RHS 144 - Todd Thams on Delivering Max Value to Your Clients

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show.
Today we have Todd Tams on the podcast for an absolutely tremendous conversation on all things independent insurance, talking about being a true value provider as an independent agent, what that

means and how the technology company that Todd has launched, Mod Advisor, is changing the game for what independent insurance agents can do from an advisory role, from a value added role beyond just advising and placement of insurance. But how do we become even more? How do we do more for our clients? And ModAdvisor is the tool that is helping independent agents take on this challenge of needing to add additional value.
I mean, guys, there's going to come a day when simply selling an insurance policy just isn't enough. I mean, it's barely enough today.
And tools like ModAdvisor are helping you be true value providers for your clients. Excited to have Todd on the show, one, I just love Todd and love his mindset and the way he thinks about things.
I also always enjoy, similar to a couple episodes when we talked to Zach Mefford, you can go back and listen to that one, when independent insurance agents become technologists. I feel like these types of projects are very interesting.
Sometimes they're misguided, but sometimes, and particularly in the case of Zip Bonds for Zach Mefford and Mod Advisor for Todd Tams, are just tremendous projects that are so dialed into what independent insurance agents need, the way they work, the way they think. They're perfect fits for our ecosystem, and they're the exact type of tools that I love to share with you guys.
Before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to today's sponsor and that is Podium. P-O-D-I-U-M.com.
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All right. With that, we're going to get on to Todd Tams.
Dude. Dude, what's going on? Not too much, man.
What's up? Just drove back from Des Moines today. Had a couple meetings, hanging out with you.
You got lots of stuff going on, it looks like. Lots of stuff.
Yeah. Yeah.
I also just got back from one of the longest haircuts of my life. Usually takes about 20 minutes to get my dew chopped.
And the woman who normally cuts my hair, she's in Florida. And I got a couple of things going on this weekend.
So I, I was like, Hey, I got to get freshened up. Who do I go to? So she referred me to this guy.
And he was like, one of those old school barbers who just wants to literally cut every hair individually. And like, it's great.
He did a great job. Happy.
He's super nice. We're wrapping Yankees, wrapping, you know, whatever.
It's all good. But I just, I'm like, my God, this is, this is like an endeavor.
Like, like, I feel like I, you know, this is, this is like a major commitment to come over here and get your hair cut. How long does it take to cut your hair? It's like 12 minutes.
I mean, my girl takes 20 minutes.

I mean, usually takes a half hour because we bullshit a lot.

I've known her for like my whole life and she's funny. But it could easily be 15, 20 minutes tops.

This was a 47 minute haircut.

So I'm flying home going, oh my God, I'm now going to be late for our call because of this haircut.

But I mean, I do look fresh though.

Talk to me.

I see Rogue Risk got acquired by SIA So talk to me, I see, uh, I see rogue

risk got acquired by SIA. Talk to me about that.
Yeah. Uh, just another, another step in the ladder to world domination.
Um, long story short was, uh, uh, we, we, I took a look at our growth curve and basically the math was it would be five to seven years, that range before we got to execute on what kind of the mission and the vision for this agency has been. From a customer facing side, it was the whole idea of a human optimized agency to better serve our customer base.
And from an internal side, it was this concept of no ceiling insurance career for the people that work here, right? Like, I don't want your last name to determine how far you can go in a business, in this business, at least. And those two kind of, I think they run parallel to each other.
Those two goals, one being external, one being internal. When I took a look at how long it would take to get them there on our own, it's five to seven years.

And in my opinion, that window, I was worried the window of opportunity would close in that time period for us, for this opportunity that I think we have today. So that's why in September, August and September, I started taking VC meetings.
I did 57 total VC meetings and got a hard no from every single one. Mostly because we don't create proprietary software today.
That was pretty much unilaterally the reason. And I said, wait a minute, you should be happy that I'm not building proprietary software.
I run on such a low budget relative to our peers in the digital space that allows me to hire people and implement our process incredibly much faster, which we can put back into marketing and branding and grow. They don't give a shit.
All they cared about was if you're a service business, you're, you know, you're, it's X EBITDA, you know, whatever percentage. And if you're a tech business, it's X revenue, this, and that's all they cared about, which I get it.
That's their business that that's fine's fine but it was a hard no so it's kind of going through that and uh I bumped into Masiello at a Arizona event uh Arizona SIA event because he had just he was kind of doing his tour from his purchase of purchasing out his dad with the leadership team, the PE company to kind of

recalibrate SIA. So he was doing his rounds to talk about the new vision and direction and all that kind of stuff.
And I was there doing a keynote that got bumped from 2020 when COVID hit. And we started wrapping and having a couple of beers and solving all the insurance industry's problems.
And he, you know, explained that they had a gap in their ecosystem. And I said, what if you didn't have a gap? And he said, what do you mean? And I said, everything you just described is rogue.
I mean, we're early, but like, that's what we're doing. So we had a few more conversations and soon to make sense.
And I got to know them a little bit. I mean, this has been seven months in the making, really.
And I got to know them, got a really good feel for them, got a feel for what I think they're trying to do, who they are, where we fit, and figured I can get to where I want to be in five to seven months versus five to seven years. And that math just made too much sense.
So that was the deal. Well, very cool for you.
Congrats. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I got to make good on all the bullshit.
I, I pitched them, but, but, but yeah, you know, it's cool. It's you know, I still own a part of rogue.
You know, I still, you know, so still, still,

