RHS 041 - How Todd Thams is Going to Dominate by Taking Workers Comp Direct

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Speaker 2 Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today, we have a tremendous guest, a tremendous conversation, just so much fun.
Someone that I probably could have talked to for like four hours.

Speaker 2 We actually talked for another whole half hour after we turned the mics off, just because we got into something. After I said, like, I said, Hey, that was great, man.

Speaker 2 And then we started talking about something else. We talked for another whole half hour.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 it's Todd Tams from the Tams agency. And Todd is just a tremendous professional.
I mean, great dude,

Speaker 2 awesome cook,

Speaker 2 and someone who I've connected with, especially since I launched Rogue, because we really, Todd is a comp master, a workers' comp master.

Speaker 2 And I had the pleasure of getting to know him better at a dinner at the last IAOA event in San Diego.

Speaker 2 And then that has kind of blossomed into us communicating quite a bit and finally having him on the show. It just

Speaker 2 was very excited to have this conversation because he's somebody who gets what we're doing.

Speaker 2 He gets this business and he's not just resting on the way the business was always done, but he's taking his very coverage focused kind of traditional expertise and experience and applying it to a whole new way of doing business.

Speaker 2 And, you know, I see Todd as one of the guys who's going to come out of this crazy COVID, you know, kind of wild atmosphere that we're in with everything that's going on culturally and all the anxiety and

Speaker 2 loss and everything that's happening in our world today. I see Todd as one of the guys who's going to be able to pull his business through and be more successful on the other side of this.
And

Speaker 2 there's just so much here to dig into. It is such a pleasure to deliver this episode to you.

Speaker 2 And I just, I think you're absolutely going to love it. Before we get there, guys,

Speaker 2 if you're not already, I'd really love for you to subscribe to the show if you want to get email updates uh go to ryanhanley.com right on top you'll see a box stick your email in and then when new episodes come out i'll i'll email them to you uh oftentimes i also have little nuggets maybe resources or something that i'm reading or whatever that i plug in there that that you can you know just be aware of introduce you to uh different people different all different kinds of stuff like uh last week i linked to david carrothers' new book the extra two minutes which i think is absolutely tremendous

Speaker 2 I was halfway through when I put it in there. I've now finished it.
The book's a must-read. You can get it on Amazon.
Like, I'm not trying to make any money off this, and David's not paying me.

Speaker 2 I just think it's a great book, and I want to expose you guys to it. So,

Speaker 2 you know, just subscribe by email. There's little ditty extras that you get that maybe you don't get just by listening to the podcast.
But it's great to be here kind of sharing content with you.

Speaker 2 I took a few weeks off to get Rogue to a place where I could start doing podcasts again. We're there, and it's just a big, it's just a pleasure to be speaking to you guys again.

Speaker 2 I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you'll tell a friend about the show.

Speaker 2 I hope you'll help us grow this community as we do what we do, which is just talk to cool people and hopefully help expand different ideas to you that'll help you grow your business.

Speaker 2 A big part of how I've gotten Rogue to the point where I was able to get back into podcasting is Tarmica. Tarmica is the primary sponsor of this show.

Speaker 2 Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com, get a demo, know what Tarmica is about. This is small business commercial lines comparative rating done the way it should be done.
This is, if it's a game-changing product.

Speaker 2 I mean, it's a game-changer for me.

Speaker 2 Now, instead of me, solo shop, having to go into five different carriers, figure out their systems, play with all their dials, I can put the information in one time, get rates from CNA, Markel.

Speaker 2 You know, just

Speaker 2 I think right now in New York, there are seven carriers that I get quotes back from,

Speaker 2 and I now know what the best price is for that business in the market. And I only had to plug the information in once.

Speaker 2 And that is a game-changing piece of technology for agencies that are trying to be profitable in the small business marketplace.

Speaker 2 And I don't just have them as a sponsor because they wanted to be a sponsor. I have them as a sponsor because I believe in what they're doing.
I believe in what they're doing.

Speaker 2 And if small business is the space that you're trying to play, it is worth getting a demo from Tarmica. All right, guys, wrapped up the business side of the podcast.

Speaker 2 Let's get on to this absolutely tremendous conversation with Todd Tams. Here we go.

Speaker 7 Yeah, if I could, if I could get,

Speaker 7 I almost had a nervous breakdown last week because I like can't get away from babysitting duty. It's freaking killing me, man.
It is killing me.

Speaker 7 Like, I said to my wife, because my dad takes the kids, I usually have the kids Monday and Friday, which is hard enough. And then my dad,

Speaker 7 my my dad,

Speaker 7 two years ago, three years ago, got

Speaker 7 prostate cancer, got it rid of it, cancer-free since he had all the surgeries and stuff. So he's doing really well.

Speaker 7 But like this week, when you go, the weeks he has to go in for tests every six months, he basically is like out of commission for a couple days. So

Speaker 7 this is the only day I have the kids again tomorrow, the only day I've been able to focus on anything without kids running around. And it like literally,

Speaker 7 you know, it like breaks me down. I said to my wife, I was like,

Speaker 7 I'm doing okay. I'm writing business.
I'm gonna, I have an account I'm gonna sign today. It's like, it's like 9,000 a premium comp in a package with an umbrella.
And,

Speaker 7 you know, I said, but one,

Speaker 7 you know, $10,000 premium account every other week, that doesn't get me anywhere. I need to be doing four of those a week.
And I can't can't build up the steam to get to that point because

Speaker 7 on the, you know, when the kids are here, it's 10 minutes and then I got to go do something. Then 10 minutes and I got to do something.
And

Speaker 7 that singular thing has been the hard part. The insurance part, trying to get things going like that.
It hasn't been as difficult. It's the, it's just finding eight hours in a day.

Speaker 8 Yeah, we're not, well, we're not meant to multitask, right? They say you can. Can you multitask? Can you do all these things?

Speaker 7 I'm terrible at it.

Speaker 7 I can't.

Speaker 8 I can't. There are certain things you need to focus on and rock out, and you need your undivided attention and distractions and phone ringing and people coming in.
Kids at home. Yeah.
I can't do it.

Speaker 8 I can't do it.

Speaker 7 I have seriously been considering

Speaker 7 like find going and trying to find some money so that I can hire somebody. If I had just another set of hands,

Speaker 7 it would, I could, because when I'm freed up to work, I honestly believe that I'm like three to one. I can, I can do, in the, I can do the amount of work that maybe three people can do.
Um,

Speaker 7 but I, but it's, I got to get rid of all the nonsense stuff. It's, it's killing me, you know?

Speaker 8 Is New York slowly opening back up right now?

Speaker 7 Slowly, very slowly.

Speaker 7 Very slowly. And, and, and, uh, unfortunately, Emperor Cuomo is, will occasionally pull that back.
You know what I mean? He'll be like, oh, you thought you were phase two.

Speaker 7 No, you were mistaken. You were mistaken.

Speaker 7 So it has been a challenge.

Speaker 7 It's been a challenge.

Speaker 7 But that part, the insurance part is not the problem. Digging up business, getting in front of people.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm just, I'm cold calling, cold emailing, pressing my network, you know, doing content, like that stuff, getting the opportunities has not been the issue.

Speaker 7 I mean, I, for, for a two-and-a-half-month-old agency, I mean, I'm consistently quoting business, you know, smaller, you know, larger, small commercial.

Speaker 7 I haven't gotten too much middle-market stuff because I just haven't had, I haven't had a chance to get that velocity or the time.

Speaker 7 But, like, I'm not, I don't feel bad about what I've been able to generate versus the amount of time I've been able to spend. I just said to my wife, like,

Speaker 7 right now, my issue is I'm a one-man show, handcuffed by watching kids handcuffed by COVID. You know what I mean? Like, it's

Speaker 8 coach that'll change soon enough, man.

Speaker 7 Yeah, yeah. So, I need those little fuckers to go back to school and

Speaker 7 everything will be just fine.

