RHS 167 - How to Get Positive Outcomes in Sales

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
Today we have a dynamic episode for you. We're going to talk about all about inbound leads, how we handle them, what they look like and we are doing it with one of the best companies in the entire industry when it comes to delivering warm call transfers, when it comes to delivering commercial insurance leads to agencies that they can quote, bind an issue, hopefully in one call.
That's the aspirational goal, that one call close. That's what we track here at Rogue.
I've talked about that in the past. We are aspirationally tracking to a maximum number of one call closes and Tivoli helps us get there.
We're talking to Mark McClure and Kim Reid from Tivoli. You guys are going to love this conversation.
Amazing conversation. Tivoli is a big partner of ours.
And just think that it's almost a necessity for creating that base layer of business that's going to help you grow. We talk all about inbound leads, inbound calls, all that kind of stuff.
Tremendous, tremendous episode. You are going to love what you're about to hear.
Before we get there, I just want to just kind of remind you guys of a few things. First and foremost, I love you for listening to this podcast.
It's 2023. We're going to be getting after it.
We're going to be moving in February. So this is going to be coming out in January.
In February, we're going to be moving to a two- to a two episode a week format. One of those episodes early in the week is going to be short format, five to seven minutes quick hitting on kind of ideas that are relevant to our industry, concepts, tactics, insights, resources, all that kind of stuff, quick hitters, just bam, bam, bam.
And then obviously we're going to continue to do the longer form interviews with thought leaders, movers, shakers in the industry and outside the industry. So make sure if you are not that you are subscribed to this podcast.
Wherever you listen to podcasts, you can get at it. Love you for listening.
Love you for being part of this community. If you want an even deeper dive, go to findingpeak.com.
Finding Peak is where I am sharing all what I do, what I learn, what I think about when it comes to peak performance. And peak performance is, yes, how we're doing our work, but it's also how we're creating opportunities for success, not for sex, although sex is fun, opportunities for success in our health, in our mentality, in our psychology, in our relationships, all the different things that we need to be thinking about to put ourselves in a position to capitalize on what comes down the pipe, on those opportunities created by the muse.
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So go to findingpeak.com. And also, you know, last thing I'll say it's 2023.
If you're trying to maximize your income, if you're trying to maximize the income that you get from your agency, if you're struggling with carrier appointments, if you're struggling with making commitments, but you want to grow, if you're looking for access to markets, if you're looking for tools, if you're just looking for a community of insurance agencies that are pushing forward, that are pooling resources to just overall generate more income for your agency, then I highly recommend you check out SIA. Guys, being acquired by SIA and becoming part of this network and becoming part of this ecosystem has been one of the best moves that I've ever made for my business.
One of the best moves I've ever made in business in general. And, you know, whether you ultimately decide to join SA or not is your decision, but I think it is worth taking another look.
Don't, you know, necessarily just believe stuff that you heard or read from 10 years ago or five years ago. This is a completely different organization in terms of how they are rapidly adapting to the modern independent insurance agency and the services and resources that they're providing.
I highly recommend you taking an extra look and you can do that at siaa.com. Go to siaa.com.
Guys, with that, let's get on to what is a fantastic episode of this show with Mark McClure and Kim Reid from Tivoli. Here we go.

Well, guys, I'm excited to get into it with you and excited to have you on the call and go through everything. I know just from a few of the teaser sponsorship reads that I've done and stuff so far, and everyone listening at home has kind of heard your name and heard a little bit about the rebrand.
And we're going to get into all that. But just from, you know, doing a couple kind of like intro sponsor reads and everyone knowing, you know, that these guys are sponsors, you'll hear it.
But I've gotten a ton of behind the scenes, direct messages and just people asking, how are you using the tool? What is your results been? All that kind of stuff. So I am incredibly excited to do a deep dive today and share with everybody listening.
You know, you're kind of get more into the backstory, talk about the rebrand. And what I really want to get into and kind of the second half of our conversation today is like the tactical success behind using, you know, we'll just call what you guys do a tool, a tool in the tool belt of agencies and agents to grow their business.
So before we get there, why don't we do the quick like origin story? And Kim, you've never been on the show before. So let's start with you, and then we'll work our way through.

