The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 057- John Mason on Why You Must Stop Thinking Like an Insurance Agent

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comJohn Mason, President at Chenango Brokers LLC, joins the podcast to talk about how he built his small-town retail agency into a five-location powerhouse and ultimately transitioned into a 24 state growing wholesale operation. Get more: https://ryanhanley.com/Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a really interesting interview with John Mason who is the founder, president, CEO of Shenango Brokers, a wholesaler here in New York that operates in 24 different states. And I've known of Shenango Brokers for as long as I've been writing and doing business in New York as an insurance agent, so 10, 15 years. But just recently, I started working with them because they have a pretty wide set of commercial auto carriers. And commercial auto, as everyone knows, is difficult right now. And in New York, it's particularly difficult as different carriers have started just literally non-renewing all their commercial auto business and getting out of the state. And I needed someone to help me because commercial auto is tough. And as we talk

about commercial auto, particularly as we get into the episode, part of it is commercial auto has a ton of losses and it can really destroy your loss ratio. And even though there's good premium, having all that premium on the books with a carrier where you're maybe trying to build up a strong loss ratio and contingency book can be an issue. And not that I'll say that that was my primary motivation for going to them. I simply needed access and markets that would write the business. It's a very, it's a thoughtful conversation. It's something to think about as you're crafting your book and trying to become the most profitable organization that you can and finding solid partners to help you write more business. And John is just a very dynamic

guy. I love the way he thinks about the business. He's been around for a long time. He's done a lot of really interesting things. And I just think you're going to enjoy this. I know I enjoyed it. And I'm, I just, I think you're going to love it. But before we get to John, I want to give a big shout out. I want to talk about one of our sponsors, one of the sponsors that makes this show possible, and that's Advisor Evolved. Advisor Evolved is the only choice for insurance websites. If you're using someone else's insurance website, just know that you have made a tactical decision. You've made a conscious decision to use a lesser product. Just know that. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you're a bad person or that you don't care

about your business. And there's a way that you can fix it. Go to advisoryvolved.com, advisoryvolved.com today. Connect with Chris and his team. Get yourself an Advisor Evolved website. Get QuoVids, get all the other gangster products that come with an Advisor Evolved website today. All right, let's get on a job. So, all right. So where, where I want to start is actually, um, actually maybe towards the end, but I just find it to, I just love this. Uh, I just love this sentence. Um, so I was, I was looking over the like breakdown of your book, follow the money, which is for those listening at home, like, you know, I had obviously heard your name, and we both operate in New York, and I knew about Shenango. But,

you know, we've never spoken until recently. And then I was, I've been talking to Shenango a little bit for your specialty, commercial auto, because I've, and I'm sure a lot of agents struggle with just how rapidly it changes and having the right companies and all that. And long story short, you know, in part of talking to you, I think Jamie or you, someone sent me a copy of your book. I read it. I loved it. Follow the money is the name of the book. You can get on Amazon for everyone who's listening. We'll have it linked up in the show notes. But in the description, you say over the last 30 years, the street smart entrepreneurs used unique marketing and management ideas to march into New York City and buy five brokerages, expand his own brokerage network into 20 states while relaxing from his home in the Caribbean. And I just was like, if that is not

this, this rainbowed picture of, you know, like the American dream slash where everyone is trying to get to, I just thought that was like this perfectly written sentence. It was like, okay, so you got to that spot. How the hell did that happen? It was a lot of work. A lot of work. You got to work smart. You got to work hard.

I think the key to it is, Ryan, I learned long ago that I'm not an insurance agent. I'm an entrepreneur and a marketer who happens to be in the greatest business in the world. That would be the insurance agent and brokerage business. And, you know, I started with this tiny little agency in this little town of about 1200 people here in the middle of upstate New York. Since COVID, I am very grateful to be living here in the middle of nowhere. It's been fantastic. But I go back and forth to my place in St. Croix where I work every day. And I've been working virtually for many years. So this was nothing new to us, but it can be done. And agents need to remember that, you know,

when they get a license in a state, I don't care if it's New York or Kansas, they're licensed to do business anywhere that that license says they can do business in that state. They're not just bounded by their own hometowns. And you have to remember that. You know, that to me is um one of