still very invested in the company. You know, this is not like they buy me and in two years, I'm looking for a new job.
You know, that's not really the way I'm going into it, at least, you know, obviously life changes, but it's. I had a, I had a demo with one of, I don't know if he's one of your employees.
Brendan Malackey. Let me see.
When was I at the Better Agency Conference? Let's see. It's not the Better Agency Conference anymore.
It's the Agency Success Conference. Scott Stevens.
Scott. You had Scott Stevens from Rogue? Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It wasn't at the Better Agency Conference, though.
You guys did a Zoom call. We did a Zoom call.
Yes, you might have been. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was Scott, yeah. He liked it.
It didn't. It didn't go that well.
Oh yeah. He said, he goes, I feel really bad.
The first like 20 minutes, all my technology was broken. He's like, he's like, I think I looked, I didn't look that great on the call because it, I couldn't get anything to work.
Um, we finally got connected though. Yeah.
But no, he said, he, he, he said he really liked the tool. And I think, you know you know once we get we got a lot of like transition shit that we're going through and um you know i think we're i think we're gonna end up signing up with you guys for sure he they're they are you know him scott and will on my team they're workers comp middle market prospecting all day long and that's what they do so he don't like to do computers.
I don't want to do this stuff. Can you do it for me? And I said, absolutely not.
I said, we, we made it pretty easy. Let me show you how easy it is.
And I think he finally got it by the end of the call. Yeah.
All of that is true. He does.
He does not love computers, but he is very good on the phone uh that's all you need yes so computers and phone yeah yeah he's got he's like um he's one of those guys who if you talk to him you would not be impressed like from a sales perspective like you wouldn't be like oh this guy's a sales killer but he somehow he has this ability and I've listened to like his calls and I've been on calls with him. He has this ability to like make people feel very comfortable talking to him, like very quickly.
Like, you know, he's got a military background, he's got some different stuff and he can kind of relate to a lot of people. And he just, all of a sudden you're like, I just, people just start telling him everything.
And, um, you know, that's a very unique and, you know, good skill for a salesperson. So yeah, he's, uh, he's an interesting cat.
Very cool. Very cool.
What's going on with you, man. I see, uh, I see my advisor all over the place.
I'm so happy for you. It's awesome.
Thank you. Thank you.
It's been a, it's a fun ride. It's been a fun ride and continues to be a fun ride.
Yeah. Broker tech ventures, right? Did I see that? Yep.
How's that going? What's that? How's that going? How's it going for you? So we're, we're two weeks out of broker tech ventures right now. Made a lot of great connections there.
And from what I understand, the way the format works for the two days we were there, I mean, it's back to back to back meetings, networking events, all this stuff. And then out of that, they each respective agency partner goes back to their organization, discusses who they want to work with.
We're getting some emails coming through right now, but I think next week it'll be pretty much formal as to who wants to help partner and accelerate our growth yeah that's great i did uh i did one of those things with uh wisconsin university of wisconsin madison had a uh had a had an incubator event like that and it was kind of sponsored or put on by american family and i did that did the thing did that whole thing and one wanted, no one wanted to work with us. They're like, we're sorry, but no one sponsored you.
I was like, the American family, they're out and about, I want to say. So we just got back from the global insurance symposium and they had a tech night, how I bet there was 30 or 40 tech startups there.
And I remember talking, I can't remember the woman's name, but I remember talking to somebody from American family who was just there checking out all the insure techs. Yeah.
Yeah. They got to, I mean, their operation is crazy.
And I was talking to somebody the other day, I think it might've even been for the podcast that, you know, I think we as an industry forget because they're not as, they're not IA focused particularly that, or at least not their main brand that they're like the 300 largest company in the country, not just like insurance company, but like, they're like one of the top 500 companies in the whole country in terms of, if you look at their total portfolio that they own and all the sub brands and all the stuff that's underneath them, they're enormous. And we all just kind of like pass them off as if they're not really a big deal.
Or I think a lot of people do. Yeah.
Well, you're telling me something I didn't know. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Well, I thought, you know, that being, you know, that's your part of the world, right? I mean, west of where I am.
So all you people know each other out there, don't you? Well, I mean, for, I'm just not paying attention to size of companies, I guess is what I'm saying. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's a small world. It's a very small world.
So what's got you excited, man? Like what's, what's, what's going on? I mean, I know you're plowing through with all the stuff with ModAdvisor, which is awesome. It's great to see the brand getting out there more and more.
And I want to learn more about Modivisor for the, for the show. I mean, I know you were on before, but just in general, like what, what's, what's on your coconut? What's exciting? Is it just, is it just your, your head's down and you're, you know, you're not, you know, you're not seeing anything else or, or is there anything that's got you kind of on fire a little bit? Uh, I'm well, I'm certainly fired up about Modiviser and all the fun things that we're going to be doing.
Yeah. Um, I mean the beginning of 2022 has been absolutely crazy, uh, peaking with getting selected into broker tech ventures.
Um, there's, there's nowhere. If you spent the last two years calling the 30 largest insurance brokerages in the country and said, Hey, I want to talk to you and pitch you an idea.
You wouldn't get in the room with the people that were in the rooms at these meetings. Yeah.
And, uh, they're so committed to, I don't know, building on the technology, but really improving the experiences and the value ads that they have for their clients. And apparently we fit one of those molds.

