The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 139 - EXCLUSIVE: Inside the SIAA Acquisition of Rogue Risk

Episode Date: April 21, 2022

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, take a look inside the acquisition of Rogue Risk by SIAA with Matt Masiello, CEO of SIAA, and Ryan Hanley, Founder and President of Rogue Risk.This is an episode you don't want to miss...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Before we get into the episode, I just wanted to share what's pretty big news for me and for my agency, Rogue Risk. Hopefully you guys find it interesting. We were acquired by SIAA. We will become part of the SIAA family. We will be a new division inside of their larger family of companies and work alongside their master agencies and agency partners to provide a digital insurance experience and platform that can help continue to boost independent insurance agencies, independent insurance professionals, producers, client success associates on their career path. It's all in service of what has been my mission from the beginning that SIA shares culturally, which is a no-ceiling insurance career. We talk about that today in this episode.

I couldn't be more excited about this move, and I hope to share more information as we go. Let's get on to Matt Massiello. in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home all right so matt um this is a kind of a different, this is a little different, a little different show than the first time you were on two years ago or whatever it was, a year and a half for your book. Kind of, kind of big, big news, at least big news for the two of us, I think, certainly for me and Rogue and all our team. You guys acquired us a few weeks ago. Yeah. And it is a big deal for me. And it is a big deal for SIAA as well. And, you know, going back the 18 months, two years ago, whenever we did the show, you know, you and I were spending a lot of time talking about what the agency of the future is going to look like. And we work a lot with startup agencies and existing independent agencies that are trying to make that transition.

And I tried to get that across for sort of our constituency in the book that I wrote and was sort of fascinated to hear your opinion on what the agency of the future looks like. And I think sort of like all good business people, you end up living what you think and you founded Rogue Risk. And we have just thought it's fascinating. And a word that doesn't get used in the insurance industry a lot is cool. It's a cool model. And so we're pretty excited about this partnership. Yeah. I, you know, I've been, since it became official, I haven't wanted to like make an announcement until we made a big announcement, which is obviously what this

is, but I've told a few friends and people in the industry and talk through. And it's funny, every time I kind of talk through both, you know, what, what our major plan is, as well as what my thought process was behind, you know, I think it's a fairly unique situation that an agency at our kind of existence, you know, how long we had existed for would be acquired or partnered or whatever the word is. But, you know, why we did it, I get more excited, right? Like every time I talk about what we're doing and explain, hey, here's where we fit into the larger ecosystem and, you know, how we're able to leverage their experience and expertise and different things like this and pull them all in,

talk about what our master plan is, I get more excited excited and that to me feels like a good thing, right? Cause you know, you would hate it to be the other way, obviously, or just neutral, but to like, every time you talk about it, be like, man, this is, there's a, there's a there, there, like, this is a really, really good thing. And, um, I I'm completely reinvigorated and not that I was down, but you know, like whole nother level of excitement. So it's, uh, it's very, very cool. Um, I I'm interested, uh, I'm interested in like, as much as you're willing to, like, what was the initial thing about the model or the brand or whatever? What was the initial thing that kind of caught your eye and said, yeah, there might be something there. There might be something here that could fit into what

we're doing. Well, I think there's a couple of things. And I think the first question is, do we actually tell your listeners where we were when we actually came up with this? Yeah. This is my favorite story of all time. I love this. Yeah. So you and I are both speaking at a meeting out West and the meeting's over and you're waiting to head to the airport and I'm waiting to head out for dinner with some folks. And I think two or three pints later, the discussion was, yeah, it might've been more than that. But the discussion was, hey, what if there were some synergies here?

And I think, you know, I think for us at SIA, we've been very fortunate over the years. You know, we have helped a lot of successful agencies join and grow. And we're just an enabler, right? Like we sort of bring some of the tools and the entrepreneurs do it. But where we've even been more successful over the years is helping insurance professionals start their own agencies. And these are entrepreneurs that are either producers or former captives that, you know, they just want that opportunity to own their own agency.

And so we've helped thousands of insurance professionals realize that dream. But over the years, we've come across a lot of really great insurance professionals that either don't have the ability to own their own agency or just don't have the desire, right? I mean, they like to be an independent agency and work with their customers and be in their community and provide a service and help solve problems for both personal insurance and business insurance customers. And at SIA, we were trying to figure out how do we sort of get into that space? How do we find an opportunity to help those really great individuals get into the industry or get into the agency side where they have those opportunities? But maybe they want to own an agency in the future. Maybe they don't.

