RHS 057- John Mason on Why You Must Stop Thinking Like an Insurance Agent

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Speaker 6 In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.

Speaker 7 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.

Speaker 7 Today, we have a really interesting interview with John Mason, who is the founder, president, and CEO of Shenango Brokers, a wholesaler here in New York that operates in 24 different states.

Speaker 7 And I've known of Shenango Brokers for as long as I've been writing and doing business in New York as an insurance agent, so 10-15 years.

Speaker 7 But just recently, I

Speaker 7 started working with them because they have a pretty wide set of commercial auto carriers. And commercial auto, as everyone knows, is difficult right now.

Speaker 7 And in New York, it's particularly difficult as different carriers have started just literally non-renewing all their commercial auto business and getting out of the state.

Speaker 7 And I needed someone to help me because it just

Speaker 7 commercial auto is tough. And as we talk about commercial auto, particularly as we get into the episode,

Speaker 7 you know, part of it is commercial auto has a ton of losses and it can really destroy your loss ratio and and even though there's good premium having all that premium on the books with a carrier where you're maybe trying to build up a strong uh loss ratio and contingency book can be an issue and not that i'll say that that was my primary motivation for going to them i simply needed access and markets that would write the business uh it's a it's a very It's a thoughtful conversation.

Speaker 7 It's something to think about as you're crafting your book and trying to become the most profitable organization that you can and finding solid partners to help you write more business.

Speaker 7 And John is just a very dynamic guy. I love the way he thinks about the business.

Speaker 7 He's been around for a long time, he's done a lot of really interesting things, and I just think you're going to enjoy this. I know I enjoyed it, and

Speaker 7 I just,

Speaker 7 I think you're going to love it. But before we get to John, I want to give a big shout-out.

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Speaker 3 All right, let's get on to John.

Speaker 8 So, all right, so where I want to start is actually

Speaker 8 maybe

Speaker 8 towards the end, but I just find it to, I just love this, uh, I just love this sentence.

Speaker 8 Um, so I was, I was looking over the like breakdown of your book, Follow the Money, which is for those listening at home, like, you know, I had obviously heard your name and we both operate in New York and I knew about Shenango, but,

Speaker 8 you know, we've never spoken until recently.

Speaker 8 And then I was, I've been talking to Shenango a little bit for your specialty, commercial auto, because I've, and I'm sure a lot of agents struggle with just how rapidly it changes and having the right companies and all that.

Speaker 8 And long story short, you know, in part of talking to you, I think Jamie or you, someone, someone sent me a copy of your book. I read it, I loved it.
Follow the money is the name of the book.

Speaker 8 You can get on Amazon for everyone who's listening. We'll have it linked up in the show notes.

Speaker 8 But in the description, you say, Over the last 30 years, this street smart entrepreneur has used unique marketing and management ideas to march into New York City and buy five brokerages, expand his own brokerage network into 20 states while relaxing from his home in the Caribbean.

Speaker 8 And I just was like, if that is not this

Speaker 8 rainbowed picture of, you know, like the American dream slash where everyone is trying to get to. I just thought that was like this perfectly written sentence.

Speaker 8 It was like, okay, so you got to that spot. How the hell did that happen?

Speaker 6 It was a lot of work.

Speaker 6 A lot of work. You got to work smart.
You got to work hard.

Speaker 6 I think the key to it is, Ryan.

Speaker 6 I learned long ago that I'm not an insurance agent. I'm an entrepreneur and a marketer who happens to be in the greatest business in the world.

Speaker 6 That would be the insurance agent and brokerage business. And, you know, I started this tiny little agency in this little town of about 1,200 people here in the middle of upstate New York.

Speaker 6 Since COVID, I am very grateful to be living here in the middle of nowhere. It's been fantastic.

Speaker 6 I go back and forth to my place in St. Croix where I work every day.
And

Speaker 6 I've been working virtually for many years. So this was nothing new to us, but it can be done.

Speaker 6 And agents need to remember that, you know, when they get a license in a state, I don't care if it's New York or Kansas, they're licensed to do business anywhere that that license says they can do business in that state.

Speaker 6 They're not just bounded by their own hometowns. And you have to remember that.