So a lot of great conversations that came out of that conference.

I'm excited to see who we're going to work with in the future.

And I think the direction that they want to see things is going to be, it's going to be

huge and it's going to be very interesting.

And I can't go into all of that right now, but where we're going to be at next year versus today is going to be, it's going to be very interesting. And I can't go into all of that right now.
Yeah, yeah. But where we're going to be at next year versus today is going to be, it's going to be amazing.
How do you like being a tech founder? I love it. Really? I know that's a short answer to a long question.
I love building tech. I love the struggles.
I love taking, I guess if you look back over my life, I think I'm a builder. It's not necessarily a tech founder, but I'm a builder.
We build things. And I think you build things too.
And you know, my first job was in the restaurant industry. We built that up, won a bunch of awards, came back to our third generation family business, built that up, grew a book, and then started into what do I really like to do? And I really like work comp and how can I build upon that? I'm not so much interested in talking to, you know, having the day-to-day conversation about what med pay limits should I have on my auto insurance.
It's like, let's talk about work comp, let's educate, let's help agents nationwide. And we've got users from the one person shop to, you know, the top 20 brokerages in the country right now.
And they all want to improve on that experience. And they want to help convey ways to reduce costs, ways to improve risk management.
And I love, I love having those conversations because we're building something that actually is going to make a difference in people's lives. And that gets me excited every morning.
Is there any part of it that you don't love? What do I not love lately? The travel schedule. Yeah.
I mean, you've been there, done that, but there's a conference every single week you can go to and you don't know which ones you should miss, which ones you shouldn't miss. We've got a couple more coming up and then I'm intentionally taking the summer off.
Cause I think we just need to wrap our, I need to wrap my head around our focus. I need to put some ideas on paper and get our roadmap for the next 12 to 24 months under wraps.
Yeah. Is, um, how, how does leading a tech company different differ from leading say an agency just, you know, for, for a lot of the people who uh you know they've never started a tech company they're only familiar with the agency business like what are some of maybe the nuances that maybe some are obvious maybe some aren't so if your question is how does running uh our third generation family business tam agency, differ from an insure tech, the clientele and the expectations?

I mean, we're located in rural Iowa.

People walk in our door.

They pick up the phone and call.

They're not tech savvy people.

I mean, it's just good salt of the earth people.

They want to meet in person, meet face to face, and they want to walk in and have you solve their problems.

On the tech side of things, people are completely OK just sending an email. You get back to them the next day, doing things over Zoom.
I mean, we cast a much larger footprint than we do with our brick and mortar operation. Do you see any advantages in the local face-to-face handshake that are lost in the digital or the virtual transaction or in the tech transaction in general? Personally, I'm a networker.
I love to meet people face-to-face. You and I meet face-to-face.
We have a good time. We talk in person.
It's great to talk to you on Zoom, but it's just not the same. not the same yes it is not the same no yeah so i love getting out there i thoroughly enjoyed the conversation that we had well fuck now i'm gonna forget what fucking conversation was oh it was the san diego uh san diego uh iowa conference remember we had an awesome conversation in the in the in the bar that uh i don't even remember what the fuck we're talking about i just just remember walking away from it and being like, ah, that was a great conversation.
I enjoyed that. I can't even remember what it was.
I just remember I have very fond memories of that in-person conversation. It's funny how that works.
You know, you know what that was, oh my gosh. So that, that was 2019.
Yep. And, um, I, I don't know for, I don't know about you, but I think that was kind of a turning point.
I remember we had a dinner that night or one of those nights that we were out there. And I think, you know, that was the beginning.
Crothers was at the table. You had Mike McDonough at the table.
You were there. Cass.
Yeah. Who else was at the table? Shoot.
Now everyone who's listening to this that was at the table, we're sorry. I know I'm trying to.
Chris Green was there. I guess I remember because you sat across from me as I recall.
Yeah. And I sat next to McDonough and that guy with what he knows in California for work comp was just amazing.
And that's how most of our conversation went that night, but that was the beginning of David Carruthers and killing commercial. That's the beginning of rogue risk.
That's the beginning of mod advisor and direct work comp. If you look back from 2019 to today, like it's pretty wild to think about that movement that's come out of that.
That is, that is that table launched a lot of stuff. And I remember the hard part was Carruthers was one end and McDonough was at the other.
And basically, we were all there to meet and hang out with those two guys because we were all comp guys. I was launching Rogue on comp.
Comp is our number one. 52% of our book of business is workers' comp at Rogue.
I mean, I don't talk about it as much on this podcast, but we've never slowed down with our comp thing. comp things so like you know we were all kind of there to hear what caruthers had going on and mcdonough and they're both that want to so remember everyone just kind of like their head snapping to one side oh yeah the other side and and it was oh that was kind of funny how that worked that was probably one of the longest dinners i've ever had because normally we you know we go we eat we get up and we leave.
And I bet we're there for two and a half hours and it just went by in the blink of an eye. Yes.
Yeah. It's, it's almost like one of those things that you would want recorded not to share, but just to like, listen back to it.
Cause it's like, there's no way to retain all the conversations that were happening and they were all so valuable and everyone was being so open and upfront. And, and I remember leaving going, McDonough is a maniac, but one of the smartest MFers I've ever met, especially when it comes to this stuff.
I mean, he was just the things he was saying. I was like, I didn't, you know, I mean, you and I are both guys who really enjoy insurance beyond just like the face value.
And there was, there, it's rare, at least rare that someone will talk about things or concepts I've never heard of. Maybe I don't necessarily understand or spend a lot of time with them, but like he was talking about relevant things that I had literally never even heard of before.
And I was like, holy shit, this is crazy. Like he is, he's literally sharing a lifetime's worth of value.
And, and everyone was just trying to vacuum up as much as they could. That was that was a lot of fun.
That was a good dinner. I think it's rare.
I mean, certainly there are workers compensation experts all over this country. It's rare when you find somebody that has that knowledge, that's also vocal.
And that's also just willing to share. Yes.
For free. Yeah.
And that's, you know, one of the rare things that you find in a Mike McDonough or a Crothers of what he does with Killing Commercial. Love those people.
Absolutely love them. Yeah.
That was a great meeting. It was.
I enjoyed that entire conference. I got to meet a bunch of people for the first time.
I only knew digitally, had a lot of really great conversations. I enjoyed that.
But I hadn't, to be honest with you, I had never really thought about how many now, you know, well, you know, now very relevant businesses were launched outcome kind of right at that time, like people were kind of gearing up, and they kind of came out of that, that play. I didn't thought about that.
That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool.
And then it happens. And it's interesting, I credit my entire path to IAOA.
I remember, you know, so we started building direct work comp and I want to say 2017, 2018, something like that. And I went to, we had to go to the big eye rural agents conference in Des Moines, Iowa.
The end of the day, there's, you know, all the rooms, everybody's having drinks and appetizers and you stand around and you, you talk about what's going on in rural Iowa. And I left that hotel that night, the next day I hopped on a plane and I went to my very first IOA, which I don't know if that was San Diego or Vegas.
I don't remember. Yeah.
But I walked out there and I just was like blown away. And from out of that has created intentional action, network connections, certainly you.
That's how I met the guys that runs at Bonds. They're from Iowa.
And I just walked in their office one day. I said, hey, I'm Todd.
We're in the same group. Let's talk.
And we certainly hit it off. Yeah.
Let me guys. Um, but there was a lot of forward thinking people.

