Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP.109 | Feat. Stephen Brown and Steve Blanchard

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

Good News York: Comedy and Car Warranties In this episode of Good News York, host Matt Masur from Growth Mode Content recaps his recent experience at Retro Game Con and gives a big shoutout to the event organizers. Matt welcomes guest comedian Steven Brown, who discusses the upcoming Crooked Mouth Comedy Fest in Broome County. The festival features five shows over four days with different lineups and national acts. Later, Matt talks with Steve Blanchard, president and founder of Empire State Warranty. They discuss the challenges and benefits of providing vehicle service contracts, breaking misconceptions about car warranties, and the process of expanding a business during COVID-19. Blanchard also highlights the reliability of Toyota vehicles and emphasizes the importance of having a warranty. 00:00 Introduction and Retro Game Con Recap 01:09 Special Guest: Comedian Steven Brown 01:54 Crooked Mouth Comedy Fest Details 04:29 Comedy Fest Lineup and Highlights 05:06 Challenges of Organizing a Comedy Festival 08:16 Hosting a Comedy Show: Tips and Experiences 19:52 Empire State Warranty: Revolutionizing Car Warranties 25:13 Understanding Vehicle Warranty Costs 25:58 Financing and Payment Options for Warranties 28:21 Navigating Warranty Claims and Repairs 33:19 The Birth of Empire State Warranty 38:00 Building and Growing the Business 42:21 Target Clients and Partnership Opportunities 48:28 Most Reliable Vehicles and Final Thoughts

Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections for who can contact teens and the content they can see. Learn more about teen accounts at Instagram.com slash teen accounts. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman and Uneworld Boutique River Cruises L'ouique Bali to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been selling there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising

and Unirold's 50th anniversary summer specials. Hey folks, I'm Matt Meager from Growth Mode content. Welcome to Good News, York. It is, I don't even know what day it is because we got back from Retro GameCon. It feels like five minutes ago. I think it's been a couple days now, actually. But that was an absolutely incredible, phenomenal time.

check out all our social medias if you'll see that. And there'll be a lot of other stuff coming. We recorded all the panel events and all kinds of really cool things. So we'll have a lot to share. Big shout out to Danny and Pat and Nathan and all the guys that put on that event. It was the most incredible thing ever. And it was just a great time had by all. Get your tickets for next year like as soon as they announce them.

Because this thing sells out. And you can see why. It's just more value I've ever seen an event ever. So big shout out to those guys again, and thanks for having us there this weekend. You might notice my spiky-haired sidekick is missing. It's his birthday. And he wanted to run around Ithaca and his birthday suit today. So we let him do that.

He's got the day off. And happy birthday to our boy, Mikey B. So without further ado, we do have a guest. He's not auditioning for Mike's job, but he is a pretty damn funny fella. You might have seen him all over the local New York comedy scene. Our buddy Stephen Brown is with us. What's going on, buddy? Hey, not too much.

It's fun. In fact, it's actually my mom's birthday, too. Oh, wow. Yeah, but she's not alive anymore, so good on Mike. Jesus Christ. All right, man. This is why I love comedians. Happy birthday, I guess? Thank you.

I'll let her know. Stephen's here to talk about something pretty crazy. There is a comedy fest that is coming up, and this is not like a one-time show. This is four days, five shows spread across Broom County. It's billed as the funniest weekend in the history of Broom County, and I feel like that that's a valid claim. I mean, it is sort of a low bar, but it's called the Cricket Mouth Comedy Fest. It's coming up on the 16th.

Stephen, tell us about this thing. We did it last year. It was a ton of fun. We've got five shows over four days, different lineup on every show, different headliner on every show, and they're really, really talented people,

and it's really going to be a fantastic showcase of not only the strength of our local regional scene from Binghamton, Syracuse, Scranton, but as far as in New York City, we have national touring acts coming through here. We have acts from California. you're coming in for it. So it's going to be really exciting. A lot of familiar faces and a lot of new faces and really just showing the strengths of our scene. Wow. Wow. And so what's really cool to me

is you can get a pass for all these shows, right? You just kind of one ticket gets you into every event. Yeah. For $50, you can get access to all five shows and you get a festival t-shirt for free. Oh, wow. Otherwise, it's $15 per show in advance or $20 at the door. So it's, even if you plan going just to two or three of the shows, it's a significant savings. That's a phenomenal deal. Wow. You guys don't like making money, I feel like.

But you do like making people laugh, and that's what is awesome, and that's why we love these shows. Tell us a little bit about where some of these venues are and who you might be able to see there. Well, we're actually running out of one spot because I really love the guys we work with. It's at Crooked Mouth Brewing.

That's where I've been running shows for the last two and a half years. That makes it easy. It's a small little brewery. got 60 chairs in it. They do all their own brews. I have a great fantastic kitchen, great menu. It's like standard bar fare, but nothing out of a deep fryer.

So it's actually tasty and good. And you don't hate yourself after it unless you have like too many IPAs, but that's on you. And they're super duper big comedy fans too. Like I knew these guys from going to comedy stuff before they opened the brewery. It's one of the reasons they wanted to open the brewery. Wow. So it's really a fantastic partner. that they run a rampant in an entire weekend of their spot.

That's incredible, man. Four days, five shows. What can you expect to see during these shows? Something for everybody. You know, it's like we make a point to have different styles on every shows, people from different scenes on every shows. And it's, you know, you're going to see people who have been doing comedy for 18 months. You're going to see people who have been doing comedy for 18 years.