All right. Well, thanks for having both Mark and I.
We're excited to be here and excited to meet you and join today. I joined Tivoli when it was commercialinsurance.net in September of 21.
But Mark and I, in fact, Mark Chad, also one of the partners in the business, we go way back about 17 years to a lead gen startup. So we've got a lot of history together and other businesses in the lead gen space.
And I was excited to get the band back together and join with Mark and Chad again as this business really started to take off and help. I'm kind of the organizer, the foundation planner of the group to come in and help grow the team, grow the processes and make sure that we're scaling and enabling everything for success from the people, the partners, the systems we use., I'll let you chime in.
Yeah. What I just heard there was Mark throws a bunch of crazy ass ideas on the wall and then you pick them off and make them happen.
Kind of, is that, is that an accurate depiction? Yeah. I mean, Mark, what do you think? Entrepreneurs for sure.
yeah only goes so long throwing things at the wall. Yes.
And it's funny. One of the things that I've learned just with Rogue is that every integrator, which Kim very much sounds like you are, needs a visionary and every visionary needs an integrator.
And that it is incredibly rare that you can be both. I don't know that you, you know, maybe a Steve Jobs, maybe an Elon Musk, maybe someone, I always forget her name, but the woman that created Spanx, shit, I can't believe I'm forgetting her name.
But if you, you know, you know, if anyone follows her story, like, you know, there are some very specific, rare people who can kind of be both, but for the most part, you need that kind of yang to your yin or you just don't get things done. So that's awesome.
And I'm super excited that you're here because we can actually get some real deep answers this time versus last time. And Mark, no, I'm kidding.
Right. So, Mark, just for everyone who missed your previous episode, which I think was back in either August or September, can you just give us the 20,000 feet? We don't have to spend a lot of time on backstory, just a little bit.
And I want to get into the company more. I'll start where we got started with a company by the name of Traffic Strategies based in Tampa.
My partner today, Chad Jaquase, and I started back in 2000. And Kim joined us, I believe, in about 2003.
And we became leaders and lead generation and built a great lifestyle company that was generating about 75,000 prospects a month and had the opportunity to sell that business to Rockerton. So all of us joined Rockerton.
And I had never worked for anybody, but that was my first job other than picking up range balls, you know, as a kid. So kid.
So as an, as an entrepreneur, you know, for eight years, that was a, a great experience and learned a lot. And thankfully we had Kim there to, to organize our business and ideas and thoughts.
And, and after I finished my earn out, Chad took my role and then Kim took his role. And then when he finished that position she she ended up taking both of our roles.
But long story short, we have today a group of digital marketers, some of the best digital marketers in the world that have worked on a ton of retail brands, Walmart to all of the brands that Kim worked with, with RetailMeNot, as well as financial services brands like American Express and Chase. And I think that's what makes us unique in the business that we are in today is that we have some of the best digital marketers in the world, but we also have 10 years experience running a commercial insurance agency.
So after I finished my earn out, I left Rockerton, relocated to Oklahoma, started a company by the name of commercialinsurance.net. And we built that up to a nice agency with right around 20,000 small business customers, a little under 20,000 small business customers, and had about, you know, 50 salespeople, service people, but we learned how hard it is to work leads and work prospects that start online and convert them into insurance policies.
And that all leads are not equal. Even free leads are really expensive if you don't have a market.
And so, you know, the combination of the digital marketing expertise that we gained at Traffic Strategies and Rocketton, along with all of the commercial insurance experience, just puts us at a unique position in the business. Typically, the companies that we go up against are really great digital marketers, but they don't know anything about commercial insurance.
It makes it really hard to excel in this space or vice versa. And since then, I think it's really special that we've been able to recruit many of the team members we've worked with over the years.
If you look around, it's a great selling point when we go to interview candidates that they always compliment us on the fact that, wow, we have a number of team members. I can't name them all, that we've all worked together in different businesses, and we still want to work together after 10 years.
And so after we sold the commercial insurance agency, we pivoted into a lead exchange. Commercialinsurance.net became a lead exchange.
And we started with about 5,000 small businesses a month that we were talking to and are up to about 80,000 small businesses that come through our exchange on a monthly basis today. And so we are having a lot of fun and we are, you know, we're growing.
We just finished a record year, just under 900,000 small businesses came through our exchange seeking insurance in 2022. We finished the year record year with 41 million in revenue and are maintaining EBITDA discipline in an environment where it's, you know, it's really a challenging environment for 2022.
We still experienced excellent growth and we're able to do that out of cash flow, which was awesome because, you know, we brought in Aquiline Capital as our lead investor a little over a year ago. And we have not had to deploy any of that cash, which sets us up for an awesome 2023 and allowed us, you know, maintaining even the discipline.
I think it's also a unique competitive advantage we have in this environment that we were able to grow specifically just out of cash flow over, you know, I guess since 2015, we've been profitable. Last year, we finished at just 70% or we grew a little over 70%, added 203 or finished the year with 203 team members, added a CFO, built out the contact center, account managers, and continued building out the engineering team.
So we're really excited about the investments that we're making. And we have been very cautious on how we deploy cash and are really protective of our culture that we bring people in that are, that we feel that we can be successful with, but also have a lot of fun.
That's which is one of our core principles is to have fun and laugh. And I think you can do that in a growth company.
we have transitioned from a lifestyle company. I know you mentioned just in your last podcast, the difference between a lifestyle company and growth company.
We are stuck somewhere in between because we do still have a lot of fun, but I think you can have fun in a growth company and grow at the same time. Sometimes you have to work a little harder than you do in a lifestyle company, but that's, uh, that was our intent in bringing in Aqualine as a partner, uh, was to, uh, bring in somebody that could, you know, put some muscle behind us to start taking some risk that, you know, maybe we weren't going to take in a lifestyle family, uh, business.
So. Yeah, that's awesome.
There's, there's lots to unpack there. And I, and I really appreciate that.
You know, I think know, I think just kind of touching on one of the last things you said about the difference between a lifestyle and a growth company, that episode has garnered a pretty substantial amount of feedback from a lot of people. um i think it's funny uh what people hear you know when you say something in between what you

