RHS 110 - Zach Mefferd on Entrepreneurship and the Independent Insurance Agency

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Speaker 7 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 8 Hello everyone, welcome back to The Show.

Speaker 9 Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. It is the very first podcast interview ever with Zach Mefford, co-founder of Coverage Direct up in Iowa.

Speaker 9 You've heard his name, you've seen him around the scene. And now you get to hear directly from the man doing big things, doing big things up in Iowa.
And Coverage Direct is an all-time agency.

Speaker 9 Absolutely love what Zach and his

Speaker 9 business partner, Ryan Swalve, are doing. These guys are kind of a yin and yang team, and they just absolutely are killing it.

Speaker 9 You know, rocking sales force, but at the same time, doing things the right way in their agency.

Speaker 9 So kind of that, just that really nice mix of looking forward, pushing boundaries while still operating inside the realm of what matters to an independent insurance agency, which is delivering on the product and the promise of our business.

Speaker 9 And it's just wonderful to have Zach on.

Speaker 9 Huge fan of Zach, and we become buddies. And it was awesome.
I've been trying to get him on to do a podcast for years.

Speaker 9 And finally, he said he was ready because he's got a couple new projects out, a couple businesses that Zach and Ryan have been working on for a while, things that they saw in the marketplace that needed to be filled.

Speaker 9 And I want to talk about those.

Speaker 9 But really, we dive deep on their entrepreneurial journey, being an entrepreneur and pushing forward in general, how you deal with everything that comes up that you need to deal with.

Speaker 9 I think you're going to love this conversation. I know I did.
And this is just one of those episodes that that's why I do the show is sharing this kind of episode with you.

Speaker 9 Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to the newest sponsor to the show and that is Codery Insurance. Small business insurance simplified.

Speaker 9 We use Codery here at Rogue.

Speaker 9 Ease of business is incredibly important and Codery is doing just that. They're making it easy to get quotes, to deliver policies.

Speaker 9 You know, not everyone needs to to go through 17 accord forms and 47 supplements to get a quote. Some people just, you know, they have a business that, you know, with a few pieces of information.

Speaker 9 And then, you know, one of the things that I love about Codery is they're using third-party data sources to pull in additional information.

Speaker 9 Codery is able to underwrite policies in no time and deliver them throughout the country. And I'm a big fan of what Codery is doing.
I know their CEO.

Speaker 9 I know Ray Lynch,

Speaker 9 who used to work at Liberty, who's now working with them. And just a great group of people who are focused on doing the right things.

Speaker 9 And if you're looking to write small business insurance and you want to make it part of your agency, but you're struggling to get appointments from traditional carriers who,

Speaker 9 you know, are going to throw minimums on you and,

Speaker 9 you know, make you jump through 17 hoops and harass you, you know, every other day about,

Speaker 9 you know, how much are you producing? What are you producing? And all this kind of stuff. Codery is a wonderful option.
Like I said, we are appointed with Codery.

Speaker 9 Happy to be so, and look forward to growing with them as Rogue continues to grow. So C-O-T-E-R-I-E Codery.
C-O-T-E-R-I-E coderyinsurance.com. Go get appointed today.

Speaker 9 With that, let's get to Zach.

Speaker 8 What up, dude?

Speaker 7 Okay.

Speaker 7 Recording in progress.

Speaker 8 First ever podcast.

Speaker 7 I know, man.

Speaker 7 It's one of those deals where I was intentionally trying to fly under the radar

Speaker 7 just because, you know, everyone's got a lot of really good ideas, but they're just that, you know, their ideas.

Speaker 7 And I wanted to have something tangible to talk about before I actually got on something.

Speaker 8 Wow. That, you know, podcasts are really just about bullshitting.
So it's not like anyone ever expects to actually learn anything when they listen to these things. They just

Speaker 8 want to tune out for a little while.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I maybe. Yeah.
And I think about that too is, well, first of all, I've never been said, it's never been said about me that I'm not good at that.

Speaker 7 So both hitting is something I can do really well.

Speaker 7 And the two of us together, I'm only, I'm actually a little afraid for the audience to see what's going to happen and who gets on a soapbox about something first.

Speaker 7 So I was thinking about this the other day as I'm listening to and get caught up on podcasts out there in the yard working. It's like, you know,

Speaker 7 we're doing this at 11, 11.03 Central, 1203 right Eastern on a Monday. And you think about when are people most likely listening to this?

Speaker 7 I'm thinking, you know, what mindset are they in that part of their day, you know, when it's Sunday afternoon and I'm out working in the yard listening and catching up to this. I think it's

Speaker 7 interesting to think of how much different your mindset would be in different times.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I mean, it's why I think streaming is

Speaker 8 such an interesting space. And when you stream is important

Speaker 8 because you're going to get a different audience based on timing alone.

Speaker 8 You're going to get a different audience based on platform. You're going to get a different audience based on format.

Speaker 8 It's a very interesting,

Speaker 8 it's not something I'm interested in doing, like live streaming. Like I'm not interested in that.
Certainly not in the current season of my life, I guess you could say, or my business career. But

Speaker 8 I think it's a super interesting concept because of all the

Speaker 8 like psychographic things that come into play

Speaker 8 when just make a determination on when you're going to actually like

Speaker 8 when it's going to be live, you know, when you're going to do it. And then are you going to record it? When are you going to put it out? How is it going to work? You know, I was actually right before,

Speaker 8 so

Speaker 8 no idea where the crypto market will be when anyone's listening to this, but as the day of recording,

Speaker 8 you know, we're having a pretty stellar day. The market's up about 40%.

Speaker 8 A little less than that that right now. But

Speaker 8 and two projects that I've been following for a very long time have had huge pumps. So 50% over the last two days for one and 37% for the other.
And,

Speaker 8 you know, I was listening. One of the guys that I listened to

Speaker 8 does a live YouTube show. And then three days later, he produces that.
He puts that YouTube show out on

Speaker 8 podcast.

Speaker 8 So if you only listen to the podcast, you're actually three days late on his advice. Now, he has two different shows.
One is long form and the three days wouldn't matter.

Speaker 8 But one is like what's happening that day.

Speaker 8 And if you want that day's information, I'm not a day trader by any stretch, but I do think it's interesting to hear, like you check your, you know, you check your app in the morning to see what's going on in the market and you get,

Speaker 8 and you're like, why is, you know, one of the, one of the tokens that I follow is called AMP, right? So

Speaker 8 it's a,

Speaker 8 there's a, there's a platform called Flexa, and basically it allows you to make payments in crypto. And the,

Speaker 8 I'm going to kind of butcher the terminology here, but the, the capital that they use to

Speaker 8 to close the the transactions in a fast time frame um is called amp okay so it's basically an intermediate currency that operates between hey Zach, I'm going to pay for this thing at your lemonade stand in Bitcoin and I'm going to have it happen instantaneously and you're going to get the Bitcoin and your thing instantaneously.

Speaker 8 So you can hand me the cup of lemonade. Well, that transaction probably really takes about an hour.

Speaker 8 But what AMP does is it bridges that so that you and it basically creates a collateralized loan for an hour between the two people. So long story short, I've been following this for a while.

Speaker 8 Wake up this morning and it's essentially doubled overnight, which is cool. Awesome.

Speaker 8 Or sorry, have.

Speaker 8 It's up 150%. So from where it was.

Speaker 8 I said that wrong.

Speaker 7 So, you know, so then I'm, I'm not, I'm not here to do the math for you.

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I apologize.
It was up 50%. So, wherever it was, it was up 50 additional percent from there.
I said that wrong. And what I'm getting to is, so then I logged in.

Speaker 8 So I was like, what the hell is going on? I mean, I kind of had an idea. I've been following it for a while.
There's a reason I invested in it.

Speaker 8 But it was like, is this, is the new, is the reason that I thought this was going to happen, the reason it happened? So I turned on his show today at 9 a.m. I missed it.
So I'm watching the recording.

Speaker 8 Um, because obviously we're working. And,

Speaker 8 you know, it was funny, you know, to get like, here's why AMP is pumping this morning. Like, here's exactly why it's pumping this morning.
And you just. You don't get that if you're doing a podcast.

Speaker 8 Like, it's just very difficult to get it out that quickly.

Speaker 7 So it is, but I wasn't even talking about that. Right.
So my, my thing thing is, like, and I think you and I are enough alike that you can relate to this.

Speaker 7 If we did this at four o'clock this afternoon, is it going to need the same energy as we do it now right now? And furthermore, what if we did this at like 8.30, right?

Speaker 7 Our time, like that's when everything, caffeine's kicking, the workout, you're feeling the adrenaline, adrenaline, endorphins are, you know, you just, I feel like I have a different energy level and I'm just more like ready to get on a soapbox and

Speaker 7 debate or, you know, discuss certain things so much more at that level. And then I listen to like when I'm hearing the podcast.

Speaker 7 And, you know, if it's 4:30 in the afternoon on a Sunday, because I'm just finally getting around to yard work I want to get done. Is that the same?

Speaker 8 Yeah. No, no, you're right.
It's a really interesting. It's a really interesting thing.

Speaker 8 I mean, the other day, the most recent podcast that I put out last week was with Cass, and we did it at like 9 a.m. Eastern time on a Friday.
So like

Speaker 8 the end of a good week, it's the morning, you know, so nothing shitty's happened yet. And I am just fired up.

