RHS 141 - Raghav Tanna on Tarmika and World Domination

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Well, we want to welcome back to the show.
Today we have one of my absolute favorite guests, and that is Raghav Tana, the founder and CEO of Tarmica. Now, I've known Rags since maybe January or February of 2020.
I was introduced to him by Chris Paradiso and sat down in Chris's office in Stafford Springs and just immediately liked this kid. Just could tell that he had the right mix of understanding that, you know, where the industry had come from and what it meant to be an independent agent with the needs that our industry had.
And at that point, Tarmico was just barely getting off the ground. And he was telling me a little bit about what he was doing.
And I just was completely enamored by the idea, by him, by the way he was attacking it and by the people that he had surrounded himself with, which in my opinion were the right people to have behind you, kind of giving you advice and feedback and most notably, in this case, Chris Paradiso. So I want to give a huge shout out to Chris for introducing Raghav and I and just love the way Raghav thinks about the business.
I just do and I think you're going to love this conversation. Before we get there, I want to talk about our sponsors here on the show and the first is Tarmaca.
Now, Tarmaca, Raghav isn't on the show today because Tarmaca is a sponsor because even if they weren't, I would still have Rags on the show because he's the best. But Tarmica is a sponsor.
They have been since the very beginning of my journey here on this iteration of the podcast. And guys, if you haven't checked out and gotten the demo from Tarmica, you're missing something.
Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com.
Tarmica is a huge part of what we do at Rogue, a huge part of us scaling our business now that we're in partnership with SIA, and we're going to be pushing Tarmica to the limits of its capabilities, and everyone that's part of our ecosystem, whether you're a producer or a network agency, is going to be able to experience what Tarmica and the systems that we've built at Rogue have to offer. If you want that same type of capabilities in your office, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com today.
All right, let's get after this episode. Let's do some podcasting.
All right.

The best part about this is going to be all the really, really good content.

None of you motherfuckers are going to get to hear because I didn't have it on record and I just hit record.

So now we're going to do all the really boring stuff for you guys.

Like I'm ready for it.

Hi, Ragoff.

What's the best part of Tarmaca?

What's your favorite feature? I not gonna answer that i think honestly i'm i mean let's get into the good stuff so i want to talk about so this is my this is my personal take on the industry and i'm gonna i'm gonna run through this a little bit of context and then you you take you break it down because you are one of the smartest dudes that I know in this space. And as I said off air, but I will also say this on air, despite being just a pup still, you have an understanding of how the industry works that is better than the vast, vast majority of people.
So 2015, 2016, InsureTech hits, disintermediation, agents are going out the door, everything's going to be automated, we're toast, it's over. You know, I was one of the few people, one of the few loud voices on the other side saying that that's crazy, you know, innovation that has since changed, we've realized that's not the case.
Okay. So InsureTech in its first wave, certainly did not disintermediate us.
And it feels very much like whether this is Gen 2 or Gen 3, it's more about innovation, integration. That's amazing.
However, there is one, I don't know if we call it a technology or a channel or whatever that does actually, I'm not going to say it's going to disintermediate agents,