And when you and I started talking about your vision, which is, I think, sort of what was the initial attraction was the vision, right? You know, I think a lot of your listeners have heard Ryan Hanley talk about his vision and his excitement about rogue risk. And if we can take insurance professionals that are looking for a sort of different work environment than that traditional independent agency or that traditional broker, and give them that opportunity to create success for themselves and their families, and maybe give them the ability to, if they want to, become a branch office or to

become their own independent agency in the future. I think sort of the sky's the limit for those folks. So, you know, at SIA, we were looking to implement something in that. And it sort of comes back, I think a lot of this discussion will come back full circle to, you know, 18 months ago or two years ago, you and I both sort of being of the same mind of what an agency of the future will look like. And then fast forward to where we are in this partnership today, actually helping create the agency of the future, not just in Rogue, but potentially setting the path for other independent agencies to follow in either how they are created or how agencies evolve into a different model. Yeah, that's awesome. I, I, uh, you know, I, I was just talking to one of my buddies. It may have been Cass, who the hell knows. And, uh, I was like, never let anyone

tell you that beers at the bar after the conference, aren't a good idea because, you know, I, well, what's funny about, you know, my side of that story is exactly as you described it, you know, and then I get on a plane and I fly home and the weekend happens and whatever. And, you know, the number of times that I have solved all the insurance industry's problems in a half drunken conversation, you know, whatever, you know, and then, you know, when you, when you emailed me and you said, Hey, you know, I'm thinking about that idea. And would you like to have another conversation? I was, you know, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, this is pretty cool.

Like, you know, we, we, we did, you know, I was like, Oh my gosh, like, it's pretty cool. Like, you know, we, we did, you know, in that time period had mapped out and talked about where there were some, some synergies and certainly some, some combined ideas. And then when I really started to think about where, where we had deficiencies and where my deficiencies were as a leader and where organizationally we had deficiencies and what I did actually, and I don't think I ever told you this is I took that following weekend after you emailed me and I did a full map out of how long I thought it would take to get to where, where I, where I really wanted to be. Right. And I just, I did the math and I came back and I said, man, with these guys, we're there in six months, you know, we're there, you were, we're, we're

rocking and rolling and like full steam ahead, leaning into the wind in, in, in probably less than 12 months. If I tried to do this on my own, it might be seven years. It might be 10 years. Really? When I started to map out actual growth resources, what we'd have to do. And I just, you know, I said to myself, what's more important? Is it, and we actually had this conversation. What's more important owning the maximum amount of an age of the, of the business that I can or partnering with someone and being able to actually execute on the vision of what I think is truly possible. And delivering what I've kind of coined as a no ceiling insurance career,

delivering on that promise to the industry, it just fascinates me. If we can pull this off, which obviously I believe we can, man, I don't know anyone else who's ever created essentially an agency incubator system with a full, the full ability to blossom into whatever you want. You know, there's a lot of triggers and you gotta, you gotta actually be able to do the job and you have to produce and all that kind of stuff. But assuming you do the work and you execute to be able to validate into your own, owning your own location or, or, or fully outright owning your own agency or whatever. I don't know that that's ever been possible before. And the idea is just so intriguing to me. Um, because of how many professionals I know wake up every day and our hand, I literally was texting with a guy 10 seconds before we went live, who is, who is literally disconnecting from his dad and uncle's agency because they've just

flatlined him. Like there's no place else for him to go. This is the son and nephew of the agency principals. They have flatlined him and he is now starting his own agency. I wish it was starting at six months from now. Cause we'd be ready to get him into the rogue system. But but like he that that shouldn't happen. Like he shouldn't have to deal with all that. Like there should be a path for him. And man, I'm to be able to deliver on that makes me feel very happy. Yeah, I mean, and there's there's sort of a lot to unpack there. I think sort of starting at the end is is we do see sort of those traditional insurance agencies. And we should be really clear, the traditional independent agency is a fantastic

business model, right? I'm very outspoken in the fact that I think right now, today, is the greatest time period to be an independent agent or in an independent agency or own one or operate one or buy one or whatever the case may be for a myriad of reasons, right? The market share for independent agencies is growing in all lines of business. The exclusive channel is shrinking and we're picking a lot of that up. Direct is sort of peaking a little bit in their private passenger auto. So that's a lot of opportunities for us. Technologies, which we'll talk about sort of high level in a couple of minutes, level the playing field for folks to move into these agencies. And I think if you were to do a SWOT analysis, which is really what you did after you came back from that trip, was you looked at your strengths, weaknesses, and your opportunities and threats, and you sort of weave that together into what could be.

