Breaking Boundaries: Mallory Agency and it’s Journey to Nationwide Success

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: [00:00:15] Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this morning. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming back to the Business RadioX microphone with Mallory Agency. The man himself, Mr. Matt Mallory. How are you, man?

Matt Mallory: [00:00:36] Hey, it’s so great to be back, stone. Um, it’s always fun to be with you, and I’m excited about the opportunity.

Stone Payton: [00:00:44] Thank you. Well, we’re delighted to have you back on. And I’m really interested interested in hearing about 2023, how it’s been for the last year or so, where things are headed. But maybe before we do that, how about, uh, getting us caught up again? Just share a brief overview of of Mallory Agency. Mission, purpose. What you guys are out there doing?

Matt Mallory: [00:01:07] Of course. I’m happy to. Mallory Agency, we are in our fourth generation. We are a highly specialized boutique property and casualty insurance broker. Clients coast to coast. Um, we’re happy to boast that. Very proud to boast that we have some clients, um, in the UK and in the US. Vis um, we are now operating from four offices in the southeast, which is very exciting. And of course, we’ll chat about that. Um, uh, during the show. Um, we, um. Being the boutique specialized firm that we are, we have been having a lot of fun working with some of the best clients, with the best team, and we get to do it our way with the with the best, most richest culture. Um, that I would really put up against any, any of our competitors or any corporate firms. So just a lot to be thankful for.

Stone Payton: [00:02:03] Well, I got to tell you from my perspective, it’s been too long since you and I have had a conversation on air. So yeah, I’m anxious to to hear what was 2023 like for Mallery Agency, man? It sounds like maybe you’ve had some some real wins.

Matt Mallory: [00:02:19] What, a year? Um, we had so much to be thankful for in 2023. Um, from finding some great talent, some new team members to join our company, to finding some really great clients to partner with and all different kind of places, some really fun, exciting, interesting clients. You know, during the last show and you and I chatted, we kind of isolated the topic of trying to find great people. And that is an ongoing. Challenge battle opportunity, however you want to label it. And last year we were able to secure some some really great new team members that have just almost immediately really bought into our culture and who we are now and more importantly, who we are going to develop and grow into. And then finding some great clients where there was alignment, um, culturally. And then some of our, some of our deliverables were just a great fit and really needed for them. So, um, 20% growth year over year was what we were able to celebrate, which was wonderful, that metric. Uh, we’re really proud of that, because in our world, within the property and casualty world, and when you look at our peers and competitors within our our revenue threshold category, um, it puts us as a leader, uh, with that kind of growth. So we’re just super thrilled, very excited. There’s a lot of energy right now and what Mallory Agency has already achieved. But then also going into 24, I mean, the the holidays were great, but they did not slow down our energy or our momentum. So we’re very excited.

Stone Payton: [00:03:59] Well, I got to tell you, 20% growth, I suspect. And I’m no economist. I suspect that is a, um, an accomplishment in virtually any arena. I’m certainly envious of us. We had a good year at Business RadioX, but I don’t think we had 20, 20% growth. And also, um, not unlike you. You know, we wanted to and have had some success in continuing to expand the Business RadioX network to have physical studios in various communities. I’m curious to know, uh, eh, what compelled you to actually set up additional offices and in what was the what was the process like? How did you go about about selecting those specific market?

Matt Mallory: [00:04:44] Yeah. So we’re new to this. Um, you know, our firm historically has expanded and acquired some smaller peers and competitors. But since I have been leading this, this company, this is new to us and new to me and this kind of real estate expansion, office expansion. Always something that would fascinated me when I saw my peers do it. I was very interested in it. Um, the process, the cadence, how do you do it? How do you do it? Well and profitably. Um, so it was new. So the two locations where we expanded, we already have a location in and, um, West Midtown of Atlanta and of course our office in Lagrange. And we were looking at what makes sense. Um, and then we, we looked at this from kind of two different lenses. One lens is where do we already have client market share that we want to build upon. And the other lens we look through is where do we want to more or less put a stake in the ground of, hey, we’re here and we want to we want to gain market share. And it may be some an area that we’re a little bit unfamiliar, familiar with or that we want to, uh, that we’re very interested in a lot of different ways. You can you can investigate that. So Charleston, South Carolina and Auburn, Alabama have been on our list of thinking about this for quite a while.