You know, so you're going to really run the gamut. But these are people who are people who have been doing comedy for 18 months. These are people who, like I said, they tour the country, like Sean Murphy, the headliner for early show. Just did a run of sold out shows in Finland with Mark Mormon. Like literally yesterday, he was in Europe. And Saturday he'll be in Binghamton, you know? So that's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. What does it like to put together a lineup like that? I mean, it's got to be, you know, book in one show is one thing. But book in five, you know, how does that happen? It's terrible. I don't recommend it. every year when I say I'm going to do it again. And I say, like, why am I doing this again?

It's a lot to juggle. This year was much harder than last year for some reason. You know, it's one thing when people say when their availabilities are and then they change them. Yeah. It makes you wish they wouldn't stop doing comedy. Sure. What do you expect in comics, right? But no, it's a lot of work.

I start the work on it in March. Wow. So it's really like a six, seven month process of first you book the weekend and you book the headliners, then you put up the submissions. I see. And then the worst part of the process is watching over a hundred submission tapes. Don't do that. Oh, wow.

Don't do that. It's, especially on one weekend. I don't recommend it. I feel like you got to make a bit out of that. You got to do like, you know, the first few episodes of America's Got Talent or whatever, where it's the horrible auditions, you know. Oh, my God. It could be incredible.

You'd be amazed what people think is their best five. I, yeah. I've seen some people on. I'm just going to say I've seen some shit. Yeah, you have. Let's talk about the ones that made the cut, though, right? Who you got headlighting these shows? Thursday night, we have Cindy Arena, just a powerhouse of a six-year-old lesbian coming down from Rochester, New York.

She's been out to our spot a few times. She works clubs all over. She's done festivals all over the country. She's amazing. Friday night, really excited about this one. We have Christina O'Day, not a name everyone knows, but she's recently been on tour and the opening for Dave Attell. Oh, wow.

And she came up and did a short spot at one of our brunch shows back in the spring and just blew everyone out of the water. Everyone was like, oh, my God, who is this woman? And I'm so thrilled to have her back. Saturday early show, that's Sean Murphy. He's always on tour with, like, Mark Norman, Dan Soder. He's your favorite comic's favorite comic. He's an absolute killer and he just recorded a new special that'll be coming out soon

Excuse me the Saturday night is Clayton Williams He's the previous winner of Buffalo's funniest person up in Buffalo Hilarious hilarious comic and then someday I definitely got sick and unable to make it But a very funny guy from Buffalo as well Brian Netzel is gonna be filling in he's a returning here He was a festival participant last year and it's great to see him get upscale to a to headliner for the brunch show Oh, that's pretty cool. That's really neat, man. Am I right in assuming that you're the host for the shows?

Yep, I host all the shows. I'll do three, four minutes up top, just to warm the crowd. And then the shows are packed. They've all got like 10 comics on it. So I'm going to bring people up and get the hell out of the way and let the people, you know, do their thing. Everyone's getting, you know, sets from six to eight minutes for the regular comics. And then, of course, your headliner is going to do a 30-minute headline set. Yeah, that's incredible.

I've hosted a couple of shows back in the day. It's been a not since COVID, but it's really interesting because it's not like doing a set where you necessarily can start and finish. You've got to have sometimes a variety of jokes and things like that. And you've got all these different shows. Just as a host, how do you prepare to kind of have a good, you know, to set people up properly? Yeah, and you just have to make sure to let them know what to expect. Because, I mean, it's a little bit different than a normal comedy show. It's a bit more of a gauntlet.

I see. You're not going to have, people aren't going to have time to really, like, warm up to anyone. You've got to come out with firing. And you've got to let him know, this is what to expect. You got to get hit him quick, hit him hard and get out of the way for the next guy. It's just want to keep the line moving, like your old baseball term, right? Gotcha.

Keep the line up turning. Keep the line up turning. And so, yeah, I'll just do a couple little bits here in there. Make sure once we get that good laugh, then bring up the next comic and get it moving. That's great, man. That's really cool. What is, I'm going to ask you two sides of this, but I'm going to start with the wild one here. What is the worst thing that can happen at a comedy show?

And then I'm going to ask you the best, but start with that. Oh, shit, okay. A white guy saying it. No, the worst thing is especially early in a show is if a comic isn't doing well, if they turn on the crowd and ruin it for the guys coming up next. I see. Sometimes you just got to eat your shit of sandwich and say thank you and move on. Because if you do that, people would be like, okay, that guy wasn't for me.

Yeah. But if he turned, if they go antagonistic and attack the crowd, then that tastes them all like on the defensive. Like now it's like, make me laugh instead of I'm ready to laugh. Right. Yeah, that's, that's wild. What about hecklers? Do you, do you see a lot of them? And then how do you deal with them?

You know what's nice as the host, usually people are pretty sober, so I don't have to deal with them often. There are some times where, like, you feel like 80 minutes into the show, all of a sudden, the crowd goes from having funds, like a quarter of them are just wasted. Gotcha. And that's when the vibe can shift and there could be more interaction. You don't often see heckling, but you just see people who don't know when to shut up. Gotcha. Yeah. needed participants.

I almost feel like that's worse when people are just having their own side conversations in full volume, you know, to me almost like, heckling almost gives you the opportunity to either add to the show or you can just throw that guy out. But when you got, you know, three people sitting at the side table just carrying on like they're at a restaurant or something, it's horrible. And that's one thing that's nice about a page show is the room can police itself a little bit because. Everyone is invested. It's not like, oh, there's a comedy show having the bar on a wing night. Yeah. That's happening to them.

Like, we're not happening to them. They knew what they came for. They all paid for. They all want to have a good time. So it's not uncommon for some people in the crowd, the other people that have, yo, shut the hell up. Right. Yeah.

