RHS 067 - Everything You Need to Know about B Atomic and the NEON Launch

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This is a very special episode of the podcast. Today, we are talking to Seth Zaremba and Sidney Rowe, the founder and CEO and chief marketing officer, respectively, for Be Atomic, the company behind the Neon platform,

the game-changing technology that is going to take our industry to the next level. And I'm sure if you've followed Seth or you've followed Sydney or you've listened to this podcast or you've listened to Cass's podcast, you've heard about Neon and you probably have a ton of questions.
And some of the things that make it so special might not seem tangible to you or obvious or just may seem foggy or unclear. We dive deep today to talk through those issues.
Neon and the tools that are coming out from Be Atomic are the game-changing technology of our industry. They are the grease that will move us forward, that will make our industry fly.
And if you want to be part of it, you have to go to Be Atomic. That's the letter B, the word atomic, beatomic.com.
On the top, you'll see a link to countdown, okay? Click on that link and put your information in. On September 30th, Sydney and the entire team at Beatomic is doing a live launch, the official launch of the product that people can sign up for and get demos and purchase the product and start to get on the schedule.
And they're doing a live launch. I want you to be there.
I want you to hear this, whether you're ever part of Be Atomic or not, whether you ever choose to put your company on the Neon platform or not, doesn't matter. You need to know what this technology is.
You will not be disappointed. I've seen some of the shots.
I've seen some of what's coming out. It is game-changing for our space.
And you at least need to know what it is so that you can make decisions for your business, which may, like I said, they may never involve B-Atomic or Neon, but you need to know the next 20 years of our industry are not going to look like the previous 20 years. Of anything else, I am certain of that.
I don't know exactly what it's going to be, but it's not going to look like the next, the last 20. And I think neon is a big part of it.
And that's why I did this episode. And that's why I'm starting the show this way.
And I want you to go to be atomic.com. There's a button up on top that says, uh, get the countdown.
Uh, it says the countdown, click on the countdown, right at the top of the screen that takes you to a page. You put your name, your email in, and you'll just be notified of when they go live with the launch.
Do it. Do it right now.
Stop the podcast. Go do it.
Then come back. Listen to this show.
Make sure you subscribe to the launch notifications. You want to watch the launch.
It's going to be incredible. And I'm just

couldn't be happier for Seth and Sid and all the agents like Cass and Cookie and all the rest that

are taking part in Neon in these early days. So let's get on to Seth and Sid.
so i am incredibly excited to have you two on the show uh and and this isn't just um you know hey it would be fun you guys have some really cool stuff that is happening uh there has been you know for for two and a half three years now uh we have been deluged on twitter by the um maniacal musings of seth zaremba as he takes these sometimes passive aggressive sometimes just complete open right hooks at the industry and in particular in industry establishments and the lack of transparency, openness, the way that we handle our business, the way that we push forward, the lack of empathy for those who work for us and providing the tools to our people to really do the job well, to provide our customers with a better experience. And that answer has been be atomic and neon, which I want you to explain the difference between those two things.
Cause I get asked all the time. They are the same thing.
Are they different things? So we're going to get to that. Don't answer that now.
But you are launching the product. Like it's a thing.
Like someone can buy it as of when this is dropped, not of, as when we're recording it, but as when this is dropped, when you're listening to this episode, you can go to a website, you can fill out a form, you can press a button and buy the thing. Is that exciting? What do you guys feel about that? I mean, it's a long time coming.
Are we excited? I feel relieved, stressed, and excited. And gosh, I don't even, yeah, I'm very excited.
I don't even, it's just, it's an emotion. I mean, we've been, I think, and here's the thing, right? It's not just about buying the thing.
Cause that's, that's the exciting part for sure. But the message that we're going to share on, on September 30th, when we launch is a lot bigger than neon.
And we want people to walk away thinking differently. You know, part of starting the company wasn't just to build a thing that people can buy.
It was to shift mindsets and get people to recognize the core issues that need to be solved and not put band-aids on top of them anymore. So I think that's what I'm most excited about.
Uh, and also buying the thing, right? Yeah. Yeah.
Well, and it takes it here and Ryan, you, you know, being friends, like we've been talking about this for a long time, it's taken that long to do this. I mean, this is not like, this is not a $5 foot long that you're just going

to run in and get. It's all the things that nobody's ever done.
And I can tell you, it's

taken five or six years of politics, of promotion, of irritation, of agitation, of erosion,

of conflagration. I mean, it's taken like all of those things to move the pieces to get to the

point where it can get done. But it's literally take everything that needed to be done over the