Matt Mallory: [00:06:05] We love Charleston, the coast there. Um, when I was a kid, I spent almost every summer in Hilton Head. Um, I had a family of mine, had a place there, and it was just a really nice thing. So we’d go back and forth, um, and I got to know that area, um, as a young boy. And then since then, we have clients we’ve been able to partner with, and we’ve always been really interested. So one of our clients in particular has a location there. And in an effort to expand our partnership and a relationship with them and have a have a presence in the Charleston market, we just felt that it was a good fit and it has been so far. So our office is overlooking the Ashley River and the The Citadel’s campus, so it’s a pretty neat view. Um, on the west edge, really pretty area. The culture over there has been fantastic. They warmly welcome, um, uh, folks like us to come in and attempt to do more business and be more successful. It’s been a very good and positive experience so far. We’re looking for leadership in that area. If anyone in the audience, uh, is interested, we are looking for, uh, market leadership for Charleston for Mallory Agency.

Matt Mallory: [00:07:15] So maybe that’s a conversation later. Um, for Auburn. We’ve always been interested in Auburn for a few different reasons. Uh, one of them is logistically, uh, for us, it’s very convenient, easy. You know, being on 85, being such a heavy and dense, uh, thoroughfare, uh, you know, Atlanta, Lagrange and Auburn, I mean, just kind of made sense. Um, we also look at the energy and the growth of a community like Auburn with Auburn University, such a big SEC school with just, you know, historically just monumental success and so many of their different athletics and academics and the community itself, family friendly, a lot of energy, a lot of youth because of the school. And every time we went down there, there was something else going on. I mean, the growth is just, um, is wild. So we thought, okay, this is clearly somewhere we need to be. Um, we’ve got great market leadership. Um, one of our, uh, client advisors by the name of Forrest Burch is our market leader in Auburn. We have established ourselves with an office downtown Auburn, fantastic community in the area. So we’re excited about this stone. I mean, we look at these two areas as having alignment with Mallory Agency, the culture of the area. Um, very positive about the future.

Stone Payton: [00:08:33] Well, I travel 85. I used to travel more. My folks live up here now, but, uh, they were in Pensacola. That’s where I grew up. And so a market growth marker for me lately has been, uh, Bucky’s. And didn’t you get a Bucky’s down here in Auburn not too long ago?

Matt Mallory: [00:08:50] Yeah. That’s right, that’s right.

Stone Payton: [00:08:52] How’s that for strategy?

Matt Mallory: [00:08:57] Absolutely. If if the Bucky’s leadership is listening in, we would love to become your broker of record. That’s just a side note.

Stone Payton: [00:09:04] I like it, I like it. So this question is a little bit selfish, but I mean, I think everybody would benefit from it. And it really is directly related to our own efforts here at Business RadioX. As we continue to expand, what are you learning or what are what have you begun to put into place to have all these different offices and more importantly, the the leadership and the rank and file within them, interacting with each other and communicating with each other? Have you run into some surprises? Have you set up some disciplines to help that go smoothly, and if so, is it working?

Matt Mallory: [00:09:39] Yeah, I mean, you just nailed it is making sure there is alignment and culture and mentality. We really have to filter that out on the front side and finding people that almost immediately. And that’s a challenge, but almost immediately can buy in to our culture and who we are again, who we are now. But more importantly, they can rather quickly see who we are going to become. Well, how do they know that? We have to be very clear in our vision and in our ambition, and how we articulate that to new team members, to leadership? It has to be done frequently. You cannot develop a vision which can get everyone really excited, and it’s almost like a we could all become cheerleaders for our own business. You can’t communicate it just one time, and you also have to communicate the reality that our vision can be a little fluid. And if we come back to you, the the framework of our vision or the substance will remain the same, but it could have some fluidity to it. And recognize that your leadership team is still focused and disciplined on the same achievements. How we get there. There could be a little bit of a turn in the road, but we’re still going to get to where we’re looking to to arrive. So a lot of that has to be filtered on the front side. Each of these offices, the personalities may be a little bit different because of the leadership.

