The Ryan Hanley Show - RHS 176 - Michael Malfa on Building a Digital Experience for Your Producers

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comIn this episode of The Ryan Hanley Show, Ryan Hanley sits down with Michael Malfa.Michael Malfa is the CEO and co-founder of Boardwalk Insurance, an independent insurance agency located in Ontario, Canada.I think Michael's LinkedIn bio says it all, "Championing change, always looking for new, efficient ways to deliver enhanced customer experiences. As technology evolves, so must we. Our goal is to leverage technology and make it our ally, rather than our enemy."We get down on many different topics associated with the digital production of insurance business.You're going to love this one...Episode Highlights: Michael discusses his experience in commercial brokerage and what led Boardwalk Insurance to develop its own unique solution and technology. (7:12) Michael discusses the process of creating the technology that will provide producers with the tools they need. (12:29) Michael explains that insurance risk management is a long-term investment and that it is essential for future-proofing the business. (18:18) Ryan mentions that when people consider their agency as a business rather than an agency, the decisions they make are different. (29:10) Michael explains that Boardwalk Insurance is developing a digital experience for brokers, and gradually releasing technology to clients and producers to gauge uptake. (36:14) Michael believes that having the right partner can help a business succeed. (41:19) Ryan mentions that the UK is far ahead of the US in terms of technological experience, but their broker model is archaic (47:07) Michael discusses the significance of having a method of communication with the clients. (54:33) Michael explains the importance of flow in direct selling and online selling. (57:54) Key Quotes: “Insurance Risk Management, the business is going to become more than just that in 5,10,15 years. If you're just doing that you're going to be left behind. So, you know, we're just trying to future-proof ourselves.” - Michael Malfa “When you think about your agency as a business and not an agency, the decisions you make are different.” - Ryan Hanley “A lot of the technology we're doing, our customers don't feel a lot of it yet. We're just giving them bit by tidbit…Our producers and our staff see it all, they're interacting with this with this system very digitally. And then eventually, it's just going to get to a point where we start flipping the switch and moving it directly to the customer.” - Michael Malfa Resources Mentioned: Michael Malfa LinkedIn Boardwalk Insurance Reach out to Ryan Hanley Rogue Risk Finding Peak 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 a tremendous episode. We have Michael Malfa, the CEO and co-founder of Boardwalk Insurance, a digital agency out of Canada in this case. And Michael and I were connected via Dylan Reed, who was with WonderRite, and then he went over to Buddy Insurance. Now he's back with WonderRite. Dylan's a great guy, and he reached out to me one day, and he said, hey, you got to meet this

guy, Michael Malfa. He's doing like a lot of the same things that you're trying to do at Rogue. He's doing up in Canada. He thinks the same way as you do. And he's got tons of interesting shit that he's building and doing. And I connected with Michael and we had this hour long conversation, which is absolutely phenomenal. I got to the end of it. I was like, Oh my God, I can't believe we didn't record this. Like, it was just awesome. And sometimes it's good to have conversations that you don't record. I'm not trying to insinuate that you need to record every decent conversation that you have. But Michael's a tremendous dude and I love the way he thinks. I love what he's doing. He is going to be a force

and in his entire, his company, Boardwalk Insurance is going to be a force of nature in Canada. Can't wait to see what he's doing. Can't wait to reconnect with him as we both continue to grow and share notes on what it means to be building a digital human-optimized agency in 2023 and beyond. So you're going to absolutely love this conversation. I think you will. Before we get there, I want to give just a quick shout out to all you guys listening. Guys, I've been pumping out a lot of episodes lately. Loving getting back into the show. Sometimes doing all this podcasting, I don't know, life takes over and I hate when that happens because I feel I just want to continue sharing with

you guys and I love you guys so much and I love you for listening and I just want to say thank you for that, but I'm glad I'm back on the horse and I feel like the episodes have been dynamic and fun and the conversations have been awesome and uh and you guys are responding and listening and I love that and you know if you enjoy the show share with a friend that's all I can ask right I mean share the show with a friend um that's the best way to support what we do here uh at the show. And just I love you for listening. If you enjoy the podcast, you'll love the blog, findingpeak.com. Go to findingpeak, findingpeak.com, findingpeak,

where we talk about peak performance in business, life, your career, what are the things you need to be doing in your health, in your mentality, in how you lead and how you sell. And all those things, We're talking about what it means to find peak performance in your life. And what I'll tell you is we talk about all kinds of different dynamic things, and no one does all those things. I don't do all the things, but what it is, I'm trying to share with you different tactics and strategies that you can cherry pick and place into your own life, and help you be the best version of yourself day to day. And whatever that means for you and whatever helps that, whatever that helps you do better.

