The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 141 - Raghav Tanna on Tarmika and World Domination

Episode Date: May 5, 2022

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Raghav Tanna, Co-Founder, and CEO of Tarmika joins the podcast for an all-time discussion on building technology, the independent insurance industry, and world domination.Raghav is always the most interesting guy in the room, so don't miss this tremendous episode...Episode Highlights: Raghav talks about the impact of embedded insurance on independent insurance agencies. (5:50) Raghav explains how Tarmika can help create the ideal digital insurance workflow. (10:06) Raghav mentions the need to embed oneself in areas where consumers already trust the brand. (15:15) Raghav explains why retention is where agencies need to focus their customer experience in a digital world. (16:09) Raghav mentions that the best way to find out what a customer wants is to ask them. (20:25) Raghav discusses whether he would sell his company. (36:23) Raghav congratulates Ryan on creating a scalable platform that others wanted to utilize in the future. (39:34) Key Quotes: “You need to embed yourself into places where people already trust the brand.” - Raghav Tanna “Embedded insurance is a buzzword, and I wish there was a different word we can use. Because I think too many people say they can do it. It does not completely destroy the independent agency channel and it shouldn't. It makes people work harder and work differently to get small commercial business for their agency. I think that's the piece that we need to focus.” - Raghav Tanna “I think you need to make 30-40 touch points per customer to make sure they feel heard and feel wanted. Right? You have to do that. Because you have zero touchpoints when you sell them in a digital world.” - Raghav Tanna Resources Mentioned: Raghav Tanna LinkedIn Tarmika Reach out to Ryan Hanley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have one of my absolute favorite guests and that is Raghav Tana, the founder and CEO of Tarmaka. Now, I've known Ragh since maybe January or February of 2020. I was introduced to him by Chris Paradiso and sat down in Chris's office in Stafford Springs and just immediately liked this kid. Just could tell that he had the right mix of understanding where the industry had come from and what it meant to be an independent agent with the needs that our industry had. And at that point, Tarmaco was just barely getting off the ground and he was telling

me a little bit about what he was doing and I just was completely enamored by the idea, by him, by the way he was attacking it, and by the people that he had surrounded himself with, which in my opinion were the right people to have behind you, kind of giving you advice and feedback and most notably, in this case, Chris Paradiso. So I want to give a huge shout-out to Chris for introducing Ragoff and I and just love the way Ragoff thinks about the business. I just do. And I think you're going to love this conversation.

Before we get there, I want to talk about our sponsors here on the show. And the first is Tarmaca. Now, Tarmaca, Rags isn't on the show today because Tarmaca is a sponsor, because even if they weren't, I would still have Rags on the show because he's the best. But Tarmaca is a sponsor. They have been since the very beginning of my journey here on this iteration of the podcast. And guys, if you haven't checked out and gotten the demo from Tarmaka, you're missing something. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Tarmaka is a huge part of what we do at Rogue, a huge part of us scaling our business now that we're in partnership with SIA and we're going to be pushing Tarmaka to the limits of its capabilities and everyone that's part of our ecosystem, whether you're a producer or a network agency, is going to be able to experience what Tarmaka and the systems that we've built at Rogue have to offer. If you want that same type of capabilities in your office,

T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com today. All right, let's get after this episode. Let's do some podcasting. All right. The best part about this is gonna be all the really, really good content, none of you motherfuckers are going to get to hear because i didn't have it on record and i just hit record so now we're going to do

all the really boring stuff for you guys like i'm ready for it hi ragoff what's the best part of tarmaca what's your favorite feature i'm not going to answer that. I think honestly, I'm, I mean, let's get into the good stuff. So I want to talk about, so this is my, this is my personal take on the industry and I'm going to, I'm going to run through this a little bit of context and then you, you take it, you break it down because you are one of the smartest dudes that I know in the space. And as I said, off air, but I will also say this on air, despite being just a pup

still, you have an understanding of how the industry works that is better than the vast, vast majority of people. So 2015, 2016, InsurTech hits, disintermediation, agents are going out the door, everything's going to be automated. We're toast. It's over. You know, I was one of the few people, one of the few loud voices on the other side saying that that's crazy, you know, innovation that has since changed. We've realized that's not the case. Okay. So InsurTech in its first wave certainly did not disintermediate us. And it feels very much like whether this is Gen 2 or Gen 3, it's more about innovation,