Yeah.

It it's funny.

Um, so I, uh, yesterday I interviewed heirs, uh, for the podcast and we were talking about, um, you know, we were talking, we were talking about conferences because he was talking a little bit about the last better conference and how they're changing the name to agency success because they want it to be bigger and all that. And we, you know,

we were just talking about all that stuff and we were talking about elevate

and elevate 2017 and 18,

the conferences that I put on back in the day and how you know elevate 2018

was, was great. And that was kind of the launching point for say like

neon and some of the other projects come out of there.

But 2017 was kind of very similar to that San Diego IOA for me, where like, you just had this moment where a certain group of people got together who was, who were ambitious, but also friendly and caring and willing to share and supportive. And like, you have these like touchdown moments where, where all of a sudden, just the right group of people get together and you leave it going, wow, I just met 10 people who I now will, who will help me, who I can ask questions of.
And I had a very similar feeling from that, whatever that was 2019 or 2020, whatever it was, IOA conference, just coming out of there, all of a sudden, you know, like McDonough now, you know, he helped us set up our entire nurse triage program. Right.
So for free, spends three different hour long calls with me and helps us set up that process for us. Right.
Which, you know, that's three hours of his life. He's a busy dude.
And for him to, over the course of like a couple of months, spend that time with us to get it right.

Like that, that's really special in my opinion.

And, you know, it only comes by sharing the same air.

That's the only way that you get that.

Well, that's, that goes back to meeting in person.

But a guy like Mike, he's going to share anyway.

And we, we wouldn't have the connections that we have today if it wasn't for conferences like that and social media and Facebook.

And that's how we talk to all of these people all the time.

It was actually 2020.

That's when the last time we had a conference.

It was January 2020.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because after that, then we shut down the country and you launched.

Yes.

Yeah.

I'm going to.

Hi, everyone.

I'm going to wait till the peak of COVID craziness and I'm just going to launch this business out into it. That's a great idea.
No, it's it's funny. You know, well, I don't want to go down.
I've kind of made a I've committed myself into the audience that I'm not going to go political as much anymore. There you go.
Well, let's change the topic then. I want to.
Trust me, I want to. I talked to an insure tech payment processor last night and they are just crushing it.
And he was like, we were, they've been around for five, six, seven years, something like that. And they were doing good.
And then when COVID hit for them, it accelerated everything. And so they're in banking and insurance and finance and, you know, COVID as just like zoom, right? Zoom exploded because we couldn't meet face-to-face anymore where they do everything electronically.
Well, I mean, everyone forgets that before COVID, Zoom was like thought of as like this janky, like second rate, like you didn't, you didn't really use it. Like it was, it was like the, the cheapos video conferencing thing.
And now it's, you just Zoom. I mean, you just, what are you going to do? You're going to do zoom.
I actually refuse to go on WebEx now. If I have a carrier that says we're going to do WebEx, I'm going to be like, nope, nope, nope.
I can't get it to work with my setup. Something doesn't work.
The mic doesn't work. The camera does.
There is always something that's broken for no reason. And then it screws up all the other programs on the computer.
You're like, no, thank you.

No, thank you.

I'm not a stupid guy.

I don't know why it is that I can't figure out how to use WebEx.

