The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 163 - Tanner Hackett On Scaling a Management Liability Company

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley interviews Tanner Hackett, CEO, and founder of Counterpart, a management liability InsurTech reinventing the Commercial Insurance industry using the most robust data sets and cutting-edge technology, with the support and guidance of some of the most respected insurance, investment, and brokerage institutions in the world.This is an absolutely tremendous conversation you don't want to miss...Episode Highlights: Tanner discusses his journey in the insurance industry, beginning with his entrepreneurial tech background. (7:16) Tanner mentions that Counterpart is committed to assisting individuals in growing and understanding their exposures. (15:13) Tanner discusses how Counterpart differs from the other 10 markets that can provide a competitive service. (17:50) Tanner explains why he decided to go from wholesale to retail. (19:17) Tanner discusses why he calls his team risk engineers rather than underwriters and what the difference is. (23:05) Tanner shares that the reason he gets out of bed every day is to support entrepreneurs who are taking risks and doing things differently. (29:15) Tanner discusses the importance of team consistency and having a clear vision. (36:19) Tanner mentions that it's difficult to be a leader in the insurance industry these days and move the industry forward because many are so entrenched in their current workflows. (46:01) Tanner explains small business risks and how Counterpart's products solve them. (55:03) Ryan believes that the advantage of data is not just marketing, it’s also communications. (1:03:00) Tanner explains they're here to educate the market about the potential for management liability. (1:04:57) Key Quotes: “It's really tough to be a leader these days in the insurance space and move the industry forward because people are so entrenched in their current workflows, current processes.” - Tanner Hackett “We want to be advocates for these small businesses. We want to take this off their plate because we talked about how hard it is to be a small business already, and be educating these businesses about what their exposures are, how they're researching, and how our product responds to those risks.” - Tanner Hackett “We're here to educate the market about the potential for Management Liability. Again, it's not where it is today, but what it should be for them in terms of the service that we can provide, and the quality product we can provide for the small business owners. And we need to do this through partnerships.” - Tanner Hackett Resources Mentioned: Tanner Hackett LinkedIn Counterpart Reach out to Ryan Hanley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. A conversation with Tanner Hackett, the CEO and founder of Counterpart, an insurtech management liability company, which is using AI and ML and third-party data sources to learn about what is ultimately a very specialized liability coverage and particularly focusing this product on small businesses. And we talk why small businesses, why management liability.

We talk about Tanner's origin story. We talk about his strategy to go or to deliver Counterpart as a product through wholesalers versus going out to a broader retail market. And we talk about entrepreneurship and leadership. And this is just a tremendous conversation. These are the kind of conversations when I'm meeting someone new and connecting with them, this is kind of why I do this podcast. I love these types of conversations.

I mean, I love all the conversations I have on the show, but in particular, when I get to meet someone new and really get this deep on business, and in particularly our industry, it's just an absolutely phenomenal experience, and I think you're going to love this conversation. Before we get there, I want to give you, the listeners of this show, a huge shout out. You continue to listen. You continue to be part of this community. It is always so special to me that you guys take time out of your day and consider this show because I know if you're listening to this podcast, then you're not listening to others. You're not focusing on other things. And that means we're continuing to this podcast, then you're not listening to others. You're not focusing on other things.

And that means we're continuing to deliver value, which is the goal of the show, right? I do this work to deliver value to you guys. And I just appreciate that it's connecting, and I appreciate that you listen and you give me that mind space. If you're looking to go deeper, I recently launched a new content community, Finding Peak. The tagline is The Pursuit of Peak Performance in Business Life and Insurance. I created this resource, and you can go to findingpeak.com, subscribe, it's free, check it out. We do do some deeper dives and some kind of Q&A stuff and some very specific question and answer type material that is paid, but it's like $7 a month. And really the reason I do that is just to give you guys, is I want buy-in from the people who are going to be engaged, who are going to be asking questions.

And that buy-in is really just a super small barrier that, you know, after the fees and stuff of the platform, I don't really make anything. It's mostly just I want to know who the committed people are and focus my attention there. But it's free for anyone, and 75 plus percent of the content that comes out there is free. So if you want to check it out, go to findingpeak.com, pop your email in, subscribe. You know, the reason for that community is to help you guys better understand what's happening at Rogue Risk. Now, and what we've learned, what I've personally learned, what our team is constantly giving me feedback on what's happening day to day, and building out this kind of digital, distributed, human-optimized agency that I would consider at least one prototype for the agency of the future.

And the successes that we're having, the challenges that we're having, how we overcome that, how we think through things, that's what Finding Peak is all about. And as we touched a little bit in this conversation with Tanner, it's the emotional side of the equation that oftentimes we do not consider as leaders when often it's the emotional side of the business that creates the problems, that ultimately creates the fragility in our business. So if you're interested in more beyond this podcast, side of the business that creates the problems, that ultimately creates the fragility in our business.

So if you're interested in more beyond this podcast, go to findingpeak.com. I'd encourage you to do so. I want to give a big shout out to Better Agency. Better Agency recently launched a rater on their platform, a PL rater. Big fan of Better Agency. They are not a sponsor of this show, but I love the people over there. I love what they're doing. I love what they're trying to do. And whether you use Better Agency or not, I think you have to give Will and Nick and the entire team at Better Agency props for continuing to push, continuing to innovate. And I think it's just fun to see men and women that I

really like, that I really care about doing great work and providing new products to our ecosystem. So big shout out to Will and Nick and the entire team over at Better Agency. Last but not least, huge shout out, of course, to my people, the parent company of Rogue Risk, SIAA. Guys, if you're looking to maximize your book of business, if you're looking to take the game to another level, if you're looking to connect with other professionals, other agencies, a network of insurance individuals who are doing tremendous things, and as I said, maximize the revenue out of your current book of business and potentially create growth opportunities in many places that you may not have seen before, I would consider SIA. I would start the journey into what it means to become a member of SIA, and you can do that by going to S-I-A-A.com.

