The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 117 - Wade Eyerly on Creating an Insurance Product Out of Thin Air
Episode Date: September 23, 2021Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley is joined by Wade Eyerly, founder and CEO of Degree Insurance. Wade discusses how to esta...blish an insurance product where one didn’t previously exist. Wade is a tremendous person, and Ryan and Wade take this conversation in a variety of directions. You don't want to miss this episode...Episode Highlights: Wade explains what led him to Utah. (8:51) Wade discusses the concept of Degree Insurance. (18:40) Wade discusses how he became a missionary. (28:43) Wade explains why he chose Moscow to serve as a missionary volunteer. (31:09) Wade shares the story of how they helped a man they met quit smoking. (33:44) Wade mentions that building genuine friendships rather than trying to network with everyone under the sun gives much greater results. (44:25) Wade believes that trust stems from shared experience, which cannot be rushed. (48:30) Wade believes that insurance is a fantastic industry in which you do not have to be the brightest person on the planet. (57:58) Wade mentions that insurance enhances people's ability to take risks. (59:36) Wade explains that the purpose of Degree Insurance is to remove the risk out of higher education. (59:59) Key Quotes: “If you spend two years walking around trying to help people as your full-time gig, you learn to love those people. You learn to care about them. You learn what's important to you.” - Wade Eyerly “Insurance is such a great industry...you don't have to be the smartest person out there. If you can put your nose down and hustle, you can do really well, in any part of the country with traditional products.” - Wade Eyerly “Insurance unlocks other people's ability to take risks and nothing is going to drive the economy faster. build more wealth, do more things than letting people take responsible risks.” - Wade Eyerly Resources Mentioned: Wade Eyerly LinkedIn Degree Insurance Reach out to Ryan Hanley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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                                         In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home.
                                         
                                         Hello everyone and welcome back to the show.
                                         
                                         I have an absolutely tremendous episode for you, a conversation that
                                         
                                         I thoroughly enjoyed. Someone who I'm probably going to be introducing you to. You probably
                                         
                                         haven't heard the name Wade Eerly. You probably haven't heard that name, but I think you're going
                                         
                                         to know about Wade as we go the next couple of years. He's got a company, a new model for an
                                         
                                         insurance product that he's kind of invented, a new model for an insurance product
                                         
                                         that he's kind of invented out of thin air. And it's absolutely tremendous. It's degree insurance
                                         
    
                                         company. You can go to degree insurance, just Google degree insurance company. You're going to
                                         
                                         find what Wade is doing now. Degree is basically insuring your college education. That's what it's doing. And I'm not going to give away the lead
                                         
                                         here. I just, the idea that you can kind of conceptually see where an insurance product
                                         
                                         fits in the market and manifest it to me is absolutely tremendous. It's amazing. And it's
                                         
                                         something that obviously I've never done. And just, you know, when I, When you hear about people and you talk to them and you see the way they think,
                                         
                                         it's inspiring, no doubt. Kind of like the conversation we had with Jonathan Libby a few
                                         
                                         weeks back, just creating insurance products in places that they didn't exist before. Absolutely
                                         
                                         tremendous. I think you're going to love this conversation. Wade's a super guy and just loved
                                         
    
                                         it. Just loved it. But before we get there, I want to give a quick shout out to the people who make this
                                         
                                         podcast possible.
                                         
                                         And today's leading sponsor is Coterie Insurance.
                                         
                                         Guys, we are writing a lot of business with Coterie because small business is what we
                                         
                                         do and Coterie does small business the right way.
                                         
                                         It's fast, it's easy, it's convenient, good products.
                                         
                                         We're writing a lot of media companies, a lot of professionals.
                                         
                                         Because what I like about Coterie is they have easy add-ons for the PL.
                                         
    
                                         It's very easy to attach the professional liability onto the GLM property.
                                         
                                         And now you're getting someone who maybe would otherwise not pay a full-blown standalone
                                         
                                         professional liability policy. They're paying for that professional liability policy or willing
                                         
                                         to pay for it as a package with their GL and their property. Love what Coterie is doing and just
                                         
                                         couldn't be happier to have them as a sponsor because we're in business with them and I love
                                         
                                         pushing companies that are working with agents and doing it in the right way. So Coterie,
                                         
                                         check them out. Go to C-O-T-E-R-I-E, Coterieinsurance.com. Go to C-O-T-E-R-I-E,
                                         
                                         Coterieinsurance.com today. Get appointed. Start writing business with them. We're doing it all
                                         
    
                                         the time. Wrote a policy today, actually. today actually cool all right other company I want to give a
                                         
                                         shout out to is Donna Arias analytics and Donna are making power moves they're
                                         
                                         bringing data to the fingertips of independent agencies and if you're
                                         
                                         looking to get a better feel for what your data can do for you check out donna for agents just
                                         
                                         google donna for agents the name donna for agents you're going to see what they're up to get the
                                         
                                         demo i'm not saying that the product is right for you today it might not be but it's another one of
                                         
                                         those tools like tarmica two years ago you know if you guys remember i was saying just just go get
                                         
                                         the demo i'm not telling you to buy it it It might not be right for your agency, but know what it does. See the demo,
                                         
    
                                         see what it does, see what data can do for your agency. And then when you're ready,
                                         
                                         then you know what it is. It's there. So go get the demo, know what Donna's all about.
                                         
                                         And then if you're ready to make a move on data and push forward, well, I can't speak tonight, then you know the product to buy,
                                         
                                         and that is Donna for Agents.
                                         
                                         We use it to find customers who potentially are leaving.
                                         
                                         That's how we use it.
                                         
                                         It gives us our sentiment score, and we use that in real time
                                         
                                         to get a feel for maybe someone's emailed us a couple times
                                         
    
                                         or maybe they had an issue with the COI that we didn't realize, and we're getting that out in the frequency of emails and contacts.
                                         
                                         It's all really, really good stuff. Big fan of Donna. Big fan of the people that are making
                                         
                                         Donna possible, which is a big part of why I choose the tools I choose to use. All right.
                                         
                                         So guys, with that, let's get on to Wade Earley and learn about the green insurance.
                                         
                                         You're going to love this one, guys.
                                         
                                         You're absolutely going to love it.
                                         
                                         Here we go.
                                         
                                         Wade.
                                         
    
                                         Hey, Ryan.
                                         
                                         How are you?
                                         
                                         Good.
                                         
                                         How are you?
                                         
                                         Good.
                                         
                                         Do you hear an echo or are you good?
                                         
                                         No, no.
                                         
                                         You're coming through loud and clear, my man.
                                         
    
                                         Good.
                                         
                                         I'm in a phone booth I haven't recorded from before.
                                         
                                         I'm getting an echo, but it's just a weird space.
                                         
                                         Yeah, whatever kind of phones you got there,
                                         
                                         iPhone technology must be doing its job.
                                         
                                         All right.
                                         
                                         Well, how are you?
                                         
                                         I'm good. I'm good. It's nice to meet you.
                                         
    
                                         Anyone that Wes recommends over, I'm always interested to talk to.
                                         
                                         Well, it's funny.
                                         
                                         I've only gotten to know Wes in the last couple of months around a little sort of Silicon
                                         
                                         Slopes insurance startup guys meet up.
                                         
                                         And at the end of the meeting, he was like, hey, I got a guy I want you to talk to.
                                         
                                         I think you guys are going to hit it off, and that's essentially all the context I have for,
                                         
                                         like, jump on a podcast. Yeah, yeah, so Wes and I have been buddies for a while.
                                         
                                         Um, you know, it's funny. We met each other just kind of similarly like i've been in insurance space for
                                         
    
                                         she's like 16 years now he's been in it for
                                         
                                         15 you know i think neither one of us you would classify in any regard as the traditional
                                         
                                         insurance mentality i don't even think he knows really the standard, even what like insurance is.
                                         
                                         You know what I mean? Like it's, I've probably bucked every standard methodology for, for going
                                         
                                         about how insurance is done. You know, it's just, I don't know. We just, our paths, we ran into each
                                         
                                         other and we became fast buddies.
                                         
                                         And I like the way he thinks about things.
                                         
