RHS 117 - Wade Eyerly on Creating an Insurance Product Out of Thin Air

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Speaker 2 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 6 Hello everyone and welcome back to The Show. I have an absolutely tremendous episode for you, a conversation that I thoroughly enjoyed.
Someone who I'm probably going to be introducing you to.

Speaker 6 You probably haven't heard the name Wade Early.

Speaker 6 Probably haven't heard that name, but I think you're going to know about Wade as

Speaker 6 we go the next couple years. He's got a company, a new model for an insurance product that he's kind of invented out of thin air.
And it's absolutely tremendous. It's degree insurance company.

Speaker 6 You You can go to degree insurance, just google degree insurance company. You're going to find what Wade is doing.
Now, degree is basically ensuring your college education. That's what it's doing.

Speaker 6 And I'm not going to give away the lead here. I just.

Speaker 6 The idea that you can kind of conceptually see where an insurance product fits in the market and manifest it to me is absolutely tremendous. It's amazing.

Speaker 6 And it's something that obviously I've never done. And just, you know, when I, when, when you hear about people and you talk to them and you see the way they think,

Speaker 6 it just,

Speaker 6 it's, it's inspiring, no doubt. Kind of like the conversation we had with Jonathan Libby a few weeks back, just creating insurance products in places that they didn't exist before.

Speaker 6 Absolutely tremendous. I think you're going to love this conversation.
Wade's a super guy and just... Just loved it.
Just loved it.

Speaker 6 But before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the people who make this podcast sponge, this podcast possible. And today's leading sponsor is Coterie Insurance.

Speaker 6 Guys, we are writing a lot of business with Coterie because small business is what we do. And Coterie does small business the right way.
It's fast, it's easy, it's convenient, good products.

Speaker 6 We're writing a lot of like media companies, a lot of professionals, because what I like about Codery is they have

Speaker 6 easy add-ons for the PL. It's very easy to attach the professional liability onto the GL and property.
And now you're getting someone

Speaker 6 who maybe would otherwise not pay a full-blown standalone professional liability policy.

Speaker 6 They're paying for that professional liability policy or willing to pay for it as a package with their GL and their property.

Speaker 6 Love what Coterie is doing and just couldn't be happier to have them as a sponsor because we're right in business with them.

Speaker 6 And I love pushing companies that are working with agents and doing it in the right way. So, Coterie, check them out.
Go to c-ot-t-e-r

Speaker 6 ie coderyinsurance.com go to c-ot-t-e-r ie coderyinsurance.com today

Speaker 6 uh get appointed start writing business with them we're doing it all the time wrote a policy today actually cool all right uh other company i want to give a shout out to is donna

Speaker 7 um

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Speaker 6 I'm not saying that the product is right for you today. It might not be, but it's another one of those tools like Tarmica two years ago.

Speaker 6 You know, if you guys remember, I was saying, just go get the demo. I'm not telling you to buy it.
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Speaker 6 data and push for it, well, I can't speak tonight,

Speaker 6 then you know the product to buy, and that is Donna for agents. We use it to find customers who potentially are leaving.
That's how we use it.

Speaker 6 It gives us our sentiment score and we use that in real time to get a feel for maybe someone's emailed us a couple of times, or maybe they had an issue with the COI that we didn't realize.

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Speaker 6 Big fan of Donna, big fan of the people that are making Donna possible, which is a big part of why I choose the tools I choose to use. All right.

Speaker 6 So, guys, with that, let's get on to Wade Early and learn about the green insurance. You're going to love this one, guys.
You're absolutely going to love it. Here we go.

Speaker 2 Wade.

Speaker 2 hey, Ryan, how are you?

Speaker 7 Good. How are you?

Speaker 2 Good. Do you hear an echo? Are you good?

Speaker 7 No, no, you're coming through loud and clear, my man.

Speaker 2 Good. I'm in a phone booth I haven't recorded from before.

Speaker 2 I'm getting an echo, but it's just a weird space.

Speaker 7 Yeah, whatever kind of phones you got there,

Speaker 7 iPhone technology must be doing its job.

Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 2 Well, how are you?

Speaker 7 I'm good. I'm good.
It's nice to meet you.

Speaker 7 Anyone that

Speaker 7 Wes recommends over is I'm always interested to talk to.

Speaker 2 Well, it's funny.

Speaker 2 I've only gotten to know Wes in the last

Speaker 2 couple of months around a little sort of Silicon Slopes insurance startup guys meetup. And at the end of the meeting, he was like, hey, I got a guy I want you to talk to.

Speaker 2 I think you guys are going to hit it off. And that's essentially all the context I have for like, jump on a podcast.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 So Wes and I have been buddies for a while.

Speaker 7 You know, it's funny.

Speaker 7 We met each other just kind of similarly. Like I've been in the insurance space for,

Speaker 7 she's like 16 years now. He's been in it for

Speaker 7 15, you know, I think neither one of us, you would classify in any regard as the traditional insurance mentality. I don't even think he knows really the standard, even what like insurance is.

Speaker 7 You know what I mean? Like, it's, I've probably bucked every standard methodology for going about how insurance is done.

Speaker 7 You know, it's just, I don't know, we just are paths. We ran into each other and we became fast buddies.
And I like the way he thinks about things. I also think he's crazy as shit.

Speaker 7 So it works out really well.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he's just a super likable guy right you meet him and you root for him immediately which is a great skill set to have yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah he's just self-deprecating and also like incredibly intelligent and uh

Speaker 7 i just think that

Speaker 7 you know this is the case for every industry i tend to i you know i just happen to operate in the insurance industry but like I just gravitate towards people, whether I agree with them or not, who are willing to take a different approach to the way things have always been done, but still have a respect for why

Speaker 7 they are done that way or how we got here. And that to me, I think is the key element when I'm looking at someone who's bringing a new idea into our space is,

Speaker 7 do they have a respect for why it's being done this way today? Like not that it doesn't need to be changed or reinvented or innovated.

Speaker 7 That's a different point. But do they at least have a respect for why 450 years later, we still do it that way? And if they do, then I'm like, oh, maybe there's a shot this person will

Speaker 7 actually make an impact. If they don't,

Speaker 7 I just become a little weary, I guess.

Speaker 2 Yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 Makes total sense. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Tell me more about where are you based? Tell me. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 7 So I'm based in upstate New York, just outside the Albany area.

Speaker 7 I was born and raised in

Speaker 2 Saratoga or where?

Speaker 7 Just south of Saratoga. Actually,

Speaker 7 it's a town called Water Valley. We're right across the river from Troy.
Okay. Yeah.
So I can be from my house

Speaker 7 with my first bet in hand at the finish line rail in about 23 minutes.

Speaker 2 So okay.