meant and maybe what you felt you said or the actual words you said and then what people hear, you know, when you say something in between what you meant and maybe what you said or the actual words you said, and then what people actually hear are oftentimes very different. And, you know, some people took that podcast offensively.
There's no problem with being a lifestyle agent or just because I don't grow at 20%, you know, am I not a growth agent? And, you know, I, I, I tried to explain to the people that were reasonable, um, that, you know, my, my point was more, um, and I, and I think you touched on it. Like if there's nothing wrong, being a lifestyle business, there's absolutely nothing wrong.
It's just the key is to make decisions that fit into the framework of what you want that to be, right? You want to have free time. You know, you want to, you know, your, your time is maybe more important than top line growth.
You, you want to be able to work on the projects you want to be able, you want to work on. And, you know.
You can be super picky. You can be super niche-y.
Like these kind of things are nothing wrong with them. They're just a set of filters that if your lifestyle you need to think of.
And in every business, there are those things, right? You may say, hey, we're doing great. We're growing 5% per year.
And I get to golf every Tuesday afternoon and Friday afternoon. And I'm freaking happy as hell.
And it's like, that's great. That is, there's nothing wrong with that.
Um, but what you wouldn't want to do is take on 10 new team members in a month. If you're a lifestyle business, because now you're not going golfing, you're training and talking and building culture and setting people up and doing all those kinds of things.
So, so it was interesting to think through, you know, it was more about how the heuristics that you put into your business to match what your, what your goals are. And, and my point in saying all that is how did you know, you know, what was the impetus or what were the conversations that you were having around? It's time to do this, you know, and you, and you, you, you mentioned, hey, we brought in alkaline so that we could take some risks that maybe we weren't willing to take or, you know, but there had to be a moment where you said, hey, we're this today.
We're pretty darn good at this, but we kind of want to go see maybe how big we can be, or we kind of want to see, we kind of want to attack this market and we're willing to push harder because I can only imagine that you're probably not working less now that you've thrown gasoline on the fire. So, you know, talk me through a little bit that decision, because I think a lot of both agency owners that are listening and sure techs that are listening, you know, even some of maybe the smaller and sure tech oriented carriers that are listening, they're all having the same conversation all the time.
So I'm interested in what your guys thought process was. No, we, we had the opportunity to sell the entire operation and in 2020, and we, you know, we had just pivoted into a lead exchange a few years prior to that.
And we made the decision that if we take the Aquiline investment, that the end result could be a lot bigger than we were going to be able to get in 2020, which that also meant that we were going to have to work a little bit harder and start bringing in greater talent that we just didn't have today. For example, bringing in Kim Reid, we didn't even have a CFO and didn't have any engineers on staff.
And, you know, as a lifestyle company, maybe we wouldn't have taken those risks. And that's OK, because, you know, we have a lot of fun on both sides.
It's just different. You know, it is as an entrepreneur, when things are going well, it's fun to work hard.
And I don't know, when you get back to the corner, sometimes I enjoy that as well, probably a sick kind of way also. But where we are today, as it relates to making the decision of transitioning from a lifestyle company and a growth company.
When you take an investment like the kind of investment we took, it's our responsibility to make sure that we return profits for our shareholders and distributions. Today, we have about 3% market share of all small businesses that are seeking insurance online, which means there's a huge number of companies that we're not touching.
And, you know, to, for us to be able to reach the other 7% of the customers, the small businesses that are in the marketplace, it means that we, we have to operate more like a growth company and bring, you know, start to bring in really strong team members in areas that maybe Chad and I were weak in those areas. You know, it's funny.
I made a very similar move in my own business. Obviously, I was acquired by SIA and there was, you know, the thought process was very similar.
It was I had this goal of where I wanted to be, but when I mapped it out, it was like a 10 year goal. It was like 10 years to get to where I wanted to be.
And I am anything if not impatient. So I said, geez, if I partner be acquired by, you know, the deal with SIA, I can get to that same place in about three years.
So, you know, it was at that point, it was kind of like, I don't want to say a no brainer, but for where I was, what I wanted to do, there was no other path. And then you get into it and you start to realize, you know, with a little bit of backstop, a little bit of resources, capital, whatever, if you're smart about it, and I love how you, and I want to talk a little bit about how you really pressed cashflow, you pressed, you know, smart management of your EBITDA, you know, all that kind of stuff.
We're still, we're still burning some capital, but we're getting, we're rapidly getting to the point where, you know, we want to be sustainable inside of 12 months, which hits our runway goal, you know, pretty early. But it's like you have finding the right people and knowing where to say, okay, because I think the mistake I see is that some people get that cash.
And it's like, we got to go spend it. You know what I mean? Like, let's hire some people, let's buy some shit.
Let's go, you know, do some stuff. And, you know, it's almost been what's been funny., what's been funny.
And obviously this is the first OPM other people's money. Yeah.
Other people's money. Yeah.
What's been, it's not really, yeah, I know. I know that's the thing.
It's not like, it may seem like it, but really it's not. And the, and the, and the interesting part for me has been, um, and I didn't do this on purpose was, uh, when I, when I got the money from SIA and we started deploying it, I've almost been more thoughtful in how I spent, even though there's way more of it.
I've been more thoughtful in the way that I spend it. The pressure that I put on contractors and vendors and stuff has been since I got their money than if it were just mine.
When it was mine, I was like, let's try this. Let's do this.
You know, hey, we lost 250 bucks here. We lost a thousand bucks here trying this, you know, whatever.
Now I'm like, eh, do we know if that's going to work? Where are we at with that? What's, you know, show me. And I don't know why that is or way that is, but it seems like a decent, you know, I stumbled into it.
It seems like a path that a lot of, a path that a lot of people don't take. And ultimately seems like you can run into a lot of, a lot of issues if you don't think about it that way.
Yeah, absolutely. There's only level of responsibility when you're spending other people's money.
Yeah. It's like a stewardship mentality.
Absolutely. And I don't want to, and again, I don't want to act like I have, this was like some grand vision of mine.
It just, maybe it's fear. I just have kind of stumbled into it and then doing some hindsight.
So, okay. So it's funny that you touch on fear.
I, I, I think as an entrepreneur, fear for me is a place that I go to harness just strength and the, you you know, the, as an, as an entrepreneur, it just really pushes me to get to wherever I, you know, wherever I'm trying to go at a much faster rate, you know, so many people talk about fear and how it's paralyzing. And, you know, I kind of hit on that earlier, like, you know, I've, I've been an entrepreneur for 20 years and except for the 18 months during the earn out at, at Rocketon and every year that I was backed in a corner too.
And, and, um, you know, having that fear, just, I don't know, just for me, it pushed, pushed me to new levels that maybe I couldn't get to if I was comfortable. And so, um, that's good.
That's okay. And I love to talk about that.
So many people say like, you should never say it out loud. Like I, it's what drives me.
So basically, you know, and I don't want to go back to that place. That's why we're so conservative with how we spend our money.
But I'm glad you said that because I basically wake up scared to death every day and operate from that place. Cause like, I don't ever want to go back to the way things used to be like, you know, I don't want to go back to, you know, grinding out someone else's nine to five, you know, working someone else's vision.
Like, I don't ever want to be put back into that corner. And, um, and the only way to continue to get opportunities, the only way to continue to get people to invest in you and future ideas and current ideas, partnerships is if you're successful.
I think one of the things that I'm hoping comes out of the recession that's coming, which I think we all can kind of say, if it's not here, it's coming or how low it goes, we'll see, is that these ridiculous concepts of like, you know, at the end of the day, all that matters is results. You either produce results or you don't.
Like you can sound great on social media. You can dress well.
You can say all the right things, whatever. You can read the right books.
You can take the right online course, whatever your things are. You can go to the right conferences.
If you're not getting results, it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And I tell this to our sales team a lot.
You know, we have some people, you know, we, we have some people on our team who are, who are talented, but I can also tell sometimes they want to be part of that, like LinkedIn celebrity thing a little bit, you know, and I'm just like, guys, the people who are LinkedIn celebrities are one of two things. They're either incredibly successful and produce massive results and they're LinkedIn celebrity as a result of that, or they're completely full of shit.
And you know, which one you are. So, you know, like, um, you don't, you, you, you have to produce results.
So for me, it's this fear that I have this vision, I have this mission and I'm not going to get there. And that's what drives me.
And I think that's to your point is like, that fear is like, it's like a hate fire that just, you know, hate for going back to the way I don't want to go back. Yeah, absolutely.
So, all right. So let's moving on from that.
Um, that um so tivoli so so talk to me about tivoli talking about the brand you know your commercial insurance dot net i you know it's funny when you first when i first heard you know when you first told me or got the email or whatever it was i can't remember who i was talking to maybe it was samantha on your team who's awesome by the way um i you know she i think she sent the email or i was on a call with her and i kind of like kind of like hit me and i was like tivoli okay it didn't immediately make sense um uh to me but once she explained it definitely did but i was like commercial insurance.net was so on the nose right like it was like what do you guys do commercial leads why commercial insurance.net oh, and again, it's a long name, tough to write, a lot of syllables. I get it.
But like, talk to me a little bit about the brand, the name. I mean, I like how concise Tivoli is and all that.
So just talk to me about the thought process behind that. I'm going to let Kim talk to you about the, because she spent a ton of work, a ton of time and work with Catchword, the agency that helped us with the

