The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 103 - Why Obie Risk Is Changing the Way We Insure Rental Properties

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews Matthew Sutika, Chief Insurance Officer and Ryan Letzeiser, Co-Founder and CEO of Obie. Matthew and Ryan join the podcast to talk about power mergers, partnerships and changing the way independent insurance agents find coverage for rental property owners. Don't miss this episode...Episode Highlights: Matthew mentions why Ryan Hanley is the coolest guy in insurance. (6:16) Ryan shares his insurance background. (8:59) Matthew shares the process they’ve built for Obie. (18:42) Ryan shares the benefit of designing policies from the consumer side. (24:11) How does Ryan manage variables that have traditionally been disqualifiers? (27:22) Ryan explains the admitted products process. (29:29) Matthew mentions their main focus. (31:40) Matthew shares what they’re currently working on in the company. (36:56) Matthew and Ryan give some advice to the agents who are listening. (42:33) Key Quotes: “I wanted Obie to be in every brokerage. I wanted everybody to have us as a carrier, even if they only use this once or twice a year. At least, it'll be fast, easy. And it'll be nice, right? Some of the bigger brokerages that love to have space will use us, day in and day out. So, that's really what we focused on.” - Matthew Sutika “I think just having a math background has allowed us to work in the right direction, basically from the bottom up rather than the top down. And yeah, I think that's a huge differentiator in making sure that we at least have a product that we know we can sell right out of the gate.” - Ryan Letzeiser “At the end of the day, your program efficiency comes out of somebody that's kind of been there, done that. And, then you exclude the things that you don't really like about their program, and you hopefully can supplement with things that you do like from other programs to make it more comprehensive.” - Ryan Letzeiser Resources Mentioned: Matthew Sutika LinkedIn Ryan Letzeiser LinkedIn Obie Reach out to Ryan Hanley 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 an absolutely tremendous episode for you. We have an interview with Matt Sudica, the former founder and CEO of Skylight Insurance, who just recently came out with an announcement that Skylight was merging with Obi. And as we would have it, we have the co-founder of Obi, Ryan Letzizer, on the show as well. And Ryan and Matt, I wanted to talk about a few different things. What was it about Obi that made it different?

Why did they choose this investment property, rental property market as a target? Where did they see the opportunity there? What did Obi actually do? What was their value proposition? And then I wanted to get into a little bit about the partnership of pulling two companies like this together and having it be successful, how it was successful, and just tremendous conversation. Ryan and Matt are both tremendous guys. This was actually the first time I had ever spoken to Ryan, but Matt and I have talked many, many times over the course of the last few years. Have tremendous respect for everything Sudica does.

And just think OB is onto it. I think they are dialed into a solution that is going to be part of the insurance ecosystem for a while. And just pumped to have them on the show, pumped to share their story with you. And I know you're going to learn a lot from this episode. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to today's sponsor, Tarmica. Tarmica, I've been telling you guys about Tarmica for over a year now, the commercial lines rating platform in the insurance space. There are other platforms out there, but all of them look up at Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. I was on Tarmica before anyone was on Tarmica because I saw this technology. I saw what it

could do. I met Raghav, the founder, and I was like, these guys get it. They knew how to speak insurance. They had respect for the industry, respect for carriers, respect for agents. And they weren't approaching anything from anything other than an additive solution for independent insurance agencies to grow their small commercial business. And they have been an enormous, an enormous piece of Rogris success. The piece. If you were to say I had to give up every other piece of technology except for one, I wouldn't give up Tarmaca.

I just think it's that good. And if you're considering something else, just understand you are choosing a lesser solution. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com, T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. I also just want to give a quick shout out to Podium, who additive, additive seven new leads to our consistent average of website leads, which were around eight to nine. We had seven additional leads on top of that just from the web chat forum this week. If you go back to the episode we did with Cam, just I think it was either last episode, a couple episodes ago. You can learn a little bit more

about that, but Podium's doing a great job. And finally, I just want to give a quick shout out to Chad Eddy at Indium. Indium is not a sponsor of the show. I just, I've had some conversations with Chad Eddy from Indium recently, and I just think the world of the guy. I just do. I think what they're doing over there at Indium is awesome. I am proud to be a member of Indium,

and I think that there are very big things to come from Indium. If you're interested in Indium, go to GoIndium.com. Again, they're not a sponsor. This is just an unpaid shout-out to a friend, an organization that I have enjoyed being a part of. But if you're looking for something more than network access, a community, I don't know, just big fan, and I think the world of Chad Eddy, so I want to give a big shout out to him, because we need to support the people that support us. That's how communities grow. So with that, let's get on to Matthew Sudica, the Sudica, as he's known on the socials,

and Ryan Letzezer from OB Risk. Here we go. What's up, dude? Hey, what's going on? Not much, man. Hold on. I was getting this. Is Ryan Letzer?

You know that guy? Yeah, he's jumping on. He's our CEO. So he was gonna answer some of the product side stuff and figured, give your give your listeners a different voice than just just mine. And he's, and you'll find out real cool that Ryan's about 10 times smarter and cooler than me. You mean, you want to you don't want them to just hear the dulcet tones of Matthew Sudeika coming through the, coming through the airwaves. They didn't.

Yeah. You know, everyone's probably, you know, everyone's going to get that nice Memorial day nap in anyways this weekend. So I don't really need them to necessarily hear my voice and go to nap early, you know, Ryan, Ryan, I'll get them a rocket and rolling. And then you always, you always bring the hype so i could see ryan i could see i could see sudaka like 2 a.m pack of cigarettes like and here is the latest jazz hits from you know just taking you got that that voice for you know 2 a.m jazz jazz radio. I've always said I got the face for radio, but it's nice to know I have the voice for it.

