RHS 176 - Michael Malfa on Building a Digital Experience for Your Producers

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Speaker 5 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 6 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 2 Today, we have a tremendous episode for you.

Speaker 8 We have Michael Malfa, the CEO and co-founder of Boardwalk Insurance, a digital agency out of Canada in this case.

Speaker 8 And Michael and I were connected via Dylan Reed, who was with Runder Wright, and then he went over to Buddy Insurance. Now he's back with Wonder Wright.

Speaker 8 Dylan's a great guy, and he reached out to me one day and he said, hey,

Speaker 8 you got to meet this guy, Michael Malfa. He's doing like a lot of the same things that you're trying to do at Rogue.
He's doing up in Canada.

Speaker 8 He thinks the same way as you do, and he's got tons of interesting shit that he's building and doing. And

Speaker 8 I connected with Michael and we had this hour-long conversation. It was just absolutely phenomenal.
I got to the end of it and I was like, oh my God, I can't believe we didn't record this.

Speaker 8 Like, it was just awesome. And sometimes it's good to have conversations that you don't record.
I don't, I'm not trying to insinuate that you need to record every decent conversation that you have.

Speaker 8 But Michael's a tremendous dude. And I love the way he thinks.
I love what he's doing.

Speaker 8 He is going to be a force in his entire, his company, Boardwalk Insurance, is going to be a force of nature in Canada. Can't wait to see what he's doing.
Can't wait to reconnect with him.

Speaker 8 You know,

Speaker 8 as we both continue to grow and share notes on what it means to be building a digital human-optimized agency in 2023 and beyond. So you're going to absolutely love this conversation.
I think you will.

Speaker 8 Before we get there, I want to give...

Speaker 8 Just a quick shout out to all you guys listening. Guys, I've been pumping out a lot of episodes lately, loving getting back into the show.

Speaker 8 You know, sometimes you just, sometimes, you know, doing all this podcasting, you just, I don't know, you just, life takes over.

Speaker 8 And I hate when that happens because I feel I just want to continue sharing with you guys. And I love you guys so much, and I love you for listening.
And I just want to say thank you for that.

Speaker 8 But I'm glad I'm back on the horse. And I feel like the episodes have been dynamic and fun, and the conversations have been awesome.
And

Speaker 8 you guys are responding and listening. And I love that.
And, you know, if you enjoy the show, share with a friend. That's all I can ask, right? I mean, share the show with a friend.

Speaker 8 That's the best way to support what we do here at the show. And just, just, I love you for listening.
If you enjoy the podcast, you'll love the blog. Findingpeak.com.

Speaker 8 Go to findingpeak, findingp-e-ak.com, finding peak, where we talk about peak performance and business life, your career.

Speaker 8 What are the things you need to be doing in your health and your mentality

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 8 how you lead and how you sell and all those things.

Speaker 8 We're talking about what it means to find peak performance in your life. And what I'll tell you is we talk about all kinds of different dynamic things.
And no one does all those things.

Speaker 8 I don't do all the things.

Speaker 8 But what it is, is I'm trying to share with you different tactics and strategies that you can cherry-pick and place into your own life and help you be the best version of yourself day to day

Speaker 8 and whatever that means for you and whatever helps that, whenever, whatever that helps you do better.

Speaker 8 So go to findingpeak.com, free articles. We do do some really deep dive, kind of nitty-gritty behind the scenes stuff for insurance people.

Speaker 8 Those come out on Tuesdays and those are paid mostly because,

Speaker 8 I don't know, I feel like if you're going to step inside my brain, the $7 a month is worth it. And plus, I just, it kind of helps me

Speaker 8 bifurcate and prioritize comments and stuff from people. So paid subscribers get priority on comments and responses and stuff like that.

Speaker 8 But yeah,

Speaker 8 90 plus percent of the content is free. And

Speaker 8 I hope you check that out. And last but not least, I want to give a big shout out to Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y.com.
T-I-V-L-Y.com. Guys, Tivly is a major part of the success that we have at Rogrist.

Speaker 8 They're one of our largest and most important partners in our business. And if you're looking to write more commercial insurance, they have a portfolio of ways to do that.
They're tremendous people.

Speaker 8 I enjoy working with them.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 we've been a client for going on 18 plus months. We're probably headed toward two years at this point.

Speaker 8 Big fan of Tivly and was honored when they asked if they could sponsor the show and share their message with you. And if you want to learn more about them, go to tivly.com.

Speaker 8 You can also listen to the episode I did. Go back in the archives and find the episode I did with Mark McClure and Kim Reed, and you'll learn all about Tivoli, what they're doing.

Speaker 8 Guys, I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Michael Malfa.

Speaker 6 I'm going to Shabbo,

Speaker 5 Mr. Hanley.

Speaker 8 What's up, dude?

Speaker 5 Hold on. Let me let me fix my audio here.

Speaker 5 Let me fix my audio. I'm not hearing you.

Speaker 7 You feel, you

Speaker 7 see.

Speaker 5 I know what it is.

Speaker 7 I'll tell you what, you look good, man. I know you can't hear me.
I know you can't hear me, but you look good. Only the audience can hear me right now.
So Michael's working on his audio.

Speaker 5 So let me hear him. I can hear you now.

Speaker 7 I was just telling the audience that even though you couldn't hear me, you look amazing. The hair,

Speaker 7 you're all trimmed up.

Speaker 5 I mean, stop it.

Speaker 7 Very intimidating to come into a call with such a good-looking dude.

Speaker 5 It's, I just got back from Florida.

Speaker 7 That's why.

Speaker 5 You asshole.

Speaker 5 You know,

Speaker 5 much needed.

Speaker 7 How was it?

Speaker 5 It's a much needed sunshine.

Speaker 7 Was good. Fine.
How are you doing?

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah, man.
Good. Just doing the thing, all the things.

Speaker 7 I'm excited. We're finally get to do this.
I know we kind of went back and forth a bunch and we've missed each other. And I think I canceled on you.
And you can't, you know, and we go back and forth.

Speaker 7 And it's always the way it is. If for anyone who's listening at home that doesn't have a podcast,

Speaker 7 you know, I think in your mind, everyone thinks it's like clean and easy and you just schedule it. And, you know, life happens.
And, you know, and this is, this is always the way it is. But we had,

Speaker 7 you know, I don't even, who connected us? I can't even remember now. Who originally connected us?

Speaker 5 You know what? It was uh

Speaker 5 who was it dylan i think it was dylan he was yeah dylan reed yeah

Speaker 7 yes um

Speaker 7 and i knew dylan at wonder right and then he went to buddy insurance and then he left buddy insurance went back to wonder right and he said yo there's this dude up in canada you got to freaking talk to him he's doing a lot of cool shit and uh and we had an awesome kind of get to know you call and uh i think at the end i was like man we got to jump on a podcast and talk about the business and what's going on so why don't we we do this?

Speaker 7 For everyone at home who's listening who doesn't know you, doesn't know what you're up to, give us like the, give them like the, the 10,000 foot or, you know, you know, maybe not back to birth, but give us kind of the origin story, what's up now, and then we'll go from there.

Speaker 5 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So, so high level view, you know, I've been in the business, you know, since

Speaker 5 2008 to been on the commercial brokering side. So I was doing commercial brokering similar to what you're doing there at Rogue Risks, you know, PNC, commercial PNC,

Speaker 5 you know, at it for a number of years, building up that book of business. And then I guess we got to the point where we plateaued, my partner and I.
So we were both at a direct writer.