I don't know. erosion, of conflagration.
I mean, it's taken like all of those things to move the pieces to get to the point where it can get done. But it's literally take everything that needed to be done over the last 20 years that everybody's ignored, throw it in a box, give it to me and Sid, and say, go fix it.
That's what took so long. And so to be at this point to exhale and say, yeah, we got version 1.0 of that up there.
Is it perfect? Everyone's always like, well, why doesn't it's like well what you're comparing to me is the 20-year mature product and all those things but we're here now and this is how you get there and you get here right this time and so yeah coming out of the box swinging after after a twitter assault which by the way you taught me how to do on agency nation you idiot like that was you i was never on on social media until you told me to be. So like, I blame you for that.
I didn't realize what social media, what you were going to do to social media. Like if I knew that we were going to get seven to 10 of the most, like, I would love to do a word cloud, like take every tweet you've done since 2017 and then, and do like a word cloud and like, see what does that look like? And all the, you know, it was funny.
We were on a, I was part of a mastermind the other day and we, in the group of people, it was the first in-person mastermind I've been a part of. Big shout out to Tom Larson and Chris Parity.
So for putting it together. It great group of agents.
Um, you had to be, um, you couldn't be, uh, um, Oh, I don't know how to say this in a politically correct way. Uh, if you were a, uh, a COVID, if you're one of those people who are deliberate, um, uh, wow, I've had too many conversations today.
If COVID freaks you out, this was not place to be like, this was not your place. This was not the place to be.
We were just having like a regular time. And Seth came on.
And here's the best part. So Spencer Holden, I don't know if anyone knows him.
He's one of the most successful high net worth agents in the entire country. Just absolutely stand up guy.
I adore him and the way he handles his business. And he's just a class act through and through.
And the way he thinks about his business is incredible. I mean, just one of those dudes, time spent with him is time well spent.
So he's sitting in front and he's got a suit jacket on and he's sitting there. And Seth comes on with slick back hair on the Zoom in a Motorhead t-shirt that we couldn't see the bottom said Motorhead be atomic or whatever when you saw the motorhead part and the he doesn't even say hello he goes who who's who's this guy in a suit jacket at a mastermind he shouldn't even be allowed in the room during covid you can't and here i'll say this spencer i love you we've met a couple of times i had i known it was, here's the thing about Spencer.
He's a beautiful man too. I mean, he's like a male model and like, he's my age, but he looks like he's half my age, but it is jarring during a pandemic to see a room full of people.
And then a beautiful man in a sport coat cut and trimmed. And you're like, what are you doing, dude? How do you have that kind of game in a pandemic? Like, come on.
Oh, well, you should have seen C he's oh he had a three-piece suit on the socks and the three-piece suits with a custom vest and the pocket square it's like yeah it's beautiful people i you know but here's what i loved about it was it felt it felt like we were um so so there's a couple there's a point to this but what i thought was interesting about this mastermind was just you had was just you had guys in the back in t-shirt and jeans. You got Clinger in a three-piece suit.
You got Spencer looking good. Paradiso's always dressed up.
Matt Namoli's there in mesh shorts and like a long sleeve. And then Seth comes on with this slick back hair.
He starts blasting everybody. And I was like, this is why I love the insurance industry.
This is the craziest group of eclectic a-holes that exists, just hammering out ideas. And, um, and, and what was awesome was after you did your thing and you talked through it, because I think so many people, um, are just confused.
They hear the big ideas. And I think the big ideas resonate, right? They really resonate.
And I want to get to what, although I've always believed in you, I've never really, you know, I've never really, I haven't been in the day to day of the building of the product, right? And I, and I, and when I sat down with you guys, and I a chance to see, um, uh, certain aspects of it, I became hooked. So what I would love is as quickly as you can, the pitch, the, if you had 90 seconds to get someone to slam that buy button, right? Like what does that look like for someone? And then I want to dig into the, into the deeper aspects, but give them that, that, that, that, not the vision, but the pitch.
So what is that pitch that really grabs them? Because then I want to talk about all the questions that I was getting after your Zoom, because I think those will, we can dig into the meat. Yeah.
And the reason it's hard to understand is we compare it to what we have, what we know. So everyone asks, is it an AMS, right? Is it a Raider? Is it all that stuff? Imagine you were just starting from scratch.
You wouldn't, you don't know AMS. You don't know Raider.
You don't know any of the stuff that's built there. How would you start your agency today if you were starting an independent agency who just landed here from Mars and I'm going to start an independent agency? You have one piece of technology that did everything you wanted it to do, right? You would be able to market on it, right? And you'd want all the data that came from it.
You'd want your salespeople to be able to track their efforts in it. And you would want that on that same piece of technology.
When it was sold, you would want it to go to a service person who could do all the functions that insurance people do and service that piece of it. And you'd want to pull all of that data together so that you had a complete picture of your process at every part.
That's what Neon is. It takes all of those things and it puts it in one system, one dashboard.
I call it the Tesla dashboard. And now you can see and do everything you need to do.
Every core insurance function, marketing campaigns and AdWords and all that stuff, sales tracking,

