The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 110 - Zach Mefferd on Entrepreneurship and the Independent Insurance Agency

Episode Date: August 5, 2021

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews Zach Mefferd, CIC, Co-Founder of Coverage Direct and ZipBonds. Zach joins the show for an exclusive, first-ever podcast interview. In their conversation, they discuss where Zach developed his entrepreneurial spirit and how he's cultivated that spirit to found multiple successful companies within the independent insurance industry. Don't miss this episode...Episode Highlights: Ryan explains why streaming is interesting and important. (5:18) Zach mentions how he became interested in car racing. (14:07) Zach shares his thoughts on having a business partner. (28:10) Zach shares why boundaries are vital. (43:53) Zach mentions one of the things they do when hiring people. (47:27) Zach explains the four things that people must do to run a business. (52:02) Zach shares what made him move to Salesforce. (56:55) Zach mentions his favorite features of Salesforce. (58:34) Zach explains what ZipBonds is all about and why agents should be interested in it. (1:05:46) Key Quotes: “I don't have a problem with people, as long as we're on the same playing field to do it. They should be able to appreciate and enjoy their success.” - Zach Mefferd “Stop trying to make everything perfect before you go move. Make a step, do something. It can be done. It is going to be difficult. But, stop trying to have everything perfectly laid out before you start.” - Zach Mefferd “We move fast, we break things, we fix them, we find out how we can improve when we move on. We don't dwell on what didn't go. We just focus on what we can learn from, then move on.” - Zach Mefferd Resources Mentioned: Zach Mefferd, CIC LinkedIn Zach Mefferd, CIC Twitter ZipBonds Coverage Direct 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 will be an absolutely tremendous episode for you. It is the very first podcast interview ever with Zach Mefford, co-founder of Coverage Direct up in Iowa. You've heard his name, you've seen him around the scene, and now you get to hear directly from the man doing big things, doing big things up in Iowa. And Coverage Direct is an all-time agency. Absolutely love what Zach and his business partner, Ryan Suave, are doing.

These guys are kind of a yin and yang team and they just absolutely are killing it. You know, rocking Salesforce, but at the same time doing things the right way in their agency. So just that really nice mix of looking forward, pushing boundaries while still operating inside the realm of what matters to an independent insurance agency, which is delivering on the product and the promise of our business. And it's just wonderful to have Zach on. Huge fan of Zach, and we've become buddies, and it was awesome. I've been trying to get him on to do a podcast for years, and finally he said he was ready because he's got a couple new projects out,

a couple businesses that Zach and Ryan have been working on for a while, things that they saw in the marketplace that needed to be filled, and I want to talk about those. But really, we dive deep on their entrepreneurial journey, being an entrepreneur and pushing forward in general, how you deal with everything that comes up that you need to deal with. I think you're going to love this conversation. I know I did, and this is just one of those episodes that, that's why I do the show, is sharing this kind of episode with you. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out I know I did, and this is just one of those episodes that is why I do the show, is sharing this kind of episode with you. Before we get there, I want to give a big shout out to the newest sponsor to the show,

and that is Coterie Insurance. Small business insurance simplified. We use Coterie here at Rogue. Ease of business is incredibly important, and Coterie is doing just that. They're making it easy to get quotes, to deliver policies. Not everyone needs to go through 17 accord forms and 47 supplements to get a quote. Some people just, they have a business that with a few pieces of information and then one of the things that I love about Coterie is they're using third

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

producing, and all this kind of stuff, Codery is a wonderful option. Like I said, we are appointed with Coterie, happy to be so, and look forward to growing with them as Rogue continues to grow. So C-O-T-E-R-I-E Coterie, C-O-T-E-R-I-E, coterieinsurance.com. Go get appointed today with that. Let's get the Zach. What up, dude? Okay. Recording in progress.

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

Yeah. I, I, I maybe, yeah. And I think about that too, is well, first of all, I've never been said, it's never been said about me that I'm not good at that. So bullshitting is something I can do really well. And two of us together, I'm only, I'm actually a little afraid for the audience to see what's going to, going to happen and who gets on a soapbox about something first. So I was thinking about this the other day as I'm listening to and get caught up on podcasts out there in the yard working. It's like, you know, we're, we're, we're doing this at 11, 1103 central, 1203, right? Eastern on a Monday. And you think about when are people most likely listening to this?

I'm thinking, you know, what mindset are they in that part of their day? You know, when it's Sunday afternoon and I'm not working in the yard, listening and catching up to this. I think it's, it's interesting to think of how much different your mindset would be in different times. Yeah. I mean, it's why I think streaming is so, so it's just such an interesting space. And when you stream is important because you're going to get a different audience based on timing alone. You're going to get a different audience based on platform. You're going to get a different audience based on format.

It's very interesting. It's not something I'm interested in doing, like live streaming. Like I'm not interested in that. Certainly not in the current season of my life i guess you could say or my business career but um i think it's a it's a super interesting concept because of all the um like psychographic things that come into play when just make a determination on when you're going to actually like when it's going to be live you

know when you're going to do it and then are you going to record it when you're going to put it out how is it going to work you know i um was actually right before and so no idea where the crypto market will be when anyone's listening to this but as the day of recording, um, you know, we're having a pretty stellar day. The market's up about 40%, um, a little less than that right now. But, um, and two projects that I've been following for a very long time, I've had huge pumps. So 50% over the last two days for one and 37% for the other. And, um, you know, I was listening to one of the guys that I listened to, uh, does a live YouTube show. And then three days later, he produces that you, he puts that YouTube show out on, on

podcast. So if you only listen to the podcast, you're actually three days late on his advice. Now, um, he has two different shows. One is long form and the three days wouldn't matter, but one is like what's happening that day. And if you want that day's information, I'm not a day trader by any stretch, but I do think it's interesting to hear, like you check your, you know, you check your app in the morning, see what's going on in the market.

And you get, and you're like, why is, you know, one of the, one of the tokens that I follow is called AMP, right? So it's a, there's a platform called Flexa. And basically it allows you to make payments in crypto and the, I'm going to kind of butcher the terminology here, but the capital that they use to close the transactions in a fast timeframe is called AMP. So it's basically an intermediate currency that operates between, hey, Zach, I'm going to pay for this thing at your lemonade stand in Bitcoin, and I'm going to have it happen instantaneously, and you're going to get the Bitcoin in your thing instantaneously, so you can hand me the cup of lemonade.

Well, that transaction probably really takes about an hour. But what AMP does is it bridges that so that you, and it basically creates a collateralized loan for an hour between the two people. So long story short, I've been following this for a while. Wake up this morning, it's essentially doubled overnight, which is cool. Or sorry, I have. It's up 150%. So from where it was, I said that wrong.

So I'm not here to do the math for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, I apologize. It was up 50%. So wherever it was, it was up 50 additional percent from that. I said that wrong. And what I'm getting to is, so then I logged in. So I was like, what the hell is going on? I mean, I kind of had an idea. I've been following it for a while. There's a reason I invested in it. But it was like, is this is the new is the reason that I thought this was going to happen? The reason it happened. So I turned on his show today at 9 a.m i missed it so i'm watching the recording um obviously we're working and uh um you know it's funny you know to get like here's why amp is pumping this morning like here's exactly why it's pumping this morning and um you just you

don't get that if you're doing a podcast, like it's just very difficult to get it out that quickly. So it is, but I wasn't even talking about that. Right. So my, my thing is like, and I think you and I are enough alike that you can relate to this. If you, if we did this at four o'clock this afternoon, is it going to be the same energy as we do it now?