Matt Mallory: [00:11:09] They’ll be unique to the leadership. However, the leaders know that I expect the culture to remain the same. It doesn’t matter if I’m in Atlanta, Georgia or Auburn, Alabama. I want to make sure that when we walk into those areas, how we are communicating with our teams internally, how we’re communicating with clients, how we’re working, the soft skills are so critical. And that’s really where I. Well, I isolate is I want to make sure our soft skills are consistent with every single person. We can teach insurance, and we can go deep with the technical, and we want that to be consistent. But when we’re dealing with our clients, we’re using more soft skills. When we’re dealing with our team members internally, we’re dealing with a lot of soft skills. That has to be consistent, and we’re not looking to clone anyone on leadership and become robots, but we have to make sure that we are consistent with each other and how we work and how we operate, and it is challenging. But if we find the right people and we’ve seen this, if we find the right people and we are effective in communicating our culture with consistent passion and enthusiasm, and then furthermore, if we can show results that what we’re looking to achieve, we are achieving, we are not finished, but we are achieving this. That gives this affirmational feel to our team that, oh yeah, it is working and that’s been really successful.

Stone Payton: [00:12:31] I got to tell you, Matt, having a conversation with you is like attending a leadership seminar. And it’s a great reminder. And it’s, uh, you know, for example, the acknowledging that that that, uh, mission and vision, maybe you need to allow for some fluidity or at least some, uh, be open to, uh, methods for achieving those ends. Maybe, you know, maybe what helped us do that really? Well, two years ago, five years ago. We need to adjust that in light of environment and other factors. The other thing that strikes me is, um, you got to have that strong communication. Uh, uh, and it sounds like maybe you have never suffered this, but I gotta believe some of my peers have have suffered this, that even if you get the really strong communication from the very top leadership, if you don’t do it consistently and it’s not really strong and clear, um, that you could suffer some dilution even at the very next level. Right? Even at that branch manager, whatever you call it, level. And then and then when they start talking to their I mean, it can, it can get diluted in a hurry without the consistency and the and the initial strength. Yeah.

Matt Mallory: [00:13:49] Absolutely. So one way we’re trying to mitigate that is and so much birthed out of 2020, the pandemic. And one of the things that was birthed out of that was we have the first Friday of every month. We have a team wide, company wide call. And some of that discussion can be. Business related. Some of it can be, um, some fun. Like. Well, one thing that we do is we always start off that call with cheers for peers. We want to celebrate each other. We want to be excited to to work with each other and come to our jobs, come to this profession and, and look forward to working with everybody. We focus a lot on mind, body, spirit. We want to be holistically healthy as a team because of this hybrid remote environment. There’s still a little new, even for years now, still a little bit new to us. And probably a lot of people out there, we want to be holistically healthy, because if we are, then we know that we’re going to perform at a top level for our coworkers, for our team members and for our clients. And then hopefully we’re not giving our crumbs to our family, significant other spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, kids, whatever. We’re giving our best. And we have to recognize that. We tell our team that a lot, that we want your best with us, but we don’t want you to max out so that when the day is over with, you may be in a little bit of a mood or tired or just tapped out, going home to your team, or just if you’re working from home, walking down the hallway to your family, we want you to give them your best.