Speaker 8 You know, that to me is

Speaker 8 one of the ideas that I am so glad is being

Speaker 8 hopefully completely driven out of the industry with COVID. Because

Speaker 8 not that operating in your hometown and being a force in your hometown is a bad thing. That's not what I'm saying.
But I do think that a lot of agents,

Speaker 8 and I even find myself sometimes being caught in this, like we become very,

Speaker 8 we get tunnel vision, you know, with a 50-mile radius around wherever the pin drops on the map versus thinking bigger about about what's possible

Speaker 8 in our state. And then, I mean, with some of the stuff that the National Producer Network has now, or whatever it is,

Speaker 8 you can get licensed in other states for $150.

Speaker 8 Now you're not

Speaker 8 licensed. It takes $10.

Speaker 6 24 states, and we're sitting here in this little town

Speaker 6 in the middle of nowhere, and we're riding

Speaker 6 small and medium-sized commercial auto in 24 states, coast to coast.

Speaker 8 Yeah, you know, so

Speaker 6 along with many other products, personal and commercial, but you know, we're doing it from here.

Speaker 8 Yeah, and I think, I think that's the idea.

Speaker 8 You know,

Speaker 8 I love that people

Speaker 8 want to have roots in their hometown. I think that's a good thing.
And I think insurance agencies for a long time have been staples of the local community.

Speaker 8 But I think, unfortunately, because of how easy it is for

Speaker 8 directs, captives, insurtechs, other independent agents who are more digitally or just marketing focused

Speaker 8 to move into that town and

Speaker 8 create a presence,

Speaker 8 it's too small.

Speaker 8 You can't protect the longevity of your business by staying so narrowly focused on such a small geographic region.

Speaker 6 Absolutely. And, you know,

Speaker 6 I was known for many years as a personal lines guide. And I wrote, before I became a wholesaler, I wrote personal lines.
I didn't just write a house and car here and there.

Speaker 6 I was writing hominato everywhere in New York and Pennsylvania.

Speaker 6 My office is actually right on the New York-Pennsylvania line. And I, back in those days, I would use those pennysaver newspapers.
Today we have social media. It makes it even easier.
And

Speaker 6 you can literally do business with people and uh for personal lines or you want to pick a niche in small commercial lines and then partner with a wholesaler such as myself who's got some interesting products but you can literally do this in any state

Speaker 6 that you've got a license in it's very easy to do and you can perpetuate yourself uh and your income quite well if you use some of the other strategies that i've talked about you know to nurture and retain that book of business.

Speaker 8 Yeah. So tell me just a little bit for people who may be unfamiliar.
You have kind of a unique story, just in terms of, you know,

Speaker 8 I don't know, you know, you say right in your bio, like you didn't grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth. Like, I think that means a lot of things to a lot of different people.

Speaker 8 But like, you know, just talk to me a little bit about how, if you, if you're not an insurance agent, which I would agree, I feel oftentimes I feel very similar that it's a, I have to fight myself to get into insurance agent mode, but I feel very comfortable in agency owner mode, if that makes sense.

Speaker 6 And

Speaker 8 so, so, so it feels, I think that's one of the things that we initially connected on is that mindset.

Speaker 8 But I'd love for you to talk through how you how you got into that, how you kind of, how you realized, because I think there's a lot of agents that fight this idea.

Speaker 8 They feel like they should be an insurance agent, but their mind is telling them they think more like an owner or an entrepreneur, right?

Speaker 6 It definitely is a mindset change, Ryan. In fact, that's what's key to it.
You have to make a decision one day, and I did.

Speaker 6 I had gone to a seminar, you know, a weekend-long seminar 20 years ago, and came home and decided I'm going to lock myself away for about a week and start designing the systems and procedures in order for myself to be delegated away.

Speaker 6 So, one of the first things that I did is I just started delegating and I'd write down anything that I did, somebody else could do. And it's amazing the things that

Speaker 6 you can get off of your plate. And I got it to the point where, and I realize people listening to this come from various size agencies.

Speaker 6 So, if you're in a one- or two-man show, it's going to be different. You know, maybe you can get yourself somebody part-time,

Speaker 6 a couple hours a day or a week or whatever to assist you. But, you know, we were a larger agency at that time because we were both retail and we had the wholesale.
Now we're strictly wholesale.