rebrand. I'll just start with commercialinsurance.net was a domain name that I purchased

in the early 2000s when I recognized that nobody was using any forms of digital media to drive

commercial insurance leads. It ranked really well from a search SEO standpoint back in those days,

but it was really long. It was a .net.
And what I didn't know along the way as an entrepreneur is that a lot of talent didn't want to go to work for a domain name. It sounded like it came out of the nineties and was.net.
We're lucky that Kim knew us and knew, knew our capabilities and where she could add value to our, to our took a bet on us. But part of it was just that the fact that it was a good brand for its time, but it was time to sunset that brand.
And it was important to our investors and keeping them happy is important to me. And so with that, I'll let Kim talk about the rebrand and how it all came about.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think going back to the point on growth, this business has grown a lot, probably started more lifestyle, definitely evolved into a growth company in 21, 22.
And as we evolved and the team got bigger and you get further and further from when Mark purchased the domain in 2000, it just started to feel a little bit dated for who we are and what we represent. We want to represent new ideas and making improvement and great digital experiences and efficiency.
And it felt like we had a domain name and not a brand name. So when I first joined, we were trying to do it all ourselves, which was Saturday morning text message threads of what about this name? What about this name? What about this name? After a couple months of doing that on our own, we decided let's get some professional viewpoints on this.
We talked to about five different agencies, a mix of ones that specialize in everything branding, PR, all of that. And we ultimately decided to go with one that really specialized in naming because that was our goal.
We want to get a brand that we're really excited about, proud of, that's broader than insurance, that gives us flexibility in the future, that is short, snappy, modern, and has meaning. So partnered with Catchword, and they have a really structured process that starts with a ton of research into what we do, who we are, interviews with a lot of our employees to really identify what do we stand for.
Their terminology would be our brand pillars.

So it's similar to values, but just not taking the words of values, but more how do you live and operate. And from there, that gives kind of the who we are so that we can find names that make a connection to a component of that.
So one of our brand pillars was yay sayers. something that came through in all of the interviews was this ability and desire to find a way to say yes to partners, to internal employees.
But if somebody needs something, if there's a way that we can do it better, smarter, create something that we haven't tried before, how do we start with yes and figure it out?

And I think that's how this business got to what it is today,

how Mark evolved it from the agency it was to what it is today, was looking at the needs of partners,

looking at the needs of small businesses

and trying to make it better,

trying to add more solutions that they need

and just create positive outcomes.

So we looked at, I think, 400 names overall

All right. add more solutions that they need and just create positive outcomes.
So we looked at, I think, 400 names overall, kind of kept, it's a funnel, kept narrowing it down. And Tivoli was one that really resonated with us because of the connection to positively.
And that concept of positive resonated so well with the yes, yay sayer side of our kind of culture and the goal we have of making experiences better, better for agents, better for the businesses. And so we ran with that.
It also was a short, short name, easy to type, go after typing commercial insurance.net for a long time, five letters, really exciting. There is nothing wrong with domain modifiers.
There's amazing businesses that have modifiers in their domain name. But we didn't, that was a goal of ours was to have the domain match the brand name.
So that limited some of the options as well for us. And then from there, we just kind of created meaning all around it.
So the logo has meaning. It represents the two sides of the marketplace and us as a connector.
The colors have meaning. We're navy and magenta.
So we're kind of that classic insurance corporate navy with like a pop of color that represents the fun and new and bright things we're trying to bring to the industry and launched in November. It's awesome.
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Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
It's awesome. I, uh, I love all that.
And I think, you know, one far, I think in the insurtech startup world, this definitely the work that you did is probably feels a little more, um, familiar, but to a listening, especially anyone that's, that's legacy or even some of the legacy carriers, it feels like, you know, that work that you did, which at some point I'm sure was absolutely grinding, mind numbing, and you wanted to like kill yourself because picking a name for a business is terrible. You know, it, like for you to say all that and walk us through that, like walk us through that thought process and how this idea of positive outcomes is a pillar of your business, you know, being, being a yes company, finding opportunity, finding ways to be successful.
Like that, that seeps down in not just to your employees or to your partners, but to your customers, it, it seeps into every filter. You know, we talk, you know, I, I try to talk to my own leadership team about filters, you know, talk and think in filters because you're the decisions, I can't make every decision for you and your individual people can't make every decision for you, the manager, right? There's going to be all these individual decisions made at every level.
And if we are developing at the high level as leaders in our business, through our brand, our culture, and these types of exercises that you did in the rebrand, it gives your people a set of filters to make decisions through that you can feel more confident that they're going to do something that it may not even be exactly what Kim Reid would do, but it is the right thing to do in that moment based on these set of filters