Speaker 8 If it makes you feel any better, I was talking to a marketing rep the other day, and they're like, Do you know, I keep seeing this guy on YouTube all over the place, and uh, he's like, All he does is talk about his comp,

Speaker 8 And they pulled up you, your website.

Speaker 8 So people are seeing it even out in California.

Speaker 7 You know, I

Speaker 7 dude, all this shit works. It does.
Content marketing works. The advertising works.
Cold calling.

Speaker 7 You just have to keep doing it. And I've never faltered from that.

Speaker 7 My stresses are not the ability.

Speaker 7 I just believe in this stuff too much. I mean, it's so funny.
I talked to Caruthers about it. and like, you know, there's always another hack or another trick, but

Speaker 7 the truth is, you just pick a couple things and you press forward, you're going to generate business. It's just going to happen.
And

Speaker 7 it's just going to happen, man. You just keep producing the content.
I look, my friggin' wife writes business every day because of videos that I did seven years ago, eight years ago. So it just.

Speaker 7 It works.

Speaker 8 Think about what you're doing today and the ramp that that's going to lead you to in seven or eight years from now.

Speaker 7 Yeah, that's the thing, man. That's the thing.

Speaker 7 And that's why everybody, everybody who's in this group of people who are creating content, whether it's more advertising based and they're building their brand that way, or it's more content-based, or it's all that shit,

Speaker 7 it works and it pays huge dividends down the line. It just does.
Like it just, it just, I have never wavered from that. You know what I mean?

Speaker 7 You just keep producing the content, keep putting it out there.

Speaker 7 People find it, they share it, and it starts to, to it starts to flow so you know did you hear that we just hired a full-time marketing coordinator i saw i saw you i saw i saw the that you talked about it i i didn't you know obviously i haven't dug into it too much what was the deal there

Speaker 8 the the deal was you know is

Speaker 8 with with direct work comp and tam's agency I think that we need to start, we need to do a better job of meeting our clients online. And we've, you know, the

Speaker 8 model that we have in small town has always been go out, cold call, and write business that way. And it's who you know, and it's referral.

Speaker 8 But if you want to grow beyond that and you want to be a multi-state and a multi-regional player, you got to be online. And I'm too busy doing it.

Speaker 8 I mean, between running an office accounting, dealing with renewals, dealing with employee problems, dealing with vacations, I have zero time right now to create any content online and to do it, to make it look like I even know what I'm doing.

Speaker 8 Yeah. And so we had an opportunity for Haley is her name.
When I heard she was coming back, I reached out to her and seems like a good fit. But in her first, so what is today, Wednesday?

Speaker 8 So she's been on board for exactly two weeks. Our email signatures look better.
We already created a video. She is

Speaker 8 making sure there are keyword targeting keywords or however that works in our blog posts right now.

Speaker 8 She's just going gangbusters. And I think that that's going to pay dividends in the future.

Speaker 7 It's awesome. Dude,

Speaker 7 that is such a good decision.

Speaker 7 That is such a good decision. So talk to me about, dude, I'm so interested in

Speaker 7 the direct work comp thing.

Speaker 7 I see it.

Speaker 7 I see what you're doing. I love it.
Like, talk to me about, so one, let's just back up a little bit too. Like, how did you get into, not necessarily the business?

Speaker 7 we all have the same story. I'm interested in your focus on comp because

Speaker 7 in our space, there aren't a tremendous people who dive into comp in general.

Speaker 7 You are one of them. I sat with you at this like epic comp table discussion in San Diego at IAOA, which hopefully the

Speaker 7 emperors and empresses of our kingdom that we live in now will allow us to meet again in person at some point. But

Speaker 7 not to be political, but

Speaker 7 you were there. We're all talking comp.
I felt like this tiny little mouse listening to these giants talk about the industry.

Speaker 7 Like what got you into, got into comp, like why, why even focus on that in particular?

Speaker 8 You know, I love comp.

Speaker 8 I don't even know how to say it. I mean, comp, everybody hates comp.
I love comp.

Speaker 8 And so,

Speaker 8 you know, my story was, you know, when I, when I joined the family business back in 2004, you got to put food on the table and you write everything under the sun.

Speaker 8 And so we wrote personal, we wrote commercial, we wrote health.

Speaker 8 And there was a, well, probably six, seven years into my career, there was an account that we brokered that had a very large comp exposure. And the large broker brought in a Modmaster report.

Speaker 8 And it was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen at that point. I'm like, this is what I'm talking about.
This is how we can help people.

Speaker 8 change their premium, change their culture, share with them what their lowest premium is. And I just went all in.

Speaker 8 I mean, I went all in on comp probably 2012, 2013, and we would use that as the lead-in to maybe help pay for benefits because benefits costs were going through the roof at that time.

Speaker 8 It was 30, 40% renewal increases. And when we can go in and show a business how to save $30,000 or $40,000 a year on comp and how to do that over four or five years, it was the pay for for benefits.

Speaker 8 And I struggled like internally because most large shops, you can't do benefits and PNC. Like it's either one or the other and that's the path that you go down.

Speaker 8 And we found out that we were doing both. And I kind of had this epiphany, you know, workers' comp is an employee benefit.
It covers your employees. And so let's just bridge that gap.

Speaker 8 And a lot of our clients, we not only do the benefits side, but we also do the PNC side. And we drill down into that workers' compensation claims

Speaker 8 because you'll see things like high deductibles. or low participation in the employee benefits plan might lead to high work comp claims.

Speaker 8 That might lead to people using workers' compensation as the pay-for for their medical care. And so it's not an either-or, but it's a together,

Speaker 8 you know, it's a together package that you need to look at both of those to see what the usage is, what the claims are, you know, what type of claims that you're seeing, and then put together a proposal based on that.

Speaker 7 Why do you think so many of our peers ignore

Speaker 7 the

Speaker 7 intricacies and nuances of comp? I, you know, comp has been, so comp is obviously where I'm focused as well, as one of my lead ins. I also find it incredibly interesting.

Speaker 7 I think I love the human side of it, the fact that you're not just getting someone lower rates on something, you're actually helping improve the culture and that idea of total cost of risk.

Speaker 7 It just resonates with the way that I like to talk to people in general. And, but what I found in just some of the early cases that I've come across is essentially the programs are ignored.

Speaker 7 It's just, oh, here's your comp, have a a nice day. And, you know,

Speaker 7 I'm writing an account. I told you I'm writing a small account today.
It's like $4,000 or $5,000 in comp premium.

Speaker 7 They were paying $1,500 more than they should simply because the agent had just, oh, here's the, here's, here's what it is, didn't look into it, didn't consider any other carriers other than one of the major national brands.

Speaker 7 And there were like, even to someone who has only really been focused on this for say, let's call it six months, right?

Speaker 7 Like I started talking to Cruz about six months ago, even before I started Rogue. I kind of knew that this was going to be one of my things.

Speaker 7 And then, obviously, my geekdom is taking me down this path much further. But, like,

Speaker 7 even for someone with six months of focused

Speaker 7 study,

Speaker 7 immediate, this is obviously wrong. This is obviously wrong.
And those changes save $1,500 on a $5,000 package. That's a decent, that's a large sum of huge.

Speaker 8 That's huge. That's huge.

Speaker 7 And why do so many of our peers just kind of disregard this?

Speaker 8 I don't know.

Speaker 8 i i wish i did you know and the thing is is that's our industry is doing a disservice to

Speaker 8 every business owner out there by not talking about workers compensation and you know that table that we had back in san diego i mean we had some of the loudest voices in the industry and probably some of the most knowledgeable people there and with what you're doing and what cruthers is doing

Speaker 8 I find that even going back to your $9,000 account, they probably don't want to talk to you at all about workers' compensation as a pain point for them.

Speaker 8 They may not have had a workers' compensation claim. And when they do, most times they screw it up.
And for me, that is like this big light bulb. I want to talk to people and I want to change

Speaker 8 that experience that their employee has when they have a claim. Because it seems to, you know, the employer tends to think that the employee may be faking it or maybe it's a Monday morning claim.