Right now. And, and furthermore, what if we did this at like eight 30, right. Our time, like that's when everything caffeine's kicking the workout, you're feeling the adrenaline, adrenaline, endorphins are, you know, you just, I feel like I have a different energy level and I'm just more like ready to get on a soapbox and debate or, you know, discuss certain things so much more at that level.

And then I listened to like when I'm hearing the podcast and you know, if it's four 30 in the afternoon on a Sunday because I'm just finally getting around to yard work I want to get done is that the same yeah no no you're right it's a it's a really interesting it's a really interesting thing I mean the other day the most recent podcast that I put out um last week was with Cass and we did it at like 9 a.m eastern time on a Friday so like I could tell end of a good week it's the morning you know so nothing shitty's happened yet and i am just fired up and i feel like when you ended that one you just went down and did like a few sets just to like kind of take that energy and do something

with it you had you had to get that that energy out yeah i was just pounding beers and crushing cans off my fork. So, so yes, I agree with you when you record definitely matters. I think putting yourself in the right mind state matters. I mean, there are definitely times when I don't prep and I don't mean prep, like get ready for the episodes. Cause I rarely ever do that. But I mean, mentally just have like a second to recalibrate, get my mind right. And the fact that I'm talking to somebody, you come in and like, you can tell like the first five or 10 minutes are tough to listen to. And I think that goes for everything. I mean, it's the same thing out of the sales call. It's the same thing with, you know, it's the same

thing with anything. I think sometimes we get moving so fast and we don't think about when it is in our day that we're having a conversation or whatever, and we're just not at our best. I mean, I've been, I've been more and more aware of that though. I think that's why I, you know, I bring it up is because I try to, I have so much energy. And so you even said, I think if one of the, well, it was the first time I think we met personally, right. And he's like, wow, I, you know know rarely i'm in the same room as somebody that has that much energy yeah you're trying to do that but then i try to think okay is you know 9 30 a.m zach the same as 4 30 p.m zach and like would i make the same decision and try to just be aware of that when i'm uh you know doing really big things so

i think it also depends on what's going on your day mean, you can schedule your day so that you're ready to go at 430. You can do that. But I'll say that on a standard day, I have, you know, I have a big spike in the morning. And then I'd say like right around like one or two, I absolutely have that dip. Part of that is I drink too much coffee, which is mostly just a habit than it is like me needing the coffee. And then I get a little bump. And like, if I have like, if I were to do a podcast recording at one or two, you can tell, I feel like I feel like you can tell, I don't know if the audience can tell. But that's why I try to schedule things for either 2pm or later, or noon or earlier, right at noon to two time is a is like a down cycle for me based on how my body works.

Like I have a big down cycle there. I've started scheduling meetings. And I don't know if you do this at all. Post 8pm though, like eight o'clock call or nine o'clock call, I can come back in. And I can be pretty good. I have about I have about a two hour window from about 8 PM to 10 PM, or I can be fairly productive again. And it's almost like clockwork at 10 PM. I like go like all the way down. Like if I get to 10 PM and I'm still working or I'm on a call with somebody, I just lose it. Like I just could care less. I lose all functionality, but, um, I'm not there with you whenever I, you know, I have younger kids. So whenever they go down, if I want to get something done right, then I do have that second wind where I can just go. Yep.

You know, and I just try to be intentional with my time at that point, too, because there's only so much of it you spend with, you know, your family and whatnot. And, you know, I'll do it. But I know exactly if I have something I have to get done, I want to get done some sort of project. I'll just block it off, you know, and say, like, that's it. You know, be dad, get the kids to bed, and then boom, yep, right into something. Yeah, so let's, but I don't think everyone wants to hear about our emotional, our daily emotional cycles, so my first question for

you is the car racing thing. Yeah. What the heck is the car racing thing? How did you get into car racing? Why do you do car racing, and is car racing fun uh okay so yes it's fun um i've been around motorsports my entire life so you know when i was a little kid i mean i used to have pictures of me next to my dad's uh i'm pretty i'm pretty redneck uh if you really trace my roots uh small town iowa kid you know we had actually we just had the county fair you know um and my little town where i'm from i don't live over there anymore it's about two hours away from where i'm at but um i grew up with my dad did demolition derbies figure eights i was around just dirt track racing

and so i don't i didn't really i didn't choose it right like i know you uh have baseball was kind of your thing you know growing up and for me is being at the racetrack and so i felt like it chose me and i just i really got into it i begged my dad to get me into something, started a soapbox derby racing when I was, I think six or seven, um, you know, a big race they have in Akron, Ohio, which they just did. I missed going to that when I was, I want to say I was eight by three thousandths of a second. So second in my, uh, my class in omaha because i was just right across the river there um and then that i begged for a go-kart i shoveled snow i had a paper route for three years mowed lawns did whatever i could to raise enough money my dad made me a deal that if

i if i would you know buy this go-kart i think it was 500 bucks and i got it that he'd buy me a motor and uh we go racing well come to find out it was the biggest piece of junk go-kart i could have ever bought and um but it just again it was my passion that's what i wanted to do so it had some somewhat of success and go-kart racing got into stock cars and you know and then life happens right so college you know marriage kids all that now i'm but i'm probably having the most fun that i've had in a long time it's something that's not a crazy. So I say like, you know, it's not a race car. It's a car that I race. Yeah. Um, which is really true. It's a stock class. We don't go crazy fast or anything, but it's a lot of fun. And I just, uh, I don't have a lot of money invested in it either, because that's the part

that makes it not fun. It's, it's, it's very similar to a gambling addiction. You know, you just throw a ton of money at it and you're not really getting much out of it. And I'm glad I don't do that yet, but I would like to get to a point in my life where I'm going to do something a little bit more advanced and, you know, have the time to do it. Yeah. It's like having a boat. I'm always so excited for people when they get boats and I'm like, wow, you just bought something that you're going to, well, so the problem is up in here in the North and I know you live in the North too, but like you get a boat up here, you literally get three months to get it. And I mean, three months, like you get out on a boat in late September and upstate New York,

and you are going to be freezing cold, the wind. And it's just like not fun anymore. You basically get like the second half of June, July, August, and the first half of September. And that's it. And then you spend all this money. It's constantly broken. I'm like, I love getting in other people's boats i don't know that's exactly what i was gonna say i don't own a boat myself guess whose boat i like to use the most anyone else's right no well yeah that but you specifically know the

guy who's got the nicest boat that i like to go use which is todd todd bams oh yeah yeah yeah well he loves that boat life yeah he does love it and i like going up there and my in-laws have a tri-tune that we get to go use every now and then which is the best because you know you don't pay for it you use it a lot but the thing about iowa too is um and i know we can pick on iowa for a thousand different things as you've uh already done before but um there is really like the lakes that i would like to go to the one that todd's at that's that's the lake to go to you know it's the quote the quote unquote Hamptons of Iowa, right? Like it's where you go, but yeah, anyone else's boat, get to enjoy it. Not have to pay

for it. Sorry, Todd, but I really enjoy using your boat. Yeah. So, okay. So no golf, you golfer, you just, you just race cars and do insurance and family. I look, I'll go out on a golf course, but if you take me out there and you're a super competitive person like I am, just know that I have to mentally put myself in a different place because I'm so bad at it. I have to be like, hey, I'm just here to have fun because I get so mad. And then I just I become someone that's not fun to be around because I know most of the time what I'm doing wrong. And I cannot I don't the muscle memory to do it as a kid um I also broke my wrist and it never healed right so I feel pop every single time I'm trying to hold my wrist the right way and be able to do it so I'm a terrible golfer

I will go out there and do it if I know I'm going with some buddies that just want to go and have a good time yeah um as far as you know other hobbies why not I mean really I'm I'm a serial entrepreneur I've been this way since I was four years old trying to sell things door-to-door to my neighbors because I just wanted to make money and I've had multiple different side hustles and different things and I just don't want to turn that off so if I really like a hobby for me would just be to start a side hustle that's yeah how much fun I have doing it yeah I I get that I would say in the second half of my life i was um i wrote an article about this one time but like i was an entrepreneur as a kid right like i used to get

up at like 3 a.m and i would leave my house so we had in our town because i grew up in a town of 900 people i always give you a hard time living from iowa i'm yeah probably from a town that's smaller than the one that you grew up in. But it's a way out in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York, 900 people. And on Thursdays was garbage day and or recycle day. So everyone would put their cans. This is before recycling was like a big thing. We put their cans in the recycling bin.