Speaker 2 So I lived the last five years in New Canaan, Connecticut. Okay.
And we'd like to take our kids up to Saratoga and out to the Finger Lakes and up to Vermont and just hang out in the Adirondacks.

Speaker 7 Yeah. What brought you to Utah?

Speaker 2 We moved out a year. Well, two weeks before COVID hit, my in-laws live out here.
Father-in-law just retired from university here and chance to raise kids by grandparents.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, you can give your kids a lot of things. That's one not everybody can.
And we had that chance. And so we did.
And frankly, Utah's just built for kids, man. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We're camping in southern Utah and hiking in northern Utah and just, you know, out on lakes and fishing.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's just social distancing here was so wildly different than it was in a suburb of New York City that I almost felt guilty for my friends.

Speaker 2 And we got, we randomly moved two weeks before COVID. It's not like it was a design thing, right? We just got real lucky and

Speaker 2 or blessed, depending on your worldview. But

Speaker 2 yeah,

Speaker 2 it's been awesome.

Speaker 7 So you're in. That's cool.

Speaker 7 I agree with the grandparents thing. I don't particularly, for a whole bunch of reasons, which we can or can't, don't have to get into, I don't really care for New York State.

Speaker 7 Um, and not that I don't have friends here and stuff, but I just, it's just not me, it's not my, it's not the way that I view the world.

Speaker 7 Although, this is a decent place to raise kids, but I have three sets of grandparents within 15 minutes of my house, so I ain't going anywhere because

Speaker 7 I grew up, my entire family is from South Buffalo, and um,

Speaker 7 my dad got a job when I like at when my mom was pregnant with me and moved our little unit so i have like 30 irish catholic cousins and they all still live in south buffalo and he moved me my mom or you know i wasn't born yet but my mom out to albany so i grew up like on an island like no grandparents around no family around so now being able for my kids to have cousins and all that stuff right here you know

Speaker 7 this will not be forever for me living up here because i want to i love other parts of the country you know um a lot where you are is one of those places um

Speaker 2 but i'm never leaving until that family unit isn't necessary anymore well i will tell you uh well first off you can come to utah and we'll we'll adopt you we'll make you family you know we'll give you what you need but uh utah has been really incredible that way um

Speaker 2 But I grew up in Kansas City. My dad moved out there.
Like we didn't have family around.

Speaker 2 And my wife's family, and you see this when you get married, but like, she just grew up differently. She had super close relationships with grandparents on both sides.

Speaker 2 And like, they have like a family reunion. Her grandpa was a cattle rancher and they all go to the ranch, you know, twice a year, every year.

Speaker 2 And she knows her, she's closer to her second cousins than I am to my youngest sibling. Cause I mean, we're 16 years apart and like, I'm like a weird old uncle, right?

Speaker 2 She like.

Speaker 2 We moved back to Utah and one of her second cousins lives around the cornerfronts. I didn't know, but I saw this woman walking a dog.
We're looking to get a new dog. I'm asking her about it.

Speaker 2 My wife comes out and she goes, Madeline, hey. And like, just

Speaker 2 like it was the most random thing in the world.

Speaker 2 She's like, oh, yeah, I see her at the ranch, you know, twice a year.

Speaker 2 So, yeah, being by family is a real treat. I have a big family, so I was, I was lucky that way, but like, now we're a diaspora, right?

Speaker 2 I got a sister in Luxembourg and another one in Fresno and everything in between. So Alabama.

Speaker 7 That's a pretty, that's a,

Speaker 7 that's a pretty diverse Luxembourg Fresno.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we're, we're all over the place. I'm involved with eight kids, big Mormon family.
So we're all over the place,

Speaker 2 but not from Utah, right?

Speaker 2 And so everybody, all the other, like, I don't know, all the other Mormons that I know, when they moved to Utah, the sort of cultural, like, you make fun of it because you never go make friends.

Speaker 2 You just have so much family that you never need anybody else. Well, that wasn't our case.

Speaker 2 Like, we moved out and we were like, we swore we wouldn't be that family that moves to Utah and only sees their family, right?

Speaker 2 And then two weeks after we got here, the government's like, yay, verily, you can only see your family. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 it's been interesting, but it's, it's a good, man, it's just great for raising kids. I did have my uh, I yawned right as I got on this.

Speaker 2 I realized I was up all night in the ER with a, my 11-year-old broke his arm and tackle football yesterday.

Speaker 2 Man, um, but it's, it's the thing, like, he's playing football and they're playing baseball, and like, doing all kinds of stuff that like parts of the country still aren't able to do.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we're, um, we've been blessed so far that uh

Speaker 7 uh being in upstate the craziness that goes on like westchester south and long island oh yeah we've been able to avoid some of that um thankfully we have a few people here um who still maintain some semblance of rational thinking sure

Speaker 7 it's startlingly uncommon it is very um

Speaker 7 Yeah, I don't want to get, I was just, I was just meeting

Speaker 7 buddies about a technology project, but like, they're like, you know, they're, they're probably younger than me and so i'm 40 they're probably in their early 30s they're technology guys they work for rt specialty and we're just working on a project with them and uh

Speaker 7 and um you know they're coming from philly where in in the greater philly area it's like bananas like you would think that it's like you know we're being bombed by a foreign country you know what i mean like that's that's what it's like and they come up here and they're like look how you know look how reasonable you are and i'm just like i'm looking around going this crazy i was behind a woman with two masks on that was buying a carton of cigarettes.

Speaker 2 Like, what world are we living in? Like, how is this? How is this real life?

Speaker 7 But it's just, it's just funny. So, you know, I guess, you know, it is,

Speaker 7 you know, like anything else, we'll get through this. And I think, uh, I think we'll all have learned a lot about ourselves, hopefully.

Speaker 7 I think the people that actually use this time in a positive way,

Speaker 7 I think you'll have learned a lot about yourself. I think that's, I think that's going to to be the case for a lot of people is um

Speaker 2 you know i think some people really let themselves go i think other people really honed in and made themselves better you know better whatever that means um i know my wife and i have used this time to really get fit and really focus on that and family and stuff so i don't know it's all yeah i mean i travel so much it was a year of no traveling and hanging out with my kids and like you know It was a terrible thing and we had people we knew who passed from it and whatnot, but like it wasn't an awful year in general for our family um yeah so and i i think insurance has an interesting perspective on it right because we're we're in the risk business yeah most of this fear is from an irrational understanding of risk tolerance yep it's novelty risk right and so you're you're more afraid of this than you are driving on the freeway i served in iraq i had one tour in iraq and uh and i was safer in baghdad than my wife was driving on the freeway around washington dc But nobody wants to acknowledge that or think about that, right?