that you've given them. And I feel like that's how you get to a scale.
That's how you scale success is, and it comes all the way back to the work that you just described. And so few people are willing to do it.
So I give you guys a lot of credit for that because I'm sure there was a moment where you're like, just pick a name. I can't take it anymore.
Like, let's just pick one. Are you sure we need to do this?

As a performance-based marketer, you know, I'm not cut from the PR cloth. And so I had to really challenge myself to let Kim and the experts and even Chad get in there and help make some really hard decisions.
Yeah. At what point did Marco, let's just pick best commercial leads on the internet for insurance.com and go with that.
There it is. Oh yeah, exactly.
It would have to be at least 50 letters long. The URL is available.
We had that he wanted a funny name so that he would laugh every time we had to say our name. So there was, there was all kinds of considerations.
Yes. I started with It was butter was, was, was, was the name that I, that I had originally picked.
I'm glad we didn't land on it, but we had a identified butter.com and, uh, you know, smooth like butter. And I'm so glad they talked me into saving a ton of money on the domain name, landing on a, uh, the name Tivoli.
And, you know, with the story that, you know, Kim just put behind it, like it's, it's meaningful. And it's in, it's, we live in such a negative industry as it relates sometimes to small business owners, because there's no's around every corner.
Yeah. No, you don't have enough experience.
No, how am I going to get any experience if nobody wants you in my business or no, you're not big enough, or you haven't been there long, you know, you haven't been doing this long enough. And, you know, we've tried to amass a number of, of different types of insurance agencies, brokers, and carriers that can, that can write insurance for a wide variety of businesses so that we can say, yes, yeah, we can help you.
And, you know, as an entrepreneur, that's something that, you know, I hate telling people now, especially when they're a startup and they have a dream and they're willing to get all, uh, to, to make it work. Like there's nothing more that drives me than, you know, just listening to stories of, of entrepreneurs that are willing to put it on the line and, and, you know, and, and do whatever it takes to make it happen.
So, um, yeah, that's butter, butter, make the cut. Although I do like smooth like butter.
I mean, I do like that. So what does a positive outcome look like? How do you determine a positive outcome? So if you're always working to positive outcomes, right? Like what, how do you start to track that? How do you measure it? What does it mean? Because that could be, it can mean a lot of things to a lot of different constituencies and stakeholders, right? Positive outcomes could be positive outcomes for your investors, positive outcomes for owners, shareholders.
It could be positive outcomes for employees. Like, do you prioritize whose positive outcomes are most important and how do you manage all, you know, and again, maybe some of this is selfishly just one business owner to another.

How do you guys manage positive outcomes for all the stakeholders associated with the business when sometimes they can conflict with each other? Kim, do you want to take that or do you want me to take it? I mean, I think I'll start super high level and then I'm sure, Mark, you've got a lot to add too. But I think what we like about the positive, positive outcomes is it's flexible.
It doesn't mean any one thing to one group. And so we look across the several stakeholders.
I came from, I spent about nine years at RetailMeNot. And we always said, you know, who mattered more? Who do you serve first, the retailers or the shoppers? And the reality is you just always had, you had to create good experiences for both.
And there were times that we were building products that focused on one or the other, but we were only a successful business if we did good for both sides. And I think we look at both sides.
First, the customers, the small businesses, small, medium businesses that need insurance. That's all about customer experience.
How do we create great customer experiences? How do we understand what scenarios create not good customer experiences, identify those, and create a game plan to just continuously be optimizing and addressing those friction points? Then we, through the, and a lot of this team, there is significant insurance background, especially from Mark, for example, running an agency, but a lot of this team has a lot of digital performance marketing experience from Rakuten Days, from several different companies. So how do we take that experience to create great customer journeys through digital, through combining human and technology, and then not just create great experiences on our own website, but power and enable great experiences on our partner site.
So what we can do to create a great customer experience on Tibley.com, we can power on other partner sites as well. That's part of our triage services using the form.
So we can create great experiences and then leverage the learnings, leverage the tool sets, the technology, the people, and then enable that for our partners as well. And in that way, we start kind of serving both sides of the marketplace.
And then for the partners, looking at what their success metrics are and just continuing to evolve our services, our offerings, our platform to align with their goals too. Mark, you want to chime in?

I had written down something very similar and it is experience.

So from our representatives,

sometimes I say our biggest customers

are actually our team members

and making sure that we're creating an environment

and putting them in a position

where they can help people

because when they have to say no all day long,

that's a really negative experience

for our team members. If we are forcing our customers, advertisers, whether they're agents, brokers,

or carriers to accept risks where they don't have a market or they have identified that they don't

want to take the lead, that creates a negative agent experience for those who are paying our

bills. And so that's also important, but probably the most important of the three would be

Thank you. want to take the lead, that creates a negative agent experience for those who are paying our bills.
And so that's also important, but probably the most important of the three would be if we focus on the insured experience and making sure we help that small business owner find somebody who can offer them a reputable company to insure their business. Hopefully that's A-rated for a reasonable price.
It doesn't have to be the best price or the cheapest price,

but it needs to be fast.

