Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Nigel Walsh Explains the Important Difference Between Digitizing and Digital Insurance

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews Nigel Walsh, Managing Director of Insurance for Google. Nigel joins the podcast for a fun and nerdy discussion examining the differences between digitizing your insurance business and building a digital insurance business. The distinction is larger and more impactful than you might think. Don't miss this epic conversation...Episode Highlights:Nigel shares the difference between digitization and digitalization. (11:09)Nigel shares why digitization is not a bad thing. (15:18)Nigel mentions some important points about digitalization. (19:32)Nigel shares how people have become more innovative during the pandemic. (20:45)Nigel mentions some really cool things he learned during his induction to Google. (23:49)Nigel shares how to earn someone’s trust and respect. (30:04)Nigel mentions the best advice he was given when he left university. (36:23)Key Quotes:“If we create a fully digitalized agency that customers aren't ready for, then we still fail...Which is why digitization also works.” - Nigel Walsh“Sometimes, good is good enough. It doesn't need to be leading edge. You just need to make sure that you can pay your claims, you can serve your customers...that you do the right thing.” - Nigel Walsh“More businesses have been started in the last 12 months. So, even during a pandemic, people become more innovative, and are out there taking risks using government support or whatever else to go and start businesses.” - Nigel WalshResources Mentioned:Nigel Walsh LinkedInGoogleReach out to Ryan Hanley--Recommended Tools for GrowthOpusClip: #1 AI video clipping and editing tool: https://link.ryanhanley.com/opusRiverside: HD Podcast & Video Software | Free Recording & Editing: https://link.ryanhanley.com/riversideWhisperFlow: Never waste time typing on your keyboard again: https://link.ryanhanley.com/whisperflowCaptionsApp: One app for all your social media video creation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/captionsappGoHighLevel: It's time to take your business workflow to the Next Level: https://link.ryanhanley.com/gohighlevelPerspective.co: The #1 funnel builder for lead generation: https://link.ryanhanley.com/perspective--Episodes You Might Enjoy:From $2 Million Loss to World-Class Entrepreneur: https://lnk.to/delkFrom One Man Shop to $200M in Revenue: https://lnk.to/tommymelloIs Psilocybin the Gateway to Self-Mastery? https://lnk.to/80upZ9This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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Price and participation may vary. Rude Laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone and welcome back to the show. Absolutely tremendous, double tremendous episode today with the all-powerful, all-seeing Nigel Walsh, the managing director of insurance at Google. And Nigel's been a thought leader in the insuretech space, the insurance industry in general, you know, living in the UK.

he's had the ability to comment on the happenings in our space over both the European and, you know, kind of international market for us here in the U.S., not international for him. Obviously, we're international for him, but as well as the U.S. market and to have him share his experience, his insights into, you know, where he sees insurance going. and in particular we dissect the difference between digitizing and the digitalization of insurance. And there is a clear difference that, you know, I had heard those two terms and even I say in the episode, you know, in some cases I thought they were kind of synonymous or people just use them interchangeably. But as Nigel explains, they're not the same thing.

And the nuances of the differences are very important in terms of philosophy and the future of our industry. and I think this is just an absolutely tremendous conversation that you're going to love. So I encourage you to follow Nigel on LinkedIn, also a good Twitter follow, and just have him in your ecosystem because as Google gets more involved in insurance, Nigel is going to have his hands in that game. And I think it's important for all of us to understand what's going on with one of the biggest companies in the entire world. And whichever direction Google decides to go, I think it's worthwhile knowing.

what they're doing and who's behind it. And I think Nigel is a tremendous guy. So it was just an absolute honor to have him on the show and happy to share him and his expertise with you. That being said, and before we get to Nigel, I want to give a big shout out to Tarmica. Tarmica is making small, commercial insurance profitable. I've been telling you this for more than a year. Tarmica, T-A-R-M-M-I-K-A-com. T-R-M-I-K-A-com. Tarmica. Tarmica is making small commercial insurance profitable by providing quotes from multiple carriers for multiple lines of business in real time. These are true API-driven rates as if you were quoting them in the systems of these carriers. There is no one else doing this. There are other, quote-unquote, commercial lines, raiders in the marketplace, but

they use weak API connections, oftentimes taken from indications. They're doing a lot of screen scraping. They're asking for your logins. They have limited carrier sets. They have limited product sets, and that is not the case with Tarmica. Tarmika has built out true deep API connections with carriers. And in some cases, they literally built the API that carriers use. And, you know, I just couldn't be happier for the success that Raghav and his team have had. And all the agents who are using the platform to drive their small commercial growth, it's