pipeline views, all that stuff, endorsements and changes and all that stuff. But it does it in a completely different and trackable way.
We put stuff in packages. We put those packages in one picture and those packages tell a story of what's happening in your agency with your customers, with your people, and with how you're interacting with your customers.
And this is where Sid usually bails me out. Yeah.
Well, I was, I just say to, to put a cap on it, um, with the 2.5 seconds that you left me, um, uh, the problem right now is that our systems only track outcome. What policies were created, what policies, uh, you know, were sold or canceled or renewed or modified, that's an outcome.
And as a business owner, what we're constantly trying to figure out is how to change that outcome. How do I modify policies faster or do less modification on policies? How do I create more policies? How do I lose less policies, right? And when you think about how to change outcome, the answer always rests in the behaviors of people who create those outcomes, your marketers, your sales team, your service team, your carrier partners, your clients.
And so our goal with NEON is to capture a picture, a full picture of all of those behaviors and line that up for you so that you get a really granular look at why things are happening in your agency so that you can change those outcomes. Yeah.
One of the things that really has opened my eyes, I'd say in the last six weeks to what you guys are doing is just around conversations that I've been having, particularly with agents that are using VAs. And I say that because COVID has created a new dynamic in our agencies.
And I think what it has done is it has legitimized every setup for an agency, right? It is made it so that you want to be a five person local agency where everyone sits in your, in the same office. That works.
You want to be five people scattered throughout the country. That works.
You want to be a one woman show that has 17 VAs working behind her. That works.
You want to be some mashup of every iteration of that with technology, that works. Because in COVID land, there are no rules, right? There's no legacy.
The legacy has been smashed against the rocks because all these agencies that have been told for so long that you had to do it a certain way and the best method was 50 miles from your office and all of that has been smashed because I could name a dozen agencies right now who do not operate that way that COVID had zero impact on. They weren't running out to Best Buy to buy laptops.
They weren't struggling to remote desktop into computers in their office because their people couldn't get to work. Their people just kept working as if nothing changed.
So my point in saying that is in this distributed, widespread, highly diverse agency force and agency plant that now exists, who are not just connecting with the three to five big nationals, but are integrating the three to five big nationals in with insurtechs, in with super regionals, in with captives, in with all these different carrier partners, all these different vendor partners. You need to have a tool.
Understanding, as you said, behaviors is what actually matters. You can't track outcomes in the mate way that we have, the way the previous systems systems were built you cannot track the outcomes today and outcomes don't give you the information you need the way they used to it is a completely different world and you need in my mind this idea of cases and this is where i'd like to talk about you to talk about you i think you call them packages maybe but this idea of cases i started just using cases in my everyday terminology, even though I don't have the tool yet, because this just resonates with me.
It completely resonates with me, this idea.

So let me tell you, let me take you on a journey and I'll use music to illustrate cases.

You know, I imagine there was probably a saloon in the 1800s you walked in and there was a guy at a piano.

You put your two bits in and you got a song, right?

You got your whiskey and a song. And then somewhere in the 50s, they're like, hey, we need to make more money off of just a song.
So you got those 33s. You got an A side and a B side.
Remember that? The A side was the song you want. And then the B side was a piece of crap that you had to just pay for.
And then somewhere in the 80s and 90eties, seventies, eighties, nineties, we got albums, right? And you got two good songs and you got 10 songs you didn't want. We bundled up all of the bad stuff with the two things you wanted to raise the price.
So we went from two bits to three bucks to, I remember the last CD I bought was like $21 and it's like, and I wanted one song. And then what happened? All of a sudden we said, no, no, no, let's start unbundling stuff.
Let's get down to what I just want the song and I want to build my own playlist. Well, what are we doing when we do that when we go on our phone, we just want the thing we don't want all the crap that comes with it.
So cases says, Hey, listen, all of insurance has been bundled up into these agencies or into these departments or into these books of business. And there's good stuff in there, but there's so much crap we can't see and get to.
And so what these cases do is breaks down these albums with probably three good songs on it and eight really turd songs. And it says, hey, listen, now you can see where the losers are and you can see what the winners are.
And now we can start to address what's really happening. Is it the customer we have? Is it the employee inside of our agency? Is it the carrier service or underwriter that we're working with? Now we can see where the problem is on the album and we can now break that apart or we can solve it.
And I'll say this, because we have these interactions,

these cases built now, now we can go to carriers and say, hey, look at these cases. Me, Ryan, and Sid, we've got 50,000 of these things all with you all around this process and you take 50 days longer than everyone else.
Do you have a solution that can fix it? Yes, we could do this process. Great.
We'll take that hose, plug it right into all 50,000 of those cases, and we'll knock 49 days off that process. That's what we really do by breaking up these albums and just giving you the song you want and let you build a playlist within your agency.
Yeah, and here's the unique part about the case system because it, and if anybody's familiar with the ticketing system, right, it's similar to that. It's a service transaction.
It's an organizational or, you know, mechanism to capture service transactions. The difference is we operate in a very unique environment where manufacturing is completely

separated from sales and service.