Speaker 2 It's like, well, well, you're taking a new risk, so I'm terrified about it. And I've already accepted freeway risk well this is the same thing it's like look

Speaker 7 you've already accepted the normal flu variant you've already you know a hundred other things this is terrifying because it's new risk but ultimately it's not particularly worse than other risks we're already accepting it's and i think it's worse than them and i don't even think it's that it's novel i think it's that it's politicized well that i think that doesn't help that's the that's the part that i think really makes this the only thing that makes this scary to me and and look i've had people that i know pass or or even have um

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 uh

Speaker 2 like uh things like things with their heart or the lungs like i don't want to change so my little brother's on oxygen now he's in his 30s with six kids under eight and he's pulling around an oxygen tank i mean

Speaker 7 it's definitely real there's no doubt yeah it's just um i'm with you like if someone you know i had one of the one of the guys this morning said if i told you you could walk into a casino and you had a 99.8 chance of winning, but the other 2% chance was you're going to lose all your money, would you walk in and place a bet?

Speaker 7 And he's like, everybody would.

Speaker 7 You know, 999,000 out of a million would do it.

Speaker 2 And that's, you know, so whatever.

Speaker 7 It's all good. So, dude, you've had a pretty wild career, it looks like.
I mean, I obviously Wes did the same thing for me that he did.

Speaker 7 did for you it was like it's like hey you gotta talk to this guy he's a good guy um you know so then i was looking at your linkedin and i was like holy you've you've been, you've, you've, you know, been all over the place.

Speaker 7 It's, you know, I'd started a lot of companies and it's awesome. I mean, it's pretty exciting to see

Speaker 7 your background. I mean, it's, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 I need to, I need to pull that up and see what it says because there's elements of my background that can't be put there.

Speaker 2 So,

Speaker 2 yeah, I've had a random career. Like I've got like career ADD along with regular ADD, right? So.

Speaker 2 um bounced around a little bit but uh i think you get a chance to bring experience from all sorts of different places and bring it together.

Speaker 2 And it makes you naturally challenge, like, the how we started this, you know? Yeah, it, well, why do we do it this way? Because we always have. That's never a good answer for me.

Speaker 2 If I don't understand why,

Speaker 2 then I'm not going to, then I'm going to challenge that every time, right? And make sure we're doing it the right way. But,

Speaker 2 but if you understand why, then maybe you, maybe you end up the same place, but maybe you end up someplace totally different.

Speaker 2 And I get to bring in learnings and best practices from, you know, a dozen different places that don't overlap very much with, you know, whatever I'm doing today. So.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So

Speaker 7 what's degree all about?

Speaker 7 Like, what is, how do you, I mean, I obviously I read about it and I've been, you know, checked out the website and LinkedIn page and everything, but like, what is, what is this about?

Speaker 7 I mean, this is a pretty wild concept.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So I.

Speaker 2 I was an executive at an airline and I'm on the board of a school, a school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So the largest and the poorest poorest city in Connecticut.

Speaker 2 And we took kids that are two years behind and we get them caught up and on to college. And that's the plan, right? That's what we set out to do.
And it's a 97% minority school. And, you know,

Speaker 2 it's doing, I think, really good work. And that's what we were focused on, really proud of it.
And so as we were sitting there, the entrepreneur and me then on the board wanted to tell.

Speaker 2 the story, like, how do we alter the life trajectory for these kids? Like, what, you know, what do we change i didn't

Speaker 2 i mean i came from a family background that was pretty similar i was on and off government programs right

Speaker 2 i didn't know you were supposed to apply to college i drove to a college in august the year after i graduated and asked how to sign up for a dorm you know and because a kind-hearted registrar took pity on me it it changed my life's trajectory right and and wildly so And so, all right, like, how do we, let's tell this story, right?

Speaker 2 That's what we want to be marketing to these families is like, hey, when you send your kids here,

Speaker 2 their trajectory alters. How does it change? And come to find out, 80 to 90% of the kids we brought in were going to drop out the first two years of college anyway.
We had the wrong goalposts.

Speaker 2 You know, getting into college doesn't alter your life's trajectory. Getting out the right way does.

Speaker 2 And it's a subtle, but pretty important distinction to say that, you know, graduating college is the path to the American dream. Going to college is what we usually say, and it's wrong.

Speaker 2 What we had done was enabled these families to take out a lot of debt, which didn't help them if they didn't graduate. So

Speaker 2 I couldn't get that sort of thought out of my head and ultimately just said to my wife, like, this is the problem I want to go fix.

Speaker 2 And we're lucky enough to be in a place where I can choose what I want to do professionally. And so

Speaker 2 set out to go that with no idea what the right solution was

Speaker 2 and spent a lot of time in data. And ultimately, we were able to build actuarial tables and say, okay, this is an insurable risk, right?

Speaker 2 If a college degree were a stock in the stock market, it outperforms the market by 2x. It outperforms the SP 500 by like 2.4 times and is simultaneously the most consistent performer in history.

Speaker 2 And that piece is really important when you're building an insurance product, right? So it works super reliably.

Speaker 2 And this is, I think, the least confident generation in American history, right? They're old enough to remember the Great Recession and the job loss and the fear.

Speaker 2 their whole lives, higher ed has said that a degree delivered online should come with an asterisk, right? And so it's their turn.

Speaker 2 We have a once every six generation pandemic, and everybody says, we'll just go online. And they don't know if it's going to count.
And is there going to be an economy when we're done?

Speaker 2 And is anybody going to hire them? So they don't have the confidence necessary to enroll. And yet we know statistically, the best thing you can do in a down economy is have a degree.

Speaker 2 In the Great Recession, unemployment goes to 10% nationally, 17% if you're Black, 5% is where it peaks if you have a college degree.

Speaker 2 And in

Speaker 2 the pandemic, you rode chetty at opportunity insights at harvard is talking about a k-shaped recovery and the the breakpoint is if you didn't have a college degree you got laid off worst unemployment crisis since the great depression if you did you worked from home bounced right back and so quite literally it it is a college degree is its own form of insurance right it protects you from an economic downturn What we need to do is convince kids that it's worth it, give them the confidence necessary to do it.

Speaker 2 And insurance was a great vehicle to to do that insurance gives you confidence where you can have none where the statistics are right but the confidence is wrong

Speaker 2 and so uh i mean it's just you know it's it's a shared risk pool right and you spread that so that if

Speaker 2 if higher ed is the roulette wheel where nine out of 10 spaces pay off the right advice to give somebody you love is to borrow 10 times their net worth make a single investment and then hope right spin the wheel

Speaker 2 But in the event that it doesn't work, what do you do? Well, if you're wealthy you spin again you borrow more money you go you spin again you go to graduate graduate enrollment spike in a down economy

Speaker 2 right if you're not if you're a first-gen american first-gen student underrepresented minority like otherwise poor pellet eligible like i was right

Speaker 2 you often just have to go to work and you anchor your market rate at a low point and the economy rebounds and your career doesn't i mean and you're you know you go back to a two percent annual wage increase or whatever

Speaker 2 and so

Speaker 2 what we did was just spread that risk across everybody where it works to fill in the gaps where it didn't and it it it should do the same thing that homeowners insurance does for homeownership, right?