a bedrock. It's a core piece of the success that we've had at Roe. and our future and if you want to tap into that go to t-a-m-m-i-a-com get a demo today and learn all about tarmica all right with that let's get on the nigel walsh mr hanley there is what's up man how are you i'm good good you have a good long weekend we did yeah well it i could have done we'd a lot of rain so we had a big baseball tournament little league tournament my kids seven and he's playing in this travel, whatever thing. And we were pretty pumped up for that because there was, like,

teams from Vermont and other states coming in. It's like his first tournament where it's like out of town teams. And like the fact that he's playing a team from like another state is like a big deal. And then it rained Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We played half of one game. So, you know, but it was still fun. You know, the kids have a good time or whatever. So they don't care with this.

rain or sleep or snow they just want to get out right so it's it's never never an issue yeah and you're still at that cool age where um like every things that like so the team's from vermont right like for me it would be like the next town over for you from like where we live it's maybe 45 minutes so um you know whatever but for him he's like whoa there's a team from vermont here like wow this is awesome. We're going far way away, dad. Yeah, yeah. So it's like one of those things. That's pretty cool. I love it. I love it. We actually got a half term this week as well for the kids. So they're actually out with my wife as we speak. So yeah, it's, uh, it's all good. It's all good. In hindsight, I should take time off and gone out and stayed with them and chilled out. But

typical Nigel screw it up and I'm now sat on Zoom calls and whatever else. So One of these days I learned. Yeah, when you figure that out, can you do like a white paper and send it to me so that I can know too? Because I'm basically the same way. Honestly, my wife will say to me, hey, it's half term. I won't even think twice unless she just says, she's got to basically say, hey, you're booking holiday. All right, that's it. I'm done. Yeah.

Yeah, I had this conversation with my wife. This is a few years ago when I was traveling a lot. And I was like, just be super special. specific with what you want me to do. Because my decisions are not based on me not wanting to be around or not wanting to be with you. Just understand that like maybe it's guy brain. Maybe it's just my brain, whatever you want to call it.

But like I'm just locked in on something. And until you go, hey, why don't we take a long weekend? I'm just going to keep operating. Like it's just here's the direction I'm pointed in until you tell me to go in a different direction. I'm just going to keep going. Honestly, I said to my wife's Emma. I said, I'll just work no matter what.

And, you know, I've switched my hours so I, like this morning, it's what, it's 20 past one UK time. This morning I've been out boot camp and all that sort of good stuff. And I've just been painting the garage floor. That's how as exciting as it gets. Because I do my mornings of my own these days and my evenings I'm working Google hours in North America. Yeah. So, but it's beautiful. It's just stunning here.

It's like, I won't mean anything to you in Fahrenheit. What is it? It is currently like 24 degrees. What is that in Fahrenheit? I don't know. I have no idea. We'll call it 75, 80. It's going to be, it's heaven.

It's just heaven. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, 75 to 80 is pretty much good at temperatures you can get. It's 75 here right now. Perfect. Yeah, there we go. Hey.

Hey, now we can do the conversion. You just say heaven. And I go, hey, 24. There we go. There it is. That's the conversion. And tomorrow, actually, now the softening is going to be 26 and 27. It gets better.

That's beautiful. Tees it. Not bad. Not bad. What are we doing today? We do a podcast? Yeah, just quick, quick, quick podcast. I just wanted to,

I think the insurance world wants to know. You know, now that they have acquired the talents. You've taken, Nigel Walsh has taken his, talents to Google, as LeBron would say. I think the insurance world just wants to know what the heck is going on. And, you know, I think mostly what I want to talk to you about is,

you know, not so much. I'm interested in whatever you want to talk about with Google and some the things you have guys have going on. But I'm really interested in your take on where the industry is headed. Because I think we're in such an interesting place. There's so much happening. I feel like in general, I feel like in general, the industry is starting to work together, right? We hit that 2015 to 2017 period where it was like, these guys are blowing up these guys and disruptors and all this kind of stuff. And it was very tumultuous, at least here in the States it was. It was very tumultuous.

Everyone was kind of pitting against each other. There was a lot of land grabbing and chest thumping. And I feel like we've kind of gotten past that to a certain extent. and it very much feels like now everyone's pointed in mostly the right direction or same direction and now everyone is just kind of figuring out where they fit and there's going to be people that win and there's going to be people that fall behind. But, you know, I'm just interested. Do you see that from where you're sitting?