I love it. I would take two garbage bags. I'd get up. This is at like 11 years old. I'd get up with two garbage bags at 4 a.m. and I would walk the entire town and be able to collect about forty dollars worth of bottles. I'd be dragging these two bags back and then I'd come back, dump them in my, you know, put in my backyard and then go to school that day. And that weekend we would go. My mom would take me to the thing. And that was like my very first job. And then a million things

after that, you know, and then I basically found out like, our, you know, my parents were in one work for the railroad, others, a secretary, you know, live, work those jobs forever. Like when I was growing up, it was like, get the job with the company, get the pension, like be, you know, this, like, that was what was drilled into my head. So I, I couldn't see, like an entrepreneurial path out of this town that I grew up in, which I hated. I mean, there's some kids that are all right. But like, I hated the town. I hated being in this small, hickey country, terrible town. It wasn't even a hickey because it's upstate New York. So it was just like, people who never made it. You know what I mean? And that's, I don't want to have anyone's listening to this from NASA, my old town. I'm not trying to be a dick. I'm just saying anyone who grew up there knows what I'm talking

about. If you're still there, it's a choice, but you know what I mean? Like what I'm saying is like, it just, it wasn't a prosperous place. Let's just put it that way. So how much did you get for a can? How much did you, I'm just curious. Five cents at the time. It was five cents. That's what it is in Iowa too. And I did exactly the same thing right i would on my days but i could go do it i would go find cans in different places we didn't so our our town was not quite 900 small but we didn't have days to pick up recycling the recycling uh thing was this huge you know container behind some of the buildings there between the rail i live in a railroad town so uh you know grew up in one i should say and that's where they take everything so i didn't have that option i was

literally going and picking up litter yeah taking it to the grocery store and turning it in for that nickel and do that but that's how it was an opportunity you know that was the hustle then i would buy baseball cards and then i would trade the baseball cards were essentially the currency between my peer group that we use to get things done oh Oh, you want a new wiffle ball? Hey, I'll trade you this card for that wiffle ball. You want this? And that's how we survived. But I basically saw, I saw no, because I wasn't raised entrepreneurial, but you know, and there was no entrepreneurship in my ecosystem. I, the only path that I saw out was going to college, getting the degree and getting a corporate job, which is what I did. And I hated every second of it. And like, it's like, then I,

so it's like, I had this entrepreneurial lifestyle, you know, or, or, or disposition is probably a better way to put it than lifestyle disposition. And then, and then like to get out, to get out of this town, the only way that I could see was like, go away to college, get a job, you know, whatever. And, and I basically like 15 years after that of like trying to work the corporate structure and I either hated it or was fired over and over and over and over again. And then it was like, finally, you know, wrote, I mean mean I kind of got a taste of it building agency nation I got a little taste of it at bold penguin although that was someone else's company um got a

little taste of it at the fitness business but but again someone else's company and then it's like when I started rogue it was like oh my god how did why did I wait till i was you know 39 years old to start this like this is great like i can't believe or you know it just it's like finally at that age uh you know i'm 40 today 39 when i started it um it was like being brought all the way back from a mentality part and that that is a weird thing that is a very odd concept like i just you know it's like you need to be taught it like you were taught race cars no one ever taught me entrepreneurship well definitely nothing mechanical i'm far from anything mechanical on the race car i just kind of feel like i'm uh anybody watch days of thunder there's a scene where um cole trickles talking to harry's talking about you know i i just can't tell you how to make changes on a car because I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Like, I'm not quite that bad, but I'm close. You know, I like to drive. That's what I was doing. So I'm no mechanical engineer or anything. Card thing. I had my first actual legit. I'm going to send you a photo of this. I literally still have the hand-painted sign that my mom helped me put together.

The card shack is what it was called. And it was one of the businesses that we first officially, I first officially had, I guess that I can remember. But I, I remember having, you know, you talk about like your, your, your parents having an influence on you, whether they realize it or not. And my dad, you know, was in the car business for, you know, almost 30 years. and I would just hear him talking about these guys that were buying the different vehicles and they owned their own business and they did this and like he definitely wanted to be an entrepreneur he just didn't know the first thing about how to become an entrepreneur where he would get to go and to do it because it's it's it's it's really hard man yeah it is so I didn't have that like grooming I definitely didn't come

from that type of a lifestyle, but I do remember specifically him and one of my, one of my uncles in particular talking about how much they wish they would have just started this, or they wish they would have done that. And I like, now that they were intentionally projecting that, you know, fear or that, you know, the guilt they have, whatever, whatever emotion you want to call it. I just remember that thinking like, I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do something because I don't want to have that, you know, I wish I would have, I wish I wouldn't have. And my father-in-law actually summed it up so well when I was talking to him about going into a business, you know, because he was, he's

an entrepreneur as well. And he said, look, the way he looked at it in his corporate job, he's leaving, he says, there's risk if you stay and there's risk if you go. And you just got to look at both sides and say, in five years, where do you want to be? And what can you live with? You know, and for him and, you know, thankfully for me, it was, I just, I would have rather gone down in a blaze of glory knowing that I tried than never just taking that first step. And it's just, it's just the action. That's the hard part for a lot of people. I completely agree. You know, and there's, I think a lot of people, I will say that I think a lot of people struggle with the judgment. What if it doesn't work? You

know, will I will I be able to get another job? What will people think? What people say? You know, I think I also will say that the older you get, the more of a solidified perception people have of you, it's very difficult, right? Especially now I can give two fucks what anyone thinks. And I think that is a superpower that I have developed. I didn't always have it, but I certainly do today. And that has allowed me to make this move. But, you know, I was talking to But I was talking to Cass and he said, he said, you know, man, this is before I started. He said, he actually said to me, I'm not saying you shouldn't start Rogue.

He said, but are you worried at all? Or will it worry you? Like, let's say you don't, it doesn't work. Does that bother you? And he wasn't saying it to dissuade me. He was just trying to make sure that I'd thought things through. And I was like, look, man, I've been fired from the last three insurance jobs that

the last three jobs I've had at this point, there's only up from a perception standpoint that I can have in the industry. Like there's not a lot of places that I can go from here. I said, and the other side of it too, is when you, when you, when you take this on and I'm sure you've seen this and I think, I'm sure you would consider yourself blessed to have Ryan, your partner, with you, you know, it's one of the person that I could say all the things that were on my mind to have them help me work through which ones were the right things and which ones were just the crazy ideas. And, um, uh, you know, that's, that's definitely that you, but what, what my point in saying that is when you, when you go on this path and you, and you take your own thing, right. You start to, I feel like if you do it right,

you start to surround yourself with other people who don't care what people think, who want to push forward, who are willing to take risks, who are willing to try things, who will listen to your crazy ideas and not think that they're crazy. Just listen to them as ideas where there is this whole much larger subgroup of people who listen to what you're saying. They're like, you're crazy. That won't work. That's bananas. It's not the way we do it. You know, you know what, what makes you qualified? I mean, all these things that if you can get away from those people for a minute, man, all of a sudden the whole world

opens up to you. And that's what I feel where I sit today. But that's the projection or fear on you, right? Of what they're afraid is going to happen when they do try and bring you down because they're not able to do it. And so they just want to try to stop anyone else from doing it. So I had a couple of thoughts on that. First of all, you're right. I am incredibly blessed to have not just a business partner because in partnerships, they are, they can be messy.