Speaker 2 The fastest way to build wealth in America for the last 150 years is homeownership.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 you borrow 10 times your net worth, you make a single investment, what's it, and then you hope that the market performs well. And it works really, really well.

Speaker 2 But if, but you couldn't do that if you were worried that your asset would burn down. Yep.
Right.

Speaker 2 And nobody's upset that the one guy they've known in 30 years who had to rebuild their home for a fire got to rebuild.

Speaker 2 But because we have insurance, we've enabled all of that wealth creation, all of that risk taking as possible. And in higher ed, it's been such a reliable bet, we've never needed it.

Speaker 2 We haven't done it.

Speaker 2 But now we do need it. We finance it to such a degree that you set a family back for a generation.
It takes 21 years on average to pay back these loans.

Speaker 2 So if it doesn't work for you, right, on average, we know it's going to work, but the risk is still individualized, right? And if it doesn't work for you,

Speaker 2 that family is a generation behind. And we can just fix that with insurance.
It's so easy. So, that's what we

Speaker 2 built the actual tables. We're now got a certificate of authority in eight different states.

Speaker 2 Um, you know, we got Oklahoma's this morning, so we're uh, you know, we're rolling out a new product, but it's a little different than a lot of insurance conversations I have because it's like inventing life insurance, like this whole category, this product didn't exist before, and we're rolling that out.

Speaker 7 So,

Speaker 7 I was a first-generation college student. Uh, my junior year,

Speaker 7 I, so I looked, I grew up in a house that everyone in my community referred to as the crack house.

Speaker 7 Now, thankfully, we did not smoke crack in the house, but it certainly looked like what you would think a crack house looked like on the outside.

Speaker 7 It just,

Speaker 7 it wasn't nice. My mom was a secretary.
My stepdad was a laborer. And, you know, we got by.

Speaker 7 And I

Speaker 6 was, was,

Speaker 7 you know, I did all right.

Speaker 7 I did pretty well in school and blessed with a, with a, a, a reasonably decent, at least enough intelligence that I could look at the world and go, my only way out of here is, and I, you know, I was good at sports, but I certainly wasn't becoming a professional athlete.

Speaker 7 Like my only way out of this shitty town of 900 people in the middle of upstate New York was to go to college. So I said to my mom, I want to go to college.
And her response was, oh, that's nice.

Speaker 7 I mean, like, it would never even crossed her mind that I would do that.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I had to figure out how to fill the forms myself.

Speaker 7 Okay. So I go to college.
I end up getting some scholarships for baseball and some scholarships for being poor and shit like that from the University of Rochester. And a blessing, great school.

Speaker 7 Well, after the first year, the head coach of the baseball team goes to another job. Okay.
Scholarship goes away.

Speaker 7 I cannot afford full rate at the University of Rochester at $33,000 a year, or whatever it was.

Speaker 7 College is over for me.

Speaker 7 I'm painting houses and waiting tables.

Speaker 7 And,

Speaker 7 you know, oh my gosh, even thinking about it makes me a little emotional. Here's my, like, I have this great year.
You know what I mean? Like played on the baseball team, part of fraternity.

Speaker 7 I was part of the all-campus judicial committee, which was like this student body adjudicating, you know, like if you didn't want to go before the dean, you can go between between this panel of your peers.

Speaker 7 Like it was a big deal.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I'm like i'm fully ingrained in this community and here i am back in an upstate new in albany new i mean or actually in upstate yeah albany by my you know essentially by myself all my friends and it was and it was like my next path was probably i'm in the gutter you know swinging a hammer drinking 30 beers a night like you know that's where i'm going yes and uh

Speaker 7 I was you know again sometimes you just you're you're blessed you have no other way to say it someone that was on that judicial committee found out that i wasn't coming back and why i wasn't coming back called the dean of the school who has since passed away but you know rest in peace this guy saved my life um

Speaker 7 and this dean got me that scholarship back and i went back to school the second semester

Speaker 7 and i'm sitting here listening to you say this going

Speaker 7 if this existed I would have went back to the University of Rochester potentially on, you know, with this kind of insurance.

Speaker 7 I would have been able possibly, you know, I'm not exactly sure how how it works, but I'm thinking to myself, like, here's a potential use case that I would have had in my life because it just poof.

Speaker 7 I mean, it was just, I had, I had, I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I was out.

Speaker 7 I was on the path to never having to go back to this shitty little town again where people said the criminals didn't steal from our town. They lived in our town.

Speaker 7 So they didn't, that's the, you know, that was like the big joke. And

Speaker 7 And then it was just gone like that. And then, you know, thankfully, a whole series of crazy phone calls were like, I'm on, I'm on the phone with the dean of the college.

Speaker 2 You know, I mean, like, how did that ever happen?

Speaker 7 And he hears my story and says, well, just pack your bags because you're coming back. And

Speaker 7 it was like wild. It's just wild to think.
And that changed my life. I mean, I'm one of those kids who, if it wasn't for college, you know, who knows where I'd be.

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Speaker 2 Totally. I couldn't relate more.

Speaker 2 I got a scholarship. I was a terrible student.

Speaker 2 So I was like 17 when I went to college and like barely turned 17. It was the summer I was 16, turned 17.
and

Speaker 2 joined the fraternity and I had two great social years. And then I left and served the church mission in Moscow for two years when I was 19.
Came back at 21 and was grown up and just matured, right?

Speaker 2 But the first two years, like I didn't, I didn't know you were supposed to go to college, but then I got there and I didn't know what I, like, how to handle myself, how to succeed, what I was doing.

Speaker 2 But a lot of the same things, joined the fraternity, was on like inter-fraternity council and student government, did a bunch of stuff.

Speaker 2 And then I went to Moscow, grew up a little bit, you know, post-Soviet Russia will teach you a lot about life decisions you want to be making. I believe.
and uh

Speaker 2 and came back and i was like all right well like i kind of knew what i wanted to do for a career or thought i did and i knew that i needed a 3.0 cum to get a government job in the federal government and i thought i wanted to work a state pharmacon and uh

Speaker 2 and i had a 257 and two and a half years worth of credits So I had to get like a 3.96 the rest of the way in order to like, so I graduated like a 3.1 my last two years, you know, I just finally just did the work, showed up to class, you know, that stuff.

Speaker 2 Anyway, but didn't really have anybody like that could show me the way. And, you know,

Speaker 2 loved my experience as a Theta Kai, but like those guys were the ones I was learning from. And they weren't always making the best decisions either at the time.
So yeah,

Speaker 7 it is, it's funny, man. Why?