Speaker 6 But I was able to hire a personal assistant and delegated things. And we have these team leaders within the agency, an operations manager, and an accounting manager.

Speaker 6 And the key to it is, I think the agency principal has got to gear himself then so that he is the marketer. There's a huge difference between marketing and selling.

Speaker 6 You know, the marketing is putting the bait on the hook, and the selling is reeling it in.

Speaker 6 And I'm a marketer. And,

Speaker 6 you know, you're marketing every day. And I don't care if it's whether you're marketing

Speaker 6 in the case of an agent to attract

Speaker 6 new clients. It's also to attract and retain employees, recognition in the community, retain your business.
Everything you're doing is always marketing.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I was talking to, I don't know if you're familiar with the name Nicholas Ayers, but he's an agency owner. And he,

Speaker 8 yeah, yeah. So I was talking to him, and I use the CRM system that I use in my agency.
He's actually, he's a partner. And so we were talking and he asked me, you know, something about the agency.

Speaker 8 And I just just looked at him and I said, you know what, man, I said, at my core, all I really am is a hype man. That's, that's really what I'm the best at, is like getting people hyped up about shit.

Speaker 8 Like, that's really, that's, that's, that's the, that's where I can add the most value to an organization. Where you said it wrote this down, what do I do that someone else could do?

Speaker 8 What are all those things?

Speaker 8 And basically, I'd say, everything that I do, my skills are duplicatable outside of hype man.

Speaker 8 And and take that word for whatever you want it to be but the idea I think I so believe in what you're saying like this makes so much sense to me and I feel like it's why so many agents struggle with this sense of um

Speaker 8 almost like disconnect with their agency because they want to do one thing

Speaker 6 yeah

Speaker 6 but you just hit it you say hype man or pitch man that's kind of what it is

Speaker 6 you know and I don't want to get

Speaker 6 political but there are certainly things that could be said said in the current environment about knowing how to connect with your audience. So if you're familiar with some of the marketing that

Speaker 6 I do,

Speaker 6 probably the highest paid thing that I do in the course of a day is when I'm writing copy. I understand the things that I can put into a sentence to appeal to my reader.

Speaker 6 And the reason for the first sentence is to get the reader to read the sentence, the second sentence, and so on. So, you know,

Speaker 6 the agent's job is to bring customers into that agency, just like the restaurant owner's job is to bring people, patrons into his restaurant, or in these times, the sidewalk.

Speaker 6 But your job is to put gas in that engine and then have the systems and procedures in place to service and retain it.

Speaker 8 So why do you think

Speaker 6 I should have said acquire service and retain it? Because you're not going to make any money if you're sitting there with a pad of applications or your iPad and writing renters apps yourself.

Speaker 8 Yes. And

Speaker 8 so why do you think, where do you think the disk, why do you think, it doesn't feel like, I mean, I'm going to position this a different way. It doesn't feel like

Speaker 8 most agencies make this leap or make it all the way.

Speaker 8 This is a huge

Speaker 8 bottleneck, I think, for a lot of agencies was this, what we're talking about right here. So why do you, what do you think it was that allowed you to make this jump? What did you see?

Speaker 8 What did you hear? What did you feel? Or whatever that allowed you to make this leap and then kind of take your business to a whole nother level?

Speaker 6 I'm a very hungry entrepreneur and I have been

Speaker 6 since I was a child. I've been working hard since I was about 12.

Speaker 6 And I grew up, as I said, very poor. watched my parents

Speaker 6 not struggle, but you know, we were lower middle class and they they worked very hard and they did very well for themselves they didn't become wealthy but they worked hard and I saw that and I saw opportunity and I've always had drive and I just did it and I think that anybody can do it you just you be not afraid

Speaker 6 just

Speaker 6 You've got to follow your dream. You've got to set your goals.
And what gets written down gets done. So I would write down daily tasks that I wanted to do.

Speaker 6 And the daily tasks that I wanted to do are all related to my bigger picture goals, my maybe 90 day or six month goals.

Speaker 6 And I'm big on lists and punch lists and I just work at that list, which you know gets added to and scratched off until I get things done.