but I think it'd have a really drastic impact on the business as a whole. And that's the embedded insurance.
And the reason for that, and then I'll shut up, is that to me, what embedded insurance, what it presents to the market is it removes the opportunity for businesses to even get down to the level of a local independent agent. Like the business is already plucked.
They already, you know, whether it's through a gusto or a paychecks or a square for business or a, or a credit card, like American Express or whatever, they sign up for a service. And then all of a sudden, they're getting offered business insurance integrated right in front of them.
And they're off to some digital player before it even gets to the local level. That, to me, presents what I believe is a real significant, you know, again, my words aren't coming to me here, but, you know, a real significant impact on our space, something we need to consider is that you think that's legitimate? Like, where do you see this going? Like, am I completely blowing it out of proportion? Or am I not taking it serious enough? I just don't.
So yes, I think that's, I think it's a valid point. I think that is a threat to local independent agencies.
But I think the part that we're still so far away from is how many businesses actually want to buy down that path? There are so many small businesses in the country today, right? But how many of them are actually going to go from start to finish through that digital journey, you'll call it, through a digital agency and even a credit card company, for example, right? If you have that ability to buy insurance right online after entering all of your data and just passes through an API to us, to one of our carriers and back, and boom, there's your quote, you have no questions. You don't need to know anything else that you're ready to buy.
I find it hard to believe that there's enough of those people out there that make this business model take up 100% of small commercial. With that being said, though, there is a high enough percentage where if you're not an agency that's focused on marketing appropriately, growing your business in small commercial, focusing on the right coverage is the right clients, and you're just selling price, price, price, you're the one that's going to struggle the most with this new digital enhancement.
Embedded insurance is a buzzword. And I wish there was a different word we could use because I think too many people say they can do it.
It does not completely destroy the independent agency channel and it shouldn't. It makes people work harder and work differently to get small commercial business for their agency.
I think that's the piece that we need to focus on. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good way of positioning it.
So I'm going to, I'm going to put this back to you, this slightly different idea. I put this to the great and powerful Bobby Collies from Coterie.
And so if you go back and listen to her episode, you can hear the way she responded, but I want to put the same question to you. So when I looked, when I look at embedded insurance and what I see is a lot of new startup, young businesses, small businesses who are willing to do that fully digital, no questions asked, cool bind issue.
Okay. And a lot of people, you know, most independent agents will go, we don't want that crap anyways.
That's garbage. You never know.
A lot of them go out of business, you know, whatever. Okay.
And I think all of that is true. Where it does.
So, so not thinking maybe three or even five years from now, but maybe a slightly longer timeframe. If say a digital brokerage who is handling the business through an embedded functionality with a channel partner, you know, say like a square for business, we'll just use them as a talking point, right? Square for business.
Okay. So, and just to position this real quick for anyone who maybe doesn't necessarily understand when we're talking about embedded insurance, we're talking about you're signing up for a square for Business account or you're logging into your Square for Business account and maybe a widget or a pop up or something, an offer is presented to you where you're actually seeing, hey, we could write your insurance for this amount or if interested, click here and we can show it.
And that number is pulled into the platform so that we're not taking them to another place. We're pulling the information in.
That's a broad stroke. So my thought here is if that digital agency is scooping up all these young businesses, right? Today, what happens is I think those young businesses go to the digital broker and then we start to get sophisticated.
They seek out a more traditional agent. I think that's the way it's working today.
What I said to her was, is there a concern that eventually an agency, say like Rogue, like this is what we want to do, is they start to develop a graduation process where, yes, the first layer when you're new, young, small is a fairly automated, fairly more impersonal, more, you know, kind of do it yourself model, but they have an entire team that when you do kind of graduate is ready for you. And in that way, is there, could there be a cliff coming? I guess is what I'm asking where eventually those new young businesses stop going down as they get bigger and they just stay right where they are because they know it and they trust these people because they held their hand through the first two, three years of their existence.
So I think that's the ideal insurance workflow, right? Is if you're a small, young company and you go into an embedded workflow, you're going to buy a policy and we treat that policy is low-hanging fruit. It's a bot policy.
It's a GL policy. It's something super simple with no additional coverages.
It's kind of bare bones, but it just gets you in the door. We have a couple of partners right now on the embedded side that if you're creating a new entity, right? We have an entity creation partner.
When you're creating a new entity, it says, do you want insurance? You say, yes. What are you really looking for? You're looking for a GL policy for $500.
Well, that business grows and now you have five employees. Well, now you need workers' comp.
Is that digital partner that we partner with on the agency side going to get you a workers' comp policy? Because if they don't, then you're going to go elsewhere and go find that workers' comp policy. But if you can trust those people, that agency that's behind our embedded solution, because we're not, we're just a tech company, are they going to sell you workers' comp? Are they going to help you decide whether you need cyber? Are they going to help you with professional? Are they going to help you with everything else that you need? And if they do that, you're never leaving.
They created that digital journey. They got you in the door.
They kept you from their service. So it's a combination of two.
You have to adopt the digital