Speaker 7 Why, why Moscow? What was Moscow like? I have a good, I have a very good buddy who did his mission in

Speaker 7 Chile and I want to say maybe Argentina as well. And we've talked about his mission so many times and how that's changed his, how that changed his life and all that.

Speaker 7 And I'm just, I'm always interested because, and this is going to sound like a broad sweeping stroke, but I'm going to do it with the most sincerity. I find

Speaker 7 Mormons who actually did their mission to be some of the like,

Speaker 7 I don't know, it just like straightforward, caring, empathetic people that you'll meet. I know that's a broad stroke, but I do find that to be the case.

Speaker 2 I think you find a spectrum, like there's a bell curve of anybody anywhere, right?

Speaker 7 Yeah, there's always some bad seeds. I get that.

Speaker 2 But it's a formative experience. Yeah.
And you spend,

Speaker 2 so it's disciplined and rigorous in that, like, you're up at 6:30, you're out of the door by 9:30, you're home by 9:30, in bed by 10.30. Like, there's a lot of structure to it.

Speaker 2 You don't watch TV, you don't go on dates, you don't like

Speaker 2 phone calls and letters home. Like you called home on Mother's Days and Christmases, and otherwise you wrote a hand letter once a week.
Now it's an email.

Speaker 2 um but like there's no failure to launch if you go on like you have to you had to figure out how to live how to do your laundry how to make a food like you know you have to figure out so it's very hard to come home and and then just move back into your mom's basement and let her take care of everything right yeah yeah um so so there's an element of that um

Speaker 2 you you don't pick where you go you tell the church you're willing to serve and then you get and then you're called and it's kind of a cultural moment it's like my you know, Jewish friends that have a bar mitzvah and like now you're a man.

Speaker 2 There's this like element of like you go on your mission, you come back and you're eligible now right um but when you get your call like every like high school girlfriend and all my friends growing up everybody is like in the room we open the mission call together it's like a big moment um because you don't know where you're going to go and you don't care

Speaker 2 uh and so uh when i got i mean i i left in 98 so six years after the soviet union fell and uh learned russian and moved to moscow right like that's in what was the world capital of atheism right they had institutionalized for 70 years.

Speaker 2 And,

Speaker 2 you know, so for missionaries who serve in Chile, Chile is the country in the world,

Speaker 2 the second highest population of Mormons, I think it's about 5% more.

Speaker 2 It's the highest concentration of Mormons outside of Pacific Islands, like Samoa, Tonga, and stuff.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 like, when you go there and you have a conversation with someone, you're really sharing like, here's what Christ did for me and how that helped me. And

Speaker 2 so it's more like additive to what like you all, people already know about the Savior. In Moscow, it was like, here's who Jesus is

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 institutionalized atheism. I mean, everybody knew

Speaker 2 Christianity because their grandma was a Christian, but nobody, like, nobody could be religious and get a job.

Speaker 2 Like the party control all the, like, so anybody aspirational, you just didn't go to church. Like, it wasn't like a thing.

Speaker 2 And so it was, but it was cool because you spend all day, every day, caring about other people. You have no concern for yourself.
I mean, you have food in an apartment.

Speaker 2 And so you're like, your base needs are met. And otherwise, your job is to leave your apartment in the morning, figure out how to help people and then come back at night.

Speaker 2 So I remember we met this guy who had just been released from prison, Russian prison, not a great experience, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 And we literally like were walking down the street and you recognize missionaries, the name tags and the white shirts, the ties on what.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 we're always like talking to random people. Can you share a message, brighten your day, like whatever it is.

Speaker 2 And I said, you know, can we help you with something? And he's like, I got to quit smoking. Everybody in prison smokes.
It's going to kill me. I need to quit.
We're like, okay.

Speaker 2 Mormons are good at not smoking, right? It's kind of according to what we, we don't want to smoke, we don't drink, we don't have a coffee. Like, great.
So we're happy to help, right? And

Speaker 2 I said, all right, so when is it hardest for you? He's like, when I first wake up in the morning, when I go to bed, we were at that dude's apartment at like six, seven o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 2 And we were at that dude's apartment at like 9 30 at night like just distracting him read some scriptures maybe sing some songs like whatever kind of other thing we could do so that he wouldn't think about it yeah and uh

Speaker 2 you know if you spend two years walking around trying to help people as your full-time gig right you learn to love those people you learn to care about them you learn what's important to you you're not it's not an aspirational experience right you're not like trying to get a promotion like the rest of your life the career like all that stuff is there you're just very centered where you're at.

Speaker 2 And I think that gives you a real base of genuine confidence in like who you are, that you're a child of heavenly parents, you know, like you, you know, that

Speaker 2 you are God's son or daughter, right? And like there's some real genuine

Speaker 2 confidence in knowing that about yourself that I think gives strength to do things that other people might think are risky or to like center you when you're like when you're dating and figuring out what you want in life.

Speaker 2 And I don't know. That's a long answer, but I kind of think that's part of it.

Speaker 7 I think it's a great answer. I think that

Speaker 7 I was talking to a couple of buddies. Again,

Speaker 7 and I'm interested in your taking this because, you know, at some point in your journey, as you mentioned very early, you then do a tour in Iraq.

Speaker 7 And I'm interested in that. And I think, you know, I think that I look at my own kids.
I think about my own life. I think about my time in college.
I had a very similar thing.

Speaker 7 I was an engineering major. and switched to be a math major just because I wanted to graduate on time, right? I'm staring at a 2-1 in engineering going, I'm not gonna make it.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 had to switch and ended up getting to a 2-9-3, I think is what I graduated with, but same kind of deal, had to freaking crank the last like year and a half.

Speaker 7 And, you know,

Speaker 7 so much of

Speaker 7 our lives is spent, I feel like, and this goes for work too, and we'll get back to the green insurance. I know we're off the path, but this is interesting.

Speaker 7 It's like, what do people think about this? What do people think about the decision I'm making?

Speaker 7 How is this going to impact the way these people view me or interact with me, or am I going to be invited to this club or whatever?

Speaker 7 And, you know, I look at, um, I have a high respect for a lot of the people, the people like Israelis that I meet. I love

Speaker 7 ethic, their mentality, very pragmatic view of the world.

Speaker 7 You know, some of being where they live, some of being the service that they have to do as part of, you know,

Speaker 7 coming up. And I just think like

Speaker 7 that we're missing, I feel like today, that service component of our lives.