integration. That's amazing. However, there is one, I don't know if we call it a technology or a channel or whatever that does actually, I'm not going to say it's going to disintermediate, but I think it'd have a really drastic impact on the business as a whole. And that's the embedded insurance. And the reason for that, and then I'll shut up, is that to me, what embedded insurance, what it presents to the market is it removes the opportunity for businesses to even get down to the level of a local independent agent. Like the business is already plucked. They already, you know, whether it's through a gusto or a paychecks or a square for business or a, or a credit card, like American express or whatever, they sign up for a service.

And then all of a sudden they're, they're getting offered business insurance integrated right in front of them. And they're off to some digital player before it even gets to the local level. That, to me, presents what I believe is a real significant, you know, again, my words aren't coming to me here, but, you know, a real significant impact on our space, something we need to consider. Do you think that's legitimate? Like, where do you see this going? Like, am I completely blowing it out of proportion? Or am I not taking it serious enough? I just don't. So yes, I think that's, I think it's a valid point. I think that is a threat to local independent agencies. But I think the part that we're still, we're still so far away from is how many businesses actually want to buy down that path. There are so many small businesses in the country today, right? But how many of them are actually going to go from start to finish

through that digital journey, you'll call it, through a digital agency and even a credit card company, for example, right? If you have that ability to buy insurance right online after entering in all of your data and just passes through an API to us, to one of our carriers and back and boom, there's your quote. You have no questions. You don't need to know anything else that you're ready to buy. I find it hard to believe that there's enough of those people out there that make this business model take up 100% of small commercial. With that being said, though, there is a high enough percentage where if you're not an agency that's focused on marketing appropriately, growing your business

in small commercial, focusing on the right coverage is the right clients, and you're just selling price, price, price, you're the one that's going to struggle the most with this new digital enhancement. Embedded insurance is a buzzword. And I wish there was a different word we could use because I think too many people say they can do it. It does not completely destroy the independent agency channel and it shouldn't. It makes people work harder and work differently to get small commercial business for their agency. I think that's the piece that we need to focus on.

Yeah, no, I think that's a really good way of positioning it. So I'm going to put this back to you, this slightly different idea. I put this to the great and powerful Bobby Collies from Coterie. And so if you go back and listen to her episode, you can hear the way she responded, but I want to put the same question to you. So when I looked, when I look at embedded insurance and what I see is a lot of new startup, young businesses, small businesses who are willing to do that fully digital, no questions asked, cool, fine issue. Okay. And a lot of people, you know, most independent agents will go, we don't want that crap anyways. That's garbage. You never know. A lot of them go out of business, you know, whatever. Okay. And I think all of that is true where it does. So, so not thinking maybe three or even five years from now, but maybe a slightly longer timeframe. If say a digital brokerage who is handling the business through, uh, an, an embedded functionality with a channel partner, you know, say like a square for business, we'll just use them as a talking point, right? Square for business. Okay. So, and just to position this

real quick for anyone who maybe doesn't necessarily understand when we're talking about embedded insurance, we're talking about you're signing up for a square for business account, or you're logging into your square bit for business account and maybe a widget or a pop-up or something, an offer is presented to you where you're actually seeing, hey, we could write your insurance for this amount, or if interested, click here and we can show it. And that number is pulled into the platform. So that we're not taking them to another place, we're pulling the information in. That's a broad stroke. So my thought here is if that digital agency is scooping up all these young businesses, today what happens is I think those young businesses go to a digital broker and then we start to get sophisticated, they seek out a more traditional agent.

I think that's the way it's working today. is there a concern that eventually an agency say like Rogue, like this is what we want to do, is they start to develop a graduation process where yes, the first layer when you're new, young, small is a fairly automated, fairly more impersonal, more kind of do-it-yourself model, but they have an entire team that when you do kind of graduate is ready for you. And in that way, is there, could there be a cliff coming? I guess is what I'm asking where eventually those new young businesses stop going down as they get bigger and they just stay right where they are because they know it. And they trust these people because they held their hand through the first two, three years of their existence.

