Finding Peak w/ Ryan Hanley - Zach Mefferd on Entrepreneurship and the Independent Insurance Agency

Episode Date: August 5, 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 Zach Mefferd, CIC, Co-Founder of Coverage Direct and ZipBonds. Zach joins the show for an exclusive, first-ever podcast interview. In their conversation, they discuss where Zach developed his entrepreneurial spirit and how he's cultivated that spirit to found multiple successful companies within the independent insurance industry. Don't miss this episode...Episode Highlights:Ryan explains why streaming is interesting and important. (5:18)Zach mentions how he became interested in car racing. (14:07)Zach shares his thoughts on having a business partner. (28:10)Zach shares why boundaries are vital. (43:53)Zach mentions one of the things they do when hiring people. (47:27)Zach explains the four things that people must do to run a business. (52:02)Zach shares what made him move to Salesforce. (56:55)Zach mentions his favorite features of Salesforce. (58:34)Zach explains what ZipBonds is all about and why agents should be interested in it. (1:05:46)Key Quotes:“I don't have a problem with people, as long as we're on the same playing field to do it. They should be able to appreciate and enjoy their success.” - Zach Mefferd“Stop trying to make everything perfect before you go move. Make a step, do something. It can be done. It is going to be difficult. But, stop trying to have everything perfectly laid out before you start.” - Zach Mefferd“We move fast, we break things, we fix them, we find out how we can improve when we move on. We don't dwell on what didn't go. We just focus on what we can learn from, then move on.” - Zach MefferdResources Mentioned:Zach Mefferd, CIC LinkedInZach Mefferd, CIC TwitterZipBondsCoverage DirectReach 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

Happy holidays. Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas, everyone, and a happy holiday. Food Laboratory in the basement of his home. Well, everyone, welcome back to the show. Today was an absolutely tremendous episode for you.

It is the very first podcast interview ever with Zach. Mefford, co-founder of Coverage Direct up in Iowa. You've heard his name. You've seen him around the scene. And now you get to hear directly from The Man doing big things, doing big things up in Iowa. And Coverage Direct is an all-time agency. Absolutely love with Zach and his partner, business partner, Ryan Swalv, are doing. These guys are kind of a yin-yang team, and they just absolutely are killing it. You know, rocking sales force. but at the same time doing things the right way in their agency. So kind of just that really nice mix of looking forward,

pushing boundaries while still operating inside the realm of what matters to an independent insurance agency, which is delivering on the product and the promise of our business. And it's just wonderful to have Zach on. A huge fan of Zach and we become buddies. And it was awesome. I've been trying to get them on to do a podcast for years and finally said he was ready because he's got a couple new projects out,

a couple businesses that Zach and Ryan have been working on for a while, things that they saw on the marketplace that needed to be filled. And I want to talk about those. But really, we dive deep on their entrepreneurial journey, being an entrepreneur and pushing forward in general, how you deal with everything that comes up that you need to deal with. I think you're going to love this conversation. I know I did.

And this is just one of those episodes that is why I do. the show is sharing this kind of episode with you. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to the newest sponsor to the show, and that is Cotery Insurance. Small business insurance simplified. We use Codery here at Rogue. Ease of business is incredibly important, and codery is doing just that. They're making it easy to get quotes, to deliver policies. You know, not everyone needs to go through 17 accord forms and 47 supplements to get a quote, Some people just, you know, they have a business that, you know, with a few pieces of information. And then, you know, one of the things that I love about codery is they're using third-party data sources to pull in additional information.

Cotery is able to underwrite policies in no time and deliver them throughout the country. And a big fan of what Cotery is doing. I know they're CEO. I know Ray Lynch, who used to work at Liberty, who's now working with them. And just a great group of people who are focused on doing the right things. And if you're looking to write small business insurance and you want to make it part of your agency, but you're struggling to get appointments from traditional carriers who, you know, are going to throw minimums on you and, you know, make you jump through 17 hoops and harass you, you know, every other day about, you know, how much are you producing? What are you producing and all this kind of stuff?

Codry is a wonderful option. Like I said, we are appointed with Codery, happy to be so. and look forward to growing with them as Rogue continues to grow. So C-O-T-E-R-I-E-C-R-I-E-C-R-E-C-R-E-C-R-E-E-C-R-E-E-C-R-E-E-C-R-E-E-E-CORE-NURY-PITED. With that, let's get to Zach. What up, dude? Okay. According in progress.

First-ever podcast. I know, man. It's one of those deals where I was intentionally trying to fly into the radar just because, you know, everyone's got a lot of really good ideas, but they're just that, you know, their ideas. And I wanted to have something tangible to talk about before I actually got on something. Wow. You know, podcasts are really just about bullshitting. So it's not like anyone ever expects to actually learn anything when they listen to these things. They just want to tune out for a little while.

Yeah. I maybe yeah when I think about that too is uh well first of all I've never been said I it's never been said about me that I'm not good at that so bullshit it's something I can do really well and and two of us together I'm only I'm actually a little afraid for the audience to see what's going to happen and who gets on a soapbox about something first yeah I um so I was thinking about this the other day as I'm listening to and get caught up on podcast out there in the yard working it's like you know we're we're doing this uh at 11 1103 central 12 o'1 three right Eastern on a Monday and you think about when are people most likely listening to this I'm

thinking you know what mindset are they in that part of their day you know when it's Sunday afternoon and I'm out working in the yard listening and catching up to this I think it's it's interesting to think of how much different your mindset would be in different times yeah I mean it's why I think streaming is so so it's such an interesting space and when you stream is important because you're going to get a different audience based on timing alone. You're going to get a different audience based on platform. You're going to get a different audience based on format. It's very interesting.

It's not something I'm interested in doing, like, live streaming. Like, I'm not interested in that. Certainly not in the current season of my life, I guess you could say, or my business career. But I think it's a super interesting concept because of all the, like psychographic things that come into play when just make a determination on when you're going to actually like record it's going to be live you know when you're going to do it and then are you going to record it when you're going to put it out how is it going to work you know

I was actually right before and so no idea where the crypto market will be when anyone's listening to this but as the day of recording um you know we're having a pretty stellar day. The market's up about 40%. A little less than it right now. And two projects that I've been following for a very long time. I've had huge pumps. So 50% over the last two days for one and 37% for the other. And, you know, I was listening.

One of the guys that I listened to does a live YouTube show. And then three days later, he produces that he puts that YouTube show out on on podcast. So if you only listen to the podcast, you're actually three days late on his advice. Now, he has two different shows. One is long form and the three days wouldn't matter. But one is like what's happening that day.

And if you want that day's information, I'm not a day trader by any stretch. But I do think it's interesting to hear like you check your, you know, you check your app in the morning and see what's going on the market. And you get, and you're like, why is, you know, one of the tokens that I follow is called AMP, right? So it's a, there's a platform called Flexa.

And basically it allows you to make payments in crypto and the, I'm going to kind of butcher the terminology here. But the capital that they use to close the transactions in a fast time. frame is called AMP. So it's basically an intermediate currency that operates between, hey, Zach, I'm going to pay for this thing at your lemonade stand in Bitcoin and I'm going to have it happen instantaneously and you're going to get the Bitcoin and your thing instantaneously so you can hand me the cup of lemonade. Well, that transaction probably really takes about an hour.

But what AMP does is it bridges that so that you, and it basically creates a collateralized, a generalized loan for an hour between the two people. So long story short, I've been following this for a while, wake up this morning. It's essentially doubled overnight, which is cool. Awesome. Or, sorry, have. It's up 150%. So from where it was. I said that wrong. So I'm not here to do the math for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I apologize. It was up 50%. So wherever it was, it was up 50 additional percent from there. I said that wrong. And what getting to is so then I logged in so I was like what the hell is going on I mean I kind of had an idea I've been following for a while there's a reason I invested in it but it was like is this is the new

is the reason that I thought this was going to happen the reason happened so I turned on his show today at 9 a.m. I missed it so I'm watching the recording obviously we're working and uh um you know it's funny you know to get like here's why amp is pumping this morning like here's exactly why it's pumping this morning and um you just you don't get that if if you're doing a podcast. Like it's just very difficult to get it out that quickly. So it is, but I wasn't even talking about that, right?