No, you're not stupid.

That's just terrible software.

And anyone, I've told, I literally, I had a carrier reach out to me.

And we were talking about doing an appointment.

And I'm actually very interested, but I kind of had to put it on hold for obvious reasons,

the SIA thing and stuff.

But they did a WebEx. The first one was a WebEx.
And I didn't want to. I didn't want to.
They're like, for security reasons. I said, whatever.
What's security reasoning? Like, we can meet in a coffee shop and have a conversation. What is so secure that we're talking about in a marketing meeting? I have no idea.
It doesn't matter. It wasn't these people.
So I didn't want to give them too hard a time. These guys were doing their job.
And you know, they didn't, they're not the ones that chose WebEx. So I was trying to give them a hard time, but I get on there.
And the very first thing I say to them, cause I just couldn't help myself. I was like, just so you know, I am currently judging you based on the fact that we're on WebEx.
Like I'm hardcore judging you just, just, just so you know that if we're, if there's a tally, this one went into no tally because we're using WebEx right now.

You know, it was funny.

One of the guys kind of laughed.

The other two women were kind of like looking at it like, is she serious?

I was like, well, I'm only half joking.

Not really, but yes.

What's up, guys?

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I'm out of here. Peace.
Let's get back to the episode. So, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, so, so let's, I want to talk a little bit about Modivisor. Yeah., because it's on your brain too.
It's a big part of what you're doing. And three, because what I've seen now with Rogue, right? We write in lower 48 where we've written, we've actually written policies in 39 of the 48 states.
We have risks in 40 something of the 48 states. And we've basically written policies that are $200 and we've written policies that are $200,000.
So I look at that. And I talked to my team all the time about what they're hearing, why they're, you know, what's going on.
And what I've taken from it is that digital consumers demand or are, have the expectation of just as much consultation and advising as an in-person local consumer does. They can, they can take it on multiple lines of communication.
It doesn't have to be all in one. You know, like if someone comes in for 45 minutes, you're going to dump all your advising on them in that 45 minutes, right? It tends to be more broken up over a series of communications over a series of time.
But that digital consumer expects the same quality service and advising if you want to retain them that a local consumer does. So my point in that preamble is that I look at a tool like ModAdvisor and what you're doing and as someone who also focuses on workers comp, to me, this seems like a necessity as we digitize, having a tool like ModAdvisor seems like a necessity if you're going to be a true advisor.
Do you think that that's accurate? Do you think it's kind of misrepresenting? No, I think you're right on the mark and you're 100% accurate here. If you're going to be the broker that is going to be the consultative broker, right? And your client has problems, they've got problems on their workers' compensation.
They've got claims. They're paying more for costs.
The last thing they need is another quote. I mean, I get that we rush to that mindset.
Let me quote your insurance. Let me quote your insurance.
Well, that doesn't solve the root cause of the problem or the high mod. And so our whole focus at ModAd show, let's identify the problem in a format that's easy for your clients to understand.
And that's the feedback that we're hearing. They're like, you've dumbed down the mod so much.
It's super easy for us. And whether you're in construction or manufacturing or transportation, they get it.
I mean, we're showing reports in simple green, yellow, red, everybody knows what a red circle means that it's not good or stop. Right.
Um, so a lot of what we hear from, from our users and their clients is it's so simple to communicate to their clients what the problem is. Well, then how do we help? That's where we've got our resource library.
We're solely focused on things like return to work programs. And how do we help agents help their clients solve that problem and pay less for insurance.
So back to your point, if you're going to be any type of a consultative risk manager, and it's hard to do that on the small accounts, right? You need to have some premium size in there. You're going to need some type of tool to help educate your clients and your prospects.
And then I'm amazed. I had a conversation with an agent the other day that was like, he, he told me that I didn't know what I was talking about because in their state, they don't use experience mods.
I said, do you sell work comp? And he goes, yeah, 30% of my book. I'm like, there's a, there's an experience mod everywhere.
And this blew my mind. Some people are just selling out there on price.
They're not actually even doing the consulting work. Yeah, I would say, I don't, I actually don't think most are.
I think that, you know, we, so one of the facts that I've quoted many times on the show recently and I will continue to, because I think it's very important, 32% of the business that we get, because we get, everything's inbound for the most part. You know, we have our team that are hunters, but I don't really count them.

You know, I, what I look at is what's coming in because I think it's more represent representative

of the market because these people have a problem and they're actually seeking help,

right?

That's why they find us.

32% of the market is not, is that, that comes to us.