Speaker 5 We were working for a direct writer, captive, captive agents for like 12 years at Fairfax Financial Company. And, you know, we decided to branch out to the brokering side.

Speaker 5 And then we saw, we started feeling a lot of the additional workload that's on the brokering side.

Speaker 5 Like people have no idea what uh what brokers do behind the scenes like everyone is you know clients push push brokers for quotes push them for service they don't realize how much back-end work there is how much administrative work there is so we felt it and as we scaled that book up you know we were just drowning in service work so we're like hey you know we got to do something here so that's when we kind of started building out uh boardwalk insurance and we were building out our own unique solutions our own technology that's basically you know, the brains behind the operation.

Speaker 5 It's like, I guess you can call it, we don't like to call it a BMS system, you know, for your listeners, I'm sure the technical ones will understand BMS is broker management system.

Speaker 5 There's also PMS and we're not talking about the time of the month PMS, like policy management system.

Speaker 5 So it's sort of like that. It's kind of like everything, it's housing all of our operations.

Speaker 5 But the reason why we decided not to purchase something off the shelf, you know, we got this, we built the solution so we can remain agile and flexible and really plug in to different providers, different service providers out there, and make this really robust and take away as much heavy lifting as possible from the producer.

Speaker 5 So that's kind of like why we did it. Two years in now, we launched in March 2021.
It's been going great. We're writing a lot of business.

Speaker 5 There's obviously some bottlenecks on the producer side, as you know.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 5 we'll dive into it deeper. But that's kind of like the high level we're at.
We're in Canada, in ontario selling mainly in ontario but we do sell out of province as well

Speaker 5 and you know i did meet uh you know dylan at insuretech new york city so we were in insure tech we were we were in a lab an accelerator with uh insurtech new york and that's where we met dylan and he had such great things to say about you ryan he's like you got to listen to ryan he's doing amazing things where we are he's he's got he he was talking about your content how unbelievable it is and uh i do commend you ryan like the content you're putting out that's a big commitment and uh you're doing a great job

Speaker 7 well thank you i appreciate that um

Speaker 7 we can come back to that side in a minute too i think you know what i'm what i what i think is really interesting so so this what you have done and and one of the things that i think is is so admirable and exciting and i'm so interested in is like what you have decided to do is something that every independent i shouldn't say every

Speaker 7 all of the independent agents that i know who are thinking where is the puck going and not where it is today. Now, one of the interesting things about our business is you can think,

Speaker 7 you know, again, taking this kind of hockey analogy here, like you don't even be successful in our industry, you don't even have to be playing where the puck is today.

Speaker 7 You can still be doing shit like the way it was 10, 20 years ago and be successful. It's the crazy part about our business.
So then there are the people who are kind of just.

Speaker 7 kind of going along operating with the tools that are kind of given to them.

Speaker 7 They they go to enough carrier functions or enough association functions like, ah, you know, I'll adopt this tool eventually. You know, they're all kind of laggards.

Speaker 7 They're not even like, they're not even like, you know, the late majority. They're like straight laggards.
If anyone's ever read Crossing the Chasm, which is which is a or chasm or

Speaker 7 a tremendous book for anyone who has not read that and is interested. But

Speaker 7 anyone who I know, and it's a growing group of people, which is exciting,

Speaker 7 who is thinking about where the puck is going in our business.

Speaker 7 They all have this fantasy of, man, i'd love to create my own you know down here we call it agency management system not a broker management system so you know our own ams and um

Speaker 7 and then you start to think about all the technical hurdles and all the uh sunk cost into technology and building out a development team or hiring a third-party development team and geez i sell insurance i don't know anything about developing software or what that looks like.

Speaker 7 Like, how, you know, what was it in your past? Or, or like, it's such a big commitment to take on building this out. Like, when did you, what was that moment like where you were like, you know what?

Speaker 7 There's no other path for us, for us to be who we are, for what we want to do. There's no other path because, cause it is an enormous commitment.

Speaker 7 And I am positive, you know, and I'm sure you talk about it. This has not just been like.
very easy, clear incremental growth and everything's been fine.

Speaker 7 So like, talk to me about that first moment when you look at, you know, you look at your partner and you're like, you know what? We got, this is something we have to do this.

Speaker 7 Like there's no other option for us. This is where we're going.
What was that like?

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. It's, and it's pretty funny, actually.
You know, it took some naiveness. I, I'm not going to lie.

Speaker 5 You know, we were coming from the product side, like, no different than you. Like, we knew the product very well, but nothing to do with development.

Speaker 5 Now, my partner is a little bit more tech-savvy, you know, than I am.

Speaker 5 He's always had some kind of passion for technology, and he's never developed any technology, but he's always been very passionate and avid in, you know, learning about it.

Speaker 5 So it started in a Starbucks, actually. We were sitting in in a Starbucks having a coffee and just on a piece of like a napkin, a piece of paper.
And we just started,

Speaker 5 we were talking about some problems and some hurdles we were having with our current AMS system and how it couldn't do this and couldn't do that. And we just started like wireframing.

Speaker 5 We just started drawing screens out on a piece of paper, a napkin. We're like, well, what if a screen looked like this

Speaker 5 when the producer came in and they can access this data and they could do this? And then we just started snowballing. We ended up talking to an advisor.

Speaker 5 So we brought brought someone on early on onto our advisory board and uh he he was a vp at a tech firm a local tech firm here and he started giving us the structure so that took a lot of time like that that discovery period of where we had to learn what how to do this like what wireframing is what sprints are development sprints like front end back end ux ui like it was exciting though we were passionate about it like we love insurance but It was exciting learning this new portion of the business.

Speaker 5 So we started, you know, we started investing tons of hours after work, in the night, in the mornings, and we were just researching and meeting with all these different, you know, consultants as well, CTOs of companies.

Speaker 5 We had some friends that were CTOs.

Speaker 5 So we just started to gather all this info and we started to get excited and be like, wow, you know, if we can do, if we can pull this off, this system would be amazing.

Speaker 5 And right now, there's really no system out there for producers that would give them these tools.

Speaker 5 And like you said, like the puck, you know, you could succeed by not being where the puck is, but if you can get ahead of it and you can be where the puck's going to be, you know, a year down the road, two years down the road, then you could start, you know, you could start scoring and winning big.

Speaker 5 And that's what we want. Like, we were doing well without the tools, like you said, but it's just not scalable and it's not going to be sustainable over a long period of time.

Speaker 5 We're young, like, you know, we're young. So we got to get ahead of the curveball.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I, so, this is,

Speaker 7 um,

Speaker 7 so for a year, I mean, since I got in the business, this is going to be my 17th year in the industry. I've been hearing,

Speaker 7 you know, AMS is sucked. They're all behind.
You know, they're, you know, there as much as the head, you know, there's so much work and writing insurance.

Speaker 7 And then your AMS is a second job, essentially. You know what I mean? All this, you know, you've heard all these things and they're all terrible.
And look, I think that hopefully St.

Speaker 7 Peter will judge all of the people who've run agency management, legacy agency management systems harshly when they decide to make their trip up north. And,

Speaker 7 but

Speaker 7 it has been a reality, right? That that's just, that's just the way that it was. And, you know, when I, when I,

Speaker 7 when I think about, you know, so, so there's always been this, this kind of, this kind of catch-22 that people will say, you know, people like you and I sit on these podcasts and we say, you know, this is where it's going.