Speaker 7 And I feel like when you ended that one, you just went down and did like a few sets just to like kind of take that energy and do something with it. You had to, you had to get that energy out.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I was just pounding beers and crushing cans off my forehead.

Speaker 8 So, so yes, I agree with you. When you record definitely matters.

Speaker 8 I think putting yourself in the right mind state matters. I mean, there are definitely times when I don't prep.
And I don't mean prep like get ready for the episodes because I rarely ever do that.

Speaker 8 But I mean mentally just have like a second to recalibrate, get my mind right on the fact that I'm talking to somebody.

Speaker 8 You come in and like you can tell like the first five or 10 minutes are tough to listen to.

Speaker 8 And I think that goes for everything. I mean, it's the same thing out of the sales call.
It's the same thing with, you know, it's just, it's the same thing with anything.

Speaker 8 I think sometimes we get moving so fast and we don't think about when it is in our day that we're having a conversation or whatever.

Speaker 7 And we're just not at our best i mean i've been i've been more and more aware of that though i think that's why you know i bring it up is because i i try to i have so much energy and so you even said i think if one of the well it was the first time i think we met personally right and he's like wow i you know rarely i'm in the same room as somebody that's has that much energy yeah

Speaker 7 trying to do that but then i try to think okay is you know 9 30 a.m zach the same as 4 30 p.m zach and like would i make the same decision and trying to just be aware of that when i'm uh you know doing really big things so i i think it also depends on what's going on your day i mean you can schedule your day so that you're ready to go at 4 30 you can do that but i'll say that on a standard day

Speaker 8 i have you know i have a big spike in the morning and then i'd say like right around like one or two i absolutely have that dip part of that is i drink too much coffee which is mostly just a habit than it is like me needing the coffee and then i get a little bump and like if i have like a if i were to do a podcast recording at one or two you can tell.

Speaker 8 I feel like, I feel like you can tell. I don't know if the audience can tell, but that's why I try to schedule things for either 2 p.m.
or later or noon or earlier.

Speaker 8 That noon to two time is like a down cycle for me based on how my body works. Like I have a big down cycle there.

Speaker 8 I have started scheduling meetings, and I don't know if you do this at all, post 8 p.m. though, like eight o'clock call or a nine o'clock call.
I can come back in and I can be pretty good.

Speaker 8 I have about, I have about a two hour window from about 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.
where I can be fairly productive again. And it's almost like clockwork at 10 p.m., I like go

Speaker 8 like all the way down. Like if I get to 10 p.m.
and I'm still working or I'm on a call with somebody, I just lose it. Like I just could care less.
I lose all functionality. But

Speaker 7 I'm there with you. Whenever, you know, like I have younger kids, so whenever they go down, if I want to get something done right then, I do have that second wind where I can just go.
Yep.

Speaker 7 Um, you know, and I just try to be intentional with my time at that point, too, because there's only so much of it you spend with, you know, your family and whatnot and be able to do it.

Speaker 7 But I know exactly me. If I have something I have to get done, I want to get done, some sort of project, I'll just block it off, you know, and say like, that's it.

Speaker 7 And then, you know, be dad, get the kids to bed, and then boom,

Speaker 7 right into something. Yeah.

Speaker 8 So let's, uh, but I don't think everyone wants to hear about our emotional, our daily emotional cycles. So, uh, my first question for you is the car racing thing.

Speaker 8 What the heck is the car racing thing how did you get into car racing why do you do car racing and is car racing fun uh okay so yes it's fun um

Speaker 7 i've been around motorsports my entire life so you know when i was a little kid i mean i used to have pictures of me next to my dad's uh i'm pretty i'm pretty redneck uh if you really trace my roots uh small town iowa kid you know we had county actually we just had the county fair you know um in my little town from i don't live over there anymore it's about two hours away from my map but um i grew up with my my dad did demolition derbies, figure eights.

Speaker 7 I was around just dirt track racing. And so I don't, I didn't really, I didn't choose it, right? Like I know you have baseball was kind of your thing, you know, growing up.

Speaker 7 And for me, it was being at the racetrack. And so I felt like it chose me.
And I just, I really got into it. I begged my dad to get me into something.

Speaker 7 Started soapbox derby racing when I was, I think, six or seven.

Speaker 7 You know, that big race they have in Akron, Ohio, which they just did.

Speaker 7 I missed going to that when I was, I want to say I was eight by three thousandths of a second. So I finished second in my class in Omaha because it was just right across the river there.

Speaker 7 And then that I begged for a go-kart. I shoveled snow.
I had a paper route for three years, mowed lawns, did whatever I could to raise enough money.

Speaker 7 And my dad made me a deal that if I, if I would, you know, buy this go-kart, I think it was 500 bucks and I got it, that he'd buy me a motor and uh we go racing.

Speaker 7 Well, come to find out it was the biggest piece of junk go-kart I could have ever bought. And

Speaker 7 but it just, again, it was my passion. That's what I wanted to do.
So I had some somewhat of success in go-kart racing, got into stock cars. And, you know, and then life happens, right?

Speaker 7 So college, you know, marriage, kids, all of that. Now I'm, but I'm, I'm probably having the most fun that I've had in a long time.
It's something that's really not that crazy.

Speaker 7 So I say like, you know, it's not a race car. It's a car that I race,

Speaker 7 which is really true. It's a stock class.
We don't go crazy fast or anything, but it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 7 And I just, I don't have a lot of money invested in it either because that's the part that makes it not fun. It's, it's, it's very similar to a gambling addiction.

Speaker 7 You know, you just throw a ton of money at it. You're not really getting much out of it.

Speaker 7 And I'm glad I don't do that yet, but I would like to get to a point in my life where I get to do something a little bit more advanced and, you know, have the time to do it.

Speaker 8 Yeah. It's like having a boat.
I'm always so excited for people when they get boats. And I'm like, wow, you just bought something that you're going to, well, so the problem is up in here in the north.

Speaker 8 And I know you live in the north too, but like. You get a boat up here.
You literally get three months to get it. And I mean three months.

Speaker 8 Like you get out on a boat in late September in upstate New York and you you are going to be freezing cold the wind and and it's just like not fun anymore you basically get like the second half of june july august and the first half of september and that's it and then you spend all this money it's constantly broken i'm like i love getting in other people's boats i don't that's exactly what i was gonna say i don't own a boat myself guess whose boat i like to use the most

Speaker 8 Anyone else's, right?

Speaker 7 No, well, yeah, that, but you specifically know the guy who's got the nicest boat that I like to go use, which is Todd.

Speaker 7 todd dance oh yeah yeah yeah well he loves that boat life yeah he he does love it and i like going up there and my my in-laws have a tri-tune that we get to go use every now and then which is the best because you know you don't pay for it you use it a lot but the thing about iowa too is um and i know we can pick on iowa for a thousand different things as you've uh already done before but um there is really like the lakes that i would like to go to the one that the todd's at that's that's the lake to go to you know it's the quote unquote hamptons of iowa right like it's where you go but um yeah anyone else's boat get to enjoy it not have to pay for it sorry todd but i really enjoy using your boat yeah so okay so um

Speaker 7 no golf you golfer you just you just race cars and do insurance and family i i look i'll go out on a golf course but if you take me out there and you're a super competitive person like i am just know that i have to mentally put myself in a different place because i'm so bad at it i have to be like hey i'm just here to have fun because i get so mad and then i just i i become someone that's not fun to be around because I know most of the time what I'm doing wrong.

Speaker 7 And I cannot, I don't have the muscle memory because I didn't do it as a kid.

Speaker 7 I also broke my wrist and it never healed right. So I feel it pop every single time.
I'm trying to hold my wrist the right way and be able to do it. So I'm a terrible golfer.

Speaker 7 I will go out there and do it if I know I'm going with some buddies that just want to go out and have a good time. Yeah.

Speaker 7 As far as, you know, other hobbies and whatnot, I mean, really, I'm, I'm a serial entrepreneur.

Speaker 7 I've been this way since I was four years old, trying to sell things door to door to my neighbors because I just wanted to make money and i've had multiple different side hustles and different things and i just don't know how to turn that off so if i really could tell like a hobby for me would just be to start a side hustle that's yeah how much fun i have doing it yeah i i get that i would say in the second half of my life i was um

Speaker 8 i wrote an article about this one time but like i was an entrepreneur as a kid right like i used to get up at like 3 a.m and i would leave my house so so we had in our town because i i grew up in a town of 900 people.

Speaker 8 I always give you a hard time living from Iowa. Yeah, probably from a town that's smaller than the one that you grew up in.
But so I'm way out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, 900 people.

Speaker 8 And on Thursdays was garbage day and or recycle day. So everyone would put their cans.
This is before recycling was like a big thing.

Speaker 8 We'd put their cans in the recycling day.

Speaker 7 I love it.

Speaker 8 I would take two garbage bags. I'd get up.
This is at like 11 years old. I'd get up with two garbage bags at 4 a.m.
and I would walk the entire town and be able to collect about $40 worth of bottles.

Speaker 8 I'd be dragging these two bags back and then I'd come back, dump them in my, you know, put them in my backyard and then go to school that day.

Speaker 8 And that weekend we would go, my mom would take me to the thing. And that was like my very first job.
And then a million things after that, you know,

Speaker 8 and then I basically found out like our, or, you know, my parents were, you know, one worked for the railroad, other as a secretary, you know, lived, worked those jobs forever.