32% of the opportunities are broker related. They don't get back to us.
We don't get good advice. We never hear from them.
They can't help us. They won't help us.
Won't help us is a, is a big one. It's probably like five or 6%.
That's crazy. Won't help us like, nah, we don't do that.
Nah, we're not interested. It's crazy.
So what I take from that is everything you just said, I've seen validated in what comes into us is these digital consumers are not just looking for prices. Obviously, some people are and some people do lead with price, but that's not why they're buying from us.
They're coming because they just want help. They want someone who's going to treat them like an adult, walk them through their policy in a timely manner and get them something that they can use.
And too many of us are just quote, throw the quote out in an email and then go, ah, these people are just price shoppers. They're not just price shoppers.
You treat them like an a-hole. That's why they came to you for advice and you treated them like a transaction.
And to me, anything that differentiates you as an advisor, one is better for the client, which should be our first priority, but two, absolutely separates you from everyone else. So here's the interesting thing.
You and I both sell insurance for a living. I have zero control over the price, as you all know, zero control over the claims experience.
But what I can control is what's in my head and how I help my clients. The price that's reflective of that is either I charge a consulting fee or it's going to be what the insurance company charges that I recommend that you go with.
I'm totally okay if they don't go with me. I'm totally okay if they price shop, go have your problems.
But I guarantee you when you have those problems and you start paying more and your current broker maybe doesn't have the experience, that's when you're going to come back. And then we're not going to have a price conversation.
We're going to have a, Hey, I really need help. Can you fix this for me? And that's where that's, that's where you're going to build that long lasting relationship and show the value of what you do.
This might sound like a lot of left field question, but what is your take on policy fees? And here's just a little bit of context. We have had an internal discussion as a way to pre-qualify leads.
So we basically go subscriber, lead, suspect, prospect, client. That's our process.
Subscriber is someone who we're aware of, but has not shown interest. Lead shows interest, suspect, qualified market, prospect is going through the quoting process and client, client.
Okay. So we've actually discussed internally, this is not something that we have in place today, but we've discussed throwing a small policy fee on every policy above $5,000 in premium for the sole purpose of weeding out people who don't appreciate or aren't interested in the advisor characteristics from lead to suspect.
$5,000 might be too low. This is a hundred percent, just a mental exercise.
It is not something that's even on the roadmap, but it is something that we've had a couple of conversations with, as we've talked about how, how do you get the customers that you want from lead to suspect? And I'm just interested in your take on that. I think that I don't know.
So there's two things here. I think education, I mean, create your marketing funnel with education.
I think that's the best way to attract people and move them through the pipeline. Just provide value and provide help.
And they're going to seek you out and find you. I know that we do a lot of, you know, there's a lot of gimmicky marketing tricks and we're going to pound you with emails.
I'm going to give you the best piece of advice I've heard in the last three months. It's from a tech founder.
And he, we were talking about spam emails and he says, here's what I do. I create a rule where if I receive an email with the word unsubscribe in it, it automatically gets deleted.
No more spam emails. And I mean, if you look at your junk email, like there's everyone trying to move them from suspect to lead and just by hammering on them and getting them to buy and Hey, most of the people don't want that.
They're not seeing it. I just had a demo with somebody today said, I'm not going to call and harass you whenever you're ready.
Call me back. It doesn't sound like you're ready today.
And that's perfectly okay.

Figure out what your process is, figure out the target markets you want to go after

when you want the resource to help advise those people will be here. But outside of that,

I'm not going to harass you. And that's just, that's not a sales model that I've ever really

bought into hammer and tell you buy. Yeah.
What was the other

part of that question? No, no. The policy fee part that was, Oh, let's talk about policies.

I totally think our system is broken nationwide and agents should be able to charge a fee for

whatever they want. Yeah.
That, that, so here was my thought. Here was our internal conversation

because I'm not sold on policy fees and they're not, they're not legal in every state, but our

two biggest States, which are California and New York right now, um, you can charge policy fee. So the internal discussion went something like, uh, so we're getting 300 plus inbound leads a month.
Um, that's more than our team can handle. And one of our biggest pain points is the lead to suspect jump, right?

We have a lot of people

that we're treating like suspects

who shouldn't be.

And we're trying to get better

at filtering that.

And we're developing some process

around that internally.

And someone mentioned,

what if we charged a policy fee,

which was like a minimum of $100

or 1% of the premium,

just something,

just don't hold me to what the numbers are. But that was kind of the concept with the simple point of not that we care about the policy is not meant, although it would be a revenue channel, it was not meant to be a driver of revenue growth.
It's meant to be a, if you're willing to pay a hundred dollar policy fee, then you're mentally bought into our process and, and, and, and are, are committing to us. It's essentially like signing a letter of engagement to a certain extent.
And what did we, you know, where, where did we fall on that? And again, we did not come up with, I don't want, everyone's going to be like, I'm going to get a whole bunch of messages from this. And I would love everyone's feedback.
Just understand that when, sometimes when you refer to me, what I hear in my brain is, that's what I hear when I see some of your responses, but, but I don't, I still appreciate them. Um, but like, you know, so we're not doing this, but it was just, it was like, how do you get them to commit to you? Because every other, especially for digital brokers, every other digital broker can't break 40% retention.
You just look across the board, right?

Like Goldman Sachs just put 200 million into new front.

New front's retention is like 40 something.

So, you know, it's great.

They're amazing at new business acquisition, but they can't keep that business.

Or at least that's the word on the street.

I want to have local independent agency retention and be a digital agency.

So we'll say 80s.

If I can crack the 80s in retention as a digital broker, we will do very, very well. To do that, we have to be better at the business that we bring in.
And that's where some of these ideas have started to percolate. And I've thought, okay, what are the tools? Like a mod advisor? That's why I had Scott reach out to you.
You know what I mean? Are there tools that we should have that can help us be better advisors? Are there systems that we can put in place for qualifying leads? Like, oh, I put all these things in the same larger bucket, different segments of that bucket as we start to think, how do we, when someone goes from a lead to a suspect, how do we, how do we do that better? Because that's the jump where you make the mistake. Suspect to prospect to client is easy.
Lead to suspect is where a lot of people make mistakes and they don't even realize.