Speaker 7 This is where the puck is going. This is, you know, one of these days, one of these days.
And then you got these legacy brokers who are like, wow, you guys are, you young guys are moron.

Speaker 7 You know, not that I'm not young anymore, but like, you know, you're morons. Just go get epic or just go get, you know, go get one of the standard systems and sell insurance.

Speaker 7 Our job is to sell insurance. And I'm like, I get that, right?

Speaker 7 Like, I wholeheartedly get that and have learned that lesson the hard way many, many times where I thought I was out ahead of something and just, it just didn't make a difference.

Speaker 7 But there is something in my core. And I, and I think this is what we really connected on, even if we didn't verbalize it during our first conversation was like,

Speaker 7 I just feel, I can't, I can't not believe that there isn't isn't going to be a day. That's a triple negative, by the way.
So I get points for that.

Speaker 7 That

Speaker 7 there is going to come a time when

Speaker 7 that buck does drop,

Speaker 7 when it does happen, when being out ahead of it, when having connectivity, when having clean, clear, easy systems that you can train people on quickly,

Speaker 7 when all of a sudden that flips over.

Speaker 7 and the people who haven't made that jump, who haven't thought about the things that you were thinking about and we're trying to think about it, Rogan, And there are many others.

Speaker 7 You know, we're not alone, but when, when all of a sudden, being in that game and thinking out ahead is going to end up being a competitive advantage. I just,

Speaker 7 it's happening. It can't happen in every other industry and not this industry forever.
I think eventually that rubber band is going to snap forward.

Speaker 7 And the people that are thinking the way you are are going to be the ones that, I don't want to say survive because you can survive without it. But I did a podcast that hasn't dropped yet.

Speaker 7 And I can't wait for it to.

Speaker 7 And the title of it is, and I think this is kind of relates to this is you're going to be okay but your kids are

Speaker 7 and like that that's kind of like my thought is like the 60 year old guy who's plugging along he doesn't need to think the way you're thinking he doesn't have to think the way you're thinking at all exactly he's he's good his spouse is always going to have a seven series bmw in the driveway he's going to have his house in florida he's going to take his great trips everything's good his life is set We're doing this for the next generation, for the next generation.

Speaker 7 His 35-year-old kid, or, you know, whether whether it's a guy or girl, comes behind him,

Speaker 7 that person's going to struggle. That person's going to struggle.
That's the one that's going to be, you know,

Speaker 7 you're setting your perpetuation up for a headache.

Speaker 5 Yeah. Do you, do you have kids, Ryan? I do.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.
Nine and seven, two boys. Yep.

Speaker 5 So there you go. The rogue risk will be ready for them.
When they come in, there's going to be, it's going to be just the machine that's running itself and they just plug into it and just watch it go.

Speaker 5 I'm telling you, I mean, we make that joke all the time. Like my partner and I, he's like, you know, he goes, you know, when your daughter Penelope,

Speaker 5 you know, grows up, she's six years old. He goes, and she gets into insurance.
That's when Boardwalk will be ready to just, you know, take over. So it is a long-term investment.
And we understand.

Speaker 5 And like you said, you said you're not young. You're very young, Ryan, especially in our industry.
Like in our industry,

Speaker 5 it is an aging demographic. So we are very young.
And it's exciting to see all this young talent coming in. They're very passionate about the direction of the industry.
But you're right.

Speaker 5 Like if you speak to someone that's toward nearing the end, it's very insurance risk management. And that's important too.

Speaker 7 Like you said, that's important too.

Speaker 5 But, you know, insurance risk management, the business is going to become more than just that in five, 10, 15 years. If you're just doing that, you're going to be left behind.

Speaker 5 So, you know, we're just trying to future-proof ourselves.

Speaker 7 And I think it's amazing, you know, and I don't want to be, you know, another thing that I've learned, and I learned this from one of my, one of my good buddies, Gordon Coyle, who's been on the show.

Speaker 7 And anyone who's listening, he had, we had we had a great conversation um six months or so ago i can't remember when it was but he's um he's in his uh early 60s and and dude is absolutely crushing it like created a five-year goal for himself said i don't want to be like all my peers who are just kind of coasting in i want to take my agency and i have x you know x goal that i want to hit in these five years And he's got this great agency with like a, I don't want to say a narrow niche, but like a really interesting focus in like DNO and E ⁇ O and cyber for like like VC firms and all this kind of shit.

Speaker 7 And he's like right outside New York. And the dude is crushing it.
He's, and he's thinking the way you and I are thinking.

Speaker 7 So it's like, it's not an age thing, but it definitely age tends to play just because of life cycles, but you can be at any point in your career. And if you, here's the other thing, man.
I think the

Speaker 7 thinking about this shit is fun too. Like selling insurance is great.
And I love making money and it's a great industry. I'll never leave it again.
I did, but I never will again.

Speaker 7 But man, thinking about this stuff, dreaming about the way things could be, even if it's small little tweaks,

Speaker 7 it's energizing. Like you, you know, it can be frustrating, but it's also very energizing.
I don't know.

Speaker 5 It is. There's so much room for improvement and so much room for disruption.
It's unbelievable. And it's amazing your podcast, you interviewed

Speaker 5 so many talented individuals. And it's so interesting and exciting to hear what they're doing.

Speaker 5 You know, everyone's doing something a little bit unique and finding a better way to get to that that puck in the net yeah you know fewer fewer strides to get there right now we can get that puck in the net but we're just you know we're really striding like taking a lot of strides we're skating hard we're we're we're short staffed we're undermanned that's another thing talent is another thing we should talk about you know i don't know how it is where you are but finding like

Speaker 7 experienced commercial p and c producers it's so challenging i'll tell you what you have people who live in Florida licensed in Canada because Florida is such a shit show from a marketplace.

Speaker 7 There are a ton of really talented people in the state of Florida who've been let go or just fed up with the market. And

Speaker 7 so

Speaker 7 we actually find a lot of really talented people in the state of Florida because Florida, you know, all these traditional agencies in Florida, it's a shit show down there.

Speaker 7 I mean, and not anyone's fault. Just.

Speaker 7 the hurricanes and the weather and all the kind of stuff that these eight a lot of people get churned or spit out or agencies fall or they get and so what we've we've found is that there's a lot of really talented people in the state of florida who because of that marketplace are kind of either disenfranchised with their business or they're they're kind of stuck or or they've been let go or they're kind of you know not there's nowhere for them to go because it's such a terrible market down there.

Speaker 7 And, you know, and I don't mean terrible like the agents are terrible. I just mean they're really handcuffed by what they can do.
And

Speaker 7 there's a lot of talent. And there's other places too, but like, have you thought about reaching down into, because we're lucky in that we'll hire anybody from anywhere in the States.
So

Speaker 7 we don't have the talent issue as much because we have such a large pool to pull from. Have you ever thought about coming down into the States and getting people licensed in Canada?

Speaker 5 You know what? We haven't. We've thought about getting them from other provinces, but never going into the States.

Speaker 5 I guess just because of the regulatory licensing requirements, like they would have to get their Canadian license.