journey. You have to keep them with service.
And I think the reason why you see all these insure tech carriers with a retention rate of 41% and 50% is because they don't do the second part. They do the first part really well.
And then the second part is brutal. amen this is this is my.
I love, like I saw a new front get what? 200 million from Goldman Sachs. I'm like, this is awesome.
Do you know how much business is now available in the market? Because they're going to fuck that up. You know why they're going to fuck up? Because Goldman Sachs and all the other VCs involved in that business are going to go, your margins are too high to have US-based, American licensed professionals servicing that business.
So because those individuals are too expensive, you need to take that service overseas. Now, this isn't an anti-VA thing because I think VAs have a really important role.
But if you have an account with any level of sophistication, and you don't have someone who is based in the United States, who is licensed, talking to that person and actually giving a shit about their account, that person is going to leave. You know why? Because 32% of the new accounts that we get are not people just finding us on Google because they're starting a business.
They're people who's their response, why they're reaching out to us is because their current agent doesn't get back to them, doesn't do the thing, has never talked to them since they wrote the business. Like 32% of the leads we get are because other agencies suck.
That's incredible to me. So I think you and I have had this disagreement before on a general premise of founding a company, raising money, selling the company.

And I think Lemon and I have had this disagreement before on a general premise of founding a company, raising money, selling the company. And I think Lemonade was the kind of the figurehead that we argued about.
Newfront's in the same boat, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. What is the goal of Newfront, right? The goal of Newfront is most likely to make a lot of money.
And I don't know the owner of Newfront. I don't know the CEO of Newfront.
I've never talked to them before in my life, but in my opinion, that's the goal. Well, if that's the goal, don't you agree that the margins need to change? Don't you agree that they should be going on? Okay.
Two different discussions. If we're talking about maximizing owner and investor value, a hundred percent, that's a hundred percent.
I am different because I don't give a fuck about money. I like money, but it doesn't matter to me.
I want to have, I want to create the unicorn digital agency where all these other fuckers, they can drive their yachts. That's great.
Cause I'm going to have a nice, my boat might be a little smaller. My lake house might, I might have to Airbnb my lake house a couple of weekends a year, but I'm going to have enough money, but I'm also going to have, I want to have the gold standard digital agency that not only can do all the front end shit that these guys can do, but then has the 80% retention on the backend where I want clients tattooing rogue risk on like under here, that really sexy spot that chicks get it like right on their ribs.
I love that when they get the cursive on the ribs, like right here, I want rogue risk tattooed under there with like, uh, if Ryan Hanley was here right now, I, you know, like that kind of thing. I'll make you a deal.
If anyone in the world ever gets that tattooed on their ribs, I don't, I don't know. I'll have to buy you.
You'll buy me a barrel of whistle pig, barrel of Whistlepig whiskey. This isn't a sponsorship, but as you can see, it's always on my desk.
There's always bourbon on my desk just in case. I have a bottle of Basil Hayden's in the living room, premier stock that I got for my two-year anniversary from my team that I'm waiting for something special to crack because I just can't wait.
No, so generally, if it's on my desk and it's 4 o'clock and I've had a decent day, I'll take a sip. If I've had a bad day, I'll take a whole glass.
But no, the premier digital agency is going to look like this. And this is my opinion.
So it's, I mean, it's subjective, right? You said you weren't going to say anything interesting, but this is good. I'm taking notes.
This is, this is completely subjective. All right.
You need to embed yourself into places where people already trust the brand. And that is cases like Gusto, like you mentioned.
It's places like Toast. You trust your point of sale system.
You trust that provider probably more than you should, but you trust them. So when they say, do you want insurance? It doesn't matter who the agency is on the back end, as long as that agency is servicing you properly.
If you trust them, you'll buy. Once you buy, you did nothing.
Rogue Risk did nothing to get them to buy. Toast did.
Gusto did. Square did.
Why can't you service them properly? So all that matters now is that you retain them because you didn't have to do anything to sell them. They did it all digitally.
You have to find a way to focus on retention. You're not spending the cost of acquisition for that customer should be relatively low.
Probably have to pay square a referral fee, pay toast or referral fee, whatever it might be. It's retention.
And how do you retain that customer? It's still customer experience. It is still being digital.
It is still touch points. I think you need to make 30, 40 touch points per customer to make sure they feel heard

and feel wanted, right?