All right, guys. If you love this content, please share, like, whatever you do. That's how we continue to grow the audience. I appreciate you all for listening. Let's get on to Tanner. We don't produce the video, so you don't have have to i don't know if that matters to you don't worry about that oh it's just just the audio audio only yeah i just use the video so that we can you know just uh it's easier to talk to somebody when you can see their facial

expression actually like that yeah let's do that okay yeah yeah yeah so yeah i only produce the audio but i use the video just uh just, just for talk purposes. Okay. Wonderful. Cool. Well, I put on clothes for you, you know, kind of a, you do, uh, you look good. I mean, you look good. That's, that's, you know, so that's, that's a good thing. Um, well, so, all right, man. Well, Hey, I, uh, like I said, I appreciate you coming on the show.

Um, you know, looking through everything that you're doing. I hadn't heard about you before your team reached out, but once I started digging into what you're doing, I was obviously very interested and would love to get, you know, what, what's the, what's the origin story for you? Let's start with you. What's, what's the origin story. I know it's not every little boy and girl's dream to grow up to be an insurance professional, at least not most of us. However, we all fall into it somehow. So I'm interested in kind of where you come from and how you got here and we can start there and then dig in. Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me. As I mentioned, I've been following your podcast for a bit. And this is a great recognition that we're doing something right to be here today talking to you. We've intentionally been pretty quiet about what we've been doing publicly. We operate through the broker channel.

So we've been galvanizing that distribution channel about all the good things we're doing. So I wouldn't be surprised if you start to hear more and more about us as brokers tout our benefits to small businesses. and how that works in insurance. I come from more of an entrepreneurial tech background. I started a few companies before, one in the e-commerce space in Southeast Asia, a large e-commerce company that was actually bought by Alibaba a few years ago, and also built a large marketing company out in New York, close to you. I was working in Manhattan. And so this journey into insurance, as you hinted out,

it wasn't what I aspired to at a young age. It was actually something I fell into as I became acquainted with this one product that I kept purchasing as a business owner, which was management liability. It's something that was required through the covenants in raising venture money to purchase DNO. And in New York state, obviously having EPLIs is super important. And so, but it was this roundabout way where I was counterpart. Actually, you can tell from the name. It was actually begun as a HR tech company. So I had to move back to Los Angeles for some family reasons. And I had this idea in the back of my head, which was predicated on some success we had in my previous company, Button, the marketing company, where we really put people first. And we did so by investing in software systems, compliance, collaboration tools that were just starting to come out.

You know, this was early 2000, 2013, 14, 15. HR software was starting to heat up. You had tools like Lattice and Culturamp. You had PEOs that were beginning to take off. We saw how these tools could be applied to help the employees with everything from finding the right employees, so hiring, onboarding employees, training, learning and development software, collaboration tools, Slack, well, it was really taking off so we were looking at how this framework could be applied and to create these workplaces where where people were empowered

uh to to operate where there was um more collaboration across the team uh and people stayed for a really long time like we just created this strong culture around this tooling. And so, yeah, I started this company, was very jazzed about bringing software tech, democratizing HR software to small businesses where I saw this need because at a certain size of company, you have compliance teams, you have risk teams, you have heads of finance, you have heads of HR. If you're 10, 15 people, you don't have that infrastructure, right? Like, what are you going to? Who do you reach out to? And so I saw this as a tool, which is a pretty lightweight way of bringing this infrastructure in um the challenge is that um even this is you know a second order priority for a small business you're thinking about you know how are you going to make

payroll this month you're thinking about you know your your goals this quarter or just you know making the best pie you can make uh let alone thinking about compliance and governance and collaboration so um we we struggled with this tool there wasn't a lot of buy-in talking to all my entrepreneurial friends um it was the got a little bit of the heisman where it's you know come back to me next quarter in the next six months and the you know the red alerts go off in your brain when you hear this as an entrepreneur um i'm sure there's a lot of people listening to podcasts that can relate it's just's just, you know, when you hear that, you got to pivot. And in my case, the realization was this thing that I had been purchasing for a while, management liability, was actually had coverages for the

externalities that occur when you're not doing these things, when you don't have a good hiring practice, when you don't have compliance, when you're not collaborating. This is when there's friction in the company, could lead to wrongful terminations, could lead to harassment, could lead to discrimination, could lead to negligence, misrepresentations, the things that, yeah, lead to directors and officers' claims, lead to employment practices claims, judiciary claims, crime claims. And yeah, seeing an uptick in these in, you know, 2015, 16, 17, yeah, became very relevant or very evident that there was a need for somebody to think about these products holistically of how do you attack the risk management piece while at the same time, you know, think about this product and what the needs are for a small business.

So here I am, you know, this insurance this insurance geek now I'm obsessed with insurance. I think this product is so powerful. I think it's so important for our society, but to be honest, you know, there's, we have a long ways to go with, with the adoption of technology in the same way that I've seen it applied in my previous companies. Yeah. So there's, I have a whole bunch of questions in there. You know, first, what, what was, what was your initial kind of feelings when you, so you're, you're starting, you, you have this HR company that you're, you're working on and testing out in the market and talking about, and you start to pivot into insurance, what was the first kind of this? Because to me,

for a long time, I fought the idea. Let me reposition this question. For a long time, I fought the idea that insurance was different. We're different. This is different. We're unique and all these kinds of things. And for a long time, I was like, eh, to say they're different, but they're not really right. It's the same set of problems passed through a different set of filters. Well, I have come to really believe in, and really just in them. So I've been in the insurance industry for, for almost 17 years now. And it wasn't until these last three years that I launched Rogue Risk, my own digital commercial agency, and that I really started to believe that insurance was different, right? There are the state regulatory matters, the technology, the information capture, the disparate nature of the providers, right? The fact that you have all these different manufacturers in terms of

insurance carriers that are distributing their product have all these different manufacturers in terms of insurance carriers that are distributing their product on all these different platforms and all these different ways, right? It's in most other industries, there's a universal connector between all the manufacturers and the distributors and in insurance, there really isn't. So when you first started running up against some of these issues, what was the first one that kind of, you went, oh, wow. Okay. There's, this is a little different than, than maybe building a marketing tech company or an e-commerce tech company. Man, there are so many, I, I, I love the way you put this. And by the way,

you as an entrepreneur, I just want to celebrate that for you to launch your own company. And it is not easy. It is a humbling experience in so many different dimensions. And that is the backbone of our society. That is why we're focused on small businesses, because it is so hard. And that bar is getting higher and higher every day to go and pursue your dream. So yeah, we are dedicated to helping people understand what their exposures are, helping them grow.