And Ryan, you actually brought this up to me. This was like a few months ago when we were talking about that disconnect.
And you said, well, yeah, in other verticals, that's okay. It still works because manufacturing is creating, you know, 100,000 tennis shoes.
and then they're sending all those tennis shoes to sales and service in December, and then sales and service goes and sells them, and then they go back. And so the amount of communication needed in other verticals isn't as frequent or important.
However, in this industry, not only do you have that disconnect, which is a difficult thing to deal with, but you also have a frequency of communication high above any other vertical. So custom one-off insurance quotes every single week, every single day, having to communicate you know, on the sales side, claims issues and adding or moving, I mean, the amount of communication needed between manufacturing and sales and service is like endless.
And so, so the case system was specifically designed for that environment where we're capturing the client's behaviors, we're capturing the employees' behaviors, but we're also bringing in the carrier partner's behaviors. And that's not something you can get.
You know, you just, it's hard to find in other pieces of technology. It's hard to create that.
Yeah. When I think about it, and this was, and when I shared that idea with you, it wasn't all the way fleshed out, but what was in my mind at that time, and since I've had a little more time to think about it, is in a traditional manufacturing distribution system, I would say I need 100,000 pairs of shoes for my stores.
I place an order, 100,000 shoes hit my stores, I distribute them out to my stores, and I now have 100,000 pairs of shoes to sell. I might not have to re-up for another month.
I may not have to re-up again for three months. In our system, it is every day, in some cases, thousands of times a day, multiple interactions on the same deliverable, on the same piece of merchandise.
You might have seven touches on the same piece of merchandise. And every single one of those is delay, delay, delay, delay, and then snap forward.
Delay, delay, delay, snap forward. Where with a traditional manufacturer distribution system, I place my order.
I know it's going to take two weeks. Two weeks later, the order comes in.
Now, granted, there's usually some sort of, you know, maybe a couple of days late, maybe a couple of days early, but there's a standard deviation from a delivery date. In our world, I mean, I just had an account come in where I submitted it to three carriers.
And one of those carriers, I placed the business, I needed it by the end of the week. I put the quote in on a Monday.
I needed to place the business on a Friday. I placed the business.
I needed it by the end of the week. I put the quote in on a Monday.
I needed to place the business on a Friday. I placed the business on a Friday.
Two weeks later, one of the carriers gets back to me and goes, hey, here's your quote. Hey, was that effective date? Was that solid? And I was just like, you got to be shitting me.
Yes. The effective date on the quote was solid.
It was a renewal date. That's when the person needed insurance.
And just the idea that it is the gall of that carrier to even send me the proposal two weeks after the effective date and then go, oh, was that a solid effective date? Like, but these are the kinds of things I, when I think about what just at a very basic level, what you are solving is that's a forgotten transaction that, that transaction that I, that, what that happened with that particular carrier, that's forgotten, right? We just poof, we placed the business, no big deal. And what we don't think about is time spent submitting that business to that carrier, the time spent dealing with the fact that now they just sent you that renewal, tracking, well, geez, on average, it does take three weeks to get a proposal back.
So when I have an account that's five days, that's renewing in five days, because whatever it falls into your lap, don't even bother submitting it to them. And we lose, and we're talking about one little microcosm.
You know, that's what really opened my eyes when I started to see the second and third level data that you guys were showing me from Zinc. I was like, you know, I'm not there yet as an agency.
I'm just not having that many transactions. But oh my God, I mean, you can just see it.
You're like, holy crap. This is so much lost time.
And, you know, how many deals do you lose? Because you're spending time submitting business to carriers that are just eating up time in your day that you should be spending on something else. And if you had that depth of knowledge, you can make those decisions.
Yeah. And the cost of operations have changed.
So Ryan, the margins aren't there to support that fluff anymore. So go back 15 or 20 years when people were getting 20%, they were getting bonus from carriers, they're making profit sharing contingency, and they had no technology costs.
Their people didn't want raises and benefits was relatively stable. Just give people a bag lunch and a trip to Cedar Point, an amusement park once a year, and they were happy.
We don't live in that world anymore. The margins have collapsed.
The cost of employees and the cost of these transactions in the aggregate are where our profit's going. And so I'll give you for an instance, Bell in our office last year did 3,860 certificates.
At $3 a transaction, I spent $11,500 last year punching keys to make a piece of paper to give someone else to go get a bond so they could go do work. That's a place I need to fix.
That should be a dollar transaction, a quarter transaction. That should be a free transaction.
And now Bell, a really qualified 22-year industry vet who is really good with people, is not doing stupid human tricks on a keyboard. They're actually talking and consulting.
And so if you think about it, we've broken things into these activities. These activities now have a cost and a profit associated with them.
And so now we know where we're making and losing money. We know where we need a VA and where we don't.
We know where we need to scale and where we don't. It might be technology and seat licenses.
It might be employee training. It might be a number of employees.
It might be physical location, Chris Langeo. We may not need our office, right? So, but if we can't definitively say that at scale, then we're oftentimes just looking for the magic pixie dust.
Like, oh, I want new software. I want a new tool.
I want a Google review because that's going to save me. Yeah.
One of the things that, one of the criticisms that I've gotten that I've, because I've been so vocal in support, a lot of people ask me questions and some of those things I just tell them I simply don't know the answer to. But one of the criticisms that I've gotten is how how does this make me more revenue? How do I write more policies? How do I write more policies? Because writing, convincing someone that your widget will have them write more policies is the ultimate way to sell insurance agents shit.
So for everyone that's listening, guys, just so you know, if someone tells you that their widget can help you sell more policies, you unconsciously gravitate to listening to what they have to say. Even if it's just another thing that you're never going to use, or if it doesn't actually work, if they go, I can have you selling more policies using this thing,

you'll listen. So that criticism I think is fair because you guys, none of your marketing is about direct, you know, it's not a new bell and whistle three-step process that, you know, gets people to click a buy button, you know, thing.
It's, you're talking operations, you're talking efficiencies.

How do you address that criticism, whether it's fair or not?