Ryan, nice to meet you, man. Hey, Ryan, also nice to meet you. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. No problem. So Ryan H is like the coolest guy in insurance. I love this guy. He's done everything. He's now rocking out his own brokerage. And so when I knew we were doing our announcement, I, well,

it was even before I knew it was coming out officially, I was texting him saying, Hey, you know, want to get on, you know, want you to be the guy that kind of, you know, ask the questions, delivers it. He's like the, uh, uh, I don't know who's, who's the big talk show host nowadays, nowadays in the world? It used to be like Oprah or whatever. I guess you're like the Jimmy Fallon of insurance, maybe. I don't know. Jimmy Fallon actually went to college in Albany, New York.

He went to St. Rose College. So he's got like a little cult following up here because of his college connection. But no, man, it's awesome to meet you. I've been following along with the success you guys are having and all the announcements and obviously talking to Matt every once in a while and getting the low down on, on, on, you know, kind of think we, we, we started having regular conversations before, before the partnership and then, you know, kind of you hinted at some things and then, you know, all that.

And I think it's awesome. It's been cool to watch and see the rollout and very fun. So I'm excited that you guys came on here and that we can talk about this. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we're excited to be on. And, you know, it's been about a year in the making. You know, the Rony R, didn't help some situations and, uh, anytime you form and merge and have acquisitions, and then you're also trying to, uh, do a series a and

everything like that. It just, uh, uh, if you, if Ryan looks like, uh, you know, he, he could use a nap due to my voice. It's it's because he's been putting in 100 hour weeks for you know I believe that you're straight so so Ryan um so it's one I'd love to get uh the the backstory as far as you're willing to go on on Obi and and and all that and just talk a little bit about it and then I want to talk through I have have some questions around how do you merge companies and do a funding round at the same exact time, pretty much. And then I want to talk a little bit about the future and where you guys, because I feel like, you know, for Rogue, I kind of look at what you guys are doing. We have our own version, but I very much look at you guys as kind of plowing the road for companies like my own to play in the space and the way that you're doing it. So,

as far as you're willing to go back, I'd love to hear a little bit about you and just share a little bit about the company itself. Sure. So, I'll be the first to say that I'm not by trade or training an insurance guy. Matt, you know, we're fortunate to have him here. And he slowly, you know, was able to download some of his tribal knowledge that he's acquired through obviously generations of, you know, insurance agency ownership into my brain over, you know, the period of, I guess, the last 18 months. But my journey begins in the real estate investment world. So I came out of grad school with a degree in architecture, but immediately shifted gears to what's known as the dark side in architecture. Everybody kind of goes into

school thinking that there's this happy path that you get to design whatever you want. The reality is that a real estate developer kind of dictates the terms and most architects coming out of school are stuck designing stairwells on AutoCAD for the first few years of their career prior to getting their exams and testing done, getting their licensing. So I immediately switched gears. I went to work for a real estate development group in South Florida, pretty substantial in size, everything under one roof. And we had access to the Aons, the Wills, the hubs of the world because the volume and the amount of premium that we were basically paying for on an annual basis. And subsequently, I kind of saw the

downturn of the retail markets. And I switched gears and moved over to multifamily, there in which I was introduced to the independent agents of the world. And just the smaller mom and pop real estate owners or investment shops or hobbyist investors all are kind of plagued with a similar situation in which there's limited product availability. And I would say sometimes limited domain knowledge and placing risk in the right location. And sometimes I can get folks into challenges when it comes time to acquire premium and get a deal closed, et cetera, et cetera. So I just saw a lot of third party providers associated with the real estate assets and originally came out with a tech solution to kind of help them manage their assets and those third party vendors a little better. And insurance was going to be our core component for, you know, monetizing the business. This is when Zenefits was really hot and they were selling payroll and benefits and healthcare insurance through their HR platform. We figured we could do the same thing. Turns out the real estate market still, I think to this day is not ready for a

tech solution. They're very happy managing things in Excel. But what we had found was that there was this large faction of folks that were really interested in trying to figure out a way to get better pricing, better transparency. So originally we had a partnership with Hub International and we were trying to place business with them. And none of the buildings that we were getting through were ever big enough for them to handle. We started poking around. And my brother, who has known the Sudica family for going on two decades now, reached out to Matt's Uncle Joe and said, hey, we have a problem. Hub is not really able to take care of a lot of this stuff. Where do we place the premium? And our relationship with Matt then was born and really found that the types of customers that we were bringing in were more appropriate for, I would say, the smaller or middle market independent agencies rather than the super large ones. And frankly, Matt just moved a million times faster than everybody else. And we started off real slow,

sent Matt leads, saw what kind of volume we were getting. And then Aaron and I, and Matt, I think together, uh, all collectively decided that, um, you know, the, the small hab market was just missing, uh, missing some product availability and started poking around, um, that space. And, you know, now with the news of the series A and some of the public stuff, um, you know, we have a product finally coming to market that I think is going to be sufficient for what I think a lot of folks are asking for, especially in the independent agency space, which is something very fast and cost-effective and easy to place for small habitational risk. These, you know,

smaller investors or hobbyist investors. So, and I appreciate that very much. I actually have a few different questions that are going to come out of that. But the first one is, are you, just so I'm clear, are you guys carrier, MGA, retail, some version of all three? Uh, so yeah, at the end of the day, it's, uh, it's retail, uh, because we have a limited risk appetite for our internal product. Um, and then we are, uh, we are an MGA. So, uh, product availability, um, coming live, uh, towards the end of Q2, beginning of Q3 of this year with a very large tech-focused reinsurer that operates internationally.