And, you know, I guess what a generally like macro, high level macro trends, what do you see and then we can drill down from there? It is exciting. You saw all the news this morning as well, right? You might not have seen it. I'll tag you. Well, we foxed are $3 billion, bought by many at $2 billion, and we, Joe, a billion. So there's loads and loads of folks that are raising money and going after things.

And almost, hey, the disruptors of dead type conversation feels like a little bit out of date now, right? Yes. Because these guys are going after things in a really big way. Yeah, it seems to me like, and this may be something that, especially the listeners of this show, which are primarily people in different functions inside the independent insurance agency space in North America. That's primarily the audience. We do have some international listeners, but for the most part, just based on the topics we touch on, it very specific to the 37,000 independent agencies and agency owners and the carriers

and vendors that serve them. It almost, to me, is something that, you know, these companies that we're talking using the term disruption and all this kind of stuff, they're kind of doing the same things they've always done, except they're just not attacking, you know, maybe traditional space anymore, but they're still moving fast and forward. They're building new products, more integrations, the speed and automation that's being used.

We're getting into the podcast, don't we? This is almost the, isn't this the debate between digitization and digitalization, though? So I would love to know the difference between those two things, because I've heard that and I've read some of the articles and stuff, but I don't know that I necessarily have my brain wrapped around it enough to be able to say I know the defining difference between the two. Yeah, fair.

You know it in a heartbeat. You just haven't heard it in a way that makes sense to in that case. Because it's easy. It's, you know, digitization is taking what we're doing today. It's replacing your fax machine with an email web form. That's digitization. digitalization is why are we asking these questions in the first place. It's nothing more than your, and I feel the agency world, this is where you and I will

quite disagree, is going through digitization to make ourselves more efficient, but remain relevant, whereas the folks that are disrupted are asking us why we need these in the first place. Yes. So I wholly agree. And this is actually one of the things that I've been trying to get more people on the show recently to talk about this particular topic. So thank you for that description. Now I clearly have it in my mind because I think in some cases I've heard the two words used ubiquitously. And that's obviously a mistake. And I think maybe that's where I was just a little like are these actual different things or are, you know, and that that kind of clears it up for me, which I appreciate. But I do think you're right. I think right now I see this in a lot of my

peers. And I see people who are like, oh, what CRM should I have? That's, they're just digital, right? Instead of keeping, you know, papers on their desk, they're keeping the same information in their computer now. And then I talked to someone like, I talked to, you know, Fenris Digital, or I had the guy from branch insurance on, or we had Kyle Nagasaki from Clearcover on, and they are completely different conversations. idea of even coming down as low is what CRM are we using is, you know, that's remedial stuff. That's kindergarten stuff. But equally, the flip side to it, and I can play both sides of the coin, the flip side to it

is, digitization is not bad. It just might not be a long-term thing. When I say long-term, it might not last past the next 10, 15, 20 years, right? Yeah, I completely agree. It, I completely agree. And this is kind of a lot of the stuff that's going on in my own agency. So I launched with the mantra, or the mantra is the wrong word. You can tell it's early here in this. My brain is not fired up yet. So I launched with the mission of being a digitalizing agency, the agency that only asked the five questions, not the 50 questions in a web form. But to get there, right, to get there, I had to digitize first. So in order to get the contracts, in order to get up off the ground, to make the initial revenue that was necessary to start to put business on the books, I basically had to digitize the traditional model.

And we did that. I buy that. And in many cases, you had to go through those loops to get to that piece. But you might, is that true for everyone going forward as well? Can we, is there other ways it means we can stop that going forward? I don't know. I think the very real reality is it depends on how much of the business the founder wants to own. I think it depends on how much money you need at the start. So if I had, well, one,

if I was flush enough at the beginning and I don't mean like having a couple hundred thousand, I mean having, you know, real cash in the bank to start from scratch, we would have started digital to begin with, not digitized. But being that we were kind of a classic startup model and that, you know, I bootstrap this thing for the first 12 months. There was no digital option for me. I had to take a traditional agency model and digitize. And now what I'm doing is synchronously taking the processes from the digitized agency and building a digital agency alongside of it that will essentially take, that will overtake and then I'll put the digitized agency away and just be a digital agency.