Speaker 8 Like when I was growing up, it was like, get the job with with the company get the pension like be you know this like that was what was drilled into my head so yeah i i i i couldn't see like an entrepreneurial path out of this town that i grew up in which i hated i mean there's some kids that are all right but like i hated the town i hated being in this small hickey country terrible town it wasn't even a hickey because it's upstate new york so it was just like people who never made it.

Speaker 8 You know what I mean? And I don't want to, if anyone's listening to this from NASA, my old town.

Speaker 7 I'm not trying to be a dick i'm just saying anyone who grew up there knows what i'm talking about if you're still there it's a choice but you know what i mean like i'm saying is like it just it wasn't a prosperous place let's just put it that way so how much did you get for a can how much i'm just curious five cents at the time it was five that's what it is that's what it is in iowa too and i did exactly the same thing right i would on my days that i could go do it i would go find cans in different places we didn't so our our town was not quite 900 small but we didn't have days to pick up recycling the recycling uh thing was this huge you know container behind some of the buildings there between the railroad.

Speaker 7 I'm living in a railroad town. So,

Speaker 7 you know, I grew up in one, I should say. And that's where they take everything.
So I didn't have that option. I was literally going and picking up litter.
Yeah.

Speaker 7 Taking it to the grocery store and turning it in for that nickel and do that. But that's how it was an opportunity, you know?

Speaker 8 That was the hustle. Then I would buy baseball cards and then I would trade the baseball cards, were essentially the currency between my peer group that we used to get things done.

Speaker 8 Oh, you want a new wiffle ball? Hey, I'll trade you this card for that wiffle ball.

Speaker 8 oh you want this and and that's how we survived but i basically saw i saw no i because i wasn't raised entrepreneurial or you know and there was no entrepreneurship in my ecosystem

Speaker 8 i the only path that i saw out was going to college getting the degree and getting a corporate job which what i did and i hated every second of it and like it's like i then i so it's like i had this entrepreneurial lifestyle, you know, or or disposition is probably a better way to put it than lifestyle.

Speaker 8 Disposition. And then

Speaker 8 and then like to get out, to get out of this town, the only way that I could see was like go away to college, get a job, you know, whatever.

Speaker 8 And I basically had like 15 years after that of like trying to work the corporate structure. And I either hated it or was fired over and over and over and over again.
And then it was like finally.

Speaker 8 you know, wrote, I mean, I kind of got a taste of it building agency nation. I got a little taste of it at Bold Penguin, although that was someone else's company.

Speaker 8 Um, got a little taste of it at the fitness business, but but again, someone else's company. And then it's like when I started Rogue,

Speaker 8 it was like, oh my God, how did why did I wait till I was you know, 39 years old to start this? Like, this is crazy.

Speaker 8 Like, I can't believe or, you know, it just, it's like finally at that age, uh, you know, I'm 40 today, 39 when I started it. Um,

Speaker 8 it was like being brought all the way back from a mentality part. And that is a weird thing.
That is a very odd concept. Like, I just,

Speaker 8 you know,

Speaker 8 it's like you need to be taught it. Like, you were taught race cars.
No one ever taught me entrepreneurship.

Speaker 7 Well, definitely nothing mechanical. I'm far from anything mechanical in the race car.

Speaker 7 I just kind of feel like I'm, anybody watch Days of Thunder, there's a scene where Cole Trickles talking to Harry. He's talking about, you know, I just can't tell you.

Speaker 7 how to make changes on a car because I literally have no idea what you're talking about. Like, I'm not quite that bad, but I'm close.
You know, I just, I like to drive and that's what I was doing.

Speaker 7 So don't, I'm no, I'm no mechanical engineer or anything. Um, back to the card thing, I had my first actual legit, I'm gonna, I'm gonna send you a photo of this.

Speaker 7 It's, I literally still have the hand-painted sign that my mom helped me put together. It's the card shack is what it was called.

Speaker 7 And it was one of the businesses that we first officially, I first officially had, I guess, that I can remember.

Speaker 7 But I, um, I remember having you know, you talk about like your, your, your parents having an influence on you, whether they realize it or not.

Speaker 7 And my dad you know uh was in the car business for you know almost 30 years and and i would just hear him talking about these guys that were buying the different vehicles and they owned their own business and they did this that and like he definitely wanted to be an entrepreneur he just didn't know the first thing about how to become an entrepreneur or where he would get to go and to do it because it's it's it's it's really hard man i mean it just it is so i didn't have that like grooming i definitely didn't come from that type of a life style but i do remember specifically him and and one of my um one of my uncles in particular talking about how much they wish they would have just started this or they wish they would have done that.

Speaker 7 And like, not that they were intentionally projecting that,

Speaker 7 you know, fear or that, you know, that guilt that they have, whatever, whatever emotion you want to call it. I just remember that thinking like, I'm going to go do this.

Speaker 7 I'm going to go do something because I don't want to have that, you know, I wish I would have. I wish I wouldn't have.

Speaker 7 And my father-in-law actually summed it up so well when I was talking to him about going into a business, you know, because he wasn't, he's an entrepreneur as well.

Speaker 7 And he said, look, the way he looked at it in his corporate job when he was leaving, he says, there's risk if you stay and there's risk if you go.

Speaker 7 And you just got to look at both sides and say, in five years, where do you want to be and what can you live with?

Speaker 7 You know, and for him, and, you know, thankfully for me, it was, I just, I would have rather gone down in a blaze of glory knowing that I tried than never just taking that first step.

Speaker 7 And it's just, it's just the action. That's the hard part for a lot of people.

Speaker 8 I completely agree. You know, and there's,

Speaker 8 I think a lot of people, I will say that I think a lot of of people struggle with the judgment. What if it doesn't work? You know, will I, will I be able to get another job? What will people think?

Speaker 8 What will people say? You know, I think I also will say that the older you get, the more

Speaker 8 of a solidified perception people have of you. It's very difficult, right? Especially

Speaker 8 now, I could give two fucks what anyone thinks. And I think that is, a superpower that I have developed.
I didn't always have it, but I certainly do today.

Speaker 8 And um that has allowed me to make this move but you know i was talking to i was talking to cass and he said he said you know man this is before i started he said he said he actually said to me you know i i'm not saying you shouldn't start rogue he said but are you worried at all or will it worry you like let's say you don't it doesn't work does that bother you and and he wasn't saying it to dissuade me he was just trying to make sure that i'd thought things through And I was like, look, man, I've been fired from the last three insurance jobs that last three jobs I've had.

Speaker 8 At this point, there's only up from a perception standpoint that I can have in the industry. Like, there's not a lot of places that I can go from here.
I said, and the other side of it too is

Speaker 8 when you, when you, when you take this on, and I'm sure you've seen this, and I think I'm sure you would consider yourself blessed to have Ryan, your partner

Speaker 8 with you. You know, it's one of the things that I definitely miss is not having someone.
I know there's additional challenges to having a partner for sure,

Speaker 8 but man, there are, I will say almost every single day throughout this journey, I have said to myself, I wish I had that person that I could say all the things that were on my mind to and have them help me work through which ones were the right things and which ones were just the crazy ideas.

Speaker 8 And,

Speaker 8 you know, that's, that's definitely that you, but what, but my point in saying that is

Speaker 8 when you go on this path and you and you take your own thing, right?

Speaker 8 You start to,

Speaker 8 I feel like if you do it right, you start to surround surround yourself with other people who don't care what people think, who want to push forward, who are willing to take risks, who are willing to try things, who will listen to your crazy ideas and not think that they're crazy, just listen to them as ideas, where there is this whole much larger subgroup of people who listen to what you're saying.

Speaker 8 They're like, you're crazy. That won't work.
That's bananas. It's not the way we do it.
You know, you know, what makes you qualified?

Speaker 8 I mean, all these things that if you can get away from those people for a minute, man, all of a sudden, the whole world opens up to you. And that's what I feel where I sit today.

Speaker 7 But that's they're projecting their fear on you, right? Of what they're afraid is going to happen or what they're doing trying to bring you down because they're not able to do it.

Speaker 7 And so they just want to try to stop anyone else from doing it. So I had a couple of thoughts on that.
First of all, you're right. I am incredibly blessed to have

Speaker 7 not just a business partner because partnerships,

Speaker 7 they can be messy. There are things about them I really, in general, don't like.

Speaker 7 But specifically, Ryan, my business partner, like I said this before to you, and I guess I'll officially go on record so you can hold it against me, but Ryan's literally one of the smartest guys I've ever met.

Speaker 7 You know, outside of insurance, I know there's different things, like the way that he thinks through things and, you know, just his process and does stuff.

Speaker 7 It doesn't mean he's always right, because that's definitely not the case, but he's definitely more right than he is wrong because of the way he does things.

Speaker 7 He's just one of the smartest guys I've met. When it comes to insurance, though, I literally have still not found somebody that I think would, you know, hold a candle to what he's able to do, right?

Speaker 7 And you might not live in it. Again, he's been on the carrier side and he's been mostly commercial and the agency side too, but he's just,

Speaker 7 he just knows so much more things, right? That other people just forget. And he, and I think some people take that for granted.

Speaker 7 And watching, you know, how things have gone with the business, it really helps having someone like that, not only to talk to through those things, but they also, you know, the yin and the yang, right?