You have to do that because you have zero.

You have zero touch points when you sell them in a digital world.

There's no actual human interaction touch point.

It's the servicing part that there's touch points.

So the ideal digital agency, you don't sell at all.

Your partner sells. The third party point of sale sells, the finance company sells, the credit card company sells, you retain, and that's all that matters.
Yeah. I don't think you're wrong.
I think you're a hundred percent right. I mean, this is, this is, well, you know that I completely not only agree with you.
I think that this, the whole game. And I guess my point, and look, all the power to New Front.
I mean, they put an incredible amount of premium on the book. So it's fun to take shots at the guys who've done really well.
But the truth is, I do think that there is a misconception over what service means and how important it is to the business. And that's where I think when I talk about that, it's not really to knock them as much as it is to say there is an opportunity in the space because I know for a fact they don't do a very good job of servicing because we've written accounts away from Newfront.
And the reason across the board is can't get a hold of them, can't service what I'm doing. Haven't heard from those kinds of things, but, and that's not to take a shot at them.
I, I, I promise I'm not trying to take a shot at them. It's, it's that I think there is a hybrid model where you can use, call it a filtering system.
I like to think of it like, have you ever seen the show? Um, uh, uh What's the name of the show? They mine for gold up in Alaska. Gold diggers, gold diggers.
This might have been before I was born. No, it's still on now.
It's been like 17 seasons, you son of a bitch. So whatever it's called, the gold digging show.
For whatever reason, I enjoy watching these, these yahoos dig for gold. I don't know what it is.
I just enjoy it at the end of the night, whatever. So, um, so, so they have something, um, they have a, uh, uh, wash plant they call it.
Right. And that wash plant, how, how all of them work, they're all different, but essentially how they work is they throw a whole shit ton of stuff into the top and they got these spray engines and they spray it.
And then they got all the big rocks fall through the holes and the little, or the little rocks fall through the holes. The big ones get filtered out.
Then they spray it again and more stuff gets filtered out and they spray it again and more till you get to the last stage where the fine pieces of gold get stuck in a mat and that that's how they get the gold. But my point is, when I think about the service model that a digital agency has to have, and obviously we're talking about different gold mining and digital, but is that there is a triage mechanism.
There is first layer automation, second layer self-service, third layer virtual assistants, non-licensed employees, fourth layer you get to what I believe you should have, which is American licensed, someone who can be like, I'm in Jacksonville today, you know, whatever. I think that that still matters.
But if we can layer and triage that system, and if you can have the tumblers in place to make sure that you're not, you're spending only as much on service as that particular account and case needs, right? If you think about it that way, then that to me is how you're able to keep your costs as low as they can possibly be on the service side while still maintaining the highest level of customer service. But how do you find that? How do you find that out? Right? How do you know what they want? How do you know what type of communication that customer wants? So I think you ask them, you ask them, you provide them with options and you watch and you have to analyze what's actually happening.
But that's again, that brings in this other layer of more data, more technology, more analytics. Bro, isn't that what AI does? Like, let's just throw AI out there.
I don't know what AI does. I think it's fake.
You just smather some AI on it and it solves all these problems. Generally, what I've heard on all other podcasts, so I think I know how to talk on a successful podcast.
You're supposed to say all the buzzwords. So if we say AI, if we say embedded insurance enough, if we say data analytics, I think this podcast will skyrocket.
View count goes. Yeah.
We just got to keep repeating. No.
Honestly, though, if we ask the customer, this is what digital agencies don't do is they don't ask. How do you want to talk to me? Do you want to call me? Do you want to email me? Do you want to text me? Do you want it to be a robot? Do you want it to be a chat bot? Who knows knows? If you don't know the answer to that, your retention won't be 80%.
That's for sure. And it's the onboarding survey.
It's a simple onboarding survey. And I don't like, I don't want to talk tools, but I will say I had a really interesting conversation that actually just released the same day that we're recording this with Andrew Darlington.
And Andrew's been on Salesforce for 10 years. And I recently made the switch to HubSpot.
And what I was talking to him about was the system doesn't make the process, right? You have the process and then you build the system around the process. That being said, when you have the right systems, they can help you adapt and actually expand your processes in a really positive way if you're able to not chase them too far.
And one of the things that we've been able to do at Rogue is implement something that a lot of local agents do. A lot of local agents, as part of their onboarding, when they sign an account, will ask, how do you want to be communicated with? Text, email, phone? It's pretty straightforward.
And many of you listening are probably like, duh. Yeah, of course I asked that question.
Many of you don't, but many of you do. And like HubSpot is a very simple thing.
Account closed two days later or one day later or whatever. You know, I can't remember what we set it to.
They get a simple survey. It's like three questions.
And one of them is, how do you want to be contacted?