                                         I also think he's crazy as shit.
                                         
    
                                         So it works out really well.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         He's just a super likable guy, right? You meet him in your root form immediately, which is a great skill set to have.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         He's just self-deprecating and also like incredibly intelligent.
                                         
    
                                         And I just think that, you know,
                                         
                                         this is the case for every industry.
                                         
                                         I tend to, you know,
                                         
                                         I just happen to operate in the insurance industry,
                                         
                                         but like I just gravitate towards people,
                                         
                                         whether I agree with them or not,
                                         
                                         who are willing to take a different approach
                                         
                                         to the way things have always been done,
                                         
    
                                         but still have a respect for why
                                         
                                         they are done that way or how we got here. And that to me, I think is the key element when I'm
                                         
                                         looking at someone who's bringing a new idea into our space is, do they have a respect for
                                         
                                         why it's being done this way today? Like not that it doesn't need to be
                                         
                                         changed or, or reinvented or innovated. That's, that's a different point, but do they at least
                                         
                                         have a respect for why 450 years later, we still do it that way. And if they do, then I'm like,
                                         
                                         oh, maybe there's a shot. This person will, will, will actually make an impact if they don't.
                                         
                                         Um, I just become a little weary, I guess.
                                         
    
                                         Yeah, sure. Makes total sense. Yeah. Tell me more about where are you based? Tell me.
                                         
                                         Yeah. So I'm based in upstate New York, just outside of Albany area. I was born and raised
                                         
                                         here. Saratoga or where? Just south of Saratoga it's a it's a town called water valley we're right
                                         
                                         across the river from troy okay yeah so i can be from my house uh with my first bet in hand at the
                                         
                                         finish line rail in about 23 minutes so okay so i lived the last five years in new canaan connecticut
                                         
                                         okay and uh we'd like to take our kids up to saratoga and out to the Finger Lakes and up to Vermont and just hang out in the Adirondacks.
                                         
                                         Yeah. What brought you to Utah?
                                         
                                         We moved out a year. Well, two weeks before COVID hit, my in-laws live out here.
                                         
    
                                         Father-in-law just retired from university here and chance to raise kids by grandparents.
                                         
                                         Like, you know, you can give your kids a lot of things. That's one not everybody can.
                                         
                                         And we had that chance.
                                         
                                         And so we did.
                                         
                                         And frankly, Utah was just built for kids, man.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         We're camping in southern Utah and hiking in northern Utah.
                                         
                                         Just, you know, out on lakes and fishing.
                                         
    
                                         I mean, there's just social distancing here was so wildly different than it was in a suburb of New York city that I almost felt guilty for my friends that, and we got,
                                         
                                         we randomly moved two weeks before COVID.
                                         
                                         It's not like it was a design thing, right.
                                         
                                         We just got real lucky and, and, uh, or blessed depending on your,
                                         
                                         your worldview, but yeah, it's been, it's been awesome.
                                         
                                         So that's cool. I, um, I, I agree with the grandparents thing.
                                         
                                         I don't particularly for a whole bunch of
                                         
                                         reasons which we can or can't don't have to get into i don't really care for new york state um
                                         
    
                                         and and not that i don't have friends here and stuff but i just it's just not me it's not my
                                         
                                         it's not the way that i view the world although although this is a decent place for his kids, but I have three sets of grandparents within 15 minutes of my house. So I ain't going
                                         
                                         anywhere because I grew up, my entire family is from South Buffalo. And, um, my dad got a job
                                         
                                         when I like at, when my mom was pregnant with me and moved our little unit. i have like 30 irish catholic cousins and they all still live in south
                                         
                                         buffalo and he moved me my mom or you know i wasn't bringing it but my mom out to albany so i
                                         
                                         grew up like on an island like no grandparents around no family around so now being able for my
                                         
                                         kids to have cousins and all that stuff right here you know this will not be forever for
                                         
                                         me living up here because i want to i love other parts of the country you know um but a lot where
                                         
    
                                         you are is one of those places um but i'm never leaving until that family unit isn't necessary
                                         
                                         anymore well i will tell you uh well first off you can come to
                                         
                                         utah and we'll adopt you we'll make you family you know we'll give you what you need but uh
                                         
                                         utah has been really incredible that way um but i grew up in kansas city my dad moved out there
                                         
                                         like we didn't have family around and uh my wife's family and you see this when you get married but
                                         
                                         like she just grew up differently. She had super close relationship
                                         
                                         with grandparents on both sides.
                                         
                                         And like they have like a family reunion.
                                         
    
                                         Her grandpa was a cattle rancher
                                         
                                         and they all go to the ranch,
                                         
                                         you know, twice a year, every year.
                                         
                                         And she knows she's closer
                                         
                                         to her second cousins
                                         
                                         than I am to my youngest sibling.
                                         
                                         Because we're 16 years apart.
                                         
                                         And like, I'm like a weird old uncle, right?
                                         
    
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         She like, we moved back to Utah and one of her second cousins lives around the
                                         
                                         corner from us. I didn't know, but I saw this one walking a dog. We're looking to get a new dog.
                                         
                                         I'm asking her about it. My wife comes out and she goes, Madeline, hey. And like, just like,
                                         
                                         it was the most random thing in the world. She's like, oh yeah, I see her at the ranch,
                                         
                                         you know, twice a year. So yeah, being by family is a real treat i have a big family so i was lucky that way
                                         
                                         but like now we're a diaspora right i got a sister in luxembourg and another one in fresno and
                                         
                                         everything in between so alabama that's a pretty that's that's a pretty diverse luxembourg
                                         
    
                                         yeah we're all over the place i'm always eight kids big mormon family so we're all over the
                                         
                                         place yeah but but not from utah right and Mormon family. So we're all over the place. But not from Utah, right?
                                         
                                         And so everybody, all the other like,
                                         
                                         all the Mormons that I know when they moved to Utah,
                                         
                                         the sort of cultural, like you make fun of it
                                         
                                         because you never go make friends.
                                         
                                         You just have so much family
                                         
                                         that you never need anybody else.
                                         
    
                                         Well, that wasn't our case.
                                         
                                         We moved out and we were like,
                                         
                                         we swore we wouldn't be that family that moves to Utah
                                         
                                         and only sees their family, right?
                                         
                                         And then two weeks after we got here,
                                         
                                         the government's like, yeah, barely, you can only see your family. Yeah.
                                         
                                         So it's, it's been interesting, but it's, it's a good man.
                                         
                                         It's just great for raising kids. I didn't have my, uh,
                                         
    
                                         I yawned right as I got on this,
                                         
                                         I realized I was up all night in the ER with my 11 year old broke his arm
                                         
                                         and tackle football yesterday. Um, but it's,
                                         
                                         it's the thing,
                                         
                                         like he's playing football and they're playing baseball and like doing all
                                         
                                         kinds of stuff that like parts of the country still aren't able to do.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         We've been blessed so far that
                                         
    
                                         being in upstate,
                                         
                                         the craziness that goes on like Westchester South and Long Island.
                                         
                                         Oh yeah. We've been able to avoid some of that.
                                         
                                         Thankfully we have a few people here who still maintain some semblance of
                                         
                                         rational thinking.
                                         
                                         Sure. It's startlingly uncommon.
                                         
                                         It is very.
                                         
                                         Yeah. I don't want to get, I just i was just you're good buddy's about a technology
                                         
    
                                         project but like they're like you know they're they're probably younger than me so i'm 40 they're
                                         
                                         probably in their early 30s they're technology guys they work for rt specialty and we're
                                         
                                         just working on a project with them and uh and um you know they're coming from philly
                                         
                                         where in in the greater ph area, it's like bananas.
                                         
                                         Like you would think that it's like, you know, we're being bombed by a foreign country.
                                         
                                         You know what I mean?
                                         
                                         Like that's what it's like.
                                         
                                         And they come up here and they're like, look how, you know, look how reasonable you are.
                                         
    
                                         And I'm just like, I'm looking around going fucking crazy.
                                         
                                         I was behind a woman with two masks on that was buying a carton of cigarettes.
                                         
                                         Like what in the world are we living in like how
                                         
                                         is this how is this real life um but it's just it's just funny so you know i guess you know it is
                                         