No, that's nice. Nice one problem solve themselves, you know? Yes. What, uh, so, so what do you, what do you do after this? You know, you said you plan this. You start. March after this thing happens. Do you,

do you take two weeks off and go lay on a beach somewhere? It's got to be a big relief once it's finished, right? It is. And I took Monday off of work and Sunday. I'm going to take the fattest fucking nap you've ever seen. Yeah. It's going to be a beautiful thing. And otherwise, you just get right back to it.

Like, we've got four more shows booked for the rest of the year, two in November, two in December, and book through May of next year. So the wheel doesn't stop turning. just keep bringing the fun and hopefully people keep showing up. And all of those are at the same venue we were talking about? Yeah, everything I run is at Crookedmouth Brewering. They're so good to me. And I think people in the area kind of understand now that that's the best place to consistently go to see comedy.

That's great. Binghamton is a small town. We don't have a comedy club. Sure. So we try to do a show every two or three weeks to kind of keep this the hub for it. Oh, that's great. And there's other comedy in Binghamton, like Mike Peters, run the club. the don't tell. He does a couple other things of local in town. His shows are fantastic,

but they're all over the place and not as consistent in the same spot, you know, with the same Carolina knows. Yeah, I think you got a good, good strategy. Good thing going, man. That's great. We're trying. We're trying to hear that. Love to hear that. Let's give folks the details again. It's the Cricket Mouth Comedy Fest, 16th through the 19th through the weekend here. Let's see. Your website, go ahead and you give it to me because you can find it. Crick and Mouth Comedy. Comedy Fest.com. It's got bios for all the headliners, links for individual show tickets, along with the weekend pass. And like I said, if you get the weekend pass, you get access to all five shows. And we printed up a festival t-shirts. There's only around a 50 of a maid.

You get one of those for free. Otherwise, we're selling them for 20 bucks. And it's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman, and Uneworld Boutique River Cruises L'Iq Bali to learn about river cruising in France. standing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising and Unirold's 50th anniversary summer specials. Hey, it's Trevor from the Jim Kerr Rock and Roll Morning Show.

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I can't wait to keep drinking all these amazing flavors. They have an unextream only 100 milligrams of caffeine, same as a cup of coffee. You can buy Liquid Death Sparkly Energy drink at fine retailers like 7-Eleven or learn more at LiquidDeath.com. That's pretty awesome, man. It's a phenomenal deal, honestly, for that much comedy and you get a souvenir. Like, you're providing incredible value to people, which I think is really. awesome, man. We're trying. We're trying. It's tough times, man. Everything's expensive. Yeah. Everything's

hard for everybody right now, you know? Yep. So we want to make sure we've got enough to make sure the headliners are taken care of and then everyone gets really good value for their money. We only charge what we need to, not what we should. I like that, man. I like that. That's an honorable way to go about it. Uh, let's, uh, so it's hard to get that out of your blood, you know? Before we go, you said something earlier about Crooked mouth that's stuck in my head. You said they have phenomenal bar food, but none of it's fried. What's your favorite menu item at the place? Oh, my favorite item lately has been the peanut butter and jelly smash burger.

What? Yeah, it's delicious. And also they do an excellent beef on whack and they do a beef on whack pizza. Okay. So those are my go-toos. So hold on. You got to back up to this sandwich. So is it like it's a peanut butter and jelly when they just jam the burger in between the normal PB&J sandwich?

Is that what happens? Yeah, it's a double-smasked burger with peanut butter and jelly and bacon and cheese. And it's amazing. Oh, my God. I can feel my arteries clogging. It sounds incredible. Yeah, but it feels so good. Yes.

Yes. He's got it there. He's got it. Who wants to be 85 anyway? you know the man's got a solid point and on that tip my friend I think that's just about it

anything else that we should tell folks about the show other than get your tickets in advance don't be one of those wait for at the door folks right I'm just going to say that for you I appreciate and also you know you save five bucks yeah it's cheaper you know

it is do yourself a favor and save me a little anxiety. You know, I'm just, he's not saying this. I'm saying this. This sounds like a nice size venue, but not a massive venue. So with this type of talent, there's a real good chance you're going to get to the door and they're going to go, hey, all the seats are filled. So, you know, if you want to plan a night out, make sure you can keep your plans, you know? No, it's a we've been very, very fortunate where I think probably eight of our last 10 shows have sold out last year. There was no walk-ups available at the festival. So, you know, and if

there are, we will definitely announce, hey, we've got 12 tickets to store, come and get them. Otherwise, you know, we have had to turn people away. We don't like to. Right. Nobody wants to do that. Yeah. That's, that's, it's one of those things as a show promoter that's like, you know, it's sort of a good feeling because we have more demand. But at the same time, like, you really want to serve. Everybody wants to see a show and you got to send some folks away. So, um, yeah. And also people are like, oh, I didn't even realize the tickets would sell out. It's like, oh, it's not like we haven't been. advertising this online for months. Right. I couldn't imagine there was another person who might want to come to this show.

Wow, what a surprise. Yeah, they show up. We had Jean-Marco Saraze in a couple weeks ago. It sold out two months in advance. People are showing up like, oh, it's sold out, like, brother. This guy's got two million views on YouTube

in the last two weeks. Yeah, he sold out. Oh, man. People are fun. I love it. It's the second annual Cricket Mouth Comedy Festival. down in Endicott, come check it out.

Crooked Mouth Brewing. It is 231 Vestal Ave in Endicott. If you want to pop that in your GPS, go check it out. Four days, five shows. He's even got a brunch show. You can't lose here. It's great, man.

Congratulations on all this hard work, seriously. I've never done it, but I've seen so many folks firsthand put this shit on and it is a hell of a job and you're killing it, man. Thank you very much. It's a lot of fun eventually. Fair. We're not there yet. Fair.