And I think independent agencies in general need to be doing that because if you're operating like an old way of an independent agency, that's a challenge. And young people don't want to work in those environments. When people sort of look at you and say, oh, you work in an insurance agency with air quotes, they're picturing that old type of agency. And so we need to create a modern work environment for those younger people. They want to be involved in technology and the digitization of the business. They also want to work with their clients and their customers the way they want to be worked with, utilizing digital tools and social media and various things. And a lot of independent

agencies haven't made that transition. So that's their own SWOT analysis that they need to do. When you took your SWOT analysis and you and I kept talking about it, you know, I mentioned earlier that we're an enabler within the industry. You know, we enable good people and good insurance professionals to either create or grow their agencies. I think maybe a better term than enabler is accelerator. You can go out and grow an agency on your own. And Ryan Hanley was going to be successful one way or another with Rogue Risk and the model due to the energy and the

vision and the excitement and all the people that are pulling for you with it. But if we can accelerate it, and if we can, and I know you've maybe talked about what one of your personal goals are for people in the industry and that get involved with rogue risk, if we can not only accelerate our own growth, whether it's SIAs or rogue risks, but accelerate other people's personal journeys and professional journeys, that's a really big deal. And I think it does start with understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, and then figuring out where do you go from there. And in many instances, whether it's agencies joining us

on the SI side of the house to have access to horsepower and tools and energy, or whether it's us now with you bringing agents into Rogue and giving them those things. Those are accelerators to growth. And we're in an exciting time where acceleration matters. Yeah. And the other thing too, is coming back to the time period, because I 100% think that you're right. That was another part, a big part of, you know, I didn't technically do a SWOT analysis, but I guess I did, was I looked at the window that I think we're currently operating in and said, if I continue to grow at the pace that I am, there's a very good chance that even if I get to where I want to go, I've missed the window. And what I mean by that is independent agencies today really do have the ability to have every competitive advantage

against every other form of doing business. And I don't care how big your budget is. I don't care who your backers are. Independent agencies who properly, and I've been banging the drum about this concept of human optimized, properly optimized the humans in their business have literally every competitive advantage, local speed, connection, understanding, expertise, market access, they have everything. So to me, if we could get this, if I can take instead of five to seven years, I can compress that down into five to seven months to get to where I want to be. And now all of a sudden we're just, we're, we're giving people this career or facilitating, you know, this career through

rogue where you're able to, to, to live a life that has that, that you can make good money. You can feel fulfilled challenge. You'd be proud of what you're doing. You can actually help people in either your community or a vertical or an industry you're interested in. And to do that with the backing of, of, of resources that come from the combined effort of, of what rogues building systematically. And you guys already have in place that to me, you know, when I ultimately got to the end of it, um, it was just an absolute no brainer because when I see, when I, I've always found more happiness in watching, uh, team members kind of like reach their potential and thrive than I have in my own personal, my own personal journey. And, and this, this now, like now that fits right in line with all the other

shit that I love doing around marketing and sales and growth. And that just, it just made too much sense. There really wasn't, you know, when I really got down to the end of it, there wasn't much internal conversation to have. It was, it was, it felt like the right move. Yeah, no, I agree. And I think, you know, anybody that's looking to enter into business relationships with anybody, you know, the first sort of, you know, part of that, that scenario should be, do you like each other? Can you get along? Yeah, not just not just when you're having more than three or four IPAs, I think it was. But do you have the similar mindset and how do you complement each other?