So my thing is like, and I think you and I are enough alike that you can relate to this. If we did this at 4 o'clock this afternoon, is it going to be the same energy as we do it right now? And furthermore, what if we did this at like 8.30, right, our time? Like that's when everything, caffeine's kicking, the workout, you're feeling the adrenaline,

adrenel, endorphins are, you know, you just, I feel like I have a different energy level and I'm just more like ready to get on a soapbox and debate or, you know, discuss certain things so much more at that level. And then I listen to like when I'm hearing the podcast and, you know, if it's 4.30 in the afternoon on a Sunday, because I'm just finally getting around the yard work I want to get done. Is that the same? Yeah.

No, no, you're right. It's a really interesting. It's a really interesting thing. I mean, the other day, the most recent podcast that I put out last week was with Cass. And we did it at like 9 a.m. Eastern time on a Friday. So like, end of a good week, it's the morning, you know, so nothing shitty's happened yet. And I am just fired up. And I feel like when you ended that one, you just went down and did like a few sets just to like kind of take that energy and do something with it.

You had to get that that energy out. Yeah, I was just pounding beers and crushing cans off my 40. So, so yes, I agree with you. When you record definitely matters. I think putting yourself in the right mind state matters. I mean, there are definitely times when I don't prep. And I don't mean prep like get ready for the episodes because I rarely ever do that. But I mean, mentally just have like a second to recalibrate, get my mind right on the fact that I'm talking to somebody.

You come in and like you can tell like the first five or 10 minutes are tough to listen to. And I think that goes for everything. I mean, it's the same thing out of the sales call. It's the same thing with, you know, it's the same thing with anything. I think sometimes we get moving so fast and we don't think about when it is in our day that we're having a conversation or whatever and we're just not at her best. I mean, I've been more and more aware of that, though. I think that's why, you know, I bring it up is because I try to, I have so much energy.

And so you even said, I think it was one of the, well, it was the first time I think we met personally, right? And he's like, wow, I, you know, rarely am in the same room as somebody that has that much energy. Yeah. I'm trying to do that. But then I try to think, okay, is, you know, 9.30 a.m. Zach, the same as 4.30 p.m. Zach. And like what I make the same decision and trying to just be aware of that when I'm, you know, doing really big things.

I think it also depends on what's going on your day. I mean, you can schedule your day so that you're ready to go at 430. You can do that. But I'll say that on a standard day, I have, you know, I have a big spike in the morning. And then I'd say, like, right around like one or two. two, I absolutely have that dip. Part of that is I drink too much coffee, which is mostly just a habit than it is like me needing the coffee. And then I get a little bump. And like if I were do a podcast recording at one or two, you can tell. I feel like I feel like you can tell.

I don't know if the audience can tell. But that's why I try to schedule things for either 2 p.m. or later or noon or earlier. That noon to two time is like a down cycle for me based on how my body works. Like I have a big down cycle there. I've started scheduling meetings and I don't know if you do this at all. Post 8 p.m. though, like 8 o'clock call or a 9 o'clock call, I can come back in and I can be pretty good. I have about, I have about a two hour window from about 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. Or I can be fairly productive again. And it's almost like clockwork at 10 p.m. I like go blah, like all the way down. Like if I get to 10 p.m. and I'm still working or I'm on a call with somebody, I just lose it.

Like I just could care less. I lose all functionality. But I'm there with you. Whenever I have younger kids. So whenever they go down, if I want to get something done right then, I do have that second wind where I can just go. Yep.

You know, and I just try to be intentional with my time at that point, too, because there's only so much of it you spend with, you know, your family and whatnot and, you know, I know,

but I know exactly me. If I have something I have to get done and want to get done some through a project, I'll just block it off. You know, and say like, that's it. You know, be dad,

get kids to bed. and then boom, right into something. Yeah. So let's say, but I don't think everyone wants to hear about our emotional, our daily emotional cycles. So my first question for you is the car racing thing. Yeah. What the heck is the car racing thing?

How did you get into car racing? Why do you do car racing? And is car racing fun? Okay, so yes, it's fun. I've been around motorsports my entire life. So, you know, when I was a little kid, I mean, I used to have pictures of me next to my dad's. I'm pretty redneck if you really trace my roots.

Small town Iowa kid. We actually, we just had the county fair, you know, and my little town I'm from. I don't live over there anymore. It's about two hours away from my map. But I grew up with my dad. My dad did demolition derbies, figure eights. I was around just dirt track racing.

And so I didn't really, I didn't choose it, right? Like I know you have baseball was kind of your thing, you know, growing up. And for me, he's being at the racetrack. And so I felt like it chose me. just I really got into it. I begged my dad to get me into something. Started a soapbox Derby racing when I was, I think, six or seven. You know, a big race they have in Akron, Ohio, which they just did. I miss going to that when I was, I want to say I was eight by three thousandths of a second. So I didn't second in my class in Omaha because I was just right

across the river there. And then that I begged for a go cart. I shoveled snow. I had a paper route for three years, mowed lawns, did whatever I could to raise enough money. And my dad made me a deal that if I would, you know, buy this go cart, I think it was 500 bucks and I got it, that he'd buy me a motor and we go racing. Well, come to find out it was the biggest piece of junk go cart I could have ever bought. But it just, again, it was my passion. That's what I wanted to do. So it had some somewhat of success in go car racing and got in the stock cars. And, you know, and then life happens, right? So college, you know, marriage, kids, all of that. Now I'm, I'm probably having the most fun that I've had in a long time. It's something that's really not

crazy. So I say like, you know, it's not a race car. It's a car that I race. Yeah. Which is really true. It's a stock class. You don't go crazy fast or anything, but it's a lot of fun. And I just, I don't have a lot of money invested it either because that's the part that makes it not fun. It's, it's very similar to a gambling addiction. You know, you just throw a ton of money at it and you're not really getting much out of it. And I'm glad I don't do that yet, but I would like to get to a point in my life where I'm going to do something a little bit more advanced and, you know, have the time to do it. Yeah. It's like having a boat. I'm always so excited for people when they get boats. And I'm like, wow, you just bought something that you're

going to, well, so the problem is up in here in the north. And I know you live in the north too, but like you get a boat up here. You literally get three months to get it. And I mean three months. Like you get out on a boat in late September and upstate New York and you are going to be freezing cold. The wind and it's just like not fun anymore. You basically get like the second half of June, July, August, and the first half of September. And that's it. And then you spend all this money. it's constantly broken. I'm like, I love getting in other people's boats. I don't know.

That's exactly what I was going to say. I want to boat myself. Guess who's boat I like to use the most? Anyone else is, right? No, yeah, that, but you specifically know the guy who's got the nicest boat that I like to go use, which is Todd, Todd Bams. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he loves that boat life.

Yeah, he does love it. And I like going up there. My in-laws have a try-toon that we get to go use every now and then, which is the best, because, you know, you don't pay it for it, use it a lot. but the thing about Iowa too is and I know we can pick on Iowa for a thousand different things as you've already done before but there is really like the lakes that I would really like to go to the one that Todd's at that's that's the lake to go to you know it's the quote unquote Hamptons of Iowa right like it's where you go but yeah anyone else's boat you know enjoy it and I have to pay for it sorry Todd but I really enjoy using your boat yeah so okay so um no golf you golfer you just you just race cars and do it insurance and family. I look, I'll go out on a golf course, but if you take me out there and you're a super competitive person like I am, just know that I have to mentally put myself in a different place because I'm so bad at it. I have to be like, hey, I'm just here to have fun because I get

so mad. And then I just, I become someone that's not fun to be around because I know most of the time what I'm doing wrong and I cannot, I don't have the muscle memory. I didn't do it as a kid. I also broke my wrist and it never healed right. So I feel pop. every single time I'm trying to hold my wrist the right way and be able to do it. So I'm a terrible golfer. I will go out there and do it if I know I'm going with some buddies that just want to go and have a good time. Yeah. As far as, you know, other hobbies and whatnot, I mean, really, I'm a serial entrepreneur.