Speaker 7 Like the joke is, you know, I push him outside of where he's comfortable and he pulls me back when things are getting a little bit too, too far down the road, but it works for us.

Speaker 7 And so it's not just that it's a a business partner and having it, it's just it's the right fit for us. That's worked out really well.

Speaker 7 And I've told him this, I was like, we can do so many different things. And we both have dabbled in other things outside of what we're doing here currently, but I just wouldn't want to.

Speaker 7 Like, that's how well things, you know, have worked for us. And I will say, too, about the support thing.

Speaker 7 When we started this initially going, like you'd call it blissfully ignorant or just the fact that I just didn't think about it enough, failure wasn't an option.

Speaker 7 We're just going to make this shit work. That's, that's, that was my mentality.
We're going to find a way to do it.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I, uh, I'd be remiss if I didn't, you know, mention how great it is to have a spouse, too, that supports you through all that.

Speaker 7 Because, I mean, there's times, Ryan, like nobody wants to hear these sad, sob stories.

Speaker 7 But I remember, you know, we found out that we were expecting our second child the second day into our business, right? And, you know, just seeing how.

Speaker 7 terrified and scared you know she comes to me and she's crying and i thought somebody died or i did something incredibly stupid that i had forgotten and that wasn't the case you know she was just really that worried about how i was going to perceive that that because, you know, she cared that much about making sure that we got to where we were.

Speaker 7 And, you know, it was tough. I mean, it wasn't,

Speaker 7 it wasn't easy. There was times where we had to go without certain things.
There's times where I look at my bank account. It's just not, you know, definitely not where you want it to be.

Speaker 7 And scary, you know, of where things

Speaker 7 were.

Speaker 7 And it takes a lot because, I mean, that's years of putting up with that and not going on vacations and not going out to eat, not doing different things to get to a point where you get to, you know, enjoy it.

Speaker 7 So I guess my point is like you, you see these people that enjoy things when they get successful and kind of taking off what you'd said last week on your um or at least the last podcast i heard from you you know i don't have a problem with people as long as they're on the same playing field we can be able to do it and then they should be able to appreciate and enjoy their success yeah it took a lot to get there yeah i think that's i think that is something um

Speaker 8 oh who was it the other day some someone

Speaker 8 Somebody we both know tweeted, and I'm going to forget. And if they remember, they can let me know.
Just something about, oh, it might might have been, um, might have been Mike Crowley.

Speaker 8 It was either Crowley or, or maybe it was Brent Kelly. It was one of those two

Speaker 8 tweeted out that,

Speaker 8 you know, just never look at where someone is today and try to compare yourself to them because you just have no idea. You know what I mean? I look at, you know,

Speaker 8 I

Speaker 8 struggle with this a lot in the first few months of Rogue because the pandemic hits. I don't sell a policy for the first two and a half months that my agency exists.

Speaker 8 I mean, I'm just literally lighting money on fire every day because whether you're right in business or not, it costs money to run an agency, as everyone knows who's listening to this, most likely.

Speaker 8 And if you don't, that would be crazy. It costs money to run an agency, even if you don't have a physical location, whatever, it still costs a lot of money.
So,

Speaker 8 that all being said, you know, I'm looking around, I'm going, Jesus, you know, I know what I want to do.

Speaker 8 I have this game plan of how to get there,

Speaker 8 and nothing's happening. This notes happening.
Look at these guys. And, you know, and it is so easy to get caught in that spiral.
And I think for a lot of people,

Speaker 8 they,

Speaker 8 especially a lot of producers, um, they get caught in this, like, man, I'd love to go do that, or I'd love to have what my, what my agency principal has, or when is it going to be my turn?

Speaker 8 And you really have two options. And I think before I was a little more, I had a little more empathy for this position.
And now maybe my position is a little more draconian.

Speaker 8 Either suck it up and enjoy the life that you have with at the agency you have, or go start your own thing and shut up. Like, you really have those two options.

Speaker 8 And I'm only saying that out of love because

Speaker 8 those are your two options.

Speaker 8 Continuing to complain and maybe produce less than you should because you're kind of thinking a lot about things that have no value and aren't productive in any way and are probably intrinsically negative.

Speaker 8 That is not a path forward. And it can be done.
You guys have done it.

Speaker 8 There's 10,000 cases that we could bring on here of agents and agencies that have just plowed through it, and you just have to be ready for the lean years. But the other side of it is nice.

Speaker 9 What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

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Speaker 9 The things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews.
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Speaker 7 You got to be ready to embrace the suck. You just do.
And it's going to take. And I've had the luxury of having a few really good.

Speaker 7 They're not even mentors because that's not, that wouldn't be fair to say that, you know, they mentored me through this. They just, you know, give me advice every now and then.
People like I call.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I remember, you know, I was at the state farm route for a little bit when I first started.

Speaker 7 And the agent there had told me it's like, look, for the first three years, you know, you're just going to embrace that suck, right?

Speaker 7 From year three to five, you don't, you're not, you're not comfortable, but you feel like you can breathe a little bit.

Speaker 7 years five to seven you start to get to a point where you're like okay this is going pretty well and then you say you're seven and after if you do it right like it's that's why you did it yeah so i i always had that in the back of my mind And I had another really good contracting client, really successful guy that told me is like, you know, the problem with you, Zach, is like, you just keep trying to like push yourself and wanting to be.

Speaker 7 And you're comparing yourself to somebody that's 10 years into their business. It's like, yeah, you can't do that.

Speaker 7 You know, I appreciate the fact that you want to push and drive and be there, but at the same time, you have to just embrace the reality of where you're at right now.

Speaker 7 and say, okay, what do I do to be the best version of myself and where I'm at, what I have right here? So I can get to that. It's okay to see that out there as something you want to get to, but

Speaker 7 you got to find a way to take care of your you know what am i doing this hour you know the day month whatever to get to that point and and and lastly to your point about the complaining stuff is you know i definitely have seen that in the different roles that i've had i think the thing that people really get into their own head about is just they just want to plan and plan and plan and plan and never take action yeah stop trying to make everything perfect before you go move make a step do something it can be done it is going to be difficult yeah but stop trying to think you have to have everything perfectly laid out before you start.

Speaker 8 And there are going to be clients where you just screw it up. There are going to be clients where you think you're trying to do the right thing.
It just doesn't work. Or, you know,

Speaker 8 recently, you know, we, we, we, uh, we lost

Speaker 8 on a communication issue. I had a client that I basically was just waiting for the renewal to when we had the claim.
It doesn't matter. Basically, there was an account that we basically were had the

Speaker 8 money, the money hole shot, whatever the hole shot on wow my metaphors are mondays are not for metaphors when it comes to ryan um but uh you tuned it into racing too which i liked so yeah and um and and we blew it communication wise you know it wasn't escalating you know a whole bunch of things um but the point but you know i just i stepped back and i was upset for a minute and you know i'm i reached out and whatever that kind of lost the opportunity and it was um very frustrating and i just took an exhale and and I said, look, we have to work this process.

Speaker 8 Like this process is eventually going to work. The process of me stepping full time back into production so that that communication or whatever doesn't get missed, like that is not the answer.

Speaker 8 We have to keep pushing forward to get to where we want to be, understanding that now we know there is a broken piece in this chain and we're going to fix that.

Speaker 8 And I think those are some of the moments that are really scary.

Speaker 8 Because if you're working in a place, especially, you know, going big corporate to starting your own agency or just being entrepreneur in general, the processes are already there, right?

Speaker 8 When you're working for another agency, this is what I took for granted at my wife's agency, my wife's family's agency, is that like, or, you know, it is her agency now.

Speaker 8 They already had processes. They had 40 years of processes that worked.
So there was no, I didn't have to figure anything out.

Speaker 8 I didn't have to figure out a COI process or a renewal process or a BOR process or a follow-up process. None of that.

Speaker 8 And I know you can subscribe to different programs and kind of jumpstart some of that.

Speaker 8 And for sure that helps, but you still have to implement them and make them work and train your people on them and execute on them. And

Speaker 8 it

Speaker 8 you're gonna screw things up and you just have to keep moving forward.

Speaker 7 So I appreciate that.

Speaker 7 point to like screwing things up. And we'll get to what I was going to say here in a second, but as far as your process went on, like, are you, are you a visual person for the most part?

Speaker 8 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 So we started doing this wherever we put something out as a plan. We start putting together these graphs and like showing this work process.

Speaker 7 I can't tell you how much that just changed my ability to walk through these processes. Now, I am still not the attention to the detail person, right?

Speaker 7 The operations side of everything that we do has always been run by Ryan. He's a lot better at that kind of stuff.
And because again, he thinks things through that way.

Speaker 7 But once I can see it, I can be a lot more engaged in those processes because it just, I have to visualize. If I'm just writing it down even, it doesn't make sense.
I have to see like a box.

Speaker 7 Here's what happens. If this happens, it goes here.
If this happens, it goes there, you know, and walking that through. I think it's just the way that I learn.
But,

Speaker 7 you know, we talk about when we bring on a team member, right? So, you know, talking about embracing the fact that we're not perfect.

Speaker 7 So we have our pillars, which I've gone over before, I think, with you in the past and, you know, how that came to be. But

Speaker 7 the two things that we ask for every single person before we bring it on board that they have to commit to is they have to be flexible and they have to be forgiving.