But to do that, I had to operate these first 15 to 18 months as more of a digitized traditional agency. If that's not, does that make sense what I just said to you? Yeah, no, it does. It does.

As I said, don't forget, I don't think the digitalization on its own is a bad thing. Yep. And I wonder about digitalization being, so you're next, you keep going through the lowest, you can only move through the network at the slowest,

the speed of the slowest thing. Yep. And if we create a fully digitalized agency, that customers aren't ready for, then we still fail, which is why digitization also works. Yes, yes. And I actually think, if I'm being completely honest, I will never get rid of the digitized agency.

It will be a piece of the larger puzzle. And this is like, I had this whole, the first two words I wrote down when I started thinking about rogue were human optimized, which is, I wish there was like a way cooler way of saying that idea because it kind of, well, doesn't roll off the tongue super nice. But the idea is, I want to take the best, aspects of digital and marry them to the best aspects of traditional. And I feel like in that

sweet spot for as long as I need to be in business, that will be the holy grail of producing, like I'm a distributor. I'm not manufacturing insurance. I'm distributing insurance. As a distributor, I feel like that will be the sweet spot where I'll be able to serve the largest market while still having a really solid flow at the least cost. That's my personal opinion. And that's why I think, that's why I'm kind of starting to build up the digital side because I have the digitized side. If I need to do pen and paper stuff, if I need to do anything that's kind of standard

agency, I can completely do that today, have every piece in place. The digital side, because there is an entire market that wants that, that's the side that we're building right now. But you as an individual agent can't move a market or can't educate the entire. We're back down to education. And I wonder whose role is it to educate? So were your eight-year-old buy insurance the same way that you and I do? Or seven-year-old?

No. And if they do, we've screwed. We've really screwed up. We've really screwed up. Yep. Yeah, I don't think that, yes, I agree. that I don't think one company can do it, but I do think one or,

and I do not think that Rogue is alone in what we're doing. So I don't want to say we are the leading edge of the sword, but I think along with a group of other players, some of which are more well capitalized today, some of which are growing alongside us. I feel like there is a group of industry professionals who are telling this story, who also have the,

I'm going to say this in a way that that might not come off is what I want. There are people saying some things and they're wholly right, but they haven't earned the respect of people in order for anyone to listen. I think eventually they will, but they haven't yet. And I think that more and more we need people who have spent time in the space to start saying these types of things. And I think we'll see an even larger and quicker adoption. That's my opinion.

Or is it just the case of actually we just need people to start doing these things before we get anywhere? Because we can say it all we like. We've been saying things about insuredech for the last five years. But it's only when you see We Fox's $3 billion valuation, it's only when you see lemonade and root and Metro mile and all these guys, not talking about it, but just doing it. Yeah.

I think unfortunately there is an entire generation of insurance professional that can't wait to see all the companies you just named fail. And I think that is unfortunate because they still have voice and play in the space. And again, I'm speaking almost specifically to North America because I just don't know your market as well. But here, and I think that holds things back. I also know that if you live in Tennessee and run independent insurance agency, you could make more money than you could ever need in your life with pen and paper today. But that's exactly back to the point about digitization.

Sometimes good is good enough. It doesn't need to be bleeding edge. You just need to make sure that you can pay your claims. You can service your customers. You can do the right thing. Well, it also depends on what your mission is, right? So if your mission is personal income, kids go to college, you know, spouse has a seven series in the driveway.

We got a second house in Florida. If that's your mission, if that's what you're trying to do, which is an amazing mission, don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking that anyway. Right? Like, hey, I'll sign up for that today if I could. I think if that's what you're trying to do, then it honestly doesn't matter. Just figure out where you are in the world, who you're trying to serve and deliver those products,

and you'll be completely successful. That's the brilliance of our industry. So is it, never mind human optimized, is it more along the lines of insurance for the next generation? Yeah. Because then you go, how do you serve each of the participants or constituents along the way? How do I serve your kids and my kids that are, you know, seven, 11, 8, whatever, what are they going to buy, how they're going to buy it? How are they going to think about home ownership or car ownership?

How are they going to think about setting up their own business? In the UK, for an example, I was chatting to someone earlier where we said, more businesses have been started in the last 12 months in the prior 12 months. So even during a pandemic, people become more innovative and are out there taking risks using government support or whatever else to go and start businesses. If you're a first-time business owner, how do you know what insurance that you need and what you don't need? Where do you go to go trust it? Rogris YouTube channel.