I've been this way since I was four years old trying to sell things door to door to my neighbors because I just wanted to make money. And I've had multiple different side hustles and different things. And I just don't know how to turn that off. So if I really could have like a hobby for me, would just be to start a side hustle. That's how much fun I have doing it. Yeah, I get that. I would say in the second half of my life, I was, I wrote an article about this one time,

but like I was an entrepreneur as a kid, right? Like I used to get up at like 3 a.m. and I would leave my house. So we had in our town, because I grew up in a town in 900 people, I always give you a hard time of living from Iowa. Yeah, probably from a town that's smaller than the one that you grew up in. But way out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, 900 people. and on Thursdays was garbage day or a recycle day. So everyone would put their cans.

This is before recycling was like a big thing. We put their cans in the recycling day. I love it. I would take two garbage bags. I'd get up, this is at like 11 years old. I'd get up with two garbage bags at 4 a.m. And I would walk the entire town and be able to collect about $40 worth of bottles.

I'd be dragging these two bags back. And then I'd come back, dump them in my, you know, put in my backyard and then go to school that day. And that weekend, we would go. my mom would take me to the thing. And that was like my very first job. And then a million things after that, you know. That's awesome.

And then I basically found out like our, you know, my parents were in one work for the railroad. Others a secretary, you know, lived work those jobs forever. Like when I was growing up, it was like get the job with the company. Get the pension. Like, you know, this, like that was what was drilled into my head. So I, I couldn't see like an entrepreneurial path out. of this town that I grew up in, which I hated. I mean, there are some kids that are all right,

but like I hated the town. I hated being in this small, hicky country, terrible town. It wasn't even a hikki because it's upstate New York. So it was just like people who never made it. You know what I mean? And I don't want to have anyone's listening to this from NASA, my old town. I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm just saying anyone who grew up there knows what I'm talking about.

If you're still there, it's a choice. But you know what I'm saying? It's like it just, it wasn't a prosperous place. Let's just put it that way. So how much did you get for a can? How much you, I'm just curious. Five cents at the time. It was five cents.

So that's what it isn't. That's what it is in Iowa too. And I did exactly the same thing, right? I would go on my days, but I could go do it. I would go find cans in different places. We didn't. So our town was not quite 900 small, but we didn't have days to pick up recycling. The recycling thing was this huge, you know, container behind some of the buildings there

between the real, I live in a railroad town. So, you know, grew up in one, I should say. And that's where they take everything. So I didn't have that option. I was literally going and picking up a lot. litter. Yeah. Taking it to the grocery store and turning it in for that nickel and do that. But that's how it was an opportunity, you know. That was the hustle. Then I would buy baseball cards and then I would trade the baseball cards were essentially the currency between my peer

group that we used to get things done. Oh, you want a new wiffle ball? Hey, I'll trade you this card for that with a ball. You want this. And that's how we survived. But I basically saw, I saw no, because I wasn't raised entrepreneurial, but you know, and there was no entrepreneurship in my ecosystem. I, the only path that I saw out was going to college, getting the degree and getting a corporate job, which is what I did. And I hated every second of it. And like, it's like, then I, so it's like I had this entrepreneurial lifestyle, you know, or, or, or, disposition is probably a better way to put it in life. So disposition. And then, and then, and then, like, to get out, to get out of this town, the only way that I could see was like, go away to

college, get a job, you know, whatever. And I basically like 15 years after that of like trying to work the corporate structure and I either hated it or was fired over and over and over again. And then it was like finally, you know, wrote, I mean, I kind of got a taste of it building agency nation. I got a little taste of it at Bold Penguin. Although that was someone else's company. Got a little taste of it at the fitness business. But, but again, someone else's company. And then it's like when I start a rogue, it was like, oh my God, how did, why did I wait till I was, you know, 39 years old to start this? Like, this is great. Like, I can't believe or, you know, it just, it's like finally at that age, you know, I'm 40 today, 39 when I started it. It was like being brought all the

way back from a mentality part in that, that is a weird thing. That is a very odd concept. Like I just, you know it's like you need to be taught it like you were taught race cars no one ever taught me entrepreneurship well definitely nothing mechanical i'm far from anything mechanical on the race car i just kind of feel like i'm uh anybody who watched days of thunder there's a scene where um cold trickles talking to harry's talking about you know i i i just can't tell you how to make changes on a car because i literally have no idea what you're talking about like i'm not quite that bad but i'm close you know i like to drive and that's what i do so I'm no mechanical engineer or anything.

Back, card thing, I had my first actual, I'm going to send you a photo of this. I literally still have the hand-painted sign that my mom helped me put together. The card shack is what it was called. And it was one of the businesses that we first officially, I first officially had,

I guess, that I can remember. But I, I remember having, you know, you talk about like your parents having an influence on you, whether they realize it or not. And my dad,

you know, was in the car business for, you know, almost 30 years. And I would just hear him talking about these guys that were buying to different vehicles and they owned their own business and they did this. And like, he definitely wanted to be an entrepreneur. He just didn't know the first thing about how to become an entrepreneur or where he would get to go and to do it because it's, it's, it's really hard, man. Yeah. It is. So I didn't have that like grooming. I definitely didn't come from that type of a life style. But I do remember specifically him and one of my, one of my uncles in particular talking about

how much they wish they would have just started this or they wish they would have done that. And I like, now that they were intentionally projecting that's, you know, fear or that, you know, the guilt they have, whatever, whatever emotion you know, I just remember that thinking, like, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do something because I don't want to have that, you know, I wish I would have. I wish I wouldn't have. And my father and maw actually summed it up so well when I was talking about going into a business, you know, because he was, he's an entrepreneur as well. And he said, look, the way he looked at it and his corporate job, he's leaving, He says there's risk if you stay and there's risk if you go.

And you just got to look at both sides and say in five years, where do you want to be and what can you live with? You know, and for him and, you know, thankfully for me, it was I just, I would have rather gone down in a blaze of glory knowing that I tried than never just taking that first step. And it's just, it's just the action. That's a hard part for a lot of people. I completely agree. You know, and there's, I think a lot of people, I will say that I think a lot of people struggle with the judgment. what if it doesn't work? You know, will I be able to get another job?

What will people think? What people say? You know, I think I also will say that the older you get, the more of a solidified perception people have of you. It's very difficult, right? Especially, now, I could give two fucks what anyone thinks. And I think that is a superpower that I have developed. I didn't always have it, but I certainly do today.

and that has allowed me to make this move. But, you know, I was talking to, I was talking to Cass. And he said, he said, you know, man, this is before I started. He said, he actually said to me, you know, I'm not saying you shouldn't start rogue. He said, but are you worried at all or will it worry you? Like, let's say you don't, it doesn't work. Does that bother you? And he wasn't saying it to dissuade me.

He was just trying to make sure that I thought things through. And I was like, look, man, I've been fired from the last three in charge. jobs that I've had. At this point, there's only up from a perception standpoint that I can have in the industry. Like, there's not a lot of places that I can go from here. I said, and the other side of it, too, is when you, when you take this on, and I'm sure you've seen this. And I think, I'm sure you would consider yourself blessed to have Ryan, your partner with you. You know, it's one of the things that I definitely miss is not having someone. I know there's additional challenges to having a partner for sure. But, yeah. But,

meant there are, I will say almost every single day throughout this journey, I have said to myself, I wish I had that person that I could say all the things that were on my mind to and have them help me work through which ones were the right things and which ones were just the crazy ideas. And, you know, that's, that's definitely that you, but my point in saying that is when you, when you, when you go on this path and you, and you take your own thing, right? you start to surround you do it right you start to surround yourself with other people who don't care what people think who want to push forward who are willing to take risks who are willing to try things who will listen to your crazy ideas and not think that they're crazy just listen to them as ideas where there is this whole much larger subgroup of people who listen to what you're saying

they're like you're crazy that won't work that's bananas it's not the way we do it you know what makes you qualified i mean all these things that if you can get away from those people for a minute, man, all of a sudden, the whole world opens up to you. And that's what I feel where I sit today. But that's the projecting their fear on you, right, of what they're afraid is going to happen or what they're trying to bring you down because they're not able to do it. And so they just want to try to stop anyone else from doing it. So I had a couple of thoughts on that.