Speaker 7 Because you need to be flexible because we still run things like a a startup. And I hope we never lose at least some aspect of that.

Speaker 7 We move fast, we break things, we fix them, we find out how we can improve when we move on. And we don't dwell on what didn't go right.
We just focus on what we can learn from that move on.

Speaker 7 But you also have to be forgiving of the fact that

Speaker 7 neither one of us claim to ever have everything totally figured out. And I don't think we ever want to have everything figured out because that means that we're not trying new stuff.

Speaker 7 So you have to forgive the fact that we might spend time and energy and effort into doing something that doesn't work.

Speaker 7 And that's okay as long as you don't take it as one of these deals where we wasted your time or whatever the case may be. And that's the culture that we try to create here,

Speaker 7 which also allows us to take on and start different or pilot different ideas that our team comes up with.

Speaker 7 We show them the same sort of grace if they have an idea and it doesn't work.

Speaker 8 Yeah, so I'm a big fan on no ideologies and life.

Speaker 8 I think that,

Speaker 8 one, it's, it's,

Speaker 8 I think our, our, our, our,

Speaker 8 I think people are too easily persuaded by ideology. I think it's probably part of the political issues that we have.
It's a big part of a lot of the discontent that we have in our country.

Speaker 7 Um, let's not get you get us on that soapbox and you and I are going to go, all I, yeah, I don't even think we disagree on many things. I just think that it'll be uh, yeah,

Speaker 7 a libertarian podcast for sure.

Speaker 8 Yes. But in general, and what I'm, so what I mean by that is, you know, and I say this to, I've I've said this to the last two people that we've hired.
I said, I said it to Sarah too. I said,

Speaker 8 because we have three, we have three people here in the U.S. And then we have

Speaker 8 a staff person in the Philippines as well. So,

Speaker 8 you know, when I say no ideologies, what I mean is just because we have a process does not mean that process is the process or has to be the process or should be the process forever.

Speaker 8 It means that whatever process is currently in place is our best attempt at the right process at that time.

Speaker 8 So when we put that in process in place, based on what was going on in that moment, that was what we believe the right thing to be doing was. And what I tell, what I tell everyone who comes in, and

Speaker 8 I got

Speaker 8 a woman, her name is Leslie. She lives in Florida.

Speaker 8 She just started with us last Monday, and she's already helping us reimagine just some of our touch points on our COI process to better document that it got done and verification and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 we didn't pick up on that. I've been doing COIs for a year and a half now.
And she just came in. She goes, You're missing a step where you notate the validation of accurate information.

Speaker 8 And I was like, Buh, that makes sense.

Speaker 8 Operating under the assumption that it's correct probably isn't the right way to go.

Speaker 7 Did they, did this person come from an insurance background?

Speaker 8 Yeah, yeah, yeah. She worked for Amwins for six years for commercial insurance.

Speaker 8 So, so, like, you know, so, but bringing her in and just, you know, I guess my point is, I think if you, if you're going to embrace,

Speaker 8 if you're going to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, whether you're a 40-year-old business or a four-day-old business, you have to fully embrace it, not just at the leadership level, but all the way down to your people.

Speaker 8 And you have to communicate that disposition. And this is, again, my philosophy, and I think you share it is like, if you're going to be entrepreneurial, I'm doing air quotes.
You guys can't see me.

Speaker 8 but then you're going to treat your people like worker drones in some big corporate entity,

Speaker 8 you're going to have a lot of problems. I'm not going to say you're going to fail.
You are going to have a lot of friction and a lot of issues and you know i i i get

Speaker 8 i you know i kind of think i feel like too often it's this do as i say not as i do or we're unwilling to empower our people and what i say is look you're not the boss but i'm super interested in your perspective like there needs to be i firmly believe in a hierarchical structure of any organization in order to be effective i'm not a i'm not a flat businesser

Speaker 8 um you know but i do think from a communication and feedback perspective, you need to have that flat structure. You need that person to be able to say, hey, this isn't working.

Speaker 8 And here's what I think should work.

Speaker 8 It doesn't mean that you'll put it in, but they need to know that I think your people need to know that they can make those suggestions, that they're not going to be penalized.

Speaker 8 That they're going to actually be rewarded potentially for making those suggestions, even if you don't put it in place.

Speaker 8 And what you get out of your people is this sense of commitment and understanding. And when shit goes bad, they're trying to fix it, not just looking at you for the answer.

Speaker 8 And I've already seen that just in the short time that I've had a team. And it's been wonderful.
You know, if we can continue to cultivate it is yet to be seen. But,

Speaker 8 but man, it has been, I said to the other, to them last week, I was just like, guys,

Speaker 8 I know we haven't been together for a long time, but like,

Speaker 8 I couldn't be happier with the way that this is going.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Yeah.
It's good.

Speaker 7 So we go back and forth on this. And since this is turning into mostly an entrepreneurial podcast.

Speaker 8 We're going to get this, we're going to get to see

Speaker 8 some more stuff.

Speaker 7 I think this is great.

Speaker 7 I don't mind. I'm just saying, like, you know, again, what soapbox are we going to get on?

Speaker 7 What we have found is there needs to be boundaries, right? And you got to figure out because there's some sort of structure that I think everyone craves.

Speaker 7 uh especially the old organization kind of know where the boundaries are right but with inside those boundaries and they can be as wide as you decide you want to make them you you give you empower them to make decisions decisions and then you follow through with saying, you know, and showing and carrying the fact that like, I'm glad you made that decision.

Speaker 7 Was it the right one? No, not in this situation. Maybe it wasn't, right? But that's okay.
I'm glad that you tried that. We figured out it didn't work.
And that's okay.

Speaker 7 That goes back to that flexible and forgiving. You know, we can be forgiving of somebody who goes out of their way to be empowered to make something and it turns out not to be the right decision.

Speaker 7 We do the same thing every day.

Speaker 7 you know what we're trying to do so we don't ever put it in a position where you know that was wrong you knew you were supposed to i don't like this whole idea of you know we're the military and everything is a standard operating procedure we have to figure that out now there needs to be guidelines again there's structure that has to be a part of that but you know we don't try to create a culture in which people aren't you know empowered to try different things and push and it's really created some of our best ideas yeah especially operational right that's you know we everything we do is mapped out now again as you know as you've seen in salesforce And there's just, there's structure to everything that's there, but there's still going to be great area where you have to make a judgment call or as, you know,

Speaker 7 what's in the best interest of our client and figuring that out. And that's where we want to really push people to, you know, think for themselves and decide what's best.

Speaker 8 Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I feel like,

Speaker 8 I feel like

Speaker 8 our current culture has lost all concept of nuance, right? Like, like you can be structured and hierarchical and still

Speaker 8 open and flexible and use in your word, forgiving. Like you can be both of those things.
You can be both.

Speaker 8 But like we, we're, we've, I feel like we're, we, we have people who are like, this is the process. You press this button, then this button, and this button.

Speaker 8 And if you don't do it in this order, and if I can't track that you did it in 17 seconds, then you know, you're, you're out.

Speaker 8 And then we have this other group that's like, it should be flowers and rainbows and we'll dance in a circle at noon together and do a big kumbayan, you know, and I'm just like, both those solutions are wrong because there's, it's, there's always maybe it's mostly singing and dancing and flowers in our hair, but you need a little bit of structure.

Speaker 8 And, and, or, you know, in that, in that way, military, like

Speaker 8 eventually people just break down in that system and there's no creativity. So, you know, I think that I feel like under there, all this gray area is, is the job of the leader.

Speaker 8 The leader is the gray area. It's managing the gray area.
It's managing all the stuff that can't be put in a flowchart and doesn't involve, you know,

Speaker 8 weaving flowers in your hair and making everyone feel like a unicorn on a rainbow. And

Speaker 8 it's just, you know, that is, because that's the real world, in my opinion. Like the real day-to-day is,

Speaker 8 we have this process, but it didn't work. What are we supposed to do? How does this, she's got an idea for it.
Can we use that? I'm like,

Speaker 8 that's, that's the job. The job is, is, is sifting through.

Speaker 8 And if you're too too structured or too loose,

Speaker 8 neither one, I think, gets you to where you want to be. You got to be able to bounce off of both.

Speaker 7 So what I would say to that, because I do agree, it is a little bit of a, we're definitely not to the, you know,

Speaker 7 we're not on one side of either spectrum. But one of the things, you know, that we do is we do track most everything that we do.

Speaker 7 And a lot of that is because, you know, we want to hire people that are motivated and are competitive and want to be a part of that type of environment.

Speaker 7 And I'm not talking about a boiler room setup, but I definitely want there to be some competition back and forth. I'm my best friend.
I'm competing against something.

Speaker 7 And, you know, there's a prize at the end because that's just the way that, you know, that we're wired. I mean, and that's what we want to attract to our culture.

Speaker 7 But we also want to do it in a way where we can decide, you know, what's really important enough to have conversations about?

Speaker 7 What are we tracking that's going wrong to the point where we have to coach to make this better and explain the message in a way? that isn't, you know, hey, you did this wrong. Here's why you did it.

Speaker 7 This is why we need to do it. It's like, no, like this is, we've noticed this to be a trend.

Speaker 7 Here's where we think there's something that you could maybe try different and be able to do this because at the end of the day, we're all trying to get to this goal.