Speaker 5 And we've looked into getting the u.s license if you if you're not a resident it's very challenging you you need someone there that's a resident that can get that license you know more about it than i do but we thought they would have the same hurdles coming north versus south now are you using like a recruiter to find these individuals or are you actually going out and hunting yourself yeah so i'll say part of the content is recruiting part of the content play is recruiting part of talking about who we are the way we do it um i have this this um

Speaker 7 uh little, I guess it's a blog, I guess you could call it called Finding Peak, which, which I, I, I have a, I have this,

Speaker 7 I have to create content and, and get it out of my system.

Speaker 7 It's like, uh, I don't know if you've ever seen a superhero movie where if they don't like get rid of their power or whatever, like they blow up, like it's kind of like that for me.

Speaker 7 Like if I'm not creating and writing, like I, I get a little crazy, but, um, but it's also a recruiting tool to say, hey, like, this is the way we think here, like, like this, this idea of peak performance and small incremental growth and getting one percent better every day and like if you like this mentality then we could be a good fit for you so the so the the content helps um we use indeed linkedin so so for i'd say for a lot of our positions the vast majority we do not use a recruiter however we have uh like we recently needed um we needed an accounting person that could sit in our we've been we've been outsourcing our accounting and commissions and

Speaker 7 while i have nothing negative i have nothing negative to say about the about the companies that we used it just it got to the point where we needed someone in-house to find that specific expertise we had to use a recruiter so um and we're also hiring um

Speaker 7 a director of sales and a director of service right now uh for similar reasons we had you know kind of had some hodgepodges and it's just we've matured to the point where we need a dedicated people in those positions and we're going to use recruiters for them too so so for some of like the more very specific skill-based stuff, we've used, and you know, I have no affiliation with them other than we pay them, but uh, we use the Jonas, the Jonas group is the name of the recruiting firm that we've used and had a lot of success with them.

Speaker 5 So, that makes sense. So, so your producers that you're bringing on, are you sort of putting them through like a rogue risk class, you know, where they

Speaker 5 come junior to you, maybe just licensed or about to get licensed. And you start to, you know, train them up and move them through the ranks.

Speaker 7 Maybe they start in a service role and they move up into a sales role is that what you're doing there are you looking for people so ready to sell any of my producers are listening i'm going to talk where where the puck is going and not where it has been so uh depending on when you came into rogue um you got a very different experience so some of the early producers and people that came in it was an absolute shit show it was like

Speaker 7 go do insurance. Like I, there's so many things on fire.

Speaker 5 Just you're a startup. It's a startup.
It's only natural.

Speaker 7 But so what we're actually building out, and the reason we're looking for a head of service is because the woman who was running our head of service,

Speaker 7 she actually has this really,

Speaker 7 uh,

Speaker 7 she has an affinity for the patience, the, the mind, um, for training and development. She's really good at, at putting things in SOPs and doing these big, right?

Speaker 7 She's, she's just, and again, it was, um, we just figured it out by accident. I asked her to do a couple like, like trainings on stuff.

Speaker 7 And like, I had her hand hold a couple of people that were struggling with things. And when they came out of working with her, it was like night and day.
And I was like, her name is Leslie.

Speaker 7 And I just said, Leslie, like, you know, it seems like while you're very good at service, this is something you're passionate about and whatever. So we are currently building out.

Speaker 7 um what we call the rogue digital producer school because i'm not gonna like there's killing commercial there's mick hunt stuff there's you know uh uh uh kelly dono piero as a thing charles speck you know there's a bunch of people that can teach you the core kind of classic, tried and true, and I don't mean that in any negative ways of selling insurance.

Speaker 7 Yep.

Speaker 7 What we do at Rogue is different.

Speaker 7 And it took me a while to realize how different it actually was. Like, I would put some, I put a couple, we've had a couple fits and starts on

Speaker 7 producers. And

Speaker 7 it's because

Speaker 7 you're either a digital producer or you aren't. If you take a classic producer and try to make them a digital producer,

Speaker 7 they have to have the right disposition to do that. It is, you can't take a classic producer, plug them into a digital model, and expect them to be successful.

Speaker 7 I was not aware of the amount of difference between those two things.

Speaker 7 And so, what we're building and what Leslie's building, and I, you know, we're going to start by launching this to our internal team.

Speaker 7 So, every producer that comes in will go through the Rogue Digital Producer School. And then eventually, we'd like to expand it to our parent company's network, the SIA network.

Speaker 7 And then eventually we may open it up to a broader ecosystem.

Speaker 7 Because I do think that this will be, I want, what I have tasked her with is building,

Speaker 7 you know, the best in class digital. We're not, I don't want to compete against these in-person trainings and that kind of stuff.
That's not what we're trying to do.

Speaker 7 This is going to be like, you know, whether we use them or not, like a teachable style format that you go through with tests and you essentially come out with like, what I said to her is, I I want to have,

Speaker 7 uh, and I feel like you're interviewing me now, so I'll flu this eventually, but well, we will eventually have um, what I want is to have something that's so good, so valuable, so important to the growth of a producer that they like take that badge and like put it on their fucking LinkedIn profile.

Speaker 7 That's what I want. I want people like going, like, look, you know, like almost like, uh, you know, how if you get like 100,000 subscribers on YouTube, those people hold like those plaques.

Speaker 7 Like, I want someone like on LinkedIn, like, I'm a digital producer. You know what I mean? Like, I want

Speaker 7 something like that. So, that's exciting.

Speaker 5 That must be a big undertaking, though, to put that together. Like, that's that's full time, yeah.

Speaker 7 And that's why we had to move her. I mean, that was really, and you know, and these are some of the decisions that I've found.

Speaker 7 Um, when you, when you think about your agency as a business and not an agency,

Speaker 7 the decisions you make are different, right?

Speaker 7 So, you know, you and I can have a conversation because you, you know, one of the things I picked up on very early with you is that you think about your agency like a business, not like, not like an agency, right?

Speaker 7 Agency is what you you do or brokerage is what you do you know what i mean that's how that's how you make your money but it's a business and you have to make business decisions okay

Speaker 7 i think i think this mindset this business versus agency or brokerage mindset is going to be one of the like when we look back at this period of time this may be like 2015 to you know we probably have five or 10 more years to go this this block of time in the insurance industry um if anybody writes books about the insurance industry i don't think they do but

Speaker 7 they'll look back on this time and say, this mindset was the delineation, not digital versus traditional, not any,

Speaker 7 this time period is, do you think about it like a business or do you think about it like an agency?

Speaker 7 Because us taking on the added expense of moving our head of service to training and development and hiring, that's a major expense. That's a fixed cost.
It's another human.

Speaker 7 but it's the only way to get to where we're going. And those types of decisions are what you have to do.
And it's risky. risky, it's stress-inducing.

Speaker 7 But at the same time, it feels necessary to me.

Speaker 5 And I'm glad you touched on that because this is not just, like you said, it's not just a digital play. It's more than that.

Speaker 5 And you kind of summed it up really well with looking at it like a business. We're not just building technology here, no different than you.
Like we're embedding SOPs and KPIs into everything we do.

Speaker 5 We're optimizing our CRM.

Speaker 5 We have consultants that come into our CRM to optimize how we're communicating with our clients, how we're following up with upsell opportunities, renewals, no different than you.

Speaker 5 Like there's a lot more to it than just the agency side and the tech side. Then it's the business as well.
Like what are your marketing strategies?

Speaker 5 Like, what's your, your, you know, your, your key audience, like your ideal client profile, and how do they want to be, you know, communicated with and interacted with?

Speaker 5 And what channels are you giving them to communicate with you? Like, you know, not every client. is fully prepared for that full digital experience.