I think me personally in this entrepreneurial experience, there's that old saying of history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. And you can apply that same lens to just about any entrepreneurial journey of it's kind of pattern matching of the things that are very, very similar. And those things and then you try and figure out where there's asymmetry. And for me, that asymmetry happened in distribution, you know, and looking at my previous companies, you know, e-commerce and marketing, you have partnerships, you have direct,

you have affiliate, you have performance. There's lots of different ways in which you can get your product to the market. And what's nuanced about insurance is this is a very complicated product. And especially in the case of management liability. Not many people know what it is. And so there's a great rationale to have a broker involved in this process. And then there's this wholesale broker side too, which aggregates the risk for retail agents, because retail agents have to understand this very broad expanse of products. And it's tough to keep these all in their head, you know, what the difference in exposure is between product liability and employment practices liability.

And so understanding the dimensions, the roles of these different participants in the distribution chain, where they fit, where we should fit as a specialty product, you know, because management liability isn't necessarily required by law. It's usually contractual or it's, you know, it's highly recommended depending on the industry or state that you're in. It's often seen as a luxury to a lot of startups. They see purchasing this product as a luxury, as like you hit a a lot of startups. They see purchasing this product as a luxury as like you hit a certain level of success and then you get this coverage. And I'm like, to me, this is like day one kind of stuff. You know, you, you, you hire the wrong person in the

wrong way. And your company, your, your idea is over before you even get out the door for no reason that has to do with your product. You know, I mean, that's the kind of thing. I love the way you said that too, because yeah, it's existential, right? One of these things go wrong, you're human. We say things, things happen. We make a mistake. So, and that's game over for your company. If you get hit with one of these claims

or one of these lawsuits. And I think that that was the big learning. It's like, oh my gosh, this thing is so important. There's this distribution chain. There's the scale of knowledge about these products. Where do we fit? How do we help to communicate our novelty in the market and the way that we're approaching this, the value that we bring to the small business in the most efficient way. And we work with wholesale brokers. So wholesale brokers are the experts in the space and they help to distribute to retail agents. And obviously, the retail agents working directly with the small businesses. So we're trying to figure out ways to

partner with our wholesale brokers to help educate the retail agents who are at the point of sale of small businesses. And make sure that this message is delivered, why we're different from the 10 other markets that might be providing a competitive service. Why did you decide to go and a lot of people do so this isn't like a judgment just interested. Why did you decide to go wholesale to retail versus just going right to bring on retail brokers and working with retailers directly? Yeah, it's kind of the power law, you know, looking at having 10s of 1000s of agents agents and then looking at wholesale brokers who are already experts in this product line is a pretty easy sell to show them how we thought about this differently, what our unique coverages were, how quickly we could get a product to them, our insured services, our claims management support. You know, it was kind of like you talk to a wholesale broker for three minutes and they get it.

It was a much longer sales process for a retail agent to wrap their heads around. OK, got it. Management liability. It should be in the toolkit of any small business. And here's where where counterpart stands apart. So the wholesale agents have been fantastic from giving us leverage with this distribution channel. They're aggregators of this risk. And we can go to work with one group and we work with the largest wholesale brokers in the world. I think we have about 30, 35 wholesale brokerages that we work with today. And yeah, they give us volume of submissions, but also our disseminators, they're the shepherds of our product. They're galvanizing its adoption with the retail agents

and with small businesses. So it's a very strong partnership with our wholesale brokers. Have you found that they've been willing to take on the product and distribute it? Cause obviously for them to push your product, they're not pushing, say a relationship that they previously had with another, with another, you know, I, I like to think of carriers as manufacturers. So, you know what I mean? They're, they're, they're, you're obviously moving in on a space where they already had relationships for management liability product. Have you found, um, have you found that

your value propositions, which I'm, which I'm really interested in would like you to get to, have you found that they see your value propositions as a competitive advantage and as a differentiator or, you know, have you, has it been just, you're another one in the mix that they're quoting or like what, what has been your experience? And I'm sure it's different with every single one. But, you know, kind of in general, have you found that the uptick has been fast? Or has it been, you know, you have to really work for it? No, it's been remarkably consistent.

And as I mentioned, when we share with them, not only the forms, but, you know when we share with them not only the forms, but we share a service model as well, which is based on speed, which is based on using third-party data to be smarter about a risk so we can get really aggressive in certain cases. In other cases, we're going to explain why we're not comfortable with the exposures of the small business. But it's that quick turnaround time brokers need to see in this small business space but it's that quick turnaround time that brokers need to see in this small business space where they're being flooded with submissions. This is premium values that are pretty low, also pretty low risk. So these are very transactional accounts where, in large part, they just need somebody that's going to be there to respond

quickly, to pick up the phone, to discuss options with them. And that's through combining technology workflows data with an unbelievable team of, we call them risk engineers, underwriters that are there to support our broker community. So yeah, it's been it's it's been remarkable just um how much support we've received from the wholesale broker channel and how quickly we've been able to grow um with them yeah this is anecdotal but do you find when you say like risk engineers people look at you like you have three heads and you're like they're like what the hell are you talking about i do and people like not only do they look at me they stay to my face. And I think it goes to kind of the point you mentioned before of like this, this industry has a certain philosophy and a certain inertia and moving

forward. And I want to question certain things. I think like there's too much around this, this idea of disrupt. That's not what I want to do, but I want to create transparency. I want to question, but I want to create transparency. I want to question, you know, should an underwriter be doing underwriting jobs in today's environment where data is so accessible and it can get you a large part of the way there. What is the point of an underwriter? An underwriter is actually, you know, to help a system learn, to train a system, to create the rating factors so that there's consistency

in the system. And it's observing what are the externalities, how is the market shifting, and how does our rating model or coverage need to evolve? And then for unique risks to be able to jump in and support the broker in the small business, and then use this as a data point to retrain them all. So yeah, I truly do see them as these engineers, more so than underwriters. Underwriters is, it doesn't capture all the value and all the contributions that they make to the system. You know, it's too account based. And that's not our philosophy. Our philosophy is about building a system. So the reason I asked you that is we call our service team members client success.