Speaker 7 And so, when you make it about the team, but individually track different things, it creates competitiveness and it also creates the really obvious ways to, you know, coach when things aren't being, you know, handling.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I'll give you an example. So,

Speaker 8 the most recent person that I hired, she,

Speaker 8 I said, tell me, tell me why you're not working at your last job, you know. Um,

Speaker 8 and she said, Well,

Speaker 8 I got in trouble for missing my task number a lot.

Speaker 8 And one, I thought that was a really interesting thing to say because not a lot of people would say that, right? Not a lot of people would be honest about that.

Speaker 8 And I said, Okay, well, what does that mean? And she said, Well, I'll give you an example. Um, I had a client at 3 p.m.
on a Friday call me.

Speaker 8 He was really struggling at a dealership to get this truck, or he needed some piece of equipment from a

Speaker 8 like a like a tractor store or whatever. He needed to get it off the lot to do a job over the weekend.
I was contracting client. And something was going on.

Speaker 8 The company wasn't closed or wasn't responding or there was an issue.

Speaker 8 And something was going on there. It doesn't matter.
And she said, it took me two hours to get this guy off the lot, back and forth, seven or eight calls. But I had to get him off the lot.

Speaker 8 He couldn't do the job without the tractor. And,

Speaker 8 you know, the company wouldn't have been open on Saturday. And she said, so I got him off the lot at 4:40, whatever, he was off the lot.
But it took most of my mental energy for almost two hours.

Speaker 8 And I missed my number. And on Monday, when I showed up, I got a call at 8:35 that said, you had 17 tasks completed instead of the 22 that we require or whatever.
I'm making those numbers up.

Speaker 8 And, you know, and she got like a demerit or whatever for it.

Speaker 8 And she's like, I just,

Speaker 8 will do what's right for the client always

Speaker 8 at the expense of a few extra tasks. Oh, because the client, you know, that guy is our job, right? Like, isn't that our job? She goes, my point is, that's our job.

Speaker 8 Now, I think there is a management piece to that where you have to make sure people aren't just blowing through time because all the agents principles are going, oh, Ryan, you don't understand.

Speaker 8 Oh, you know, my people will just talk all day. I get that.
I get that you have to kind of, and again, this is your point, but like that is, you have to understand.

Speaker 8 Do you want that person who's going to get the 22 tasks done every day? Cause that's what's important. Or do you want the person who's going to, who's going to, might miss on the tasks?

Speaker 8 And I think to what you just said, and I think this is the really important piece to take out is

Speaker 8 having,

Speaker 8 being willing to dive into the situation deeper to understand why they missed the task number, not just go, hey, you missed your task number.

Speaker 8 You know, you, you know, demerit, you, you know, come over here and let's slap your wrist with this ruler.

Speaker 8 And which one of those things is your culture? Your culture might be, screw him. He didn't get off the lot.
Too bad. Get your 22 tasks in.
We don't care. You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 Or your culture is, we're perfectly fine. Just notate the system, notate your task management system, why you missed a couple, just so we know.
All good.

Speaker 7 So here's the gray area for us. So that's pillar four for us, right? I tell her, tell you our pillars.
I think I have, but I don't know. We talk a lot.
So I don't know when.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you've told a movie before, but I couldn't tell you what they are.

Speaker 7 Well, I want to say it again for the record, right? So we talked, this is after, this is back at 700 square foot little office, just Ryan and Zach hanging out. We had a good day.

Speaker 7 I, I, you know, yeah, I like to remember maybe we're having a beer. I don't know.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 7 But we were laughing about how we just wrote this account that we didn't have any right writing, right? Like it was just like, we shouldn't have had this opportunity, but we did.

Speaker 7 And I laugh and I was looking at Ryan. It's like, you know,

Speaker 7 it's really the bar is so low.

Speaker 7 in our space sometimes that really there's only four things you had had to do well to be able to run this business one just be nice you know start up by being nice to tell the truth always as soon as possible.

Speaker 7 And definitely when it's not in your best interest, right? So if somebody's better off going where they're at or what are they doing, tell them that.

Speaker 7 Do that because they're going to respect you and give you the opportunity later if it happens. And if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be anyway.
So just you save yourself a lot of time, right? Yep.

Speaker 7 Always be available. That's that's one that we put out there.

Speaker 7 And then people that are really important that need to have certain things like this, maybe you had to stay late at night to be able to get that done.

Speaker 7 You, you, you know, you're available and your people know how to get a hold of you or get things resolved quickly.

Speaker 7 The last one, probably the one that people overlook the most, is we initially was give a shit, just give a shit, be nice, tell the truth, always, always be available, give a shit.

Speaker 7 That's all you have to do.

Speaker 8 Yep, look, my number one core value is we give a shit.

Speaker 7 That's it. So, so, as you know, we call it genuinely care now because we have grandmas that come into our office every now and then.
I don't want anybody to be offended by the language, but

Speaker 7 the idea is if you could show empathy and just show people that you care and really go above and beyond to do that, you know, to your point in the last one, you're talking about that small uh uh vegan with a mozzarella

Speaker 8 stick coming, right?

Speaker 7 So, so, but like, just taking the time to help them understand that, right? Like, that's

Speaker 7 that nobody's doing that. There's not, there's not enough give a shit in this world that, you know, that could, it's well outside of insurance, right? And just a lot of different businesses.

Speaker 7 And if you could just show that, it goes a long way. And that's what that person was doing.

Speaker 7 For us, that's a gray area of which we're not going to ever, you know, hold it against them if they don't hit certain numbers for that.

Speaker 7 But again, to your point of agency, you want to say, well, to be on the phone all day, well, there's, there's certain metrics you got to look at, and then there's behaviors that you can coach to and coach out of your system.

Speaker 7 But

Speaker 8 let's let's get to that piece because um we've talked a lot about maybe the philosophical side of the business although um

Speaker 8 i think it's pretty funny that that we both have give a shit we use give a poop emoji on our in our internal documents um but yes we yeah ours are we give a we hate to lose we solve problems um and we are accountable for our actions.

Speaker 8 And the one that I, that I, the one that I picked up on the most, although give a shit to to me was kind of was a, was a given, right? Was the solving problems piece.

Speaker 8 And what I wanted to, what I, that core value was

Speaker 8 everyone can do everything easy. The easy stuff is easy, right? It's why every insure tech, tech dick who comes into our space picks the easiest mainlined coverage and they automate it.

Speaker 8 And they go, look at this amazing miracle thing that I've done. I've automated renter's insurance.
Like congratulations. I just, I'm not impressed.

Speaker 8 Automate when the renter's insurance person also has a pit bull with four bites in a high-rise apartment that had a loss. You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 And they are also like a hedge fund manager with, you know, $50 million in personal, you know, whatever. Like you, like, when you get into these, it's all the hard stuff that makes this job valuable.

Speaker 8 Like, we're valuable because of the problems, not because of the easy stuff. So

Speaker 8 I wanted like clear as day day in our core values uh when someone calls and they have a problem we are not going to be the agency that just goes sorry we can't help you because it's we have to do accord forms right like i'm going to about accord forms forever just like everyone will because they're stupid and i can't believe we still use them that being said we're never not going to do them if that's what it requires to get the job done right we're not going to schluff you off because it's going to take us an extra 10 minutes to fill out accord forms we're just never going to do that.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 7 you're preaching the choir on that, man. That's that's a that's a problem that needs to be addressed.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So let's talk about let's talk about Salesforce and cool shit.
Let's talk. Let's talk about cool shit because we're going to go just probably just a couple minutes over because

Speaker 8 I know you have an extra block of time after this hour that we allow.

Speaker 7 I do. I do.
I have an important meeting after that.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Yeah.
So let's talk. Let's talk with the last few minutes we have here.
I want to talk about some of the fun stuff. You have two fun things.
First,

Speaker 8 you use Salesforce and

Speaker 8 you use currently Veruna.

Speaker 8 And on top of that, you did your own customizations,

Speaker 8 customization layer.

Speaker 8 We'll get all the nitty-gritty details, but why

Speaker 8 sales? So I am actively trying to get this to Salesforce. That's kind of a known thing, mostly because I believe that data, you have to know what's going on.
You have to own your data.

Speaker 7 And there is no current solution in the marketplace that allows you to do that like salesforce so um talk to me a little bit about the decision to move to salesforce and some of the things that you thought were important when you were implementing it in your agency so that's a great loaded question but a great question right so um going back to this whole like we're we're driven by problems so ryan and i talk about you know what you got to get to your core and like as uh simon said i can get back to like you know why we do what we do and how we're wired the way that we are and you know our corporate structure all these other things right but at the end of the day when ryan and i talk about like the things that we really want to go after,

Speaker 7 we want to make money. Everybody wants to make money, but what really drives us is going out and finding what the problem is and trying to fix that.

Speaker 7 I mean, at the end of the day, on Monday morning, when I wake up and I know there's something I can go fix, it'll be like,

Speaker 7 that's what drives me. And so when we started, you know, our agency, the way that we did, you know, really, that's what it was.

Speaker 7 And at the time, we didn't know, we didn't even know what Ivan's was, right? Like we didn't understand what was stopping us from getting to where we were trying to go.

Speaker 7 But we knew that it was broken. We knew there was technology out there that existed that could make these things happen.

Speaker 7 And we spent, you know, it's now just over five years trying to get to a point where we could, you know, solve that problem.