Oh, okay. Seth is telling me to go first.
Well, my camera's not working. So I was like, I, well, he's sending me that.
That's all right. You go first.
So what was the question? Sorry. What was, so it doesn't sell more policies.
This is not, this is not going to sell more policies and, and we're not saying it is what we're saying is there's a better way to run. It'll do every, it'll do a lot of the things that participate in success of which one of them is being more productive around marketing and sales.
But like, here's what I would tell you. 12 years into Zinc, what it has done is taken my retention from an 87% two years ago to a 95% today, 96% today.
So a 10 point jump on retention, I'm a 2.35 million revenue shop times 10%. That's 230,000 of revenue that having system and process and understanding around what's happening with my customer, the people inside my agency and my carriers has had a huge impact.
NPS, 30 point jump. Sales has definitely gone up.
We've grown 4 million organically over the last

couple of years because we have integrated marketing. Marketing now works with service

and sales. And so if you look at anything, getting more horsepower out of a motor is not always a

swap. It's tuning it, it's adjusting it, and it's getting the way.
And so rather than telling people

to buy new motors for your car, we looked at it and said, you got a really good, the independent agency plant is a heck of a chassis. It's a great motor, but it has not been tuned.
It's choked. It needs to be tuned up and blueprinted and balanced so that it can run.
And that's really what we do. And it'll run.
You'll run higher retention. You'll run better customer experience.
You'll get sales and you'll get visibility into where your problems are. And then you got to be a man and step up and do the thing.
But that's what we all are anyways. No offense, Sid.
I mean, I didn't mean man in the sense of like a male. I just, you know, be the dude, be the thing.
Yeah. Well, forgive you your lack of wokeism, Seth.
I know. Well, I'm an old man.
Elitist bastard. So I, here's my take on this is you don't need another shiny thing.

If I've learned anything in my seven months at rogue risk, it's that shiny things don't sell shit. Um, they don't, um, I, you know, there are just about any tool can help you grow.
If you're doing the right things, if you reach out, if you're reaching out to the right people, if you're making phone calls, if you're sending the right emails, if you're connecting with people, if you're asking for referrals, if you're finding referral partners, that's how we sell things. Yes, you can do PPC.
Yes, you can do paid ads. Yes, you can buy email lists.
You can do all the things. You want to know why? It's fucking Salesforce.
It can connect with anything. So I answer that question with, I think it's a fair criticism at face value.
I think it is a shallow and short-sighted criticism of the platform in terms of what it actually is doing and the problem that it's actually solving for our industry. So that to me, I think is super interesting.
The next criticism that I've received is that it's just a lot. It's just, it feels like a big undertaking to get involved with, right? Like not that Epic or EMS isn't a big undertaking, but it does feel that way, which a lot of the newer systems that have come out, you know, now certs, or there's another one, quick fusion, or, you know, they feel they're simpler, they're easier.
And I don't mean simple in a, like it doesn't work. I just mean, they're very, very, um, they, they just, uh, uh, a low barrier to entry.
And you know, what do you agree? Does it, is it a big undertaking or is that just a perception because Salesforce comes with that and it really is, um, nothing more than, than what you would expect? Uh, well, I've, I've definitely heard the phrase. Um, the phrase, it's almost too powerful, right? Like why does an insurance agent need, I guess, a Lamborghini or something, right? They just need a car that gets them from point A to point B, which I feel like is undervaluing insurance agents to be completely honest when I hear people say that.
I, yeah, I don't, I guess when you buy for the future, right? So if you're trying to buy a piece of technology that solves today's problems, I'll never forget sitting in my dad's office and he was picking between two agency management systems. And they both came in.
We heard this is pre-COVID, right? So salespeople actually coming into the building and they had their sheets and we were going through everything. And I just sat there and I'm like, dad, how are you going to make a decision? Because it seems like they're