Yeah, that's a that's I don't know that I have any advice for you on that. Fuck, Todd, I thought you were going to solve your problem.
Come on, man.

No, I thought you were talking about policy fees.

I think there's so many agencies. I am.

I'm interested in a lot.

I just want to charge a fee sometimes because the account's so small that the level of service

that we need to provide, like, I understand that you might want our service. But on an $800 policy, the whole thing, maybe we end up putting more money into that thing than the commission check that the insurance company writes.
You do. And so it's negative for us.
In the state of Iowa, where we're at, you can't charge a fee if you're also getting commission. And I think at the end of the day, we ended up doing a disservice to our clients and our policyholders.
And there's not enough conversation around charging fees the right way. And if the customer is willing to pay it because they want the level of service, then I don't know why we need the state to regulate and say, you can't do that.
Yeah. Well, Democrats are the reason, but, um, you know, I think that the, um, you know, the, uh, for some reason, when you become a Democrat, you forget math, like math, you just don't understand math.
It doesn't, it doesn't work anymore. Anything that involves numbers, you become, your IQ drops about 20.
But I'm completely with you because what ends up, even though I get the bleeding heart mentality is, oh, they're already paying a commission. Why should they also pay you this? And you're like, well, here's why.
We don't make any money. So they get shit service and they get put to the bottom of the barrel and we don't reshop them and we don't take their calls and we don't answer their emails and we don't do anything because we're losing money every time we work with them.
Right. And I think that there are some ways through automation and outsourcing and self-service to, to, to get some of that margin back, but it is razor thin, razor thin.
That's, that's a big part of why Rogue has a dual strategy of select, which is 25,000 premium under and premier, which is larger commercial and middle market. Wouldn't it be great if everything was just net neutral, no commission, then you just override it on the top.
And then you have to justify what it is that you're doing. And for example, you come in and say, Hey, here's a digital experience that you're going to have.
Here's all the tools and resources that's going to make your life easier. So you don't have to spend 45 minutes on the phone with the insurance company.
What's that 45 minutes of time worth with you? Yeah. I don't know.
Well, what you just described is called capitalism. And again, Democrats don't believe in capitalism.
Let's just give everyone their insurance for free college insurance. We'll make airplane rides, teslas we'll just make it all free he doesn't pay tax we should just think everyone should get a tesla you get a tesla and you get you get a tesla yeah i get i went political i'm sorry everybody i'm sorry democrats are people too we just should send them all to australia it's it's funny there's a there's a there's a young man in my office named cole that erin tam's agency that uh that runs our office office.
And every year he, on his birthday, he emails Elon Musk says, is this year I get a free Tesla? Elon has yet to respond, but maybe like five years in a row every day on the same, you know, that's sends that tweet out. It is, uh, yeah, I, I just, um, you know, I, I think that, I think that, I think your idea of idea of a of a of a net policy that then you get to dictate.
Now, I'm all for the transparency stuff. I think you absolutely should have to be we should why not have a standardized form for what you get paid, right? Like, I'm going to charge a 7% fee or a flat thousand, whatever.
You standardize that, right? And you make it so everyone has to sign it, every policy, every time, whatever. You know, you can look at the standardized form.
No problem. Make it transparent.
But it should be net, no commission, charge feed on top. And then the market has to dictate it.
Because if we're in the same market and you're charging 7%, and I'm just making these numbers up, you're charging 7% and I'm charging 9%, I have to justify my 9% to your 7%, right? And people are going to talk. You think people don't talk? People are going to go, hey, TAM's agency is just as good as Hanley agency and they're only charging 7% and not 9%.
And you might go, well, hey, we're going to go to 8% and then I come down to 8% and now we're competing head to head or whatever. I mean, that's how the system should work.
It also allows us to say, okay, you know, I get that you're a $500 consulting bop. You're actually going to give us, I can charge less for that because you're never going to call me once.
You're never going to need anything. You're going to auto renew every year with Hartford or Traveler or Chubb, wherever you're with.
That's easy, but you're a $500 bakery or something like that. You're a pain in the ass.
And I'm going to have to send out different certs and you're going to call me and someone's going to slip and you're going to light something on fire. And that $500 should have a $500 policy fee on it because you're going to talk and there's no way to dictate.
There's no way to handle that.

And like you said, it's such a, you end up just kind of shuffling those people back. Yep.
I don't disagree. Yeah.
So as much as you are willing, taking it back to ModAdvisor, as much as you are willing, what is the, what is, what's coming down the pipe? If you, if you can tease anything, what are some of the features that are coming or, you know, cool schmoogies that we're going to get here? We're going to see like, what, what should people be jacked up about? Why should they get on the newsletter dying? Although you just told them all to, to send your newsletter or whatever you send out to spam, um, which I don't necessarily think that that's a good idea. but, but, but, you know, what, what should they be waiting for? What should they be, you know, waking up every morning, breathless, waiting for you to announce, like, what is that? What does that look like? Well, so, so right now we're, we're finalizing the four remaining states.
Obviously, New York has a big change coming through with their workers' compensation, the way they calculate the mod September of this year.

That'll be next in our build-out.

So we'll be, in the next five months, we'll be entirely nationwide.