the ideas that i am so glad is being hopefully completely driven out of the industry with covid because not not and not that not that operating in your hometown and being a force in your hometown is a bad thing that's that's not what i'm saying but I do think that a lot of agents and, and, and I even find myself sometimes being caught in this, like we become very, uh, uh, we get tunnel vision, you know, with a 50 mile radius around wherever the pin drops on the map versus thinking bigger about what's possible, our state. And then, I mean, with some of the stuff that the National Producer Network has now or whatever it is, you can get licensed in other states for $150. Now you're not licensed. It takes 10 minutes.

I'm licensed in 24 states, and we're sitting here in this little town, you know, in the middle of nowhere, and we're writing a small and medium sized commercial auto in 24 states, coast to coast. Yeah. You know, so, so along with many other products, personal and commercial, but you know, we're doing it from here. Yeah. And I think, I think that's the idea. You know, I, I, I know, I love that people, you know, want to have roots in their hometown. I think that's a good thing. And I think insurance agencies for a long time have been staples of the local community. But I think unfortunately, because of how easy it is for

directs, captives, insurtechs, other independent agents who are more digitally or just marketing focused to move into that town and create a presence, it's too small. You can't protect the longevity of your business by staying so narrowly focused on such a small geographic region. Absolutely. And you know, I, I was known for many years as a personal lines guy. And I wrote before I became a, became a wholesaler. I wrote personal lines. I didn't just write a house and car here and there. I was writing home and auto everywhere in New York and Pennsylvania. My office is actually right on the New York-Pennsylvania line.

And back in those days, I would use those panty saver newspapers. Today we have social media. It makes it even easier. And you can literally do business with people for personal lines. You want to pick a niche in small commercial lines and then partner with a wholesaler such as myself who's got some interesting products. But you can literally do this in any state

that you've got a license in. It's very easy to do. And you can perpetuate yourself and your income quite well if you use some of the other strategies that I've talked about, you know, to nurture and retain that book of business. Yeah. So tell me just a little bit for people who may be unfamiliar, you have kind of a unique story just in terms of, you know, I don't know, you know, you say right in your bio, like you didn't grow up with a silver spoon in your mouth. Like, I think that means a lot of things to a lot of different people, but like, you know, just talk to me a little bit about how, if you're not an

insurance agent, which I would agree, I feel, oftentimes I feel very similar that it's a, I have to fight myself to get into insurance agent mode, but I feel very comfortable in agency owner mode, if that makes sense. And so, so, so it feels, I think that's one of the things that we initially connected on is that mindset, but I'd love for you to talk through how you, how you got into that, how you realized, because I think there's a lot of agents that fight this idea. They feel like they should be an insurance agent, but their mind is telling them they think more like an owner or an entrepreneur. Right. It definitely is a mindset change, Ryan. In fact, that's what's key to it. You have to make a decision one day, and I did. I had gone to a seminar, you know, a weekend-long seminar 20 years ago, and came home and decided I'm going to

lock myself away for about a week and start designing the systems and procedures in order for myself to be delegated away. So one of the first things that I did is I just started delegating and I'd write down anything that I did somebody else could do. And it's amazing the things that you can get off of your plate. And I got it to the point where, and I realize people listening to this come from various size agencies. So if you're in a one or two man show, it's going to be different. You know, maybe you can get yourself somebody part time a couple hours a day or a week or whatever to assist you. But, you know, we were a larger agency at that time because we were both retail and we had the wholesale now we're strictly wholesale but I was able to hire a personal assistant and delegated things and we have used team leaders within the agency and operations manager

and an accounting manager and the key to it is I think the agency principal has got to gear himself then so that he is the marketer. There's a huge difference between marketing and selling. You know, the marketing is putting the bait on the hook and the selling is reeling it in. And I'm a marketer and, you know, you're marketing every day. And I don't care if it's whether you're marketing in a case of an agent to attract new clients. It's also to attract and retain employees, recognition in the community, retain your business. Everything you're doing is always marketing. Yeah. I was talking to, I don't know if you're familiar with the name Nicholas Ayers but he's an