I started out as client success advocates was what the original, when I wrote like my business plan and everything, because I wanted the philosophy to be, I want you as a service person to think of yourself as advocating in every way for our client. You don't work for the carrier. And I'd almost rather you pushed against me in the moments where you think our client needs something that maybe they're not getting. You are a client success advocate. Well, I will say, and I hope that you don't, this doesn't happen to you because I love what you just said. And I agree with your philosophy. I have been worn down by the, you mean account manager, right? Or you mean a CSR, right? And I'm like, oh yes, yes. I mean a CSR. Yes. That's what, yes. But the idea is I want, I don't want them to think of themselves as just CSRs, which have this kind of almost like negative, it almost has like a negative

connotation. I want them to think of themselves as they are the most important person in our company to that client. You are their advocate in our company. That's, that's what I wanted the philosophy to be and how, and it is how we still train them, but I've just been bludgeoned by people going, you mean account manager, right? Like you're talking about an account manager, right? I'm like, yes, I'm talking about an account manager, but that's, you know, and so so like even though on their job descriptions they're still csa's um we inevitably refer to them as like account managers and csr sometimes too and i i kind of am hating myself after hearing how you've stuck to your guns but uh it is funny how people just don't want to change they just can can't, they like can't do it.

That reversion to the mean is a very, very powerful force. And it's going to be, especially as you grow, you know, it becomes even more challenging. You know, you're fighting against, you know, it's like size and gravity, you know, it becomes much more difficult to push against. And the only advice I would give to you is consistency. And the way you message the team, you know, these constant reminders and having a cadence for how you speak about it, you know, so there's things like values in a company or nomenclature. And it's just repetition. So we go through our

values every week as an organization. We speak about our values. And I think a lot of the team can recite these off the top of their head. And it creates stickiness, but old habits just die hard. Yeah. So, so in, I completely agree with that. And I will say, and I agree with you. It's like you to the, to the gravity piece, like as you grow, you're fighting larger and larger battles, right? The battles become bigger and they're becoming more of them. And like some of these, it is easy. And again, this is where, you know, I'm being transparent in my own failings as a leader. Like some of these battles that seemingly,

that feel smaller, like this particular, just naming of our service professionals, like at a certain point, you're like, oh my God, I am fighting this battle that is taking 90% of my brain cycles over here. I don't have the brain cycles left yes account manager whatever like you know i'm trying to like you know take this mountain over here and i got this little thing happening over you know and it's just you just you just run out of brain

cycles sometimes to fight these battles but if you can i i i agree with you and we do i will say uh the other thing that happens too. And I think again, I'm, I think it's incredibly admirable and awesome that you are, you're talking about your values every week. I try very hard to do that, but it is easy to get lost in the, in the shuffle. And, you know, and I, and I have also found like at certain points in the company's evolution, um, you, you hit moments where, where there's more to more or less. And when there's less, you can kind of come back to things like, here's why we're here. Here's what we believe. Here's our philosophical beliefs. And then things get hectic. And you're like, I'm just trying to

keep all 10 fingers and toes in holes in the dam, you know what I mean? Like, and, you know, those things can get lost. And I think the leaders that I admire the most are the ones that seemingly can stay consistent and push through that, even though those things are happening or, or, or not let it bother them as they, as they push through it. So that's really good advice. I, I, I, I just appreciate the rawness that you're bringing to this conversation. It is so real. And as an entrepreneur, to be able to compartmentalize all this and still grow and meet your investor expectations, this is exactly what I'm talking about. And the reason I get out of bed every day is like I want to support entrepreneurs like you that are challenging things, that are doing things different. I think there's, you know, you talk about culture and

there's so much said about culture and a culture is, you know, in large part, you know, planted by the founder and, you know, people rally around that and this idea of good culture and bad culture. I don't believe in good culture or bad culture. I believe that culture is a function of the business and, you know, the mindset of the business and the mindset of the company, the vision, the principles. And really where the dissonance happens is if there is not alignment between the people working there and the values of the company. That is bad. But there's some companies that just want to work 80 hours a week. They're perfectly successful because they're hiring people that want to work 80 hours a week. There's other companies that are creatives. They need the headspace.

People can be perfectly successful working 20 hours a week. I love the way you're thinking about things. I think it's the right would, I love the way you're thinking about things. I think it's the right approach. I think it's, there's so much knowledge out there about how to run organizations. It sounds like you're well-versed in this stuff too. And yeah, we want to be advocates for small businesses, for leaders to provide that support. You know, obviously it benefits us too when our policyholders are thinking about governance,

business operations, compliance. It's something I've spent a lot of time thinking about. And the data also yields that companies obviously are less likely to have claims, but are going to have better outcomes financially when they start to think about culture as well. Yeah. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast,