Speaker 8 And there's this instant animosity of, well, I saw them lifting 50 pounds and they're not supposed to and I saw them doing this and like rather than hey let's help to understand or work to understand what they're going through

Speaker 8 we we we owe it to every business owner we do business with to do a better job at workers compensation in my mind yeah what kind of if you have any formal training do you have in comp have you taken you know gone and gotten any uh certificate programs or have you done any real formal work into the into the product or is it just experience and learning and kind of your own self-study that's the second it's you know i don't even have a college degree um i i subscribe to the school of thought that you just you never stop learning and so it's it's constant reading constant education constant surrounding myself with people like you and other people in the industry who are thought leaders and you know clients that make us be better you know i don't know that there's really i'm sure there's some stuff out there with comp right that you can take a class but is that really talking about how to make a better experience for that injured worker?

Speaker 8 Or how about a better experience for underwriting or a better experience for our client? I mean,

Speaker 7 yeah.

Speaker 7 So the episode that will come out right before our conversation that we're having now

Speaker 7 was about

Speaker 7 what we were talking about was

Speaker 7 with Micah Salas. And what Micah talks about is packaging up your insurance program to the underwriter and how do you sell your case to an underwriter? How do you tell that story?

Speaker 7 How do you build that program? And I think, you know, this is one of the things that I've learned,

Speaker 7 kind of been forced to learn in having Cincinnati as one of the carriers that I work with is they want

Speaker 7 a cover sheet of sorts. They want that narrative.

Speaker 7 kind of being forced through them to do that and think about it that way, man, it's really forced me to change my perspective on how you approach a client because it's not,

Speaker 7 it's not, you can't win in that, in that method, in that, in that method by just

Speaker 7 quoting and praying. Like you just, that can't be how you approach a client.
You have to dig deeper. And once you start to dig deeper, what you find is so much fun.
It's so interesting.

Speaker 7 It's, it's, there's so much you can do and help and advise. And

Speaker 7 I just, I can't, I don't understand

Speaker 7 why we

Speaker 7 still sit, you know, kind of in this commodity space. I just, I guess I'm struggling with that at this point, how we can continue to play in that space and

Speaker 7 see ourselves as value providers.

Speaker 8 Do you think that most people don't want to talk about comp because they don't understand it and they don't have any tools to help?

Speaker 7 I mean,

Speaker 7 yeah.

Speaker 8 I don't, you're, you're, one of my favorite clients that we picked up a few years ago, the agent that he was with,

Speaker 8 every year it was commodity. Let's drive down price, let's drive down price, let's drive down price.
And this is the cheapest workers' compensation quote.

Speaker 8 And the business owner thought, well, this is the best strategy based upon what my agent is telling me.

Speaker 8 And so every year we're going to move, which we all know that's the worst thing a business can do is go out to market every single year. Yeah.

Speaker 8 And suddenly they had two years in a row of bad claims, and they had no longevity with the carrier. They've known to bounce around.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 the next thing is they're in the assigned risk pool with a 1.85 mod.

Speaker 8 And nobody had talked to that business owner about

Speaker 8 how to reduce claims, how to bring employees back to work, what they could and couldn't do. And they were actually a benefits client of ours that

Speaker 8 he approached the subject with us. What do you know about workers' compensation? And you're like, ding, ding, ding, ding.
I know this. What do you want to talk about?

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 8 so

Speaker 8 we pulled five years of loss history and just dug into that. And,

Speaker 8 you know, why did you have this claim? Well, it was because of this, and that employee is no longer here.

Speaker 8 Or in a lot of cases, this business owner had said, we identified a problem in our manufacturing. We corrected it with new safety guards.
There's no way an employee can get injured anymore.

Speaker 8 And we went through his facility, and that's the way it was on so many of the claims that they'd had before,

Speaker 8 they couldn't happen anymore. And so we took a narrative to a carrier and only one carrier and said, here's what we think you guys should do with this claim, this client.
Let's go out.

Speaker 8 Let's send out your inspector. And I want to walk through this with you.
And we pulled the guy out of the assigned wrist pool. We put him with one carrier.

Speaker 8 And my conversation I have with every large client is, we're not going to remarket you every year. That's not what we do.

Speaker 8 If that's what you want, if you want me to find you the cheapest price every single year, there's a good chance you and I aren't going to do business together because I can't do that.

Speaker 8 But what I can do is bring you value and build a relationship. And we're going to look at a three to five year plan.

Speaker 8 Unless something goes awry, we're not going to market you out for three or five years. And when you tell them this, they're okay.

Speaker 8 I mean, the clients that we want to work with, if they're price shopping, I don't want that. You don't want that.
It's just too much work annually.

Speaker 8 But, you know, in the case of this guy, we've had a great relationship with the carrier now for five years. He renews every year with them.

Speaker 8 Pricing has been stable. Even when they wanted rate,

Speaker 8 the company has gotten the rate. He stayed with them because that company was also there at his worst moment.
And I think that's what the carriers miss sometimes: they miss the loyalty that

Speaker 8 they can bring to the table or they can have with that client when they do something out of the ordinary.

Speaker 7 Yeah, you know, my experience, and again, it's, it's, this has been so, such an interesting time for me because

Speaker 7 I had this experience as an agent, then went away and had lived this national, you know, I wasn't an agent, I was talking to millions of people. Then coming back and being an agent again,

Speaker 7 my perspective is, is, is, is very different. And

Speaker 7 what's been interesting to me is like if you're writing $500 bops, right? I get that it's really difficult to have a conversation with a client about loyalty to a carrier.

Speaker 7 That's a really, that, that's a difficult, that's a difficult conversation. But when you get into,

Speaker 7 you know, really, I don't even think it has to be that large of account.

Speaker 7 You can, you know, seven, eight, 10, even, you know, something as small as that and premium that that maybe is a little meaty, you know, it makes a difference that that carrier knows what's going on, especially if, if your client has real risk.

Speaker 7 If we're talking about an office risk and it's just large, maybe that's not even as much a concern. But, you know, you get it any kind of like, you know, I did

Speaker 7 woodworking and mill working, but I'm sorry. My wife is home and obviously the dogs are.

Speaker 8 Those are nice shoes, man. What are those?

Speaker 7 These are Nike Air Maxes, the

Speaker 7 no laces.

Speaker 8 Nice. Look at those.
I like the yellow.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 I like a little splash on my shoes.

Speaker 8 Are those socks? Are those the ones that you don't wear socks with?

Speaker 7 You, I do. You can not wear socks.
I just don't. To me, I like the slip-on feature.
Like, you could, you could go, um, you could definitely go no sock. If you don't, I just, I don't,

Speaker 7 not into that.

Speaker 8 I can't figure, like, I bought a pair of shoes.

Speaker 8 I think they were Cole Han sneakers with the sock built in, and I can't figure out, like, it just doesn't feel right with socks, but it doesn't feel right without socks.

Speaker 7 And yeah, there we are. I'm more of a

Speaker 7 just give me the sock-shoe relationship. I'm still there on the sock shoe.

Speaker 7 What the hell was I saying? Oh, so, you know,

Speaker 7 I think that this idea that you're bringing up about establishing a relationship between the carrier and the agent is vitally important.

Speaker 7 The other side of that is I think a lot of carriers are at a decision point. Their decision is either, do we go? national

Speaker 7 travelers Hartford liberty model where we don't necessarily have a relationship with our insureds. It's just here's our product, here's our price.
Do you want it? Do you not want it? Which tends to be

Speaker 7 the case with a lot of those carriers. Not that the products aren't good, just tends to be.

Speaker 7 Or are you going to play more in the we'll call it super-regional mutual space where the underwriter literally knows who the CEO is, knows what they're doing, has possibly been in the place? Like,

Speaker 7 those are very different things.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 when you expose somebody to

Speaker 7 that mutual mindset, the

Speaker 7 man, you, you watch, you know, the most, you watch a lot of business owners' eyes light up. They didn't realize that that relationship was even something that was possible for them.