Speaker 5 So we do offer like a kind of hybrid experience where they still, they still can get that traditional approach, somewhat traditional with a little sprinkle of technology.

Speaker 5 But it comes down to, like you said, it's more than just tech and insurance. Like it's, there's so much more.
And we're trying to really

Speaker 5 push the limits on everything, not just the technology, on the actual business.

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Speaker 7 Let me ask you this. When you think about,

Speaker 7 so I'm talking, thinking about through the customer journey, right? And this is something that we ask ourselves all the time.

Speaker 7 Are you more in the camp of this is the way we want to do business and we're going to find the customers to do business the way we want to do business?

Speaker 7 Or are you in the camp of, I want to provide customers who want to work with us with whatever experience they desire in working with us and we will adapt to the way they want to work?

Speaker 5 So to be honest, great question. I'd love to be in camp number one.
And we're striving to get to camp number one, but it's taking a little bit more time.

Speaker 5 When we launched, we were more like, you know, this is how we're doing it. And, you know, we want to attract, like you said, a customer that fits that profile.

Speaker 5 The problem is, is the Canadian marketplace, the market is not massive here. And it's a little bit slow to adapt.
You know, Canada is usually a little bit behind the US.

Speaker 5 So we were finding that a lot of these customers weren't ready for the way we wanted them to interact with.

Speaker 5 So we've had to step back a little bit and be a little bit more flexible, a little bit more patient, and give them the opportunity to interact still on the way on their terms.

Speaker 5 And then we're starting to slowly introduce, say, like a certificate of insurance, for example.

Speaker 5 Hey, you know, instead of emailing us, we'll give you this portal, this link where you can create your own certificates.

Speaker 5 And, you know, the uptake, ideally, we want every customer creating their own certificates, but the uptake, believe it or not, is low on that.

Speaker 5 It's getting better and better significantly as.

Speaker 5 you know as businesses are starting to adopt technology and as as newer younger more tech driven controllers are coming into place but we've had to like slowly move into that like hey we'll do your search manually if you send us an email the old-fashioned way but we also have this great new way that saves you time and we try to we try to incentivize them to nudge them forward to using the technology because it helps everybody.

Speaker 7 How do you manage the cost benefit analysis of, okay, we want to keep building towards what you said, just using this example that you brought up, this, we want insureds, clients who are going to be, who desire and are willing to use this self-service COI portal.

Speaker 7 Okay. That type of client is who crushes with us.
But at the same time, being that you have to make money to grow your business,

Speaker 7 so then there's, there's act, you know, there's going to be process, procedures, expense to, to building out a process that actually wows them the traditional way.

Speaker 7 So, you know, one thing that I'll tell you, I constantly struggle with, and I'm really interested in your, your take on this is like,

Speaker 7 I know where I want to go. And I actually said this the other day too.
I was, I was complaining because

Speaker 7 I had to let somebody go the other day. And it was one of the harder things that I've had to do in a very long time.
No, and it was tough. It was a very tough thing.
I did not like it.

Speaker 7 And it didn't make me happy. It didn't, you know, there was no part of it.
Was it even a sense of relief? It just started to finish. It sucked.
Okay.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I was just bitching to

Speaker 7 my,

Speaker 7 I have a boss. He runs all of SIA, Mad Master.
I was just, I was just bitching to him.

Speaker 7 And I just said, man,

Speaker 7 I can see so clearly. what rogue is.
Like I just, when you, you know, it is this, I can see it. There's no fogginess.
Like I know exactly exactly where I want to go.

Speaker 7 However, if I were to just push all my chips into that,

Speaker 7 that path,

Speaker 7 we're not profitable for five years.

Speaker 7 You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 Like, you know, so, so in order to make money and to make our, you know, to make sure that my people get paid and that, you know, all this stuff, like, we have to do these other things.

Speaker 7 But to do those other things, there's time. It takes you away from getting to that vision.

Speaker 7 It costs, you know, so how do you manage that?

Speaker 7 How do you manage the realities of making money, being a, being a business, growing with that, that, that, that path that you want to be on that, that excites you, that gets you up every day?

Speaker 7 Like, I find some days it's easy to manage. Some days it's very, very difficult to manage that, that they're, you know, sometimes they click and sometimes they're diametrically opposed.

Speaker 7 And that's a hard thing. How do you, how do you manage that?

Speaker 5 So that's, yeah, that's another great question. You're definitely good at this, at digging out information.
So, you know, I have an interesting answer to this, Ryan. I think you're going to like it.

Speaker 5 So what we've been doing is creating a digital experience first for our brokers. So that's how we're getting around it.
So first, we want to give our brokers this digital experience.

Speaker 5 And that we have a little bit more control over because, you know, we can attract, like you said, staff that understands. you know, the commercial and the tech, the tech.

Speaker 5 We could train them on the tech.

Speaker 5 We kind of eat, sleep, and breathe that philosophy into our business. So they come on already with that, you know, that's the philosophy here.

Speaker 5 So we're giving them this experience, this tech experience. We're letting them be the guinea pigs.
So they're interacting with everything very digitally, very tech forward.

Speaker 5 And then they can choose to give that same experience, pass it on to the client, or do a more traditional approach, like, hey, you know, phone calls, emails, traditional PDF documents.

Speaker 5 So once we feel that we get to a point where, you know, the client is starting to buy in slowly, we're going to push that experience right to the client. So, a lot of it's back end now.

Speaker 5 A lot of the technology we're doing, our customers don't feel a lot of it yet.

Speaker 5 We're just giving them bit by tidbit by tidbit, a little of the time, like the certificate feature, pink slips, you know, automate like rapid renewals, just little things at a time.

Speaker 5 Our producers and our staff see it all. They're interacting with this, with this system very digitally.

Speaker 5 And then eventually, it's just going to get to a point where we start flipping the switch and moving it directly to the customer.

Speaker 5 So now instead of our producer going into the system and inputting the submission info, they're going to be able to share that URL with the customer where the customer can input that submission info.

Speaker 5 So we're just like kind of releasing it slowly but surely to our clients. But right now it's all back in.

Speaker 5 We're just pumping as much technology to our producers as possible and seeing how the uptake is there with how they're interacting with it and how they're communicating with the clients.

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 so i got a couple questions out of that um so one of the things that one of the very one of the mistakes that i made

Speaker 7 quite a bit early was trying to do too much too fast so i love what you said about thinking it in small bits i literally write down small bits because you know that is something that i have had to my my way

Speaker 7 You know, I've said this before and people, you know, have had different opinions on this, but like I'm like a wartime general.

Speaker 7 I am, you, you don't bring me in when everything's going great and you just want to like maintain. That's not, that's not me.
You bring me in when you're like, that hill has to be ours.

Speaker 7 Here's what you have. Go figure it.

Speaker 7 Like, that's what I can do. Like, when I get to the top of the hill, I'm like, all right, I don't want to be here anymore.

Speaker 7 You know, put me in another, you know, put, go get, go give me another hill to go get, right?

Speaker 5 I could see that. I could see that.

Speaker 7 That's my way. And, and in that way,

Speaker 7 um, you know, and again, I like like, like, you know, one of the things I do a lot of, I read a lot. And one of the things, one of the reasons why Lincoln chose Grant

Speaker 7 to be, you know, to be his field general and taking on

Speaker 7 Lee,

Speaker 7 Civil War, if you don't know those references, I'm sure you do, or maybe you do.