                                         um you know like anything else we'll get through this and i think uh i think we'll all have learned
                                         
                                         a lot about ourselves hopefully i think the people that actually use this time in a positive way,
                                         
                                         I think you'll have learned a lot about yourself. I think that's,
                                         
                                         I think that's going to be the case for a lot of people is you know,
                                         
    
                                         I think some people really let themselves go.
                                         
                                         I think other people really honed in and made themselves better, you know,
                                         
                                         better, whatever that means.
                                         
                                         I know my wife and I have used this time to really get fit
                                         
                                         and really focus on that and family and stuff.
                                         
                                         So I don't know.
                                         
                                         It's all.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
    
                                         I mean, I travel so much.
                                         
                                         It was a year of no traveling and hanging out with my kids.
                                         
                                         Like, you know, it was a terrible thing.
                                         
                                         And we had people we knew who passed from it and whatnot.
                                         
                                         But like, it wasn't an awful year in general for our family.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         So, and I think insurance has an interesting perspective on it, right?
                                         
                                         Because we're in the risk business.
                                         
    
                                         Most of this fear is from an irrational understanding of risk tolerance.
                                         
                                         It's novelty risk, right?
                                         
                                         And so you're more afraid of this than you are driving on the freeway.
                                         
                                         I served in Iraq.
                                         
                                         I had one tour in Iraq.
                                         
                                         And I was safer in Baghdad than my wife was driving on the freeway around Washington,
                                         
                                         D.C.
                                         
                                         But nobody wants to acknowledge that or think about that.
                                         
    
                                         Right.
                                         
                                         It's like, well, you're taking a new risk.
                                         
                                         So I'm terrified about it.
                                         
                                         And I've already accepted freeway risk.
                                         
                                         Well, this is the same thing.
                                         
                                         It's like, look, you've already accepted the normal flu variant.
                                         
                                         You've already, you know, 100 other things.
                                         
                                         This is terrifying because it's new risk.
                                         
    
                                         But ultimately, it's not particularly worse than other risks we're already accepting. And I think it's new risk but ultimately it's not particularly worse than
                                         
                                         other risks we're already accepting it and i think it's worse than them and i don't even think it's
                                         
                                         that it's novel i think it's that it's politicized well i think that doesn't help that's the that's
                                         
                                         the part that i think really makes this the only thing that makes this scary to me and and look i've
                                         
                                         had people that i know pass or or even have um uh know pass or even have things with their heart or their lungs that aren't going to change.
                                         
                                         My little brother's on oxygen now.
                                         
                                         He's in his 30s with six kids under eight, and he's pulling around an oxygen tank.
                                         
                                         It's definitely real.
                                         
    
                                         There's no doubt.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         It's just I'm with you. Like if someone, you know, I had one of the, one of the guys this morning said, if I told you, you could walk into a casino and you had a 99.8%
                                         
                                         chance of winning, but the other 2% chance was you're going to lose all your money. Would you
                                         
                                         walk in and place a bet? And he's like, everybody would, uh, uh, uh, you know, 999,000 out of,
                                         
                                         out of a million would do it. And that's, you know, so whatever,
                                         
                                         it's all good. So dude, you've had a pretty wild career. It looks like, I mean, I obviously Wes
                                         
                                         did the same thing for me that he did for you. It was like, it was like, Hey, you gotta talk to
                                         
    
                                         these guys. A good guy. Um, you know, so then I was looking through your LinkedIn and I was like,
                                         
                                         holy shit, you've been, you, you know, been all over the place. It's, you know,
                                         
                                         it started a lot of companies and it's awesome.
                                         
                                         I mean, it's pretty exciting to see your background.
                                         
                                         I mean, it's pretty cool.
                                         
                                         I need to pull that up and see what it says
                                         
                                         because there's elements of my background
                                         
                                         that can't be put there.
                                         
    
                                         So yeah, I've had a random career.
                                         
                                         I've got like career ADD along with regular ADD, right?
                                         
                                         So bounce around a little
                                         
                                         bit but uh I think you get a chance to bring experience from all sorts of different places and
                                         
                                         bring it together and it makes you naturally challenge like the how we started this you know
                                         
                                         yeah it well why do we do it this way because we always have that's never a good answer for me if
                                         
                                         I don't understand why then then I'm not going to,
                                         
                                         then I'm going to challenge that every time, right. And make sure we're doing it the right way. But,
                                         
    
                                         but if you understand why, then maybe you, maybe you end up at the same place,
                                         
                                         but maybe you end up someplace totally different. And I get to bring in learnings and best practices
                                         
                                         from, you know, a dozen different places that don't overlap very much with, you know, whatever I'm doing today. Yeah. So what's degree all about? What is, how do you, I mean, I, obviously I read about it and
                                         
                                         I've been, you know, checked out the website and LinkedIn page and everything, but like,
                                         
                                         what is, what is this about? I mean, this is a pretty wild concept.
                                         
                                         Yeah. So I, uh, I was an executive at an airline and I'm on the board of a school,
                                         
                                         a school board in Bridgeport, Connecticut. So the largest and the poorest city in Connecticut.
                                         
                                         And we took kids that are two years behind and we get them caught up and on the college. And
                                         
    
                                         that's the plan, right? That's, that's what we set out to do. And it's a 97% minority school.
                                         
                                         And, you know, it's, it's doing, I think, really good work.
                                         
                                         And that's what we were focused on.
                                         
                                         I'm really proud of it.
                                         
                                         And so as we're sitting there, the entrepreneur in me then on the board wanted to tell the story.
                                         
                                         Like, how do we alter the life trajectory for these kids?
                                         
                                         Like, what, you know, what do we change?
                                         
                                         I didn't, I mean, I came from a family background that was pretty similar. I was
                                         
    
                                         on and off government programs, right? I didn't know you were supposed to apply to college. I
                                         
                                         drove to a college in August, the year after I graduated and asked how to sign up for a dorm,
                                         
                                         you know, and because it kind-hearted registrar took pity on me, it changed my life's trajectory,
                                         
                                         right? And, and, and wildly so. And so, all right, like, how do we, let's tell this story,
                                         
                                         right? That's what we want to be marketing to these families is like, hey, when you send your kids here, their trajectory alters.
                                         
                                         How does it change? And come to find out, 80 to 90 percent of the kids we brought in, we're going to drop out the first two years of college anyway.
                                         
                                         We had the wrong goalposts. You know, getting into college doesn't alter your life's trajectory. Getting out the right way does.
                                         
                                         And it's a subtle but pretty important distinction to say that, you know, graduating college is the path to the American dream.
                                         
    
                                         Going to college is what we usually say, and it's wrong.
                                         
                                         What we had done was enabled these families to take out a lot of debt, which didn't help them if they didn't graduate. So I couldn't get that sort of thought out of my head and ultimately just said
                                         
                                         to my wife, this is the problem I want to go fix. And we're lucky enough to be in a place where I can
                                         
                                         choose what I want to do professionally. And so I set out to do that with no idea what the right
                                         
                                         solution was and spent a lot of time in data. And ultimately, we were able to build actuarial tables
                                         
                                         and say, OK, this is an insurable risk, right? If a college
                                         
                                         degree were a stock in the stock market, it outperforms the market by 2X. It outperforms
                                         
                                         the S&P 500 by like 2.4 times and is simultaneously the most consistent performer in history.
                                         
    
                                         And that piece is really important when you're building an insurance product, right? So it works
                                         
                                         super reliably. And this is, I think,
                                         
                                         the least confident generation in American history, right? They're old enough to remember
                                         
                                         the Great Recession and the job loss and the fear and their whole lives. Higher ed has said that a
                                         
                                         degree delivered online should come with an asterisk, right? And so it's their turn. We have
                                         
                                         a once every six generation pandemic. And everybody says, well, just go online online and they don't know if it's going
                                         
                                         to count and is there going to be economy when we're done and is anybody going to hire them
                                         
                                         so they don't have the confidence necessary to enroll and yet we know statistically the best
                                         
    
                                         thing you can do in a down economy is have a degree right in the great recession unemployment
                                         