So you could probably take a wild guess who that might be. We can't disclose that right now, but there is a product that we have developed internally internally in concert with Matt, myself, you know, actuarial team, and then just outlaying kind of the problems that plague the market, you know, with folks either getting themselves into HO3 policies or an inflexible DP3 policy and really wanted to create something that had tons of flexibility and kind of was a jack of all trades type of policy for, you know, 99% of the folks out there. Yeah, I love that. I, you know, it's, it's so interesting, because and this is one of the things that when I really, when you really get nerdy into an insurance, and I'm sure you're starting to realize this, Ryan, that like, at face value, insurance is the worst. It's so boring. Like it just is. And then you start to get into it, right? And you start to, you know, if you have that disposition,

and I would have never thought this of myself in my younger days, right? Like every little boy's dream, like all of ours is to be, be an insurance professional when you're growing up. But I am, and little girl, I get, you know, whatever. But you know, you start to get into the nuances of the idea, like you don't live in that home, but you have an HO3. So what you don't realize is even though you're paying premiums on that, you've just opened the door wide open for the query to completely deny that claim. And your agent may have the best intentions, but doesn't have the capabilities to stay on top of whether you live there or don't live there anymore, and how much you live there and, you

know what, and all of a sudden, that policy that was perfectly fine for the two years you live there, you didn't notify when you moved out, you know, like that, that kind of inflexibility, rigidity, and lack of, I'd say, widespread, widespread attention to these types of policies, especially because, you know, on a one-to-one basis, it's not like anyone's getting rich off any of these things, right? A $1,500 homeowners policy or renters, you know, DP3 or whatever you say, like it's no one's getting rich off of it.

So it's not like you're waking up every day going, geez, I wonder if Tom Jones moved out of his house this week, you know, like, you know, I got a little idea that he was, but, you know, so, so that's, that's really cool. You know, I'll be super interested in, and I don't know what you can say, like, and what you can't, but, you know, when you, what is it like to see a problem like that, an inflexibility in policy form and in language, and, and now you're going to craft it. I don't necessarily want to say from scratch, but you're essentially building your own policy. I mean, I've never done that. What is that process like? What do you have to think through? What are the questions that you have to ask yourself to put something together like that?

Well, I think I'll let Matt kind of take over. And this is where he can allude to, you know, what folks are really asking for. So Matt, you start there and then I can give you the rest of the journey. Yeah. So actually first I don't, I want it on record that Ryan stated Matt Sudica and his team better than hub international. Yeah.

If anyone's if anyone's if anyone's doing a little video widget capture, you know, now's the time. Hey, record. Yeah. Like whatever minutes we are into this, like, yeah, just fast forward to that section of Ryan or then hub. And that's, that's all I need. But, you know, I, everyone that knows me, I'm not like the details guy. And Ryan, you know, deferred to me on the high end of the insurance. But, you know, we have people that we've hired on the consulting side that are putting together the actual policy language. I'm sure that there's people like like our buddy James, you know, that's in the space that can, you know, read a policy back and forward and everything like that. What I was really concerned with was a couple couple things when we were putting this product together. One, you know, fixing a need that my own brokerage had had, right? Which is like this weird space. You mentioned a little bit like going from home to rental, but really there's not anybody in the rental space in the country that's not

vacant sometimes. Sometimes they have a tenant, sometimes they're remodeling it. Sometimes they're major remodeling it. Sometimes they don't know what they're going to do with it. They're going to put it up for sale. And so we know we needed flexibility in the space. The other thing here with the big holiday weekend coming up is that I was always the tech forward guy. Ryan, you see it in the Facebook groups. I'm always post tech and everyone doesn't like it, but now they're kind of starting to like it. Right. And so I wanted to get involved with a company that was in the insured tech space that could be like the, the, the company that's like for the people. Right. So there's all these insured techs that are getting into auto and getting to home. And that's great. You know, I like a lot of them, but there's major competition and they're not a fit for every brokerage out there, you know, where I felt like in the rental space, but there's major competition and they're not a fit for every brokerage out there. Where I felt like in the rental space, we really are a fit for every brokerage in the country, right?

Because there's really not a good carrier in the space. Anyone will tell you that. And so I, even though there's less rentals than there is homes or less rentals in their auto, I wanted OB to be in every brokerage. I wanted everybody to have us as a carrier, even if they only use us once or twice a year, at least it'll be fast, easy, and it'll be nice. Right. Some of the bigger brokerages that love to have space too, will use us, you know, day in and out. So that's really what we focused on is, you know, and for me being a captive guy, then an independent guy, and now

getting the insured tech space, like, I felt like I was kind of carrying a torch that way, too, of like, allowing people to see that, like, you can go from state farm to independent to the insured tech space, it's not that bad. And it's actually there is a lot of, you know, good in it. I know, Ryan, you and I are big crypto guys guys or at least uh in our facebook chat and it kind of feels the same way right i you know we might be still a little early but we are building some really good stuff that we're gonna see down the line everyone kind of eventually adopt yeah it's got i'm big on solana right now there you go a lot of summer man it's a lot so well yeah i'm all over it um so uh we won't go down the crypto rabbit hole right this second. So you said a couple of things