So I think that's the ideal insurance workflow, right? Is if you're a small, young company and you go into an embedded workflow, you're going to buy a policy. And we treat that policy as low-hanging fruit. It's a bot policy. It's a GL policy. It's something super simple with no additional coverages. It's kind of bare bones, but it just gets you in the door. We have a couple of partners right now on the embedded side that if you're creating a new entity, right? We have an entity creation partner. When you're creating a new entity that says, do you need workers comp. Is that digital partner that we partner with on the agency side going to get you a workers comp policy? Because if they don't, then you're going to go elsewhere and go find that workers comp policy. But if you can trust those people, that agency that's behind our embedded solution, because we're not, we're just a tech company, are they going to sell you workers comp? Are they going to help you decide whether

you need cyber? Are they going to help you with professional? Are they going to help you decide whether you need cyber? Are they going to help you with professional? Are they going to help you with everything else that you need? And if they do that, you're never leaving. They created that digital journey. They got you in the door. They kept you from their service. So it's a combination of two. You have to adopt the digital journey. You have to keep them with service. And I think the reason why you see all these insure tech carriers with a retention rate of 41% and 50% is because they don't do the second part. They do the first part really well. And then the second part is brutal. Hey, man, this is my big thing.

I love, like I saw a new front get what, 200 million from Goldman Sachs? I'm like, this is awesome. Do you know how much business is now available in the market? Because they're going to fuck that up. You know why they're going to fuck up? Because Goldman Sachs and all the other VCs involved in that business are going to go, your margins are too high to have us based American licensed professionals servicing that business. So because those are, those, those,

those individuals are too expensive. You need to take that service overseas. Now this isn't an anti VA things. I think VAs have a really important role, but if, but if you have an account with any level of sophistication and you don't have someone who is based in the United States, who is licensed talking to that person and actually giving a shit about their account, that person is going to leave. You know why? Because 32% of the new accounts that we get are not people just finding us on Google because they're starting a business. They're people whose their response, why they're reaching out to us is because their current agent doesn't get back to them, doesn't do the thing, has never talked to them since they wrote the business. Like 32% of the leads we get are because other agencies suck. That's incredible to me.

So I think you and I have had this disagreement before on a general premise of founding a company, raising money, selling the company. And I think Lemonade was the kind of the figurehead that we argued about. New Front's in the same boat, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. What is the goal of Newfront, right? The goal of Newfront is most likely to make a lot of money. And I don't know the owner of Newfront. I don't know the CEO of Newfront.

I've never talked to them before in my life. But in my opinion, that's the goal. Well, if that's the goal, don't you agree that the margins need to change? Don't you agree that they should be going off? Okay. Two different discussions. If we're talking about maximizing owner and investor value, 100%. That's 100%. I am different because I don't give a fuck about money. I like money, but it doesn't matter to me.

I want to create the unicorn digital agency where all these other fuckers, they can drive their yachts. That's great. Cause I'm going to have a nice, my boat might be a little smaller. My lake house might, I might have to Airbnb my lake house a couple of weekends a year, but I'm going to have enough money, but I'm also going to have, I want to have the gold standard digital agency that not only can do all the front end shit that these guys can do, but then has the 80% retention on the backend where I want clients tattooing rogue risk on like under here, that really sexy spot that chicks get it like right on their ribs. I love that when they get the cursive on the ribs, like right here, I want rogue risk tattooed under there with like a, if Ryan Hanley

was here right now, I, you know, like that kind of thing. I'll make you a deal. If anyone in the world ever gets that tattooed on their ribs, I don't, I don't know. I'll have to buy you. You'll buy me a barrel of whistle pig, my own barrel of whistle pig whiskey. This isn't the sponsorship, but as you can see, it's always on my desk. There's always bourbon on my desk. Just in case I have a bottle of basil Hayden's in the living room, premier stock that I got for my two-year anniversary from my team that I'm waiting for something special to crack because I just can't wait.

No, so generally, if it's on my desk and it's 4 o'clock and I've had a decent day, I'll take a sip. If I've had a bad day, I'll take a whole glass. Just because of the fact. But no, the premier digital agency is going to look like this. And this is my opinion. So it's, I mean, it's subjective, right? You said you weren't going to say anything interesting, but this is good.