                                         goes to 10 nationally 17 for black five percent is where it peaks if you have a college degree,
                                         
                                         right? And in the, you know, the pandemic, Raj Chetty at Opportunity Insights at Harvard is
                                         
                                         talking about a K-shaped recovery. And the break point is if you didn't have a college degree,
                                         
                                         you got laid off. Worst unemployment crisis since the Great Depression. If you did, you worked from home, bounced right back. And so quite literally, it is, I call it its own form of insurance,
                                         
                                         right? It protects you from an economic downturn. What we need to do is convince kids that it's
                                         
                                         worth it. Give them the confidence necessary to do it. And insurance was a great vehicle to do that.
                                         
                                         Insurance gives you confidence where you can have none, where the statistics are right, but the confidence is wrong.
                                         
    
                                         And so, I mean, it's just, you know,
                                         
                                         it's a shared risk pool, right?
                                         
                                         And you spread that so that if higher ed
                                         
                                         is the roulette wheel
                                         
                                         where nine out of 10 spaces pay off,
                                         
                                         the right advice to give somebody you love
                                         
                                         is to borrow 10 times their net worth,
                                         
                                         make a single investment and then hope, right?
                                         
    
                                         Spin the wheel. But in the event that it doesn't work, what do you do? Well, if you're
                                         
                                         wealthy, you spin again. You borrow more money. You spin again. You go to graduate school. You
                                         
                                         get a spike in a down economy, right? If you're not, if you're a first-gen American, first-gen
                                         
                                         student, underrepresented minority, otherwise poor, Pell eligible like I was, right? You often
                                         
                                         just have to go to work. Then you anchor your market rate at a low point, and the economy represent minority, like otherwise poor, Pell eligible, like I was, right? You often just
                                         
                                         have to go to work and you anchor your market rate at a low point and the economy rebounds
                                         
                                         and your career doesn't. I mean, and you're, you know, you go back to a 2% annual wage increase
                                         
                                         forever. And so what we did was just spread that risk across everybody where it works to fill in
                                         
    
                                         the gaps where it didn't. And it should do the same thing that homeowners insurance does for
                                         
                                         homeownership, right? The
                                         
                                         fastest way to build wealth in America for the last 150 years is homeownership. And you borrow
                                         
                                         10 times your net worth, you make a single investment with it, and then you hope that
                                         
                                         the market performs well. And it works really, really well. But you couldn't do that if you
                                         
                                         were worried that your asset would burn down. Yep. Right?
                                         
                                         And nobody's upset.
                                         
                                         The one guy they've known in 30 years who had to rebuild their home for a fire got to rebuild.
                                         
    
                                         But because we have insurance, we've enabled all of that wealth creation, all that risk-taking is possible.
                                         
                                         And in higher ed, it's been such a reliable bet.
                                         
                                         We've never needed it.
                                         
                                         We haven't done it.
                                         
                                         But now we do need it. We finance it to such a degree that you set a family back for a generation.
                                         
                                         It takes 21 years on average to pay back the loans.
                                         
                                         So if it doesn't work for you, right?
                                         
                                         On average, we know it's going to work, but the risk is still individualized, right?
                                         
    
                                         If it doesn't work for you, that family is a generation behind and we can just fix that
                                         
                                         with insurance.
                                         
                                         It's so easy.
                                         
                                         So that's what we, so we built the actuarial tables.
                                         
                                         We're now, we've now got a certificate of
                                         
                                         authority in eight different States. Um, you know, we got Oklahoma's this morning, so we're, uh,
                                         
                                         you know, we're rolling out a new product, but it's a little different than a lot of insurance
                                         
                                         conversations I have because it's like inventing life insurance. Like this, this whole category,
                                         
    
                                         this product didn't exist before and we're rolling that out. So I was a first generation college student.
                                         
                                         My junior year, I, so I looked, I grew up in a house that everyone in my community referred to
                                         
                                         as the crack house. Now, thankfully we did not smoke crack in the house, but it certainly looked
                                         
                                         like what you would think a crack house looked like on the outside. It just, it wasn't nice.
                                         
                                         My mom was a secretary.
                                         
                                         My stepdad was a laborer and, you know, we got by.
                                         
                                         And I was, was, you know, I, I did all right.
                                         
                                         I did pretty well in school and blessed with a, with a reasonably decent, at least enough
                                         
    
                                         intelligence that I could look at the world and go, my only way reasonably decent at least enough intelligence that I could
                                         
                                         look at the world and go my only way out of here is and that you know I was good at sports but I
                                         
                                         certainly wasn't becoming a professional athlete like my only way out of this shitty town of 900
                                         
                                         people in the middle of upstate New York was to go to college so I said to my mom I want to go to
                                         
                                         college and her response was oh that's nice I, like it would never even crossed her mind that I would do. Yeah. Yeah.
                                         
                                         And, you know, I had to figure out how to fill the forms myself. OK, so I go to college.
                                         
                                         I end up getting some scholarships for baseball and some scholarships for being poor and shit like that from the University of Rochester.
                                         
                                         And a blessing. Great school. Well well after the first year the head coach of the baseball team
                                         
    
                                         goes to another job okay scholarship goes away i cannot afford full rate at the university of
                                         
                                         rochester at 33 000 a year or whatever yeah yeah college over for me let's go I'm painting houses and waiting tables and uh you know oh my gosh even
                                         
                                         thinking about it makes me a little emotional here's my like I have this great year you know
                                         
                                         what I mean like played on the baseball team part of eternity um I was part of the all-campus
                                         
                                         judicial committee which was like this student body adjudicating you know like if you didn't
                                         
                                         want to go before the dean you go between between this this panel of your peers like it was a big deal
                                         
                                         and uh you know i'm like i'm fully ingrained in this community and here i am back in upstate new
                                         
                                         and albany new york i mean i'm actually upstate albany by my you know essentially by myself all
                                         
    
                                         my friends and it was and it was like my next path was probably i'm in the gutter you know
                                         
                                         swinging a hammer drinking 30 beers a night like you know that's where i'm going yeah and uh i was
                                         
                                         you know again sometimes you just you're you're blessed you have no other way to say it someone
                                         
                                         that was on that judicial committee found out that i wasn't coming back and why I wasn't coming back called the dean of the
                                         
                                         school who has since passed away but you know rest in peace this guy saved my life um and this dean
                                         
                                         got me that scholarship back and I went back to school the second semester and I'm sitting here
                                         
                                         listening to you say this going if this existed I would have went back to the University of
                                         
                                         Rochester potentially on you know with this kind of insurance I would have went back to the University of Rochester potentially
                                         
    
                                         on, you know, with this kind of insurance, I would have been able possibly, you know,
                                         
                                         I'm not exactly sure how it works, but I'm thinking to myself, like, here's a potential
                                         
                                         use case that I would have had in my life because it just poof. I mean, it was just,
                                         
                                         I had, I had, I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I was out. I was on the path to never having to go back to this shitty little town again,
                                         
                                         where people said that the criminals didn't steal from our town.
                                         
                                         They lived in our town. So they didn't, that's the, you know,
                                         
                                         that was like the big joke. And, and then it was just gone like that.
                                         
                                         And then, you know, thankfully a whole series of crazy phone calls were like,
                                         
    
                                         I'm on, I'm on the phone with the Dean of the college,
                                         
                                         you know what I mean? How does that ever happen? And he hears my story and says, well, just pack
                                         
                                         your bags because you're coming back. And it was like wild. It's just wild to think. And that
                                         
                                         changed my life. I mean, I'm one of those kids who, if it wasn't for college, you know, who knows
                                         
                                         where I'd be. 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. Totally. I couldn't relate more. I, uh, I got a scholarship. I was a terrible
                                         
                                         student. Uh, so I was like 17 when I went to college and, uh, like barely turned 17. It was
                                         
                                         the summer I was 16, turned 17 and, uh, and joined the fraternity. And I had two great social years.
                                         
                                         And then I left and served the church mission in Moscow for two years when I was 19,
                                         
                                         came back at 21 and was grown up and just matured. Right. But the first two years, like I didn't,
                                         