And what are your strengths and weaknesses and what are mine and our strengths and weaknesses? And to be clear with everybody, this didn't happen overnight. I mean, you and I have been working on this for six months and, and through that sort of both informal and formal diligence, you start to figure out, yeah, you know, this, this feels good, like good relationships feel good going into them. And, and then that's what you sort of, you know, out the other side of that comes, comes success, which is going to be a really,

it's going to be a really cool model. And there's going to be a lot of people watching it. And, and, uh, comes success, which is going to be a really, it's going to be a really cool model. Uh, and there's going to be a lot of people watching it and, and, and, you know, I think you and I have talked about it. We're excited about, uh, a lot of people watching this and watching what we're, uh, what we're going to do with this. Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, I definitely, yeah, I, I, um, it intrigues me that we, we, to a certain extent, there's not a lot of, there's not a lot of areas of our industry that are unexplored jungle, right? I mean, there's a lot of innovations to happen for sure. And a lot of people are getting better at, you know, building the mousetrap, I guess, but completely undiscovered countries such as the ability for for a

22 year old unlicensed right out of college person just using that as an example to to to come in and say um so some people yeah i've had a lot of people ask me what does this no ceiling career look like what does that look like and again i don't want anyone to hold us to exactly the words that we're using but understand the the this understand that this is the map, whether the terminology and all the triggers are exactly the same is another thing. But to come in and say, start as what we would call a new business coordinator, right? You're calling, you're talking to people, you're gathering information, you're moving them from leads to suspects. You're unlicensed, but you're learning. You're learning hands-on, you're

learning the agency work, you're getting involved. You validate, hands-on. You're learning the agency work. You're getting involved. You validate. You become, say, a select producer. Now you're handling inbound leads. You're talking to people. You're getting a million at-bats, right? It's minor league baseball. It's all those at-bats. You can make a mistake because there's another one right behind. Now, obviously, you don't want that to happen, but it's going to. So we facilitate that. We train. We educate. we give people resources, we hold them accountable, we give them goals. And if you validate there, you get to go to Premier. Premier, now you're actually, we're teaching you how to hunt. Now you're becoming a true, you know, that chest thumping conference going, you know, agent who loves to talk about their big wins.

We're teaching you how to do that, how to go out and prospect that vertical or that geographic region or whatever. And at that point, if you validate through that process, now you have the option. You can stay and keep doing that. You could launch your own rogue location. Maybe there's even an option for you to start your own agency out of that. But to think that at no time, because your last name isn't on the outside of the building, you're going to have a place that you have to stop. And I don't just want to make it about independent agents. Same thing with State Farm, right? Or an exclusive. At a certain point, your territory gets to a certain size. They're just not going to let you grow any more than that. And all of those, I personally struggle with any scenario where I know that I can't go as far as I want to go.

So some of this is, is me kind of facilitating, facilitating my own fantasy, but it feels to me like something that is, that, that people are asking for, and it just has never been available to them and the ability to blaze that trail. And I'm sure we'll make mistakes and we'll have to re you know, rework things and, and course correct and all that kind of stuff. But to, to get to that goal, man, that's a, that to me, that's work worth doing. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, sort of that trajectory that you outlined of the, the young, you know, man or woman coming into the industry and having that path is, is something that's rare unless there are agencies that are willing to make that investment into those individuals,

or unless they go the captive or the exclusive route first. And then that creates a whole another route of obstacles. I think the other sort of trajectory you and I have talked about is, you know, the M&A world right now. And there's a ton of merger and acquisition going on. And, you know, not everybody wants to work for, you know, the agency that acquired their agency or, you know, in some instances, large agencies are acquiring agencies and they're limiting what producers can write because only this one can write that size or only this one can write that class of business or whatever. And so, you know, this gives, you know, producers or, or in agencies or account executives in agencies, the ability to say, no, I want that. I want that ability to sort of do it

all and go out and grow and, and, and come on board and be that premier producer or that select producer that we've talked about. And I think when we look at, you know, when we look at the number of agents in the insurance industry or agencies and the independent agency history, there's an insurance company executive that was quoted several years ago saying, look, there's 37,000 independent agencies in the independent agency channel today. 10 years from now, there'll be 37,000. It's going to be a different 37,000. It just won't be all the same ones. And I think when we get to the agency level and there's hundreds of thousands of agents, licensed agents in this distribution channel, in the other distribution channels, and giving them the path to be in a modern work environment,

it's a big deal. I actually heard today, which was the first time I'd heard it, that actually some of the exclusive carriers, the captive companies are actually setting up virtual exclusive agency offices where, you know, they're not a brick and mortar storefront or they're not in a direct call center, but they're working virtually out of their home to be exclusive agents as well. And so I think sort of this model of, you know, the virtual agent, if you will, with all the tools to build their business, their book of business, either in a geographic physical community or an online community. You know, I think it's a trend we're going to see in the industry. And I think we're in the right part of the wave on this together. So in two years, zero clients of ours and prospects have asked, where's your office?