I'm taking notes. This is completely subjective. All right. You need to embed yourself into places where people already trust the brand. And that is cases like Gusto, like you mentioned. It's places like Toast. You trust your point of sale system. You trust that provider, probably more than you should,

but you trust them. So when they say, do you want insurance? It doesn't matter who the agency is on the back end, as long as that agency is servicing you properly. If you trust them, you'll buy. Once you buy, you did nothing. Rogue Risk did nothing to get them to buy. Toast did. Gusto did. Square did. Why can't you service them properly? So all that matters now is that you retain them

because you didn't have to do anything to sell them. They did it all digitally. You have to find a way to focus on retention. You're not spending. The cost of acquisition for that customer should be relatively low. Probably have to pay Square a referral fee, pay toast or referral fee, whatever it might be. It's retention. And how do you retain that customer? It's still customer experience. It is still being digital.

It is still touch points. I think you need to make 30, 40 touch points per customer to make sure they feel heard and feel wanted, right? You have to do that because you have zero. You have zero touch points when you have zero, you have zero touch points when you sell them in a digital world. There's no actual human interaction touch point. Servicing part, there's touch points. So the ideal digital agency, you don't sell at all. Your partner sells. The third party point of sale sells. The finance company sells. The credit card

company sells. You retain. And that's all that matters that matters yeah i don't think you're wrong i think you're 100 right i mean this is this is well you know that i completely and utterly agree with you um i i i think that this this is the whole game and i guess my my point in and and then look all the power to new front i mean they put an incredible amount of premium on the book. So it's fun to take shots at the guys who've done really well. But the truth is,

I do think that there is a misconception over what service means and how important it is to the business. And that's where I think when I talk about that, it's not really to knock them as much as it is to say, there is an opportunity in the space because I know for a fact

they don't do a very good job of servicing because we've written accounts away from Newfront. And the reason across the board is can't get a hold of them, can't service what I'm doing, haven't heard from those kind of things. And that's not to take a shot at them. I promise, I'm not trying to take a shot at them. It's, it's that I think there is a hybrid model where you can use, call it a filtering system. I like to think of it like, have you ever seen the show? Um, uh, uh, the gold digging show, what, what's the name of the show? Um, they mine for gold up in Alaska, gold diggers, gold diggers, gold. This might have been before i was born no it's still on now it's been like 17 seasons you son of a bitch so whatever it's

called the gold digging show i'll for whatever reason i enjoy watching these these yahoos dig for gold i don't know what it is i just enjoy it at the end of the night, whatever. So, um, so, so they, they have something, um, they have a, uh, a wash plant, they call it right. And that wash plant, how, how all of them work, they're all different, but essentially how they work is they throw a whole shit ton of stuff into the top and they got these spray engines and they spray it. And then they got all the big rocks fall through the holes and the little, or the little rocks fall through the holes and the little, or the little rocks fall through the holes. The big ones get filtered out. Then they spray it again and more stuff gets filtered out and they spray it again and more till you get to the last stage

where the fine pieces of gold gets stuck in a mat. And that's how they get the gold. But my point is when I think about the service model that a digital agency has to have, and obviously we're talking about different, this is gold mining and digital, but is that there is a triage mechanism. There is first layer automation, second layer self-service, third layer virtual assistants, non-licensed employees, fourth layer, you get to what I believe you should have, which is American licensed, someone who can be like, I'm in Jacksonville today, you know, whatever. I think that that still matters. But if we can layer and triage that system, and if you can have the tumblers in place to make sure that you're not, you're spending only as much on service as that particular

account and case needs, right? If you think about it that way, then that to me is how you're able to keep your costs as low as they can possibly be on the service side while still maintaining the highest level of customer service. But how do you find that? How do you find that out? Right. How do you know what they want? How do you know what type of communication that customer wants? So I think you ask them, you ask them,

you provide them with options and you watch and you have to analyze what's actually happening. But that's, again, that brings in this other layer of more data more technology more analytics bro that's isn't that what ai does like let's just throw ai out there i don't know what it does i think it's fake but you just smother some ai on it and it solves all these problems generally what i've heard on all other podcasts so so I think I know how to talk on a successful podcast. You're supposed to say all the buzzwords. So if we say AI, if we say embedded insurance enough, if we say data analytics, I think this podcast will skyrocket. You count goes.