Speaker 7 Is

Speaker 7 Grant was all offense. So his, he fired two,

Speaker 7 two of the, two of the generals directly below him almost immediately because they were very defensive. They were very, and his whole thing was:

Speaker 7 you can play offense and defense, but you can't play only defense. You can't win only playing defense.
You can't do it. You have to push.
You have to apply pressure.

Speaker 7 When you apply pressure, that creates cracks, cracks create opportunities, and then that's how you get in. Okay.
So in war, that makes a lot of sense. How does it make sense in business?

Speaker 7 Well, you don't know what works and what doesn't until you apply pressure to systems and see where things blow up and break. Now,

Speaker 7 I believe in that philosophy wholeheartedly. However, the hard lesson that I've had to learn, and I promise there's a question in here, is that

Speaker 7 the answer in business, unlike maybe, and maybe this is similar to war. I've never been in war.
I've only read books about it. So

Speaker 7 in business.

Speaker 7 Applying massive pressure to multiple systems at one time does not work. It overwhelms your people.
It overwhelms your ability to understand what's happening, what's happening well.

Speaker 7 And that is a mistake that I've made is I've moved too fast, tried to make too many changes too quickly and too rapid a success succession, and it's created problems.

Speaker 7 So, do you think that having, and one thing I've never had is a partner. I've only ever been a solo op.
And I've many times thought to myself, Jesus, if I just had,

Speaker 7 even if it was like a movie and I could have like the angel and the devil on my shoulders, just to have someone else talking to me, maybe it'd be better. But, like,

Speaker 7 you know, I've never had a partner. Do you think having a partner allows you to

Speaker 7 throttle either up or down, like like like be better about throttling up and down because now you have that constant conversation do you do you think that is like a competitive advantage for you that you did this with a partner 100

Speaker 5 but it has to be the right partner yeah so you know before getting into business you know we deal with a lot of business owners so i've got a lot of advice and the wrong partner could be the worst thing to your business you know so we won't talk to that obviously we know the the implications of having the wrong partner but if you have the right partner and they complement your skill set and they come in from like a different lens, and you're right, I'm a lot, I'm like you, maybe not, you know, as much of a wartime general, but I like to push forward and I like to drive results.

Speaker 5 My partner is a little bit more conservative. He's very methodical.
Like he think, he loves to think, think. Sometimes it's like analysis, paralysis.
Like I just like to do.

Speaker 5 I just want to get out there and do it. Let's just cross this off.
Let's bang it out. Let's bang these things out.
And he's more like, hey, let's stop. Let's plan.
Let's let's drop.

Speaker 7 Let's test.

Speaker 5 let's, let's QA. So, you know, it's good.
It's good because it keeps me grounded.

Speaker 5 And a lot of times, when you know, I just want to jump into something that these waters, he may, you know, he may identify some sharks in the water before I just dive into it. So, it helps.

Speaker 5 And getting that opinion helps as well, that second opinion, because a lot of times you're right. It's like, okay,

Speaker 5 I think this is what we should do, but I don't really know. It's nice having that second opinion.
It's been a huge help.

Speaker 7 And having that backup, you know, we all have our uptimes and our downtimes and when you're when you're not on your game it's it's nice to have someone else you can rely on but it has to be the right partner yeah yeah are you able to or how much are you able to pull from say u.s based insured tech companies and pull that up into your marketplace is there are there companies that provide crossover for you or mostly do you have to watch what's going on in the us and either try to find similar companies in canada or recreate it yourself

Speaker 5 i i would say now it's a little bit more than before You know, when we first started looking, there wasn't much that we can apply over from the U.S.

Speaker 5 because, you know, the flexibility wasn't there, different wordings, different, you know, different docs, like WonderWrite, for example.

Speaker 5 Like we spoke to WonderWrite and, you know, they're completing documents, really great what they're doing, like applications. The thing is, it's U.S.
applications.

Speaker 5 And when we first spoke to them, a lot of these accord forms weren't really relative to the forms we were using down here, but they're becoming much more flexible.

Speaker 5 Like now they're willing to adopt these forms and to program these forms into their system.

Speaker 5 So now we can, you know, we use CSIO forms instead of accord forms and we can actually program our forms into their system. So I would say it is, it is opening up a lot more.

Speaker 5 And we're starting to look at some providers south of the border. It is very exciting.
There's lots of opportunity. Even

Speaker 5 there was another one we're looking at as well.

Speaker 5 I forget the name,

Speaker 5 Andrew's talking to them. It's another provider from the US.
I'll share it with you after the podcast, but they've been great to help us with ingesting information into our system.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Do you, you know, so one of the things early in my career that I realized is that because the insurance industry is so far behind, I could just look at what was going on in other industries, recreated insurance industry, and people be like, oh my God, look what you're doing.

Speaker 7 And I'd be like, well, you know, they've been doing this for 15 years in the marketing industry, or they've been doing this for this much time. And, you know,

Speaker 7 and because it's such an insulated industry, it you know people were like it was like blowing their minds and the things that i was doing that that has changed a lot today just you know i think people are more aware of what's going on in the world in general um outside of the insurance industry and technology has helped a lot with that do you find that because you are dialed into the us market at least in being part of insure tech new york and having some of the connections that you do down here it allows you to almost seem like you have superpowers because you can see just this, you know, not that the U.S.

Speaker 7 is better or whatever, just bigger. And now you have this big, huge, and you can kind of pull, hey, I really like what this company is doing.
Man, we could create that in our own system.

Speaker 7 And now we're a step ahead. Like, are you kind of using your connections in the U.S.
market, pulling them up into your market, building them into their system?

Speaker 7 And it's giving you kind of some advantage?

Speaker 5 Big time, big time. So before we joined InsurTech New York and before we started really networking into the U.S.

Speaker 5 with some of the, you know, the agencies, the insurers, the technology providers, a lot of the stuff that

Speaker 5 we've seen south of the border does not exist and is nowhere even near development here in Canada, like especially on the MGA side.

Speaker 5 In the US, like you have so many tech forward MGAs with API connectivity. Like we don't have any of that here.

Speaker 7 Like this is

Speaker 5 it's just wild to see what's being done down there. So it has given us a bit of an advantage because now we have that foresight and we know where things.
are eventually going to go.

Speaker 5 So we can see that and we can start to position ourselves to capitalize on that.

Speaker 5 So we know, you know, this API is coming, you know, in this segment, you know, because a Hartford's doing it or a travelers, you know, it's only a matter of time before Travelers Canada starts to adopt that as well.

Speaker 5 So let's start getting ahead of it. So it has been helpful.
And one for you, what would be good is to look, and I'm sure you already have, is look to like the UK, Europe, Europe and the UK.

Speaker 5 There's that Insure Tech Conference out there. And there, I think they may even be ahead of the US.

Speaker 5 They're either on par or ahead of the U.S. because the technology that's happening there, the plays out there are also mind-blowing.

Speaker 5 We don't see too much because we haven't been participating in any events out there.

Speaker 5 But I am on the newsletter and I have been on a few panels where they're trying to like, I was on a panel where they interviewed,

Speaker 5 interviewed me on what's happening over here. And it just was like a dinosaur.
compared to what they're doing over there in the UK.

Speaker 7 It's really the interesting part about the UK and even the Western European market in general is that

Speaker 7 it's almost

Speaker 7 from what I can take. And I will say that I have not spent as much time in the UK market as I think I should.
It's actually, it's funny that you say that.