in there that make me, that I'm super interested in. One, what was the idea? So I guess I'll go backwards. I think you're, this is one of the things that I've been thinking about as, as, as my own company rogue evolves, because the things that you and I were talking about back in whatever, over a year ago, um, I'm not going to say we're nowhere near that today, but we're way different. I, the way that rogue is moving and operating is much, much more like an insure tech. And to be honest with you, some of the things that you're doing and saying are on our roadmap today. And, you know, because we're on the path to going out and potentially doing a, like, I don't know if you'd call it a seed or an A, I get lost in all that crap. Going out and finding someone who's going to give us

money to throw gasoline on the fire, right? So I think backwards into what's going to make us successful, who are the type of people that we want to involve in this project. And when I think about, and I'm sure Ryan is aware of this and is why he wanted to partner with you, but when I see somebody like you who've lived all these different lives, you said it's not that bad. To me, it's a positive on a positive on a positive because what it shows is that you're one, you're flexible to your adaptable and three men, all that history of being able to what's the right word, but like kind of boil down the best pieces of a captive and then the best pieces of an independent and then always having your hand in all these insure techs and working with the hippos and the clear covers and the openlies and all these people. And then that to me is like a superpower in our space

because the tribalism that, that happens is so it's so it's such a handcuff to so many really smart people that limit their upside because they have this tribalistic nature to one set of one structure or another. And it's just not the world we live in anymore. Certainly not where we're going. And again, a lot of people think you and I are nuts because you see an advertisement for Hippo and you and I are like oh that shit looks cool you know and everyone else is like f them you know they went direct whatever first and um and then obviously we nerd out on crypto all the time so I think I see that

as a positive and really if you can if I could advise any, having different iterations of your career, I think folks don't really see behind the scenes of the policy administration system door and the rating tables and the filings with the state departments of insurance and all the regulatory factors that if you make tweaks, guess what? You're going back to the state. You need new approvals. You need new rates. You need new approvals. You need new rates. You need new forms. And if you don't design it the way it should be at the outset, you're putting yourself in a position where you might have a product that doesn't sell because it doesn't meet

the needs of the consumer. Or you're putting yourself in a weird position where you might be looking at attritional losses that are extreme. And I think just having Matt's background has allowed us to work in the right direction, basically from the bottom up rather than the top down. And I think that's a huge differentiator in making sure that we at least have a product that we know we can sell right out of the gate. And then we can fine tune and make adjustments on the pricing and the rates and the structures over time that don't require us to have to go back to refile with the states every time. I think that's a tremendous point. I think that's, I really do.

I think that that is a lot of the policies that we sell today were built the other way. Almost all the policies we sell today were built the other way, right? You know, maybe, maybe, maybe some of the new cyber companies like Corvus, Coalition, Evolve, MGA have built some of their products that way. Maybe a few of the insure techs like, like a clear cover or openly, but, but very, very few. And, and it's, and it, to me, it's exciting to think that habit, you know, habitational rentals, multifamilies, that, that type of product is going to be able to get that in the hands of an agent

force and your own direct. And I'm sure partner channels as you as you know, where you go look for volume. I mean, that's me thinking that way from the outset is going to be a huge win. So my my question, my next question for you is, you know, you mentioned a whole bunch of things that disqualify people from writing with certain carriers, right? You said there's not really a good solid consistent product. Well, I would I think that that's probably on a, on a macro basis, that's probably a very fair statement on a micro basis, probably unfair, right? Cause, cause there are carriers in Western New York who are awesome at habitational that doesn't have a wood stove, right? They just crushed that market. So, so understanding all those different factors that you just discussed, how do you, or what, how did, what did you consider? What were your thoughts around the ideas of

the consistency of pricing and of ultimately being profitable, managing all those variables that traditionally have been disqualifiers for rental property carriers? So the great thing about admitted products with the state is that you can go and rip through what everybody else has done that is basically par for the course right now. So if you like a little bit of this traveler's policy, okay, grab the surf filing for them. If I like this Erie, you know, DP3 policy for Ohio, okay, I'll grab little tidbits here. And basically, you know, kind of going back to the original point, you grab the things, you know, you need ahead of time,

and then you're able to kind of boil that down and do a comp survey or rating comp survey of how those products are competitive and how they are not. And you start to move the dials in ways that make sense for everybody. And then from that point, you can take probably your most comprehensive filing at that point and take the majority or the bulk from there and then make your adjustments that you need to make from that point forward. So really at the end of the day, you know, your program efficiency comes out of somebody that's kind of been there, done that. And then you exclude the things that you don't really like about their program. And you hopefully can supplement with things that you do like from other programs to make it more comprehensive.

Okay. And I'm just going to ask you a follow-up question only because I'm a little ignorant on this particular topic. So when you, let's say you're building it out for Ohio, just because you mentioned Ohio and with the admitted products, the carriers who have admitted paper in that state, you can actually go in and because you have their filings and you know that they've already been approved by the state in the way that they're currently written, you can almost kind of like a buffet, choose and place together as maybe like a baseline,

as a starting point for what you like. You can kind of take some of this, some of that, piece it together and then start to have someone work through how all those pieces work together. Is that just so I'm clear. Correct. So, you know, for, for us, I won't tell you who we grabbed, but we had a boilerplate and that's called a me too filing. Okay. So generally when you have a bunch of things inside the forms or inside the rates that have already been approved by the state, the departments of insurance and the actuarial teams there tend to

not give you nearly as much kickback of, hey, this might be, you know, a rate that we would deem borderline inadmissible, or it seems too low. We're not going to back this filing for one reason or another, or this particular thing that you are rating on might be prejudicial or, you know, there's a million factors. And, you know, the roots of the world have done this with telematics and using your cell phone as an indicator of how you drive. So they had to go through and basically prove to the state that, hey, the way this person takes a turn or accelerates actually is a component of risk. and here's what happens. Well, if you take some of the larger carriers that have already done this, you can utilize their information, their rates in order to say, hey, this was good enough for Erie or

Travelers or CNA. You've already approved this and for this particular policy, you get, you should just approve it for us. And they, they basically give you, uh, an opportunity to push a bunch of things forward and only have to fight or make amendments on very small things. Yeah. That's cool. You know, and Ryan is way more in the weeds on this stuff than, you know, me. I get the cliff notes of this stuff from Ryan. But my take on it is, you know, and I said we want to highlight some sections. If this next section we want to remove, if Ryan doesn't like it. But, you know, we're not trying to rewrite policies, right?