neck and neck. Like nobody had anything that was particularly, you know, special.
And they were about the same price point. And he sat back in his chair and he was like, Sid, I'm going to go with the one that thinks about the future.
So it's not what they're saying. It's the vision they're pitching me for the future.
And that is always, that moment has always stuck with me because to my dad, he wasn't just buying a piece of technology, he was investing in his business's future, right? And so that's, I guess I would say that, right? It's, if you want a simple tool that can do a simple thing in one piece of the value chain, go out and buy the widget, right? If you want to solve the real problems and set your business up for the future, it's an undertaking. And I would say, you know, the time for honoring them will soon be at an end.
I mean, there is no, there is no reality that anybody can paint to me in the next five to six years where we are still batch processing 30 year old data sets back and forth. There is no sophisticated sales organization I can picture of in the next few years, heck in my place presently, but I could never go back to a place where I didn't have an understanding of how marketing is generating leads and sales producers are contributing towards the success.
There's no economy that's going to let us have fat and fluff in the system. I mean, if you think that there's an economy that is going to let us just get by in 2020, I just cannot concede.
There's no future I can imagine where having data, it doesn't make you more valuable, more capable. And all of that comes with structure.
And Ryan, your last podcast with Chris Burren, and he talked about clean data. Oh my goodness.
Like just, if you want to talk to talk to me just listen to that podcast if you don't have clean data sets built in the 20th century 21st century for a 21st and 22nd century you don't have an agency you don't have a business you're in seat retired and you're getting by but but you don't know that you're going out of business and so I've always been a guy that skates where the puck is going. And I just, this is the world that is coming your way.
And I'm in those meetings. I'm talking to the carriers.
I see what's happening. I am not being a fear monger.
It's happening. And Ivan's list world is happening right now.
I'm doing it, right? A data-driven world where data is moved between agents and carriers to improve the customer experience or pricing, I'm doing it. Data for sale, I'm doing it.
So I don't care if you think it's too complicated, but imagine a future where this isn't happening because I can't see a present where it's not happening. Yeah, I think that episode with Chris Byrne was – Groundbreaking? Yeah, I mean, well you.
I think the, the place that he went at the end around the ideas, and if you haven't listened to it, just go back in the episodes and, and, and, and find it. But he basically broke down.
I asked him with about 10 minutes left in the show. I asked him, okay, we know, we know at a a basic sense, how to come to evaluation for an agency today, right? We either take EBITDA, or you take top line revenue, and you have a multiple.
That's, that's, that's what it is, right? You're, you're going to pick one, and you're going to pick the multiple based on a couple factors, retention, book a business makeup, maybe some other things, how the owner actually wants to be paid out. But ultimately, that's how business, that's how an agency gets value.
I said, if you could pick one or two things that is going to drastically impact the change, or that's going to drastically impact how we value agencies moving forward in the future, what's that going to be? And he immediately, without hesitation, said clean data. Yeah.
And this is, you know, so my eyes have been open, man. And Seth, you and I have talked about it.
Sid, you and I have talked about it. We talked about it a little bit when I was in Ohio with you guys a couple of weeks ago.
And my eyes have been opened so much to the realities of business. And, you know, a lot of agencies are probably like, duh, right? I mean, it's easy to talk about it.
But then once you're living it, it's completely different. And that's true.
That has happened. And one of the things that I've realized is for all the fanciness of some of the tools that I have, and the tools are great.
Don't get me wrong. I mostly write business from people that email or call me, right? Yeah.
They see a website article or they know a friend of mine or I cold call them or I send them a postcard in the mail. It's not the system itself isn't selling the business.
It's everything, everything about my agency that keeps me from writing more insurance is everything that happens during the sale and after the sale. That's what's keeping me from being more successful is a lack of understanding, using all these different, you know, I got to wait for a download, this downloads differently, I got to reconcile this, this carrier doesn't download, this carrier does this and, you know, and I have all this disparate information and systems and, you know, I literally have a human being who sits in the Philippines now that his sole job is figuring all that crap out and putting it into a system.
And then he's got to put it into three systems because no one system that I have can actually do everything. So I look at that and I say to myself, there has to be a better way.
And, and that's what you guys have created. And I look at some of the people that have adopted the product, Christopher Cook, Jason Cass, there's, you know, I was talking to Andrew Darlington, who was in the mastermind in Boston.
And I look at the way that these agency owners operate and the way they think about the future. And I say to myself,

what do these individuals have in common? And there's probably a few things, but what stands out to me the most is they understand one core idea, that the way agencies were built for the last 50 years cannot be the way that an agency is built in the next 50 years. It is impossible to do it the same way.
It is absolutely impossible to do it the same way. So if you're using the same tools and the same processes, you are not going to be successful.
And I unfortunately see it every day in the questions that are asked in IOA or in some of the other groups that I'm in. And it's not that those people are, it's not their fault, but they have not been shown or they've not been exposed to the idea that they're following a path that was trod 40 years ago and it's grown over.
There's trolls under every bridge, right? There's dragons swooping down over the trees, just waiting to pick them off. And you just can't walk that path anymore.
It just doesn't exist. It doesn't go anywhere.
Well, and think about this, Ryan, for all those guys you mentioned, 95 to 96% of their revenue comes from renewals. And we spend so much time in conferences talking about the 6 to 8% of revenue that comes from new business, which is important.
You have to have that. But we just ignore the 96% of the operations where almost 100% of our cost is and where all of our profit exists, well, that just should just be unchanged for the last 40 years.
It's ridiculous. And if you talk about agency valuation, when you sell your agency, Ryan, what are you selling, if not data? Are you, I mean, are you backing up a truck of files anymore? Are you, the people are gone, you know that the second like these guys buy you out, the people are gone, the office is gone, there was no paper.
What are you the people are gone you know that the second like these guys buy you out the people are gone the office is gone there was no paper what are you buying except for data and so if that's what you're buying then the quality of the data the volume of the data the structure of the data and the integrity of the data is what's going to rise that asset and here's the thing because it's data and because you've structured it right way, you can now balance it. And a book of business is not just a big piece of paper with names on it.
Just like your retirement is not just stocks, it's an asset allocation. Your books of businesses are assets.
And as data stacks, they now have independent businesses and they will move in different ways. They will have different values.
In the future, that is now, no one's going to come in and buy bad data, unorganized data in big chunks. They're going to break it down and say, hey, this doesn't look good.
I'm going to devalue that. This is unorganized.
I'm devaluing this. I didn't want this in the first place.
I'm devaluing that. And if you look at the value of your agencies, that's all it is, is data.
That's all you're going to be selling. And if you've got low quality or no quality data, good luck to you.
Well, this is the way I think about it too. So this is a relationship business through and through, right? We, we, we sell on trust.
If people don't trust you, they don't buy from you. There's no gimmick or scheme that you can play that gets people, that you can run a successful business in our industry when you don't have trust.
It's just, you know, people want to bang on Geico all day long. There are an incredible number of Americans that trust Geico and that's how their business survives.
It's not the advertising, it's that the advertising has built trust. And we can think that that's crazy,

but that's what it actually is.