Speaker 7 I was listening to something the other day, or oh, I know what it was.

Speaker 7 I did a mastermind last week. I'm, you know, again, you have all these thoughts and they come rushing back.

Speaker 7 I was at a mastermind last week that Doug Benz put together, who's an amazing agent out of Buffalo, New York, Go Bills and not Sabers. And

Speaker 7 the

Speaker 7 and we were in New York City. So he brought in 15 agents in New York City.
It was really cool, really, really well done. It was, it was an awesome mastermind because it was event-based.

Speaker 7 So we went, one of the things we did was we went to Lloyds London's headquarters, which is the U.S. headquarters in New York City.
And this gentleman, Hank Watkins, who is the president of all of U.S.

Speaker 7 Lloyds. Okay.
Lloyds is an incredibly interesting operation. And And

Speaker 7 he gave us this really detailed, it was either 90 or 90 minutes or two hours breakdown on Lloyd's and what it means, what's going on, and all this kind of stuff.

Speaker 7 And he was kind of contrasting the UK and the U.S.

Speaker 7 And one of the things that hit me is that from a carrier perspective, from a distribution perspective, in many ways, I feel like the UK is just so far ahead.

Speaker 7 um in terms of what they're able to deliver from a technological experience. however, when you look at their broker model, their broker model is almost archaic compared to the U.S.

Speaker 7 model, or at least, and I don't want to, I want to say I'm sure, but this was the feeling that I got was that the D, so I don't want to say this for sure.

Speaker 7 And if someone who's listening knows, please school me on this, hit me up on LinkedIn. I'd love to learn more.

Speaker 7 This is something, and I had this thought of, I want to learn more about this market because it felt like

Speaker 7 it almost felt like the broker model,

Speaker 7 the gap between what they could do D to C and what the brokers were doing it almost got too big and it got untethered and now all of a sudden you have this broker model and and then you have this d to c model particularly on personal insurance i don't even think there's any brokers that sell personal insurance anymore um and it's and it's just because the brokers didn't keep up and in the us that hasn't quite happened yet but i do feel like we would be naive to believe that it couldn't happen especially in certain segments where i mean we've already seen it we're already seeing it in personal lines uh the lemonades and the hippos i guess.

Speaker 7 Yeah, it just, I just feel like at some point that

Speaker 7 market's going to get, you know, detached. That, you know, right now it kind of follows, they kind of follow each other.
One takes a little bit, one takes back, but they kind of follow each other.

Speaker 7 I feel like at some point they're going to get detached. And I don't think it's going to be.

Speaker 7 I don't think, especially for downstream products, bops,

Speaker 7 you know, standard personal lines. I don't think think brokers' agents are going to win in those games.

Speaker 7 I think eventually the way the UK has gone for some of these smaller downstream products are just the market is just going to say, if I'm buying, if my business owner's policy is a thousand bucks, I don't need to talk to a human.

Speaker 7 I don't need to talk to a human for $1,000.

Speaker 5 It's true. You're right.

Speaker 5 There is that school that think that the agency is alive and well and strong. It's not going anywhere.
And it's true. It's not going anywhere in certain lines of business.

Speaker 5 But in the lines of business that you've mentioned that are very heterogeneous like that, you know, a lot of these smaller, very micro bop policies and small personal lines, they're not looking at coverage.

Speaker 5 Like when you're going to buy car insurance and home insurance, you know, 90% of the buyers, they're just looking at the price. They're looking at the price.

Speaker 5 They want, and they don't want to speak to human beings. They want to go online.

Speaker 5 They want to go on to a Bel Air Direct, which is in Canada, you know, and they want to just buy their insurance online and just get the best price and be done with it.

Speaker 7 Well, here's the other thing, man. A bop is a bop is a bop is a bop is a bop.
Like,

Speaker 7 you know, I have these people go, wow, but you don't understand. Well, I got to make sure their coverages are set up properly.
I'm like, what don't they have?

Speaker 7 That's what I don't understand.

Speaker 5 Everything's in extensions. You just, you just throw a bunch of extensions in a package of extensions.
It's all in there.

Speaker 7 Every year, the carriers put more shit. And again, my market is commercial.
So I'm thinking, you know, bop business. Like.

Speaker 7 Every year they just put more shit into the bot, more shit into the, what don't they have? What are they missing? Like if they go online and they click, you know, Hartford, you know,

Speaker 7 you know, whatever, like bakery bop, what are they fucking missing? I don't get what they're missing. You know what I mean? Like workers comp.
What are they missing? And workers comp?

Speaker 7 What do they, they workers comp. Now, okay, commercial auto.

Speaker 5 Yes, commercial auto.

Speaker 7 Maybe you, you know, maybe you set some can't go below this limit kind of shit.

Speaker 7 Like, I, I guess, you know, I get your manufacturers, your wholesalers, your distributors, um, large contractors that are doing it.

Speaker 7 Large contractors, construction, general, you know, that kind of stuff.

Speaker 7 Some of the technology businesses, yes. Okay.
I get it. And that's the market where the brokers dominate and should dominate because you do need a human in there.

Speaker 5 It's anything that requires like a substantial amount of underwriting or some like, you know, unique coverage, some specialized coverage based on a niche operation.

Speaker 7 So if it doesn't have that, if it doesn't have that specialized coverage based on that really, really niche or unique operation, or doesn't require extensive underwriting, there's no reason why they can't fulfill it d to c and see this is the distinction that i think a lot of of the purists uh miss is that i think and and and i'd be interested in your take what i'm not saying and i don't think you're saying is that it doesn't mean they don't need good service if they need help that a human shouldn't be involved that if they have questions those questions shouldn't be answered with someone experience and guidance and expertise but they don't need it to purchase the policy, right?

Speaker 7 That's right. To purchase the policy, a human does not have to be involved to purchase the policy.
Once the policy is purchased, it doesn't mean someone can't go behind and go, okay, this looks good.

Speaker 7 Okay, this looks good. Or they call with a question and you don't need someone who's licensed who can answer that question and be there for them and care for them.

Speaker 7 It doesn't mean the service side goes away.

Speaker 7 I'm saying from purely a sales perspective, if your bop is, I'm going to go so far as to say, under 5,000 bucks, what do you need a human to sell that policy to you for? I don't think you do.

Speaker 7 I honestly,

Speaker 7 in our numbers and what we're doing, I do not think you need a human to sell those policies. Service, renewal, you know, some of the other stuff, cross-selling, sure, for sure.

Speaker 7 But like, I don't think you need a human to sell those policies. I don't know.
No, you're right.

Speaker 7 And I don't, and I think customers are rapidly getting to the point where they don't want a human involved because they only slow it down and muddy it up.

Speaker 5 Yeah, exactly. You're right.

Speaker 5 And as long as the experience, you know, answers the questions of the customer, because that's the only thing that would come up while they're going through it, the customer is going to have questions.

Speaker 5 They're going to be like, okay, well, why do I, what's CGL or why do I need liability?

Speaker 5 Or, you know, as long as the flow answers those questions and you kind of give that those descriptions, then I can't see there being any issues with that.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 That's the only barrier we see.

Speaker 5 That only barrier we see is sometimes I'll have, you know, some questions. But if you have a really good online flow, you should be able to answer those questions.