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

share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. And I hope you enjoy it, listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. I, um, uh, I, I saw a quote, um, I was listening to that. Who knows you, you read so much and I can't remember exactly what it was, but it basically was the gist of it was, um, whether the leader is focused, whether the leader is driving culture or not, they are, you know what I mean? It's like, whether you are focused on growing culture or

you're not focused on growing culture, you're growing, like you're, you're impacting culture. Like it's what you do as a leader is it's, you cannot get away from the fact that if you decided to take a leadership role, even if it's not the tippy top leadership role, even if it's, you know, the, the executive suite or, or a managerial role, you are impacting the culture of the company when you decide to, you know, when you decide to take that position, because people watch you and they feed off what you do. And I think that,

particularly insurance, because insurance, oftentimes, the individuals who hold leadership roles in our industry tend to be great practitioners, not people who necessarily chose to be and focus on being great leaders. And that doesn't mean they aren't or can't be. It just means oftentimes the leadership roles tend to get given to great practitioners. So they're not necessarily versed in or love learning about and practicing and cultivating things like culture, things like mission, right? They, they see those as, and again, and this isn't a knock it's because they're great practitioners that they they're just, they haven't taken the time or, nor do they value these concepts because their idea is all we need

to do is sell more stuff. If we sell more stuff, we're good. That's our goal. We sell stuff. I don't care if you hate working here, I send you a paycheck, be happy with it, right? Like that's the kind of way that most people operate. And what we've really found at Rogue is one, I didn't name it the Hanley Insurance Agency because I didn't want the business to be about me. I love the fact that I have this amazing team that every day is working to get me out of the biz out of working in the business, you know, so I can work on it, essentially, you know, which is a great thing, like they, they're not like upset, they're not, they're not like, fighting me, they don't

feel they're, they're operating to get me out of day to day, which is an amazing thing. So I can work on things like culture. Well, if I was a practitioner, if I was still getting value from doing the thing, I could never step out and focus on these things like culture, which I think is what you have to do. All that being said, I think the point that you just made around whatever you want your business to be, it should be that thing. If it's an 80 hour a week job, if it's a 30 hour a week job, if it's a only nights and week, you know, whatever you, your culture is going to be, but then you have to be hard and fast to marketing it that way and hiring that way.

And, you know, we hire a lot of moms. We just do because, because a lot of insurance agencies, thankfully, are misogynistic and want people to work 830 to 430 on like a punch in punch out. And if you're a mom and there are dads, too, but they tend to be moms who are have kids that get sick or have to go into school late or they need to do this to need some flexibility, right? And we as a company, and I made this our mission from the very beginning, we are completely willing because we're results-based to be flexible around those points, right? Hey, you need to take your kid to the doctor at 3 p.m., no problem. I trust because you're an adult and we're a results-based organization that you will either come in later or come in earlier or work doubly hard the next day to get your numbers and do the things you need to do for your actual job. And that's the way we work.

Well, we made the mistake of hiring, again, sometimes you don't know, a couple individuals who were slightly on the misogynistic side. And they were just of the opinion that their experience, whatever that, you know, most of the females in our organization didn't know shit was kind of their general disposition. And that did not fly. And we punted those sons of bitches like really quick. Now they were high performers, seemingly high performers, right? They were, they were hitting their numbers and doing very good work, but you can't have that shit in your business. If you're going to be successful, if, if it doesn't match what you're trying to do, if we were like a locker room mentality company, where it was, we all just beat our chess and

fight with each other and competitive. And that's who we were like boiler room or, or a Wolf of wall street. They would have been awesome in that environment. It just wasn't what we were building. And you have to get those people out. And I think unfortunately, I think unfortunately, especially early in a company's genesis, it's very difficult to let high performers go if they don't match culture, because you're like, Oh my God, who's going to sell this thing? Or who's going to execute this part? And I, I mean, since they've been gone, we haven't skipped a beat. Other people have stepped up and everyone is happier. So I think that's a really, really important point that I wanted to come back to.

I love it. And the thread here is consistency. And consistency is incredibly important, especially when you have strong vision, you know, and you're seeing repeated success. It is so easy to get off that path. Yeah, it is. There's so many turns. And, you know, it could be a partnership that seems all nice and fun and shiny. Could be an employee, you know, it could be an investor.

And like you, you have to constantly as a business leader, take a step back. And you also have to create an environment where you're open to that feedback from the team. One of the things we did, we had the entire company down in San Diego last week for a company on site. So we're completely remote. We flew everybody in to San Diego. And we just had this open discussion. One of our values is speak boldly and honestly. And yeah, there were moments where, wow, people spoke very boldly and honestly about our OKR. So we use the OKR system, objective key results.

Highly advise anybody listening to take a look at this if they're looking for structure around goals on a quarterly basis. Measure What Matters by John Doerr, is it? Doerr. John Doerr. Yeah, Doerr is the book that really breaks that concept down. Yeah, it's not perfect. There's no perfect solution. You know, I don't want to pretend that this is, you know, just read the book and go apply it.

This is something, again, requires commitment or requires consistency. But, yeah, the team gave me great feedback that it, you know, despite having all the structure, it still felt like we didn't have a clear focus. And so we walked out of that meeting. We cut our OKRs in half. And now we're focused on half the OKRs. And so it's one, that consistency, but everyone, now and then you just need a speed check and you need to invite people to be able to speak up and have trust. I think the other thing, have you heard of this Project Aristotle from Google? I have not, no. It's a really interesting study by Google, which, of course, is one of the most respected

company of the century over the last 100 years. And they tried to figure out what is the thing that really makes for really high-performing teams. And off the top of my head, I'm like, of course, it's talent. It's education. It's, you know, having certain people and certain groups, you bring a product person engineer, and there's got to be a great formula. And they're like, they couldn't figure it out for the longest time until they started to look at more of the psychological elements of the team. And what they found is that when there's psychological

safety, trust in a team, those are the highest performing teams, irrespective of backgrounds, irrespective of the talent of the team. When there's trust, that is the team that's going to perform better on a more consistent basis. And so, you know, I challenge everybody to bring this into their organization, because what you're going to learn from somebody that's two levels down, what they're seeing in the field is probably going to shock you. And, you know, it probably doesn't bubble up to the top very much because people might be afraid of communicating this to you. You know, it's you as an entrepreneur having to deal with all these things, you know, naming conventions of certain people, but it's really enlightening and you're not going to change everything. So, you know, we're not superhuman, but I think creating that environment where at least people feel their opinions are valued, where they're heard, it creates a very

collaborative spirit and people are also then more willing to take feedback themselves, right? If they know the CEO is open to it, they're going to be like, okay, you know, he can take a few punches about his philosophy, but yeah, maybe I can, you know, be better myself. Yeah. I think you're wholly right, especially about the last piece, just to put a pin in that. You can't hold your employees to a standard that you're unwilling to live by yourself. That is like, if I've learned anything in the various leadership roles that I've had throughout my career, if you are unwilling to do something or live by a standard or work to a standard, you cannot hold your employees to that standard. You just can't. And again, this is why

I'll tell you, this is very selfishly why I have a flexible work environment. Like I'm a divorced single dad. I have to do shit during the day that is personal. Like I just have to, it's part of my, sometimes my kids have this. Sometimes I have to do this. I have to go over here sometimes because of the nature of my life. I haven't been grocery shopping in weeks and I have to run out and grab something so I can eat. Cause I work from home. And it's like, how can I then, if I want to, if I prefer as a leader to be held to a results based philosophy with a flexible work schedule, how then can I tell my employees, you have to be in your seat eight 30 to four 30 and punch this card.