So go to findingpeak.com, free articles. We do do some really deep dive kind of nitty gritty behind the scenes stuff for insurance people. Those come out on Tuesdays and those are paid mostly because, I don't know, I feel like if you're going to step inside my brain, the $7 a month is worth it. And plus I just, it kind of helps me bifurcate and prioritize comments and stuff from people. So paid subscribers get a priority on comments and responses and stuff like that. But yeah, 90 plus percent of the content is free and I hope you check that out. And last but not least, I want to give a big shout out to Tivly, T-I-V-L-Y.com, T-I-V-L-Y.com. Guys, Tivly is a major part of the success that we have at

Rogue Risk. They're one of our largest and most important partners in our business. And if you're looking to write more commercial insurance, they have a portfolio of ways to do that. They're tremendous people. I enjoy working with them. And we've been a client for going on 18 plus months. We're probably headed toward two years at this point. Big fan of Tivoli and was honored when they asked if they could sponsor the show and share their message with you. And if you want to learn more about them, go to tivly.com. You can also listen to the episode I did. Go back in the archives and find the episode I did with Mark McClure and Kim Reed, and you'll learn all about Tivoli, what they're doing. Guys, I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Michael Malfa.

I'm going to Shaboom! Mr. Hanley. What's up, dude? Hold on, let me fix my audio here. Let me fix my... I'm not hearing you. You feel... You... Let's see. I know what it is.

I'll tell you what. You look good, man. I know you can't hear me. I know you can't hear me, but you look good. Only the audience can hear me right now. So, Michael's working on his audio. So I can hear you now. I was just telling the audience that even though you couldn't hear me, you look amazing. The hair, you're all trimmed up.

I mean, stop it. Very intimidating to come into a call with such a good looking dude. It's I just got back from Florida. That's why you you asshole you know much needed how was it so much needed sunshine was good fun how you doing yeah yeah man uh good just just doing the thing all the things um i'm i'm excited we're finally get to do this i know we kind of went back and forth a bunch and we've missed each other and i think i canceled on you and you can't you know and we go back and forth and it's always the way it is if for anyone who's listening at

home that doesn't have a podcast um you know i think in your mind you everyone thinks it's like clean and easy and you just schedule to and you know life happens and you know and this is this is always the way it is but we had um you you know, I don't even, who connected us? I can't even remember now who originally connected us. You know what? It was, who was it? Dylan. I think it was Dylan.

He was Dylan Reed. Yeah. Dylan Reed. Yes. And I knew Dylan at Wonder Right. And then he went to Buddy Insurance and then he left Buddy Insurance, went back to Wonder Right. And he said, yo, there's this dude up in Canada.

You gotta freaking talk to him. He's doing a lot of cool shit. And we had an awesome kind of get to know you call. And I think at the end, I was like, man, we gotta jump on a podcast and talk about the business and what's going on. So why don't we do this for everyone at home who's listening, who doesn't know you,

doesn't know what you're up to. Give us like the, give them like the 10,000 foot or, you know, I just, you know, maybe not back to birth, but give us kind of the origin story. What's up now. And then we'll go from there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, so high level view, you know, I've been in the business, you know, since, since 2008, I've been on the commercial brokering side. So I was doing commercial brokering, similar to I was doing commercial brokering, similar to what you're doing there at Rogue Wrists, you know, PNC, commercial PNC, you know, at it for a number of years, building up that book of business. And then I guess we

got to the point where we plateaued, my partner and I. So we were both at a direct writer. We were working for a direct writer, captive agents for like 12 years at Fairfax Financial Company. And we decided to branch out to the brokering side. And then we started feeling a lot of the additional workload that's on the brokering side. Like people have no idea what brokers do behind the scenes. Like everyone's, you know clients push push brokers for

quotes push them for service they don't realize how much back-end work there is how much administrative work there is so we felt it and as we scaled that book up you know we were just drowning in service work so we're like hey you know we got to do something here so that's when we kind of started building out uh boardwalk insurance and we were building out our own unique solutions, our own technology. That's basically, you know, the brains behind the operation. It's like, I guess you can call it, we don't like to call it a BMS system, you know, for your listeners. I'm sure the technical ones will understand BMS is broker management system. There's also a PMS and we're not talking about the time of the month PMS,