First of all, you're right. I am incredibly blessed to have not just a business partner. Because partnerships, they can be messy. They're things about them by really in general don't like. but specifically Ryan, my business partner, like I said this before to you and I guess I'll officially go on record so he can hold it against me, but Ryan's literally one of the smartest guys I've ever met. You know, outside of insurance, I don't know, there's different things. Like the way that he thinks through things and, you know, just his process and does stuff,

it doesn't mean he's always right because that's definitely the case, but he's definitely more right than he is wrong because of the way he does things. He's just one of the smartest guys I met. When he comes to insurance, though, I literally have still not found somebody. that I think would, you know, hold a candle to what he's able to do, right? And you're not, might not live in it. And again, he's been on the carrier side and he's been mostly commercial on the agency side, too. But he's just, he just knows so much more things, right, that other people just forget. And I think some people take that for granted.

And watching, you know, how things have gone to the business, it really helps having someone like that, not only to talk to through those things, but also, you know, the Y and the Yang, right? Like the joke is, you know, I push him outside of where he's comfortable and he pulls me back when things are getting a little bit too far down the road. But it works for us. And so it's not just that it's a business partner in having it. It's just it's the right fit for us. That's worked really well. And I've told him this is like we could do so many different things.

And we both have dabbled and other things outside of what we're doing here currently. But I just wouldn't want to. Like that's how well things, you know, have worked for us. And I will say, too, about this, the support thing. when we started this initially going, you call it blissfully ignorant or just the fact that I just didn't think about enough, failure wasn't an option. We're just going to make the shit work. That's, that was my mentality. We're going to find a way to do it. And, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't, you know, mention how great it is to have a spouse, too, that supports you through all that,

because, I mean, there's times, Ryan, like, nobody wants to hear these sad, sob stories, but I remember, you know, we found out that we were expecting our second child, the second day into our business. right? And, you know, just seeing how terrified and scared and just comes to me and she's crying. I thought somebody died or had something incredibly stupid that I had forgotten. And that wasn't the case. You know, she was just really that worried about how I was going to perceive that because, you know, she cared that much about making sure that we got to where we were. And, you know, it was tough. I mean, it wasn't, uh, it wasn't easy. There was times where we had to go without certain things. There's times where I look at my bank account. It's just not, you know,

definitely not where you want it to be and scary, you know, of where things, you know, were. and it takes a lot because, I mean, that's years of putting up with that and not going on vacations and not going out to eat and not doing different things to get to a point where you get to enjoy it. So I guess my point is like you see these people that enjoy things that get successful and kind of take them up. It's the last week on your, or at least the last podcast I heard from you. You know, I don't have a problem with people as long as they're on the same playing field, we can be able to do it. And then they should be able to appreciate and enjoy their success. Yeah. It took a lot to get there.

Yeah. I think that's, I think that is something, oh, who was it the other day? Someone, somebody we both know tweeted and I'm going to forget. And if they remember, they can let me know. Just something about, oh, it might have been, might have been Mike Crowley. It was either Crowley or maybe it was Brent Kelly. It was one of those two. Tweeted out that, you know, just never look at where someone is today and try to compare

yourself to them because you just have no idea. You know what I mean? I look at, you know, I struggle with this a lot in the first few months of Rogue because the pandemic hits, I don't sell a policy for the first two and a half months of my agency exists. I mean, I'm just literally lighting money on fire every day because whether you're right in business or not, it costs money to run an agency, as everyone knows who's listening to this most likely. And if you don't, that would be crazy. It costs money to run an agency.

Even if you don't have a physical location, whatever, it costs a lot of money. So that all being said, you know, I'm looking around. Jesus, I know what I want to do. I have this game plan of how to get there, and blah, blah, blah, and nothing's happening, and this not's happening. And look at these guys. And it is so easy to get caught in that spiral.

And I think for a lot of people, especially a lot of producers, they get caught in this like, man, I'd love to go do that. Or I'd love to have what my agency principal has. Or when is it going to be my turn? And you really have two options. And I think before I was a little more, I had a little more empathy for this position. And now maybe my position is a little more draconian.

Either suck it up and enjoy the life that you have at the agency you have or go start your own thing and shut up. Like you really have those two options. And I'm only saying that out of love because those are your two options. Continuing to complain and maybe produce less than you should because you're kind of thinking a lot about things that have no value and aren't productive in any way. and are probably intrinsically negative, it's, that's, that is not a path forward.

And it can be done. You guys have done it. There's, there's, there's 10,000 cases that we can bring on here of agents and agencies that have just plowed through it. And you just have to be ready for the lean years. But the other side of it is nice. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode.

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Peace. Let's get back to the episode. You got to be ready to embrace the suck. You just do. And it's going to take. And I've had the luxury of having a few really good. They're not even mentors because that would be fair to say that, you know, they mentored me through this. You know, it would give me advice every night on people like I call.

And I remember, you know, I was at the State Farm route for a little bit when I first started. And the agent there, it told me, like, look, for the first three years, you know, you're just going to brace that suck, right? From year three to five, you're not, you're not comfortable, but you feel like you can breathe a little bit. Years five to seven, you start to get to a point where you're like, okay, this is going pretty well. And then you say, you know, seven and after if you do it right, like, that's why you did it.

Yeah. So I always had that in the back of my mind. And I had another really a good contracting client, really successful guy that I told me is like, you know, the problem with you, Zach, is like, you just keep trying to, like, push yourself and wanting to be. and you're comparing yourself to somebody that's 10 years into their business. It's like, you can't do that. I appreciate the fact that you want to push and drive and be there.

But at the same time, you have to just embrace the reality of where you're at right now and say, okay, what do I do to be the best version of myself and where I'm at, what I have right here so I can get to that. It's okay to see that out there as something you want to get to, but you got to, you got to find a way to take care of your, you know, what am I do this hour, you know, the day, month, whatever, to get to that point. And lastly, to your point about the complaint and stuff is, you know, I've definitely have seen that in the different roles that I've had. I think the thing that people really get into

their own head about is just they just want to plan and plan and plan and plan and never take action. Stop trying to make everything perfect before you go. Move, make a step, do something. It can be done. It is going to be difficult. Yeah. But stop trying to think you have to have everything perfectly laid out before you start. And there are going to be clients where you just screw it up. They're going to be clients where you think you're trying to do the right thing. It just doesn't work. Or, you know, recently, you know, we, we, we lost a, on a communication issue, I had a client that I basically was just waiting for the renewal to,

when we had the claim, it doesn't matter. Basically, there was an account that we basically were, had the, the money, the money hole shot, whatever, the whole shot on. Wow, my metaphors are, Mondays are not for metaphors when it comes for Ryan. But I, you turned it into racing too, which I like. Yeah. And, and we blew it communication wise, you know, it wasn't escalating, you know, a whole bunch of things.

But the point, but, you know, I just, I stepped back and I was upset for a minute. And, you know, I reached out and whatever that kind of lost the opportunity. And it was very frustrating. And I just took an exhale and I said, look, we have to work this process. Like, this process is eventually going to work. The process of me stepping full time back into production so that that communication or whatever doesn't get missed, like that is not the answer. We have to keep pushing forward to get to where we want to be, understanding that now we

know there is a broken piece in this chain and we're going to fix that. And I think those are some of the moments that are really scary because if you're working in a place, especially going big corporate to starting your agency or just being entrepreneur in general, the process are already there. right when you're when you're working for another this is what I took for granted at my my wife's agency I'm always family's agency is that like or you know it is her agency now um

they already had processes they've 40 years of processes that worked so there was no I didn't have to figure anything out I didn't have to figure out a COI process or a renewal process or a BOR process or a follow up process none of that and I know you can subscribe to different programs and kind of jump start some of that and for sure that helps. But you still have to implement them and make them work and train your people on them.