Yeah. You just got to keep repeating. No. Honestly, though, if we ask the customer, this is what digital agencies don't do is they don't ask. Yeah. How do you want to talk to me? Do you want to call me? Do you want to email me? Do you want to text me? Do you want it to be a robot?

Do you want it to be a chat bot? Like, who knows? If you don't know the answer to that, your retention won't be 80%. That's for sure. And it's the onboarding survey. It's a simple onboarding survey. And I don't want to talk tools, but I will say I had a really interesting conversation that actually just released the same day that we're recording this with Andrew Darlington.

And Andrew's been on Salesforce for 10 years. And I recently made the switch to HubSpot. And what I was talking to him about was the system doesn't make the process, right? You have the process and then you build the system around the process. That being said, when you have the right systems, they can help you adapt and actually expand your processes in a really positive way if you're able to not chase them too far. And one of the things that we've been able to do at Rogue is implement something that a lot of local agents do. A lot of local agents, as part of their onboarding, when they sign an account, will ask, how do you want to be communicated with? Text, email, phone?

Like, it's pretty straightforward. And many of you listening are probably like, duh, yeah, of course I asked that question. Many of you don't, but many of you do. And like, HubSpot is a very simple thing. Account closed two days later or one day later or whatever. You know, I can't remember what we set it to. They get a simple survey. That's like three questions. And one of them is, how do you want to be contacted? And we tell our salespeople, you tell them that email is coming

and you say, look, it's really important. It's three questions. And the reason it's important. And we want you to answer those questions is because that's how we're going to communicate with you. And like, we're just getting off the ground. So I have no numbers to back it up, but like that kind of stuff, when you have the right systems in place becomes actually pretty easy to do. Take it a step further, right? It's not just that that's how you're going to communicate with them. It makes you better. And that's what you want to tell them is it makes us better for you. Yeah, we we know that you didn't talk to any of us when you signed this. But now that you're talking to us to bind this policy, we're going to be there for you. How would you like to communicate? How would you like this to happen? And if you actually follow through with that retention is about 80%. I've been on the agency side, right? Like I know that side,

I know that world better than I know this side. I mean, Tarmaca is not really second nature. The agency side is second nature. I understood that because my dad, I grew up in his agency 20 years, right? You got to know what they want. And if you don't know what they want, it's not going to work. And I think that's the combination of embedded digital and all that stuff. 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. Yeah. The other thing too, and this is for, I think just not different or separate, but just part of the same

conversation is one of the things that we've really tried to work on, haven't always done well, but are trying to get better at is setting expectations with people, right? A lot of frustration, a lot of people switching. We find a lot of people who switch to us because we do do a very good job of tracking why people come to us. And a lot of it has to do with just, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know who to contact. I didn't know. I didn't know. And it's like, from that, I've taken and we've started to do like, just tell them what's happening next. Just that's all you got to do before you get off this call. Just if it's nothing is happening next, we're done. It's concluded. Let them know that, right? Like if

there's something else that has to happen, say in three days, you're going to get an email from the carrier. Here's what I need you to do. I'm going to follow up, but I just want you to know that's what's next. People just want to know what to expect. And when they look out in the ether and they have no idea what's going on, they get antsy and they make change. That's sales 101, though. It's not just selling insurance. It's just selling.

Tell them what to ask them questions. Ask them probing questions. Find out what they're looking for. Yeah. And tell them what's next. You're assuming this is a sales business though. It is. If you're in a business, and I know you said earlier,

you don't care about money, but if you're in business not to make money, then you should not be running a business. Yeah. Well, I'd like to reframe that. I'm not in the business not to make money, but I would have a very, I personally, and this is probably a failing of mine as a CEO, for sure. I would never want an enormous paycheck and someone to say, yeah, but look at how shitty that thing is that you have, or yeah, but you cut all these fucking corners over here. And when you know, I would know.