agency owner and he um yeah yeah so I was talking to him and uh I use uh the CRM system that I use in my agency is actually he's a partner and so we were talking and he asked me you know something about the agency and I just looked at him and I said you know man I said at my core all I really am is a hype man that's that's really what I'm the best at is like getting people hyped up about shit. Like that's really, that's where I can add the most value to an organization where you said and wrote this down. What do I do that someone else could do? What are all those things? And basically I'd say everything that I do, my skills are duplicatable outside of hype man. And take that word for whatever you want it to be. But the idea, I think, I so believe in what you're saying.

Like this makes so much sense to me. And I feel like it's why so many agents struggle with this sense of almost like like disconnect with their agency because they want to do one thing yeah but you just hit it you say hype man or pitch man that's kind of what it is you know and i don't want to get political but there are certainly things that could be said in the current environment about knowing how to connect with your audience. So if you're familiar with some of the marketing that I do, probably the highest paid thing that I do in the course of a day is when I'm writing copy. I understand the things that I can put into a sentence to appeal to my reader. The reason for the first sentence is to get the reader to read the sentence, the second

sentence, and so on. So, you know, the agent's job is to bring customers into that agency, just like the restaurant owner's job is to bring people, patrons, into his restaurant, or at least these times, the sidewalk. But your job is to put gas in that engine and then have the systems and procedures in place to service and retain it. So why do you think... And actually I should have said acquire service and retain it because you're not going to make any money if you're sitting there with a pad of applications or your ipad and you know writing renter's apps yourself yes and um so why do you think where do you think the disc why do you think it doesn't feel like i mean i'm in position it's a different way it doesn't feel like most agencies make this leap

or make it all the way they stay this is a huge um bottleneck think, for a lot of agencies. Is this what we're talking about right here? So what do you think it was that allowed you to make this jump? What did you see? What did you hear? What did you feel? Or whatever that allowed you to make this leap and then kind of take your business to a whole other level? I'm a very hungry entrepreneur, and I have been since I was a child.

I've been working hard since I was about 12. And I grew up, as I said, very poor, watched my parents struggle. But, you know, we were lower middle class, and they worked very hard, and they did very well for themselves. They didn't become wealthy, but they worked very hard and they did very well for themselves. They didn't become wealthy, but they worked hard. And I saw that and I saw opportunity and I've always had drive and I just did it. And I think that anybody can do it. You just, you'd be not afraid. Just, you've got to follow your dream. You've got to set your goals and what gets written down gets done. So I would write down daily tasks that I wanted to do. And the daily tasks that I wanted

to do were all related to my bigger picture goals, my maybe 90 day or six month goals. And I'm big on lists and punch lists. And I just work at that list which you know gets added to and scratched off until I get things done and again write it down it'll get done and just be a fierce delegator hire quality people that you can trust and get the job done. Yeah. What are, so in today, so right now, a lot of people, per this discussion, there's a huge debate that goes on between hiring people, we'll call them, you know, kind of the standard American worker versus say, Puerto Rican or a Filipino VA. There's also VAs in India, a lot of other countries. So say an outside, a non-US-based virtual assistant versus someone who's going to sit

in an office. I think what you're trying to say, Ryan, is what are the differences in the functions that a virtual assistant, regardless of where they're from, can perform versus somebody in an office setting? Yeah, and where do you stand on the topic? Where do you see advantages, disadvantages, and what would you do? Sure. There are certainly a lot of functions that an agency can outsource to virtual assistants. You have to be very careful, first of all, of what the security is on the other end of that equation. That's also a huge exposure so I just want to talk from kind of a ways that you know you could utilize them to the standpoint and

I probably utilize them differently as a wholesaler and someone running an agency would that they can easily handle doing quoting they can handle all sorts of back-end things your downloads from your carriers getting things assigned they in our case they they do some personal lines data inputting for us they handle getting things that are not downloaded into the management system, which thank God isn't a lot. There's a lot of accounting transitions that either they can handle. But for somebody to be able to give advice to a consumer, they need to be licensed.