Zero. What? It's just not a question. Unless you are leading with that in your marketing, no one cares. Now, if you lead with it in your marketing, it's different. But they just don't care. You know, I was talking to, I interviewed Zach Mefford from Coverage Direct for the podcast a couple of weeks ago. Super good guy, very smart.

And we were talking about, shoot, what were we talking about? We were talking about the handoff from one provider to another and how what people want today is expertise. They don't care if that expertise is down the street from them, if it's over the phone, if it's via chatbot, email, text message. They don't necessarily care. Now, people are comfortable with different types of communication methods, but I think what consumers, business owners in particular, just because that's our niche, they are so thirsty for someone who will respond and respond with a

little bit of compassion and some expertise. And if you can do that in a timely manner, that is the bar. That's what they're looking they don't they don't need you down the road they just need you to get back to them give a shit and do a good job and if you can do those things you can do them from anywhere what's up guys sorry to take you away from the episode but as you know we do not run ads on this show in an exchange for that i need your help if you're loving this episode if you enjoy this podcast whether 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

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the show for you all right I'm out of here peace let's get back to the episode and an interesting comment there right one number one small commercial is as we know is an underserved market right so those of us sort of on the smaller side of the independent agency channel always think that's crazy because that's how we make our bones is in the small business, local community business. But when you talk about when they need you, it's when they need you, it's how they want you and what they need you for, how they want to access you. And I think that's where there's still sort of a disconnect there. And I think if you do want to be a storefront agency with a plate glass window on Main Street or a strip mall or whatever, that is a perfectly viable business for independent

agencies to do. Look, you know, a lot of our business is still done on the Little League fields or BNI or Chamber or, you know, up and down Main Street supporting the other businesses or the food pantry or whatever the case may be. But also, if you want to be a virtual agency, you can still do a little bit of those things too. But I think in either of those scenarios, and you talked about the handoff, in either of those scenarios, we have to allow our clients and our prospects to work with us

the way they want to. And I think the problem with sort of the traditional insurance space is we still think that we can dictate to the consumer how they're going to buy a policy or how they're going to service policy. And that's nuts because the consumer dictates how they're going to buy and what they're going to buy in Walmart or on Amazon or at Best Buy or at Target or at the local store downtown, we don't tell them, you know, we're the only industry that still thinks we can tell people how to buy things. And so the consumer is going to pick and choose those things. And we have to have that right handoff when, where,

and how the consumer wants it. And I've got, you know, sort of a couple examples of that is, one, if we're going to be an agent for somebody, I think the agent of the future is going to be, you know, both an agent and an advocate or an advisor and an advocate. And when we talk about how we're going to be an advisor, a lot of people say, well, duh, agents are advisors. I mean, we help people, you know, protect their most valuable assets. But what is missed in that is a lot of people want to do some amount of that work digitally, DIY. They want to get to a certain point and then deal with a human. And we sort of think that they all want to talk to us, and they don't.

At the point they need us, they want to talk to us. And so how do we within this industry provide the consumer both the digital tools to access us from an advisor, an agent, and a sales standpoint, as well as the one-on-one tools that we have. I think the other part of it is we're advocates. We're advocates because, don't forget, as agents, we all work for the carrier. We all tend to forget that, but we're advocates for our clients and we're advocates for them, maybe not performing all of the service functions that we've traditionally performed, but advocating for them when self-service or a VA agency virtual assistant or a service center or direct reporting claim sort of falls down and we have to step in and do that advocacy. But if we try and do it all,

and we try and do it the way we've traditionally done it, we're not available to the customer when, where, and how they want. We have a lot of agencies or agents push back on things like self-service or virtual assistance or service centers. And my response to them is all you're doing is just giving your consumer, your client three or four different ways. They can still call you, but give them options, give them options for when you're not open, right? This is, this is right. This is the human optimized agency. You know, this is digitizing functions. So humans can be more effective in working with other human beings. And I think it's just a great time. And I think just back again, I mean, that's what we're trying to, that's what we're trying to get other agents to listen to, but that's also what we're

trying to build here and what we will build with Roke. So I'll give you an example during the contractual process of our, you know, our deal, I had my main attorney who was my guy working me through contracts, just like whatever. And then there was a question about something with a security or whatever. So he brought in a different attorney from a different law firm who was a securities guy. And he came in for 20 minutes on a call and he said, this is fine. And this is fine. Ultimately, he said, you don't have any worries. 20 minutes later, calls over. Okay, great. I didn't go, hey, John, what the F man, like what's wrong with your law firm? You couldn't supply or, or hey, John, what's wrong with you? You couldn't give me this advice. I was like, that's amazing. I just got a 20 minutes from a top notch security guy to come in who my guy knew