Matt Mallory: [00:15:27] So holistic health is important to us. And then lastly, it’s making sure that we can give updates to our team. Now some things we we hold a little bit close because we don’t want to we don’t want to deliver anything that could be premature. Um, it’s tough to pull something back once you once you deliver it, but we want to give updates and share excitement, because if we share excitement to our team, they feel like they’re along with us. If we wait to only one time a year for an annual meeting to share all the good things going on, it arguably puts your team in the dark and they don’t have a clue what’s going on. They’re just grinding out during the day, and then all of a sudden they hear these updates. But how much more fun is it to tell them along the way in meaningful periods of time, how we are growing, developing what we’re achieving? It gives them something to be pretty proud of so that when they’re at a cocktail party or they’re at their church, or they’re at their kids sport sports game, they’ve got something to brag about and talk about. Hey, listen, this company I work for, we are having a great year. We’re doing all these exciting things. It could be that’s a recruiting tool. That’s also a way that we can build our brand and communicate our brand and celebrate our brand through our team. So we’re trying all these different ways and these methods to make sure that, um, there’s cohesiveness and there’s a lot of unity.

Stone Payton: [00:16:54] So when it comes to this communicating showing results you said earlier and and and updating folks is there room for not. This may be industry specific, but I’m just going to ask it in general, is there room for the peer group to contribute to what those metrics and milestones that matter should be like? If you’re looking toward 2024, should they and do they have some role in defining what those what those metrics and milestones that matter are?

Matt Mallory: [00:17:28] Absolutely. This is not the Matt Mallory show. This is Mallory Agency, but as a company, we are a team. And I tell everyone on the front end when they come in, we want to build something special with great people that become great leaders, so that when we get to a point and we start achieving metrics and benchmarks that we have been staring and maybe even obsessing about, we get to that achieving mark. We can turn around and say, oh my gosh, look what we did together. And we’re just now getting started. That builds a lot of excitement. So how do you get there? So we do. We have our five pillars that are very near and dear to us. And we get with our team and we talk about fulfilling those. And the way we fulfill those is getting with our different departments and our leadership and saying, here’s how we’re performing. In fact, we just finished an agency retreat the end of 23. Um, it, uh, precursor to our Christmas party, which was just what a fun night. And during our agency retreat, we we showed the data stone. We showed the numbers of this is how we are performing as a team and we isolated it per department. We never called anyone out. I don’t believe in that. We never we never. We celebrate things together and we will celebrate individuals for sure, top performers.

Matt Mallory: [00:18:51] But we will never poke anyone on the chest that was an underachiever or underperform. We want to build people up and edify them and find out, okay, if we fell short by a little bit or a lot, how can we improve? And we look at these departments and we say this, this is a challenge for you. You’ve already performed and achieved this level of success, but we know you have not reached your potential and we cannot wait to see what you can do. So we’re going to give you a new level of achievement and then maybe push you a little bit just to see what we’re capable of, maybe stretch you a little bit and that that can put some excitement, that can put some ownership and accountability with our teams and departments. And they love the idea. It was a new thing, a test that we did, um, that we deliver to our team. They loved it. They loved being able to see some of the numbers and the metrics about our growth and expansion and how we’re performing, and now when they are coming together in teams. Now they have something to look forward to, something to strive for. Compared to just thinking, well, I guess we’re doing okay because no one’s mad at us.

Speaker4: [00:20:01] Right?

Stone Payton: [00:20:02] I got to say, man, if I had a stronger work ethic, I think I’d want to come to work for Mallory Agency. It sounds like a great place.

Speaker4: [00:20:12] Oh, yeah? Yeah. Okay. You got to.

Stone Payton: [00:20:13] Tell me about. I understand that you’ve become a member of this gbn worldwide. What’s that all about?

Matt Mallory: [00:20:21] Yeah. So fun. So Gbn stands for the Global Broker Network Worldwide. So the history of this dates back about 5 or 6 years when our leadership team came together and we recognized and it sounds maybe a little bit silly coming off the tongue, but we definitely live in a, a global interconnected world economy, commerce. And you don’t have to be a big billion dollar company to recognize that. You don’t have to have offices all over the world to to recognize the kind of world we live in. I mean, we can quite literally get in touch with anyone we want to anyone in the world on the cell phone now, right? We can look up anything. We can find anything. So when we recognize that, then we took another step forward and thought, well, how can we, number one participate in that, contribute to that and make our brand known? And how can we maybe partner with great clients? What’s the pathway? So in the in the fun, lively property and casualty world, it’s called reverse flow business. And there are a lot of different networks that are similar to Gbbn, but we pick them a little bit intentionally where if there is a business anywhere in the world that wants to have a location in the United States by regulation, they have to have a US domiciled insurance broker partner, and they have to have US paper, which is just slang for you have to have a US insurance carrier, a Hartford or traveler as a Chubb, something similar to that.