Speaker 6 And again, write it down. it'll get done and just be a fierce delegator hire quality people that you can trust and get the the job done.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 What are, um,

Speaker 8 so

Speaker 8 in today, so right now, a lot of people, and it per this discussion, a lot, there's a huge debate that goes on between hiring people,

Speaker 8 we'll call them, you know, kind of the standard American worker versus, say, uh, Puerto Rican or a Filipino

Speaker 8 VA. There's also VAs in India, a lot of other countries.
So say, say, an outside, a non-US based virtual assistant versus you know someone who's gonna sit in an office like

Speaker 6 obviously we're right I think what you're trying what you're trying to say Ryan is what are the differences in

Speaker 6 the the functions that a virtual assistants regardless of where they're from

Speaker 8 it can perform versus somebody in an office setting yeah and where do you stand on the the topic where do you see advantages disadvantages, and what would you do?

Speaker 6 Sure. There are certainly

Speaker 6 a lot of functions that an agency can outsource

Speaker 6 to

Speaker 6 virtual assistants. You know, you have to be very careful, first of all, of what

Speaker 6 the security is on the other end of that equation. That's also

Speaker 6 a huge exposure. So I just want to talk from kind of

Speaker 6 ways that you could utilize them as a standpoint. And I probably utilize them differently as a wholesaler than someone running an agency would.
But they can easily handle

Speaker 6 doing

Speaker 6 quoting. They can handle all sorts of back-end things, your downloads from your carriers, getting things assigned.

Speaker 6 In our case, they do some personal lines

Speaker 6 data inputting for us. They handle getting things that are not downloaded into the management system, which thank God isn't a lot.
There's a lot of accounting transitions that

Speaker 6 they can handle. But

Speaker 6 for somebody

Speaker 6 to be able to give advice to a consumer, they need to be licensed. So the idea I would think would be to do what I did.

Speaker 6 And all the years that I ran a very successful agency is to get your CSRs licensed, train your clients that either

Speaker 6 John or Susie CSR can help them. They have the exact same license that you do.
They're here to advise and they'll help you. And then John or Susie CSR has the virtual assistant supporting them to

Speaker 6 perform functions behind the scenes. And that seems to work quite well for a lot of agencies.

Speaker 8 Yeah,

Speaker 8 I think, you know, I think you're right on it. And the reason I asked that question is

Speaker 8 this idea of freeing yourself up to do the things that allow you to grow and to grow the business.

Speaker 8 This is a huge, it's a huge hang-up. It's a very technical hang-up, right? So the high-level idea that you outlined, I think everyone listening would agree with.

Speaker 6 But then that next step is-there's a fine line, Ryan.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 6 You also have to understand

Speaker 6 how to do some a lot of of the key functions in your business.

Speaker 6 I wouldn't be at all above telling you that at nine o'clock last night, I was entering a 40-vehicle fleet in California trying to help get something out that be done quick.

Speaker 6 So you know how to run your business, be able to pitch in when you need to. But for the most part, I spend most of my time trying to grow it.

Speaker 6 And other people who have been loyal team members here, most of them for around 20 years, know what to do. They're trained and they handle what they need to do.

Speaker 8 So you're running a successful growing retail agency. You sit down, you're

Speaker 8 starting to map out what your future looks like, and you decide to add wholesale elements or, and just so I may have the timeline a little wrong, you decide to push into wholesale more.

Speaker 8 Talk through that decision because I'll say I know how to use wholesalers, but I don't know a tremendous a lot about them. Yeah,

Speaker 6 I'm glad you brought that up because I get asked that a few times a year. First of all, there's a lot of agents who have the misconception that being a wholesaler is the land of milk and honey.

Speaker 6 And believe me, it's not.

Speaker 6 Unless you're of the mega, mega size.

Speaker 6 A lot of times you're working on standard agency commissions, just like retail agencies get. And so you're working on a much smaller margin.

Speaker 6 How I happen to do it, I had a small wholesaler come to me looking to have me produce business for him. I said, I have more markets than you do.
Why don't I partner with your agents?

Speaker 6 And very soon we had a marketing relationship going. And very soon after that, I wound up buying Shenango.
It was owned by a small insurance company at that time.

Speaker 6 And,

Speaker 6 but the other thing you have to be really careful of is your systems and procedures. First of all,

Speaker 6 not every company is going to let you do it.