like policy management system. So it's sort of like that. It's kind of like everything, it's housing all of our operations, but the reason why we decided not to purchase something off the shelf, we built the solution so we can remain agile and flexible and really plug in to different providers, different service providers out there and make this really robust and take away as much heavy lifting as possible from the producer. So that's kind of like why we did it two years in now. We launched in March 2021. It's been going great. We're running a lot of business. You know, there's obviously some bottlenecks on the producer side, as you know, but, you know, we'll dive into it deeper, but that's kind of like the high level we're at. We're in Canada, in Ontario, selling mainly in Ontario, but we do sell out of province as well. And, you know, I did meet, you know, Dylan at InsurTech New York City. So we were in InsurTech. We were in a lab, an accelerator with InsurTech New York, and that's where we met

Dylan. And he had such great things to say about you, Ryan. He's like, you got to listen to Ryan. He's doing amazing things. Where we are, he was talking about your content, how unbelievable it is. And I do commend you, Ryan. The content you're putting out, that's a big commitment. And you're doing a great job. Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We can come back to that side in a minute too. I think, you know, what I'm, what I, what I think is really interesting. So, so this, what you have done, and one of the things that I think is, is so admirable and exciting. And I'm so interested in is like, what you have decided to do is something that every independent, I shouldn't say every, all of the independent agents that I know who are thinking, where is the puck going and not

where it is today? Now, one of the interesting things about our business is you can think, you know, again, taking this kind of hockey analogy here, like you don't even, to be successful in our industry, you don't even have to be playing where the puck is today. You can still be doing shit like the way it was 10, 20 years ago and be successful. That's the crazy part about our business. So then there are the people who are kind of just kind of going along, operating with the tools that are kind of given to them. They go to enough carrier functions or enough association functions like, ah, you know,

I'll adopt this tool eventually. You know, they're all kind of laggards. They're not even like, they're not even like, you know, the, the late majority, they're like straight laggards. If anyone's ever read crossing the chasm, um, which is, uh, which is a chasm or, uh, uh, uh, a tremendous book for anyone who has not read that and is interested, but, um, anyone who I know, and it's a growing group of people, which is exciting, who is thinking about where the puck is going in our business. They all have this fantasy of, man, I'd love to create my own, you know, down here we call it agency management system, not a broker management system.

So, you know, our own AMS. And then you start to think about all the technical hurdles and all the sunk cost into technology and building out a development team or hiring a third party development team. And geez, I sell insurance. I don't know anything about developing software or what that looks like. What was it in your past? It's such a big commitment to take on building this out. What was that moment like where you were like, you know what? There's no other path for us. For us to be who we are, for what we want to do. There's no other path. Cause, cause it is an enormous commitment and I am positive, you know,

and I'm sure you'd talk about it. This has not just been like very easy, clear, incremental growth and everything's been fine. So like, talk to me about that first moment when you look at, you know, you look at your partner and you're like, you know what? We got, this is some, we have to to do this. Like there's no other option for us. This is where we're going. What was that like? Yeah, that's a great question, Ryan. It's and it's pretty funny, actually, you know, it took some naiveness. I'm not gonna lie, you know, we were coming from the product side, like no different than you like we knew the product very well, but nothing to do with development. Now, my partner is a little bit more tech savvy, you know, than I am. He's always had some kind of passion for technology and he's never developed any technology, but he's always been very passionate and avid in, you know, learning about it. So it started in a Starbucks, actually, we were sitting in a Starbucks, having a coffee and just, just on a piece of like a napkin, a piece of paper. And we just started, you know, we were talking about some problems and some hurdles we were having with our current AMS system

and how it couldn't do this and couldn't do that. And we just started like wireframing. We just started drawing screens out on a piece of paper, a napkin. We're like, well, what if, you know, a screen looked like this when the producer came in and they can access this data and they could do this. And then we just started snowballing. We ended up talking to an advisor. So we brought someone on early on, onto our advisory board. And he, he was a VP at a tech firm, a local tech firm here. And he started giving us the structure. So that took a lot of time, like that, that discovery period of where we had to learn what, how to do this, like what wireframing is, what sprints are, development sprints, like front end, back end, UX, UI. Like it was exciting though.