And that's how I'm going to judge your performance. Even though I can run out and hit the gym at noon real quick and come back because then I know I'll log in at 8 PM and get work done from eight to 10 or whatever. Like I then can tell them, I can't tell my employees that they can do that stuff. You know what I mean? Or, or that, that there isn't that bit of flexibility in their lives. Like to me, um, that disconnect is like is the number one way to completely trash your

culture is like, is like, and you see this a lot, right? You're, you're the, you're the producer. You've been there for three or four years. You're sitting in an agency and you see the agency principal log out at 11 a.m. and go play golf every Friday for the entire summer. You know, and the standard philosophy is, well, that individual invested time, money, resources, built this business, built, they've earned that right. Okay. I can buy that certain levels of seniority and certain levels of risk-taking do then provide you with certain levels of flexibility. But it can't be you live this way, I live this way, right? Maybe it's you get one Friday a month that you can go play golf or go out on your boat or have a half day

on Friday if you want during the summertime. Summers are a big deal up here because they're so small, right? So that's why I'm focusing on summer. Other parts of the country every day is summer, so it's different. But like, you know, up here, that's like a big thing, right? Your summer in the north is very, very important to you. And I know people that have literally quit jobs because they've watched the owner or the owners have all this flexibility to enjoy their summers and they get zero. I don't think that people expect, I think people intrinsically understand the difference between someone who has taken the risk, who has earned the right to have maybe the max benefit of a culture, but to give someone no benefit or to create a completely separate set of rules or

guidelines or performance triggers for everyone else versus leadership that just destroys trust, destroys all the things that you just talked about that make a healthy environment. And it just, you know, you're holding yourself to a different standard. How can you expect people to want to live up to it? It just doesn't work that way. Yeah. And you bring in the insurance lens, which I've only been in this industry for about three years. I think there's that element to it, which is just consistent across every company. But then also there's this big challenge with insurance, which we're going from a digital 1.0 world to a 2.0 world. And you look at a lot of the leadership across some of the big insurance institutions and you use this word practitioners. I love this word practitioners. In today's environment, you need to be a strategist.

You need to be technologists. You need to, it's like, you just need to be questioning everything because the way business has been conducted over the past 10, 20, 30 years, clearly is not what it's going to look like 10, 20, 30 years from now. I think there's been in insurance even this general attitude of like, let's wait and see. Let's wait and see what happens. It's a fast follower mentality. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Fast follower, which frankly, it's one of the last bastions of still the email processing and these workflows and the administrative work in this industry. It's kind of mind-boggling when I come from other industries.

And I think it's safe to say it's going to change pretty quickly. And there's some folks that are leaning into this. But I also see this general hesitation to be the first, there's no incentive in a large insurance carrier to adopt these new practices because you're not rewarded for doing so. You know, it's like nobody's going and patting John or Jane on the back and saying, oh, great job with this new digital platform. Because most of the time people are irritated from having to change their behaviors. Like you're actually, you know, people get their pitchforks out when you come and move their keys. And so, yeah, I find it interesting. It's really tough to be a leader these days in insurance space and move the industry forward because people are so

entrenched in their current workflows current processes um you know i spoke at this conference the digging conference and they like they really prodded me they really prodded me for for what i would do if i was in a big insurance carrier and um you know I tried to caveat as much as possible, but like, I really challenged some folks. I was like, what is your value? Like, just come back to the core principles. How do you contribute value to the company? How is it today? What do you think it should be? And, and like, I saw people, like people were shaking their heads like oh yeah well oof this is a bit uncomfortable you can see people you know shaking shaking it shaking their shoulders looking around it's like oh man like and and it's just a testament to i think people

want to like this there's brilliant people in this industry people want to change you know we're shining the spotlight on the fact that maybe there's other ways you can contribute value that you should push the needle. We're not saying we need to go off the rails here. There's much more good than there is bad, but let's have an honest conversation about how we contribute value to these small businesses that need a better product that need it faster, you know, that need more transparency, that it needs to be more consumable, you're just getting, you know, a lot of times a PDF document as a as a policy form, what are they supposed to do with this? Yeah, yeah. So I so I have so many thoughts on this particular topic. I'm going to start by saying about three weeks ago, I did a just off the cuff video for

LinkedIn. I was walking, I was on a walk. I just got done with a couple carrier calls, two consecutive carrier calls where I questioned the UX of the carrier. They were, they were peppering me for why aren't we writing more business with them? And I said, because your UX is terrible. It's incredibly difficult to do business with you. Um, you, I said, you know, and what I said to them, and then they would push back. That's not what we're hearing. And I'd say, okay, well, I do a straight behavioral experiment every day where I send a shit total leads to my producers and they choose where the business goes. My producers do. Do you think they choose because they dislike you? Do they just, they just don't like you. They hate your brand. They hate

your logo and your colors. You think that's why they choose it? Or do they choose it because some variation of your product, your pricing, and your user experience does not match up with what makes their job easy because we're all super selfish. We all want to do what's easiest. So a producer, 99 out of a hundred times with a bar of quality coverage, right? I'm not going to say anyone is doing anything, you know, improprietary or whatever, with a bar of quality coverage. After you hit that bar of quality coverage, the next most important trigger for where the business goes is who's the easiest to do business with. Not price, not schmuggies, not cyber reports. It has nothing to do with any of that crap. It's how easy is it to do business with you? That is literally the next one. And I've watched this over hundreds