Like there's been smart lawyers and everything like that and carriers that have wrote these policies. And as we all know, they're, they're, they all come from this like almost like boilerplate type of, you know, coverages, right? What we cared more about is, you know, combining these things that are already out there, these endorsements for vacant, these endorsements for builder's risk, they're already a thing, right? So we cared more about making sure that we had those available and that we had this all-encompassing offering. And really, I think, and I guess comment below or whatever, maybe I've been watching too much YouTube here, but if you disagree, but really for the space, especially the rental for a broker, you want it just to be easier to provide this policy to a client faster, easier,

as you mentioned, it's very low margin, very low, you know, premiums, etc. Right. And so we really been focusing on that we didn't want to spend all of our valuable resources on doing everything from scratch, where we'd end up probably almost like the same thing as you know, just what's already been out there. We've been spending a lot of our time making sure that we found the right endorsements, we're going to offer the right endorsements. And then really the, you know, the ability, like you mentioned, the one carrier in upper New York, right? Well, if you're up there in your upper New York, and you're doing habitational with that carrier, you're golden. But if someone calls you from Florida, you know, what do you do? So we're, we're kind of, so we might, you know, you could argue, we could get on a micro basis and get

beat out in an individual small town, like I'm from, but in the, the, the big space across the country, we're going to be able to work with, you know, brokers so that they have a consistent feel, consistent offering, consistent pricing, you know, to offer to their clients. And that's really what our main focus is. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode. But as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help.

If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews.

They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it. Listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. I think you're right on it. And there's a there's a wow, my you can tell it's Friday before holiday week in my brain. The words are not coming to the brain. There is a I made you

do this thing two weeks early. So it's good. Yeah, no, no, it's all good. So yeah. Well, hey, when Sudaka calls, I answer, you know what I mean? You said, Hey, man, we're doing it today. Screw the fact that I set the meeting for two weeks from now. We're doing it today. I thought it was today. I said, looking forward to doing this today at one, you responded with one question mark. And I was like, Oh, man, I got it wrong, but it's good. We're getting it out there today. We're getting a ton of questions and my inbox has been crazy on LinkedIn and Facebook, um, you know, special things. I got to thank Jay, uh, James Jacobs. He, he's, he was really pushing us out. So I know he'll appreciate that, but due to him also pushing us out the other day,

I've been just getting bombarded with, you know, when are we starting? Where are we going? You know, what's the direction of our company? Can we, can we work with brokers, all these things. So either now or before you end, I, you know, I don't want, I'll address that. I figured it'd be a good. No, dude, first of all, I'm busting your chops. It's all good. And when, and, and it is true when Sudoku calls, Hanley answers. So just, I know how the game is played, man. I don't want to, I don't want to disrupt, you know, the ecosystem that you work in, but no, it was all good. It's, it's fun. So, so I guess, you know, what I was, where my brain was trying to get to is there is a, a macro trend that is happening in our space right now, which is as agents digitize, right? Like as they start using social more using, you know,

creating more blogs, YouTube, you know, whatever email, and just people move and their connections aren't just in their hometown anymore, their connections are spread throughout the country. The inevitable result of that is that you get opportunities in states that you're not licensed in, like that just happens. And you get in or states that you don't have expertise in that you're not licensed in. Like that just happens. And you get in or states that you don't have expertise in or that you don't have markets in. So I, that's why I see like what you're doing with OB. I see, I look at it and I'm like, this is, this is obvious, not obvious in creating the solution, but an obvious answer for agents who are sitting there going, geez, you know, my, this great client I have has a, has a rent, you know, I'm in Kentucky and they're in, they have a rental in Iowa where they grew up. I can't insure that. Well, you know,

before what you would do is, you know, maybe just do nothing, say, Hey, find someone up there. Or you would maybe, maybe you had a buddy or a friend, or you'd go in one of these Facebook groups and say, Hey, anyone write rental properties in Iowa? And to me, all those solutions, unless it's a good friend and you're referring to a friend, all those solutions aren't real. They're not what you should actually be doing because you're the one that has the relationship.

Now, with solutions like what you're providing, you can say, I got you. No problem. We'll get you taken care of. I got the perfect market for you. And that keeps the boots on the ground agent, the connection, it keeps everything right there. And to me, it's, I'm, to me, this seems like an obvious solution for everyone listening. It seems like, you know, the next thing you should do is go to whatever website you're about to tell me they should go to and sign up. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. So I'm glad you brought up that point. It's

actually, I feel like you might have been a fly on the wall. And some of these conversations I've been having with Aaron and, and Ryan, you know, and I'm always a clearly pro broker. And so you mentioned this Facebook post. And that's what I always see the Hey, I have a friend that has a rental in Missouri. I don't write there who can help me. And then you get a thousand posts. You never know who really is good or not good. Or, and then sometimes you're offending people because you went to the first comment or whatever. And so we are working on, you know, we'll have people who are appointed with us and, you know, that are writing a lot of business, but we're also trying to work on in the background right now of exactly that. How do we just create this Facebook post forum, if you will,