Speaker 7 I don't know.

Speaker 8 You know, if you agree with that, I don't know. I don't know if I agree that every carrier needs to have a relationship.
I mean,

Speaker 8 I like Amazon. I love Amazon.
Yeah. Amazon for me has changed the way that I buy a lot of the stuff that I can't get in the town that we that we live in.

Speaker 8 And I wouldn't say that I have a relationship with Amazon, but they've made things super easy that two days from now, it's at my front door. It's easy to return things.

Speaker 8 I know there's other vendors out there. I'm not even looking at those other vendors because they've just made it so simple and so easy.

Speaker 8 So I think when it comes to the smaller premium, the more transactional stuff, that needs to be super easy.

Speaker 7 I mean, oh yeah, no, no, no.

Speaker 8 It just needs to be super easy for the company and it needs to be super easy for the client.

Speaker 8 And when they have a touch point or a billing payment or something like that, all of that, if they would just focus on making things super simple and super easy for the client, I think that's the best way to have a relationship on some of the smaller stuff.

Speaker 7 I am not, yes, I completely agree. I am not knocking what Liberty Travelers in Hartford have in terms of a product and a situation.

Speaker 7 I'm saying it feels like a lot of carriers are hitting, are hitting a decision point where they have to decide, are they going to be, is easy the methodology or is it more richness with the relationship?

Speaker 7 Like that, it feels like you, like the void between those, it's very difficult to have. And no one seems to have yet figured out how to be both incredibly easy.
and quick and have a rich relationship.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 and I agree with you that neither is wrong. It just feels like that's the decision point that a lot of carriers are starting to make.

Speaker 8 How have you seen your relationship with your carriers since COVID started? I have

Speaker 8 changed it all for you.

Speaker 7 I have found some to become more difficult and some to become, I've become much more connected to them.

Speaker 7 I

Speaker 7 there are certain, there's a couple of carriers. There's one carrier in particular that I was very excited to take on that COVID has made it so difficult to get in touch with them that

Speaker 7 I just, they're almost like, they've almost become like a market of last resort.

Speaker 7 There are a couple other carriers, two in particular, that have been so accommodating and so willing to pick up the phone.

Speaker 7 In particular, Hanover and Cincinnati for me, you know, those have become my two. first markets and how a lot of my marketing, a lot of my, you know, messaging, a lot of the

Speaker 7 niche target markets that I've gone after are really just basically lining up with them because I can call the underwriter on the phone say, here's what's happening.

Speaker 7 You know, this is the situation. I can send them, you know, to basically talk them through the account.
And even though they're unwilling to send a loss control person in there right now,

Speaker 7 they're willing to accept

Speaker 7 you know, my depiction, the pictures, the narrative that I send them.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 they've helped me out in two separate Hanover specifically helped me out with a situation

Speaker 7 where I had a,

Speaker 7 it was a coworking space and they were completely misclassified by the previous agent.

Speaker 7 And co-working spaces, I don't know, at least in New York, almost everyone, it was almost immediate decline by everybody.

Speaker 7 Hanover said, hey, we actually don't write a lot of these, but let's take a look.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 we were able to get a three-location coworking space, one of which was in Rhode Island, all squared away. Client is incredibly happy.
They're happy. And,

Speaker 7 you know, that was because the underwriter is,

Speaker 7 you know, picks up, answers the phone when I call him.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's Sophie when they answer the phone. That's how you build a relationship.
I mean, yeah, that's how you build a relationship. Pick up the phone when I call.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 it's funny how that happens.

Speaker 7 People seem to want to be willing to talk on the phone more. And I think it's changing.
I think people are settling into COVID and it does seem less hectic. I don't know.
Have you found that?

Speaker 8 I think it's a lot less hectic even in our office. And I hate to say this.
It seems like I love the marketing reps, but all the marketing reps want to have a Zoom meeting.

Speaker 8 I mean, I could spend a whole week every week or two every month just having Zoom meetings with all the marketing reps that are just checking in to see how things are going right now. when

Speaker 8 we're in the midst of COVID and remarketing and trying to write new business and work from home. And I think we were certainly set up well to work from home, but not every carrier was.

Speaker 8 And that was a struggle for them.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 To transition. So I think there were some just chinks in the arm or breakdown that I think we've seen some more,

Speaker 8 maybe just auto declines.

Speaker 8 And I don't know if the carriers don't want all the new business right now or if they only want vanilla type business or they're just not set up to have, you know, some of those carriers do round tables on meetings and I or roundtables on risk.

Speaker 8 And I don't know if they're, you know, if it's a $50,000 account and it needs to be roundtable and they've got all of these and they're all working remotely on Zoom trying to figure it out, that it's just easier for them to say no or what the deal is right now.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I had a couple carriers just send out moratorium lists.
We're just not even going to consider

Speaker 7 the most common ones were fitness restaurants, hair salons.

Speaker 7 You know, I'm actually,

Speaker 7 I'm writing almost more of a cathartic

Speaker 7 diary post of uh for a LinkedIn post about launching, you know, because I launched the agency on March 9th, 2020, which is, which was one week before the large-scale and complete and utter shutdown of the state of New York.

Speaker 8 It was actually that a Wednesday? What day was that? It was a Monday.

Speaker 7 It was a Monday. I launched it on a Monday.
The following Monday,

Speaker 7 basically the entire state of New York was shut down.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 my entire game plan to launch on that Monday was the, was the fitness space. I was coming off of, you know, my brief time out of the industry in the fitness space.
I kind of could speak the language.

Speaker 7 i knew what their issues are i you know i was focused in on things like um you know epli and and some of that kind of stuff because you know um

Speaker 7 trainers and clients having um inappropriate relationships is is really one of the largest risks outside of injury to to the client um the professional risk of of of someone getting hurt so I had this entire program set up, cold marketing, PPC campaigns, you know, this whole thing.

Speaker 7 I was sending out

Speaker 7 hard mail to people and whack,

Speaker 7 completely shut down.

Speaker 7 And then all of a sudden, all these moratorium letters started coming out from carriers, like, we're not even willing to write it if you can get it in. And I was like, ah,

Speaker 7 that was really wild. But

Speaker 7 I will say, to kind of take us back to comp.

Speaker 7 The good part about that was it forced me to refocus on comp, which is what I wanted to build the agency on. It forced me to refocus on that.
And,

Speaker 7 and that's been a good thing. That's been a great thing.

Speaker 8 So it's, it's interesting. Yeah.

Speaker 8 What do they say? The niches are in the riches, or the riches are in the niches. I got it backwards there.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 So, okay. I think if you're going to be an expert on comp,

Speaker 8 dude, with what you're doing, I see it all the time, just the content. You're going to rock it out real soon, man.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 Businesses opening back up.

Speaker 7 Yeah. And you'll be right there.

Speaker 7 I'll tell you, one of the industries that, so I've written two accounts so far in the manufacturing space, and i really have come to enjoy some of some of what's going on i like the systems i like i i just like the setup of it i like um

Speaker 7 there's a lot of premium there's a lot of you know what i mean so there's they're the business owners tend to be uh slightly more

Speaker 7 I don't want to say sophisticated because I don't want to say that anyone's unsophisticated, but you know, they tend to be more engaged with the day-to-day because in order to run a profitable manufacturing shop, you have to be focused on process and stuff.

Speaker 7 So, there's, I have enjoyed those two accounts and I want to focus more on that.

Speaker 7 And I just read an article, and I think this is the case, but the Northeast is already seeing a resurgence of investment into homegrown manufacturing in the United States.

Speaker 7 And I think that there's opportunities, not just in manufacturing, but in a lot of industries, for

Speaker 7 insurance professionals to start to find some of these new opportunities that are going to sprout up because of COVID, because of who the president is and the fact that he is building policy around a more America-centric workforce.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I think that there's a lot of opportunity for agents there

Speaker 7 to try to find spaces to fit in.