We were passionate about it. Like we love insurance, but it was exciting learning this new portion of the business. So we started, you know, we, we started investing tons of hours after work in the night, in the mornings. And we're just researching and meeting with all these different you know consultants as well ctos of companies we had some friends that were ctos so we just started to gather all this info and we start to get excited

and be like wow you know if we can do that if we can pull this off this system would be amazing and right now there's there's really no system out there for, for producers that would give them these tools. And like you said, like the puck, you know, you could succeed by not being where the puck is, but if you can get ahead of it and you can be where the puck's going to be, you know, a year down the road, two years down the road, then you could start, you know, you could start scoring and winning big. And that's what we want. Like we were doing well without the tools, like you said, but it's just not scalable and it's not going to be sustainable over a long period of time. We're young, like, you know, weS has sucked. They're all behind, you know, they're, you know, they're,

they're as much as the head, you know, there's so much work in writing insurance and then your, your AMS is a second job essentially. You know what I mean? All this, you know, you've heard all these things and they're all terrible. And look, I think that hopefully St. Peter will judge all of the people who've run agency man, legacy agency management systems harshly when they decide to make their trip up North. And, but

it has been a reality, right? That that's just, that's just the way that it was. And, you know, when I, when I, when I think about, you know, so, so there's always been this, this kind of, this kind of catch 22 people will say, you know, people like you and I sit on these podcasts and we say, you know, so there's always been this, this kind of, this kind of catch 22, people will say, you know, people like you and I sit on these podcasts and we say, you know, this is where it's going. This is where the puck is going. This, you know, one of these days, one of these days. And then you've got these legacy brokers who are like, ah, you guys are, you young guys are moron. You know, not that I'm not young anymore, but like, you know, you're morons just go get Epic or just go get, you know, go get one of the standard systems and sell insurance. Our job is to sell insurance. And I'm like, I get that, right? Like I wholeheartedly get that and have learned

that lesson the hard way many, many times where I thought I was out ahead of something and just, it just didn't make a difference, but there was something in my core. And I, and I, and I think this is what we really connected on, even if we didn't verbalize it during our first conversation was like, I just feel, I can't, I can't not believe that there isn't going to be a day. That's a triple negative by the way. So I get points for that. That there is going to come a time when that, when that, when that, when that, that buck does drop, when, when it, when it does happen, when, when being out ahead of it, when having connectivity, when having clean, clear, easy systems that you can train people on quickly. When, when all of a sudden that flips over and the people who haven't made that jump, who haven't thought about the things that you were thinking about, and we're trying to think

about it, Rogan, and there are many others, you know, we're not alone, but when, when all of a sudden being in that game and thinking out ahead is going to end up being a competitive advantage i just it's it's happening it can't happen in every other industry and not this industry forever i think eventually that rubber band is going to snap forward and the people that are thinking the way you are they're going to be the ones that i don't want to say survive because you can survive without it but i did a podcast that hasn't dropped yet and i can't wait for it to, and the title of it is, and I think this is kind of relates to this is you're going to be okay, but your kids are fucked. And like that, that's

kind of like my thought is like the 60 year old guy who's plugging along. He doesn't need to think the way you're thinking. He doesn't have to think the way you're thinking at all. He's, he's good. His spouse is always going to have a seven series BMW in the driveway. He's going to have his house in Florida. He's going to take his great trips. Everything's good. His life is set. We're doing this for the next generation, for the next generation, his 35 year old kid, or, or, you know, you know, whether it's a guy or girl comes behind him, that, that person's going to struggle. That person's going to struggle. That's the one that's going to be, you know, you're, you're setting your, you're setting

your perpetuation up for, for headache. Yeah. Do you, do you have kids, right? I do. Yeah. Yeah. Nine and seven, two boys. Yep. So there you go. The rogue risk will be ready for them when they come in. There's going to, it's going to be just the machine that's running itself and they just plug into it and just watch it go. i'm telling you i mean we make that joke all the time like my partner and i he's like you know he goes you know when your daughter penelope uh you know grows up she's six years old he goes and she gets into insurance that's when boardwalk will be ready to just you know take over so it is a long-term investment and we understand and like you said you said you're not young you're very young ryan especially in our industry like in our industry it's it is an