But so you just answered a really smart way of saying, how do I educate people? Do you know why I was doing the weekend? I was painting my garage floor. Do you know where I went to go and ask the question about how do I go do it? What's the right way to do it? I went straight to YouTube because YouTube is my default learning channel where I want to go learn something. I jumped in there and said, here's what you do, here's how you prep it before you paint it. And that was it.

I learned about the anti-inflammatory diet in which I lost 20 pounds and changed my entire life, including my mental clarity. Are you still in hotels? I took one this morning. Jordan Peterson. I watched all his biblical series, which I've watched now three. times I watched on YouTube. I learned about cryptocurrency on YouTube. I learned, I mean, just I could list all these things that are literally core pieces of who I am today.

Things I'm certainly interested in, hobbies, you know, things I like to spend mental cycles on. It's YouTube. It's all YouTube. My kids, my kids can barely navigate a phone. But if I get them to YouTube, they could find anything for me. Literally. I'm so weird. My kids would literally sit there watching other kids playing Minecraft. I don't get it. I don't get Minecraft. I don't get the while they sit there watching other games, but they love it and they learn and it's great.

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All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. This is a conversation I have with my seven-year-old. So I'm doing a little work yesterday, right? And I could hear him because he got his phone time or whatever, right? We're pretty, I don't want to say we're restrictive, but we definitely try to be good about the phone.

We're like all parents. We lose frustration at the point that screen times becomes whatever else, right? Yes. So I said, okay, man, you can have a half hour of phone time. Okay, cool. So he's doing his phone. I'm banging away on some work or whatever. And I hear this thing that you're saying, Minecraft.

And there's this guy and he's cackling, he's talking about all these things. and the screen's moving around. I'm like, so I just come over and I'm like, hey, man, what's you watching? And I knew it was like in the G rate, you know, I knew I had the setting set up. So I knew it wasn't, well, hopefully wasn't something crazy. It didn't sound like something crazy, just something I didn't know about. And I'm watching this going, this is, I said to him, do you understand what he's saying? Because he's speaking English, but not English that I understand.

And he's going to get it. It is a whole brand new language. then you can jump into things like Mr. Beast and all these. I mean, they are, it's a world I should know more about, and I'm getting to grips with it. And actually, on my induction to Google, I learned some really cool things. And it was all delivered, obviously, remotely,

because I'm still remote given the pandemic. But things like, hey, did you know, and this is a great thing about insurance, right? Did you know that half the photographs that we receive are upside down? Why is that? Because we're left-handed, or right-handed. Oh, geez.

Right? And I'm assuming you didn't know that because you're right-handed, right? Yeah, no. I had no idea. Yeah. But if you're like that and take your pictures, it's fine. If you're on the other hand and you're doing that way around, all some insurance carriers or any organizations receiving photographs that are

appears to be upside down, but actually you're not. So imagine if you are the left-handed or ambidextrous and you're submitting something, you're submitting it in the wrong way or perceived wrong way. And there's so many good examples that I sat. through and just watched many of the many, many years old, but just great examples of businesses that have started up and then just accelerated through the pandemic or whatever. So it's a phenomenal channel and goes back to our point about actually how do we go and get people to educate things or educate on certain topics. I'm not sure you've probably seen the same in the states where

people go, hey, where do you get financial advice? I look at things like Facebook or TikTok and the amount of people that go on to the local village group and go, anyone recommend anyone to help me with a mortgage and they recommend personal recommendations or people posting their personal situation onto Facebook and then saying, what should I do in this scenario? I'm sitting there going, you didn't speak to a financial advisor because you shouldn't be answered by the local village person that probably isn't qualified to give you financial advice. Yeah. If they're on Facebook at this moment, probably not the person that should be giving financial advice. But it's just balancing all those things out.

And I do think content, you know, the other way to look at this, and then if you, the last time you bought a new car, but you buy a new car, I thought it won't bought one for a long time. But it comes with like a huge, chunky manual. Whoever opens the manual and reads the manual to a car? I don't know that anyone ever has. I think the only time I've ever looked for it was when I had to go and find the head of change the oil or flip open some sort of thing to get water in somewhere.

And I couldn't find the fuse or whatever. But outside that, we don't do it. Everything's straight to the dash or straight to the phone. You want to learn something these days? It literally is straight to YouTube. So how do we get into terms to be that cool? I have the perfect example for this. I got a flat tire.