Speaker 8 100%.

Speaker 8 100% agree.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 7 I'm supposed to be interviewing you, but I'm doing a lot of the talking if I'm counting the words.

Speaker 7 The reason I reached out was one, I just wanted to chat with you, but the other side of it was

Speaker 7 I'm super interested. So you've taken

Speaker 7 this

Speaker 7 love of comp and expertise in the space, and you're doing something that I think not a lot of people have been able to crack. And certainly,

Speaker 7 so let's see, very few have had the guts to try. And even, and I don't know that anyone has yet cracked

Speaker 7 comp,

Speaker 7 direct comp, people coming in and marketing directly and driving people in. And I'm just super interested in this project.

Speaker 7 So like, as much as you're willing to, I would love for you to chat about your, what was the impetus of it and

Speaker 7 kind of, you know, where it's going and what you're doing.

Speaker 8 So you want to talk about the beginning of direct work comp and how that got started? Yes. All right.
So

Speaker 8 I would say that there was a period probably, let's go back five, six years, where I've been in the industry 10 years now, and I'm just frustrated.

Speaker 8 I mean, I'm just frustrated with how everything works. I'm frustrated with the submission process.
I'm frustrated that some carriers want us to quote online. Some of them take applications.

Speaker 8 Nothing is fast. And I...

Speaker 8 I just, you'd beat my head again. I'd beat my head against a wall.
And

Speaker 8 I found at that time, I started, started, you know, Facebook. I got to find people like me that are interested in what I want to talk about and what I want to do with comp.

Speaker 8 And I ended up finding IOA and met some people through there. And so suddenly like, hey, we're going to take on some projects.
We're going to upgrade our website.

Speaker 8 We're going to do some of those stuff. And the farther I started going down that rabbit hole, I'm like, I want to build an online company.

Speaker 8 I want to create an Amazon life experience for people to buy workers' compensation.

Speaker 8 And I want to be able to help the bigger companies and I want to be able to help the little companies when it comes to claim time, when it comes to audit problems.

Speaker 8 I mean, the list goes on and on of the things that we see of carriers not reporting the correct payroll on a Work Comp experience report, claims going wrong, reserves too high.

Speaker 8 And I'm just like, I'm going to dig into this and I'm going to go whole hog. I guess that's what I was going to do, whole hog.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 ended up

Speaker 8 going to an InsureTech vendor or conference last year. We found the vendor that we partnered with,

Speaker 8 which was Insured Mine, Rossen's company, and worked with him to help us build out the

Speaker 8 back end and front end to partner with the carrier. And that's been going on for probably five or six months now, a lot longer than what I want to.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 8 we're getting real close to going live.

Speaker 8 And there's things that come up that you just wouldn't even think of. Like when you have this question, what do you want the next page to be?

Speaker 8 Or what do you want to do if they have two losses or three losses in a year? And how does that work out in the API?

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 what if they don't have a group health plan? What page do you want to show them? And what are we going to refer? And I mean, just the logistics of building out a fluid quoting system.

Speaker 8 I've learned a lot. And that's been a lot of fun.
I'm excited to get up and going.

Speaker 8 We've only written a couple policies through Director Comp right now.

Speaker 8 But

Speaker 8 what else do you want to know, man?

Speaker 7 I want to know.

Speaker 8 You're just going to be so slick. I mean,

Speaker 8 three minutes or less. We're down to 14 questions.
14 questions and a quote.

Speaker 2 How did you get the carrier that you're working with to agree to this?

Speaker 8 The carrier that we're working with has an API, but it took,

Speaker 8 you know, we knocked on, it's like selling insurance. I knocked on a lot of doors, had a lot of awkward conversations, had a lot of no's.
And

Speaker 8 actually the carrier that I'm working with right now,

Speaker 8 which I can say we partner with employers. They're in 48 states.
My initial employers. I love employers.

Speaker 8 So they've got a digital distribution channel that we work with. But I bet I knocked on that door.
I don't know how many times and I got told no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 8 Because when I said, hey, we have direct work comp, they say, how much work comp premium do you have? I say, none. We have $0 at direct work comp.
And they say, we're not interested.

Speaker 8 I said, but we're trying to build something here. So I was able to kind of show them the vision and sell what we're going to do and how we're going to do it.

Speaker 8 And they agreed to take us on as one of their digital carriers or digital partners.

Speaker 7 Is DirectWork Comp its own company separate?

Speaker 8 Separate of TAMS agency? Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Okay.
Okay. Yep.
So you had to get. the whole thing.
So it's a completely separate thing. And that book of business will be its own.

Speaker 7 So the, so tams is the the local your market the normal stuff that you're doing and i don't mean normal in a negative way just no yeah standard operation this is going to be its own entity its own thing built up and and you're scaling regionally statewide nationally uh eventually nationally obviously is probably where you're going what is that the goal or

Speaker 8 we'll see we'll we'll see if we need to go nationally right now we're focused on seven states in the midwest um the state iowa where i live and then the states that the states that surround and touch us

Speaker 8 and um i want to say there's 700 billion dollars 700 million dollars is it's billion or million i think it's billion it's got to be billion it's got to be 700 billion dollars in workers compensation premium in those seven states so i think we've got a pretty good market just right here in our own backyard this is one of the early mistakes that i made with my agency because i have this this human hybrid vision uh that i have for for how to operate an agency moving forward and

Speaker 7 um

Speaker 7 this is not an excuse, but COVID has punched that plan squarely in the mouth. And I've had to set some things aside, but I will get back to it as things change.

Speaker 7 But one of my initial visions was, I'm going to write Pennsylvania in the Northeast, right? That was going to be my footprint. Give me Pennsylvania in the Northeast.

Speaker 7 And a lot of that is because, and anyone who's in this area, I'm completely cool with you not appreciating this comment.

Speaker 7 I feel like the Northeast in particular is so behind the times digitally from an insurance agency perspective that it's easy to stand out.

Speaker 7 You start to get Midwest, South, the agents in those areas for whatever reason have taken to digital a lot faster than the Northeast.

Speaker 7 Case in point, I've never been hired in my own state to do a speaking engagement. Massachusetts, the last time was five years ago.
I've never been hired in Vermont.

Speaker 7 I've never been hired in New Hampshire. I've never been hired in Maine to do my content marketing speech.
I have been to.

Speaker 8 That's crazy.

Speaker 7 I've been, however, I've been to 37 states. So it's like think about that like, you know, the most innovative online agencies and perspectives.
So, okay, so this was my plan, Northeast.

Speaker 7 I immediately realized that to get off the ground, there was so much premium just in the,

Speaker 7 we'll call it the hundred mile radius from my house that

Speaker 7 spending resources to go that far out wasn't necessarily even worthwhile at first. I mean, eventually I want to get there because the vision is still the same.

Speaker 7 But I think a lot of agencies that take on digital, I believe they make that mistake. They would look national first.

Speaker 7 They would go, you reach out too far, spread yourself too thin, and you're never able to go deep enough to make a real impact.

Speaker 7 So I think that's a, that's a really smart play to pick to the, to pick just seven states to start with.

Speaker 8 Yeah, so we're picking seven states. And then, um, you know, certain carriers like to write certain target classes of business.

Speaker 8 So I just hired my good friends on Fiverr to find out who some of those target people were.

Speaker 8 And that's, you know, that's that's our plan going forward. We're going to, we're going to hit those people hard, do a lot of target marketing, a lot of Google AdWords.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 And that's that's the beauty of our new marketing coordinator: she's going to help coordinate all that and

Speaker 8 take that job on full-time.

Speaker 7 So, did she have any experience in the insurance industry?

Speaker 8 She has zero experience in the insurance industry,

Speaker 8 but she did come from

Speaker 8 her last previous employer. She was managing their online, they had an online retail company for pet supplies.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Did you have any hesitation hiring someone from outside the industry?

Speaker 8 No. You know what? Everybody who I've ever hired has been outside the industry.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And then, you know, you kind of build them and train them to the culture.