So in today's world, that trust moves so fast. And because there's so many options

and we're so exposed to those options,

one false touch, one insincere action

can drastically change the nature of trust that your clients have with your agency. Well, 10 years ago when you're selling your agency and what did you do, right? You'd sell, you'd do nothing.
And then a year later, you'd send out this mailer that would go out. They would say, Hey, just so you know, John's not here anymore.
He's gone. But, but hey, you've been with us for the last year and you didn't know the difference.
So it's all good. Stay with us.
And people would go, ah, you know, whatever. Things have been fine.
That's not the way it works today. Touch points, touch points, everything changes.
So if I don't have the ability to move in, to use the information and data that you have, to reestablish trust with your clients quickly and on their terms, knowing do they like to be contacted via text? Do they like email? Do they need a phone call? Who are my VIP clients? Who are my high touch clients? Who are the clients I don't care if I lose? Who are the clients that I absolutely have to retain? If you don't have that information in your agency, then that is a major,

major problem. Because what happens is you don't retain it, right? How do you get paid out as a

principal? You get a nut up front and then you get paid out based on the retention that you're able

to keep over the next two to three years, depending on your contract. Well, if your data's

sucks so bad that you can't retain that business over time, you're losing money. That's just a fact.
And I think from that very selfish standpoint, clean data is a must. And I'm not saying that Neon is the absolute only way to do it.
I just think you are setting yourself up for a lot of headaches and a lot of failures if you do it a different way. It was built to be done that way.
And we don't have any legacy baggage to overcome. It was built for that.
And here in 2023 and 2024, we will sell books of business as assets to each other. And so Neon has built the way for me to say, hey, I've got 300,000 of non-performing clients for me and my agency with Rochester Mutual.
Well, you know what? I think Ryan would love Rochester Mutual. You want that and all the data? Yeah, great.
Push the button on your end. I'll push it on my end.
Boom. Here's all my clients.
Here's all the data. Here's every phone call.
Here's all the stuff, five minutes transaction done. And we will build an economy where we move these assets back and forth.
We will take illiquid assets, such as books of business. We will turn them into liquid assets, which you can now borrow against and trade against and sell against and allocate against.
And so you have this asset called data. It is going to be liquefied by the marketplace, either to you or by you.
You might as well do it yourself. And if you look at our pipeline for where this goes, there is a whole economy built on the idea that if your data was put in right, if it's structured right, if you've got it clean and there's a way to move it, hint, hint, neon, all of a sudden this thing that you had to wait 30 years to sell one day to your son or daughter or the guy down the street, it can be moved at any time, any way.
And it can be moved for underwriting. It can be moved for sale or transfer.
It can be mailed for aggregation. There are all sorts of things you can do once your data is set and it's platformed.
And that's what we're doing. So I'm sitting here and I'm an agency owner and I'm listening to this and I'm probably still a little confused if I don't already believe in these ideas, but I think at the core, the takeaway should be, I think the major takeaways and so people listening know, you know, I'm on the path to being a neon agent.
I'm still a little a little small, probably Seth and I have talked about that. I'm setting my system up and the systems that I'm actually using today are intentional.
So when I'm ready, I can make that move. I want to be transparent that I'm that I'm not I'm not on the platform yet.
But that's mostly just because I'm seven months into owning my agency. And we are not paid advertisers either.
Yeah. No, no, no.
This is just because, you know, I, I believe in this. So, so if I'm sitting there and I'm thinking about this, you know, I think it's fair to say, you know, this, this is a, an undertaking in your agency.
It's if, if, if you're not already believing to make this move, there are some philosophical shifts that you have to make. So I don't, I don't think that Seth nor Sid, nor myself, nor, nor Cass or, or, or cook or any of the other, any other advocates out in the ecosystem.
I don't think any of them would sit there and say, so you're sitting there and you're thinking to yourself, I think this is an undertaking. There is a philosophical shift that you need to make.
I think the argument against this, which is you can make personal income without it. I think that that is logical,

which only validates the idea, right?

Yes, you can do nothing and make personal income.

The problem is you isolate yourself,

you limit yourself,

and you ultimately never allow yourself

to step out of your business.

You never allow yourself the ability to dig deeper

and make the decisions that can really create an ongoing entity. Because Seth can drop a marketing program into your hometown and start picking your clients up and be four states away.
And understand completely how much he's spending, who's working on it, how much time is there, what his profit margin is, and he can reinvest in the places that make sense while you're just going, geez, I wish I had more referrals. And that level of sophistication is where we're going.
And it is not, that is not science fiction. It's not, well, there's a few agents doing this.
I talk to agents every frigging day who are thinking about this stuff at this level. This is absolutely the future of our industry.
And I think that at a minimum, at an absolute minimum, if you've listened this long to this show, you need to get a neon demo. Know what this product is doing.
Know what it can do. And have it in your holster for when you're ready.
Because there will be a day. It might not be this month.
It might not be six months from now. But I honestly believe that this is going to be an enormous move.
And in the next two to five years, this will be the standard. It will be the standard of how we operate is this methodology.
So I just appreciate the shit out of you guys. I think that I know you've taken more stones and sticks and barbs and jabs and had more people question what you're doing than maybe any other initiative in a very long time in our industry.
And it's a paradigm shift. And that's not easy.
And you guys have done it. I mean, you're launching this product.
You have paid customers. You have people already on the platform.
You have proven cases. And I just couldn't be more proud to have you both as friends and be more excited for today.
So I just thank you for coming on and sharing. I appreciate that, dude.
It's funny