I hear you. Stephen, thanks again, man. We will talk to you soon. Give us an update on everything else you got going on. Love to have you anytime. Thank you so much, man. We appreciate you. Thanks for taking the time for me.

And you guys are great things. I love the positivity. written the word about what's going on. It's a community is very important. It's how all of us stay afloat. So keep it up. We appreciate you. 100%.

And I appreciate you saying that, man. Thank you so much. I mean, have a great day, my friend. Thanks, buddy. Bye-bye. And hey, folks, we will be back in just a moment. We've got another guest.

We're trying to really deliver as much as we can because we took yesterday off for you. So stick around for more good news, York in just a moment. Hey, everybody. We're back. That may sure again from Growth Mode. content here with Good News York. We've got an incredible guest in studio, but before I introduce you to this gentleman, I got to give a quick shout out to our man, Zach, with Ads on the Go, the sponsor of Good News York. Get AdsOnthego.com is the website. You've seen the truck

driving all around the greater Syracuse area. It's one of the few in our area. You've seen these all over the country, but around here, our man, Zach is the one to go to. If you want a mobile billboard or even a video screen at an event. It's incredible. You can pull up, they can jack anything into these screens. And we may even have a video game tournament in the middle of the field with this thing one day. But again, just shout out to Zach. Get ads on the go.com if you want to advertise your business with him.

So without further ado, we have a gentleman who came to us, I want to say as a referral necessarily, But as a, he saw our buddy Dan, the car man, our returning champion here on Good News, York. He's good friends with him. He works with him. I'm going to let him go ahead and introduce himself in his business. And let's learn a little bit about this. Yeah. So my name is Steve Blanchard.

I'm the president and founder of Empire State Warranty. We're based out of Albany, New York. We provide vehicle service contracts, ancillary products, and other, you know, marketing things to, automotive dealerships across the northeast and we're just expanding into the mid-Atlantic. So we're the first of its kind, first ever, what we're called in the automotive industry is a TPA, which is a third-party administrator. And we're the first ever TPA in New York State. Oh, wow. It's been a wild ride over the last several years. We've grown incredibly fast.

And, you know, we're just trying to break the perception of what carwere warranties are, you know? Okay. The iced teas of the world that are on CarShield or, you know, the, you know, the Danica Patrick's on Endurances, you know, there's just, there's a lot of misconception, misperception, I would say, in the car, in the warranty business and rightfully thought of based on a lot of people's, you know, probably experiences, I should say, and we're just trying to break the note, and it's nice to know that it's in the backyard right here in New York. That's awesome. You know, I, I can understand kind of some of your challenges because I think some of the time

when you just hear these warranty things, you're thinking about, you know, I'm going to date myself, but you go to Sears, you know, and you bought a television, like, do you want the extended service product? You know, they always had that, you know, add on.

And it was sort of nonsense, you know? It's like I'm buying a remote control. No, I don't need a service plan, you know. And I feel like people get a little jaded by those things. Absolutely. When it comes to a vehicle, that's the thing that I want a, warranty on, right? Yes. Yeah. So what do you do differently and kind of provide that some of these

other folks may not? Yeah. So first and foremost, we're primarily a wholesaler through and through, right? We don't sell direct to consumer. We partner with dealerships across the country, as we're expanding very fast. I think when I started us becoming our own administrator in 2023, we were just in New York, now we're in 10 different states in a little over a year and a half. So first and foremost, we try to vet out relationships with quality dealer partners, whether it's an independent guy like a Dan and RCA services and the garage of 3100 or a franchise dealership like the NIME's Auto Group in Utica. So we vet out our partners first. We identify if they're going to be a good quality partner, not just,

for us in working together, but also the consumers that we're going to provide a program to. And that's who we are through and through is customer service oriented and focused. Our average claims authorization time right now is under an hour, which is unheard of. Wow. You know, our average industry is anywhere from a week to two weeks. It's very much convoluted relative to communication, right? You want to try to call a service contract provider to see what's going on. It's pretty difficult. You might be talking to eight or nine different people. One might be from Idaho.

One might be from out of the country. Oh, wow. It's totally unique and different, dependent on the company you're working with. You'd be calling a mom and pop family-oriented company right out of Albany. Everybody, you know, we're a small-knit group. And that really is unique not just to the dealerships we work with, but the customers that decide to invest in the product when they're buying their vehicle at these dealerships. Gotcha. And we have a great reputation because of that.

So I would say that's our biggest differentiator is just I think the level of protection the customers feel, not just from a product-oriented perspective, but a people-oriented perspective. When you can just call, get an answer real quick, hey, what's going on with my car? And you can get all that. It just makes the whole process smooth. And it feels like, that customer feels like this company has our back. And we have a lot of repeat business due to that. I mean, the only time we really do direct is if a customer that might have gotten our contract or been referred to by somebody that has gotten our contract in the past, and they're buying from a dealership that might not be partnered with us.

We'll try to work with them to try to get protection. Wow. Wow. So what goes into protecting something? Is it vehicle specific? Do you have particular standards of what you can and can't cover? How does that work? Yeah.

So the service contract space works on. on us in particular, and we're pretty standard, we work on a classification basis, right? So a Honda Civic might be different than a range rover. Sure. Just because of the type of cost that's associated with parts, sometimes it's harder to get parts. Sometimes there's a specialty element to the service person that's doing the work, right? Not everybody can work on a range rover. Yeah.