So the idea I would think would be to do what I did in all the years that I ran a very successful agency is to get your CSRs licensed, train your clients that either John or Susie CSR can help them. They have the exact same license that you do. They're here to advise, and they'll help you. And then John or Susie CSR has the virtual assistant supporting them to perform functions behind the scenes. And that seems to work quite well for a lot of agencies. Yeah. I think you're right on it. And the reason I asked that question is this idea of freeing yourself up to do the things that allow you to grow and to grow the business.

This is a huge hang-up. It's a very technical hang-up, right? So the high-level idea that you outlined, I think everyone listening would agree with. But then that next step is… And there's a fine line, Ryan. Yeah. listening would agree with but then that next step is fine and there's a fine line ryan yeah you also have to understand uh you know how to do some a lot of the key functions in your business uh i i wouldn't i wouldn't be at all above telling you that at nine o'clock last night i was entering

a 40 vehicle fleet in cal, trying to, you know, help get something out that needs to be done quick. You know, know how to run your business, be able to pitch in when you need to. But for the most part, I spend most of my time trying to grow it. And other people who have been loyal team members here, most of them for around 20 years, know what to do. They're trained and they handle what they need to do. So you're running a successful, growing retail agency. You sit down, you're starting to map out what your future looks like, and you decide to add wholesale elements or, and just so I may have the timeline a little wrong,

you decide to push into wholesale more. Talk through that decision because I'll say I know how to use wholesalers, but I don't know a tremendous a lot about the wholesaling business. I'm glad you brought that up because I get asked that a few times a year. First of all, there's a lot of agents who have misconception that being a wholesaler is the land of milk and honey. And believe me, it's not. Unless you're of the mega, mega size, a lot of times you're working on standard agency commissions, just like retail agencies get. And so you're working on a much smaller margin. How I happen to do it, I a small small wholesaler come to me

looking to have me produce business for I said I have more markets than you do why don't I partner with your agents and very soon we had a marketing relationship going and very soon after that I want a buying shenanigans owned by a small insurance company at that time. But the other thing you have to be really careful of is your systems and procedures. First of all, not every company is going to let you do it. And almost every company, if they find out you're doing it behind their back, will have some sort of a disciplinary type of discussion with you I've seen companies terminate agents for it your E&O carrier is certainly going to want to be aware of it I certainly wouldn't recommend

trying to sneak it beyond them eligibility for E&O can certainly be impacted by the percentage of businesses that and agency brokers and you've got to have the systems and procedures set up you know for many years we were both retailers and wholesalers and we are strictly wholesalers at this point and moving forward but we had the systems and procedures in place uh at the time and we were running you know two different kinds of businesses and believe me they are much different procedures you know sometimes agents will say why do you do that well I have you know insurance too and we need to make sure that we do things so that the carriers most importantly the clients that everybody in the transaction is protected

it's it's a little more difficult to set up a wholesale brokerage than people think yeah i i believe that probably wasn't the answer everybody wanted to hear but no no it's it's something that uh there's a way to do. There's a way not to do it. What was it about the wholesale business that you liked? Like, why did you eventually go full wholesale? When I got into it, to just kind of shed light on the whole thing, I saw it as a way to keep my, you know,

very rapidly growing small town agency that I had 20 years ago further expanding why did i decide to get out of it um i'll be i'll be quite honest why did i decide to get out of the retail agencies and stick with the wholesale uh we began selling off the retail agencies six years ago. We sold the operations down in New York City. And then four years ago, we sold the upstate New York agencies and retained strictly Shenango. And we had done quite well as wholesalers several years ago. And we have some unique markets that others don't have. I had had a quite candid three and a half years ago I took care of a very personal problem. I'm an alcoholic.