There are things about them that I really in general don't like. But specifically Ryan, my business partner, like I've said this before to you, and I guess I'll officially go on record so you can hold it against me, but Ryan's literally one of the smartest guys I've ever met. Outside of insurance, all those different things, like the way that he thinks through things and just his process and does stuff. It doesn't mean he's always right, because that's definitely not the case, but he's definitely more right than he is wrong because of the way he does things. He's just one of the smartest guys I've met when it comes to insurance though. I literally have still

not found somebody that I think would, you know, hold a candle to what he's able to do. Right. And you're not, might not live in it. And again, he's been on the carrier side and he's been mostly commercial on the agency side too, but he's just, he just knows so much more things, right. That other people just forget. And I think some people take that for granted and watching, you know, how things have gone with the business. It really helps having someone like that, not only to talk to through those things, but he also, you know, the yin and yang, right. Like the joke is, you know, I push him outside of where he's comfortable and he pulls me back when things are getting a little bit too, too far down the road, but it works for us. And so it's not just that it's a business partner and having it, it's just, it's the right fit for

us. That's worked really well. And I've told him this is like, we can do so many different things and we both have dabbled in other things outside of what we're doing here currently, but I just wouldn't want to like, that's how well things, you know, have worked for us. And I will say too, about this, this core thing, when we started this initially going, you'd call it blissfully ignorant or just the fact that I just didn't think about it enough. Failure wasn't an option. We're just going to make this shit work. That's, that's, that was my mentality and we're going to find a way to do it. And, you know,

I, uh, I'd be remiss if I didn't, you know, mention how great it is to have a spouse too, that supports you through all that. Because I mean, there's times Ryan, like nobody wants to hear these sad sob stories, but I remember, you know, we found out that we were expecting our second, uh, child the second day into our business. Right. And, you know, just seeing how terrified and scared and just comes to me and she's crying. And I thought somebody died or I did something incredibly stupid that I had forgotten. And that wasn't the case. You know, she was just really that worried about how I was going to perceive that because, you know, she cared that much about making sure that we got to where we were. And, you know, it was tough. I

mean, it wasn't, it wasn't easy. There was times where we had to go without certain things. There's times where I look at my bank account, it's just not, you know, definitely not where you want it to be. And it's scary, you know, of where things, you know, were, and it takes a lot. Cause I mean, that's years of putting up with that and not going on vacations and not going out to eat, not doing different things to get to a point where you get to, um, you know, enjoy it. So I guess my point is like, you, you see these people that enjoy things when they get successful and kind of taken off what you'd said last week on your, um, or at least the last podcast i heard from you you know i don't have a problem with people as long as they're on the same playing field you can be able to do it and then they

should be able to appreciate and enjoy their success yeah it took a lot to get there yeah i think that's i think that is something um oh who was it the other day some someone somebody we both know tweeted, and I'm going to forget. And if they remember, they can let me know. Just something about, oh, it might've been, might've been Mike Crowley. It was either Crowley or maybe it was Brent Kelly.

It was one of those two. Tweeted out that, you know, just never look at where someone is today and try to compare yourself to them because you just have no idea. You know what I mean? I look at, you know, I, I, I struggle with this a lot in the first few months of rogue because the pandemic hits, I don't sell a policy for the first two and a half months of my agency exists.

I mean, I'm just literally lighting money on fire every day because whether you're right in business or not, it costs money to run agency as everyone knows who's listening to this most likely. And if you don't, that would be crazy. It costs money to run agency, even if you don't have a physical location, whatever, it still costs a lot of money. So that all being said, you know, I'm looking around, I'm going, Jesus, you know, I know what I want to do. I have this game plan of how to get there, bop, bop, bop, and nothing's happening. And this stuff's happening. And look at these guys at these guys and you know and it is so easy to get caught in that spiral and I think for a lot of people they they especially a lot of producers um they get caught in this like man I'd love to go do that or I'd love to have what my

what my agency principal has or when is it going to be my turn and you really have two options and and I think before I was a little more I had a little more empathy for this position. And now maybe my position is a little more draconian. Either suck to complain and maybe produce less than you should because you're kind of thinking a lot about things that have no value and aren't productive in any way and are probably intrinsically negative, that is not a path forward. And it can be done. You guys have done it.

There's 10,000 cases that we can bring on here of agents and agencies that have just plowed through it, and you just have to be ready for the lean years, but the other side of it is nice. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if 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, etc. 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. Let's get back to the episode. You got to be ready to embrace the suck. You just do. And it's going to take, and I've had the luxury of having a few really good, they're not even mentors. Cause that's not, that wouldn't be fair to say that, you know, they mentored me through this. They just, you know, give me advice every now and then people I got calling't be fair to say that, you know, they mentored me through this. They just, you know, would give me advice every now and then, people I got calling.

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

always had that in the back of my mind and i had another really uh a good contracting client really successful guy that told me is like you know the problem with you zach is like you just keep trying to like push yourself and wanting to be and you're comparing yourself to somebody that's 10 years into their business it's like yeah you can't do that you know i appreciate the fact that you want to push and drive and be there, but at the same time, you have to just embrace the reality of where you're at right now and say, okay, what do I do to be the best version of myself and where I'm at, what I have right here. So I can get to that. It's okay to see that out there as something you want to get to, but you gotta, you gotta, you gotta find a way to take care of your, you know, what am I doing this hour, you know, the

day, month, whatever, to get to that point. And lastly, to your point about the complaining stuff is, you know, I've definitely seen that in the different roles that I've had. I think the thing that people really get into their own head about is just, they just want to plan and plan and plan and plan and never take action. Stop trying to make everything perfect before you go move, make a step, do something. It can be done. It is going to be difficult. Yeah, but stop trying to think you have, we, we, we, uh, we lost, uh, uh, on a communication issue. I had a client that I basically was just waiting for the renewal to when we had the claim, it doesn't matter. Basically there was an account that we basically were had the, the, the, the, the money, the money hole shot, whatever the hole shot on. Wow. My metaphors are Mondays are not

for metaphors when it comes to Ryan. Um, but, turned it into racing too which i like so yeah and um and and we blew it communication wise you know it wasn't escalating you know a whole bunch of things um but the point but you know i just i stepped back and i was upset for a minute and you know i reached out and whatever that kind of lost the opportunity. And it was very frustrating. And I just took an exhale and I said, look, we have to work this process. Like this process is eventually going to work the process of me stepping full-time back into production so that that, that communication or whatever doesn't get missed. Like that is not the answer. We have to keep pushing forward to get

to where we want to be understanding that now we know there is a broken piece in this chain and we're going to fix that. And I think those are some of the moments that are really scary because if you're working in a place, especially, you know, going big corporate to starting your own agency or just being entrepreneurial in general, the processes are already there, right? When you're, when you're working for another, this is what I took for granted at my, at my wife's agency, my wife's family's agency is that like, or, you know, it is her agency now. They already had processes. They had 40 years of processes that worked. So there was no, I didn't have to figure anything out. I didn't have to figure out a COI process or a renewal process or a BOR process or a follow-up process.