But there's a lot more mechanics out there that can work. work on a Honda or a Chevy or a Ford right here. They're more common in the area. So the easiest way to think about it is if your cost is going to be much greater if a failure occurs, well, obviously the cost on the contracts is going to be much greater as well because our contracts are built on a reserve element. And that reserve element is essentially set based on the risk factor of the vehicle. I see. Typically, that's on a classification basis. Most companies work on a class one through five model. Some other companies work on a class A through FD model. The administration companies are constantly changing that way. It's almost turning into a more forward thinking,

almost insurance type of, you know, really, it's almost like we're a sister company to insurance in a way. Right. But, yeah, we're constantly looking at data to analyze, you know, what classifications or what, but that's the main premise of how we identify what the cost should be. Gotcha. people buy these, they typically, I'm guessing, buy it at the time of the purchase of the vehicle, and then the cost of the warranty, I'm assuming, goes, it's just part of your monthly car payment? Is it? Yeah, you know, so either they're fitting it into their loan.

So if they're going to Sydney Federal Credit Union or M-Power, you know, I'm thinking of some individual banks that are used up here, they would typically have it financed with their bank, and their bank is going to allow an allowance of what they can provide, which will allow their dealership to figure out, can I do just a service contract? Can it maybe do tire and wheel? Maybe can I do a gap product or something that encrovers my interior exterior protection? It all comes down to what the dealer really is going against is the approval rate of, say, the financing. To see what they can actually get into your loan. They can't get it into your loan. It will just up your down. payment usually on your price.

Oh, I see. Pay for it out. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman and Uneworld Boutique River Cruises L'Ik Bally to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been selling there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities.

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So sometimes if you're getting a higher down payment, it might not necessarily mean that was the approval. It's what the dealership is trying to get you based on your needs through a menu presentation or essentially the information that they got to the customer during the sale of the car. Gotcha. Cash as well. I mean, there's there's opportunities that we have like installment payment plans that are zero percent down that the customer can get a monthly payment on. That's kind of what like these TV, you know, warranty companies do in a way as a monthly payment plan.

It's a little bit different than that. You know, it's, think of it this way. You said Sears before. It's like a warranty on Layway, right? You're slowly paying it until you pay it off and you go from there. There's programs out there like that are obviously a customer can just pay straight cash. Wow, that's phenomenal. You know, I can attest this years ago.

I had a Dodge caliber. Don't ask me why I ever would have bought it. one of those things. Okay. But at the time, I got a lifetime unlimited warranty on the thing. And let me tell you, that paid for itself probably 10 times over. We kept that car much longer than anyone has ever kept to dodge. They put a transmission in it.

I mean, it was no joke. And like I said, worth every penny, you know. Tell us a little bit about the process. So you have a warranty on your vehicle. but now something breaks. Is it a real hassle now to get that fixed, or what do I got to do to use this warranty? Yeah, so the first step is there's a lot of fear and uncertainty and doubt, right? Somebody has an engine light pop on your car immediately thinking, my engine is toast.

It's done, you know, when it could be just their gas cap is just loose. Sure. You know, ultimately it's just triggering that light to come on. But it's overcoming first, you know, consumer is going to feel. immediate anxiety. Unfortunately, in our industry, in the automobile industry, and the repair industry, there's a lot of repair facilities that can take advantage of that fear. Sure.

So the first step is finding a reputable repair facility that you feel that you're comfortable with that you can go to and talk to on this to figure out what the true mechanical failure is, or even if there is a mechanical failure on the car, maybe it's something simple or, you know, simple like the gas cap situation that I said. But what we do is we have an in-network repair facility program with us. We vet out particular repair shops, and they get into an agreement with us where we feel confident enough that we can refer our Empire State warranty customers to them, and then they work with our rates to not just mitigate the cost associated on the contracts because they're on,

we call it in-network because it's similar to, like, health insurance, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah, like your health insurance is going to have in-network doctors and out-of-network doctors. It's the same concept. You go to our N-N network repair facilities. We have the confidence to know this is a reputable repair facility. You're going to come out very minimal, if any, out-of-pocket, because a lot of times our N-N-N- Network repair facility, the deductible is waived.

If that's how your contract is constructed, or they're working on rates that match our labor rate. There's a lot of different factors involved in. There's profiles on our website that say that. But we try to direct them there. If they decide that or we don't have an in-network repair facility in that customer's area, you got to ask a lot of questions first before you've been taking it there. The first question with somebody who has a service contracts today, do you take aftermarket warranties or do you take aftermarket service contracts?

There's some repair facilities that have been so tarnished by the industry that they just don't take anybody. Sure. And it's not they're not taking Empire State warranty or maybe a product that somebody is purchased. They just don't take anybody. Right. They just don't want to deal with that. They don't want to deal with it.

It takes weeks and weeks. They manipulate our process. They'll send out inspectors. it takes weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. And I totally understand their philosophy on that. And that's why we constantly try to talk to repair facilities to say, give us a chance for our customers and see how our process is in comparison to your previous experiences. But that's what a customer should be asking if they're out of network.

The second thing is they want to make sure they know what the labor rate cost is of the repair shop. Right. So I think sometimes people get blindsided that nowadays, I think the average, average labor rate currently in upstate New York is about $135 to $140 an hour. Wow. And it's continuing to increase. Fortunately, due to COVID. It's not $25 an hour?

No, come on. What are you talking about? It's not. I just paid that guy that 30 years ago. Come on. Think of it this way. Like, I started in 2013 coming out of college. I went to Sienna University in Albany.

And, you know, coming out of college, I think the average laborer. in the independent space was about, I want to say about $85 to $90. Wow. And that was, and I've been in this industry now for 13, 14 years now. So 14 years ago it was about $85, $90, and now it's $140. Yeah. So it's constantly increasing. So a customer is going to want to ask that because say your contract only pays $125,

but someone's charging, you know, 175 an hour. And that's not the standard norm, maybe. Right. Maybe this is Mike's used repair shop, but there's six other repair shops that are around the area that pay $40 less. Well, who's paying for the difference? Customers, right, if there is an approval. So you want to understand what the labor rate is, and they want to understand their contract, too. What does their contract cover to mentally prep them that their contract is going to cover it, then they feel good.