aging demographic so we are very young and it's exciting to see all this young talent coming in they're very passionate about the direction of the industry but you're right like if you speak to someone that's toward nearing the end it's very insurance risk management. And that's important too. Like you said, that's important too. But insurance risk management, the business is going to become more than just that in 5, 10, 15 years. If you're just doing that, you're going to be left behind. So we're just trying to future-proof ourselves. And I think it's amazing. And I don't want to be... Another thing that I've learned, and I learned this from one of my, one of my good buddies, uh, Gordon Coyle, who's been on the show and anyone who's listening, he had, we had, we had a great conversation,

um, six months or so ago. I can't remember when it was, but he's, um, he's in his, uh, early sixties and, and dude is absolutely crushing it. Like create a five-year goal for himself said, I don't want to be like all my peers who are just kind of coasting in i want to take my agency and i have x you know x goal that i want to hit in these five years and he's got this great agency with like a i don't want to say a narrow niche but like a really interesting focus and like dno and eno and cyber for like vc firms and all this kind of shit and he's like right outside new york and the dude is crushing it and he's thinking the way you and i are thinking so it's like it's not an age thing but it definitely age tends to play just because of life cycles but you can be at any point in your career and if you yeah here's the other thing man i think the thinking about this shit is fun too

like selling insurance is great and i love making money and it's a great industry. I'll never leave it again. I did, but I never will again. But man, thinking about this stuff, dreaming about the way things could be, even if it's small little tweaks, it's energizing. Like you, you know, it can be frustrating, but it's also very energizing. I don't know. It is. There's so much room for improvement and so much room for disruption. It's, it's unbelievable. And, and it's amazing your podcast, you interviewed so many, so many talented individuals and it's, it's so interesting and exciting to hear what they're

doing. You know, everyone's doing something a little bit unique and finding a better way to get to that, that puck in the net. Yeah. You know, fewer strides to get there right now we can get that puck in the net, but we're just, to get there now right now we can get that puck in the net but we're just you know we're really striding like taking a lot of strides we're skating hard we're we're short-staffed we're under man that's another thing talent is another thing we should talk about you know i don't know how it is where you are but finding like experienced commercial pnc producers it's so challenging. I'll tell you what. Yeah.

People who live in Florida licensed in Canada, because Florida is such a shit show from a marketplace. There are a ton of really talented people in the state of Florida who've been let go or just fed up with the market. And so I, we, we actually find a lot of really talented people in the state of Florida because Florida, you know, all these traditional agencies in Florida, it's a shit show down there. I mean, and not anyone's fault, just the hurricanes and the weather and all the kind of stuff that these eight, a lot of people get churned or spit out or agencies fall. And so what

we've, we've found is that there's a lot of really talented people in the state of Florida who, because of that marketplace, are kind of either disenfranchised with their business or they're kind of stuck or they've been let go or they're kind of, you know, not – there's nowhere for them to go because it's such a terrible market down there. And I don't mean terrible like the agents are terrible. I just mean they're really handcuffed by what they can do. And there's a lot of talent. And there's other places too. But have you thought about reaching down into – because we're lucky in that we'll hire anybody from anywhere in the States. So we don't have the talent issue as much because we have such a large pool to pull from. Have you ever thought about coming down into the States and getting people licensed in Canada? You know what we haven't, we've thought about getting them

from other provinces, but never going into the States, I guess, just because of the regulatory licensing requirements, like they would have to get their Canadian license. And I we've looked into getting the U S license. If you're, if you're not a resident, it's very challenging. You need someone there. That's a resident that can get that license. You know more about it than I do. But we thought they would have the same hurdles coming north versus south. Now, are you using like a recruiter to find these individuals? Or are you actually going out and hunting yourself?

Yeah, so I'll say part of the content is recruiting. Part of the content play is recruiting. Part of talking about who we are, the way we do it. I have this, this little, I guess it's a blog, I guess you could call it called finding peak, which, which I have a, I have this, I have to create content and get it out of my system. It's like, I don't know if you've ever seen a superhero movie where if they don't like get rid of their power or whatever, like they blow up. Like, it's kind of like that for me. Like, if I'm not creating and writing, like I get a little crazy.