I'm on the side of the highway. And I've never, and I got a truck. I got Ford F-150. And I never changed the flat on this particular vehicle before. So I get out of the car. And I've changed flats. right? I'm from the woods. I'm relatively handy. You know, this is a task that I can perform. Okay. So I'm like, okay, no big deal. 20 minutes. We're back on the road. I cannot find the jack.

Can't find it. Like I'm, I'm under the car. I mean, now there's cars, you know, zipping by 70 miles an hour. I'm under the car. I can't find. I'm under the truck. I'm looking. I can't find the jack. I'm going, I don't have a jack. I can see the tire. I can literally see the tire. Okay. So finally, I pull a string in the car in the back and the thing, the whole seat pops out and there's a jack. I'm like, this is amazing. Okay, we're good. Boom, boom.

I cannot figure how to get the tire off the car. I mean, now we're an hour into this project. So finally, what I could have solved in two seconds, because I go Ford F150 removed tire into YouTube, one minute and 30 second video shows me exactly how to do it. if I had just used my brain, like I would have for any other project, I would have been out of there in the 20 minutes instead. It was an hour and a half.

But I'm like, I didn't go to the manual. I didn't even think to look in the manual. Didn't even think about it. I didn't even, I forgot it was even there. As soon as the problem got to the point where I could not figure it out, I just went to YouTube. The answer was the first answer. It was a minute and 30 seconds.

My problem was solved. And on I went. So I'm with you, by the way. And the next question, therefore, is, At what point do we rely on this too much and then not work out what we can and can't do? But I think this is the battle that we're currently in over authority, trust and built on content creators, right? We're in this. We are in a second generation. So my background is content marketing.

That's, you know, any success that I've had in business is because I think everything through the filter. But you can tell the story, you can tell the narrative. you can picture what people actually want and see. So I look through that and I look right now, we're in the kind of second or even maybe the third generation of content creators, which are people who entire lives are based around educating, right? Now you need to be very careful with that. And that's where I come back to,

we need more people who've earned the right to have an opinion. I know a lot of people listening to this may hate that term, earn the right because we kind of are in a point in society where, you know, everyone should just be able to say whatever they want, regardless of what they've done or not. But I feel like in order to have true authority, you have to have earned some validation of your thoughts and your skills. And the more people cycle out of doing into teaching

who've already done the thing. And you see this with like in the in the invent like Paul Graham, right? If Paul Graham tweets something, you're like, that's probably true. Probably true. Right. Like probably true. He's done it. You know, now he mostly just creates content.

Yeah, he still advises, but he's not really doing. startups anymore. So he is a treasure because when he has an opinion on a topic, you're like there. And I think in the insurance industry, we haven't gotten to that yet. We haven't gotten enough. That's, sorry, that's back to brands that you trust. Yeah. And then let's assume that you and I are both 21 years old. And we then go back to our eight and 12 year olds. Will do the brands they trust different from the brands that we trust? Yes. But they're done because they're 21 and they're going to make a whole bunch of mistakes just like we did when we were 21 and they're going to learn how to validate who to trust and who not to trust and then when they get

to be in their late 20s 30s and 40s they'll have a really solid filter on how to pick people that they should trust and people they shouldn't trust yeah and I think that that grows or you back to your point you earn over time right you earn you earn you you earn that respect you earn that insight You learn the how people understand, learn, deal with logic and I've built up that narrative to go, actually, if my business is in these things, I'd like to know, these are the things that I need. These are the nice to have and these are the must have. And that would be a really cool a cool way of presenting it. I think the other side of this is brands, not content creators or educators, but brands who have earned it. Right. And in some cases, this will be companies

that today are still growing, right? Like there'll be a day when a, you know, potentially a clear cover or a hippo or some of these, right, really smart, innovative companies. Like if I were hippo and I was in home insurance, I would have a whole module inside of Minecraft somewhere where you're building these places and you can insure them. Right?

Like that's the way where my brain goes is I would want every eight-year-old insuring with some sort of diamond force field. What of the hell my kid was talking about? his Minecraft thing with hippo. Well, what's hippo? Frickin home insurance. Oh, well, in 10 years from now, when they're looking for homes or 12 years from now, when they're looking for homes or their parents are looking for home insurance and

the kid says it at the kitchen table, you know, they're learning what, one, they're learning the concept. And two, you're validating very early on a brand in their life. And like, that's where my mind goes for some of this stuff is either the creator validates because they've done it and earned that right, or the brand attached to that creator gives that, you know, by by being the filter. The brand is the filter to the creator. And again, there's always going to be cases where this doesn't work.