None of that. And I know you can subscribe to different programs and kind of jumpstart some of that. And for sure that helps, but you still have to implement them and make them work and train your people on them and execute on them. And you're going to screw things up and you just have to keep moving forward so i i appreciate that point too of like screwing things up and we'll get to what i was gonna say in a second but as far as your process went on like are you are you a visual person for the most part yeah yeah so we started doing this wherever we put something out as a plan we start

putting together these graphs and like showing this work I can't tell you how much that just changed my ability to walk through these processes now I am still not the attention to detail person right the operation side of everything that we do has always been run by Ryan he's a lot better that kind of stuff because again he thinks through things through that way but once I can see it I can be a lot more engaged in those processes because I have to visualize. If I'm just writing it down, even, it doesn't make sense. I have to see like a box. Here's what happens.

If this happens, it goes here. If this happens, it goes there. You know, and walking that through. I think it's just the way that I learned. But, you know, we talk about when we bring on a team member, right? So, you know, talking about embracing the fact that we're not perfect. So we have our pillars, which I've gone over before, I think with you in the past and, you know, how that came to be. But the two things that we ask for every single person before we

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

totally figured out. And I don't think we ever want to have everything figured out because that means that we're not trying new stuff. So you have to forgive the fact that we might spend time and energy and effort in doing something that doesn't work. And that's okay as long as you don't take it as one of these deals where we wasted your time or whatever the case may be.

And that's the culture that we try to create here, which also allows us to take on and start, you know, difference or pilot different ideas that our team comes up with. Right. We show them the same sort of grace if, uh, if they have an idea and it doesn't work. Yeah. So I'm a big fan on no ideologies, um, in life. Right. Um, I think that one it's, I think our, our, our, our, I think people are too easily persuaded by ideology. I think it's probably part of the political issues that we have.

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

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

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

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

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

And what you get out of your people is this sense of commitment and understanding. And, and when shit goes bad, they're trying to fix it, not just looking at you for the answer. And I've already seen that just in the short time that I've had a team. And it's been wonderful. You know, if we can continue to cultivate it is yet to be seen. But, um, but man, it has been, I said to the other to them last week i was just like guys i i know we haven't been together for a long time but like i couldn't be happier with the way that this is going yeah yeah it's good i so we go back and forth on this and since this is turning into mostly an entrepreneurial podcast we're gonna get this we're gonna get this we're gonna get some

more stuff. I think this is great. I don't mind. I'm just saying like, you know, again, what's the box are we going to get on? What we have found is there needs to be boundaries, right? And you got to figure out, because there's some sort of structure that I think everyone craves,

especially in the organization, kind of know where the boundaries are, right? But with inside those boundaries, and they can be, why does he decide you want to make them you give you empower them to make decisions and then you follow through with saying you know and showing and carrying the fact that like i'm glad you made that decision wasn't the right one no not in this situation maybe it wasn't right but that's okay i'm glad that you tried that we figured out it didn't work and that's okay that goes back to that flexible and forgiving you know we can be forgiving of somebody who goes out of their way to be empowered to

make something. And it turns out not to be the right decision. We do the same thing every day, you know, that we're trying to do. So we don't ever put it in a position where, you know, that was wrong. You knew you weren't supposed to. I don't like this whole idea of, you know, we're the military and everything is a standard operating procedure. We have to figure that out. Now there needs to be guidelines. Again, there's structure that has to be a part of that, but we don't try to create a culture in which people aren't empowered

to try different things and push. And it's really created some of our best ideas, especially operational, right? That's, you know, everything we do is mapped out now, again, as you know, as you've seen in Salesforce. And there's just, there's structure to everything that's there, but there's still going to be gray area where you have to make a judgment

call or as you know, what's in the best interest of our client and figuring that out. And that's where we want to really push people to, you know, think for themselves and decide what's best. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I feel like, I feel like our current culture has lost all concept of nuance, right? Like, like you can be structured and hierarchical and still open and flexible and use in your word forgiving. Like you can be both of those things. You can be both, but like, we, we're, we've, I feel like we're, we, we have people

who are like, this is the process. You press this button, then this button, and this button. And if you don't do it in this order, and if I can't track that you did it in 17 seconds, then you're out. And then we have this other group that's like, it should be flowers and rainbows, and we'll dance in a circle at noon together and do a big kumbaya. And I'm just like, both those solutions are wrong. Because it's always maybe it's mostly singing and dancing and flowers in our hair, but you need a little bit of structure. And in that way, military, like eventually people just break down in that system and there's no creativity. So, you know, I think that I feel like all this gray area is, is the job of the leader. The leader is the gray area. It's managing the grayers, managing all the stuff that can't be

put in a flow chart and, and doesn't involve, you know, weaving flowers in your hair and, and, and making everyone feel like a, like a unicorn on a rainbow. And, and it's just, you know, I, that is because that's the real world, in my opinion, like the real day to day is we have this process, but it didn't work. What are we supposed to do? How does this, she's got an idea for it. Can we use that? I'm like, right. That's, that's the job. The job is, is, is sifting through. And if you're too structured or too loose, you're, you're that neither one, I think gets you to where you want to be. You got to be able to bounce off of both. So, so what I would say to that, because I do agree, it is a little bit,

we're definitely not to the, you know we're not on one side of either spectrum, but one of the things, you know, that we do is we do track most everything that we do. And a lot of that is because, you know, we want to hire people that are motivated and are competitive and want to be a part of that type of environment. And I'm not talking about the boiler room setup, but I definitely want there to be some competition back and forth. I'm my best when I'm competing against something. And, you know, there's a prize at the end because that's just the way that, you know, that we're wired. I mean, that's,

and that's what we want to attract to our culture, but we also want to do it in a way where we can decide, you know, what's really important enough to have conversations about what, what's, what are we tracking? That's going wrong to the point where we have to coach to make this better and explain the message in a way that isn't, you know, hey, you did this wrong. Here's why you did it. And this is why we need to do it. It's like, no, like this is, we've noticed this to be a trend. Here's where we think there's something that you

could maybe try different and be able to do this because at the end of the day, we're all trying to get to this goal. And so when you make it about the team, but individually track different things, it creates competitiveness. And it also creates the really obvious ways to, you know, coach when things aren't being, you know, handled. Yeah, I'll give, I'll give you an example. So, um, most recent person that I hired, she, uh, I said, tell me, tell me why you're not working at your last job, you know? And she said, well, I got in trouble for missing my task number a lot. And one, I thought that was a really interesting thing to say, because not a lot of people would say that, right? Not a lot of people would be honest about that. And I said, okay, well,

what does that mean? And she said, well, I'll give you an example. I had a client at 3pm on a Friday call me, he was really struggling at a dealership to get this truck or he needed some piece of equipment from a, like a, like a tractor store or whatever. He needed to get it off the lot to do a job over the weekend. I was contacting a client and something was going on. The company wasn't closed or wasn't responding or there was an issue. There was something and something was going on there. It doesn't matter. And she said, it took me two hours to get this guy off the lot. Back and forth, seven or eight calls. But I had to get him off the lot. He couldn't do the job without the

tractor. And the company wouldn't have been open on Saturday. And she said, so I got him off the lot. At 4.40, whatever, he was off the lot, but it took most of my mental energy for almost two hours. And I missed my number. And on Monday, when I showed up, I got a call at 835 that said, you had 17 tasks completed instead of the 22 that we require or whatever. I'm making those numbers up. And, you know, and she got like a demerit or whatever for it and she's like i i just i will do what's right for the client always at the expense

of a few extra tasks oh because the client you know that guy is our job right like isn't that our job she goes my point is that's our job now i think there is a management piece to that where you have to make sure people aren't just blowing through time because all the agents principles are all right you don't understand you know my people will just talk all day i get that i get that you have to kind of and again this is your point but like that is you have to understand do you want that person who's going to get the 22 tasks done every day because that's what's important or do you want the person who's going to who's going to get the 22 tasks done every day, because that's what's important. Or do you want the person who's going to, who's going to might miss on the tasks.