But it's also a recruiting tool to say, hey, like, this is the way we think here. Like, this idea of peak performance and small incremental growth and getting 1% better every day. And like, if you like this mentality, then we could be a good fit for you. So the content helps. We use Indeed LinkedIn. So I'd say for a lot of our positions, the vast majority, we do not use a recruiter. However, we have, like we recently needed, we needed an accounting person that could sit in our, we've been outsourcing our accounting and commissions

and I have nothing negative to say about the companies that we used. It just got to the point where we needed someone in-house. To find that specific expertise, we had to use a recruiter. And we're also hiring a director of sales and a director of service right now for similar reasons. We had, you know, kind of had some hodgepodge and it's just, we've matured to the point where we need a dedicated people in those positions and we're going to use recruiters for them too. So, so for some of like the more very specific skill-based stuff we we've used and you know, I have no affiliation with them other than we pay them but uh we use the jonas the jonas group is the name of the recruiting firm that we've used and had a

lot of success with them so that makes sense so so your producers that you're bringing on are you sort of putting them through like a rogue risk class you know where they they they come junior to you maybe just licensed or about to get licensed. And you start to train them up and move them through the ranks. Maybe they start in a service role and they move up into a sales role. Is that what you're doing there? Are you looking for people ready to sell? If any of my producers are listening, I'm going to talk where the puck is going and not where it has been.

So depending on when you came into rogue um you got a very different experience so some of the early producers and people that came in it was an absolute show it was like go do insurance like i there's so many things on fire just your startup it's a startup it's only natural but so what we're actually building out and the reason we're looking for a head of service is because the woman who was running our head of service, she actually has this really, she has an affinity for the patients, the mind, for training and development. She's really good at putting things in SOPs. I wish I had that. Right?

She's just, and again, it was um we just figured it out by accident i asked her to do a couple like like trainings on stuff and like i had her hand hold a couple people that were struggling with things and when they came out of working with her it was like night and day and i was like her name is leslie and i just said leslie like you know it seems like while you're very good at service this is something you're passionate about and whatever. So we are currently building out what we call the rogue digital producer school, because I'm not going to like, there's killing commercial. There's Mick Hunt stuff. There's, you know, Kelly, Donald Piro as a thing, Charles Speck, you know,

there's a bunch of people that can teach you the core kind of classic tried and true. And I don't mean that in any negative ways of, of selling insurance. Yep. What we do at rogue is different. And, and, and it took me a while to realize how different it actually was. Like I would put some, I put a couple, we've had a couple of fits and starts on, on producers.

And, and it's because you're either a digital producer or you aren't. If you take a classic producer and try to make them a digital producer, they have to have the right disposition to do that. It isn't that you can't take a classic producer, plug them into a digital model and expect them to be successful. The, the, I was, I was not aware of the amount of difference between those two things. And so what we're building and what Leslie's building and I, you know, we're going to start by launching this to our internal team. So every producer that comes in, we'll go through the rogue digital producer school. And then eventually we'd like to expand it to our parent companies

network, the SIA network. And then eventually we may open it up to a broader ecosystem. Because I do think that this will be, I want, I, what I have tasked her with is building, you know, the best in class digital. We're not, I don't want to compete against these in-person trainings and that kind of stuff. That's not what we're trying to do. This is going to be like, you know, whether we use them or not not like a teachable style format that you go through with tests and you essentially come out like what i said to her is i want to have uh and i feel like you're interviewing me now so i will flip this eventually but well we will eventually have um what i want is to have something that's so good so valuable

so important to the growth of a producer that they like take that badge and like put it on their fucking linkedin profile that's what i want. I want people like going like, look, you know, like almost like, you know how if you get like a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube, those people hold like those plaques. Like I want someone like on LinkedIn, like I'm a digital producer. You know what I mean? Like I want, I want someone like that. So that's exciting. That must be a big undertaking though, to put that together. Like that's, that's full time. Yeah. And that's why we had to move her. I mean, that was really, and you know, and these are some of the decisions that I've found. When you,

when you think about your agency as a business and not an agency, the decisions you make are different, right? So, you know, you and I can have a conversation because you, you know, one of the things I picked up on very early with you is that you think about your agency, like a business, not like, not like an agency, right? Agency is what you do or brokerage is what you do. You know what I mean? That's how, that's how you make your money, but it's a business and you have to make business decisions. Okay. I think, I think this mindset, this business versus agency or brokerage mindset

is going to be one of the, like, when we look back at this period of time, this may be like 2015, you know, we probably have five or 10 more years to go. This block of time in the insurance industry, if anybody writes books about the insurance industry, I don't think they do, but, you know, they'll look back on this time and say, this mindset was the delineation, not digital versus traditional, not any. This time period is, do you think about it like a business or do you think about it like an agency? Because us taking on the added expense