But I do think that that one side or the other can validate them, right? A really well respected creator can validate a brand or a really well-respected brand can validate a creator. And if they're constantly working together, you do start to paint a picture of, you know, what's actually going on. But you've just given me an idea, and one that's been thought of many times in the past as well, but if Minecraft turned around and said,

eating your greens and broccoli and cauliflower was good for you, I'm pretty sure our kids would be, you know, eating their greens and cauliflower and broccoli all the time because Minecraft said so. Equally, if you think about things like, is it second life for all these virtual worlds that you lived in? If there was real things in there that you could buy, which there is, what if Minecraft had for the base or house that you set up,

and my daughter did the same, she creates houses that my son comes along and destroys it or whatever else? What if she could buy insurance from a brand for some false currency that sets that brand off in her mind? At what age do you start doing that? get them at three, get them early. I mean, I'm kind of joking about that, but I do think that there's,

like I think about that scenario you just played, right? I mean, how freaking, I mean, just the PR alone would be amazing. And again, I'm going to use hippo as an example only because I'm, we just got a point in with them. So, um, and thank you for that hippo people. Um, so let's say hippo says, we're launching brother insurance.

So when you build a home in Minecraft, you buy insurance against your brother, who we know is going to come in when he logs in and blow your house up, right? However that's done. And, you know, I'm just making this up. But like, but like that very simple, stupid thing, but you could do a whole,

I can just see like a whole PR campaign around it and kids going, hey, ma, can I have 50 cents or 50 credits or whatever to ensure my Minecraft house against Johnny, who I know when he logs in and now is going to blow my outside. I love that because it starts to teach them the purpose of some of these things that you can get and what you can't get. What you need to do is make sure you obviously then protect them. Yeah.

The Mr. I said, a quick scan. He's a 23-year-old guy, Jimmy Donaldson. Yeah. He's got 62.4 million subscribers on his main channel, 99 million. combined. He said 10.7 billion views. Imagine buying access to that sort of, hey, it's hippo, it's root, it's Metromar, it's bought by mainly, it's whoever. Yeah. You've got a dog or a pet in one of these worlds. You want to ensure where the best pet insurance comes. You're building your own

business on there. Remember, you and I grew up probably playing Sims, right? Or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, Sim City and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So you've built your own world. How do we manage to ensure those things a long way if we needed it against events? What are those events? We're still in education, right? We go back to the whole, I get frustrated. We leave school and you picked it up exactly going, I know all these things in maths and geography and history, but I can't change a tire of 150, sorry.

I can't change an outlet. And I've got absolutely no idea what a bank account or compilages looks like. Yeah. Why are we teaching those things to get us by at a different level? day forward. I mean, think about how much, how much different our world would be. And this is going to sound crazy, but I honestly believe this. If all we did in math was teach them like the four basics, right, like addition, subtraction, multiplied division, we don't need derivatives or any of that crazy nonsensical stuff, maybe a little bit of geometry, just a little of the basics, right?

And compound interest. If everyone knew what compound interest was, we all would live very, very different. Like, right? Like we would be investing in things. nurturing things and watching them grow and even the simplest and smallest. I mean, right? Like you put $10 a week into something. You buy one less coffee. How much is, I mean,

these are like simple concepts that would change our entire world. I agree with that to some extent. I don't agree with other nonsense because we should, we should learn at all, but we should absolutely learn the practicalities of these. My best advice I was given personally when I left university was, pay off your debt quickly. I would start paying into a pension,

even if it was a tiny amount. I put in 50 bucks a month when I was 21. And it was a big stretch back then, but funny enough, 25 years later, it's worth a little bit of money. Yeah. Yeah. So I just wish, I guess the thing is, where do that generation go to get that insight and advice? If you want to be a dancer or an actor or whatever else, you go to dance school, you go to acrobat school, you go wherever, you know, all these things. you go acting school.

But the reality is most of us come out of school and become someone in a white collar job, blue college job, whatever it might be. But you go, or if you start your business, you become an entrepreneur, where's the business school piece without going to business school? Where's the, actually, these are the things,

when you set up, these are the 10 things you need to get going. I'll tell you what, the banks are in a good job. Some of the banks did have done a really good job of starting your first business, here's what you need. Seed capital, protection, space, insurance, and it's just digging into each one of those things, one by one that's important.