    
                                         I didn't know you were supposed to go to college, but then I got there and I didn't know what I,
                                         
                                         like how to handle myself, how to succeed, what I was doing. But a lot of the same things joined
                                         
                                         as attorney was on like interfraternity council and student government did a bunch of stuff.
                                         
                                         And then I went to Moscow, grew up a little bit, you bit you know post-soviet russia i'll teach you a lot about life decisions
                                         
                                         you want to be making i believe and uh and came back and i was like all right well like i kind
                                         
                                         of knew what i wanted to do for a career or thought i did and i knew that i needed a 3.0
                                         
                                         cum to get a government job in the federal government and i thought i wanted to work at state parmesan and uh and i had a two five seven and two and a half years worth of credits
                                         
                                         so i had to get like a three nine six the rest of the way in order to like so i graduated like a
                                         
    
                                         three one yeah my last two years you know i just finally just did the work showed up to class you
                                         
                                         know that stuff anyway but didn't really have anybody like that could show me the way and you know uh loved my experience as a theta chi but like those guys
                                         
                                         were the ones i was learning from and they weren't always making the best decisions either at the
                                         
                                         time so yeah it is it's funny man why um why why moscow what was moscow like i have a good i have a very good buddy who did his mission
                                         
                                         in um oh chile and i want to say maybe argentina as well and we've talked about his mission so
                                         
                                         many times and how that's changed his how that changed his life and all that and um i'm just
                                         
                                         i'm always interested because and this is going to sound like a broad sweeping stroke, but I'm not the most sincerity. I find Mormons who actually did their mission to be some of the, like, I don't know,
                                         
                                         it just like straightforward, caring, empathetic people that you'll meet. I know that's a broad
                                         
    
                                         stroke, but I do find that's the case. I think you find a spectrum, like there's a bell curve
                                         
                                         of anybody anywhere right yeah there's
                                         
                                         always some bad seeds i get that but it's a formative experience yeah and you spend so it's
                                         
                                         disciplined and rigorous in that like you're up at 6 30 you're out of the door by 9 30 you're home
                                         
                                         by 9 30 in bed by 10 30 like there's a lot of structure to it you don't watch tv you don't go
                                         
                                         on dates you don't like phone calls and letters. Like you called home on mother's days and Christmases. And otherwise you wrote a hand letter
                                         
                                         once a week. Now it's an email. Um, but like, there's no failure to launch. If you go on,
                                         
                                         like you have to, you have to figure out how to live, how to do your laundry, how to make a food,
                                         
    
                                         like, you know, you have to figure out. So it's very hard to come home and then just move back
                                         
                                         into your mom's basement and let her take care of everything. Right. Yeah. So, so there's an element of that. You, you don't pick where you go. You tell the church you're
                                         
                                         willing to serve and then you get, and then you're called and it's kind of a cultural moment. It's
                                         
                                         like my, you know, Jewish friends that have a bar mitzvah and like, now you're a man, there's this
                                         
                                         like element of like, you go on your mission, you come back and you're eligible now. Right.
                                         
                                         But when you get your call, like every like high
                                         
                                         school girlfriend and all my friends growing up, everybody's like in the room, we opened the mission
                                         
                                         call together. It's like a big moment. Cause you don't know where you're going to go and you don't
                                         
    
                                         pick. And so when I got, I mean, I left in 98, so six years after the Soviet Union fell and learned
                                         
                                         Russian and moved to Moscow.
                                         
                                         Right. Like that's in what was the world capital of atheism. Right.
                                         
                                         They had institutionalized for 70 years.
                                         
                                         You know, so for missionaries who serve in Chile, Chile is the country in the world.
                                         
                                         The second highest population of Mormons, I think it's about 5% Mormon.
                                         
                                         The highest concentration of Mormons outside of pacific islands like samoa
                                         
                                         tonga and stuff and uh and like when you go there and you have a conversation with someone
                                         
    
                                         you're really sharing like here's what christ did for me and how that helped me and uh and so it's
                                         
                                         more like additive to what like you all people already know about the savior in Moscow
                                         
                                         it was like here's who Jesus is because institutionalized atheists I mean everybody
                                         
                                         knew Christianity because their grandma was a Christian but nobody like nobody could be
                                         
                                         religious and get a job like the party control all the like so anybody aspirational you just
                                         
                                         didn't go to church like it wasn't wasn't like a thing um and so it was uh but it was cool because you spend all day
                                         
                                         every day caring about other people you have no concern for yourself i mean you you have you know
                                         
                                         food in an apartment and so you're you're like your base needs are met and otherwise your job
                                         
    
                                         is to leave your apartment in the morning figure out how to help people and then come back at night
                                         
                                         so i remember we met this guy who had just been released from prison, Russian prison, not a great experience, I'm sure.
                                         
                                         And we literally like we're walking down the street and you recognize missionaries,
                                         
                                         the name tags and the white shirts, the ties on them. And, and we're always like talking to
                                         
                                         random people can share a message, brighten your day, like whatever it is. And he said,
                                         
                                         you know, can we help you with something and he's
                                         
                                         like i gotta quit smoking everybody in prison smokes it's gonna kill me i need to quit we're
                                         
                                         like okay um mormons are good at not smoking right it's kind of core to what we we don't want to
                                         
    
                                         smoke we don't drink no coffee like great so we're happy to help right and uh and i said all right so
                                         
                                         when is it hardest for you like when i first wake up in the morning, when I go to bed,
                                         
                                         we were at that dude's apartment at like six or seven o'clock in the morning.
                                         
                                         And we were at a dude's apartment at like nine 30 at night, like just distracted and would read some scriptures,
                                         
                                         maybe sing some songs,
                                         
                                         like whatever kind of other thing we could do so that he wouldn't think about
                                         
                                         it. Yeah. And you know,
                                         
                                         if you spend two years walking around trying to help people as your full-time gig,
                                         
    
                                         right, you learn to love those people. You learn to care about them. You learn what's important to
                                         
                                         you. You're not, it's not an aspirational experience, right? You're not like trying to
                                         
                                         get a promotion, like the rest of your life, the career, like all that stuff is there.
                                         
                                         You're just very centered where you're at. And I think that gives you a real base of genuine
                                         
                                         confidence in like who you are, that you're a child of I think that gives you a real base of genuine confidence in like
                                         
                                         who you are, that you're a child of heavenly parent, you know, like, you know, that you are
                                         
                                         God's son or daughter. Right. And like, there's some real genuine confidence in knowing that
                                         
                                         about yourself that I think gives strength to do things that other people might think are risky
                                         
    
                                         or to like center you when you're like, when you're dating and figuring out what you want in life. And I don't know, that's a long answer, but I
                                         
                                         think that's part of it. I think it's a great answer. I think that, um, I was talking to a
                                         
                                         couple of buddies again, you, you, and I'm interested in your taking this because, you
                                         
                                         know, at some point in your journey, as you mentioned very early, you then do a tour in Iraq.
                                         
                                         Um, and I'm, I'm interested in that. And I think,
                                         
                                         you know, I think that I look at my own kids, I think about my own life, think about my time in
                                         
                                         college, I had a very similar thing. I was an engineering major, and switched to be a math
                                         
                                         major, just because I wanted to graduate on time. Right? I'm staring at a two one in engineering
                                         
    
                                         going, I'm not gonna make it. And, and had to switch and ended up
                                         
                                         getting to a two nine three, I think is what I graduated with, but same kind of deal had to
                                         
                                         freaking crank the last like year and a half. And, you know, so much of our, our, our, our lives is
                                         
                                         spent, I feel like, and this goes for work too, and we'll get back to, to degree insurance. I know
                                         
                                         we're off the path, but this is interesting.
                                         
                                         It's like, what do people think about this?
                                         
                                         What do people think about the decision I'm making?
                                         
                                         How is this going to impact the way these people view me or interact with me?
                                         
    
                                         Or am I going to be invited to this club or whatever?
                                         
                                         And I look at, I have a high respect for a lot of the people, the people like Israelis that
                                         
                                         I meet, I love their ethic, their, their mentality, very pragmatic view of the world, you know, some
                                         
                                         of being where they live, some of being the service that they have to do as part of, you know,
                                         