But at the same time, understanding that. So always giving us a call first or calling any type of service contract provider that you have is really important and vital, because we're going to guide you to understanding what the process should be, and communication is key. And I would probably say that would be inevitably the starting point in order to make a smooth process. That's great. That's great. I'd probably say a million other things because I have so much knowledge and experience in it, but I'm trying to simplify it. No, no, I love it. That's what the podcast is all about. Let's get the details out. This is so cool. Let's step back for a minute.

And I'd love to learn a little bit more about you and just kind of how you got here. So, you know, you mentioned you're the first of this kind in New York State. How or why did you come to even getting into this venture? By accident. Okay. So I graduated Sienna University in 2012. I worked full-time through Sears, actually. I worked for Sears Holding Corporation for six years.

sold tractors tillers mowers mattresses i got you rasping tools you know you name it i sold it at sears sold a lot of service contracts there was great um no i'm just kidding my my percentage is all right um but um but yeah i uh i wanted to always get into business to business outside sales i wanted to be a consultant to help businesses grow was the was the main reason why i got into uh b2b outside consulting and it just so happened. I did like nursing education temporarily. I would go out on the road and and talk to nurses that needed basically a remote program because Mohawk Valley Community College or some of these other nursing programs are two years,

three years behind. There's a waiting period, right? Or they were so far outside of the norm from a logistics perspective that they needed help trying to get their LPN or the registered nursing license. So I helped on that. for a year. But I wanted something, and that was still kind of more B to C, and I really wanted to fall in that. So there was an opportunity with a corporate company up here that was opening up a market and expanding, and I decided to take a chance, young 22-year-old, 23-year-old,

just breaking in. I didn't know anybody in the car space, man. My dad's best friend owned a repair facility in East Greenbush, New York. So it kind of felt. felt like I was always around cars in my life. But man, it was tough. I mean, nobody knew who I was, nobody knew what company I was. It was like I was building a business from the round-up because of an expansion market. But, you know, just boots on the ground, knocking on a lot of doors, you know, people giving me chances. A little over three or four years, I built it to a over a million-dollar market.

I was one of their top reps in their company. They promoted me to a regional director to cover basically the entire Mid-Atlantic. So Pennsylvania all the way down to South Carolina, covered some in New York too in a way. There was another regional manager that covered New York, but I had so many relationships there as kind of the pseudo de facto as well there. And, yeah, I performed at an extremely high level for that in that realm for a little over eight years until we mutually agreed to Partways in 2019. Just a lot of change in that company.

And, you know, they were going into a different direction. And, you know, I felt in a way I was as well. So that's kind of where, in a way, Empire State Warranty was born. Gotcha. It was during COVID, actually. Yeah. You know, it's funny because I felt like COVID was a little bit of a petri dish of maybe entrepreneurs saying, you know.

Completely agree. It was, it just kind of kickstarted me to go, what am I doing? Yeah. Like, I've always had this mentality. Even when I worked in the company that I worked at, I never felt as if I was working for them. I was just working underneath their umbrella and they were paying me, but I was still working for myself. Sure. And I always was, I was probably overly opinionated at the time, but, you know, because I had all the right intentions, I just had to help others. So I always had

that in me and I think COVID was a pushing point. I had an amazing business coach. His name's Wayne Herring Jr. You know, just an amazing guy. Shout out to Wayne, because And I had a conversation with it was a very emotional conversation. I remember I was pretty, I was in a pretty dark place, not knowing what to do. And he just said, why don't you start your own warranty company? I go, how the heck am I going to do that? I had no idea how to start. And, you know, in a way, I look at him as an angel knowledge investor, right?

You know, he doesn't have any money or any game into my business, but he provided me the confidence and knowledge to push myself to do that. And he gave me some connections within the automotive space to kickstart me out. Wow. And Empire State Warranty was born in 2021. Wow. That's incredible. So now you're expanding.

You said you're in multiple states now. Yeah. What does that take in terms of a team? Do you have lots of people? Are you spending 100 hours a week yourself? How does it go? All the above. Yeah.

So, yeah. So 2021, when I started the company, we were white label. So we basically, our name was on some other administrator's product. Sure. So that's how we got kickstarted because New York has a lot of laws and other states have a lot of laws. In New York State, what you need is what's called a script, which is service contract reimbursement insurance policy. And that's required in order to be an administrator in the space. When you're a brand new company and you're doing $0.0.0, there's only about a handful of companies in the country.

that provide this underwriting insurance, you're not going to take you on because the risk is too great. You've got to have a proof of concept. So my vision was to create a proof of concept underneath a white label umbrella to eventually break off on my own. We did that for a little over two years. We got big enough to ultimately that relationship that we were working with under a white label was strenuous. It was kind of like we were conflicting based on what my vision of the company was to the vision

of the administrator. It was almost like a partnership in a way, and I had to make a determination, do I weight label under somebody else? Or do we just bring this all in-house internally and do it all on our own? Making our own bread is what I think of most people, right? So at the time, I asked my wife, she was the director of a day spa called Kimberly's in Latham. And I said, how would you like to start this thing with me? And bring this in-house. And she said, I'd love to get me out of this place.

I'm ready to take on this venture with you, which I'm very grateful of. her and making that decision. Without her, I wouldn't have been able to do this. Yeah. And we took a chance. It took me a year to get the licensing for New York State to approve us. We had to get the underwriter approved. We have an A-plus underwriter, old Republic Insurance Corp, which is a phenomenal, you know, partnership that we have to, you know, protect our dealers, if, God forbid, anything happened to us. And if we're protecting the dealers, we're protecting the consumers at the end of the day, we get that question a lot because we're younger. So if anything happens to you, what happens to you? What happens these service contracts there on the road, that's what the underwriting insurance is for.