And I think to what you just said, and I think this is the really important piece to take out is having, being willing to dive into the situation deeper to understand why they missed the task number, not just go, hey, you missed your task number. You know, you, you know, demerit, you, you know, come over here and let's slap your wrist with this ruler. Um, and in which one of those things is your culture, your culture might be screw him. He didn't get off the lot too bad. Get your 22 tasks in. We don't care. You know what I mean?

Or your culture is we're perfectly fine. Just notate the system, notate your task management system. Why you missed a couple just so we know all good so here's the gray area for us so that's pillar four for us right i tell her tell you our pillars i think i have but i don't know we talk a lot so i don't know when yeah you've told them before but i couldn't tell you what that well i want to say it again for the right so so we thought this is after this is back at 700 square foot little office just ryan and zach hanging out we had a good day i, you know, I like to remember, maybe we're having a beer. I don't know. It doesn't matter.

But we were laughing about how we just wrote this account that we didn't have any right writing, right? Like it was just like, we shouldn't have had this opportunity, but we did. And I laughed and I was looking at Ryan's like, you know, it's really, the bar is so low in our space sometimes that really there's only four things you had to do well to be able to earn this business. And one, just be nice. Start off by being nice to tell the truth always as soon as possible. And definitely when it's not in your best interest, right?

So if somebody is better off going where they're at or what are they doing? Tell them that do that. Cause they're going to respect you and give you the opportunity later. If it happens and if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be anyway. So just you save yourself a lot of time, right? Always be available. That's, that's one that we put out there. And then people that are really important that need to have certain things like this, maybe you had to stay late at night to get that done. You, you, you know, you're available and your people know how to get ahold of you or get things resolved quickly.

The last one, probably the one that people overlook the most is we initially was give a shit. Just give a shit, be nice, tell the truth. Always, always be available. Give a shit. That's all you have to do. Yeah. See, look, my number one core value is we give a shit. nice tell the truth always always be available give a shit that's all you have to do yeah see look my number one core value is we give a shit that's it so so as you know we call it genuinely care now because we have grandmas that come into our office every now and then i don't want anybody to uh be offended by the language but but the but the idea is if you could show empathy and just show people that you care and really go above and beyond to do that you know to your point in the last one, you're talking about that small vegan with a mozzarella stick.

Mozzarella stick coming in. So, but like just taking the time to help them understand that, right? Like that's, nobody's doing that. There's not enough give a shit in this world that, you know, it's well outside of insurance, right? And just a lot of different businesses. And if you can just show that, it goes a long way.

And that's what that person was doing. For us, that's a gray area, which we're not going to ever you know hold it against them if they don't hit certain numbers for that but again to your point of agency you want to say we'll be on the phone all day well there's there's certain metrics you got to look at and there's behaviors that you can coach to and coach out of your system but so let's let's get to that piece because um we've talked a lot about maybe the philosophical side of the business although um i think it's pretty funny that that we both have give a shit we use give a poop emoji on our in our internal documents um but yes we yeah ours are we give a shit we hate

to lose we solve problems um and we are accountable for our actions. And the one that I picked up on the most, although give a shit to me was a given, right? Was the solving problems piece. And what I wanted to, that core value was everyone can do everything easy. The easy stuff is easy, right? It's why every insure tech, tech dick who comes into our space

picks the easiest mainlined coverage and they automate it and they go, look at this amazing miracle thing that I've done. I've automated renter's insurance. Like, congratulations. I just am not impressed. Automate when the renter's insurance person

also has a pit bull with four bites in a high rise apartment that had a loss, you know what I mean? And they are also like a hedge fund manager with, you know, $50 million in personal, you know, whatever. Like you, like when you get into these, it's all the hard stuff that makes this job valuable. Like we're valuable because of the problems, not because of the easy stuff. So I wanted like clear as day in our core values. When someone calls and they have a problem, we are not going to be the agency that just goes, sorry, we can't help you because it's, we have to do fucking accord forms, right? Like I'm going to bitch about accord forms forever,

just like everyone will, because they're stupid and I can't believe we still use them. That being said, we're never not going to do them if that's what it requires to get the job done, right? We're not going to slough you off because it's going to take us an extra 10 minutes to fill out Accord forms. We're just never going to do that.

And- You're preaching to the choir on that, man. That's a problem that needs to be addressed. Yeah. So let's talk about, let's talk about Salesforce and cool shit. Let's talk, let's talk about cool shit. Cause we're going to go probably just a couple minutes over. Cause I'm, I know you have, I know you have an extra block of time after this hour that we allow.

I do. I do. I've had an important meeting after that. Yeah. So let's talk, let's talk with the last few minutes we have here. I want to talk about some of the fun stuff. You have two fun things. First, you use Salesforce and you use currently Veruna. And on top of that, you did your own customizations, customization layer. We'll get all the nitty gritty details. But why sales? So I am actively trying to get to Salesforce. That's kind of a known thing, mostly because I believe that data,

you have to know what's going on. You have to own your data and there is no current solution in the marketplace that allows you to do that like Salesforce. So talk to me a little bit about the decision to move to Salesforce and some of the things that you thought were important when you were implementing it in your agency. So that's a great loaded question, but a great question. Right. So going back to this, we're driven by problems. So Ryan and I talk about, you know what, you got to get to your core. Like it's a Simon Sinek, you get back to like, you know, why we do what we do and how we're wired the way that we are and, you know, our corporate structure, all these other things. Right. But at the end of the day, when Brian and I talk about like the things that we really want to go after, we want to make money.

Everybody wants to make money. But what really drives us is going out and finding what the problem is and trying to fix that. I mean, at the end of the day, on Monday morning, when I wake up and I know there's something I can go fix, I'll be like, that's that's what that's what drives me. And so when we started, you know, our agency, the way that we did's, that's what, that's what drives me. And so when we started, you know, our, our agency, the, the way that we did, you know, really that's what it was. And at the time we didn't know, we didn't even know what Ivan's was, right? Like we didn't understand what was stopping us from getting to where we were trying to go. But we knew that it was broken. We knew there was technology out there that existed that could make these

things happen. And we spent, you know, it's now just over five years, trying to get to a point where we could, you know, solve that problem. So when we decided to go to Salesforce, you know, really the truth was we were looking at moving AMS systems and one of the, you know, largest here or the largest had picked up what was at the time, but we thought was the most open one, right. And tech canary and acquiring that. And so, you know, we had, we'd had some meetings with people in the organization trying to figure out how we could use that. Cause we saw that still as being the way that we could get to ultimately what we want, which is don't tell me how I'm going to do my business. Give me the opportunity to work in a platform that lets me tailor to how I want to do

it. Because something as simple as adding a word track to a form that fills things out and, you know, adds it to a comparative rating platform at the time was what we saw as one of the things that held us up the most, the duplicate, triple, quadruple entry. And so when we looked at the different options that were out there, there were plenty of things you could use. But what we liked about Salesforce in particular is because of the way that it was built on that open platform, we could plug in darn near everything that we wanted right away without having to put a whole lot of effort into it outside of what we do with an EMS system. And, you know, and I use that air quotes as well as, you know, any other system, because we weren't trying to use it for the things that people try

to make. It's the same reason why, you know, they're like a better agency and they get so much attention for it because they were creating what agencies need, but not trying to call it one thing or the other, right? We weren't trying to be an AMS that was a CRM. But at the end of the day, the majority of our agencies still don't have an AMS that talks to a CRM, that talks to a comparative reader, that doesn't talk to their VoIP, their email and all these different things. And that fragmented tech stack just needed to be solved.