Speaker 8 what your company, how your company operates and what you're looking for. And so,

Speaker 8 you know, we dumped her in the total CSR training for a couple weeks to get her familiar with everything.

Speaker 8 But I, you know, her position is not to know necessarily insurance. She's going all in on work comp and researching stuff and sending me things and Todd, we need to write a blog here.

Speaker 8 We need to do this and let's get some video going. But,

Speaker 8 you know, her skill set is not necessarily insurance. It's going to be producing insurance results and producing quotes on the website.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So you're thinking, and I asked those questions almost facetiously because I think that's a hangup that a lot of people have.

Speaker 7 And I actually just saw a thread somewhere on one of the insurance forums on Facebook about this particular question.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I think the issue ultimately comes down to like, you're going to have to lead her. You're going to have to be a mentor.
to her to get her to where you want to be, you know, coming into the insurance.

Speaker 7 I do feel it has some nuanced differences versus a lot of standard marketing, but,

Speaker 7 you know, as long as you're willing to invest some of your time into her, she'll be completely fine. If not, she won't have bad habits that insurance marketers have and will probably excel beyond

Speaker 7 what those who develop bad habits would do.

Speaker 7 I think so often we're, but I think so often the conversation on the other side is

Speaker 7 the argument against hiring someone from outside the industry is that you have to train them, is that you have to invest them.

Speaker 7 And you think a tool like Total CSR that gets them, that ramps them up fast enough. I mean, that's a really good idea

Speaker 7 to have her have her invest in that tool to to invest her time

Speaker 8 yeah so i think she said that total csr training was great um they helped us so we could kind of fly through and pick out some topics but you know i don't she doesn't need to know how to fill out an accord form yeah yeah honestly nobody should ever really ever fill out an accord form we should just do away with those things entirely yeah but um

Speaker 8 you know i don't know that many agents i don't know that many agencies even have a full-time marketing coordinator no most don't Vast, vast majority don't.

Speaker 8 You and I have talked about this, and

Speaker 8 I'm 100%

Speaker 8 positive that

Speaker 8 the way that insurance agencies marketed died on March 16th.

Speaker 7 It's over.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 most of our businesses have their front doors closed. They may not reopen the rest of the year.
I'm not sure if they're going to open ever. And a lot of businesses have put locks on the doors.

Speaker 8 They don't want to see solicitors in there. So it's now how are you going to a market?

Speaker 8 How are you going to sell your product or service to the masses when the days of in-person delivery drops and in-person cold calling is no longer allowed?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 And I think it's going to be on the digital front.

Speaker 8 And I mean, that it sounds crazy to say digital front in 2020 because the digital front's been out for 20 years, but I think we as agents are so far behind in where we meet our clients at and how we service them.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I mean, there's so few carriers out there that are even direct to consumer in the insurance space.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I, um,

Speaker 7 you know, I think now more than ever as well,

Speaker 7 brand becomes so incredibly important, right? Because the ground and pound could get, could, you didn't need a brand when you were ground and pound growing, right?

Speaker 7 You just had to bludgeon your way into situations, be able to. to talk through it, be a value provider to some extent, and you were perfectly fine.
Brand didn't matter.

Speaker 7 But in a world where someone doesn't want you to walk in, where you're not not going to breathe the same air, at least until somewhere way down the transaction, you know, and maybe at the signing, you do that, maybe, but certainly that first interaction today is most likely not going to be in person.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 certainly not if you're trying to grow at scale. And if that's the case, then your brand becomes infinitely more important.

Speaker 7 And I think it was Steve Anderson on Cass's podcast the other day who said, We just, the industry was just forced to evolve five years worth of evolution in two months. And

Speaker 7 if you, if you're able to make that jump, then you're going to be fine. If you're not, then you're, right now you're flailing and struggling.

Speaker 7 And there's a lot of agencies that are, that that's the case.

Speaker 8 I think that's the same with carriers, too. Yeah.
I've seen some carriers rock and roll and the carriers that,

Speaker 8 you know, have the online ability to quote versus the sending the submissions. I mean, we're going to see what makes or breaks carriers here pretty soon too.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Is it crazy that I prefer the carriers that I can just send a chords to right now?

Speaker 8 Nope.

Speaker 7 Because I will tell you that

Speaker 7 going into each carrier's individual

Speaker 7 platform to quote business is awful. It's awful.
I mean, it is, it's a determining factor in where I write the business. I mean, I literally look, I have, I have,

Speaker 7 let's see, right now for commercial, I have five or six direct appointments. and

Speaker 7 I'll just be like, nope, not doing that one, not going there. That's too much work.
Oh, wait, I can do accord forms once and just email them to the underwriter. Like, okay, I'll quote them.

Speaker 7 That's pretty easy. Cause I, because you got to do the accords anyways at some point for most carriers.
I mean, it, you know, and this is where a tool like Tarmica,

Speaker 8 you know, I can't wait for Tarmica. I just got an email from Chris yesterday.
I'm like, where are you at? I'm going to do business together someday.

Speaker 7 I know.

Speaker 7 I had a call with with Rag of today, just brief one

Speaker 7 because I I just I can't wait for it. Like

Speaker 7 the larger accounts, you have to do records for anyways. The smaller accounts, I don't want to have to go into multiple systems.

Speaker 7 And for some of my carriers, I have to log into this piece of crap PC Windows-based computer in order to quote them. So

Speaker 7 I literally have to go into a different machine to quote. And I'm just like, oh my God, is this for real? Like, how is this? How is this the case?

Speaker 8 You want to hear something cool?

Speaker 7 What?

Speaker 8 Do you want to hear something cool? Yes.

Speaker 8 We

Speaker 8 were able to partner with the carrier Selective earlier this year. Yep.
We send them accord forms.

Speaker 8 They data scrape the information off the accord forms, puts it into their quote system and produce a quote.

Speaker 7 Oh, I love that.

Speaker 8 Like, why is every carrier not doing that? Oh, I love that. So we can send them the accords.
We don't have to use their website, but then we can go in and manipulate the quote right online. Yeah.

Speaker 7 Because how far forward are they? Oh, I love that because, because that's really the thing is like, I, I, you send in the accords, you get the quote back, and then it's like, okay, so

Speaker 7 what I really want to do is take this down and move this up and here.

Speaker 7 And let's, you know, really, I, I put this, but then I had another conversation between the time I submitted and the team I got it back. And really the revenue is, you know, 100,000 less.

Speaker 7 And let's make, you know,

Speaker 7 but then you got to email email somebody, explain it to them, and they got to take two days. Oh my God, what a great, what a great solution.

Speaker 8 We could talk at length about my frustration with carriers and the submission process and just how it's, it's broken.

Speaker 7 Yeah. I, I do think

Speaker 7 I will say I like the idea of,

Speaker 7 I do like the idea of a certain size risk. I love, I like telling the story.

Speaker 7 I like, I like, I like the, um, I like feeling like I can help the underwriter understand why I'm submitting this piece of business to them.

Speaker 7 You know, for a certain size and certain type account, some of the just put the information into the computer and get the rate back type rating.

Speaker 7 You know what I mean? It feels colder. It feels like I'm not able to, I'm just manipulating numbers to get to the number that I want, which again, isn't, I'm not trying to bash that.

Speaker 7 But those are like such different experiences. And as you're trying to market a count

Speaker 7 to have one be this version and one be this version, and and this is a hybrid of that and then trying to keep it all straight.

Speaker 7 I can see why the complaint that I've heard, I heard so many times during my kind of agency nation days of, you know, agents just find one or two carriers they like and they put everything with those carriers.

Speaker 7 I'm like, yeah, because the process is so different.

Speaker 7 I mean, we're not talking about different auto raters. I mean, we're talking about a wide margin of difference between rating from carrier to carrier, the same risk.

Speaker 7 And you definitely just fall into a pattern and use those carriers. I mean, that's 100%.

Speaker 7 I think Tarmica has the potential to be a solution to that for an account of a specific size.