Speaker 7 And it used to be through the church, but you know, secular, secularism is really, you know, destroying, I feel like destroying our society in many ways. But,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 it, this service component, like I'm listening to you talk about that. I'm going, those two years allowed you to actually figure out.
like who the hell you are.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, you think about how many existential crises so many people seem to be having every day right now. And I'm like, you probably not knowing you, you know, knowing you for 36 minutes,

Speaker 7 seem to have a pretty good feel for who you are, at least for the most part, as much as anyone can. And

Speaker 7 I'm assuming that that, that, just that time to be able to figure that out played a large role in it.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, there's another interesting thing as you mentioned Israelis, many of whom I admire as well. My wife lived in Israel a couple of times growing up, and we've been

Speaker 2 able to go a couple of times with our kids. And

Speaker 2 how do I put this? Walking around with white shirts and ties, wearing a name tag for two years is you're never the cool guy, right? Like that layer is like you're a dork for two years. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And you learn to be comfortable in your own skin and rather than be externally validated

Speaker 2 because there's no show you can put on.

Speaker 2 right you can't be cool as a mission um if you look at like uh other religious folks all around the world, my father-in-law was a religion professor, and he talks about a concept of religious envy.

Speaker 2 And what he says is you can learn a lot about how to practice your faith by watching other people practice theirs. You know, and

Speaker 2 if you're a Sikh and you wear a headdress everywhere, you can't hide that you're a Sikh.

Speaker 2 It's the first thing anyone knows about you before they've ever, before you've ever opened your mouth, before they've said a word to you. They know you're a Sikh.
So

Speaker 2 how does wearing your religion that way change how you behave and who you are? Because you represent now not just yourself and your family, but this like entire

Speaker 2 faith. Yeah.

Speaker 2 What do you learn about, you know,

Speaker 2 Hasidic Jews getting themselves into a trance-like state at the Western, at the Whaling Wall, right? Like, what does that teach you about how you are going to live your faith?

Speaker 2 And missionary service does similar things. Like, you're willing to be not cool.
And if you can give up, it's like for you and I,

Speaker 2 I'm going to project here a little bit, but our circumstances aren't too dissimilar. dissimilar.

Speaker 2 I know how to be poor, right? I know I can get by, which means, which enables me to take some risks because I was poor, but also relatively happy, right? I had a happy childhood.

Speaker 2 I played with neighborhood kids and whatever else. And the house behind us gets busted for math or whatever it was with three cop cars in their lawn.
Like,

Speaker 2 you don't know as a kid, right? There's much, you're not like the comparisons are all very small. It's like inside your elementary school, not, you know, global stuff.

Speaker 2 And so you can be poor and happy and that like realization is empowering as a you know risk-taking entrepreneur because the worst case scenario is you still get to be happy and there's a lot of power that comes from genuinely understanding that well i think in in your faith journey in other parts of your life and in the world um

Speaker 2 you know as soon as you can get over needing to be cool or validated by your peers for what you have or how you wear or what you look like, or whatever it is, how good you are at sport, whatever the thing is that you're getting external validations from, as soon as you can get past that and you just get to be comfortable in your own skin, right?

Speaker 2 That's a superpower in the modern world. And being a missionary kind of forces you to get, I mean, two years of not being cool will break most people of their need to

Speaker 2 wear the right clothes and say the right thing. And it doesn't mean you don't fall back into that or whatever, but there's a baseline of like, I know who I am.

Speaker 2 And I think that happens for a a lot of missionaries.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's a really good lesson, you know, not just for obviously for faith and

Speaker 7 living our lives, but also for our work and how we present ourselves to the world.

Speaker 7 I get people, and I don't, if any one of them are listening, I don't mean this in a negative way, if you've asked me this question, but I get people who a lot of people will reach out to me because of the podcast or because of some of the writing.

Speaker 7 And at different times in my career, I've had some reach, we could say.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 people will say, well, how do I become an influencer? I want to become an influencer.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, the very first way that you become an influencer is to never, ever refer to yourself as an influencer or think about being an influencer ever.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, one of the misconceptions I think that a lot of people have about,

Speaker 7 and I know this.

Speaker 7 I know this in part because I've had the opportunity at different times to talk to people who have substantially more reach than me, dog, real, real, outside the industry, large millions of people, audiences.

Speaker 7 And the people that I think, the ones who sustain and I think do real,

Speaker 7 real yeoman's work is the ones who do it because they're there personally. It's like their own personal journey that they're on and they're trying to learn and grow.

Speaker 7 And they have, and if 10 people listened, they would be doing the same exact thing as if the millions that did listen.

Speaker 7 And I think that that's a very important part of growing a company like the green insurance or, you know, some of the things I'm trying to do here at Rogue is like, you know, a lot of people have asked me, how come you didn't try to start this agency sooner in your career?

Speaker 7 You know, obviously,

Speaker 7 I wasn't there. Like, you know, the way that I can sit here and talk to you today,

Speaker 7 even two or three years ago, I may not have been of the same, you know, I may not have had everything as dialed in.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I think when, but when the opportunity presents itself, if you are in some of the mental state that we've talked about and you're not trying to do something to be cool or to have a place, but because it feels like a problem that you need to solve or want to solve,

Speaker 7 then, you know, that opportunity seems to present itself and you can go get it.

Speaker 7 It's when you start forcing things that I think you really find yourself in trouble or you start making bad decisions, partnering with the wrong people,

Speaker 7 becoming losing focus on what you're trying to do.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 all of that. you know, can hold you back from where you want to try to get.

Speaker 2 You see it in the military too, right?

Speaker 2 Everybody wears a uniform and one of the things that does is strip away a lot of the you know cool guy stuff right and puts everybody on the same place and and lets you grow and and you know your work product stands out and discipline stands out and you know you know those kind of sorts of things and i feel the same way about sort of the influencer comment you made and uh and networkers i get i'll get asked a lot about um how do you grow a network or be a network and i have never tried to do any of those things so i'm like i don't have great advice for you other than to don't don't be that guy at a conference hand out business cards giving everybody finger guns like you know like

Speaker 2 if you if you say that you're here to network i'm immediately you know not interested yeah um but if you're here because you genuine like

Speaker 2 adult men don't make friends well

Speaker 2 just like especially adult american like it's just not something we do you have old friends and otherwise you're family right and so if you just genuinely care about somebody and you know help them out with something right that then you you you build that sort of group of people who want to be around you want to like go build genuine friendships instead of trying to network with everybody under the sun and you'll just do a lot better yeah i one of my favorite conversations that i've had on this podcast with wit was with a woman by the name of uh sheffy ben hutta she runs um her and her brother are the founders of coverager which is uh insurtech publication i have a lot of respect for them and the work that they do and uh she's one of my favorite people in the space for the way that she uh

Speaker 7 she just views things and attacks them. And we disagree on different stuff.

Speaker 7 And we were having a conversation around the good old boy nature of the industry, right?

Speaker 7 And we were talking about how, you know, I mentioned to her that at different times in my career, I felt blessed to sit at tables that I probably shouldn't have been at listening to old fat white guys tell stories about how they conquered the world.