Speaker 7 So when we decided to go to Salesforce, you know, really the truth was we were looking at moving AMS systems and one of the largest here or the largest had picked up what was at the time, but what we thought was the most open one, right?

Speaker 7 And Tech Canary and acquiring that.

Speaker 7 And so, you know, we had we had had some meetings with people in the organization trying to figure out how we could use that because we saw that still as being the way that we could get to ultimately what we want, which is don't tell me how I'm going to do my business.

Speaker 7 Give me the opportunity to work on a platform that lets me tailor to how I want to do it.

Speaker 7 Because something as simple as adding a word track to a form that fills things out and adds it to a comparative rating platform at the time was what we saw as one of the things that held us up the most, the duplicate, triplet, quadruple entry.

Speaker 7 And so when we looked at the different options that were out there,

Speaker 7 there were plenty of things you could use.

Speaker 7 But what we liked about Salesforce in particular is because of the way that it was built on that open platform, we could plug in darn near everything that we wanted right away without having to put a whole lot of effort into it outside of what we did with an AMS system.

Speaker 7 And, you know, I use that air quotes as well as, you know, any other system because we weren't trying to use it for the things that people try to make.

Speaker 7 It's the same reason why, you know, look at a better agency and they get so much attention for it because they were creating what agencies need, but not trying to call it one thing or the other, right?

Speaker 7 We weren't trying to be an AMS that was a CRM.

Speaker 7 But at the end of the day, the majority of our agencies still don't have an AMS that talks to a CRM, that talks to a comparative radar, that doesn't talk to their void through email and all these different things.

Speaker 7 And that fragmented tech stack just needed to be solved.

Speaker 7 And so Salesforce provided us with what we felt was, albeit expensive, the easiest way to quickly get where we wanted to go without hiring a team of engineers to just build out our own products.

Speaker 7 So that's why we ultimately chose to go with Salesforce. And so far, you know, I mean, it's been money well spent.
You know, we've, it's not if it can be done, it's how much and who does it. Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah. I,

Speaker 8 you know, I think about, I think about where the industry is going, right? And

Speaker 8 both of us are building for where the industry is going to be in 10 years, not where it is today. And, you know, Seth, Zaremba and the team at Neon and

Speaker 8 the whole vision behind what.

Speaker 8 why that product was created and what it was trying to do, the idea of value in data,

Speaker 8 the idea that, you know, as you scale a business, you can't manage without data, without having the right data, without being able to actually track where your data is going.

Speaker 8 And I don't mean by like someone selling your data, I mean like they're right now, if you were to say, how many tasks are your account managers doing every day?

Speaker 8 What tasks are they and which tasks are costing you the most money? You could probably snap your fingers and have that information. And 97% of our industry is going to go, well,

Speaker 8 you know, I've been doing this for 30 years. So I know what's going on.
And they could have no freaking clue. And, you know,

Speaker 8 I'm with you, man. Like, I have, I've run down AMS 360.
I've run down Applied Epic.

Speaker 8 I mean, if you're going to scale in any capacity, the only other two options are Nextsure or Sagita, which are bananas. You know, we're not even, that's playing in a whole different world.
And,

Speaker 8 you know, I've. The fact that some of the biggest agencies in the country run on them is kind of a joke to me.

Speaker 8 You know, so then you got to step down. And if you level down to the Hawksoffs and the Now certs and the QQ Catalysts and all the others whose names I don't know, you just can't get there, right?

Speaker 8 There's too many warts. If you're trying to scale and understand what's going on, there's just too many warts in all of them and none of them are perfect.

Speaker 8 And that's not to say that if you're running a nice, simple, straightforward, and I don't mean anything negative by simple, I just mean you're doing just personal lines or, you know, you're just doing a certain niche commercial business, that any of those systems can't work for you.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 7 this level has to be something bigger you're right and and so and maybe that's not there yet hanley but like the way i look at it is okay you talk about all these different things that you can do with you know let's start let's go back to where you started like with the the data and everything because we were the pilot of the pilots with with neon right and and i love seth i love this mission that he's on i i mean that's like one of those guys you just

Speaker 7 jump how high you know i'll do whatever you ask me to do and be able to do and you know we tried making some of those things that for our process and what we want to do now ours is a little bit different different because we work with affinity groups and what we're trying to do.

Speaker 7 But the data and the stuff that you're going to be able to do with it, especially at the scale and the level that you'll be able to do it is amazing.

Speaker 7 That needs to be there and it's there. For us, where we were at, and this is just our specific business case, right?

Speaker 7 There were some efficiencies that had to happen because without those efficiencies, we were never going to get to the point where the data was ever going to be able to be utilized.

Speaker 7 We just, we had to make our business. you know, work at a faster level to

Speaker 7 follow through on the promises that we made to our partners. And it was missing from that.

Speaker 7 And so if you take all these different things that you just mentioned as far as technology and try to figure out, can those just adapt to the simplest things? Okay.

Speaker 7 Let's not talk where the puck is going even right now.

Speaker 7 Let's just talk about how do we get from having duplicate, triplicate, quadruple entry, you know, of different forms, different things, and make it so these systems can talk to each other.

Speaker 7 Just start there and then start getting to the point above the full capability where it's at. And that's where we, I think, have had our biggest wins is, you know, we figured those things out.

Speaker 7 Now, look, I get it. People has, you know, Zapier and they figured out a way to get Frankenstein to get things together and they connect and they work and it does work for them.
That's great.

Speaker 7 But what I'm saying is in our instance right now, when our producers log in, when our CSRs log in, by the way, they have their own separate instance because we only do sales on one side and service on the other because that's how much we split things up.

Speaker 7 When they log into that org.

Speaker 7 outside of going into a carrier's website to you know make certain things that you cannot do in there because again there's another uh you know a can of worms that we don't need to open right now but we'll eventually hopefully get to a better spot they live inside that org everything they do sits right there they're not logging into other programs they're not trying to you know push this to to connect over here and then have to go into a different screen or whatnot it all lives in one place

Speaker 7 um short of you know the comparative rating portion of it which we went down the road of doing it with the two largest that you have there however and i think you share my opinion on this we're very long on tarmica and and you know have seen what this personal lines side is going to look like and having those together.

Speaker 7 That's our bet, right? That's what we're making right now. Outside of that, everything is in one org.

Speaker 7 It doesn't have to, you don't have to bounce around. It's there.
And then we customize those things to what we want. I mean, without going into too much yelling, you've seen it, right?

Speaker 7 And the different things that you're able to do and the efficiencies that come of that.

Speaker 7 that was one of the things like everyone's talking all this huge big level top you know stuff which is great and i love where that can go but if you can't get the simplest things done first,

Speaker 7 that stuff doesn't come. You know, we had to, I felt like we had to be really

Speaker 7 focused on the simple day-to-day tasks before we could get anywhere to match the capabilities of what Salesforce has.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I completely agree.

Speaker 8 So we could, we're going to have to do another podcast here in a couple of months, but I, because I just have a million more questions and I didn't mean to talk so much about business philosophy to start, but I want to talk a little bit about zip bonds too.

Speaker 8 So,

Speaker 8 you know, as you said, you have multiple entrepreneurial endeavors happening at all times, and you have the agency, you have another kind of technology solution that you're working on, which we won't name, but is

Speaker 8 very interesting as well.

Speaker 8 And then, and then probably this isn't the only one, but the next, you know, kind of big project I recently announced, which is I'm super happy for you and excited about in general, is zip bonds.

Speaker 8 So, what is zip bonds? Why should agents be interested in zip bonds? Like, what just talk to me a little bit about the problem you're solving there.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

Speaker 7 Again, that was, again, so when we initially had this idea, and it was a few years ago, we've been, you know, trying to finish up the Salesforce integration for Coverage Direct, right?

Speaker 7 So now we're at point, Ryan runs point and all things coverage direct. I'm running and taking off the stuff on Zip.

Speaker 7 It was a problem that we saw because we worked with a lot of contractors and.

Speaker 7 the process was more complicated than it needed to be, right?

Speaker 7 And so really the impetus of this was how do do we make it easier for these contractors that we're working with to find, get access to small contract surety and, you know,

Speaker 7 bid these jobs, right? Because they're intimidated by the idea of, you know, where this is.

Speaker 7 And there was a little bit to that where we had some, you know, discussions with a carrier that we've worked really well with that was also, you know, presenting some different ideas.

Speaker 7 But we really didn't set out to say, okay, we're going to take the surety world by storm when we first started this.

Speaker 7 But I will tell you, because we're attracted to problems, the more we started to peel that onion and get back to the part of what the core issue was, we felt like there was, we could bring some value to that space, right?

Speaker 7 And so when I think about, you know, where we started to where we are, it's completely different. Um, because now, you know, in the process, we figured out there's certain things on the

Speaker 7 backside of house that that needs to be changed and need to be different opportunities for both carrier and agent level.

Speaker 7 Um, you know, our ability to work on commercial is different than, you know, at the time, there wasn't a solution out there when we started this to provide that.

Speaker 7 So, when zip bonds is really, it's it's focused on all things surety.

Speaker 7 Our initial focuses were on that small contract piece, but we've built out now we have a database of over 5,000 commercial surety options where you go, you click, you select what you need, you pay for it, you print it off, you're done, you're ready to go.