Yeah. And execute on them. And you're going to screw things up and you just have to keep moving forward. So I appreciate that point to like screwing things up and we'll get to what I was going to say in a second. But as far as your process went on, like are you a visual person for the most part? Yeah. Yeah. So we started doing this wherever we put something out as a plan, we start.

putting together these graphs and like showing this work. I can't tell you how much that just changed my ability to walk through these process. Now, I am still not the attention to the detail person, right? The operation side of everything that we do has always been run by Ryan. He's a lot better that kind of stuff. And because again, he thinks through things through that way. But once I can see it, I can be a lot more engaged in those processes because it just, I have to visualize it.

If I'm just writing it down even, it doesn't make sense. I have to see like a box. Here's what happens. If this happens, it goes here. If this happens, it goes there. you know, and walking that through. I think it's just the way that I learned. But, you know, we talk about when we bring on a team member, right? So, you know, talking about embracing the fact that we're not perfect. So we have our pillars, which I've gone over before, I think with you in the

past and, you know, how that came to be. But the two things that we ask for every single person before we bring it on board that they have to commit to is they have to be flexible and they have to be forgiving because you need to be flexible because we still run things like a startup. And I hope we never lose at least some aspect of that. We move fast. We break things. We fix then we find out, you know, how we can improve when we move on. And we don't dwell on what didn't go right. We just focus on what we can learn from that move on. But you also have to be forgiving of the fact that, you know, neither one of us claim to ever have everything totally figured out. And I don't think we ever want to have everything figured out because that means

that we're not trying new stuff. So you have to forgive the fact that we might spend time and energy and, you know, effort in doing something that doesn't work. And that's okay. As long as you don't take it as one of these deals where we wasted your time or whatever the case may be. And that's the culture that we try to create here. Yeah. Um, which also allows us to take on and start, you know, difference or a pilot different ideas that our team comes up with. Right. We show them the same sort of grace if, uh, if they have an idea and doesn't work. Yeah. So I'm a big fan on no ideologies, um, in life, right. Um, I think that one, it's, I think our, our, our, our, people are too easily persuaded by ideology. I think it's probably part of the political issues that

we have. It's a big part of a lot of the discontent that we have in our country. Let's not get you get us on that self box and you and I are going to go all. I don't even think we disagree on many things. I just think that it'll be a libertarian podcast for sure. Yes. But in general. And what I mean by that is, you know, and I say this to, I've said this the last two people that we've hired. I said it to Sarah too. I said, um, I said, um, because we have three, we have three people here in the U.S. and then we have a staff person in Philippines as well. So, you know, when I say no ideologies, what I mean is just because we have a process

does not mean that process is the process or has to be the process or should be the process forever. It means that whatever process is currently in place is our best attempt at the right process at that time. So when we put that in process in place based on what was going on in that moment, that was what we believe the right thing to be doing was. And what I tell what I tell that everyone who comes in and I got a woman, her name is Leslie. She lives in Florida. She just started with us last Monday. And she's already helping us reimagine just some of our touchpoints on our COI process, the better

document that it got done and verification and all that kind of stuff. And we didn't pick up on that. I've been doing COIs for a year and a half now. And she just came in. She goes, you're missing a where you notate the validation of accurate information. And I was like, but that makes sense. Operating under the assumption that it's correct probably isn't the right way to go. This person come from an insurance background. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She worked for Amlins for six years for commercial insurance. So, so like, you know, so, but bringing her in and just, you know, I guess my point is, I think if you, if you're going to embrace, if you're going to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit, whether you're a 40 year old business or a four day old

business, you have to fully embrace it, not just at the leadership level, but all the way down to your people. And you have to communicate that disposition. And this is, again, my philosophy and I, and I think you share it, is like, if you're going to be entrepreneurial, I'm doing air quotes, you guys can't see me. And, but then you're going to treat your people like worker drones in some big corporate entity. You, you are going to, you're going to have a lot of problems. And I can say you're going to fail. You are going to have a lot of friction and a lot of issues. And, you know, I get, I kind of think, I feel like too often it's this do as I say, not as I do, or we're unwilling to empower our people. And what I say is, look, you're not the boss, but I'm super

interested in your perspective. Like there needs to be. I firmly believe in a hierarchical structure of any organization in order to be effective. I'm not a flat businesser. You know, but I do think from a communication and feedback perspective, you need to have that flat structure. You need that person to say, hey, this, this isn't working and here's what I think should work. It doesn't mean that you'll put it in, but they need to know that I think your people need to know that they can make those suggestions, that they're not going to be penalized, that you know, that they're going to actually be rewarded potentially for making those suggestions, even if you don't put it in place. And what you get out of your people is this sense of commitment and understanding

and when shit goes bad, they're trying to fix it, not just looking at you for the answer. And I've already seen that just in the short time that I've had a team. And it's been wonderful. You know, if we can continue to cultivate it is yet to be seen. But, man, it has been, I said to them last week, I was just like, guys, I know we haven't been together for a long time. But like, I couldn't be happier with the way that this is going. Yeah.

Yeah. It's good. So we go back and forth on this. And since this is turning into mostly an entrepreneurial podcast. No, we're going to get this. We're going to get this more stuff. I think this is great. I don't mind.

I'm just saying, like, you know, again, what's up box are we going to get on? What we have found is there needs to be boundaries, right? And you have to figure out because there's some sort of structure that I think everyone craves, especially the old organization, kind of know where the boundaries are, right? But within those boundaries, and they can be, why does you decide them you want to make them? You give, you empower them to make decisions. And then you follow through with, and showing and caring the fact that like, I'm glad you made that decision.

Was it the right one? No, not in this situation. Maybe it wasn't, right? But that's okay. I'm glad that you tried that. We figured it didn't work and that's okay. That goes back to that flexible and forgiving. You know, we can be forgiving of somebody who goes out of their way to be empowered to make something and it turns out not to be the right decision. We do the same thing every day, you know, what we're trying to do. So we don't ever put it in a position where, you know, that was wrong. You knew you were supposed to. I don't like this whole idea of, you know, we're the military and everything is a standard operating procedure. We have to figure that out. Now, there needs to be.

guidelines. Again, there's structure that has to be a part of that, but we don't try to create a culture in which people aren't, you know, empowered to try everything and push. And it's really created some of our best ideas. Yeah. Especially operational, right? That's, you know, we everything we do is mapped out now, again, as you know, as you've seen in Salesforce. And there's just, there's structure to everything that's there, but there's still going to be great area where you have to make a judgment call or as, you know, what's in the best interest of our client in figuring that out. And that's where we want really push people to, you know, think for themselves and decide what's best. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, I feel like, I feel like our current culture has lost all concept

of nuance, right? Like, like, you can be structured and hierarchical and still open and flexible and use in your word forgiving. Like, you can be both of those things. You can be both. But like we're, I feel like we're, we have people who are like, this is the process. You press this button, then this button and this button. And if you don't do it in this order, and if I can't track that you did it in 17 seconds, then you know, you're out. And then we have this other group that's like, it should be flowers and rainbows and we'll dance in a circle at noon together and do a big kumbaya on, you know, and I'm just like,

both those solutions are wrong. Because it's always, maybe it's mostly singing and dancing. flowers in our hair, but you need a little bit of structure and in that way military, like eventually people just break down in that system and there's no creativity. So, you know, I think that I feel like all this gray area is is the job of the leader. The leader is the gray area. It's managing the grayers, managing all the stuff that can't be put in a flow chart and doesn't involve, you know, weaving flowers in your hair and making everyone feel like a,

like a unicorn on a rainbow. And it's just, you know, that is, because that's the real world, in my opinion, like the real day to day is we have this process, but it didn't work. What are we supposed to do? How does this? She's got an idea for it. Can we use that? I'm like, that's the job.

The job is, is sifting through. and if you're too structured or too loose, that neither one, I think, gets you to where you want to be. You got to be able to bounce off of both. So what I would say to that, because I do agree, it is a little bit older. And we're definitely not to the, you know, we're not on one side of your spectrum,

but one of the things, you know, that we do is we do track most everything that we do. And a lot of that is because, you know, we want to hire people that are motivated and are competitive and want to be a part of that type of, environment and I'm not talking about the boiler room set up but I definitely want there to be some competition back and forth I'm my best or I'm competing against something and you know there's a prize at the end because that's just the way that you know that we're wired I mean that's and that's what we want to attract to our culture but we also want to do it in a way where we can decide

you know what's really important enough to have conversations about what what's what are we tracking that's going wrong at the point where we have to coach to make this better and explain the message in a way that isn't you know hey you did this wrong here's why you did it and this is why we need to do it. It's like, no, like this is, we've noticed this to be a trend. Here's where we think there's something that you can maybe try different to be able to do is because at the end of the day, we're all trying to get to this goal. And so when you make it about the team, but individually track different things, it creates competitiveness and it also creates the really obvious ways to, you know, coach when things aren't being, you know, hands.