right. Type thing where instead of going to Facebook, you know, and maybe it's backed by a couple of brokers, but it'll be the licenses will be taken care of. Right. And you're a licensed broker. You'll be able to go. And in some fashion, either intro your client right through this portal that allows the quote, and you can still be kind of part of the journey. And then maybe you're able to see your, your policies outside of your book type of feature. You know, a lot of this, I'm probably making Ryan cringe because he's just thinking about how many engineers he's going to have to hire on all these ideas I have, but this will happen in some fashion because once again,

the rental market, we know this is it's not home and auto. It's not, you know, 100 policy a month type of thing. It's onesie, twosie, you know, threes for the average broker. Right. Even like you're right. And like, I know it's not your main focus, you know, but you probably still getting a couple here and there. So if you have the ability to just, hey, someone wants a rental in Florida, go to our site. You type in maybe six things of information. It shoots out a quote with an email that you're CC'd on that says, you know, this is our partner at Obi. They're helping you out with your rental in Florida.

You can still see it's going. And then, you know, a year down the road after you've been doing this, you can look in your portal and see all that you've done, 30 referrals and how much premium that is. And, you know, maybe that will inspire you to get a license in that state or those states and then actually be a broker. And, you know, maybe that will inspire you to get a license in that state or those states and then actually be a broker with us, you know, permanently. Or maybe you're just like, you know, I love being able to see who I've referred over. I can answer quick questions still for my clients about policy number or whatever. And, you know, that is, you

know, the core of OB, which will always be there is we were brokered turn insure tech, right? Or at least a good part of us was right. And so everything we built, I think we'll be solving these problems that I'm constantly seeing, you're constantly seeing even now, I consider Ryan and Aaron, insure, insure tech, nerds like me to or insurance geeks like me. So they're seen. So that's also what we get to do with OB is that, yeah, we're gonna have a product. We're going to rental space, but ideas like that can be multiplied. So like, let's say you get into your space, like you talked about with Rogue, right? That same technology for those instant referrals all over the country might be something that you're calling me up. Like, hey, Matt, how do I get the IP for that over at Rogue to do workers comp or whatever, you know,

you're going to focus on, you know, type deal. So I think we're OB we'll start out with one direction in the rental space, but I think you'll see our company over overall solving a lot of just IA channel type problems as well. And, you know, we're able to do that while growing a rental business. It's awesome. Well, you know, I think, I think more, more solutions in my opinion is always the answer because, you know, I I'm writing a, like 10 minutes before we jumped on this call, I just got a eight unit quote back from a single state mutual company who just came in with a ridiculous rate because I wrote him an email and sent him all these pictures for the unit and said, Look, you know, I know this isn't your target is super clean,

great, you know, I wrote him this big, long story. And they come in $1,000 less than the next highest quote in the market, right? So like, that's really difficult to beat. However, that also took me a couple hours, right to put all the information together, to write the story, to call the underwriter. You do the quote in a Excel spreadsheet that you then email them, right? So there's like, it's not scalable. So that's great. That's a great solution. On the other side, if I have a simple two family that flies in, and the guy's ready to go, why would I just punch up OB and go, okay, here's your rate, boom, how's it sound? Great, boom, closed, good. Here's your payment information, all right, you have coverage, rock and roll right like so i don't think i feel like sometimes and again this goes back to my comments before about tribalism i feel like we we we are in this place where there are still there are still a lot of agents and it's not a negative i understand that they're they're riding the horses that got them to where they are but i guess my only my only point is like you can ride the

horse and have the motorcycle and the Elon Musk rocket ship, like you can have all those things. And in different situations, they all make sense. And that's really, I think, why I love having you guys on here telling these kinds of stories, talking about these kinds of solutions and making them tangible for agents is because I don't think any one solution is the answer anymore. It's really about finding for this particular moment, this particular client, what's going to get this person what they need. And it's not always a mutual, it's not always a national, it's not always an insure tech, it's not always a captive or whatever. It's, it's having access

to all of them. So I think you guys are right on it. And the more that you can facilitate that, I think, I think the better. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I think Ryan, you know, to your point on having all three, you know, you said horse, you know, motorcycle, you know, rocket ship, right? Well, a lot of these agents that are maybe listening to this that are like, you know, still a you know, rocket ship, right? Well, a lot of these agents that are maybe listening to this that are like, you know, still a little anti-insure tech or just maybe they just don't know, right? Or whatever is, I want to remind all of them, go back five years, 10 years, 20 years. I don't know how long they've been an agent, right? But there was a time when yellow pages was scary. There was a time when Google ads was scary. There was a time when, I don't know,

maybe using the phone and calling people, right? There's always been, even in everyone's career that's listening to this, like there's been something that was scary as a new marketing or a new tool. You know, how many people probably listen to this, like were scared the first time they had to go from like the fish film to like a computer and a monitor, right? Or, you know, from one monitor to two monitors or let alone like work remote on a laptop, right? So I think, you know, what I'll end with here on that subject is that, you know, you're 100% right.