And we tell our salespeople, you tell them that email is coming.

And you say, look, it's really important.

It's three questions. And the reason it's important and we want you to answer those questions is because that's

how we're going to communicate with you.

And like, we're just getting off the ground.

So I have no numbers to back it up.

But like that kind of stuff, when you have the right systems in place, actually pretty easy to do. Take it a step further, right? It's not just that that's how you're going to communicate with them.
It makes you better. And that's what you want to tell them is it makes us better for you.
Yeah. We know that you didn't talk to any of us when you signed this, but now that you're talking to us to bind this policy, we're going to be there for you.
How would you like to communicate? How would you like this to happen? And if you actually follow through with that, retention stays about 80%. I've been on the agency side, right? Like, I know that side.
I know that world better than I know this side. I mean, Tarmica is not really second nature.
The agency side is second nature. I understood that because my dad, I grew up in his agency 20 years, right? You got to know what they want.
And if you don't know what they want, it's not going to work. And I think that's the combination of embedded, digital, and all that stuff.
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Peace. Let's get back to the episode.
Yeah. The other thing too, and this is for, I think just not different or separate, but just part of the same conversation is one of the things that we've really tried to work on, haven't always done well, but are trying to get better at is setting expectations with people, right? A lot of frustration, a lot of people switching.
We find a lot of people who switch to us because we do do a very good job of tracking why people come to us. And a lot of it has to do with just, I didn't know what was going on.
I didn't know who to contact. I didn't know.
I didn't know. And it's like, from that, you know, I've taken and we've started to do like, just tell them what's happening next.
Just that's all you got to do before you get off this call. Just if it's nothing is happening next, we're done.
It's concluded. Let them know that, right? Like if there's something else that has to happen, say in three days, you're going to get an email from the carrier.
Here's what I need you to do. I'm going to follow up, but I just want you to know that's what's next.
People just want to know what to expect. And when they look out in the ether and they have no idea what's going on, they get they get antsy and they make change.
that's sales 101 though. It's not just selling insurance.
It's just selling. Tell them what to ask them questions, ask them probing questions, find out what they're looking for and tell them what's next.
You're assuming this is a sales business though. It is.
If you're in a business and I know know you said earlier you don't care about money,