Speaker 6 And almost every company, if they find out you're doing it

Speaker 6 behind their back,

Speaker 6 will have some sort of a disciplinary type of discussion with you. I've seen companies terminate agents for it.

Speaker 6 Your ENO carrier is certainly going to want to be aware of it. I certainly wouldn't.
recommend trying to sneak it beyond them.

Speaker 6 Eligibility for ENO can certainly be impacted by the percentage of business that an agency brokers. And you've got to have the systems and procedures set up.

Speaker 6 You know, for many years, we were both retailers and wholesalers, and we are strictly wholesalers at this point and moving forward. But we had the systems and procedures in place

Speaker 6 at the time, and we were running two different kinds of businesses. And

Speaker 6 believe me, they are much different

Speaker 6 procedures. procedures.
Sometimes agents will say, well, why do you do that? Well, I have ENO insurance too, and we need to make sure that we do things so that the carriers,

Speaker 6 most importantly, the clients, that everybody in the transaction is protected.

Speaker 6 It's a little more difficult to set up a wholesale brokerage than people think.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I believe that.

Speaker 6 Probably wasn't the answer everybody wanted to hear.

Speaker 6 No, no. It's

Speaker 6 something that

Speaker 6 there's a way to do it and there's a way not to do it.

Speaker 8 What was it about the wholesale business that you liked? Like, why did you eventually go full wholesale?

Speaker 6 And when I got into it, to just kind of shed light on the whole thing, I saw it as a way to keep my, you know, very rapidly growing small town agency that I had 20 years ago further expanding.

Speaker 6 Why did I decide to get out of it?

Speaker 6 I'll be quite honest. Why did I decided to get out of the retail agencies and stick with the wholesale?

Speaker 6 We began selling off the retail agencies six years ago. We sold the operations down in New York City.
And then four years ago, we sold the upstate New York agencies and retained strictly Shenango.

Speaker 6 And we had done quite well as wholesalers several years ago and

Speaker 6 we have some unique markets that others don't have. I had had a

Speaker 6 quite candid

Speaker 6 three and a half years ago I took care of a very personal problem. I'm an alcoholic.

Speaker 6 Many people listening to this have been at insurance industry events with me and seen what a jackass I can be when I am.

Speaker 6 And I got my life back three and a half years ago. Fortunately, I think that God sits on the shoulder of every drunk.
I had good people who helped me keep things going

Speaker 6 while I was in the happy house. And I came out and got things running again.
And we've been growing it and growing it. And

Speaker 6 we've now turned it into a national wholesaler. We've gone pretty quickly from,

Speaker 6 not quickly, gradually, I guess would be a better term, from about three or or four states to 24.

Speaker 6 We're operating with carriers that most of our competitors don't have, depending on what state we're in. And we've got some unique opportunities.
I'm having a lot of fun. This is the

Speaker 6 greatest business in the whole world.

Speaker 6 And we've got a new opportunity coming out that we're going to be able to help many agents.

Speaker 6 be able to get direct access to personal commercial lines products without ever having to fill out an accord app and they'll be able to do it within their office.

Speaker 6 We've got a couple of job openings right now for new positions and the excitement of this industry is just unending. I get up now every morning at four o'clock.
I can't get enough of this.

Speaker 6 I'm having fun.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's great. Well, there's a bunch of stuff in there.
So as someone who

Speaker 8 was tasked with breaking the chain in my own family,

Speaker 8 I can understand and respect your battle and very happy and

Speaker 8 for you for having done that because I understand and have seen firsthand what that looks like.

Speaker 8 So that's great. And I'm very,

Speaker 8 I appreciate you sharing that because I think I think a lot of people struggle with that. And I think to see someone come out the other side of it gives hope to everybody.
So

Speaker 6 I just read a great book about it to the My Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell's book.

Speaker 6 For anybody who's a business person, which I think most of the people listening to this are, and struggle, that was a fantastic tool for me.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we'll have that linked up in the show notes. So

Speaker 8 I think

Speaker 8 what I like is

Speaker 8 what I like about

Speaker 8 Shenang on what you're doing

Speaker 8 is that

Speaker 8 it probably would have been easy to

Speaker 8 coast to a certain extent, but you didn't do that.