I'd say the more digitized or digital banks have done a good job with that. I still, as much as I appreciate a community bank and there are a lot of community banks, at least around where I live, I still have to go in and wet sign like 17 forms to set up a bank account. And it is freaking bananas. Like, it's just bananas. Like, it's, I'm in the worst bank ever right now. Like the bank that I use is awful. I hate every part of it. It won't let me do the things I need to do with the speed I need to do them. It's awful. And the idea of changing that bank to another bank is like a day of my life. Like I literally have to take a day to get all the money out of one bank into another. I just haven't done it. And you know, you look at that and you

think, but I want to put down pause. I want to go back to your question of where are these people going to, where is this next generation going to be learning from? It's not, Here's what I know for a fact. It's not going to be CNN. It's not going to be Fox News. It's not going to be the New York Post. It's not going to be the New York Times. It's going to be YouTube and TikTok and obscure blogs and Reddit subchannels and whatever

the else comes out that we haven't even thought of yet that's happening. WhatsApp group channel things. Like, I mean, that's going to be where they get educated on stuff. Like, I don't have any of those things. on my phone. You know where I go for news in the morning? I go to Reddit sub-reddits and Twitter. I have subredits that I follow and Twitter. And that's where I get my news. If it's not happening in those two places, I don't see it. But then I also get reminded on making the basis that we are the exception rather than the rule because most people, you know, I'm a big fan

of Pivot podcast with Cara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway. And he was talking about, explaining to another fellow dad about cryptocurrency and all that sort of stuff. And And it's amazing the folks that understand it, know it, or have a small bit of knowledge, or have a huge bit of knowledge. I'm in the camp of having a tiny bit of knowledge. But we're still in the top, you know, couple of percent. It's alien to most people. And it's still early days for most of those things.

Well, most of those folks can't get past just the basics. So we're just going to work out where our audience is and how we, back to our very first point, are we dealing with the folks that are mass or the small niche that wants super digitalized or whatever else? Back to my point, digitized as it had approved less broken process. If you didn't have to go a wet sign or whatever else, you'd be happier. You wouldn't bother changing.

Yeah. I think the balance, and this is the balance that I constantly struggle with, not struggle, but I'm considering. where your audience is today, very few people. I mean, I was at a party on Saturday night. It was a charity event. There were a lot of people there that you would think with the amount of money that

they had would be aware of crypto more than they were. And this small pocket of four nerds, we found each other. And that's all we talked about for two and a half hours where everyone else drank champagne. And I, you know, and I got a Coors light in my hand just dissecting Ethereum versus Cardano. You know what I mean? It's like what's, my wife's like, what's wrong with you? But but so, so yes, but the puck, I guess my thought is, right? So it's, the puck is here today. This is where we are. But where how do you balance that versus where to me it is inevitably going, right? And that's my, that's my perspective. I think there's an argument to be made, hey, maybe it, this

particular topic fizzles or this never becomes as important or maybe we have a counterculture revert to localization where everyone goes back to, you know, barter trading. I mean, who the hell knows? But, you know, where I see it going versus today and how do you balance that as a business is a really big question. It almost reminds me of the debate for many years about software companies that used to sell perpetual and then move to cloud or SaaS-based models. And that valley of the shadow of death between the two is a really hard place to manage. If you're a public company, you're managing, even you're private, you're managing investor or shareholder expectations on one hand to show perpetual increases while you dip and move to an annual recurring revenue perspective. Yeah.

And that is a transitionary state that most folks have jumped. Yeah. But going through it, it's quite painful. And I feel like we're in that painful point right now, whether it's ownership of assets or creation of businesses or whatever it might be. but once we're through the other side, the acceleration is going to be through the roof. I couldn't agree with you more. Nigel, I know you have to go.

It is such a pleasure to spend time, man. We could wrap for three. I actually avoided a bunch of topics because I was like, these are rabbit holes that'll take us hours to get to. So, man, I just appreciate it. We had our first conversation like a month or two back, but always been an enormous fan.

I'm so happy. Google absolutely hit a home run by snatching you. And I just, hopefully sometime in the future, we can do this again or just talk offline so we can just talk shit about everyone and no one can hear us. A hundred percent. I always, likewise, I've always enjoyed the content and keep creating stuff that makes people easy to understand. Yeah, thanks, man. Hey, be good. Close twice as many deals by this time next week.

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