                                         coming up. And I just think like, that we're missing, I feel like today, that service component of our lives.
                                         
                                         And it used to be through the church, but, you know, secularism is really, you know, destroying.
                                         
                                         I feel like destroying our society in many ways.
                                         
                                         But, you know, the service component, like I'm listening to you talk about that.
                                         
    
                                         I'm going, those two years allowed you to actually figure out
                                         
                                         like who the hell you are. Like, you know, you think about how many existential crises,
                                         
                                         so many people seem to be having every day right now. And I'm like, you probably not knowing you,
                                         
                                         you know, knowing you for 36 minutes, um, seems to have a pretty good feel for who you are,
                                         
                                         at least for the most part, as much as anyone can. And, uh, I'm assuming that, that, that just that time to be able to figure that out played a large role
                                         
                                         in, well, you know, there's another interesting thing is you mentioned, uh, Israelis, many of
                                         
                                         whom I admire as well. My, my wife lived in Israel a couple of times growing up and, um, we've been,
                                         
                                         been able to go a couple of times with our kids and um how do i put this walking around with white
                                         
    
                                         shirts and ties wearing a name tag for two years is you're never the cool guy right like that layer
                                         
                                         is like you're a dork for two years yeah and you learn to be comfortable in your own skin and rather
                                         
                                         than be externally validated um you because there's no show you can put on, right? You can't be cool
                                         
                                         as a mission. Um, if you look at like, uh, other religious folks all around the world, my father-in-law
                                         
                                         was a religion professor and he, uh, he talks about a concept of religious envy. And what he
                                         
                                         says is you can learn a lot about how to practice your faith by watching other people practice
                                         
                                         theirs, you know? And, uh, if you're a Sikh and you wear a
                                         
                                         headdress everywhere, you can't hide that you're a Sikh. It's the first thing anyone knows about
                                         
    
                                         you before they've ever, before you've ever opened your mouth or they've said a word to you,
                                         
                                         they know you're a Sikh. So how do you, how does wearing your religion that way change how you
                                         
                                         behave and who you are? Because you represent now, not just yourself and your family, but this like entire faith.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         What do you learn about, you know,
                                         
                                         Hasidic Jews getting themselves into a trance-like state at the Western, at the Wailing Wall, right?
                                         
                                         Like, what does that teach you about how you are going to live your faith?
                                         
                                         And missionary service does similar things.
                                         
    
                                         Like, you're willing to be not cool.
                                         
                                         And if you can give up, it's like for you and I, I'm going to
                                         
                                         project here a little bit, but our circumstances aren't too dissimilar. I know how to be poor,
                                         
                                         right? I know I can get by, which means, which enables me to take some risks because I was poor,
                                         
                                         but also relatively happy, right? I had a happy childhood. I played with neighborhood kids and
                                         
                                         whatever else in the
                                         
                                         house behind us gets busted for busted for meth or whatever it was, three cop cars in their lawn.
                                         
                                         Like you don't know as a kid, right. There's much, you're not like the comparisons are all
                                         
    
                                         very small. It's like inside your elementary school, not, you know, global stuff. And,
                                         
                                         and so you can be poor and happy. And that like realization is empowering as a, you know,
                                         
                                         risk-taking entrepreneur, because the worst case scenario is you still get to be happy.
                                         
                                         There's a lot of power that comes from genuinely understanding that. Well, I think in your faith
                                         
                                         journey and other parts of your life and in the world, you know,
                                         
                                         as soon as you can get over needing to be cool or validated by your peers for
                                         
                                         what you have or how you wear, what you look like, or, you know,
                                         
                                         whatever it is, how good you are at sport, you know,
                                         
    
                                         whatever the thing is that you're getting external validation from,
                                         
                                         as soon as you can get past that and you just get to be comfortable in your
                                         
                                         own skin, right. That that's a superpower in the modern world.
                                         
                                         And, uh, and being a missionary kind of forces you to get, I mean, two years of not being cool will break most
                                         
                                         people of their needs to, you know, wear the right clothes and say the right thing. Then it doesn't
                                         
                                         mean you don't fall back into that or whatever, but there's a baseline of like, I know who I am.
                                         
                                         And I think that happens for a lot of missionaries. Yeah. I think that's a, I think that's a really
                                         
                                         good lesson,
                                         
    
                                         not just for obviously for faith and living our lives,
                                         
                                         but also for our work and how we present ourselves to the world.
                                         
                                         I get people and I don't,
                                         
                                         if any one of them are listening,
                                         
                                         I don't mean this in a negative way
                                         
                                         if you've asked me this question,
                                         
                                         but I get people who,
                                         
                                         a lot of people will reach out to me
                                         
    
                                         because of the podcast
                                         
                                         or because of some of the writing
                                         
                                         and at different times in my career, I've had some reach, we could say. But I get people who, a lot of people who will reach out to me because of the podcast or because of some of the writing.
                                         
                                         And at different times in my career, I've had some reach, we could say.
                                         
                                         And people will say, well, how do I become an influencer?
                                         
                                         I want to become an influencer.
                                         
                                         And I'm like, the very first way that you become an influencer is to never, ever refer to yourself as an influencer or think about being an influencer ever.
                                         
                                         Like, you know know one of the
                                         
    
                                         misconceptions i think that a lot of people have about and and i i know this i know this in part
                                         
                                         because i i i've had the opportunity at different times to talk to people who have substantially
                                         
                                         more reach than me dog sure real real outside the industry um large millions of people audiences
                                         
                                         and the people that i think the ones who sustain,
                                         
                                         and I think do real, real yeoman's work is the ones who do it because they're there personally,
                                         
                                         it's like their own personal journey that they're on. And they're trying to learn and grow. And they
                                         
                                         have, and if 10 people listened, they would be doing the same exact thing as if the millions that did listen.
                                         
                                         And I think that that's a very important part of growing a company like degree insurance or, you know, some of the things I'm trying to do here at Rogue is like, you know, a lot of people have asked me, how come you didn't try to start this agency sooner in your career?
                                         
    
                                         You know, obviously, I wasn't there.
                                         
                                         Like, you know, the way that I can sit here and talk to you today,
                                         
                                         even two or three years ago, I may not have been of the same, you know, I may not have had
                                         
                                         everything as dialed in. And, you know, I think when, but when the opportunity presents itself,
                                         
                                         if you are in some of the mental state that we've talked about, and you're not trying to do
                                         
                                         something to be cool or to have a place, but because it feels like a problem that you need to solve or want to solve,
                                         
                                         then, you know, that opportunity seems to present itself and you can go get it.
                                         
                                         It's when you start forcing things that I think you really find yourself in trouble,
                                         
    
                                         or you start making bad decisions, partnering with the wrong people,
                                         
                                         becoming, losing focus on what you're trying to do um and all of that all of that you know can
                                         
                                         can hold you back from where you want to try to get you see it in the military too right everybody
                                         
                                         wears a uniform one of the things that does is strip away a lot of the you know cool guy stuff
                                         
                                         right and puts everybody on the same place and lets you grow and and you know your work product
                                         
                                         stands out and discipline stands out and you know know, you know, those sorts of things.
                                         
                                         And I feel the same way about sort of the influencer comment you made and and networkers.
                                         
                                         I get I'll get asked a lot about how do you grow a network or be a network?
                                         
    
                                         And I have never tried to do any of those things. So I'm like, I don't have great advice for you other than to don't don't be that guy at a conference.
                                         
                                         Hand out business cards, giving everybody finger guns, you know, like if you if you say that you're here to network, I'm immediately, you know, not interested.
                                         
                                         Yeah. But if you're here because you like adult men don't make friends.
                                         
                                         Well, just like especially adult American.
                                         
                                         Like it's just not something we do. You have old friends and otherwise your family.
                                         
                                         Right. And so if you just genuinely care about somebody and you, you know,
                                         
                                         help them out with something, right.
                                         
                                         Then you build that sort of group of people who want to be around you,
                                         
    
                                         want to help you go build genuine friendships instead of trying to network
                                         
                                         with everybody under the sun. And you'll just do a lot better.
                                         
                                         Yeah.
                                         