And that's requirements, it's called the McKinney Law of New York State. And I did all the marketing. That was my background at Sienna. It's a gentle cruising. You start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman and Uneworld Boutique River Cruises L'uick Bali to learn about river cruising in France. As we have been selling there for decades, we have been able to create deep connections.

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And that's when we really, really grew. Because I feel like a lot of the dealers kind of looked at it as he's all in now. Yeah. Like he, they could relate. Like, when you're an entrepreneur and you're an owner, I think a lot of the times, it's scary, man. I dump my entire life savings in 401k in order to make this work. It was almost like, listen, I'm a Texas Holden poker player. Yeah.

And I was putting all the chips in. Yeah. I was going all in. And I think my dealers could resonate with that. Like, let's give this a shot and help him out. And if it doesn't work for us, then we'll tell him why. Yeah. But our retention state.

That's awesome. We executed at an extremely high level. And, you know, we grew tremendously. I think at the end of 2023 coming out of a white label, we were a little over a half a million dollar company, 2024. we did about 3.2, 3.4 million. And this year we're projected to do about 6.7. Wow. And we're in 10 different states now. We have seven employees. We have two other additional employees coming on by the end of the year, director of finance and another individual to help out my tech department as my tech department's starting to grow, my VP of tech. And yeah, it was just, it just, I think that was

the jumping off point is when we became our own administrator, there was an immense buy-in by the the automotive sector. That's great. I love to hear that. So let's talk just for a couple of minutes about who you're looking for to continue to grow this, right? Who is your now target client? Who should be talking to you about partnering up? Yeah, I would say any automotive dealership, franchise or independent, that's looking for a true partnership. You know, maybe their service contract provider. A lot of our industry has turned very transactional. 1099 agent comes in, slings products, hopes that you sell 50, 60, 70 contracts, a month, 20 contracts, whatever the amount is, right? They're just more worried about how many contracts

they're going to get for themselves, as opposed to how they can truly partner with the dealership to become a better dealership overall, how to grow their back-end business or back-end. revenue and have a partner in that category. And it's a little old school, but there's any dealers out there that are looking for, man, I'm looking for someone to help partner with me to make more money. I mean, if their average PVRs right now aren't a split between back end and front end, you should talk to us. Because the average industry right now is if you're at a 90 to 10, you know, all the majority of the money that I make right now is in the front and our back end PVRs are just in the dumps.

It's 10% or 20% of the gross revenue or our store. Talk to our team, you know, because the majority of our dealerships, once we sink our teeth into them and we really build that partnership, I'd probably say the split of revenue at the stores are 60, 40, 50, 50, which is a huge difference.

And just, I would say, if there's any dealers out there that are thinking to themselves, I make X amount on the front right now, and I can match that same amount I'm making on the front and the back, how much of a difference would that make for your store? I mean, that sounds incredible.

Yeah. Are a lot of the dealers that did sell the vehicles in the warranty, also some of the service shops that folks would then bring it to for warranty service? Or do you find they're kind of different players? You're talking in terms of like consumers? Just the dealership themselves. Do they typically take both parts? They're then the warranty center where they do the work in our shop?

Yeah, for the most part. Yeah. And honestly, those are our best. our best relationships. Yeah. Because there's a structured element to it, right? There's a level of ownership and the product that they're selling. Honestly, any of our dealerships that have a service department attached to them are really,

really strong partners for us. And in the long term, they can grow into, you know, a gross profit share program with us, or eventually there's programs called reinsurance or DOC programs that they can get into and they can really grow their portfolio that way because they can control. the narrative on their service side. It's not just for people coming in, but it's also the reconditioning associated on the cars. When you're buying a used car, there's a lot of, for most people, it's their new car. So they expect everything to be good, everything to be great. This is my new car, even though it might be a 2017 Chevy Tahoe and 95,000 miles on it.

That's their new car. And reconditioning costs, I mean, for a good, solid, reputable dealership is anywhere from $1,500 to $2,500. Does everybody do that? No. And it's even harder when they don't have their own service department because that dealership has to partner with a third-party repair facility for essentially wholesale work. They're paying them due to volume. And, you know, so it makes it a little bit more difficult on their end.

So, yeah, I would probably say a lot of those guys that have an attached repair facility are great partners. but that doesn't necessarily mean the individuals that don't are good partners too. We have a lot of dealerships that do like a certified pre-owned program that will ultimately show all the work that's been done ahead of time onto the car to give the customer a piece of mind, hey, and the bar is really tight. And on top of it, they might include a warranty on it too to say, we don't think anything is going on,

but in order to give you a peace of mind, we're going to include a six-month or a 12-month warranty. So, yeah, I mean, repair shops are just as important in our field, but in particular for dealerships. That's kind of how it's structured on there. So if I'm shopping for a car, is it fair to say that I might be able to hit your website, EmpireStateWarranty.com, and see a list of dealers that you work with? Unfortunately not. Okay. So don't do that. We don't have any list of, we have a list of repair facilities that they can take it too. But a lot of the times we don't have a list of dealerships that we work with.

I would probably say if they're looking for a good general idea, some of the dealers we work with, our social media page is awesome for that. So Facebook or LinkedIn, because we have a diamond dealer program and we give a lot of recognition to a diamond dealer program. So our diamond dealer event happens once a year. Last year was at the KCQ Resorts in Florida. this year, I think it's going to be double in size. It's going to be at the Sagamore Resorts in Lake George this year. We're bringing it home to New York. That was a request from our dealers last year.