Yeah, I'll give you an exam. So, um, most recent person that I hired, she, uh, I said, tell me why you're not working at your last job, you know. And she said, well, I got in trouble for missing my task number a lot. And one, I thought that was a really interesting thing to say because not a lot of people would say that, right? Not a lot of people would be honest about that. And I said, okay, well, what does that mean? And she said, well, I'll give me an example. I had a client at 3 p.m. on a Friday call me.

He was really struggling at a dealership to get this truck or he needed some piece of equipment. from a like a tractor store or whatever. He needed to get it off the lot to do a job over the weekend. I was going to contact your car. And something was going on. The company wasn't closed or wasn't responding or there was an issue. And something was going on there. It doesn't matter.

And she said it took me two hours to get this guy off the lot. Back and forth, seven or eight calls. But I had to get him off the lot. He couldn't do the job without the tractor. And, you know, the company wouldn't have been open on Saturday. And she said, so I got him off the lot at 440, whatever, he was off the lot. But it took most of my mental energy for almost two hours. And I missed my number.

And on Monday when I showed up, I got a call at 835 that said, you had 17 tasks completed instead of the 22 that we require or whatever. I'm making those numbers up. And, you know, and she got like a demerit or whatever for it. and she's like, I just, I will do what's right for the client always at the expense of a few extra tasks. Oh, because the client, you know, that guy is our job, right? Isn't that our job? She goes, my point is that's our job. Now, I think there is a management piece to that where you have to make sure people aren't just blowing the time because all the agents principles are, well, right, you don't understand. My people will just talk all day. I get that.

I get that you have to kind of, and again, this is your point. But like, that is, you have to understand, do you want that person who's going to get the 22 tasks done every day? Because that's what's important. Or do you want the person who's going to, who's going to might miss on the tasks? And I think to what you just said, and I think this is the really important piece to take out is having, being willing to dive into the situation deeper to understand why they miss the task number, not just go, hey, you missed your task. number, you know, you know, demerit, you know, come over here and let's slap your wrist with this ruler. And in which one of those things is your culture. Your culture might be screw him. He didn't get off the lot. Too bad. Get your 22 tasks in. We don't care. You know what

mean? Or your culture is we're perfectly fine. Just notate the system, notate your task management system. Why you missed a couple just so we know, all good. So here's the gray area for us. So that's pillar four for us, right? I tell you what pillars. I think I have, but I don't know. a lot so I don't know. Yeah, you've told them before, but I couldn't tell you what they're. Well, I want to say it again for the record, right? So we thought this is after, this is back at 700 square foot little office, just Ryan and Zach hanging out. We had a good day. I, you know, I'd like to remember maybe we're having a beer. I don't know. Doesn't matter. But we were laughing about how we just wrote this account that we didn't have any right writing, right?

Like it was just like we shouldn't have had this opportunity, but we did. And I laugh and I look at Ryan's like, you know, it's really the bar is so low in our space sometimes that really there's only four things you had had to do well to be able to earn this business and one just be nice start off by be nice two tell the truth always as soon as possible and and definitely when it's not your best interest right so if somebody's better off going where they're at or what are they doing tell them that do that because they're going to respect you and give you the opportunity later if it happens and if it doesn't it wasn't meant to be anyway so just you save yourself a lot of time right yep always be available that's that's one that we put out there and then people that are really important

that you'd have certain things like this maybe you had to stay late and that night's going to do that done you know, you're available and your people know how to get a hold of your, get things resolved quickly. The last one, probably the one that people overlook the most is we initially was give a shit. Just give a shit. Be nice, tell the truth, always, always be available, give a shit. That's all you have to do. Yeah, see, look, my number one core value is we give a shit.

That's it. So, so as, you know, we call it genuinely care now because we have grandmas that come in our office every now and then I don't want anybody to be offended by the language. But the idea is if you could show empathy and just show people that you care and really go above and beyond to do that, you know, to your point in the last one, you're talking about that small a vegan with a mozzarella steak. Right. So, but like just taking the time to help them understand that, right? Like that's, nobody's doing that. There's not enough give a shit in this world that, you know,

it's well outside of insurance, right? And just a lot of different businesses. And if you can just show that, it goes a long way. And that's what that person was doing. For us, that's a gray area, which we're not going to ever, you know, hold it against them if they don't hit certain numbers for that. But again, to your. your point of agency, you know what to say will be on the phone all day. Well, there's certain metrics you got to look at and there's behaviors that you can coach to and coach out of your system. But let's get to that piece because we've talked a lot about maybe the philosophical side of

the business, although I think it's pretty funny that that we both have give a shit. We use give a poop emoji on our internal documents. But yes, we, yeah, ours are we give a shit. We hate to lose. We solve problems. and we are accountable for our actions. And the one that I, that I, the one that I picked up on the most, although give a shit to me was kind of, was a, was a given, right?

Was the solving problems piece. And what I wanted to, what I, that core value was everyone can do everything easy. The easy stuff is easy, right? It's why every insure tech, tech, dick who comes into our space picks the easiest mainline coverage. and they automate it and they go, look at this amazing miracle thing that I've done. I've automated renters insurance.

Like, congratulations. I just am not impressed. Automate when the renter's insurance person also has a pit bull with four bites in a high-rise apartment that had a loss. You know what I mean? And they are also like a hedge fund manager with, you know, $50 million in personal, you know, whatever.

Like when you get into these, it's all the hard stuff that makes this, job valuable. Like we're valuable because of the problems, not because of the easy stuff. So I wanted like clear as day in our core values. When someone calls and they have a problem, we are not going to be the agency that just goes, sorry, we can't help you because we have to do fucking accord forms. Right. Like I'm going to bitch about accord forms forever just like everyone because they're stupid and I can't believe we still use them. That being said, we're never not going to do them if that's where it requires to get the job done, right?

We're not going to sluff you off because it's going to take us an extra 10 minutes to fill out of cord forms. We're just never going to do that. And you're preaching to the choir on that, Ann, that's a problem that needs to be addressed. Yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk about Salesforce and cool shit. Let's talk about cool shit because we're going to go probably just a couple minutes over because I know you have, I know you have an extra block of time after this hour that we

I do. I do. I've had an important meeting after that. Yeah. So let's talk with the last few minutes we have here. I want to talk about some of fun. You have two, two fun things. First, you use Salesforce and you use currently Veruna. And on top of that, you did your own customizations. Customization layer. We'll get all in any great details. But why sales? So, I am actively trying to get to Salesforce. That's kind of a known thing, mostly because I believe that data, you have to know what's going on. You have to own your data and there is no current solution in the marketplace allows you to do that like Salesforce. So talk to me a little bit about the decision to move to Salesforce and some of the things that you thought were important when you were implementing it in your agency.