And so Salesforce provided us with what we felt was, albeit expensive, the easiest way to quickly get where we wanted to go without hiring a team of engineers to just build out our own, our own products. So that's why we ultimately chose to go with Salesforce. And so far, you know, I mean, it's, it's been money well spent, you know, we, it's not, if it can be done, it's how much and who does it. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I think about, I think about where the industry is going, right? And both of us are building for where the industry is going to be in 10 years, not where it is today. And, you know, Seth Zaremba and the team at Neon and the whole vision behind what,

why that product was created and what it was trying to do. The idea of value in data, the, the, the idea that, you know, as you scale a business, you can't manage without data, without having the right data, without being able to actually track where your data is going. And I don't mean by like someone selling your data. I mean, like they're right now, if you were to say, how many tasks are your account managers doing every day? What tasks are they and which tasks are costing the most money? You could probably snap your fingers and have that information. And 97% of our industry is going to go, well, you know, I've been doing this for 30 years,

so I know what's going on. And they could have no freaking clue. And, you know, I'm with you, man. I have, I've run down AMS 360. I've run down applied Epic. I mean, if you're going to scale in any capacity, the only other two options are next year or Sagita, which are bananas. You know, we're not even that's playing in a whole different world. And I, you know, the fact that some of the biggest agencies in the country run on them is kind of a joke to me.

You know, so then you got to step down. If you level down to the Hawks Office and the NowCerts and the QQ Catalysts and all the others whose names I don't know, you just can't get there, right? There's too many warts. If you're trying to scale and understand what's going on, there's just too many warts in all of them and none of them are perfect. And that's not to say that if you're running a nice, simple, straightforward, and I don't mean anything negative by simple. I just mean you're doing just personal lines or, you know, you're just doing a certain niche commercial business. Any of those systems can't work for you. But the next level has to be something bigger. You're right.

And so maybe that's not there yet, Hanley. But like the way I look at it is, okay, you talk about all these different things that you can do with, you know, let's start, let's go back to where you started, like with the data and everything. Cause we were the pilot of the pilots with, with neon. Right. And I love Seth. I love his mission that he's on. I, I mean, that's like one of those guys, you just jump how high, you know, I'll do whatever he asked me to do and be able to do and you know we tried making some of those things that for our process and we want you know ours is a little bit different

because we work with affinity groups and what we're trying to do but the data and the stuff you're gonna be able to do with it especially at the scale the level you'll be able to do it is is amazing that that's that needs to be there and it's there for us where we were at and this is just our specific business case right we there were some efficiencies that had to happen because without those efficiencies, we were never going to get to the point where the data was ever going to be able to be utilized. We had to make our business work at a faster level to follow through on the promises that we made to our partners. And it was missing from that. And so if you take all these different things that you just mentioned as far as technology and try to figure out,

can those just adapt to the simplest things, okay? Let's not talk where the puck is going even right now. Let's just talk about how do we get from having duplicate, triplicate, quadruple entry of different forms, different things, and make it so these systems can talk to each other. Just start there and then start getting to the point of the full capability where it's at.

And that's where we, I think, have had our biggest wins. We figured those things out. Now, look, I get it. People have Zapier and they figured out a way to Frankenstein things together and they connect and they work and it does work for them. That's great. But what I'm saying is in our instance right now,

when our producers log in, when our CSRs log in, by the way, they have their own separate instance because we only do sales on one side and service on the other, because that's how much we split things up. When they log into that org, outside of going into a carrier's website to, you know, make certain things that you cannot do in there, because again, there's another, you know, a can of worms that we don't need to open right now, but we'll eventually hopefully get to a better spot. They live inside that org. Everything they do sits right there. They're not logging into other programs. They're not trying to, you know, push this to connect over here and then have to go into a different screen or whatnot. It all lives in one place. Short of, you know,

the comparative rating portion of it, which we went down the road of doing it with the two largest that you have there. However, and I think you share my opinion on this, we're very long on Tarmica and, you know, I've seen what this personal line size is going to look like and having those together. That's, that's our, that's our bet, right? That's what we're making right now. Outside of that, everything is in one org. It doesn't, it doesn't have to, you don't have to bounce around. It's there. And then we customize those things to what we want. I mean, you know, without going into too much, you've seen it, right? And the different things that you're able to do and the efficiencies that come of that, that was one of the things, like everyone's talking all this huge, big level, you know,

stuff, which is great. And I love where that can go. But if you can't get the simplest things done first, that stuff doesn't come. You know, we had to, I felt like we had to be really, um, focus on the simple day-to-day tasks before we could get anywhere to match the capabilities of what Salesforce has. Yeah, I completely agree. Um, so we could, we're going to have to do another podcast here in a couple of months, but I, uh, cause I, I just have a million more questions and I didn't mean to talk so much about business philosophy to start,

but I want to talk a little bit about zip bonds too. So, um, so, you know, as you said, you have multiple entrepreneurial endeavors happening at all times and you have the agency, you have, uh, another kind of technology solution that you're working on, which we won't name, but is, um, uh, very interesting as well. And then, and then probably this isn't the only one, but the next, you know, kind of big project that recently announced, which is, I'm super happy for you and excited about in general is ZipBonds. So what is ZipBonds?

Why should agents be interested in ZipBonds? Like what, just talk to me a little bit about the problem you're solving there. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Again, that was, again, so when we initially had this idea, and it was a few years ago, we've been, you know, trying to finish up the Salesforce integration for Coverage Direct, right? So now we're at a point, Ryan runs a point in all things Coverage Direct, I'm running and taking off with stuff on Zip. It was a problem that we saw because we worked with a lot of contractors and the process was more complicated

than it needed to be. Right. And so really the, the, the impetus of this was how do we make it easier for these contractors that we're working with to find gets access to small contract surety and, you know, bid these jobs, right. Cause they're intimidated by the idea of, you know, where this is. And there was a little bit to that, where we had some discussions with know, discussions with a carrier that we've worked really well with that was also, you know, presenting some different ideas, but we really didn't set out to say, okay, we're going to take the sturdy world by storm when we first started this. But I will tell you, because we're attracted to problems, the more we started to peel that onion and get back to the part of what the core issue was, we felt like there was, we could bring some value to that space. Right. And so when I

think about, you know, where we started to where we are, it's completely different. Cause now, you know, in the process we figured out there's certain things on the, the, the backside of house that, that needs to be changed and need to be different opportunities for both carrier and agent level. You know, our ability to work on commercial is different than, you know, at the time there wasn't a solution out there when we started this to, to provide that. So ZipBonds is really, it's focused on all things surety. Our initial focuses were on that small contract piece, but we've built out now, we have a database of over 5,000 commercial surety options where you go, you click, you select what you need, you pay for it, you print it off, you're done, you're ready to go.