to solve our problem, give us the rubber stamp and on we went. Like that, I feel like we, to the agencies that I see struggle with this concept, they believe any point of leakage in the process where they're not handling it is somehow they're losing connection with the insured. And from my perspective, I'm like, I tell my people, be the best at the things that we're the best at. And we'll find someone else to be the best at the other things that we're not the best at. And our customers will love us more for surrounding ourselves with the best in these other things. And that simple mind shift, one, it allows you to be even better at what you do, even better. Because now you're not thinking about, like,

I'll give you an example. Surety, right? You can have an surety expert, but if you're a standard property casualty agent writing commercial, and you're going to tell me that you know everything there is to know about surety, you are freaking lying. You're lying. You don't. Surety is a whole another monster. It's important. I think way too many agencies give it away. But with companies like Propeller and companies like Zip and others, you now pick whoever your favorite is or do like we do. We use both. Both have strengths and weaknesses. And I love both. I like what Aaron does. I like what Zach does. I think they're both great companies. And, um, and by, do you think one of our insurers has ever cared that either propeller or zip is the one writing our surety bond? No. You know what I get? Hey, thanks, man. That, that went great. Thanks for the, you know,

whatever, like this mind shift allows me to just be good at property, casualty, commercial insurance and not have to worry about surety or not have to worry about something else. It opens you up to be the best at the thing that you can be the best at, which is what we should be doing from my perspective versus this, we're everything to everybody. I just don't know that that can be the future. Yeah. You have to reduce friction in, in the process. Right. And we talk a lot about reducing friction between agents and carriers,

right. You know, we need to get better about that, but what you're talking about here is reducing the friction between the agent and the consumer and the, and the client. And, and I'll just say it again. I think that some of us that sort of think traditionally about the insurance process, we're creating undue friction. that some of us that sort of think traditionally about the insurance process, we're creating undue friction. And if we don't sort of smooth out those edges in how an agent is working with a client and offer them sort of a smoother path and an easier sort of resolution to things, and it's usually a positive outcome, but we should be driving the positive outcome home if it was done on the other ways of service over the transactions been created.

But sometimes we're still creating that friction, right? Like my client wants to talk to me. They don't really want to talk to you, right? When they need you, they want to talk to you. Or if they have a question that they can't answer online, they want to talk to you. But, you know, help get the friction out of there. I think, yeah, I think we're in this, this is sort of that statement of it being a really cool time to be in the industry. There's always room for an agent in insurance, right? I mean, this is a complex product. I mean, sure, you know, you can plug a VIN number in and buy an automobile policy with

sort of lower limits, and you're not going to know if you got the right coverages and things like that. But as people acquire assets, you know, they want to, they want to know that these things are being taken care of, and they want it done smooth, right? You know, our competition isn't, you know, you know, you know, the listeners, their competition isn't rogue risk or the agency down the street, or even the captive agency, or, you know, the other independent agency across town, or the one that just sold our, our competition is how people transact business in other parts of their lives. Right. And, and it is much smoother. And I think that what we have to do is we have to define, and this may be different by agency or agent for that matter. We have to define our place in the insurance cycle where we're delivering value to the consumer that they view as value.

Because if they don't view it as valuable, ultimately they will migrate to a process that does deliver what they perceive or they see as value. The other thing that I want to say to people is, you know, I'm going to give them a little piece of advice to help with their next conference trip, whatever that conference may be, is the beauty of running, I don't want to say a digital because I do believe in local and a big part of our long term plan is having local offices or facilitating that for agents who so desire. But a digitized agency, a human optimized agency is that you can figure out the way that you work best and then find the customers that appreciate that way. Right.