And that's what we pride ourselves on

is taking them through the journey

as fast as possible

so that it's just a good experience

for all three stakeholders.

And if we can do that,

then as investors in the company,

the money will follow.

Yeah, yeah. I think that's good.
I think that, Kim, you had said, you know, constantly addressing friction points. This to me seems like one of the key aspects of a growth oriented business.
And whether it's an agency, a carrier, an insurtech, you the business is in our particular industry, it does seem like someone who is in more of a stasis or a lifestyle state, they've kind of hit that point where their personal income is great. Again, not knocking.
One of the characteristics is they stop addressing friction points. They start saying things like, this is the way we do it.
Our clients may appreciate the way we do it, which is fine, but we're not doing it a different way, even if it's easier, right? This is how we operate. And one of the things I've heard on this show from interviewing and talking to individuals like yourselves, you know, hundreds of times now, it's, you know, just an internal culture or a personality characteristic or whatever that just, you, you, you can't abide a friction point.
Like you may have to deal with it for a period of time, but it like bugs you. There's like something inside you that says we can do that better.
I might not be sure yet how, I might not have the technology. We may have to build something, find a partner, whatever.
But man, it bugs me that that happens here every time.

And we have to fix that.

We need to remove that friction.

That feels like a fairly ubiquitous characteristic of growth-oriented cultures and people in general is that they just, it just bugs them.

Having friction in their business just bothers, unless it's purposeful, which sometimes you want to have purposeful friction.

But that is often not the case.

It just bothers them.

And that's a really good point. So one of the things, you know, I want to take these last 20 minutes or so that we have together and start to look at and just talk through is you know, and these are the, these are the questions I get is, you know, I don't, I don't want to get into not things like lead quality or whatever, but like, how are you finding the partners that work with you are the most successful? What are some of the characteristics? You know, like I always say to people when they call me about you guys, like I say, look, you know, you're going to write business.
Like if you work with these guys, you're going to write business. One of the very first things that I think everyone that you, and then again, this is me talking to whoever's calling me is you have to be able to answer the phone.
Like a lot of what I've found is that a lot of agencies, a lot of agents, a lot of producers, especially today. And especially if they're part of Gen C, the worst generation that they just don't want to be on the phone.

Like they don't want to be on the phone. Like they just,

this phone is like, they're like allergic to it.

I shouldn't say the worst generation, the worst generation at phone skills,

the worst generation of phone skills, just to be clear.

I'm sure they're perfectly fine people.

And that to me is like, if you can't answer the phone and do your job over the phone, you know, that seems like a pretty, in a lot of agencies, the phone will just ring into infinity or it rings to like the principal's cell phone, who is on the golf course three days a week, or they turn their phones off from noon to two for lunch. And I know you can like set up these triggers and stuff, but it's like, like you got to have a good phone game, right? I mean, that kind of feels like step one and, and tell me if I'm wrong.
Uh, but then what are some of the other characteristics that you're seeing of successful partners that if I'm sitting here and I'm going, geez, you know, I've been considering these guys for a while. Like, what are some of the other successful things that you see partners doing when they work with you to write more business? Mark, you want to start with that one? Sure.
Yeah, well, I'll start with from an advertiser perspective. So your agencies, brokers or carriers who are purchasing risks, the best thing that they can do to be successful is making sure they provide us with an appetite and spend the time to build an appetite for the risks that they want to write.
One characteristic that's unique for Tivoli is that we not only will ask for filters that include state, class, line of business. But we also start to drill down in specific questions that are important to that advertiser, the agent, broker, carrier, kick out questions that may be important to them.
For example, if it's a landscaper, there's some buyers who don't want to work with landscapers who carry ladders that are over six feet wide because they're probably doing more than landscaping. There is a segment of that.
So that's a filter that we allow advertisers to buy. So taking the time to build your filters within the campaigns and not just providing us with a list of states and classes that you want to write.
Maybe if you're a generalist and you're successful with that, that's one way to do it. But I would say the best way to build a profitable book is to give us filters that are going to protect your loss ratios.
Is it years in business? Is it revenue? Are they kick out filters by class? I don't know. It depends on whatever the specialty is for the for the advertiser.
And then as it relates to our publishers, the groups where we that we work with to purchase leads, you know, we we it's not a secret that we generate a lot of our traffic through declinations that come out of insurance carriers. So the you know, these old school carriers that have in the past been able to say yes to those who they can write a market for, but they say no to the balance, which is usually a pretty large number, providing them with a solution that allows their agents to say, I don't have a market for you today, but I have somebody that can help.
Whether they're giving out our phone number or they're doing a cold transfer or a warm transfer, they're at least offering that small business owner an opportunity to find what they're looking for. And that generally leads to building a relationship that allows us to be on the front line.
So there are many insurance carriers, brokers that we actually answer the phone on behalf of the company. And we do all the triage work up front.
What does that do for the company? Well, we answer the phone in four seconds. So, you know, some of those companies have over, you know, 10 minute hold time.
So they're missing tons and tons of businesses in that back to the experience standpoint. Nobody likes to be hold on hold for 10 minutes and then put through an IVR system.
And so that's a, that's a, you know, that is a solution that makes our, our publisher insurance company successful is, is off, is offering them the ability to answer calls in volume, as well as, you know, you'd be amazed at how many insurance companies, brokers, even agents will purchase web leads and they don't call them for one day, two days, three days. So they've crazy.
Sometimes groups will put us on the front lines to do that work for them. That's not where we make our money, but that's how we make our partners successful.
And that's what puts us on the front lines of, of some, you know, what we're told are some of the best leads in the business. Yeah.
I'd love to get your thoughts on.

Oh yeah. I'd, I'd, uh, I give our leads and how, and how we, um, probably should have talked about

this prior to this, this interview, but you know, just how do we stack up against the,

against the competition and, you know, what can we do to continue to improve our business?