Bring it closer to home. And we post all those awards. We post, you know, I have an eye manager of the year, all of our diamond dealers, you know. Wow. We post like service directors of the year. So if you're looking for, you know, if you're a customer out there and you're saying, who's a reputable dealer I can go to? Follow our social media page because I can.

guarantee you in the previous posts that we've had or their upcoming posts that we're going to have in the future because our diamond dealerships around the corner here in the next couple months to identify that, that will show exactly who has that diamond status with us. And those diamond dealerships are our cream of the crop. Those are our top of the line dealerships. And I know that's who the customers are going to really want to gravitate to. And we have some in the area around here. And I'd recommend you looking through our social media post. Awesome. Awesome. One last question I will ask you, and this is one that I asked Dan, and I'm interested to get your perspective as well. As somebody who's in the car warranty business, you see all kinds of things, you see claims, you see what breaks down, how often things break down probably.

If you had to choose the most reliable vehicle on the market today, I'm going to buy a used vehicle. What's the one that's going to last me the longest? Toyota. Hands down. Any particular model? Nope. Okay. Toyota or Alexis, either one, you're in good shape. They are the most popular brand in the country right now. Subaru and Subaru kind of competes with them pretty much, but, you know, hands down Toyota Lexus has a tendency to be the top of the line.

And I'm personally a Toyota Lexus guy. and I'm not saying that because that's who I am, our data shows that as well. It's, they're just, they're phenomenal vehicles. And I wouldn't. I mean, I mean, honestly, you can't go wrong with any Asian-based program, you know, like a Honda, Toyota, stuff like that. You know, but I would probably say if there's any particular brand, it would be Toyota. Dan also said Toyota.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His specific recommendation was for the Toyota, I think it's the Siena, the Bina, the The minivan. Okay. Yeah. And his logic was that you can put your kids in that.

You can fold the seats down. You got a cargo van. It was the ultimate in terms of not only reliability, but just one of the most versatile, you know. I have a sales route. He had a whole, he had a whole logic built out to it that I really appreciated. I have to agree with them, you know, because I have, you know, your, you're, you know, a 26-year-old, you know, guy looking for a reliable car. I don't know if you're going with a Toyota Sienna. Exactly.

but I have a sales rep on the road right now. It works directly for us who has a Toyota Sienna with 210,000 miles on it. And that thing just doesn't, it doesn't, you wouldn't even know it had 210,000 miles on it. So, yeah, for sure. I mean, you can't go wrong with Camrys, Corolla's, you know, forerunners, you name it. Like, there's just so many good products in the Toyota brand. Like, there's a reason why that particular. manufacturers as popular as it is.

They just, you know, I don't want to say they're bulletproof. Like, they're not, you know, reliability nowadays is like, you've got to think to yourself, I mean, 45 to 50% of these cars have technology on it nowadays. Like, the more bells and whistles you have when you purchase a car, you should think of risk.

Right. You know, you guys are in the tech space. Yeah. It only takes one light of code to be off in order to mess up everything. My career exists because this stuff doesn't work all the time. Yeah, exactly. And it's the same thing with cars, right? So, you know, your car is made up of over 120 computer chips. Yeah.

You know, during COVID, the reason why there was an issue with manufacturing, like, getting cars out, that was it was a similar thing in real estate, right, was because they couldn't get the computer chips to bring on the cars. In Detroit, Michigan, in COVID, there was over 100,000 units just sitting in fields because they couldn't get the computer chips buying video. Yeah. And that was, that's, that just tells you that, you know, reliability is defined in different. ways now. I would probably say the person that mitigates the risk the most is Toyota, but regardless for any car that you get, there's going to be a level of risk there. That's why you need a warranty. That's right. That's awesome. Empirestatewarrantee.com.

You mentioned the socials. Let's go ahead and give all the plugs. What's what to look for on the social networks and all those fun things. Yeah, so you can follow us on our main website is Empirestatewarranty.com, our Facebook, which just go add. Empire State Warranty. LinkedIn at Empire State Warranty. We have a YouTube channel as well, which is just basically an upload of our videos. We have a high-level production team

that works on all of our videos if you want to take a look at all of our products on a video format or our diamond dealership from last year or even a story about us. So those are the main platforms that were on. That's awesome. Listen, this has been really phenomenal. I've really enjoyed learning about this business.

And I love just talking to entrepreneurs who really sort of, sort of break the mold here, especially in New York's every city. Oh, you, New York State's so hard to do business. And it's a challenge, but we can pull it off if you're dedicated and you've got the right people. And I love hearing folks to do that. So thank you for that. Thank you.

Thank you for that. That's what we're, you know, here at Good News, York. That is really the whole purpose of this, is celebrating things all over the Empire State that are positive. And people doing it right and creating jobs and building businesses and keeping people's cars on the road. which is pretty damn. That's essentially a public service. Listen, there's a saying by Frank Sinatra, if you can make it here,

you can make it anywhere, right? And that's the truth. I like it. I like it. And on that note, I think we should call it a day. Guys, this has been a phenomenal episode of Good News, York.

Please like, follow, share, all that fun stuff. You know how to do it on all of our socials. And we will be back again tomorrow with more exciting good news. And with that, peace out. It's a gentle cruising you start to see the village, almost like a painting. Join me, travel expert Darley Newman, and Uniworld Boutique River Cruises L'Ik Bally to learn about river cruising in France.

As we have been sailing there for decades, we have been able to create deep connection with the local communities. Local connections make exploring France easy. Tune into the Travels with Darley podcast on IHeart and wherever you listen to podcasts to hear about river cruising. and Unirold's 50th anniversary summer specials. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy.

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