Speaker 7 That's the pass-through. But we also were really intentional about

Speaker 7 hiring and bringing on the right team members that have a strong underwriting background.

Speaker 7 So our model really for agents is if you have a surety option that comes up, you just zip it over to us and then we take care of everything for you, present that back, and then you go off and present to your client.

Speaker 7 But we wanted it to be, as we're calling it, more of a concierge type of system.

Speaker 7 So we're setting this up and piloting it currently with a few agents to make sure we get all the kinks worked out before we go live, large scale.

Speaker 7 But that's what it's focused on, right? It's like, we want to be, if you look at like what Chris Green has done to the flood insurance arena.

Speaker 7 you know that's what we're trying to be on the surety side of house right we want to be that turnkey division that takes care of your security for you either because you don't have the options you don't have the expertise, or rather, you just don't want to spend the time and energy in doing it because you don't do it enough.

Speaker 7 And at the same point, we're able to provide a similar comp plan that you're going to get from a carrier if you did all the work yourself anyway.

Speaker 8 So are you guys a carrier?

Speaker 7 So we are not the carrier. No, we have worked and still are currently in negotiations with creating what we call like a broker in control, meaning that we have underwriting authority.

Speaker 7 We want to become somebody that can not only help you initially get that standard type of business or small contract, but one of the things that were really frustrating for us when we started, let's say that carrier, that standard carrier says no to a piece of business, right?

Speaker 7 Then what do you do? You know, you're going to go to a broker, right? That broker is going to send you a form. Sometimes it can't even be, it's not even a fillable PDF, right?

Speaker 7 You're just getting this. Now you're explaining everything all over again, right? And it's frustrating.
So we wanted to create an experience where if we're your turnkey surety division, right? Like.

Speaker 7 we help you out with the stuff from commercial, small contract, large, full, fully underwritten surety programs, but also help broker out things that are more difficult.

Speaker 7 You know, we don't want to only be that, right? And we understand because of that,

Speaker 7 there's a certain type of agency that's going to want to work with us. And others are going to say, no, I just want to do that stuff myself, which is fine.
There's nothing wrong with that.

Speaker 7 But that's, you know, really what drove us to want to create the solution.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think there's very few agencies in the country that should be doing surety themselves. And my purpose, my reason I say that is,

Speaker 8 why waste your time? Right. Like you're, and I don't mean it like shirties a waste of time.
I mean, like,

Speaker 8 like take, so I'm a huge fan of pro writers, right? I'm a huge fan of pro writers. Um, I like pro writers because

Speaker 8 I answer eight questions and I get nine compared cyber quotes, but not just compared on rate.

Speaker 8 I also get a 30-point breakdown on all the coverages that the different carriers have for that line of business, for that class of business, for that size business. I understand

Speaker 8 cyber probably better than most agents, but I don't understand it as well as an expert.

Speaker 8 So by doing that, what it allows me to do is get, is understand what the market looks like from a pricing perspective and make a relatively educated decision based on my understanding of the top-level coverages on which, which two, usually we present two, two quotes I should present and break them down for people.

Speaker 8 What I don't have to do is be appointed with CFC and be appointed with all the, you know, and I just, bam, I don't have to be a super expert on cyber. I get a quick,

Speaker 8 I think the same exact thing about bonds, right?

Speaker 8 Don't be a bond expert.

Speaker 8 Send the bonds out. Have someone else come back to you and go, here's your two best options for this bond.
Or the way bonding works, here's the best option. Here's what it is.
Here's what it is.

Speaker 8 And get back to selling and prospecting and running your business and building operations. And people are like, I don't have time to automate, but we're still putting stickers and stamps on our bonds.

Speaker 8 I'm like, how much freaking money are you making on that? Probably not a lot.

Speaker 7 Well, and that's just the thing, though, right? Like, so, so on the commercial side, you know, basically we've set this up. You're making the same amount anyway.
We're doing all the work. Right.

Speaker 7 And then on the other side, it's, it's very similar to on the contract.

Speaker 7 But you look, when I don't think that by any means, you know, I'm the smartest guy in the space or whatnot, but definitely far from the dumbest. And I struggled with this when we first got.

Speaker 7 I still remember the first time I tried a credit security bond because I was cold calling, you know,

Speaker 7 commercial contractors.

Speaker 7 You know, this is almost 10 years ago now, but and I remember thinking, I'm like, there's got to be a ways because I called the one carrier at the time that we were working with, and, you know, and his answer was basically, you know, you don't know enough about this.

Speaker 7 You need to send this off to somebody else to be able to do that. And I just remember how that made me feel and thinking like, okay, there's got to be a way to have that be a better process.

Speaker 7 Cause I go to you and you're, you know, essentially we're creating a similar type of like setup, but it just you could position it better, right? Yeah.

Speaker 7 And so you don't have to be and if you don't do it every single day or don't do it enough, you're going to run into this question over and over again.

Speaker 7 How much time are you spending trying to figure out how to do that where you can go to somebody that could do that for you?

Speaker 7 You know, and so again, we just created the solution we would have wanted when the idea came up, right? It didn't exist. So we were trying to figure out how we do that.

Speaker 7 And then all of a sudden, it's like, okay, well, if we can't find it, then we're just going to build it. I still remember presenting the idea to a carrier.

Speaker 7 uh about what we would do right we were asking for our feedback on this is mid into our you know sales force you know thing for the agency and we said look we didn't even want anything to do with the time.

Speaker 7 Here, just do these things, run with it. We'll be happy to advise or give you our opinion, whatever you want us to beta test it.

Speaker 7 And in the middle of trying to, this is pre-pandemic, but in the middle of trying to explain this,

Speaker 7 somebody asked a question about the colors and the logo and stuff. And I could just tell this wasn't going where I paused or muted the phone.

Speaker 7 I looked over at Ryan and it's like, we're just going to have to build this. Like they don't understand what we're saying.

Speaker 7 It's clearly that it's an option that's needed because this carrier was asking us to help them with it because they wanted something like that.

Speaker 7 And so that's kind of how a lot of the things that we do end up being what they are.

Speaker 7 We just figure out that we can't explain it well enough or can't figure out just it's easier just to build it ourselves. And that's what we've done.

Speaker 8 Well, I, for one, am very happy that you and Ryan are out there because

Speaker 8 our industry needs people who are willing to take risks and who see problems and don't just bitch about the problems, but try to find solutions to them, which I think was probably the thing that I

Speaker 8 disliked the most about my time at Trusted Choice and Agency Nation, not the organization itself, but the number of people that I ran into in our space who wanted to complain about things and not present solutions.

Speaker 8 And, you know, I think that's one of the things that attracted me to you and to Ryan and what your guys' mission is and why, you know,

Speaker 8 you know, we've always kind of stayed close over the years here is that

Speaker 8 I just love that your mentality is is this something that's important yeah you know you have this framework that you walk through where at the end of it one of the one of the answers might be well we'll just build it and i think there are so many people in our space that will would that they don't have like one of one of the boxes at the bottom of the plinko board is not we build it right like it's just not so um

Speaker 8 And I think we just need to cultivate and share more stories.

Speaker 8 And I hope everyone who is unfamiliar with you and coverage direct and zip bonds and every other project like you're going to need to create like a you're going to have to create like your holding company empire page with all your portfolio companies under it pretty soon but um we have to draw pictures for our attorney and cpa yeah and i don't want to take away from the fact that you know people say that we're distracted from that it's it's it's far from that i mean we

Speaker 7 thankfully have a really great team behind us and helping us figure all this stuff. So it's not just us.

Speaker 7 We just, again, this is why we've always tried to fly under the radar because we don't want to make a big deal about certain things. But now I think we do.

Speaker 7 We have solutions that we can really help other agents, you know, implement and want to do it.

Speaker 8 Yeah. Dude, so where other than coverage direct.com, zipbonds.com, where LinkedIn, Twitter, like what's the best place to connect with you?

Speaker 7 I feel like I have the best Twitter connections with the InsurTech or insurance space right on Twitter. That's that's why I'm at night.

Speaker 7 And, you know, if you're one of those people that only want to see tweets from things of business, I'm not the right one because I'm always posting things about my kids and racing and different stuff.

Speaker 7 But Twitter is the best place to find me.

Speaker 8 Are you what are you covered direct on Twitter or what's your name?

Speaker 7 No, it's it's uh I got to figure out if there's a period or I forget the handle if it's just my name. I think it's just my first last name that's on there.

Speaker 7 You'd think I would know that off the top of my head, but yeah, it's my first Z-A-C-H-M-E-F-F-E-R-D. So at Zach Mefford on Twitter, that's my personal one.
That's the way I had the most conversations.

Speaker 7 LinkedIn's good, too. I just, I feel like I'm on Twitter more than I am probably most platforms.

Speaker 8 Well, I know we went long here, but I do think it was an awesome conversation. I look forward to the next time.
I'm also, and this is, this is stuff, people.

Speaker 8 I am glad that I popped your podcasting cherry. That makes me very happy.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no,

Speaker 7 I appreciate it going on there first.

Speaker 7 Again, I just want to make sure that I had something tangible to talk about.

Speaker 7 And I really didn't think that this conversation was going to be about entrepreneurship as much as it was, but I'm really glad we got to talk about it. That was fun.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I'm passionate about that too so cool well thanks again man we'll talk soon yeah thank you

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