because when we first started down this mission, the biggest critique we got is you're not going to find agents who are interested in it. And 365-ish days in, we're like two weeks out of our year mark.
We have a pipeline of 400 agents who have all asked to talk to us and see what's going on. I have not had time to talk to all of them.
We're already filled up for the end of this year and the beginning of Q1. And I only say that because, and I just heard it in the way that you were, you closed us out here.
We're so used to talking to the entire indie agent channel as if they're all the lowest common denominator. And it is the most ridiculous self like fulfilling.
It's like, because that's what we're told. Like that's what we're told every day is, oh, you're just the insurance agent.
Enough. Like enough.
You know, you're better than that. The people listening to this phone call know they're better than that.
Come on September 30th at 10 a.m. Eastern.
Watch what we're talking about. It's not about neon.
It's bigger than that, right? It's thinking about yourself, believing in yourself and being a leader in this industry. There's no better time to be a leader than right now.
This is the time. So I would say to all of those listening, I can't wait to talk to you.
I'm so pumped. There's more people out there like you than you think.
And we got to stop with the nonsense of like, the indie agent is the lowest common denominator because we're not, we're better than that. Well, and I would say this.
Everyone told me that all I would hear is no's. And I can honestly say one year in, I've not had one no from an agent.
And everyone said carriers will tell you no. I've not had one no from a carrier.
I have had, I can't do it right now, or that's too baller for me. But I have yet to have a no.
And the reason I say that is. And I was, I came home last night and I was talking to my wife, Jen, and she's like, man, you look beat.
And I'm like, like, honey, I know I'm right. And, and, and the rest of the world's going to figure it out.
And I'm like, I'm, you know, here I've mortgaged zinc. I've mortgaged my house.
I've sold cars. I'm basically broke, but I know I'm right.
And I know this is the thing. And is it perfect? No, but this is the chance for agents and carriers to come together to make the channel world-class and to do the thing.
And if I'm wrong, then you won't see me again. You won't hear me again.
And I'll be the joke. And I don't care.
I'm not in it for that. I'm right.
And you may not like it, but this is the right way to go. If you're a carrier, if you're an agent, this is the right thing.
And if you want to do the right thing for your clients, if you want to do the right thing for your people, if you want to do the right thing for your carrier partners, and if you want to do the right thing for yourself and your family, then give me a look. I'll buy you a steak dinner if you tell me I'm wrong.
And I'll tell you what, I don't think I'm buying many dinners. Just you may tell me not for now, or you're not ready or whatever, but I ain't wrong.
And I know it. And I'm not going to, I'm not going to fail on this.
We're right. And it's time.
So if they're listening to this before September 30th, where do they go? Beatomic.com.

Okay.

And what is happening? Just super quick. There's going to be some sort of something's happening.
Yeah. So, you know, up till this point, I think we've been kind of mysterious about what we're up to.
We've tried to film as much of the journey as we could and be as vulnerable as we can about the process. But the solution itself and the mission in its entirety hasn't really been shared.
So on September 30th at 10 a.m. Eastern on YouTube, we're going to live stream a neon demo and talk to the mission of the atomic in its entirety and where we're at and where we're going.
So if you have 60 minutes, that's all it takes. You'll get a bit of a Be Atomic fire hose, but I think you'll walk away, you know, not knowing what we're doing for sure, but thinking a little bit differently about where to go and how to start thinking about, you know, solutions in the future.
So if they go to be atomic today, they can sign up for an email to get notified. And so, so go to be atomic, punch your email in, you'll get an email on the 30th at 10am to join this live show.
This is the place you want to be. Make sure you subscribe to the be atomic YouTube channel.
If you do that kind of thing, this I'm excited for you guys. I, you know for you guys.
I'm an observer. I watch from afar.
Obviously, you're both very good friends of mine, and I love you both dearly, but I'm just excited for you. I can't wait to see where this goes.
I can't wait till I can be a part of it. I think this just feels right to me.
It does. There's nothing easy about it.
I know that. Um, but everything in me, every conversation I've ever had tells me that, that this is, this is the path.
And, um, and I'm just excited that you guys are the ones that are bringing it to us. So I just want to again, say thank you, everyone listening, just show up at the YouTube share it talk about it you know because it's important whether you agree or disagree the conversation in and of itself is important and um and whether you participate as you know actually become part of the neon platform or or you don't again that is less important per se than the conversation at large, because the people that it does resonate with, that it is the right time for they're going to be drawn in and, and, and it's going to work for them.
So just engage guys. That, that's my, my biggest ask from you is to engage because I do think this is as important as it gets.
So thank you to you both.

I know that Neon is going to be wildly successful,

and this will not even be close to the last time that we talk about it

because I'll just probably have you on every couple months

to talk about what's going on and do updates.

But I just wish you a ton of success on the 30th.

I'm so excited.

Appreciate you, dude.

Yeah.

Thanks, dude. Yeah.

Thanks, guys. You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass.
Take it easy, my brother Charlie, take it easy, oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

Yes. Peace.
Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint bubbles?

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