It's not that I even care that they're saying that. It's I would know that I cut corners just to make money instead of delivering the best possible thing that I could and make as much as I could delivering that best possible thing. Does that make sense what I'm saying to you? I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with y'all, but I will add you play golf, right? I do play golf. Yes. Does anyone ever know how your ball got on the green two feet from the hole? Or do they just know it's there? If you birdie a hole, if they see your scorecard, did anyone ask you how you birdied the hole? But this is my point. Let's say I – so the lowest I've ever shot on a legit 18-hole course is 82. Let's say I shoot an 81 and I foot wedged one under a tree.

I shot an 81, and everyone's like, you know, that's fucking amazing, your best score ever, that's great. But I know I foot wedged it out from under the tree to get a better line. Now we're talking about cheating and lying. That's two different things. I mean, a legitimate round of golf where you put your entire effort in, it wasn't perfect. The way you got there, wasn't the way you wanted to. Every once in a while, you had to, you had to take some risks or you failed or broke whatever. Yeah. That's stuff.

What if, all right, so let me try i'm taking this golf analogy all right what i'm saying is i think there's a course over here it's it's it's a golfer's course very very challenging you if i were to shoot my best score on that course is a 90 right there's another course over here also an 18 hole course also a private course good shape my best score is an 82 if i shoot an 82 here that's great if i shoot an 82 over there i'm a fucking baller like i'm not a baller shooting 82 over here now 82 is an 82 right i can tell you my best score ever is 82 but if i want if i want to get my 81 i ain't getting it over there i'm getting it over here by playing the easier thing you know wide open

kind of flat greens aren't really that undulating although they are fast you know this this course over here i can drive the ball 280 down the middle and i still got a freaking three wood to the green on most holes like again though right over there so that's the masters right over here you're talking about the waste management how much more money do you make from winning the masters in the waste management so it's it's still different because it could be harder you could have to work harder to get to that point where you're shooting 82 on the harder course but if you do it people know that that was the harder path. So again, I want the master's win. I'll take the waste management win for sure.

Take every win. But I want the master's win. Take every win along the way. I love you. Only thing is I hear too many agents say, oh, I want to help people. I want to make them feel better. I want to do this. Now you're running a fucking business. You want to make money. You helping them is a by You want to make money. You helping them as a by-product of you making money. Yes. I agree with that. I agree with that. I think that's, that doesn't, that's why the new front, right? The point of new front is to make money. And I know you're not shitting on them, but the point of new front is to make money. The

point of lemonade was for Dan Shriver to make money. Well, guess what? He did it. I know he's also a douche though. I don't, I've never met him. I just know that he made money. And that's what I care about because he ran a business. His goal was to make money. It had to be to make money. And I respect people that set out, they make money, they do it the right way, which is they ran their business. They grew their business. And you guys can't see me. I i'm doing i'm doing rags is right in air quotes the right way the right way the right way to me is that you didn't go to you didn't win the lottery right like it's not i want people to make money by working hard

well there's no doubt that they worked hard yeah i i agree with that that's why i don't want to take i I don't take anything away from what Lemonade did. I guess what I'm saying, I don't want to take anything away from these companies that have grown super big, right? Because I haven't done it. So I would be an asshole to try to criticize them. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is though, it would bother me. It would bother me. I don't know why. And again, this is me being a podcast. Now I'm kind of feel like I'm being a podcaster.

It's a fucking hate. I hate being a podcaster. But like, it would really fucking bother me if I did all that work that he did and launched that thing. And yeah, he made a shit ton of money. That's great. And it's never made a dollar. Their policies are a dumpster fire. Every investor who

invested after the IPO has lost money. Awesome. You made a shit ton of money and that's great. And you worked super hard to get there and you deserve every penny, but that would suck if that's your fucking legacy. That would bother me too. I want to build a successful business long-term. I want to make sure that everything's working properly. I don't want my stock. If I went public, I wouldn't want my stock price to plummet. That's not what I'm saying. Yeah.

You also have to be, if you're going to invest in something, you should know better. You should look at those numbers and say, okay, that doesn't make sense long-term. I blame the investors for that. I don't blame him. He did a great job. He built a good company. He went public. The stock price went to 180.