and hundreds, at this point, thousands of opportunities coming into Rogue, watching where the producers put them. And in this case, what I said to them was the vast majority of our small business goes to the Hartford. And the reason for that is because the Hartford is really, really, really, really, really, really easy to do business with considering they also have things like, because people go, well, what about companies like Coterie? Coterie is a great company, except Coterie does not have a contingency or bonus program. So you're only ever getting their standard commission level, which if I could go, if I can get standard commission from Coterie, standard commission and contingencies with Hartford,

well, I make more money there. So that's where I go, right? So that's kind of the thought process. So, you know, there, and my point in what I said in the video, just to kind of wrap this part up is, is Hartford seems to, from the people I talk to and the changes they make to their platform, seemingly is incrementally building efficiencies into where the puck is going. versus other carriers who I know call their biggest broker, who's probably 67 years old, who hasn't logged into the system in 20 years, who has Sally or Tammy or Jimmy or Johnny in the office, who does it, who places the business there because they feel like that's what the owner wants

and they don't give a shit because they're only placing a couple of pieces of business a week anyways. And, and the owner comes back and goes, yeah, you're fine. I don't get any complaints. And they go, okay, great check. We're doing awesome because they're, they're playing to where the puck is today, the way the business is done today. And my point was, if someone asked me on stage, that same question they asked you, it would be like, I would make every decision would be, where is the puck going? We would iterate to where the puck is going, not monumental tear down, rebuild changes because the insurance industry isn't broken. That's the big secret that the disruptors of 2015 and 2016 didn't get.

You know, they went in, they went to Silicon Valley, they did some sort of NBA dick regression analysis and said, insurance is an opportunity. These people are all idiots. We're going to change it, right? What they didn't understand is it wasn't broken. Insurance is not broken. If your building burns down, if you get into a car accident, if you do something stupid, your insurance company shows up and they hand you a check and they say, here, as much as we can financially, based on what the policy you bought, here's your reimbursement. And that is how the business is supposed to work.

Your town is not rallying to put your house back up if it burns down in a fire. They're just going to yell at you because you have a shitty smoldering building. And now it's making their home value go down, right? So the only entity that's going to rebuild that home for you, in this case, Pursaline is going to be insurance companies. So it's not broken. That being said, I think the vast difference between the carriers that I see today succeeding and the carriers that I see stagnating has to do with the singular idea of iterations to where the puck is going versus where it is. I think that startups like you,

like Coterie, I love the people at Coterie. It's not a knock on them. They're new and growing. I feel like starting their own internal agency and going D to C. I'm completely fine telling them I think that was a mistake from a brand perspective because everyone knows and it kind of keeps agents who don't like to compete against all our carriers, we kind of know that, but they just need a contingency program and Coterie will be fine. But like, you know, I see Coterie, I see Pi, I see Cover Whale and Transportation. Like, I see you guys, you group of this next generation, not disruptors, innovators, pushing the carriers that are thinking the right way to match. Now, the hard part about that is now you're competing against juggernauts. But I think it's, I think it's worthy work. And I know, I know many of you are going to end up getting, are going to reap the benefit personally, but also from a purpose and meaning standpoint, do really important work and really change things, which I

think is incredible. I want you to comment on that if you have a thought. And then I have one more question. I want to be respectful of your time. I have one more question I want to get into around, you know, your product is marketed to a certain extent on being built on AI, which no one knows what that means at all. So I would love to any comments you have on what I just said and then move that into what is AI and how are you using it and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. So it's a quick response to what you're saying. Again, brilliantly said. I would say that moving to where the puck is going to be, I can tell you where the puck is going to be. Think about this Amazon philosophy of people

want better pricing. They want it faster, and they want more options. Just put that in your head. Everybody should be thinking about this. What the internet of things is doing is it's creating more transparency. People are realizing, oh my gosh, I have more options. I have more agents I can work with. I have more wholesalers I can work with. I have more carriers I can work with. Options are becoming more evident to them. So you need to be thinking about, okay, how can I elevate? How can I provide better service, better pricing? How can I be smarter about how I underwrite? How can I just create more value? That's really what it comes down to. And it happens at every layer of that stack, every layer of the distribution stack. And as it relates to what

we're doing specifically for this, so being a tech entrepreneur several times before, really most technology is grounded in data. It's how you apply data to solve problems, to be faster, to provide more options, better service. And in our case, it was understanding what are the exposures of small businesses? So you think of a small business, and I'm here in Los Angeles, California. There's like 10 restaurants around me within a mile radius here. If I was to get a submission to these restaurants, probably look all the same. Roughly the same number of employees, same zip code, probably a lot of the same practices around the wage and hour and employment training, etc.

They would come up on a PDF application. But there's lots of nuance between these actual small businesses that you can pick up from knowing where to look. And this is looking at lawsuit information. Maybe it's not a claim against the company for management liability, but we want to know if this, this company has been operating compliantly within, you know, maybe it's there, the state regulation around, you know, accessibility things that things that wouldn't pop on,

on a PDF application, but it just shows the governance, the compliance of this business. Or, you know, what are employees, customers saying about this company? What's the other financial variables that we can pick up about the business? So this is through public-private APIs that were pinging information, which like you as an entrepreneur, I'm sure you've spoken to a lot of tech companies. They talk about AI. Even to be able to talk about AI, which I'll get to in a bit, there is so much data engineering complexity to be able to find this data, to be able to pull this data into your system, structure it in such a way,

so then you can build the AI models. The AI models are the application layer on top of massive data infrastructure that needs to be built. And so the AI layer is really understanding, okay, if this company is compared against similar companies, how does this, what's the risk profile of this business on a relative basis? Because if you think of what a underwriter does in a traditional company, if it's a, you know, and this is an account that's sizable where it's even worth their time to go search for this. You know, maybe they're going to go to Google and say, oh, I'm going to query in lawsuits against the Hyatt in Venice Beach. And they're going to be like, oh, great. Nothing there. Fantastic. I've done my job. Or maybe they're going to Yelp and it's like, oh, Hyatt, I'm going to scroll through and see if anybody says anything bad about this company. Well, in our case, we're looking at a multitude of different factors.