Speaker 7 If I have a $50,000 risk, I may not, you know, I may get an indication from Tarmica, but I'm still going to want to. But for those,

Speaker 7 geez, 10,000, 5,000 below accounts that you just want to get in, find out who's got the best rate and move forward, like those type of accounts,

Speaker 7 it is a game-changing solution. I just can't wait for it.

Speaker 8 I think we're going to see that, you know, the 5,000 to 10,000 number increase rather drastically. I agree with you.

Speaker 7 I agree with you. I think quickly that will go up as well.
Yeah, I'm with you. Yeah.

Speaker 8 I think when they figure out what their touch points are and what data they really need, you know, a $30,000 manufacturer is not that different than a 10,000. They're just bigger and do more revenue.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 So the interesting part about this, and again, I'm kind of looking out a little bit, is that the other thing that's going to be interesting is where, like, if you're, if you're, if you're as a carrier actually looking at the data from

Speaker 7 a company like Tarmica, you're going to get to see at what point you're being kicked out of the process versus your competition. You'll be able to say, geez, on the third page,

Speaker 7 we're a not available, but these other three carriers, you know, we write that risk, but we're getting kicked out as a not

Speaker 7 available. Why are we asking for this piece of information if our four competitors aren't? Are we? looking for something that's not relevant.
And

Speaker 7 I had this conversation with Basilios from employers, and I know they're doing a ton of work in that space to really figure out, you know, you don't want to give up too much where you're starting to become unprofitable.

Speaker 7 Like you can't estimate what the loss is going to be, but you certainly don't want to be asking questions that can kick you out of a process when the information is irrelevant to the success of that risk.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 only a tool like Tarmica will be able to show them that because right now they have no idea. It's all anecdotal

Speaker 7 because they're not able to compare themselves to what other carriers are doing so i that that to me is just it's it's it's really exciting stuff so how quick how quick do you think our industry

Speaker 8 capitalizes on that i mean go back to amazon 2000 not doing anything 2010 huge think of tarmaca and companies like that right now what's that look like in 10 years for carriers and how the ease of agents doing business yeah i cannot wait yeah i it's why I sing Tarmica's praises.

Speaker 7 I mean, in all honesty, they do also sponsor this podcast, but that is not why I'm so interested in them. Like

Speaker 7 they,

Speaker 7 I honestly believe that what they are doing allows, one, every agency in the country to

Speaker 7 to take on small commercial, right?

Speaker 7 So if today you're a personal lines owned only agency and you have struggled getting into the small commercial space, this tool immediately allows you to be a player immediately.

Speaker 7 You know, and

Speaker 7 I look at like their partnership with Indium, who's a market access company.

Speaker 7 Seth Seremba's involved. Chad Eddie's a CEO, tremendous market access company.

Speaker 7 There are many others, but they are tremendous. And now, as a small agency, I can take on Tarmica as a tool.
I can plug into a market access company like Indium. And now I have seven

Speaker 7 nationwide commercial carriers that write the vast majority of class codes that I'm going to run into on Main Street. And I am immediately competitive.
Immediately.

Speaker 8 Why wouldn't you build a model on that? I mean, that's kind of what I, that's exactly what direct work's doing. Like, if it's not, if it's outside of the appetite, I'm not interested.

Speaker 8 Why, why am I going to make that process so much tougher when you've got a tarmica there and they take on 70 or 80% of the industry and you can write it quickly and easily?

Speaker 7 I mean, this is where I'm going. This is what I'm doing.
So like, I, you know, not that I'm

Speaker 7 my whole model here at Rogue is I want to have three divisions eventually. I want to have a small commercial division that is based basically on what we just described.

Speaker 7 And there is, there is marketing, driving in. I want to do the exact same thing for personal lines, particularly home and rental properties, because I just think

Speaker 7 personal property,

Speaker 7 I just, it's just the bedrock of a profitable agency, I think, or can be the bedrock of a profitable agency. I look at my wife's agency, which is 85% personalized.

Speaker 7 2007 to 2009 was a blip on her radar. Nothing.

Speaker 7 I mean, they continue to grow through it because they just have all this property on the books and they rolled right through that time, you know, where many commercial lines, folks, agencies had to step back and work on different things.

Speaker 7 So I think that, and then I'm so interested in some of this middle market stuff. You can reach out.

Speaker 7 And the best part is if you have the right tool and the right process, an agency can be really good at these different things.

Speaker 7 I'm thinking five to seven years out, this isn't like I'm going to do this tomorrow, but like, this is what I think happens when you partner with good technology vendors, when you think through a process, when you have the people in place.

Speaker 7 These are, these allow you to differentiate and add value in ways that were never possible before. They just were not possible.
And

Speaker 7 it's such an exciting time

Speaker 7 from my perspective, if you're willing to dive down these paths.

Speaker 7 And it's happening like this, that COVID

Speaker 7 has only

Speaker 7 exacerbated the need for these types of tools and pushed the technologists to build faster.

Speaker 8 I'll have to send you a, I stumbled across a

Speaker 8 startup. I think they're in Indiana or Ohio.

Speaker 8 And

Speaker 8 it's a personal auto quote that does a couple. They'll ask a couple different questions, but they go out and they pull all the data from the assessor's website.

Speaker 8 They pull your cars from the DMV based upon the home address. And consumers get an instant personalized quote, three or four questions.

Speaker 8 How amazing is that experience versus the way that we're doing it today?

Speaker 8 What's your electrical panel size? When was it last replaced?

Speaker 7 Do you have copper or packs?

Speaker 7 Everyone lies in these freaking questions anyways.

Speaker 7 I mean, is it not, I mean, why do we all play this game that we're like, well, when was your, when was the last time that your water tank was replaced? 2015.

Speaker 8 Do you know what all of our personal lines claims are?

Speaker 7 Hail.

Speaker 8 They're always hail.

Speaker 8 The water heater replacement date has nothing to do with hail.

Speaker 7 I just, I don't, well, so I will say, um, one of the personal lines carriers that I have here at Rogue is Plymouth Rock.

Speaker 7 And I don't, you know, Plymouth Rock is a six state, they're in six states, six or seven states. They just came to New York.
Dude, homeowners, it's a dress.

Speaker 7 It's all this stuff about hippo and nothing against hippo. Plymouth Rock does this.
They have, they have pre-underwritten every single property in the state of New York.

Speaker 7 All you do is put the address in, whack, price. That's all.
And here's the

Speaker 7 what? Oh, yeah, incredibly competitive. Incredibly competitive.

Speaker 7 I wrote,

Speaker 7 and the really interesting part about their pricing structure is inside of that, they have

Speaker 7 class A to class E risks. So if a class A risk, you're getting 26 or 24 points commission on that homeowner's property.
Class E risks, you're getting like 18 points. So if the standard is 20,

Speaker 7 they're actually helping you prioritize the risk because they've already underwritten its profitability. They've underwritten everything about it and classified it.
And you can get a quote.

Speaker 7 I can literally have a home quote as fast as it takes me to auto fill the address into their into their rater. It's unfreaking believable.
It's unbelievable.

Speaker 8 Imagine the carrier incentivizing you to write business that they want.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 8 That's awesome. Yeah.

Speaker 7 And

Speaker 7 I called my underwriter the other day and I was like, dude,

Speaker 7 we have to figure out a way that we can work, that we can make this easier than I have to do it because this is like solid gold. I mean, this is unbelievable what you're able to do.

Speaker 7 And it's a perfectly fine policy. And it's not like there's anything weird about the policy.
You know, this is a carrier that's been around for a long time.

Speaker 7 They've already proven it in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and now brought it to New York. Um, you know, their auto rates are competitive.

Speaker 7 So, you know, if you want to package it up, they're releasing an umbrella policy, I think, July 1st. So, you'll have home auto umbrella, and you can get a home quote.

Speaker 7 In, I mean, literally, if I type in 17, you know, main main street water deli, here you go, click rate.