I'm sure he sold it at 180. Come on. I hope he did what he was supposed to do. And I think the number one, you're a capitalist. I'm a capitalist. Yeah, I'm, yeah. The point of running a business, no matter what, is to make money. The reason we got into embedded insurance,

we have this entire agency tool that's doing great and we love it. The reason we got into the embedded insurance, A, because we could and B, because it makes more money. It's something that people aren't doing properly. No matter who says they're doing it the right way, they aren't actually embedding insurance into anything. They are creating a lead funnel that's very different. You need to be able to buy on the glass. You need to be able to complete your entire flow on the glass and you need it to run through someone that can handle digital capabilities. That's it. Yeah. I, well, I think, I think, well, you make a lot of good points there.

I, I guess what, where I go, where, where my brain was going was the legacy part is I would hate if I would hate to do all that stuff and then have to, and then, and then, but your legacy is you're really good at making money. Not so good at building a business that people that actually, you know, people get a shit about. I completely agree. I guess that's the dichotomy that I, that I have there, but here, here's the other side of it. Those dudes have done things, you know, I mean, you're going to be there someday. This thing's going to sell for a billion dollars in a few years. So you're on your path. But for me, you know, I never,

I didn't build a company that went public yet. So like, I think for anyone to take shots beyond, I think the, a very trivial legacy conversation would be would be being insincere because if anyone could sign up for daniel schreiber's ride you know the ride that he took they would fucking sign up in a heartbeat i mean that's my point though this is this goes way past insurance though there's all these people there's like little keyboard warriors on twitter and facebook and instagram and they're like you know i'm not getting into this stuff but they're shitting on companies worth billions of dollars for making decisions that are going to drive

business to them there's this whole disney thing going on right now right what disney did was smart because they didn't piss any they did exactly what they're supposed to they stayed politically correct they tried to stay politically correct guess what what? If they didn't do that, all the people that go to Disney, a majority of people that go to Disney would have stopped going to Disney because it would have pissed them off. They made a business decision. Had nothing to do with the politics around it. They don't give a shit. They wanted to make a business decision that made them more money.

That's every decision that's ever made. The NFL does it all the time. You kick someone in the head. You don't suspend them because if you suspend that person, you're going to lose money. Right. And this is what capitalism is so great is you have, so you have Disney do their crazy shit, which people are yelling at him about. Right. And, and again, and I'm with you politically, I kind of disagree with what they did, but,

but it's my view of America is they get to do whatever the fuck they want. So that's fine. What I love is then you get, because capitalism is amazing. And this is the greatest country in the world. The daily wire, who's this conservative fucking, you know, whatever. I mean, I like Ben Shapiro, but you know, what, what is the daily wire compared to Disney? Now they're like positioning themselves as like a competitor and i'm just like that's just amazing like it is amazing that we live in a

country where this absolute behemoth that's been around for what 75 years 80 years can make a decision and then this little this little company over here can like put position themselves as if they even have a fucking chance. Like, it's just amazing. I just love it. That's what it's, it's, it's the greatest thing in the world, but with capitalism, you got to remember people aren't in to make money. So they'll, not everyone has the same morale or the ethics that you're talking about. Sometimes you just want to make money and it doesn't matter.

I do think, and I've said this before and it's probably why I know none of the 54 VCs that I met with me actually invested in me, but, um, you know, you know, I think they could probably sniff the, like, he won't knife his own son to, to get this thing across the finish line vibe from me. But, um, you know, that, that, that was the thing is that like, I, I, I just like, I have this vision for what is possible and it's building, it's building what I think is possible more than just, dude, if I wanted to build just a business that was worth a shit ton of money, it's not, it's really, it's really not that hard.

Like any of you out there who are listening to this, that are struggling with lead acquisition, it's the easiest part of the fucking business. The fact that you can't put business on the books is insane because putting business on the books is not hard. Putting the right business on the books that's going to stick with people who are actually going to make you money over the long-term, that's very difficult to do, at least today. And that's the game that I'm trying to play. But the acquisition game is the easiest game out there. There's no easier game than the acquisition game. Embedded, SEO, buy leads.