So that's a great loaded question, but a great question, right? So going back to this, like we're driven by problem. So Ryan and I talk about, you know, what you got to get to your core. Like it's a Simon Sennick can get back to like, you know, why we do what we do and how we're wired the way that we are and, you know, our corporate structure, all these other things, right? But at the end of the day, when Brian and I talk about like the things that we really want to go after, we want to make money. Everybody wants to make money, but what really drives us is is going out and finding what the problem is and trying to fix that. I mean, at the end of the day on Monday morning, when I wake up and I know there's something I can go fix, but you're like, that's, that's what drives

me. And so when we started, you know, our agency, the, the way that we did, you know, the way that we did, you know, really that's what it was. And at a time, we didn't know, we didn't even know what Ivens was, right? Like, we didn't understand what was stopping us from getting to where we were trying to go. But we knew that it was broken. We knew there was technology out there that existed that could make these things happen. And we spent, you know, it's now just over five years, trying to get to a point where we could, you know, solve that problem. So when we decided to go to Salesforce, you know, really the truth was, we were looking at moving AMS systems and one of the, you know, largest here or the largest had picked up what was at the time,

but what we thought was the most open one, right, in Tech Canary and acquiring that. And so, you know, we had, we had some meetings with people in the organization trying to figure how we could use that because we saw that still as being the way that we could get to ultimately what we want, which is don't tell me how I'm going to do my business, give me the opportunity to work in a platform that lets me tailor to how I want to do it. Yeah, because something as simple as adding a word track to a forum that fills things out and, you know, adds it to a comparative rating. platform at the time was what we saw is one of the things that held us up the most,

you know, the duplicate, triplicate quadruple entry. And so when we looked at the different options that were out there, there were plenty of things you could use. But what we liked about Salesforce in particular is because of the way that was built on that open platform, we could plug in darn near everything that we wanted right away without having to put a whole lot of effort into it outside of what we did with an AMS system. And, you know, I use that air quotes as well as, you know, in a system because we weren't trying to use it for the things that people try to make. It's the same reason why, you know,

look at a better agency and they get so much attention for it because they were creating what agencies need, but not trying to call it one thing or the other, right? We weren't trying to be an AMS that was a CRM. But at the end of the day, the majority of our agencies still don't have an AMS that talks to a CRM, that talks to a comparative reader that doesn't talk to their voice, their email,

and all these different things. And that fragmented text stack just needed to be solved. And so Salesforce provided us with what we felt was, I'll be at expensive, the easiest way to quickly get where we wanted to go without hiring a team of engineers to just build out our own product. So that's why we ultimately chose to go with Salesforce. And so far, you know, I mean, it's, it's been money well spent. You know, it's not if it can be done. It's how much and who does it.

Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I think about, I think about where the industry is going, right? And both of us are building for where the industry is going to be in 10 years now. where it is today. And, you know, Seth, Zremba and the team at Neon and the whole vision behind what, why that product was created and what it was trying to do, the idea of value and data, the, the idea that, you know, as you scale a business, you can't manage without data, without having the right data, without being able to actually track where your data is going.

And I don't mean by like someone selling your dad. I mean like there right now if you were to say how many tasks are your account managers doing every day? What tasks are they and which tasks are costing you the most money? You could probably snap your fingers and have that information. And 97% of our industry is going to go, well, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years. So I know what's going on. And they could have no freaking clue.

And you know, I'm with you, man. like I have, I've run down AMS 360. I've run down applied epic. I mean, if you're going to scale in any capacity, the only other two options are Nexur or Sejita, which are bananas. You know, we're not even, that's playing in a whole different world. And the fact that some of the biggest agencies in a country run on them is kind of a joke to me. You know, so then you got to step down.

If you level down to the Hawksoffs and then the Nowcerts and the QQQ Catalysts and all the others whose names, I don't know, you just can't get there, right? There's too many warts. If you're trying to scale and understand what's going on, there's just too many warts in all of them. And none of them are perfect. And that's not to say that if you're running a nice, simple, straightforward and I don't mean anything negative by simple.

I just mean you're doing just personal lines or, you know, you're just doing a certain niche commercial business. Any of those systems can't work for you. But the next level has to be something bigger. You're right. And so maybe that's not there yet. Handley, but like the way that I look at it is, okay, you talk about all these different things that you can do with, you know, let's start. Let's go back to where you started, like with the data and everything. Because we were the pilot of the pilots with neon, right? And I love Seth. I love this mission that he's on. I mean, that's like one of those guys, you just jump how high, you know, I'll do whatever he asked me to do and be able to do. And, you know, we tried making some of those things that for our process and we want to, you know, ours is a little bit different because we work with affinity groups and what we're trying to do. But the data, the data, and the stuff that you're going to be able to do with it, especially at the scale,

the lovely we'll be able to do it is amazing. That that needs to be there and it's there. For us where we were at, and this is just our specific business case, right? There were some efficiencies that had to happen because without those efficiencies, we were never going to get the point where the data was ever going to be able to utilize. Yeah. We just, we had to make our business, you know, work at a faster level to, you know,

follow through on the promises that we made to our partners. And it was missing from that. And so if you take all these different things that you just, as far as technology and try to figure out, can those just adapt to the simplest things, okay? Let's not talk where the puck is going even right now. Let's just talk about how do we get from having duplicate, triplicate, quadruple entry, you know, of different forms, different things, and make it so these systems can talk to each other. Just start there and then start getting the point of the full capability where it's at. And that's where we, I think, have had our biggest

wins is, you know, we figured those things out. Now, look, I get it. People as, you know, Zap year and they figured out way to Frankenstein to get things together and they connect and they work and it does work for them. That's great. What I'm saying is in our instance right now, when our producers log in, when our CSRs log in, by the way, they have their own separate instance because we only do sales on one side and service on the other because that's how much we split things up. When they log into that org, outside of going into a carrier's website to, you know, make certain things that you cannot do in there because, again, there's another, you know, a can of that we don't need to open right now, but we'll eventually hopefully get to a better spot.

They live inside that org. Everything they do sits right there. They're not logging into other programs. They're not trying to, you know, push this to connect over here and then have to go into a different screen or whatnot. It all lives in one place. Short of, you know, the comparative rating portion of it, which we went down the road of doing it with the two largest that you have there. However, and I think you share my opinion on this. We're very long on Tarmica and, you know, I've seen what this personal lines.

side's going to look like and having those together. That's our bet, right? That's what we're making right now. Outside of that, everything is in one org. It doesn't, it doesn't have to, you don't have to bounce around. It's there. And then we customize those things to what we want. I mean, you know, without going into too much the LMUV, you've seen it, right?

And the different things that you're able to do and the efficiencies that come of that, that was one of the things. Like everyone's talking all this huge, big level of, you know, stuff, which is great. And I love where that can go. But if you can't get the simplest things done first. that stuff doesn't come. I felt like we had to be really focused on the simple day-to-day tasks before we could get anywhere to match the capabilities of what Salesforce has.

Yeah, I completely agree. So we're going to have to do another podcast here in a couple of months, but I just have a million more questions and I didn't mean to talk so much about business philosophy to start. But I want to talk a little bit about zip bonds too. So as you say, as you said, said you have multiple entrepreneurial endeavors happening at all times and you have the agency. You have another kind of technology solution that you're working on, which we won't name,

but is very interesting as well. And then, and then probably this isn't the only one, but the next, you know, kind of big project I recently announced, which is I'm super happy for you and excited about in general, is zip bonds. So what is zip bonds? Why should agents be interested in Zip bonds, like what, just talk to me a little bit about the problem you're solving there. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Again, that was, again, so when we initially had this idea, and it was a few years ago, we've been, you know, trying to finish up the Salesforce integration for Covers Direct, right?

So now we're at a point. Ryan runs point in all things Covers Direct. I'm running and taking off and stuff on Zip. It was a problem that we saw because we worked a lot of contractors and the process was more complicated than it needed to be, right? And so really the impetus of this was how do we make it easier for these contractors that we're working with to find gets access to small contract surety and bid these jobs, right? Because they're intimidated by the idea of, you know, where this is. And there was a little bit too that where we had some, you know, discussions with a carrier that we've worked really well with that was also, you know, presenting some different ideas.

But we really didn't set out to say, okay, we're going to take the surety world by storm when we first started this. But I will tell you, because we're attracted to problems, the more we started to peel that, onion and gets back to the part of what the core issue was, we felt like there was, we could bring some value to that space, right? And so when I think about, you know, where we started to where we are, it's completely different. Um, because now, you know, in the process, we figured out there's certain things on the, the, the backside of house that needs to be changed and need to be different opportunities for both carrier and agent level. Um, you know, our ability to work on commercials different than, you know, at the time,

there wasn't a solution out there, uh, when we started this to, to provide that. So when it, bonds is really it's it's focused on all things surety our initial focuses were on that small contract piece but we've built out now we have a database of over 5 000 commercial surety options where you go you click you select what you need you pay for it you print it off you're done you're ready to go that's the pass through but we also are really intentional about um you know hiring and bringing on the right team members that have a strong underwriting background so you know our model really for agencies if you have a surety option that comes up you just zip it over to us and and we take care of everything for you, present that back,

and then you go up and present to your client. But we wanted it to be, as we're calling it, more of a concierge type of system. So we're setting this up and piloting it currently with a few agents to make sure we get all the Kingswork that before we go, you know, live. Yeah, large scale. But that's what it's focused on, right? It's like we want to be, you know, if you look like what Chris Green has done to the flood insurance arena, you know, that's what we're trying to be on the surety side of house, right?