Yeah. Well, I'd say, you know, in, in full transparency to everyone listening and you know what can we do to continue to improve our business yeah well i'd

say you know in in full transparency to everyone listening you know um we we pay thousands to tivoli every month because we get good business out of it i mean i think the proof is in you know i read uh i read uh something the other day uh don't listen to what someone says listen to what's in their portfolio, right? Like, you know, we pay money to Tivoli every month for leads. And we have, I think, two very targeted niche campaigns.
And then we have one like mass buying campaign that we run. And we do that because feeds our producers.
I've talked, I talked before on the episode that just you and I were on Mark back in the, back in the fall around how one of the, one of the ways that we use Tivoli as well is to feed new producers leads to kind of test their metal, right? Get them going right off the bat. Here's some, here's some, here are some qualified, ready to go opportunities.
You know, if you these up, then we know where we need to train you.

Not like we kick out the door, but now, you know, we get to hear them on the phone in

real time, addressing someone who has presented a need, who is actively on a call.

We have the backup data.

How do they ask the questions?

How do they frame our business?

How do they, you know, solve problems?

Like, what are they doing?

And then from there, we feed a couple specific niches that we have. Because to me, it's just constant activity, right? Like the game, you know, the unfortunate part about buying leads in general, we'll just say as a general sense.
Buying, you know, I like that you call them buying risks because I think I would classify what we get from you as more than leads. Leads are kind of like this might work.
What we get from you guys are it's yours to fuck up kind of. It's more if that makes sense.
So, you know, what I, you know, if we're talking about lifetime value of a customer, then first year ROI to me, uh, is, is not as important. Um, the reason that I, and then the other thing too, is when we're buying a lead, let's say, let's say I pay you guys, I'm just going to just pick up a number.'m not going to hold, you know, I don't want everyone to say like, this is what they all cost, you know, whatever.
Let's just say buying a lead from you costs a hundred bucks. Let's just say that for purposes of conversation, let's just say, bam, I buy a lead from you a hundred bucks.
It's a live, you know, call. Hey, we have, we write those landscapers.
Hey, we have a five person landscaper with 1.5 million in revenue on the phone. They need GL and workers comp.
Can you help them? Yes. Boom.
Okay. We just paid a hundred bucks for that.
Now I have a producer talking to that person. Okay.
So that's the cost. And what a lot of agency principals in particular, not carriers, some of the larger entities will see past this, but what a lot of people who struggle with the value proposition think is that's a hundred dollars out of my pocket.
And now I'm talking to this person. Okay.
Well, what they, what they fail to think about when comparing those types of opportunities versus all others is the time and material expense that goes into generating other types of opportunities. So let's say I go to a networking event, right? And I'm there for an hour and it's 20 bucks to get in.
And I buy a beer at the bar and it's an hour of my time. That math is most likely more than a hundred dollars, right? If I meet someone there and then I want to do business with them because now we're going to connect on LinkedIn and we're going to do the back and forth on scheduling our first call or meeting.
Then we're going to do the get to know you meeting and gather the info. And it's like when you stack all that up, now we're talking hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in terms of time and spent getting that opportunity in the door.
Now they might have not bought that opportunity, but they're not thinking pound for pound. Wow.
I just got all of that for a hundred bucks in the snap of my fingers today with the person on the phone ready to go. So we close on the opportunities that we don't mess up and we mess them up.
We have some training stuff that we're working on. But when we're really cooking, my personal close ratio was just north of 60% and we're currently close to 50% at rogue risk.
So I want to get us back up over 60. And I think we can be as high as 75.
If we, we need to dial in some markets, you know, one of the things that I was saying, I'm not, I don't mean to be selling you guys. I just, this is what we do all day is the way that I think is like, I mean, I think about this for all campaigns.
So I think of Tivoli. So do everyone at home realize I think of Tivoli like a campaign there.
I have many different streams of leads coming into rogue risk. I think of them all as campaigns or projects.
And each one is set up a little different. So for for us to be successful with Tivoli, what we found is dialing in the appetite and the dials to a particular carrier.
So, like, we're going to be launching a transportation one with you guys soon.

We do construction and contracting just in California right now because we have three carriers in California and two producers that do contracting and construction in California, which is very hard to do. And so we don't have as much competition.
And in the competition we do have, we have experts taking the phone calls and we have all the markets that we need to be successful. Those do very, very well.
I think where people get hung up and again, the transportation one will be geared towards cover whale. So we're going to be gearing that call campaign towards what cover whale needs to be successful so that the leads that come in, the ones we answer the phone for, fit their appetite so that when my transportation producer takes that call, there's less of a chance of it not fitting that appetite because we're setting Tivoli up for that.
So then our mass campaign is kind of the same way. We continue to tweak and dial an industry, maneuver, remove an industry to set up for like, you know, our big three, which are travelers, Hartford and nationwide.
Right. So like a great American a little bit to just give great American shout out.
So, you know, we're, we're setting up for those guys so that those leads that come in, when we, when the leads, we get the questions we ask, we know they fit the markets and we're going right to market with what we hope. And our biggest, we call them STMs, shit that matters.
Our number one STM in sales is one call closes. As our one call close number goes up, our cost of acquisition, our return on investment goes up.
That's, there's a very clear, my brain's not working. Very clear relationship.
Sorry. Wow.
I've done that. I promise I've talked on that radio before.
A very clear relationship between one call closes and return on investment. So that's a very long way of saying, if we match campaigns to carriers that we want to write business with, we put producers with expertise on those inbound calls.
And then we tweet the dials, appetite, size, whatever geography to match what that particular producer's expertise is and the carrier they want to write more business with, you will be highly successful. 62,, I think, north of 75% close ratio on these leads.
That's my personal take. It's great to hear.
I bet your underwriters love you. They don't, but we're getting- Well, the fact that you're dialing in and your hit ratio is so high, that makes their job a lot easier for sure.
You need to add some for a raise. The hard part, this is a completely off topic, but our underwriters, we have a love-hate, have a love-hate relationship with us mostly because they don't know how to handle us.
Right. They're so used to like, they're so used to having relationships with traditional local agents because we're not big enough to be thought of as like a new front or a sage or a renegade or one of these like mega digital agents.
So we're, they were like in that in-between phase of they kind of want to put us in a local agent box, but at the same time we operate like one of those big ones. So like these underwriters are getting hit seven, nine, 15 times a day.
And they just start feeling, I went through it for years and eventually it'll, it'll, it'll start to snowball. Yeah.
Well, they all say the same thing. As soon as you hit a million, we start paying attention to you.
So, okay, we're on our way. Um, so yeah, so that's kind of been our, our, our process.
And again, just, I don't want it to be, you know, just, just like that. What I just explained to everybody, that's how we set up every campaign for every, that's how we set up stuff for SEO.