So like, I think as an agency, as a whole, you need to be able to take in all the different forms of communication. I do think that as an agency, thinking about that level of the entity, you need to be able to do an online chat. You need to be able to do a text message or an email or a phone call or whatever. But as an agent, as a specific, as one unit of the larger organization, if you write badass cold emails and you're just really good at them and that's how you like to start conversations, that's all you should do. If you like to cold call, if you like to be,

you know, develop referral partners, like you get to be that thing because once you digitize, you go from 15 miles from my agency location to a much broader set of area. And I actually did a great podcast with, great because of the gas, not because of me, Andrew Darlington, who's in Eastern Tennessee, right? You, I mean, he always makes the joke that like, you know, you couldn't find this place on a map and neither can I, even though I've lived here, you know, whatever, he's got some version of it, you know, it's, but like he, there's nobody where he lives yet. He's because he's a digitized agency and uses Salesforce and some of these other tools, he's able to expand his base to now he has as much ability to capture as much business as I do living in the Northeast and a,

you know, semi-metropolitan area in Albany. And that to me is the big opportunity is that if you can figure out how you like to do business, you can expand maybe your geographical footprint or expand to another vertical or what have you, and, and be exactly what you want to be for the people in the way that they want you to be it. And you can find them where before you were kind of handcuffed by whatever was given to you in your local market. And that to me is a big piece of this and should be a really, hopefully a really exciting piece for agencies and agents. Yeah. Look, you know, your point about finding the right customers, it's the right customers for you as an agent or you as an agency.

And I've talked a lot in this day of comparative rating. Over the years, I've had a lot of agents come up to me and say, I can't compete with this one or I can't compete with that one. And my response is it's usually a direct writer they're talking about that spends a couple billion dollars in advertising. And I'm like, man, you're fighting over your weight class, right? I mean, stop punching above your weight. Let's figure out who in your community, and let's come back to community again, because I really want to make sure the listeners get that. But let's figure out who in your community wants your services and needs your services

and see value in your services. You know, somebody that's going to sit in front of a comparative rater and offer every time the phone rings, offer the person on the other end the lowest rate, it's a diminishing value, right? I mean, price is not the value proposition of the future for an agent's career. And so finding that right community,

and I really think it is important because even if you're in a geographic community, you still can use and should use the digital capabilities at your fingertips, which are less expensive. And they do create speed to build a digital community within your geographic community. But boy, building that digital community where you've got somebody, I think you said in Tennessee, that digital community, that can be anywhere. And we get licensed anywhere. And the carrier is right in 48 or 50 states. And so to expand your digital community and be seen as the expert within that digital community, I mean, that's just a fascinating thing that didn't exist for years and years prior. And I think sort of the agility of the independent agency and the independent agent is real right now because large organizations are hard to be agile.

I mean, we, you know, even though we play in the sort of local agency space at SIA as a large organization, it's hard to swing the ship. And I love seeing the agility of these small businesses or individuals in these businesses that can pivot to sort of increase their own success. So, you know, geography, digital community is such a great opportunity for people in this day and age. Yeah. The other exciting piece is, I think, where a lot of the technology is going. We made a move. It's working out. It wasn't a small endeavor, but we made a move to HubSpot. And the reason we did that was a couple of fold. One, I think the internal user experience, and as I described to you, Matt, one of the things that sold me and I did 10 months of research and many of you listening and probably sick of hearing me talk about this, but I'm going to say it again, because it's my show and I can say whatever I want. So screw you. No, I love you all. So

was I did a demo with Salesforce and I did a demo with a few others and I would bring a couple of my people and, and, and like trying to train them, like what were their initial eyes? Where did their eyes go? Whatever. And when we got to HubSpot and I started showing them around, we were doing a free trial and I was kind of demoing it to them as if I was training them. That's how I, that's how I did it. Um, in five minutes, they had 90% of the basics. So I was like, wow, I can train somebody on this in like a week. I can have them fully up and running, no questions asked, rocking and rolling and have a knowledge base ready to go. That's a huge win versus the months that it takes to train people on some other systems. The other thing that we were able to do in the, hope it's not the only system.

Some of the AMSs allow you to do this. So I don't want to make that sound like this is the only tool. Some of the better agencies, agency Zooms, all these others can do this too. But like it condensed 10 tools into four. So instead of having 10 tools do all these different things, we do text messages and take payments and e-signatures and all these different things that we need to log into and down to four tools. And it's just this concept, like as the leader of the agency, one of the things that I'm constantly thinking about is how much time are people spending on things? Where are they spending their time? Because if I can find

a system or a process or a vendor or a consultant or a partner who can help take this wasted time, we waste so much time with logins and nonsense, and really start to streamline that so that the humans can do the thing they do best, which is talk to other humans and solve problems. That's what they do best. There are systems processing things. There's better ways. Humans are the best at talking to other humans and solving their problems. That's where they're the best. And if I, the Mac, I want to maximize that time with every person I have in my agency where, because they're also energized by that. If you talk to your people, they're not energized by processing TPS reports and sliding them across their desk. They hate that. That's