                                         One of my favorite conversations that I've had on this podcast with wit was
                                         
                                         with a woman by the name of Sheffy Benhutta.
                                         
                                         She runs, her and her brother are the founders of Coverger, which is an insurtech publication.
                                         
                                         I have a lot of respect for them and the work that they do.
                                         
                                         And she's one of my favorite people in the space for the way that she just views things
                                         
    
                                         and attacks them.
                                         
                                         And we disagree on different stuff.
                                         
                                         And we were having a conversation around the good old boy nature of the industry, right?
                                         
                                         And we were talking about how, you know, I mentioned to her that at different times in my career, I felt blessed to sit at tables that I probably shouldn't have been at listening
                                         
                                         to old fat white guys tell stories about how they conquered the world.
                                         
                                         And that without actually shaking hands or without actually signing a contract,
                                         
                                         deals were made and tens of, if not more, millions of dollars of business
                                         
                                         would then be passed based on these relationships, right?
                                         
    
                                         And it was never like, hey, we're good now, right?
                                         
                                         It was just this conversation was had and things were done on these relationships, right? And it was never like, hey, we're good now, right? You know,
                                         
                                         it was just this conversation was had and things were done and you learned how to navigate in this
                                         
                                         one. She said, and her response was, I hate that that's still our industry. And while I pushed back on her and I said, I think we need more of that, except not just old fat white guys.
                                         
                                         But the idea that there should be some barrier that you have to earn your way into that space,
                                         
                                         to me, there's a reason why those groups... Now,'m, I'm all for diversity and meritocracy. I'm a firm
                                         
                                         believer in meritocracies and, you know, I can give a shit what color you are and all that.
                                         
                                         Although I do particularly have a swing slant towards Americans. I'm, you know, but, but I do,
                                         
    
                                         but, but outside of that, where you come from, who you are, I can give two shits about what
                                         
                                         religion you are. That part has to change. But the idea that these little groups of people form who trust each other, I think that's a good thing because you
                                         
                                         should have to earn your way in and you should have to, you know, I have to treat you well for
                                         
                                         a period of time before you're going to trust that if we do business together, I'm not going
                                         
                                         to hose you like that's, that's human nature. And I think there is this misbelief by some people, particularly younger people who are trying to move up in that because they showed up to the party that we should just, you know, take them for for what it is.
                                         
                                         And I'm like, nah, man, you need to get bashed across the rocks a couple of times and you need to have the door slammed in your face a couple of times and learn why that happens. And then when you come back in, you're going to, you're going to still be that, you know, the, the innovative,
                                         
                                         inventive, energetic person, but you're also, but they'll, but everyone will know that you're
                                         
                                         around for the long haul, which is, which is who people want to do business with. Does that make
                                         
    
                                         sense? It does. There's there's an interesting dynamic between trust and regulation.
                                         
                                         Right. So I trust and reputation are earned and take time and are valuable.
                                         
                                         Regulation is a shortcut for when you when you need to interact in a space where you can't afford to build trust or don't have that time, right? So when an average homeowner walks in and needs a new policy, they don't know a good
                                         
                                         agent from a not good agent, right? And so the government, or in some cases, like with lawyers,
                                         
                                         like the Bar Association or others, they'll step in and they'll create barriers that are designed
                                         
                                         to ensure some believability in what's
                                         
                                         coming out, right? Some trust. And it is a, it's a way of building trust in an area where you don't
                                         
                                         naturally have it. It is always better to be able to build and have that trust, right? And I think
                                         
    
                                         there's, you know, a lot of trust comes from shared experience, which can't be shortcutted.
                                         
                                         That's time. And so getting in a room with a bunch of other people from shared experience, which can't be shortcutted. That's time.
                                         
                                         And so getting in a room with a bunch of other people who have shared an experience with you does a lot to build that trust. But you don't need regulation in a world where we know who
                                         
                                         the good actors are and who the bad actors are. And I think what's interesting is the
                                         
                                         balance between the two, between allowing people to make mistakes, to trust the wrong person. We do this with dating. Everybody gets to forge their own path and find their own people. You then a year and a half later, they break up. And then you're like, hey, we could see it. Yeah, it was horrible, right?
                                         
                                         But you have to let them make that mistake
                                         
                                         or they won't be ready when the right person comes along.
                                         
                                         There are just industries and places
                                         
    
                                         where you can't do that, right?
                                         
                                         I used to run an airline.
                                         
                                         And guess what?
                                         
                                         I can't put somebody in the cockpit and be like,
                                         
                                         oh, they'll figure it out, right?
                                         
                                         Give them a little time.
                                         
                                         Let them crash a few, right?
                                         
                                         Like that doesn't work.
                                         
    
                                         And so you've got to have some barrier.
                                         
                                         But when you put too many barriers
                                         
                                         and too much structure, one, trust doesn't get built
                                         
                                         because you never learned to rely on trust, right?
                                         
                                         And two, you can impede progress and innovation, right?
                                         
                                         And so I'm always fascinated by innovating in spaces where the trust quotient is shallow
                                         
                                         because the regulatory quotient is high.
                                         
                                         So we have a lot of regulation because pharmaceuticals, airlines, insurance,
                                         
    
                                         there's a ton of regulation because we need these things and we can't afford to build the relationships of trust that need to make it work.
                                         
                                         And so we use regulation to do it. Regulation is a very heavy tool, right?
                                         
                                         It doesn't, it's not a soft, nuanced thing.
                                         
                                         No.
                                         
                                         And so, and regulation has a hard time keeping up with the speed of technology and the speed
                                         
                                         of growth and the speed of change and the speed of need.
                                         
                                         So insurance is a great example.
                                         
                                         I mean, you know, 15 years ago, you didn't need cybersecurity.
                                         
    
                                         That wasn't a threat, right?
                                         
                                         Now, my friend, Josh Steinman, he was head of, he was on the National Security Council
                                         
                                         in charge of cybersecurity for the last four years.
                                         
                                         He just started a company. Oh, I wish I could plug it and tell you the name.
                                         
                                         I can't think of it all of a sudden, but he just started a company who's working to go secure our industrial like systems and controls.
                                         
                                         Right. Because right now, like hacking into the dairy plant, right? It's
                                         
                                         probably one of the easier things you can hack into or hack because the software that those
                                         
                                         things run on, it's a, you know, it's a, it's an Excel spreadsheet and, you know, and a blinky
                                         
    
                                         light, right. That's telling you the milk's good or the milk's not good. And those systems are
                                         
                                         weak. We've been able to trust for a long time at a certain level, you know, your food
                                         
                                         systems are regulated and you're not going to get bad milk out, but the systems we're now relying
                                         
                                         on have become vulnerable. Right. And you didn't need that 15 years ago. So, so now you got to roll
                                         
                                         out new products. You got to build new actuarial tables, understand new sets of risk and do that
                                         
                                         all in a regulatory framework and structure that was built for challenges a hundred years ago. Right. And so we're applying old laws in new ways where they don't always fit and not always right.
                                         
                                         And what you see are the very best insurance commissioners are those who understand not just
                                         
                                         the regulation, but the why. Right. Seasoning on your capital, seasoning on your capital
                                         
    
                                         can make great sense. We want you to, I want you in another state to show that you know how to be an insurance company before you come here.
                                         
                                         Great. In premise, fantastic. So does that clock? So I want a year of seasoning before you come to
                                         
                                         our state. Does that clock start the day we're an insurance company there or the day we pay claims
                                         
                                         there? Like when does it start? So we had a state tell us, it starts when you pay claims. I'm like,
                                         
                                         okay, two years of seasoning we need before we come to your state.
                                         
                                         You understand that in our product, because we're built differently than auto or whatever
                                         
                                         else, we're going to sell it to a college and those students are going to start school
                                         
                                         today.
                                         
    
                                         And they're going to go to college for three to six years and graduate and then work for
                                         
                                         five.
                                         
                                         And then they're going to make a claim.
                                         
                                         So you're telling me don't come to your state for a minimum
                                         
                                         of eight years plus two years of seasoning. So I shouldn't come here for a decade. I want to make
                                         