I am committed, I'm telling you, I'm 100% committed to making this software so easy for insurance agents and value patched with resources that we will, that will be the number one advisor platform when it comes to workers' compensation. And the, the, the priorities and the commitments that we have right now and what we're pushing through is all with that single intent.
And I hear there's a lot of frustration around duplicate data entry. And I think we intend to solve that problem and make it super easy for brokerages across the country to get lost information, payroll information, and everything in our system and do that quick and fast.
I mean, this shouldn't be a manual time-consuming thing. You shouldn't have three people running mod analysis for you on the back room, doing all the calculations for your clients.
And so I can tell you everything that we're going to do in the next 12 to 24 months is going to simplify that entire process and make it super slick. I love it.
It just, it shouldn't be this hard. It shouldn't be this hard.
Well, most of the stuff that we do in our industry shouldn't be this hard. I'm glad that there are people like yourself who have the balls to create these kinds of things because in, you know, male or female, the proverbial balls, not actual, you don't actually have to have them, but just, you know, that term because you're putting yourself out there, right? I mean, you could create this and it could blow up in your face.
And now all of a sudden you've taken yourself away from your agency and shifted your focus and spent brain cycles. And that's a big risk.
And I think it's amazing. And I give you so much credit and it's why, you know, I just love having you on the show and just enjoy our relationship in general is it takes a lot of guts to do that.
And I just couldn't be happier that, you know, you're seeing that success and you're getting some of the early payoffs in terms of like broker tech ventures and all the, all the publicity. I think it's, I think it's absolutely tremendous.
And you got a sweet pair of kicks out of it too, which is great. I got a sweet pair of kicks.
I've got, I've got a really nice mod advisor cup here. Nice.
Makes it all worthwhile. If your users are listening, I mean, we throw around the term for agents by agents, but I don't think there's any better of a group of people in this country that are doing things to improve the independent agent channel.
And I know we talk about some of the large companies out there and how they do things to get a return on VC money. And sometimes that's not always helpful to how we operate our insurance agencies or how other people operate their insurance agencies.
And everything that I do with ModAdvisor is 100% committed to the independent agent channel. If you go on ModAdvisor right now and you go under learn, you can request a resource.
And I just showed a guy, he goes, well, I want to go after trucking and here's the problems. Tell me what problem you have.
We'll build out resources to help you win that business. I mean, I don't know anywhere else you can go.
It's that they will, we will custom design you the content you need to help close accounts and actually help your clients reduce their total cost or risk. Yeah.
It's tremendous. Give people what they want.
It's not a hard concept. It isn't.
It is. And it seems to be at the same time.
Well, it's greed. I had this conversation with, with Raghav from Tarmica, Cause he's always plusing my chops because you know, his, and I, and he's great.
And I'm obviously an enormous fan of Tarmaca. I mean this only in, in just, he's an interesting cat and gives me a hard time, but like I, he busts my chops because I tend to, I tend to skew towards my vision and mission for what I want to build versus straight revenue.
Not that I don't like creating revenue. Not that I don't think revenue is important.
I'm not a socialist. I'm the whole thing.
I get it. But like, and he's like, no, you are in business to make money.
That's your goal. He goes, yes, you have to deliver value to make money or people won't buy your shit.
But like, you know, and obviously he's delivered a tremendous amount of value. But my point in saying that is, I think far too often companies hit a certain size.
You get someone into a leadership position or a board position who is wholly removed from the client set that you're trying to serve. And then all of a sudden decisions start getting made that are not in the best interest of customers.
And that is where we've seen problem after problem after problem, after, you know, all the, all, you know, you can line up the dozens of stories that we have of companies who started as, you know, you know, whatever. And then it just, I'm glad that you're sticking to it.
I'm excited for it. I think it's great.

And we've, you know, and the best part is, you know, if you do stick to this model of

four agents by is, which I believe that you will, I, you know, I just, it is proven that

if you can kind of last through some of the early days, man, there is a huge, huge windfall

on the backend and a lot of value to be provided.

So I'm just, I'm happy for you, man.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Yeah, dude.
I want to be respectful of your time. I appreciate you so much.
Thank you for this. Great conversations as always.
If someone's interested in Mod Advisor, where do they go? And if they want to just connect with you and be part of your ecosystem, where do they go for that? Modadvisor.com has a direct link to book my schedule. Certainly you can find me on LinkedIn, not as much on Twitter.
I need to get on that platform a little more, especially now that Elon Musk is super interested in it. Yeah, be careful.
And I just saw a headline today. I think he's got the money to buy it.
Yeah. I'm also on Facebook.
You'll see a lot of cooking videos on there if you follow me on Facebook. Yeah, if you have a hard time with meat, then, you know, like my

problem is that I don't have the grill skills. So I look at the shit you make and then I look at the

stuff I make and I feel like less of a man is the problem. It's, it's super interesting.
My, uh,

the, the senior developer on my development team, he's vegetarian, him, him and his wife are

vegetarian and I'm posting these, you know, big pictures of pork and meat and bacon. And, uh, you know, we had this conversation.
He's like, we don't eat meat, but we love what you're doing. And so he sends me pictures of, I just, I tell you in India, they make some pretty cool food.
And a lot of it is just, you know, how they prepare it and how it looks is absolutely amazing. And one of these days we're going to over there and meet him and I can't wait to eat all of his vegetarian food

and then come back and have a big old steak.

That's awesome.

All right, brother.

Hey, I appreciate you so much. Thank you again.
We're out of here. Peace.
Take care, Hanley. Thanks again.
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