I think we have like 18 different sources for data that we're going to. And we're able to ingest this information and get a relative score because, you know, maybe, yeah, you do find something on Google about this company, but it's such a massive company. Is this normal behavior where you get a few lawsuits for a hotel of that size, or is this something I should worry about and I need to modify the account for? So AI is able to ingest this information in such a way that it normalizes it. It normalizes the behavior and response of an individual that's trying to interpret this and tells them how meaningful the signal is and how they should change their behavior, the underwriting of this company.

And then it also allows for this human in the loop to provide a signal back to the model of, okay, you showed me what was important. You kicked this thing out for referral. Me as a human, I can interpret this information. And then I can tell you whether it's the next time this thing comes up, whether the model should kick it out on a similar basis. So you're training the model as much as the model telling somebody where to look.'s identifying the signals and this is how you get what i call bionic underwriting it's the system does most of the work but you still have a human there to interpret the asymmetries of the the risk and be able to say oh this is a great account like you know our system is is pricing here but, I see that we can probably do much better because I know that

manufacturing in Ohio, you know, we've built a really strong book here. And again, this reinforces the book, hey, we should continue to mod, to change our underwriting for manufacturers in Ohio. Similarly, California, you know, we know that the exposures are just increasing here. If you underwrite just historically, maybe it looks okay. But with the litigation trends in California, we need to be continuously modifying the accounts up. So that's one piece of it, which you think about on the underwriting side, but then think about this account during the policy term. Now we've written this account. Now we're on the policy.

And I want to get back to risk mitigation because this is really why I started the company. You spoke about these employees that you hired. And there was controversy around these employees where it wasn't a good culture fit. Well, probably what happened was like, you had people that were leaving the business, maybe, you know, there's a little bit of turnover. Probably people were a bit disgruntled.

Maybe it impacted your financials. We're monitoring these signals throughout the term of the policy and saying, hey, you know, are there things that we should be thinking about from a risk mitigation standpoint that we can propose to the company and say, hey, talk to our HR experts. We have HR experts on call. And if you, in the case of these two employees that you needed to fire,

not many people know how to fire well. There's a very clear process, depending upon the state, of how you terminate an employee and do it without them suing you for wrongful termination. A very, very fine line that I advise everybody getting counsel about before they do this. We are saying, hey, before you fire them, come talk to us. We'll give you the playbook to how to run this so you don't have a claim. Or somebody says, oh, somebody said

this really uncomfortable thing to me that could be construed as harassment. Somebody reported this. Come talk to us. Come talk to us, and we'll share guidance on how to communicate to the employee, how to communicate to the company about this event so you're not putting this, you're burying this. And that's where things go wrong. It's not the events because humans say things that might be misinterpreted. It's how the company responds, how leadership responds in these events

that lead to the adverse outcomes, the claims, et cetera. So yeah, we want to be partners to these small businesses. We have a handbook builder for companies. We have harassment discrimination training. We have tons of data on this new legislation. I think there's 60 new pieces of legislation coming I certainly it's not, I'm not, you know, reading up on my municipal and state legislation about how this impacts me and wage and hour laws. So yeah, we, we want to be advocates for these small businesses. We want to take this off their plate because we talked about how hard it is to be a small business already and be educating these businesses about what their exposures are, how their risks are changing and how our product responds to those risks. Because yeah, it's just,

things happen in a small business and we want to be able to respond with great cleaners management when they do. Yeah. I want to be respectful of your time. So we'll wrap this up, but I just, just to finish off that idea, I think I love that. I mean, to me, the advantage of data is not just marketing. I think a lot of people immediately just think marketing and sales data, you know what I mean? Or maybe they think pricing of products with data, but so much of it can be the communications, the comms, the proactive outreach you see, you know, you, you can, you know, you're subscribed to certain databases. You can see increases in payroll, increases in revenue within days of when they happen and send out messages. Hey, your payroll just increased by $100,000.

That means you're hiring people. Are you, you know, what practices you put in place? What's going on? Do you need to tell us something? You know, as your insurance provider, these are all moments that I think are, are, you know, the, the disparate nature of how insurance is distributed creates a lot of user experience issues. A lot of, we'll just say bland user experience, you know, a very bland user experience that I think can be rapidly approved upon as we start to connect. And I love, I love where you're taking it, man. I'm super

excited for you. I'm going to be following along on the journey. I'm glad that we had a chance to meet. I'm a huge fan now of what you're doing. And, you know, so let's, let's take this last moment before we finish here. Just where can people learn more? I know you said that, that agents that are listening can get to your products through, uh, various wholesalers. I'm sure maybe if they go to your website, um, they can find those wholesalers and know who to talk to and whatever, but if they just want to follow you or, or check people out, where, where should they go? Where, where should they learn more about you and what you're doing? Yeah, our website's yourcounterpart.com. Come check out the websites. Come to our LinkedIn page, to our Twitter page. Yeah, we're here to educate the market about the potential for management

liability. Again, it's not where it is today, but what it should be for them in terms of the service that we can provide and the quality of product we can provide for the small business owners. And we need to do this through partnerships. I think that was one point that I failed to mention that is, yeah, all these insured techs are doing cool stuff, but we're standing upon the shoulders of giants. Like we're standing upon the shoulders of our great wholesale partners, these retail agents, these carriers that are leaning into the future. And, you know, we're, we're, we're helping to nudge them along and show them what's, what's possible. Yeah. I love it, man. Well, I'm super glad that we had a chance to connect. I'm glad we had a chance to share your story and your expertise with the audience and, uh, wish you nothing but the

best. Thanks for having me, Ryan. This is really fun. Awesome. Cheers. Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the OneCall Close system, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals.

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