Keep what's comfortable for you, but give 5%, give 10% to this new journey, right? So you can stay, you know, going down on the same career path that you've always done. And I, once again, I can stay, you know, going down on the same career path that you've always done. And I once again, I think one as individuals, Ryan, myself, you know, you know, I know you are, Ryan as well, like, I can also take phone calls and stuff like that about like, just insure tech in general, like what's happening, how to like get involved, just as much as talking about being a partner with OB, because we might not be a fit sometimes, but really just, I want to more than anything, just say that like this insure tech

space is not here to take anybody's careers jobs, like move people out of the way. It is just a new tool, a new thing in the woodshed, a new rocket ship. And like, we, we, we couldn't be more pro broker. We couldn't be more pro, uh, you know, wanting to be part of the space and not like, and not take over the space. Like we're here to, you know, make all these brokers, these channel partners, lives better, faster, and easier. And, you know, and have some, you know, crap ton of fun on the way out, you know? Yeah. And we, you know, you said it took you hours to put together stuff for an eight flat, you know, at the end of the day, we're trying to take that burden off your hands.

So you could spend that time prospecting and getting more customers. I mean, you shouldn't be like, you know, we have data enrichment solutions now that will calculate replacement costs on your behalf. It'll furnish all of the data. We scrape, I think, 15 different sites now, and we have over a thousand data elements that we can plug in to help enrich data. And you'll see that starting to go live here in the next 30 to 60 days. All you have to do is enter an address and it's going to pump out a quote for you. Spend your time being an advocate for your customers. And you don't have to worry about whether or not their relationship is going to go to an insure tech because they love you for

going the extra mile, getting them a quote extremely fast, making it competitive, and then being a risk advisor to them rather than just being somebody that sells a commodity because it's occupying so much of your time to have to put all that stuff together. I mean, I, at the end of the day, I think that that is what we are. We're, we're helping speed up and we're helping empower, uh, the agents and the brokers of the world and, and trying to be an advocate for them so they can be an advocate on behalf of their, their consumer. Amen. I completely agree. I mean, I know this is the first time you and I have ever spoken, but Matt knows this. The first two words I wrote down when I started mapping out my agency was human optimized. So the whole construct or whatever, the window, the lens that I use to view

every decision that we make in our agency is how do we take the best aspects of the traditional model of connection and relationship and compassion and caring and all those things that make a traditionally run agency amazing and how do we make sure that they're placed into the transaction and into every interaction with a customer in the right moments, right? So instead of, it's, you know, and this was like my vision was I remember sitting in my wife's family agency, listening to the CSRs and a phone call would come in and they would want, and this isn't a negative because they do a great job, but they would be trying to get that customer off the phone as quickly as possible because they knew whatever that customer was asking them to do was then going to take X amount of time to get done. And what my thought was, there has to be a way to make it so that actual transaction processing time can be reduced so that that same 20 minutes, right? So instead of,

so if I'm going to spend 20 minutes on this particular thing, whatever it is, instead of five minutes on the phone with the customer in 15 minutes transactioning, I can flip that and go 15 minutes on the phone, building relationship connection, finding other things to cross sell, asking for referrals, making sure everything's okay, double checking, you know, data points in our database, and then only five minutes transacting, right? Like, so how do we flip that on its head? And, you know, that's what we're working on every day. And it sounds like you guys are on a similar journey. So I couldn't be more on that path. So hey, guys, I want to be very respectful of your time. And I have some questions about, and you don't have to get into details.

That's not what I'm looking for. But what I'm super interested in is just this process, right? Like you found each other. We heard a little bit about that. And then decided, hey, this is going to be something that makes sense. Lighthouse, right? Skylight. Skylight. Skylight. It it was skylight but you know skylight i'm sorry i knew there was a light in it it's it's just like apartment names they're they all have park light sky or something so skylight and oh and obi come

together and you're going to form this partnership and then and then go out and get some capital, and there's a whole process. Just talk me through, I don't care about the details of this and which part, just how do you manage through that? I mean, that's a moment where there's a lot of moving parts. If you're not on the same page, if you're not communicating, working well together, a lot of things can fall apart, right? And I'm sure it wasn't perfect every moment. That's not the picture I'm trying to paint. But the idea, you know, you obviously have done something right as a group, a leadership group, and as an overall company to get to this point where you've combined, you've raised money, and now it's go time. Like, how do you navigate

that? Like, what are some, or did you you learn anything or is there any advice that you can give people when they make these kind of connections because I'm sure there's a lot of people listening who either are in the early stages of a partnership or are considering a partnership or a merger or whatever I'm just interested what you learned from that whole process because it's there's so much there you said one word that I think will ring true and it doesn't process because it's there's so much there you said one word that i think will ring true and it doesn't matter whether it's friendships family your spouse um the word was communicate um and i think just ongoing uh matt myself and my brother, Aaron, all had a really good open line from the day that we got started. And I think Matt can probably speak to this as well. But we dated, I would say, before we got

married for a while. Matt proved to us what he was capable of. And I hope we were able to prove to him what we were as well. And at the end of the day, I think your, your communication, your level of integrity, and, and doing what you say you are going to do, and, and evaluating that over a period of months, and even, you know, over a year, allowed us allowed us to form a more meaningful bond and feel a lot more comfortable about the direction we were heading, rather than us all feeling like in some way or another, Matt was a cog in our wheel or we were a cog in his. And the reality is that that wasn't the case at all. I think we formed mutual trust along a period of time that I think was paramount in where we're at now. Yeah, I would, I would agree. I mean, I think communication is always number one in a marriage, you know, everything, right. And for me, I'll just speak like personally on it. I've been in

quite a few partnerships now. And, you know, to be honest to the viewing public, like most of those didn't go as, as you first dream it up when you, you know, cause everyone meets, it's just like that first night we met, you know, you talk about a relationship, everything's all exciting that first drink and that first date and all that kind of stuff. And, and, and, you know, you tell yourself little fibs and little things, or you, you know, you, you maybe like agree that, Oh, I like, I like going to the, uh, the art museum too. Right. And, and then when it gets down to it and kids come and, you know, you're buying a house and, and someone loses a job and all, and when hard stuff happened, then you really see what comes out. And so I think to Ryan's point,