We want to be that turnkey division that takes care of your security for you, either because you don't have the options, you don't have the expertise, or rather you just don't want to spend the time and energy in doing it because you don't do it enough. And at the same point, we're able to provide a similar comp plan that you're going to get from, like, if you did all the work yourself anyway. So are you guys a carrier? So we are not the carrier. No, we have worked and still are currently in negotiations with creating what we call it like a broker and control,

meaning that we have underwriting authority. We want to be getting somebody that can not only help you initially get that standard type of business or small contract, but one of the things that were really frustrating for us when we started, let's say that carrier, that same carrier says no to a piece of business, right? Then what do you do? You know, you're going to go to a broker, right? That broker is going to send you a form. Sometimes it can't even be, it's not even a fillable PDF, right?

You're just getting this. Now you're explaining everything all over again, right? And it's frustrating. So we wanted to create an experience where if we're your, turnkey surety division, right? Like we help you out with the stuff from, you know, commercial, small contract, large, full, fully underwritten surety programs, but also help broker out things that are more difficult. You know, we don't want to only be that, right? And we understand because of that we, there's a certain type of agency that's going to want to work with us. And

others are going to say, I just want to do that stuff myself, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's, you know, really what drove us to want to create the solution. Yeah. I think there's very few agencies. in the country that should be doing surety themselves. And my purpose, my reason I say that is why waste your time, right? Like you're in, I don't mean it like shirtie's a waste of time. I mean like like take, so I'm a huge fan of pro writers, right? I'm a huge fan of pro writers.

I like pro writers because I answer eight questions and I get nine compared cyber quotes. And not just compared on rate. I also get a 30 point breakdown on all the coverages that the different carriers have for that line of business, for that class of business, for that size business. I understand cyber probably better than most agents, but I don't understand it as well as an expert. So by doing that, what it allows me to do is get, is understand what the market looks like from price and perspective and make a relatively educated decision based on my understanding of the top level coverages on which, which two, usually we present to two quotes I should

present and break them down for companies. for people. What I don't have to do is be appointed with CFC and be appointed with all the, you know, and I just, bam, I don't have to be a super expert on cyber. I get a quick sit. I think the same exact thing about bonds, right? Don't be a bond expert. Send the bonds out. Have someone else come back to you and go, here's your two best options for this bond or the way bonding works. Here's the best option. Here's what it is. Here's what it is. And get back to selling and prospecting and running your business and building operations. and people like, I don't have time to automate, but we're still putting stickers and stamps on our bonds.

I'm like, how much freaking money are you making on that? Probably not a lot. Well, and that's just the thing. So on the commercial side, you know, basically we've set this up. You're making the same amount anyway, and we're doing all the work. Right. And then on the other side, it's very similar to them in the contract. But look, I don't think that by any means, you know, I'm the smartest guy in the space or whatnot, but definitely far from the dumbest. And I struggled with this when we first got. I still remember the first time I tried to credit. sure DeBond because I was cold calling, you know, commercial contractors, you know, this is almost 10 years ago now. But I remember thinking, I'm like, there's got to be of a way because I call the one carrier at the time we were working with. And, you know, and his answer was

basically, you know, you don't know enough about this. You need to send us off somebody else to be able to do that. And I just remember how that made me feel in thinking like, okay, there's got to be a way to have that be a better process. Because I go to you and you're, you know, essentially we're creating a similar type of like setup, but it just, you can be a business. position it better, right? Yeah. So you don't have to be, and if you don't do it every single day or don't do it enough, you're going to run into this question over and over again, how much time are you spending trying to figure out how to do that, where you can go to somebody that could do that for you, you know, and so again, we just created the solution we would have wanted when the idea came up, right? It didn't

exist. So we were trying to figure out how we do that. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, we can't find it, then we're just going to build it. I still remember presenting the idea to a carrier about what we would do, right? We're asking for our feedback on it. This is mid into our, you know, Salesforce, you know, thing for the agency. And we said,

look, we didn't even want anything to do at the time here. Just do these things. Run with it. We'll be happy to advise or, you know, give your opinion, whatever you want to do,

beta test it. And in the middle of trying to, this is pre-pandemic, but in the middle of trying to explain this, somebody asked a question about the colors and the logo and so, and I could just tell this wasn't going anywhere. I paused or muted, muted the phone. I looked over at Ryan and it's like, we're just going to have to build this.

Like they don't understand what we're saying. It's clearly that it's an option that's needed because this carrier was asking us to help them with it because they wanted something like that. And so that's kind of how a lot of the things that we do end up being what they are. We just figure out that we can't explain it well enough or can't figure out. It's easier just to build it ourselves. And that's what we've done. Well, I for one, am very happy that you and Ryan are out there because our industry needs people who are willing to take risks and who see problems and don't just bitch about the problems, but try to find solutions to them, which I think was probably the thing that I

disliked the most about my time at Trust of Choice and Agency Nation, not the organization itself, but the number of people that I ran into in our space who wanted to complain about things and not present solutions. And, you know, I think that's one of the things that attracted me to you and to Ryan and what your guy's mission is and why, you know, you know, we've always kind of stayed close over the years here is that I just love that your mentality is, is this something that's important? Yeah. You know, you have this framework that you walk through where at the end of it, one of the one of the answers might be, well, we'll just build it. And I think there are so many people in our space that we'll,

would they don't have like one of one of the boxes at the bottom of the plinko board is not we build it right like it's just not right so um and i think we just need to cultivate and and share more stories and i hope everyone who is unfamiliar with you in coverage direct and zip bonds and every other project like you're going to need to create like a you're going to have to create like your holding company empire page with all your portfolio companies under it pretty soon but um we have to draw pictures for our attorney in CPA. And I don't want to take away from the fact that, you know, people would say that we're distracted from that. It's, it's far from that. I mean,

we think we'll have a really great team behind us and helping us figure out of stuff. So it's not just us. We just, again, this is why we've always tried to fly into the radar because we don't make a big deal about certain things. But now I think we do. We, we have solutions that we can really help other agents, you know, implement and want to do it. Yeah. Dude, so where, other than coverage direct.com, zip bonds.com, where LinkedIn, Twitter, like what's the best place to connect with you. I feel like I have the best Twitter connections with the insure tech or insurance space right on Twitter. That's what I'm at. And I, and, you know, if you're one of those people that only want to see tweets from things of business, I'm not the right one because I'm

always posting things about my kids and racing and different stuff. But Twitter's the best place to to find me. Are you, uh, what are you coverage direct on Twitter or what's your? No, it's, I got to figure out if there's a period or I forget the handle if it's just my name. I think it's just my first last name that's on there. You'd think I would know that off top of my head. But yeah, it's my first ZACH, M-E-F-F-E-R-D. So, at Zach Mefford on Twitter. That's my personal one. That's the way I had the most conversations. LinkedIn's good too. I just, I feel like I'm on Twitter more than I am probably most platforms. Well, I know we went along here, but I do think it was an awesome conversation. I look forward to the next time. I'm also, and this is stuff, people, I am

glad that I popped your podcasting cherry. That makes me very happy. Yeah. Yeah. No, I, I, I appreciate going on there first. I again, I just want to make sure that I had something tangible to talk about. And I really didn't think that this conversation was going to be about entrepreneurship as much as as it was. But I'm really glad we got to talk about it. That was fun. Yeah. I'm passionate about that too. Cool. Well, thanks again, man. We'll talk soon. Yeah. Thank you. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible. It's not. With the one call closed system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients under three years during the pandemic.

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