Speaker 7 And that without actually shaking hands or without actually signing a contract, deals were made and, you know, tens of, if not more, millions of dollars of business would then be passed based on these relationships, right?

Speaker 7 And it was never like, hey, we're good now, right? Harump, you know, it was just this conversation was had and things were done and you learned how to,

Speaker 7 how to navigate in this world. And she said, and her response was,

Speaker 7 I hate that that's still our industry.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 while I, while I pushed back on her and I said, I'm, I think we need more of that, except not just old fat white guys, but the idea that there should be some barrier that you have to earn your way into that space to me, like there's a reason why those groups, now, now, granted, I'm, I'm all for diversity and meritocracy.

Speaker 7 I'm a firm believer in meritocracies and, you know, I could give a shit what color you are and all that. Although I do particularly have a swing slant towards Americans.

Speaker 7 I'm, you know, but, but I do, but, but outside of that, where you come from, who you are, I could give two shits about what religion you are. That part has to change.

Speaker 7 But the idea that these little groups of people form who trust each other, I think that's a good thing because you should have to earn your way in and you should have to.

Speaker 7 You know, I have to treat you well for a period of time before you're going to trust that if we do business together, I'm not going to hose you. Like, that's human nature.

Speaker 7 And I think there is this misbelief by some people, particularly younger people who are trying to move up in, that because they showed up to the party, that we should just, you know, take them for what it is.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, nah, man, you need to get bashed across the rocks a couple of times, and you need to have the door slammed in your face a couple of times and learn why that happens.

Speaker 7 And then when you come back in,

Speaker 7 you're gonna, you're gonna still be the, you know, the the innovative inventive energetic person but you're also but they'll but everyone will know that you're around for the long haul which is which is who people want to do business with does that make sense what i'm saying it does there's um

Speaker 2 there's an interesting dynamic between trust and regulation right

Speaker 2 so i uh

Speaker 2 trust and reputation are earned and take time and are valuable.

Speaker 2 Regulation is a shortcut for when you when you need to interact in a space where you can't afford to build trust or don't have that time, right?

Speaker 2 So, when an average homeowner walks in and needs a new policy, they don't know a good agent from a not good agent, right?

Speaker 2 And so, the government, or in some cases, like with lawyers, like the bar association or others, they'll step in and they'll create barriers that are designed to ensure some believability in what's coming out, right?

Speaker 2 Some trust.

Speaker 2 And it is a

Speaker 2 way of building trust in an area where you you don't naturally have it it is always better to be able to build and have that trust right and and i think there's you know a lot of trust comes from shared experience which can't be shortcuted that's time um

Speaker 2 and so getting in a room with a bunch of other people who have shared an experience with you um does a lot to build that trust but but that you don't need regulation in a world where we know who the good actors are and who the bad actors are.

Speaker 2 And I think what's interesting is the uh the the balance between the two between allowing people to make mistakes to trust the wrong person right and like we do this with dating right like everybody gets to forge their own path and find their own people and you've got buddies who you've seen date the wrong girl right like and you know it's wrong and everybody knows it's wrong and then a year and a half later they break up and then and you're like hey we could see it and they're like yeah it was horrible right yeah but you have to let them make that mistake or they'll be ready when the right person comes along there are just industries and places where you can't do that, right?

Speaker 2 I used to run an airline.

Speaker 2 And guess what? I can't put somebody in the cockpit and be like, they'll figure it out. Give them a little time.
Let them crash a few.

Speaker 2 That doesn't work.

Speaker 2 And so you've got to have some barrier. But when you put too many barriers in and too much structure, one, trust doesn't get built because you never learn to rely on trust.

Speaker 2 And two, you can impede progress and innovation.

Speaker 2 And so I'm always fascinated by innovating in spaces where the trust quotient is shallow because the regulatory quotient is high.

Speaker 2 So we have a lot of regulation because, you know, pharmaceuticals, airlines, insurance, there's a ton of regulation because we need these things and we can't afford to build the relationships of trust that need to make it work.

Speaker 2 And so we use regulation to do it. But regulation is a very heavy tool.

Speaker 2 right it doesn't uh it's not a soft nuanced thing no and so and regulation has a hard time keeping up with the speed of technology and the speed of growth and the speed of change and the speed of need.

Speaker 2 So, insurance is a great example. I mean, you know, 15 years ago, you didn't need cybersecurity.
That wasn't a threat, right?

Speaker 2 Now, my friend Josh Steinman, he was head of, he was on the National Security Council in charge of cybersecurity for the last four years.

Speaker 2 He just started a company. Oh, I wish I could plug it and tell you the name.

Speaker 2 I can't think of it all of a sudden, but he just started a company who's working to go secure our industrial like systems and controls, right?

Speaker 2 Because right now, like hacking into the dairy plant, right, is probably one of the easier things you can hack into or hack because the software that those things run on,

Speaker 2 it's an Excel spreadsheet and a blinky light, right? That's telling you the milk's good or the milk's not good.

Speaker 2 Those systems are weak. We've been able to trust for a long time

Speaker 2 at a certain level. you know, your food systems are regulated and you're not going to get bad milk out.
But the systems we're now relying on have have become vulnerable, right?

Speaker 2 And you didn't need that 15 years ago.

Speaker 2 So, so now you got to roll out new products, you got to build new actuarial tables, understand new sets of risk, and do that all in a regulatory framework and structure that was built for challenges 100 years ago, right?

Speaker 2 And so, um, we're applying old laws in new ways where they don't always fit and not always right.

Speaker 2 And what you see are the very best insurance commissioners are those who understand not just the regulation, but the why, right? Seasoning on your capital.

Speaker 2 Seasoning on your capital can make great sense. We want to want you to

Speaker 2 want you in another state to show that you know how to be an insurance company before you come here. Great.
In premise, fantastic. So does that clock?

Speaker 2 So I want a year of seasoning before you come to our state. Does that clock start the day we're an insurance company there or the day we pay claims there? Like, when does it start?

Speaker 2 So we had a state tell us, it starts when you pay claims. I'm like, okay.
two years of seasoning we need before we come to your state.

Speaker 2 You understand that in our product, because we're built differently than auto or whatever else, we're going to sell it to a college and those students are going to go start school today.

Speaker 2 And they're going to go to college for three to six years and graduate and then work for five, and then they're going to make a claim.

Speaker 2 So you're telling me, don't come to your state for a minimum of eight years plus two years of seasoning. So I shouldn't come here for a decade.

Speaker 2 I want to make sure that you're telling me that's how far behind you want to be, right?

Speaker 2 And they're like,

Speaker 2 I mean, I'm like, and you just passed a regulatory sandbox where you said, hey, innovative insurance companies, come here.