Many people listening to this have been at insurance industry events with me and seen what a jackass I can be when I am and I got my life back three and a half years ago. Fortunately, I think that God sits on the shoulder of every drunk. I had good people who helped me keep things going while I was in the happy house. And I came out and got things running again. And we've been growing it and growing it. And we've now turned it into a national wholesaler. We've gone pretty quickly from, not quickly, gradually, I guess would be a better term,

from about three or four states to 24. We're operating with carriers that most of our competitors don't have depending on what state we're in. And we've got some unique opportunities. I'm having a lot of fun. This is the greatest business in the whole world. And we've got a new opportunity coming out that we're going to be able to help many agents be

able to get direct access to personal commercial lines products without ever having to fill out the court app and they'll be able to do it within their office we've got a couple of job openings right now for new positions and the excitement of this industry is just unending. I get up now every morning at four o'clock. I can't get enough of this. I'm having fun. Yeah, that's great. Well, there's a bunch of stuff in there. So as someone who was tasked with breaking the chain in my own family, I can understand and respect your battle and i'm very happy and um for you for having done that because i understand uh and i've seen firsthand what that looks like um so that's that's great

and i and i'm very uh i appreciate you sharing that because i think um i think a lot of people struggle with that and i think to see someone come out the other side of it gives hope to everybody. So. Yeah. I just read a great book about it too. My pillow guy, Mike Lindell's book for anybody who's a business person, which I think most of the people listening to this are and struggle. That was a fantastic tool for me. Yeah. Well, thank, well, yeah, we'll have that linked up in his show notes.

So I think what I, what I like is, uh, what I like about, about, you know, Shenang on what you're doing and, and, and is that, um, it probably would have been easy to coast to a certain extent. Um, but you didn't do that, you know, in our, in our, in our, and, and, and though I know, you know,. But you didn't do that, you know, in an arm. And though I know, you know, I know you can't mention the exact names of the carriers, the opportunities that you have coming out in personal line specifically are really, it's really exciting. Yeah. You know, I could be sitting in my front lawn, lapping up the waves right now if I wanted to be, but I'm very excited about the opportunities that we are bringing to the table, I mean, like right now.

I got a call yesterday from, and I can't tell their name yet, like Ryan said, but one of the biggest AMVEST A-plus rated national carriers that you don't normally find for personal lines in the independent agency system is going to be available for personal lines, toys through Shenango Brokers in nine states as recently as it shouldn't has today another one of our major carriers who does not want their name tied to this has asked us for package business through the end of October and they're paying $50 per person aligns policy so if you write a house a home car package you get 50 for the house 50 for the car and another 50 because I'm a nice guy when you sold a package and did the right thing so that's going on to the end of October and with that particular company we can

get agents the ability to rate and upload the policies right in their office. We have other carrier relationships where we're actually going to be able to offer the online rating and binding. Some are already in place for commercial lines. Other opportunities are in the works. The other thing we just did, this company is a small company and it's a New York company. We have an admitted carrier in New York called Weather Stocking. They're AM Best

rated A- and they are partnering with us in Long Island, being the counties of Nassau and Suffolk in New York for a new admitted AM Best A- rated homeowners product should be available in September, and they will write homeowners right up to the water. They will do a windstorm deductible on a sliding basis from 0% to 5%. They'll write a replacement cost or an ACV homeowners, any limit that the insurer chooses. I've done business with the company since 1991 in many different ways we have a tremendous relationship with them and we think they're going to be a very very good alternative for

agents doing business in NASA and Suffolk County. We've also just taken on another national carrier, new enough that I'm not sure if I'm supposed to use their names yet, but let's put it this way, they're a sister to the lizard. And we are writing workers comp, commercial auto, bops, commercial packages, homeowners, in 23 states with them, very excited excited to grow and the other thing that many agents are really faced with right now is the loss of commercial auto markets uh in addition to Am

Trust over the last year non-renewing their book uh we've all got a partner that you know their rates get progressively higher we We've got other carriers. MetLife has just announced that their entire commercial lines book is getting non-renewed beginning in October. So those non-renewal notices are actually starting to come out now over the summer, depending on the state you're in. So there's a lot of commercial auto that's got to be replaced. We've got two national carriers that want all the commercial auto they can get. I've actually got some regional carriers depending on the state and depending on the state and the carrier, I've got some that don't credit score. So we're here,