Speaker 8 And though

Speaker 8 I know you can't mention the exact names of the carriers, the opportunities that you have coming out in personal line specifically are really

Speaker 8 exciting. Yeah.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 I could be sitting in my front lawn lapping up the waves right now if I wanted to be, but I'm very excited about the opportunities that we are bringing to the table.

Speaker 6 I mean, like right now, I got a call yesterday from, and I can't tell their name yet, like Ryan said, but

Speaker 6 one of the biggest

Speaker 6 AM best A plus rated national carriers that you don't normally find for personal lines in the independent agency system is going to be available for personal lines.

Speaker 6 We're talking home, auto, umbrella, dwelling, toys

Speaker 6 uh through shenango brokers in nine states uh is recently

Speaker 6 or it should have has uh today

Speaker 6 uh another one of our major carriers who does not want their name tied to this has asked us for package business through the end of October and they're paying $50 per personal lines policy.

Speaker 6 So if you ride a home car package, you get $50 for the house, 50 for the car, and another 50 because I'm a nice guy, maybe you sold a package and did the right thing.

Speaker 6 So that's going on to the end of October. And with that particular company, we can get agents the ability to rate and upload the policies right in their office.

Speaker 6 We have other carrier relationships where we're actually going to be able to offer the online rating and binding.

Speaker 6 Some are already in place for commercial lines. Other opportunities are in the works.

Speaker 6 The other thing we just did, this company is a small company and it's a New York company. We have an admitted carrier in New York called Leatherstocking.
They're AM-Best rated A-,

Speaker 6 and they are partnering with us in Long Island, being the counties of NASA and Suffolk in New York, for a new admitted

Speaker 6 AM-Best A-rated homeowners product. It should be available in September, and they will write homeowners right up to the water.
They will do a windstorm deductible on a sliding basis from 0% to 5%.

Speaker 6 They'll write a replacement cost or an ACV homeowners, any limit that the insured chooses. I've done business with the company since 1991 in many different ways.

Speaker 6 We have a tremendous relationship with them, and we think they're going to be a very, very good alternative for agents doing business in Nassau and and Suffolk County. We've also just taken on

Speaker 6 another national carrier,

Speaker 6 new enough that I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use their names yet, but let's put it this way: they're a sister to the lizard.

Speaker 6 And we are writing workers' comp, commercial auto, bops, commercial packages, homeowners in 23 states with them. Very excited to grow.
And

Speaker 6 the other thing that many agents are really faced with right now is the loss of commercial auto markets. In addition to Amtrust over the last year, non-renewing their book,

Speaker 6 we've all got a partner that, you know, their rates get progressively higher. We've got other carriers.

Speaker 6 MetLife has just announced that their entire commercial lines book is getting non-renewed beginning in October.

Speaker 6 So those non-renewal notices are actually starting to come out now over the summer, depending on the state you're in. So there's a lot of commercial auto that's got to be replaced.

Speaker 6 We've got two national carriers

Speaker 6 that want all the commercial auto they can get. I've actually got some regional carriers, depending on the state, and depending on the state and the carrier, I've got some that don't credit score.

Speaker 6 So, we're here, we've got great products, we love helping agents help their customers, and

Speaker 6 we've got unique things that other wholesalers don't have.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I um, you know, the commercial auto is what brought me to reach out to you guys, but the, you know, just

Speaker 8 all the opportunities. I mean,

Speaker 8 for anyone listening to this that doesn't understand New York, New York is an odd state. If you're where I am up in Albany, all the way to Buffalo, you know, you basically

Speaker 8 you're writing like it's the Midwest. It's a, you know, mid, you know, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's, it's like a middle of the country risk.
You know, there's no earthquakes. There's rarely a tornado.

Speaker 8 There's no hurricanes.

Speaker 6 You know, that's a really good point, Ryan. Yeah.
If you look at, if you go to our website at shenangobrokers.com, that's C-H-E-N-A-N-G-O-B-R-O-K-E-R-S dot com, on the homepage, there's a map. And

Speaker 6 each state that we're licensed in is in green.

Speaker 6 We're actually...

Speaker 6 releasing a new website within the next week or two so there's some updates that are coming on there but anyway any state that we're in is in green if you click on any state state except New York, it'll bring up a PDF and it will tell you all the products that we offer in that particular state.