what drains the soul out of their body. But when they're actually given a challenge and like, you know, some people can be jerks or whatever, but like, you know, when they're given a challenge and they need to go solve, figure out this thing, they may complain about it a little bit. Cause obviously all these situations are frustrating. That's what really keeps them coming back though, is they felt like they helped somebody at the end of the day. And the more you can get your people doing that, the better. And I think digitizing your agency is the best way to optimize that time. Yeah. Look, you're not going to get a whole lot of instant gratification off of entering VIN numbers. Yeah. Right. But, but when you've helped solve a problem for somebody,

right. That that's, that's, that's why we do what we do. I mean, I said it before, you know, we protect people's most valuable assets.

Right. And, and when they need us, we solve problems and, you know, entering, you know, mind numbing amounts of data in the 12 carrier systems and our AMS is just not a good use.

It's not a good use of time. Humans are pack animals. We want to hang out with the pack. Yes, we do. And drink IPAs. And drink IPAs and solve all the world's problems. Yes. All right.

So I want to be respectful of your time and the time of our audience. I'm going to shift gears just slightly and ask you, not just Rogue, or maybe using Rogue, carving Rogue out, since we've already talked about that a lot, looking out over, it's been almost a year since you took over, looking out over the space, looking out over the SI ecosystem, what else has you excited? You're waking up and you're going, man, here's another project that I just, this is going great. I'm loving this project. What else is happening out there? Yeah. And so, yeah, thank you for that. It has been a year since the executive team and our private equity sponsors took over the business. We were a family started and run business for over three decades, approaching four decades. And so it's been a pretty exciting year. I think the biggest thing for us, we've seen very little change sort of in our execution of the core

business model because it worked, right? It was already working. You never break things that work, you just make them better. Where we've put a lot of enhancements in to our world is I think in two specific areas. One is creating a clear path, as I was talking about before, for people to own their own agency and start their own agency. We've invested really heavily in what we call our Agency Foundation 3.0, which is a new version of our program where we're actually in these agencies helping these people create and build a foundation for their independent agencies of the future. We've got about 65 people around the country that are growth coaches that support agencies

on that. I think we're going to continue to see a significant shift of the exclusive channel coming into the independent agency channel. So that's one that's really exciting. I think the other place where we've made most of our investments along with our master agencies around the country is really helping those existing independent agencies, right? Helping them understand what their strengths are, helping them understand sort of how they can get better, how they can evolve, how they can grow. We've got a business model that it works, right? And we put a lot of incentives back into the agency's hands so they can reinvest into their

business. And so if you were to bubble sort of those three things up, what we're really trying to do is make sure that we're in a good leadership position as the industry continues to evolve. And those are big shoes to fill because it's an industry that doesn't evolve very quickly. And what we want to do is stand with other like-minded people and organizations and be the leaders to help independent agencies into the future. And while you said, talk about other than Rogue, I think Rogue is just a big part of that, right? I mean, it's introducing this model into the channel. And I think for carriers, and you get some carriers that listen to this as well, these are distribution points for them, right? That we're all investing in so we can help produce with them. So it's been a really exciting year for us. But a lot of it

isn't, you know, it's not inventing a new wheel, it's making our wheel better, is where we've seen those investments. I love that. I love that. Well, I'll tell you that, while I would have never handicapped where we are, I personally couldn't be any happier. I think that, you know, just the people inside the organization, not just I don't want to make it just you're in my relationship. But, you know, everyone who I've worked with so far has been has been great. And, and, you know, very professional. And, and I can tell, you know, I'm excited about the the challenge of living up to the to the professional standard that that so many people have. And it's

going to be a lot of fun. And, you know, I would be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of, when I was getting all the, I get, you know, every once in a while, I get people will send me these hate messages, you know, what have you done? And what does this happen? And all this. And I'd be lying if I said there wasn't some part of a chip on my shoulder that said, you guys are going to see pretty soon what I've been talking about all this time. And hopefully we can just help a lot of business owners, help a lot of professionals in our space, do some really cool work, have some fun. And it's an exciting time. As you said, I think we finished where we started. It's an exciting time to be in this space if we're not having fun we're doing something wrong i agree with that completely

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