Speaker 7 It's that easy, it's crazy.

Speaker 8 That's the way it should be.

Speaker 7 yeah and you know for for a risk like property i mean the the hard part i think too and and uh i didn't realize what time it was but the the thing about you know i i i really hate personal auto i just hate personal auto i i i know that there's a lot of premium there but it's just it's the worst it's just i really if i never wrote another personal auto policy ever again i'd be completely happy um but i do like writing the property a lot My least favorite question on personal auto is, hey, I'm thinking about buying a car.

Speaker 8 It's red.

Speaker 8 Whatever, make a model. What's my insurance going to be if I trade off?

Speaker 8 And like, they'll do that five or six times, you know, as they go dealership to dealership to dealership just to find out what, what's the premium impact on my $2,000 auto policy.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 So now it's 1998. The next one's 2012.
You know, whatever.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 Just a grind.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 But I get that consumers want that and there's no easy way to do it. I mean, in what other industry, if you're going to do something, can you not find out what it's going to cost cost you?

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 No, I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

Speaker 8 I hate doing it, but it's got to be done.

Speaker 7 Dude, I was at the when COVID first hit and commercial, you know, all businesses kind of shut down for a while. I turned to personal lines, right? So I started running

Speaker 7 Facebook ads to drive personal lines in just to have activity because they're literally

Speaker 7 New York was black. It was shut down.
There was nothing happening here, nothing for a month. So I turned to personal lines.
So I get these personal lines risks in. And

Speaker 7 of New York is so heavily credit score, I'm getting people who've lived in the same house for 20 years with no claims, but they just don't have a good credit score. So their rate is through the roof.

Speaker 7 And Geico is writing them all day. And I'm like, there's no way this is an unprofitable account.
These people have not had a claim in 20 years on their auto. They own a home.

Speaker 7 They've lived there for 20 years. nothing's happening.
They're 55 years old, but because what? They don't have good credit. Now all of a sudden we're going to charge them through the roof.

Speaker 7 Like it's stuff like that that I'm like this I can't even wrap my head around that like I just I'm just not interested in it. It just feels like a I get

Speaker 7 I can lean on why they do it and I can rationalize why they do it. I just to me it is such a terrible experience to think that because my credit score is 650 instead of 750 I'm gonna pay an extra $500

Speaker 7 when my I get if I have accidents I'm talking clean drive comparable driving records that to me is nuts it's just nuts it doesn't

Speaker 7 and i

Speaker 8 that is why i hate personal auto i just hate it i mean i'm gonna write i'm still gonna write it but in our office it's it's funny because you'll you'll send something to a standard carrier and maybe the driving record or the credit score or it's not eligible and you go put it with progressive my progressive block of business makes money year after year after year for the carrier and they take everything Yeah.

Speaker 8 Like, and it's super simple and super easy.

Speaker 8 You know, the stuff that the other carriers don't want. And I mean, progressive, they take some good stuff too.
Like, they'll take a good driver and like, it's just cheap, cheap, cheap.

Speaker 7 Yeah. But so progressive in New York is no longer cheap.

Speaker 8 Really?

Speaker 7 Yeah. They, uh, they're, so they're making this move to being uh

Speaker 7 New York is such a crazy state. Like every a lot of times you guys talk about stuff and I just kind of like, I was talking to Greg Hogan about this the other day.

Speaker 8 I love Greg.

Speaker 7 Yeah, so do I. We're talking, I call him and I was just like, man, because

Speaker 7 Carruthers said something in Killing Commercial the other day. And I just, I called up Greg and I'm like, Greg,

Speaker 7 God, don't you, don't you like, do you ever fantasize about what it would be like to operate in a state that wasn't New York? Like, Carruthers is describing these processes.

Speaker 7 And I'm like, that, you know, like NCCI. So we're not an NCCI state.
So to get a mod. You have to pay $1,700 to get access to a database that is worse than the NCCI database.

Speaker 7 Like the setup, there's no way to trigger like a preliminary mod release. Like it's just this, it's basically just plug-in company name, get mod.
Like that's what it is. So,

Speaker 7 you know,

Speaker 7 it's just stupid crap like that. I'm like, ah, it's crazy that we live in this state.

Speaker 8 But see, in Iowa, they lock that all down. You can't see anybody's mod history at all.
All you can see is their renewal effective date.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 8 So it's crazy because we wanted even, like one of my plans was to go look after people who are in the assigned risk pool. They protect that here too.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 You can't see that here in New York, but you can see it in.

Speaker 7 So I also, Vermont is a state that I, I'm like 20, less than 20 minutes from Vermont. I'm pointing in a direction that means nothing to you, but Vermont is, yeah, Vermont is like right there.

Speaker 7 And so I have written a couple accounts in Vermont because it's so close. And Vermont is NCCI.
You can find accounts that are in the assigned risk pool. It's a completely different ballgame.

Speaker 7 I mean, your your access to be able to target people who have issues and try to help them, it's completely different.

Speaker 7 You come to New York and I feel like the state thinks they're protecting people, or at least

Speaker 7 some politician with an agenda feels like they're protecting people.

Speaker 7 they're not actually because what you're what ends up happening is these companies that don't know any better get stuck in programs that their agent is not getting them out of and they just sit there because no one can figure out you know there's a rand you randomly bump into them and hope that the person who who works with them knows what they're doing and um i can understand i i mean i can understand at some level protecting all of the people in the standard market i cannot wrap my head around the decision to protect the database of the people in the assigned risk who are overpaying

Speaker 8 and why why uh the state would not want to publish that information or obviously they can't publish it, but

Speaker 8 let it be searchable. So people like you and I could go in there and drill down and see if

Speaker 8 there's a way to help them. I mean, it's claim costs, it's high-risk hazards.
It's some reason they're in the assigned risk pool and they shouldn't be. Nobody should ever be in the assigned risk pool.

Speaker 7 Yeah.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I agree with you. Well, you know, yeah, I agree.
Dude, we're way over time. I appreciate this conversation a lot.
This has been, we've been all over the place, but it's been low.

Speaker 7 So just in case some, you know, if not say in case people are going to want to connect with you. They're going to want to see what you're doing and just just see what you're up to.

Speaker 7 Where's the best place? LinkedIn, where's the best place to get at you?

Speaker 8 Dude, I'm all over the place. You can find me on LinkedIn.
You can find me on Facebook. If you're friends with me on Facebook, I'm doing a lot of cooking and posting a lot of videos.

Speaker 7 I saw that. A lot of 3D.

Speaker 7 It's like 3D, you and Carruthers, 3D pictures of what you're cooking. It's like you're battling.

Speaker 8 Oh my gosh. We started.
I started doing Suvit over the over the pandemic. And I have had, I bet I've had eight wives reach out to me and say, Todd, what is it that you're cooking with?

Speaker 8 That's what I'm getting my husband this year for father today.

Speaker 8 They've seen the videos. They think it's awesome.
But yeah, Facebook, LinkedIn, you can always find me at tamsagency.com or direct work comp.

Speaker 8 My email address is pretty simple. TTAMs at TAMSAgency or TTAMs at DirectWorkComp.

Speaker 7 So I appreciate it.

Speaker 8 Big things coming for me. Big things coming for you.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Wow, dude, I can't wait to see.

Speaker 7 I honestly, I was, I was,

Speaker 7 I would be, I would be remiss remiss if I didn't say that I was slightly envious of your direct work comp thing, where you're at, because

Speaker 7 I think you're going to kill it, man. I think this is, I think the fast movers to these type of spaces are going to are going to be there.

Speaker 7 I mean, you see what's happened with life and how well that has worked. And

Speaker 7 I know PC agents like to disconnect the two, but the consumers don't. And if you can figure out the mindset, man, I think you're going to dial in on it.
So I'm just super excited for you.

Speaker 7 And I think you're going to dominate, man.

Speaker 10 Thanks so much. There's a lot round.

Speaker 2 Yeah, appreciate it, brother. Be good.

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