but if you're in business not to make money, then you should not be running a business. Yeah.
Well, I'd like to reframe that. I'm not in the business not to make money, but I would have a very, I personally, and this is probably a failing of mine as a CEO for sure.
I would never want an enormous paycheck and someone to say, yeah, but look at how shitty that thing is that you have, or yeah, but you cut all these fucking corners over here. And when, you know, I would know it's not that I even care that they're saying that it's, I would know that I cut corners just to make money instead of delivering the best possible thing that I could and make as much as I could delivering that best possible thing does that make sense what I'm saying to you I don't disagree with you I don't disagree with y'all but I will add you play golf right I do play golf yes does anyone ever know how your ball got on the green two feet from the hole or do they they just know it's there? If you birdie a hole, if they see your scorecard, did anyone ask you how you birdied the hole? This is my point.
Let's say I, so the lowest I've ever shot on a legit 18 hole course is 82. Let's say I shoot an 81 and I foot wedged one under a tree.
I shot an 81 and everyone's like, you all that's fucking amazing. Your best score ever.
That's great. But I know I foot wedged it.
Now we're talking about cheating and lying. That's two different things.
I mean, a legitimate round of golf where you put your entire effort in, it wasn't perfect. The way you got there wasn't the way you wanted to.
Every once in a while, you had to take take some risks or you failed or broke whatever that stuff for sure but you played a little round what if all right so let me try i'm taking this golf analogy all right what i'm saying is i think there's a course over here it's it's a it's a golfer's course very very challenging if I to shoot, my best score on that course is a 90, right? There's another course over here, also an 18-hole course, also a private course, good shape. My best score is an 82.
If I shoot an 82 here, that's great. If I shoot an 82 over there, I'm a fucking baller.
Like, I'm not a baller shooting 82 over here. Now, 82 is an 82, right? I can tell you my best score ever is an 82, but if I want, if I want to get my 81, I ain't getting it over there.
I'm getting it over here by playing the easier thing, you know, wide open, kind of flat greens. Aren't really that undulating, although they are fast, You know, this course over here, I can drive the ball 280 down the middle and I still got a freaking three wood to the green on most holes.
Like again, though, right over there. So that's the masters, right over here.
You're talking about the waste management. How much more money do you make from winning the masters and the waste management? So it's still different because it could be harder.
You could have to work harder to get to that point where you're shooting 82 on the harder course. But if you do it, people know that that was the harder path.
So again, that's, I want the masters win. I'll take the waste management win for sure.
Take every win, but I want the masters win. You take every win along the way.
I will. The only thing is I hear too many agents say, Oh, I want to help people.
I want to make them feel better. I want to do this.
No, you're running a fucking business. You want to make money.
You helping them as a by-product of you making money. Yes.
I agree with that. I agree with that.
I think that's, that doesn't, that's why the new front, right? The point of new Front is to make money. And I know you're not shitting on them,

but the point of New Front is to make money.

The point of Lemonade was for Dan Shriver to make money.

Well, guess what?

He did it.

I know.

He's also a douche though.

I don't, I've never met him.

I just know that he made money.

And that's what I care about.

Because he ran a business.

His goal was to make money.

It had to be to make money.

And I respect people that set out.

They make money. They do it the right way, which is they ran their business, they grew their business.
And you guys can't see me, I'm doing, I'm doing rags is right in air quotes, the right way, right, right, the right way to me is that he didn't go to, he didn't win the lottery, right? Like it's not, I want people to make money by working hard.

Well, there's no doubt that they worked hard.

Yeah, I agree with that.

That's the right way.

That's why I don't want to take,

I don't take anything away from what Lemonade did.

I guess what I'm saying,

I don't want to take anything away from these companies

that have grown super big, right?

Because I haven't done it.

So I would be an asshole to try to criticize them.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is though,

Thank you. that have grown super big, right? Because I haven't done it.
So I would be an asshole to try to criticize them. That's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is though, it would bother me. It would bother me.
I don't know why. And again, this is me being a podcast.
Now I'm kind of feel like I'm being a podcaster. It's a fucking hate.
I hate being a podcaster. But like, it would really fucking bother me if I did all that work that he did and launched that thing.
And yeah, he made a shit ton of money. That's great.
And it's never made a dollar. Their policies are a dumpster fire.
They're, they're, they're, every investor who invested after the, after the IPO has lost money. Like, awesome.
Like you made a shit ton of money and that's great. And you work super hard to get there and you deserve every penny, but that would suck if that's your fucking legacy.
That would bother me too. I want to build a successful business long-term.
I want to make sure that everything's working properly. I don't want my stock.
If I went public, I wouldn't want my stock price to plummet. That's not what I'm saying.
You also have to be, if you're going to invest in something, you should know better. You should look at those numbers and say, okay, that doesn't make sense long-term.
I blame the investors for that i don't blame him he did a great job he built a good company went public the stock price went to 180 i'm sure he sold it at 180 come on i hope he did what he was supposed to do and i think the number one you're a capitalist i'm a capitalist yeah i'm yeah point of running a business no matter what is to make money. The reason we got into embedded insurance, we have this entire agency tool that's doing great and we love it.
The reason we got into the embedded insurance, A, because we could and B, because it makes more money. It's something that people aren't doing properly.
No matter who says they're doing it the right way, they aren't actually embedding insurance into anything. They are creating a lead funnel.
That's very different. Yeah.
You need to be able to buy on the glass. You need to be able to complete your entire flow on the glass and you need it to run through someone that can handle digital capabilities.
That's it. Yeah.
Well, I think, well, you make a lot of good points there. I, I guess what, where I go, where, where my brain was going was the legacy part is I would hate if I would hate to do all that stuff and then have to, and then, and then, but your legacy is you're really good at making money.
Not so good at building a business that people that actually, you know, people give a shit about. I completely agree.
I guess that's the dichotomy that I that I have there. But here's the other side of it.
Those dudes have done things, you know, I mean, you're going to be there someday, this thing's gonna sell for a billion dollars in a few years. So you're on your path.
But for me, you know, I never I I didn't build a company that went public yet. So like, I think for anyone to take shots beyond, I think the, a very trivial