There's a million cold emails. There's a million fucking ways to acquire business. And it just boggles my mind that people have such a hard time getting business in the door, like at a broad scale. I just never wanted to be, probably wrongly from a personal wealth perspective. I just never wanted to be, I wanted to have, I want to get to that,

but I also want to retain it 80%. That's what I want. You're trying to build a legacy and it's very different than what a lot of people are trying to build. And I will say at some point, I will sell Tarmac a hundred percent. I've never been shy about saying that. And I'm not doing this for 20 years. I'm not doing this to change the world. I'm doing this because I think it was a useful tool for agencies. I think we helped, but I also want to make money. And I am not, I want it to be done the right way though. When we do sell, I want people to say that we built something that actually helped them. I want to make money on it, but I want that first part too. I don't, I don't, I won't, I won't settle for anything less. I think the good news for you is man, like it already is helping people. I mean, you know,

what you, what you guys have done, um, not just to the tool itself is tremendous. It has been since day one, obviously I've been one of your biggest advocates for two plus years now, I think as highly of you as anybody in the industry. And I think that that's amazing. I think the other thing you guys have done is even though I know it's not finalized yet, I think you already have built a legacy in the space. Because at least from my perspective, and I try to take a broad view of this, there's Tarmaka and then there's everybody else. And there are a lot of other players, right? But in terms of functionality, features, quality of work, the conversations that have happened because you guys exist, even if the people were trashing you or saying, you know, whatever, right? Like the conversations that have, that you forced to happen, maybe not as controversially as lemonade, but certainly I think as broad spectrum as, as someone like them

has already had a lasting effect on the industry. And I think you should be very proud of that, even though I know the journey isn't over. I appreciate that. Yeah. Yeah. There's, there's still a lot more to do in my opinion, but I do appreciate that. And I think we've had good advocates behind us, you being one of them. We have a lot of agencies that helped us early on, and now I hope we're doing the same for them. But we did it differently. We tried to do it differently. I think that's important.

We tried to do things in a way that no one else was doing it. And we were, we were Switzerland and I know you hate that and you're supposed to pick a side, but we're Switzerland for a long time and we stayed neutral. And now it's like, okay, we did something. Now we don't have to be Switzerland anymore. We can, we can go the route we always want to go. Yeah.

And I don't think there's anything wrong with being Switzerland as long as you are. I think where the problem is, is when people try to be or pretend to be or present themselves as that thing, when really everyone knows they're skewed in one direction or the other. I think that's a lot of where animosity comes from there. I think with you guys, you were building a tool. You never tried to be anything other than this very useful functional tool that was very difficult to build. And I think that, um, I think, I think it played out, man. I'm, I'm super happy for you. And, you know, in terms of being open about selling the company or whatever, I mean, dude, I sold rogue. I mean, by the time this comes out, it will be public knowledge. So, you know, I'm. Yeah. I didn't know we were talking

with us on this, but I, yeah, that's, that's one of the biggest things. I mean, that's a huge congrats to you because what you built worked right. You built a model that was scalable, that people wanted to use in the future. Um, and that's what you got acquired. Yeah. And I think we're not shy in saying this. It wasn't like you were doing this for 20 years and you grew your book to 50 million and that's why you were purchased. You were purchased because of what you built. Yeah. Not the size of what you built, but just the actual concept and the complexity around how that functions. That's why you were bought. And I think that matters. I think it's an important note to make. Thanks, man. Well, dude, I know you don't do a lot of podcasts. I appreciate you sharing

your vantage points. I think as much as you downplayed what you were going to actually say, you delivered the value. Then you delivered the value. My plan was to sit in silence and drink bourbon the whole time. Cause it's, it's almost four o'clock, right? I'll be honest with you. If we ever do this again, let's just do that.

We'll just watch each other drink bourbon for an hour and then we'll hit stop. Yeah. And we'll talk stop. Yeah. And we'll talk about the different tasting notes that we taste and the drunker we get, the better the notes will be. I like that. And crypto maybe?

Can we talk about crypto too? Yeah, I don't know much about crypto, but I do know that we should talk about it. All right. I like it. Yeah, there we go. Be good. Thanks for having me. close twice as many deals by this time next week sound impossible it's not with the one call close system you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic.

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