That's how we set up stuff for, you know, paid ads.

That's how we set up stuff for referral partners. We do it all.
We, we match producer market to lead source, and then we create a campaign around it. And it's kind of how we think about it.
Wow. Interesting.
Yeah. So I don't know.
I think it's like, it's almost like thinking about it, like niching a generalist agency. We are very much a generalist agency.
Like the, the way I explain our business. And again, I don't mean to talk about rogue so much, but the way we explain, I explain my business is we're, we're, if you ever watch gold rush, I don't know if you guys have ever seen gold rush.
I, for some reason that show just speaks to me. I don't, I have absolutely no idea why.
Um, but it hit me one day that, that what we're trying to do at rogue is be essentially the gold shaker deck, right? I don't know if you've, you know, you see basically they take these big, huge goops of pay dirt, which is shit and good stuff mixed in the gold being the good stuff. And they throw it all on the top of this shaker deck.
And you guys can't see the hand gestures that I'm doing at home right now. They're amazing.
But like the, you know, that gets blasted with these big jets and then it gets blasted with smaller jets. And then it shakes out the big rocks through big holes and then it falls down.
And then there's holes get a little smaller and a little smaller and a little smaller until the gold comes out the ass end of this thing. And that is what ultimately we're trying to build with Rogue in the various versions of our business, both at do-it-yourself, a select team, and a premier team, is that I just want to find every avenue I can for opportunities, throw them in the top of this shaker system, and then have the gold come out the bottom wherever it needs, wherever it's most appropriate based on the customer experience and the needs of that particular customer.
So, you know, that's, and you guys are a big part of that. So, yeah, it's great to hear.
Yeah. My, when we were running our agency and even today, my mind was deadliest catch.
So same concept. You might go fishing and catch nothing and, you know, it's going to be a really cold winter, but you know, when you, when you do, you put it through, you know, the same, same process.
So, yeah, it's, it's interesting. So we're kind of at our number.
I would love to leave you guys with like, if I'm listening at home and wherever I'm listening, most people probably don't listen to this at home, but if I'm listening and, you know, I'm, you know, a lot of people 2023, they're trying to hit it hard. I think we're all finally out of the COVID mentality.
I think we're all kind of whatever it's going to look like firing on all cylinders for the new versions of our business. These quasi remote, whatever, wherever we're going.
um you know i see for for for the agencies that are ready to go you guys are are a big

can be a big part of their success these quasi remote, whatever, wherever we're going. You know, I see for the agencies that

are ready to go, you guys are a big, can be a big part of their success. And I think both as growth or, and or a foundational layer of consistent sales, right? Which I think a lot of people don't think about.
I think they only think, Hey, I want to grow. I'm going to go buy some leads.
Well, yes, that can be the case, but I tend to think of you guys almost more as a consistent base, right? Like I can count on this many leads coming from Tivoli every week. And if we hit this close ratio, I know there's just a base layer of business we're going to do every month.
Bam. Here it is.
You know, it's between X number and Y number of premium. And, you know, we buy more, that number will go up.
We, you know, as long as we keep buying it, we know we're going to be right in there. And that's really, really important to success.
And so, so if I'm thinking about it, like, like, you know, who, who is the perfect, let's, let's go maybe just, just think agent agency. You know, what would be just a great case? You're sitting there and if you look like this or you're thinking this whack, give us a call today and you know, we're going to, we're going to get you there.
Kimberly Kay, I'll let you bring us home. I just think it's anybody we've got, as Mark said, we're getting 80,000 small, medium business partners, leads, risks every single month coming and looking for somebody who can write a policy.
And if you write commercial insurance policies or connected to that, you fit. You can come in and customize it to your point, create the campaigns, create the filters, create the bid price that makes sense for your specific goals.
You can set daily limits. You can set hourly limits.
You can day part. So you're looking for commercial insurance, businesses, partners, leads.
We're a great fit. You can just go to tiddly.com.
You can go down to the footer, commercial insurance leads, and we'll follow up right away and help get you set up. Awesome.
I will also say, I'll just toss this out there. Anybody who's listening that has questions and wants to ask me before, hit me up.
I'll be completely honest. I'll give you the good stuff, the bad stuff, the stuff that where the mistakes that we made, how we've optimized over time.
You know, we've been using guys for, I mean, it's going to, I think the spring is when I, when we started or maybe even a little before then. So we've been buying leads from you guys for a while.
So you know, we're coming up on almost a year and we've learned so much. So happy to answer any questions everyone has.
You can DM me on LinkedIn or wherever your favorite DM place is. And happy to answer those questions too.
But tivley.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com. Go to Tivley.
And is it okay if people want to connect with either you on LinkedIn? Is that cool? Awesome. Awesome.
Awesome. Well, hey, thanks, brother.
Yeah, looking forward to crushing 2023 and being a partner with you guys and I wish you nothing but the best yes sir good day same to you let's do it thanks close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call this is the exact method we use to close 1200 clients in under three years during the pandemic no No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast.

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