legacy conversation would be, would be being insincere because if anyone could sign up for

Daniel Schreiber's ride, you know, the ride that he took, they would fucking sign up in a heartbeat.

I mean, that's my point though. This is, this goes way past insurance though.
There's all these

Thank you. ride, you know, the ride that he took, they would fucking sign up in a heartbeat.
I mean, that's my point though. This is, this goes way past insurance though.
There's all these people, there's like little keyboard warriors on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. And they're like, you know, I'm not getting into this stuff, but they're shitting on companies where billions of dollars for making decisions that are going to drive business to them.
There's this whole Disney thing going on right now, right? What Disney did was smart because they didn't piss any – they did exactly what they were supposed to. They stayed politically correct.
They tried to stay politically correct. Guess what? If they didn't do that, all the people that go to Disney, a majority of people that go to Disney, would have stopped going to Disney because it would have pissed them off.
They made a business decision. They had nothing to do with the politics around it.
They don't give a shit.

They wanted to make a business decision that made them more money.

That's every decision that's ever made.

The NFL does it all the time.

You kick someone in the head.

You don't suspend them

because if you suspend that person,

you're going to lose money.

Right?

And this is what capitalism is so great.

So you have Disney do their crazy shit, which people are yelling at him about. Right.
And, and again, and I'm with you politically, I kind of disagree with what they did, but, but it's my view of America is they get to do whatever the fuck they want. So that's fine.
What I love is then you get, because capitalism is amazing and this is the greatest country in the world, the daily wire, who's this conservative fucking, i mean i like ben shapiro but you know what what is the daily wire compared to disney now they're like positioning themselves as like a competitor and i'm just like that's just amazing like it is amazing that we live in a country where this absolute behemoth that's been around for what 75 years 80, 80 years, can make a decision. And then this little company over here can position themselves as if they even have a fucking chance.
It's just amazing. I just love it.
It's the greatest thing in the world. But with capitalism, you got to remember people are in it to make money.
So not everyone has the same morale or the ethics that you're talking about. Sometimes you just want to make money and it doesn't matter.
I wish I do think, and I've said this before, and it's probably why I know none of the 54 VCs that I met with me actually invested in me, but you know, you know, I think they could probably sniff the, like he won't knife his own son to get this thing across the finish line vibe from me, but, um, you know i think they could probably sniff the like he won't knife his own son to to get this thing across the finish line vibe for me but um you know that that that was the thing is that like i i i just like i have this vision for what is possible and it's building it's building what i think is possible more than just dude if i wanted to build just a business that was worth a shit ton of money, it's not, it's really, it's really not that hard. Like any of you out there who are listening to this that are struggling with lead acquisition, it's the easiest part of the fucking business.
The fact that you can't put business on the books is insane because putting business on the books is not hard. Putting the right business on the books, that's going to stick with people who are actually going to make you money over the long term.
That's very difficult to do, at least today. And that's the game that I'm trying to play.
But like the acquisition game is the easiest game out there. There's no easier game than the acquisition game.
Embedded SEO, buy leads. There's a million cold, there's a million fucking ways to acquire business.
And it just boggles my mind that people have such a hard time getting business in the door, like at a broad scale. I just never wanted to be probably wrongly from a personal wealth perspective.
I just never wanted to be, I wanted to have, I want to get to that, but I also want to retain it 80%. That's what I want.
You're trying to build a legacy. And it's very different than what a lot of people are trying to build.
And I will say at some point, I will sell Tarmic 100%. I've never been shy about saying that.
Yeah. And I'm not doing this for 20 years.
I'm not doing this to change the world. I'm doing this because I think it was a useful tool for agencies.
I think we helped, but I also want to make money. And I am not,