Speaker 5 And if you can answer those questions, you just like you said,

Speaker 5 there's a chat. There's a chat.

Speaker 5 There's a line they can call and they can get those questions quickly answered.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I think, you know, I, I've, I mapped out this like years ago.

Speaker 7 I mapped out this vision because, cause, you know, I, I had pitched trustedchoice.com, the company that I worked for a few years ago. I had pitched them on.

Speaker 7 So everyone listening to this is going to hate this, but, you know, we, we listened to every one, we saw everything that happened. So lead would come in and they did a massive amount of leads.

Speaker 7 You know, they, they put a massive amount of leads to their system. And we would see what would happen to those leads.
Most of the time, the agents wouldn't follow up for days.

Speaker 7 This was 2014 to 2018. So today, I think that has gotten a lot better.
I think we've rapidly improved our response.

Speaker 5 Well, I'm not necessarily you, but just in general, like that human is the bottleneck.

Speaker 7 Yes. So I'm watching all this and I pitched them on like,

Speaker 7 why are we giving these to agents? Do you know how much money?

Speaker 7 I was like, do you know how much money trustedchoice.com would make if we just said, fuck the fuck agents, we're just going to sell this insurance ourselves? Because they obviously don't want it.

Speaker 7 We're watching the numbers. They get these emails because we would have read receipts on the emails.
So we could see they didn't even open this email for like three days.

Speaker 7 And then they're bitching at us that it's a bad lead and all, you know, all this crazy stuff. And we recorded the phone calls so we could hear like, and like agents on the phones would be like, what?

Speaker 7 What do you want? What's it social? Where are you? Why are you calling me? And I'm like, oh my God, we just sent you a person who raised their hand sitting. Okay.
So I pitched them on like, guys,

Speaker 7 what if we created, you know, we still send leads, but we've given customers this option where they can do their own path. And I mapped this whole thing out.
And I think that

Speaker 7 there are ways, and I'm happy to discuss this offline too, because it's probably not appropriate and we're running out of time. But, like,

Speaker 7 there are a lot of ways if you look at really well-done flows around using

Speaker 7 call-out videos, call out boxes, ripcord polls, chat features,

Speaker 7 you know, customers like you commonly chose these things.

Speaker 7 Good, better, best. There's all these really classic, but important customer behaviors that you could add into it that I have never seen ever.
I've never seen it in an insurance flow

Speaker 7 that you could add that would drastically improve, what I believe drastically improve the close ratio. But here's the other thing, man.

Speaker 7 I don't think anyone, and I would even put lemonade in this as well. I don't think anyone has fully committed to the D2C model in a way.
Cause you look at Geico, Geico's flow kind of sucks.

Speaker 7 It's it's it's it they only take a small amount of information, but their flow is kind of not great. Next is the same way.

Speaker 7 It's just a it's just a it literally looks like they freaking wedged in an iframe. Like it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's clunky, crazy stuff.

Speaker 7 And I look at it and I'm like, wow, no one is really committed to to this full experience online. They're just kind of like, we ran an ad, click here, you know, buy this thing.

Speaker 7 And you're like, geez, your business model is D2C. And your flow is kind of like, meh, like, I don't, I don't understand.

Speaker 7 And so I feel like there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity for D2C out there for certain segments.

Speaker 5 The flow is everything. When you get a chance, have a look at,

Speaker 5 you know, they're a competitor. So I don't really want to shout them out, but I'm sure you've heard of them, Zensurance.
So they're in Canada.

Speaker 5 They've done a pretty decent flow on

Speaker 5 BOP policies. And they are a brokerage, but

Speaker 5 they're backed by an insurer. So they do have a direct flow.
Yeah. And it's pretty interesting, but you're right.
When you're selling direct and you're selling online, the flow is everything.

Speaker 5 And you got to put

Speaker 5 everything into it. You have to run through that flow over and over again and find out where those friction points are, where they're dropping off.
You have to have trackers and tags on every page.

Speaker 5 Okay, where's the customer dropping off? Where are they unsure? Where are they reaching out to us, chat with an agent? And then it's just, it's a huge undertaking. But you're right.

Speaker 5 If that's your business, you need to invest in that area. It's number one.

Speaker 7 I think that what happens to a lot of these D to C companies, and I don't, I don't,

Speaker 7 I don't think necessary, I don't know their business, but this is my best guess, is running the insurance part of the business is so hard that they put up with, they get a certain amount of inbound business that allows them to make money.

Speaker 7 They, they kind of stop there from an improvement of flow standpoint because it's so difficult and so labor intensive and cost, costly to actually run an insurance company.

Speaker 7 And I think, you know, when you're, when you're reporting to a board of directors or investors and you're like, yeah, we're putting millions into improving our flow, they're like, eh, how about you put millions into your underwriting?

Speaker 7 Cause that's where we make more money. And I get that.

Speaker 7 But I think it, I think it leaves opportunity. for idiots like you and me who are stupid enough to try to take these things on and figure them out because

Speaker 5 it's all there it's all there for us so we started started that flow we have like a little online capture and uh we just we just saw how what a big undertaking it is and it's a big it is a big undertaking we're going to revisit it uh you know next quarter we're revisiting it we're going to use a third-party provider to help us with that we're going to connect in but you're right it's it's a massive undertaking building that flow out

Speaker 5 we don't have the resources like you don't have the resources to do it all you know to build the technology to run the brokerage to manage the insurance partnership side to manage the employees and the service team, the SOPs, the KPIs.

Speaker 5 You're like literally spread so thin amongst every amongst everything.

Speaker 7 And you only have so many brain cycles. And that's the part, that's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned.

Speaker 7 And I think is probably a good place to leave this conversation, which has been tremendous. And I appreciate the hell out of you.

Speaker 5 Likewise, likewise.

Speaker 7 I think that it is very difficult to explain to people who aren't in this space

Speaker 7 how hard it is to manage all the different

Speaker 7 veins of thought that you have going on in your head at one time. I mean, just look, and you probably only listed a third or maybe even half of the things that you have to think about every day.

Speaker 7 And your brain has to jump from SOPs to some service person's having a baby. And now you have to figure out a way to backfill him or her, you know, whatever.
And, you know what I mean?

Speaker 7 And you're like,

Speaker 7 and all these different things. You're like, oh my God, you're right.

Speaker 5 Generate leads.

Speaker 5 And then after you generate the lead, the producers want leads and then they don't call the leads like you said it's true we have that problem too okay we got leads for you call the leads why aren't you calling the leads do the training

Speaker 7 it's it's endless it's endless but dude i think this has been absolutely wonderful um i i'm i'm rooting for you uh hopefully we can do this again um you gotta be anytime you want to come back on and just chat let's do it uh where if people just want to connect with you a little bit more about you linkedin where's the best place to learn more about you and your business yeah absolutely i i would say linkedin just look me up michael Malfa or Boardwalk Insurance.

Speaker 5 We're also on online at myboardwalk.ca.

Speaker 5 Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, or you could send me an email at michael at myboardwalk.ca.

Speaker 5 It's been a pleasure being on the podcast, Ryan. I got, you know, nothing but respect for you.
Kudos to you for doing this. And, you know, this is not a sprint.

Speaker 5 We're, we're, we're in, uh, we're in a, we're in a long race. We'll get to the end.
We'll get to the finish line.

Speaker 7 Absolutely. Be good.

Speaker 5 You too. Thanks Ryan.

Speaker 7 Take care.

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