we've got great products. We love helping agents help their customers and we've got unique things that other wholesalers don't have yeah i um you know the the commercial auto is what brought me to to reach out to you guys but the you know just all the opportunities i mean for for anyone listening to this that doesn't understand new york new york is an odd state if you're where i am up in Albany, all the way to Buffalo, you know, you basically, you're writing like it's the Midwest. It's, you know, it's like a middle of the country risk. You know, there's no earthquakes. There's rarely a tornado. There's no hurricanes. You know. That's a really good point, Ryan. Yeah. If you look at, If you go to our website at shenangobrokers.com, that's C-H-E-N-A-N-G-O-B-R-O-K-E-R-S.com,

on the homepage, there's a map. And each state that we're licensed in is in green. We're actually releasing a new website within the next week or two, so there's some updates that are coming on there. But anyway, any state that we're in is in green. If you click on any state except New York, it'll bring up a PDF, and it will tell you all the products that we offer in that particular state. In New York, you'll notice that there are two dots on the map. And to say what Ryan was just saying, with upstate New York being like the Midwest, he's absolutely correct that it is. And the markets that play in upstate New York, sometimes because of where the carriers are allowed to write

business, some carriers can't write in the five boroughs. But you'll find that the markets that are available upstate versus what's available downstate can be completely different. Yeah. And the way they write the policies, I mean, you look at a good example is, is Hanover, they have upstate risks, and then down and they delineate the two, you know, basically Westchester County line south is downstate risks. And right. And, you know, some of that is, you know, probably reinsurance and coastal and that kind of thing. But you're right. But the risks are much different. Yeah. In the two territories. Well, you go from you go from buildings potentially built in the 1700s in upstate New York to brand new skyscrapers and the densest population to coastal. And that's something that's important. The Shenango brings to the table with the unique

carriers that we have in New York. Most of the other wholesalers don't do business with the cooperative insurance companies that we have in New York. And we actually are partnered with a few of them. And we can, these companies can't go into the five boroughs of New York. They're not redlining. They're just not licensed to do it. But they can write everywhere from Westchester County all the way up to Niagara Falls. And some of them, depending them depending i believe on their charter can go into long uh long islands nassau and suffolk counties so uh they're unique companies

uh they'll write vacant property they'll write uh homeowner the older homeowners they'll write rental properties they do a lot of things that the stock companies or even the large regional type mutual companies don't want any part of. And they do a really good job of it. So the last, you know, I want to be respectful of your time. And, you know, the last thing I'd really like to, or at least the last thing for now that I'd like to kind of have you talk about is kind of the pitch for using a wholesaler. Because one of the things that I hear out on the agent circle all the time, and it's real, I'm not saying this in a negative way, is it's just tough to find markets. And I think a lot of people get lost in direct appointments. And look, there are advantages, direct appointments, but there's also disadvantages. And, you know, I'm, you know, for someone who may be struggling or someone who

may feel like they don't have access or they're limited by the fact that they just are struggling to get in front of markets, like maybe just hit them with the pitch for working with a wholesaler and even, you know, Shenango in general. There's more than meets the eye, Ryan. The obvious reason is that the wholesaler can bring you markets that you don't have access to through your normal agency relationships. You know, if you have a direct appointment with XYZ Mutual, great. And we know you're going to feed most of your business to your primary carriers. And we want you to, we want you to get a nice contingency check but they don't fit everything that you're

going to write and i've got and the other thing you need to understand is different kinds of wholesalers a lot of people assume that the wholesale marketplace is ens and while we're licensed to write ens in a couple of states, and we actually use a separate little agency we own to do that, our focus is standard and preferred admitted products in both primarily commercial, but some small, also personal lines. So we're not an ENS marketplace. So an agent can come to us without having to pay some astronomical sign-up fee. He doesn't have to pay us, you know, some, you know, I guess some of these other wholesalers charge agencies two or three hundred

bucks a month, I've heard. I don't know. And we don't charge that. And the agent owns his business, he needs to have, you know, a license, etc. and a brokerage agreement with us. But then he has access to our markets that he doesn't have. And then he can just continue feeding his own markets the things that work well. Now, we were just talking about commercial auto. One of the reasons that it's so tough to place right now is it's volatile from a loss standpoint or loss ratio standpoint. Carriers are losing money. That's why they're getting off it. So you're transferring that to my loss ratio as opposed to your own and still making a relatively generous portion of the commission. So it can help your agency a couple of ways that way.