I want it to be done the right way though. When we do sell, I want people to say that we built something that actually helped them.
I want to make money on it, but I want that first part too.

I don't, I don't, I won't settle for anything less. I think the good news for you is man,

like it already is helping people. I mean, you know, what you, what you guys have done,

not just to the tool itself is tremendous. It has been since day one.
Obviously, I've been one of your biggest advocates for two plus years now, I think as highly of you as anybody in the industry. And I think that that's amazing.
I think the other thing you guys have done is even though I know it's not finalized yet I think you already have built a legacy in the space because at least from my perspective and I try to take a broad view of this there's Tarmica and then there's everybody else and and there are a lot of other players right but in terms of, quality of work, that the conversations that have happened because of, because you guys exist, even if the people were trashing you or saying, you know, whatever, right? Like the conversations that have, that you forced to happen, maybe not as controversially as lemonade, but certainly I think as broad spectrum as someone like them has already had a lasting effect on the industry. And I think you should be very proud of that, even though I know the journey isn't over.
I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah.
There's still a lot more to do, in my opinion, but I do appreciate that. And I think we've had good advocates behind us, you being one of them.
We have a lot of agencies that helped us early on, and now I hope we're doing the same for them. But we did it differently.
That's all. We tried to do it differently.
I think that's important. We tried to do things in a way that no one else was doing it.
And we were, we were Switzerland. And I know you hate that.
And you're supposed to pick a side, but we're Switzerland for a long time and we stayed neutral. And now it's like, okay, we did something.
Now we don't have to be Switzerland anymore. We can, we can go the route we always want to go.
Yeah. And I don't think

there's anything wrong with being Switzerland as long as you are. I think where the problem is,

is when people try to be, or, or pretend to be, or present themselves as that thing, when really

everyone knows they're skewed in one direction or the other. I think that's, that's a lot of where animosity comes from there.
I think with you guys, you were building a tool. You were never, you've never tried to be anything other than this very useful functional tool that was very difficult to build.
And I think that, um, I think, I think it played out, man. I'm, I'm super happy for you.
And, you know, in terms of being open about selling the company or whatever, I mean, dude, I sold rogue. I mean, by the time this comes out, it will be public knowledge.
So, you know, I'm. Yeah.
I didn't know we were talking with us on this, but I, yeah, that's, that's one of the biggest things. I mean, that's a huge congrats to you because what you built worked right.
You built a model that was scalable that people wanted to use in the future. And that's what you got acquired.
And I think we're not shy in saying this. It wasn't like you were doing this for 20 years and you grew your book to 50 million.
And that's why you were purchased. You were purchased because of what you built.
Not the size of what you built, but just the actual concept and the complexity around how that functions. That's why you were bought.
And I think that matters. I think it's an important note to make.
Thanks, man. Well, dude, I know you don't do a lot of podcasts.
I appreciate you sharing your vantage points. I think as much as you downplayed what you were going to actually say, you delivered the value, then you delivered the value.
My plan was to sit in silence and drink bourbon the whole time because it's almost 4 o'clock, right? I'll be honest with you.

If we ever do this again,

let's just do that. We'll just watch each

other drink bourbon for an hour and then we'll hit stop.

Yeah, and we'll talk about

the different tasting notes that we

taste and the drunker we get, the better the notes will be.

I like that. And crypto maybe?

Can we talk about crypto too?

Yeah, I don't know much about crypto, but I do know that

we should talk about it.

I like it.

Yeah, there we go.

Be good.

Thanks for having me. See you soon.
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