like we did get to go through some hard stuff in the dating phase, which helped, but in, in really for me, it was when like, I had just an unbelievable for the first time, like respect for my partners, you know, I've always been the hardworking, like guy, like that, you know, or felt like, you know, sometimes there was, you know, where I was holding up my end and not there. And in every turn, you know, Aaron and Ryan were putting in just as much effort, if not more, you know, on things. And the other thing with the partnership was I love for the first time being able to get rid of two thirds of my workload, right? Ryan and I are actually really good friends like outside of work and get along really well and have

personal interest. But from a work standpoint, you know, him, Aaron and I couldn't be more different. I still remember we, we, this was kind of the solidify period we did this whiteboard activity right and it was and I just knew this was when it was perfect we drew these three like columns right and we wrote up on a spare thing like all the stuff that like someone as a CEO right like Ryan's our CEO but like you know we were trying to like what does someone as a business owner have to handle right and we started going through them of like, hands up, hands down, you know, like real simple kindergarten style of like, who likes doing that, or who thinks it's good. And when every single person almost like kind of took their own third,

and was like happy with their third and super pumped more less about what the third they got, but super pumped, they didn't have to do the other two thirds of the stuff, right? Like, I love that, you know, Ryan's brother, Aaron handles like the HR legal, like, like, you know, write ups and contracts and stuff like that, that stuff used to make me sick. And so to me, that is another strength of a good partnership is that you're all counted on, right to do certain aspects. And everyone's kind of in their wheelhouse, right? And we've all been entrepreneurs, probably 90% of the people listening to this here are probably top of the flagpole, right? They are the boss. And it's tough, you know, so that is the advantage

of having a partnership is that if you get it right, with all those other things, communication and everything, you really can be able to work on the things that you are the best at. Right. Like I see, gosh, what's his name from IAOA is now doing that big, like marketing gig for a better agency. Right. And it's like that, what? Yeah. That was always his wheelhouse. Right. But he had his own brokerage and he was, you know, probably getting distracted with other things. And now the guy's just, you know, every time I see him, he's on fire. Right. Cause he's in his wheelhouse. Cause he's probably got a couple other partners with that company doing the other couple of things. And that's just, you know, to relate to the audience, I guess, uh, give Nick some props, but, um, yeah, I think that was our partnership thing is communication, trust and

trust when things go bad, like, and, you know, a little date before you marry. And then honestly being able to get rid of the things you're not the best at and concentrate on the things that you are. I mean, so that's probably a longer answer than you wanted, but I actually think partnerships are probably the most important decision you can ever, you know, make. They're harder than starting a business scratch. Yeah, I get that. I get that.

I, I, I, I fantasize about having a partner sometimes because I've become keenly aware of the aspects of this business that I just at horror, you know, I just can't like, just to do them makes me like sick a little bit. Like, I just don't even like doing them at all. And, but at the other time, you know, that's the other thing too, then you're counting on someone, you have to hope that they do it. You have to hope they're as bought in as you are. So that's wonderful. I'm very happy for you guys. I think it's great. I think what you're doing is tremendous. I think the product that you're bringing to the market, there's an absolute need. And, and I just wish you guys nothing but success. Where, if someone's listening to this, I know, I know you

think you said it's not available yet that agents can start writing, but where do you have like a beta list or a place that they can go put their email in? So when it does open up, they can get contacted or how do people just find out more so that they can be aware of when it does open up? Yeah. That's the guy. Yeah, so they can reach out to me via my email, which is matthew at obrisk.com. And this is actually a topic that came up about 30 minutes ago or 40 minutes, right before this call. We're gonna be doing some social media posts here

over the next few months with some, hopefully like some contact type forms that people can fill out. Because what we do wanna find out right now is, yeah, who's in the States that we're first launching with who's interested in it, create this kind of database. So then that way we can have agents start to, as we get closer and closer to launching in their state,

maybe get on for a test pilot, you know, or we can start to work with them. So one, see social media posts. And then two, if you are super eager, like some have been, DM me, I guess is what the cool kids say on sliding into the DMs, right? In the social media or email me. So the CMO in me says, pay one of this, pay one of these army of engineers that you have to create obrisk.com slash beta with a simple gravity form that allows people to fill out information and then you can just collect it all right there um if you want just send me your wordpress login and i'll create it for you right now um it's like killing me that you don't have

a contact form where i can send people but uh no so um matthew at obrisk.com is the best place or slide into Sudaka's DMs, which is just the subtle sexuality to that statement. I'll just, that'll never get old for me. People will stop listening to, you know, the three of us probably about 15, 20 minutes. No, that's not what we're saying now. They've already stopped. They're like, they got done with their Peloton ride. They're done. They're done listening. But no, we're going to have that

gravity type form. Honestly, you're smarter than me, Ryan, as part of the thing. I'm, I hit up our CTO before this call and I was like, Hey, I need, I need a form or whatever. And I think we have contact form for like regular contact, but we're, we're trying to build one just for this. So you're just, uh, your questions as always are just a little always ahead of the game. So your ass, we will take care of shortly. Just, you know, by the time you post this video, I bet we have something. Sweet, sweet, awesome.

Well, hey guys, I appreciate it. I appreciate you spending the time sharing your story. I very much look forward to what's going on and I'm sure the next big thing that comes out, love to have you back on and talk about it and share with the audience so thank you absolutely, thank you for having me thank you Ryan, appreciate it

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