That's the pass through. But we also are really intentional about hiring and bringing on the right team members that have a strong underwriting background. So, you know, our model really for agents is if you have a surety option that comes up, you just zip it over to us and then we take care of everything for you, present that back, and then you, you know, go off and present to your client. But we wanted it to be, as we're calling it, more of a concierge type of system. So we're setting this up and piloting it currently with a few agents to make sure we get all the kinks worked out before we go, you know, live, large scale. But that's, but that's what it's

focused on, right? It's like, we want to be, you know, if you look at like what Chris Green has done to the flood insurance arena, you know, that's what we're trying to be on the surety side of house, right? We want to be that turnkey division that takes care of your surety for you, either because you don't have the options, you don't have the expertise, or rather, you just don't want to spend the time and energy in doing it because you don't do it enough. And at the same point, we're able to provide a similar comp plan that you're going to get from a carrier if you did all the work yourself anyway. So are you guys a carrier? So we are not a carrier. No, we have worked and still are currently in negotiations with creating what we call like

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

You're just getting this. Now you're explaining everything all over again, right? And it's frustrating. So we wanted to create an experience where if we're your turnkey surety division, right? Like we help you out with the stuff from commercial, small contract, large, full, fully underwritten surety programs, but also help broker out things that are more difficult. You know, we don't want to only be that, right? And we understand because of that, we, there's a certain type of agency that's going to want to work with us and others are going to say, no, I just want to do that stuff myself, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But that's, you know, really what drove us to want to create the solution.

Yeah. I think there's very few agencies in the country that should be doing sure to do themselves. And my purpose, my reason I say that is why waste your time, right? Like you're, and I don't mean it like sure. He's a waste of time. I time. I mean like take – so I'm a huge fan of pro writers, right? I'm a huge fan of pro writers. I like pro writers because I answer eight questions and I get nine compared cyber quotes. But not just compared on rate. I also get a 30-point breakdown on all the coverages

that the different carriers have for that line of business, for that class of business, for that size business. I understand cyber probably better than most agents, but I don't understand it as well as an expert. So by doing that, what it allows me to do is get, is understand what the market looks like from a pricing perspective and make a relatively educated decision based on my understanding of the top level coverages on which two, usually we present two, two quotes I should present and break them down for people. What I don't have to do is be appointed with CFC and be appointed with all the, you know, and I just, bam, I don't have to be a super expert on cyber. I get a quick, I think the same exact thing about bonds, right? Don't be a bond expert on cyber. I get a quick, I think the same exact thing about bonds, right? Don't be a bond expert. Send the bonds out, have someone else come back to you and go,

here's your two best options for this bond or the way bonding works. Here's the best option. Here's what it is. And get back to selling and prospecting and running your business and building operations. And people are like, I don't have time to automate, but we're still putting stickers and stamps on our bonds. I'm like, how much freaking money are you making on that? Probably not a lot. Well, and that's just the thing though, right? Like, so, so on the commercial side, you know, basically we've set this up, you're making the same amount anyway, and we're doing all the work. Right. And then on the other side, it's, it's very similar to the contract, but you look, I don't think that by any means, you know,'m uh the smartest

guy in the space or whatnot but definitely far from the dumbest and i struggled with this when we first got i still remember the first time i tried to crash dirty bond because i was cold calling you know uh commercial contractors um you know this is almost 10 years ago now but and i remember thinking i'm like there's got to be a way because i called the the one carrier at the time we were working with. And, you know, his answer was basically, you know, you don't know enough about this. You need to send this off to somebody else to be able to do that. And I just remember how that made me feel in thinking like, OK, there's got to be a way to have that be a better process.

Because I go to you and you're, you know, essentially we're creating a similar type of like setup, but it just you position it better. Right. Yeah. And so you don't have to be and if you don't do it every single day or don't do it enough, you're going to run into this question over and over again. How much time are you spending trying to figure out how to do that, where you can go to somebody that could do that for you, you know? And then, so again, we just created the solution we would have wanted when the idea came up, right. It didn't exist. So we were trying to figure out how we do that. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, if we can't find it, then we're just going to build it. I still remember presenting the idea came up, right? It didn't exist. So we were trying to figure out how we do that. And then all of a sudden it's like, okay, well, we can't find it. Then we're just going to build. I still remember presenting the idea to a carrier about what we would do, right? We were asking for

our feedback on this is mid into our, you know, Salesforce, you know, thing for the agency. And we said, look, we didn't even want anything to do with the time here. Just do these things, run with it. We'll be happy to advise or you know give your opinion whatever you want us to beta test it and in the middle of trying to this is this is pre-pandemic but in the middle of trying to explain this uh somebody asked a question about the colors and the logo and stuff and i could just tell this wasn't going anywhere i paused or muted the phone i looked over at ryan it's like we're just gonna have to build this like they don't understand what we're saying it's clearly that it's an option that's needed because this carrier was asking us to help them with it because they wanted something like that. And so that's kind of how a lot of the things that we do end up being what they are.

We just figure out that we can't explain it well enough or can't figure out. It's easier just to build it ourselves. And that's what we've done. Well, I, for one, I'm very happy that you and Ryan are out there because our industry needs people who are willing to take risks and who see problems and don't just bitch about the problems, but try to find solutions to them, which I think was probably the thing that I disliked the most about my time at Trusted Choice and Agency Nation, not the organization itself, but the number of people that I ran into in our space who wanted to complain about things and not present solutions. And, you know, I think that's one of the things that attracted me to you and to

Ryan and what your guys' mission is and why, you know, you know, we've always kind of stayed close over the years here is that I just love that your mentality is, is this something that's important? Yeah. You know, you have this framework that you walk through where at the end of it, one of the, one of the answers might be, well, we'll just build it. And I think there are so many people in our space that will, would they don't have like one of the boxes at the bottom of the Plinko board is not, we build it, right? Like it's just not. So, um, and I, I think we just need to cultivate and share more stories.

And, uh, I hope everyone who is unfamiliar with you and coverage direct and zip bonds and every other project, like you're going to need to create like a, you're gonna have to create like your holding company empire page with all your portfolio companies under it pretty soon. But, um, we have to draw pictures for our attorney and CPA. And I don't want to take away from the fact that, you know, people would say that we're distracted from that. It's, it's, it's far from that. I mean, we thankful to have a really great team behind us and helping us figure out all this stuff. So it's not just us. We just, again, this is why we've always tried to fly under the radar because we don't want to make a big deal about certain things. But now I think we do, we,

we have solutions that we can really help other agents, you know, implement and want to do it. Yeah, dude. So where, um, other than coverage, direct.com, zip bonds.com, where, uh, LinkedIn, Twitter, like what's the best place to connect with you? I feel like I have the best twitter connections with the insure tech or insurance space right on twitter that's that's where i'm at and i and you know if you're uh one of those people that only want to see tweets from things of business that i'm not the right one because i'm always posting things about my kids and racing and different stuff but yeah twitter's the best place to to find me uh are you uh what

are you coverage direct on twitter or what's your no it's it's uh i gotta figure out if there's a period or did i forget the handle if it's just my name i think it's just my first last name that's on there you'd think i would know that off the top of my head but yeah it's my first z-a-c-h-m-e-f-f-e-r-d so at zach mefford on twitter that's my personal one that's the way i had the most conversations. LinkedIn's good too. I just, I feel like I'm on Twitter more than I am probably most platforms. Well, I know we went long here, but I do think it was an awesome conversation. I look forward to the next time I'm also in, and this is, this is stuff, people. I am glad that I popped your podcasting cherry.

That makes me very happy. Yeah, no, I, I, I appreciate going on there first i again i just want to make sure that i had something tangible to talk about and i i really didn't think that this conversation was going to be about entrepreneurship as much as it was but i'm really glad we got to talk about it that was fun yeah i'm passionate about that too so cool well thanks again man we'll talk soon yeah thank you close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we used to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast.

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