Speaker 6 In

Speaker 6 New York, you'll notice that there are two dots on the map. And to say what Ryan was just saying, with upstate New York being like the Midwest, he's absolutely correct that it is.

Speaker 6 And the markets that play in upstate New York, sometimes because of where the carriers are allowed to write business, some carriers can't write in the five boroughs.

Speaker 6 But you'll find that the markets that are available upstate versus what's available downstate can be completely different.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And the way they write the policies. I mean, you look at a good example is

Speaker 8 Hanover. They have upstate risks and then down, and they delineate the two, you know, basically Westchester County line south is downstate risks.
And right.

Speaker 6 And, you know, some of that is, you know, probably reinsurance and coastal and that kind of thing. But you're right.
But the risks are much different

Speaker 6 in the two territories.

Speaker 8 Well, you go from you go from buildings potentially built in the 1700s in upstate New York to brand new skyscrapers and the densest population to coastal.

Speaker 6 And, you know, that's something that's important that Shenango brings to the table with the unique carriers that we have in New York.

Speaker 6 Most of the other wholesalers don't do business with the cooperative insurance companies that we have in New York. And we actually are partnered with a few of them.

Speaker 6 And we can go, these companies can't go into the five boroughs of New York. They're not redlining.
They're just not licensed to do it.

Speaker 6 But they can write everywhere from Westchester County all the way up to Niagara Falls. And some of them, depending, I believe, on their charter, can go into Long Island's Nassau and Suffolk counties.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 they're unique companies. They'll write vacant property.
They'll write

Speaker 6 homeowner, the older homeowners, they'll write rental properties. They do a lot of things that the stock companies or even the large regional type mutual companies don't want any part of.

Speaker 6 And they do a really good job of it.

Speaker 8 So the last, you know, I want to be respectful of your time. And, you know, the last thing I'd really like to, or at least the last thing for now, that I'd like to kind of have you talk about is

Speaker 8 kind of the pitch for using a wholesaler.

Speaker 8 Because one of the things that I hear out on the agent circle all the time, and it's real, I'm not saying this in a negative way, is it's just tough to find markets.

Speaker 8 And I think a lot of people get lost in direct appointments. And look, there are advantages, direct appointments, but there's also disadvantages.

Speaker 8 For someone who may be struggling or someone who may feel like they don't have access or they're limited by the fact that they just are struggling to get in front of markets, like maybe just hit them with the pitch for working with a wholesaler and even Shenango in general.

Speaker 6 There's more than meets the IRI. And the obvious reason is that the wholesaler can bring you markets that you don't have access to through your normal agency relationships.

Speaker 6 You know, if you have a direct appointment with XYZ Mutual, great. And we know you're going to feed most of your business to your primary carriers, and we want you to.

Speaker 6 We want you to get a nice contingency check. But they don't fit everything that you're going to write.

Speaker 6 And I've got, and the other thing you need to understand is different kinds of wholesalers. A lot of people assume that the wholesale marketplace is ENS.

Speaker 6 And while we're licensed to write EMS in a couple of states, and we actually use a separate little agency we own to do that, our focus is standard and preferred admitted products in both the person, both primarily commercial, but some small,

Speaker 6 also personal lines.

Speaker 6 So we're not an ENS marketplace. So an agent can come to us without having to pay some astronomical sign-up fee.

Speaker 6 He doesn't have to pay us, you know, some, you know, I guess some of these other wholesalers charge agencies two or three hundred bucks a month. I've heard, heard, I don't know.

Speaker 6 And we don't charge that. And the agent owns his business.
He needs to have, you know,

Speaker 6 a license, et cetera, and a brokerage agreement with us. But then he has access to our markets that he doesn't have.
And then he can just continue feeding his own markets with things that work well.

Speaker 6 Now, we were just talking about commercial auto. One of the reasons that it's so tough to place right now is it's volatile from a loss standpoint or loss ratio standpoint.
Carriers are losing money.

Speaker 6 That's why they're getting off it. So you're transferring that to my loss ratio as opposed to your own and still making a relatively generous portion of the commission.

Speaker 6 So it can help your agency a couple of ways that way.