Speaker 2 We'll waive away the regulation so that you can come here and innovate and take chances because we need these sorts of products to, we need to move it faster.

Speaker 2 Like, we didn't apply through the sandbox, but you can waive away the seasoning, which doesn't won't teach you anything in the next two years.

Speaker 2 Do you really want to stay away for 10? Well, no, right. And they were able to get their minds around and come around, right?

Speaker 2 But that,

Speaker 2 we see that a lot in insurance.

Speaker 2 We're very much a trustless industry because we're in the business of risk avoidance, right? We're in the business of hedging against the worst possible outcomes.

Speaker 2 And so by nature, by nurture, both self-selection and what we're sort of trained to do, we avoid risk.

Speaker 2 We shy away from things that haven't been done before and sort of trust the process, just let it go. What we don't do is move very quickly to address things.
And

Speaker 2 you get caught sometimes, right? If you move quick and you bring in a new product no one's seen before, like that can come back to bite somebody, right?

Speaker 2 And then are they, do they learn a lesson and apply it? Or are they burned from, quote, anything new?

Speaker 2 Right. And all those things sort of come up as you're thinking about how do we build new products? And I mean,

Speaker 2 why don't we see a rash of new products? We've seen a rash of new businesses, right? Moving from physical goods to online service industries. So cybersecurity is the example everyone points to.

Speaker 2 And then global warming, which is changing, you know, the actuarial tables. But that's more of a shift in the math than it is a fundamental difference in the product nature, right?

Speaker 2 Cybersecurity is a new product. Ours is a fundamentally new product.

Speaker 2 We should be, I'm of the opinion, we should be seeing a lot more new products, right, in all sorts of different industries, but people don't think of it because we're not an industry that's prone to taking risks and to innovating.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 The episode that's coming out this week that we're recording this is actually with a guy by the name of Jonathan Libby.

Speaker 7 So when this episode comes out people can go back and listen to that one if they missed it he runs um or founded steady state insurance which is smart d5

Speaker 7 and i'm looking at some of the things that they're doing in crypto which is which is a really interesting space which i'm which i'm super interested in but what what i thought was most interesting about our conversation was was not just you know the crypto piece which is interesting a lot of people don't know but um insuring d5 transactions once you understand the math behind it makes a lot of sense what what became even more interesting to me was, okay, we're using DeFi as almost a loss leader for what blockchain can do for the insurance industry in terms of creating new insurance products over time

Speaker 7 and new ways of viewing

Speaker 7 how we tackle risk and the way that we can spread risk out to smooth out rates, to smooth out.

Speaker 7 um opportunities to to to finally do away with you know even some of the loose redlining that still happens even though we want to pretend like it doesn't.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, things like blockchain can really help us massage some of those problems and attack them. And I was like, you know, it's why it makes me so excited.

Speaker 7 And I know we didn't talk about degree that much,

Speaker 7 but obviously everyone's going to be very interested now that they understand the way that you're talking this problem. It makes me very excited that there are people like you out there.

Speaker 7 bringing these ideas into our industry because it's exactly what it needs.

Speaker 7 A lot of our industry is not broken.

Speaker 7 It needs innovation and some invention, but a lot of of it is not broken but i agree with you there are many gaps that we just don't see they're like black holes looking out into space because we just haven't had someone come in who who understands how gravity works in that particular part of the universe you know one of the challenges you got to build that x-rail table right but i could easily see an executable contract on the blockchain that does parametric insurance right where you're

Speaker 2 sort of everybody's pooling in capital and splitting it and a set of regulations that allows those to exist and suddenly you can create digital insurance right where there's no manual underwriting like it's an automated process do you fit this category you put the money in shared risk here's how here's how you're gonna you know make a claim later um

Speaker 2 you know and those parameters paramutual parametric models don't need an actorial table which opens it up as a as a model for where you can and innovate and and doing that in executable contracts right building that on bth or or in a d5 product or whatever those are those are real things that could happen

Speaker 2 But they're going to happen one at a time. And you got to have a champion.
You got to have somebody who's willing. They'll say, like, I'm going to stick my neck out and try this.

Speaker 2 In an industry where if I just put my nose down and outwork my peers,

Speaker 2 I can do really well building an amazing agency. Do you know what I mean? Like

Speaker 2 the central conflict isn't always like attracting the right people. It's like, look, risk reward.
There's great upside if you're going to build something new.

Speaker 2 But insurance is, I mean, it's such a great industry where if you can put your nose down and hustle, you don't have to be the smartest person out there.

Speaker 2 If you can put your nose down and hustle, you can do really well in any part of the country, right, with traditional products. And so, um, yeah, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right?

Speaker 7 So, yeah, I agree with you. You know, I want to be respectful of your time, so we'll wrap up here.

Speaker 7 But, you know, I think, I think you just hit one of something that a lot of people don't talk about that I'm kind of facing in what I do. But

Speaker 7 some of our most talented people look at our space and rightly so go, I could sell seven middle market accounts and never have to worry about money ever again.

Speaker 7 Why would I do something that could possibly force me to be uncomfortable? When, if I can just learn how to make a few cold calls, network a little bit, and write a few big, large accounts, I'm good.

Speaker 7 Spouse has got a seven series. I'll have that second house in Florida in a couple of years.
I'll be able to golf all the time.

Speaker 7 Why would I want to go bash my head, you know, take a chance of running into the rocks when this path is tried and true, and there's a lot of money still on the money tree.

Speaker 7 And, um, you know, I, I, I think it's it's that all being said, it is such an interesting and amazing time to be part of this space. And, uh, like I said, I'll say it again, I'm not blowing smoke.

Speaker 7 I'm very happy that there are people like you out there waiting. I just appreciate you coming in and sharing so much.

Speaker 7 Not just obviously, we only heard a little bit about your business that'll give us a chance to have you back on the show, but uh, um, just about you and your mindset. I think it's exciting stuff.

Speaker 2 Well, I appreciate you having me. I

Speaker 2 like you, I think I can talk about insurance all day.

Speaker 2 I think there's just so many great avenues for growth and great places where you can innovate and great places where you can do really good things.

Speaker 2 Insurance unlocks other people's ability to take risk. And nothing is going to drive the economy faster, build more wealth, do more things than letting people take responsible risks.
So

Speaker 2 yeah, degree insurance, we're going to let people do that.

Speaker 2 We're going to take the risk out of higher education and hopefully help a generation that I have taken to referring to as the least confident generation in American history and get them in college and get them through to a place where their financial futures are secure.

Speaker 7 So, yeah, guys, decree degreeinsurance.co. There's a white paper you can read.
There's all kinds of resources.

Speaker 7 Go check it out. Get to know what this is because to me, we're going to be hearing a lot more from you, I'm sure.
And

Speaker 7 I just, new products in the space are a good thing so i appreciate it man hey thanks for having me

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