Another way in certain states, and I am not advocating that you do this with my or any other products, but if you're an agent who charges fee revenue and you're looking for fee revenue in certain states, you're not allowed to charge a broker fee and you're looking for fee revenue in certain states you're not allowed to charge a broker fee and you're using your agency license but if you're brokering the business to a wholesaler you can charge a a fee uh for procuring your or using your professional services to procure the policy if you have to follow the laws in the given state the customer usually has to sign an acknowledgement etc but that's another way that you have access to it but really we actually have agencies rather large commercial agencies who will place business with us because we can actually get the

job done for them faster than their own agency can get it done in their centralized commercial lines office. I can think of two agents, three agencies right off the top of my head that we are doing that actively on a regular basis. Yeah. I also think, I mean, I think your idea, and this has actually crossed my mind, around commercial auto. I mean, I know commercial auto in New York is a disaster and some of the surrounding states, and it's just, like you said, it's volatile.

And if you're trying to build a good, solid book of business with a good loss ratio with a carrier, you don't want to turn a commercial auto with them. Well, and that's just it. I get calls every day. John, can you write NEMT? John, can you write Amazon? I got kind of some good news.

NEMT, no, sorry, not happening. You might have to cart me off in one if we did that. But Amazon, I will say that I'm aware that one of my preferred carriers is working on a product. But I will also say that I currently have a product to write the workers comp for Amazon drivers anywhere in the country. So, you know, somebody needs that. That's available, but we do, I'm aware that one of my carriers is developing a product now for the Amazon trucks and hopefully later this year that comes to fruition, but I can't talk any more than that about it. What about when the big blimps start dropping drones out of the, with our packages in it? Do

you have, you got a market for those things come to my retirement party i have no markets for drones i know there's some specialty markets out there that do them i had a i had a bad experience with a drone recently because of everybody moving out of new york city and trying to get into upstate New York, I got my house out of the market. And the drone was there the other day and did all the filming. And three or four days later, I was in my backyard at the pool

with less clothing on than I probably should have. And I had a memory of that drone and I'll never do it again. Hey, if they want to look, let them look, right? I mean, it's a new world. That's right. Maybe I won't be single forever, you know? Hey, John, this has been tremendous.

I appreciate your time, man. I, you know, I'm looking forward to us building our relationship or, you know, Rogan Shenango and then you and I personally. And I just appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and sharing your experience and your thoughts, man. I was absolutely thrilled to come on. If anybody has questions, either for me or for a lot of people, know our agency relations director, Jamie Depot.

He's been around the insurance water cooler for 40-some years, most recently at New York's Big Eye shoot us a text 607-246-7277 or I can take a quick email jmason at chinangobrokers.com as always we want your business pick up the phone give us a call 1-800-403-3738 or just shoot us an application we're more than happy to do quotes for agents prior to you signing up with us. If you want to kind of take us for a test drive, we'll do that. We will need to have you sign a broker agreement with us in order to find coverage. If you want to send us a quote, email address is quotes at ChenangoBrokers.com. That's quotes, C-H-E-N-A-N-G-O-B-R-O-K-E-R-S.com.

Thank you, Ryan. I can't thank you enough. I've enjoyed also getting to know you over the last few weeks since we've been talking. Look forward to doing more business with you. And like you said, I'd heard of you for a long, long time. And then Jamie was talking about you. And so finally, we've established this relationship over the phone. And we're all allowed to go outside and play again.

Maybe we'll actually meet. That sounds good to me, man. Hey, have a great day. All right. You too, Ryan. Thanks. Cheers. Thank you. You go fuck yourself and your fat fucking ass. Yeah, we We're gonna rock Make it is my brother Charlie

Make it is my little Charlie Make it is my brother Charlie Make it is my little Charlie Make it is my brother Charlie Make it is my little Charlie Make it is my brother Charlie Make it is my little Charlie Thank you. Drink some smoke of joint bubbles. Yes. Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Yeah, me Thank you. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, fellas?

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