Speaker 6 Another way in certain states, and I am not advocating that you do this with my or any other products,

Speaker 6 but if you're an agent who charges fee revenue and you're looking for fee revenue, in certain states you're not allowed to charge a broker fee and you're using your agency license, but if you're brokering the business to a wholesaler, you can charge

Speaker 6 a fee

Speaker 6 for

Speaker 6 procuring your or using your professional services to procure the policy.

Speaker 6 You have to follow the laws in the given state.

Speaker 6 The customer usually has to sign an acknowledgement, et cetera. But that's another way that you have access to it.

Speaker 6 But really,

Speaker 6 we actually have agencies, rather large commercial agencies, who

Speaker 6 will place business with us

Speaker 6 because we can actually get the job done for them faster than their own agency can get it done in their centralized commercial lines office.

Speaker 6 I can think of two agents, three agencies, right off the top of my head that we are doing that actively with a regular basis.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I also think, I mean, I think that your idea, and this has actually crossed my mind

Speaker 8 around commercial auto. I mean, I know commercial auto in New York is a disaster and some of the surrounding states.
And it's just, like you said, it's volatile.

Speaker 8 And if you're trying to build a good, solid book of business with a with a good loss ratio with a carrier, you don't want to run a commercial auto with them.

Speaker 6 Well, and that's just it. And I get calls every day.

Speaker 6 john can you write nemt john can you write amazon well i got kind of some good news uh nemt no sorry not happening you might have to cart me off and what if we did that but uh

Speaker 6 amazon i will say that i'm aware that one of my preferred carriers is working on a product but i will also say that i currently have a product to write the workers comp for amazon drivers anywhere in the country uh so you know somebody needs that that's available but we do i'm aware that one of my carriers is developing uh a product now for the amazon trucks and hopefully later this year that comes to fruition but i can't talk any more than that about it because it's still what about when the big blimps start dropping drones out of the with our packages in it do you have um You got a market for those things?

Speaker 6 Come to my retirement party.

Speaker 6 I have no markets for drones. I know there's some specialty markets out there that do them.

Speaker 6 I had a bad experience with a drone recently because of everybody moving out of New York City and trying to get into upstate New York. I got my house out of the market.

Speaker 6 And the drone was there the other day and did all the filming. And three or four days later, I was in my backyard at the pool with less clothing on than I probably should have.

Speaker 6 And I had a memory of that drone, and I'll never do it again.

Speaker 8 Hey, if they want to look, let them look, right? I mean, it's a new world.

Speaker 6 That's right. Maybe I won't be single forever, you know?

Speaker 8 Hey, John, this has been tremendous. I appreciate your time, man.

Speaker 8 I, you know, I'm looking forward to us building our relationship or, you know, Rogue and Schenengo and then you and I personally.

Speaker 8 And I just appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and sharing your experience and your thoughts, man. I was absolutely

Speaker 6 thrilled to come on. If anybody has questions, either for me or for a lot of people know

Speaker 6 our agency relations director, Jamie Depo. He's been around the insurance water cooler for 40-some years, most recently at New York's Big Eye.

Speaker 6 Shoot us a text, 607-246-7277, or I can take a quick email, jmason at chenangobrokers.com. As always, we want your business.

Speaker 6 Pick up the phone, give us a call, 1-800-403-3738, or just shoot us an application.

Speaker 6 We're more than happy to do quotes for agents prior to you signing up with us. If you want to kind of take us for a test drive, we'll do that.

Speaker 6 We will need to have you sign a broker agreement with us in order to find coverage. If you want to send us a quote, email address is quotes at chenangobrokers.com.
That's quotes.

Speaker 6 It's C-H-E-N-A-N-G-O-B-R-O-K-E-R-S.com. Thank you.
Brian, I can't thank you enough. I've enjoyed also getting to know you over the last few weeks since we've been talking.

Speaker 6 Look forward to doing more business with you. And, like you said, I'd heard of you for a long, long time, and then Jamie was talking about you.

Speaker 6 And so, finally, we've established this relationship over the phone, and when we're all allowed to go outside and play again, maybe we'll actually meet.

Speaker 8 That sounds good to me, man. Hey, have a great day.

Speaker 6 All right, you two, Ryan. Thank you.

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