                                         sure that you're telling me that's how far behind you want to be. Right. And they're like, I mean,
                                         
                                         I'm like, and you just passed a regulatory sandbox where you said, Hey, innovative insurance
                                         
                                         companies come here. We'll wave away the, innovative insurance companies, come here.
                                         
    
                                         We'll waive away the regulation so that you can come here and innovate and take chances because we need these sorts of products.
                                         
                                         We need to move it faster.
                                         
                                         We didn't apply through the sandbox, but you can waive away the seasoning, which won't
                                         
                                         teach you anything in the next two years.
                                         
                                         Do you really want to stay away for 10?
                                         
                                         Well, no, right?
                                         
                                         And they were able to get their minds around and come around, right?
                                         
                                         But we see that a lot in insurance. We're a, we're very much a trustless industry because we're in the business of risk avoidance, right? We're in the business of hedging
                                         
    
                                         against the worst possible outcomes. And so by nature, by nurture, both self-selection and what
                                         
                                         we're sort of trained to do, we avoid risk.
                                         
                                         We shy away from things that haven't been done before and sort of trust the process,
                                         
                                         just let it go. What we don't do is move very quickly to address, you know, things. And,
                                         
                                         and you get caught sometimes, right? If you move quick and you bring in a new product,
                                         
                                         no one's seen before, like that can come back to bite somebody, right?
                                         
                                         And then do they learn a lesson and apply it or are they burned from, quote, anything new, right?
                                         
                                         And all those things sort of come up as you're thinking about how do we build new products? I mean, why don't we see a rash of new products?
                                         
    
                                         We've seen a rash of new businesses, right?
                                         
                                         Moving from physical goods to online service industries.
                                         
                                         So cybersecurity is the example everyone points to.
                                         
                                         And then global warming, which is changing, you know, the actuarial tables.
                                         
                                         But that's more of a shift in the math than it is a fundamental difference in the product
                                         
                                         nature, right?
                                         
                                         Cybersecurity is a new product.
                                         
                                         Ours is a fundamentally new product.
                                         
    
                                         We should be, I'm of the opinion, we should be seeing a lot more new products, right? In all sorts of different industries, but people don't think of it
                                         
                                         because we're not an industry that's prone to taking risks and to innovating.
                                         
                                         Yeah. The episode that's coming out this week that we're recording this is actually with a
                                         
                                         guy by the name of Jonathan Libby. So when this episode comes out, people can go back and listen
                                         
                                         to that one if they missed it. He runs or founded SteadyState Insurance, which is smart DeFi. And I'm looking at some of the
                                         
                                         things that they're doing in crypto, which is a really interesting space, which I'm super
                                         
                                         interested in. But what I thought was most interesting about our conversation was not just
                                         
                                         the crypto piece, which is interesting. A lot of people don't know, but ensuring DeFi transactions,
                                         
    
                                         once you understand the math behind it, makes a lot of sense.
                                         
                                         What became even more interesting to me was, okay,
                                         
                                         we're using DeFi as almost a loss leader for what blockchain can do for the
                                         
                                         insurance industry in terms of creating new insurance products over time that
                                         
                                         and new ways of viewing how we, how we tackle risk and
                                         
                                         the way that we can spread risk out to smooth out rates, to smooth out opportunities, to finally do
                                         
                                         away with, you know, even some of the loose redlining that still happens, even though we
                                         
                                         want to pretend like it doesn't like, you know, things like blockchain can really help us massage
                                         
    
                                         some of those problems and attack them.
                                         
                                         And I was like, it's why it makes me so excited.
                                         
                                         And I know we didn't talk about degree that much,
                                         
                                         but obviously everyone's going to be very interested
                                         
                                         now that they understand the way that you're talking this problem.
                                         
                                         It makes me very excited that there are people like you out there
                                         
                                         bringing these ideas into our industry because it's exactly what it needs. It, it, a lot of our industry is not broken. It needs innovation and some invention,
                                         
                                         but a lot of it is not broken. But I agree with you. There are many gaps that we just don't see
                                         
    
                                         that like black holes looking out into space because we just haven't had someone come in who,
                                         
                                         who understands how gravity works in that particular part of the universe.
                                         
                                         You know, one of the challenges is you got to build that X rail table, right? But I could
                                         
                                         easily see an executable contract on the blockchain that does parametric insurance, right? Where
                                         
                                         you're sort of, everybody's pooling in capital and splitting it and a set of regulations that
                                         
                                         allows those to exist. And suddenly you can create digital insurance, right? Where there's no manual
                                         
                                         underwriting, like it's an automated process. Do you fit this category? You put the money in,
                                         
                                         shared risk. Here's how you're going to make a claim later. And those paramutual, parametric
                                         
    
                                         models don't need an actuarial table, which opens it up as a model for where you can innovate and
                                         
                                         doing that in executable contracts, right? Building that on
                                         
                                         ETH or in a DeFi product or whatever. Those are real things that could happen.
                                         
                                         But they're going to happen one at a time and you got to have a champion. You got to have somebody
                                         
                                         who's willing to say like, I'm going to stick my neck out and try this in an industry where
                                         
                                         if I just put my nose down and outwork my peers, I can, I can do really well building an amazing
                                         
                                         agency. Do you know what I mean? Like there's that's the, there's a central conflict. Isn't
                                         
                                         always like attracting the right people. It's like, look, risk reward. There's great upside.
                                         
    
                                         If you're going to build something new, but insurance is, I mean, it's such a great industry
                                         
                                         where if, if you can put your nose down and hustle, you don't have to be the smartest person
                                         
                                         out there. If you can put your nose down and hustle, you don't have to be the smartest person out there. If you can put your nose down and hustle, you can do really well in any part of the country, right?
                                         
                                         With traditional products.
                                         
                                         And so necessity is the mother of invention, right?
                                         
                                         Yeah, I agree with you.
                                         
                                         You know, I want to be respectful of your time, so we'll wrap up here.
                                         
                                         But, you know, I think you just hit one of something that a lot of people don't talk about that, that I'm kind of
                                         
    
                                         facing in, in, in what I do, but some of our most talented people look at our space and rightly so
                                         
                                         go, I could sell seven middle market accounts and never have to worry about money ever again.
                                         
                                         Why would I do something that could possibly force me to be uncomfortable? When, if I can just learn
                                         
                                         how to make a few cold calls, network a little bit and write a few big, large accounts, I'm good. Spouse has got a seven series.
                                         
                                         I'll have a second house in Florida in a couple of years. I'll be able to golf all the time.
                                         
                                         Why would I want to go bash my head? Take a chance of running into the rocks when this path is tried
                                         
                                         and true and there's a lot of money still on the money tree.
                                         
                                         And, you know, I think it's that all being said, it is such an interesting and amazing time to be part of this space. And like I said, I'll say it again.
                                         
    
                                         I'm not blowing smoke.
                                         
                                         I'm very happy that there are people like you out there, Wade.
                                         
                                         And I just appreciate you coming in and sharing so much.
                                         
                                         Not just obviously we only heard a little bit about your business.
                                         
                                         That'll give us a chance to have you back on the show, but just about you and your mindset. I think it's exciting
                                         
                                         stuff. I appreciate you having me. I like you. I think I can talk about insurance all day.
                                         
                                         I think there's just so many great avenues for growth and great places where you can innovate
                                         
                                         and great places where you can do really good things. Insurance unlocks other people's ability to take risk and nothing is going to drive the
                                         
    
                                         economy faster, build more wealth, do more things than letting people take responsible risks. So
                                         
                                         yeah, degree insurance, we're going to let people do that. We're going to take the risk out of
                                         
                                         higher education and hopefully help a generation that I have taken to referring to as the least
                                         
                                         confident generation in American history and get them in college and get them through to a place
                                         
                                         where their financial futures are secure. So yeah, guys, decree degree insurance.co. There's
                                         
                                         a white paper you can read. There's all kinds of resources. Um, go check it out, get to know what,
                                         
                                         what this is, because to me, uh, we're going to be hearing a lot more from you, I'm sure.
                                         
                                         And new products in the space are a good thing. So I appreciate it, man.
                                         
    
                                         Hey, thanks for having me on.
                                         
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