Matt Mallory: [00:21:53] You have to have that. So knowing that and knowing about the the influx of business coming into the US that we all know exists, we thought we want to build a participate, be able to be a point of contact, contribute to this, be a part of this entire story. So now we’ve reengaged in all candor. We’ve disengaged the first time just because we had a very tragic loss within our firm, and it was just a little bit too much to try and do all the things we were attempting to do at that time. We pressed pause, and now we’ve reengaged because we feel like we’re in a much better place, a more stable place to really take on some exciting initiatives like this. So now Mallory Agency has become kind of a, um, an East Coast point of contact or anchor for the Gbbn. And we’ve had some success already. We’ve been able to work with some really great partners overseas, worked with some great clients, exciting clients so far. Um, it’s very interesting, um, relationship to cultivate. Uh, but it’s been a lot of fun so far, and we’re positive about the future.

Stone Payton: [00:22:56] Well, don’t share anything proprietary, of course, but anything that we haven’t already touched on that you’ve kind of got in mind for 2024 and beyond for Mallory Agency? For example, do you think you might stay on this path and continue to open additional offices or some other kind of big, big, hairy, uh, things? What do they call it? Big hairy goal you guys might be after in the coming years.

Matt Mallory: [00:23:20] Mallory Agency has no plans for future office expansion right now, but I will say we have never been more excited about 24. My goodness, the energy, the enthusiasm is palpable for 24. The level of momentum that we have going into first quarter, I can share that that what we have right now in our pipeline for first quarter of 24 alone almost equals what we achieved in our for all of 23. And we are just over the moon excited about this. We have a great team. We’re recruiting more team leaders and more leaders in general for our firm that will understand who we are. Buy into our culture almost immediately recognize that we have not even closed reached our potential. And if they can have long, firm vision, it’s difficult now to find people that can do that. Everyone is really into quick results, immediate success, and I probably suffer from a little bit of that myself. Um, maybe suffer from a little bit of impatience. I actually call that working with urgency, but looking at wanting to find people that can understand again. Who we are looking to become now and more importantly, who we will develop into and what we will achieve when we can find that for this year, it’s just going to be incredible. But I look forward to a use, maybe a less eloquent word. I look forward to a truly epic historical 2020 for finding great people to really build up something special and partner with truly amazing clients. It’s going to be, um, it’s going to be a wonderful year.

Stone Payton: [00:25:02] Well, I certainly have every reason to believe that. What an inspiring conversation. All right. What’s the best way for folks to learn more about Mallory Agency? Tap into the things that you guys are doing. Whatever works for you. Website. I just want to make sure folks can can get to you.

Matt Mallory: [00:25:21] Of course, happy to connect with people. Our website is always, um, accessible to everybody. Um, I am active on LinkedIn. You can always look up Matt Mallory on LinkedIn. I can toss out my email address as well. I’m happy for people to to connect that way. It’s Matt M, Matt M at Mallory Agency.com happy to connect with people and and look forward to possible conversations to, uh, collaborate and look forward to an exciting year.

Stone Payton: [00:25:53] What an absolute delight to have you on the show. Of course, I knew it would be because of the last time that we had you on air. Congratulations on all the momentum and success. I know there’s only greater things to come, but keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing is important, and the way you’re doing it is both important and inspiring. And I can’t thank you enough for joining us on the show, man.

Matt Mallory: [00:26:21] It has been so much fun to be with you again. Thank you for the time. And, um, cheers to 24.

Stone Payton: [00:26:28] My pleasure man. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today with the Mallory Agency, Mr. Matt Mallory and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying we’ll see you in the fast lane.