of moving our head of service to training and development and hiring, that's a major expense. That's a fixed cost. It's another human, but it's the only way to get to where we're going. And those types of decisions are what you have to do. And it's risky, it's stress inducing. But at the same time, it feels necessary to me. And I'm glad you touched on that because this, this is not just, like you said, it's not just a digital play. It's more than that. And you,

you kind of summed it up really well with looking at it like a business. We're not just building technology here. No different than you. We're embedding SOPs and KPIs into everything we do. We're optimizing our CRM. We have consultants that come into our CRM to optimize how we're communicating with our clients, how we're following up with upsell opportunities, renewals. No different than you. There's a lot more to it than just the agency side and the tech side. Then it's the business as well. Like what are your marketing strategies? Like what's your, you know, your key audience, like your ideal client profile and how do they want to be, you know, communicated with and interacted with and what channels are you giving them to communicate with you? Like, you know, not every client is fully prepared for that full digital experience. So we do offer like a kind of hybrid experience where they still,

they still can get that traditional approach, somewhat traditional with a little sprinkle of technology, but it comes down to, like you said, it's more than just tech and insurance. Like it's, there's so much more and we're trying to really push the limits on everything, not just the technology, on the actual business. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if 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. Let me ask you this when you think about so I'm talking thinking about through the customer journey, right? And this is something that we ask ourselves all the time. Are you more in the camp of this is the way we want to do business, and we're going to find the customers to do business the way we want to do business? Or are you in the camp of I want to provide customers who want to work with us with whatever experience they desire in working with us and we will adapt to the way they want to work? So to be honest, great question. I'd love to be in camp number one. And we're striving to get to camp number one, but it's taking a little bit more time. When we launched, we were more like, you know, this is how we're doing it. And, you know, we want to attract, like you said, a customer that fits that profile. The problem is, is the Canadian marketplace, the market is not massive here. And it's a little bit slow to adapt. You know, Canada's usually a little bit behind the US. So we were finding that a lot of these customers weren't ready for the way we wanted them to interact with. So we've had to step back a little bit and be a little bit more flexible,

a little bit more patient and give them the opportunity to interact still on the way on their terms. And then we're starting to slowly introduce, say like a certificate of insurance, for example. Hey, you know, instead of emailing us we'll give you this well this portal this link where you can create your own certificates and you know the uptake ideally we want every customer creating their own certificates but

the uptake believe it or not is is low on that it's it's it's getting better and better significantly as you know as businesses are starting to adopt technology and as, as newer, younger, more tech driven controllers are coming into place, but we've had to like slowly move into that. Like, Hey, we'll do your search manually. If you send us an email, the old fashioned way, but we also have this great new way that saves you time. And we try to, we try to incentivize them to nudge them forward to using the technology because it helps everybody. How do you manage the cost benefit analysis of, okay, we want to keep building towards what you said,

just using this example that you brought up this, we want insured clients who are going to be, who desire and are willing to use this self-service COI portal. Okay. That type of client is who crushes with us. But at the same time, being that you have to make money to grow your business there, you know, so, so, so then there's, there's, you know, there's going to be process procedures expense to, to building out a process that actually wows them the traditional way. So, you know, one thing that I'll tell you, I constantly struggle

with, and I'm really interested in your, your take on this this is like I know where I want to go and I actually said this the other day too I was I was complaining because I I had to uh I had to let somebody go the other day and it was one of the harder things that I've had that's never easy no and it was tough it was very tough thing I did not like it and uh didn't make me happy it didn't you know there was no part of it was it wasn't even a sense of relief it just start to finish it sucked okay and and uh and i was just bitching to um to to my uh i i have a boss he runs all of uh sia uh mad maxi i was just bitching to him and i was like and i just said man like i can see so clearly what rogue is like i just when you you know it is this i can see it there's no

fogginess like i know exactly where i want to go however if i were to just push all my chips into that that path yeah we're not profitable for five years at a minute you know what i mean like you know so so in order to make money and to make our, you know, to make sure that my people get paid and that, you know, all this stuff, like I, we have to do these other things, but to do those other things, there's time. It takes you away from getting to that vision. It costs, you know, so how do you manage that? How do you manage the realities of making money, being a, being a business growing with that, that, that, that path that you want to be on that excites you, that gets you up every day. Like I find some,

some days it's easy to manage some days. It's very, very difficult to manage that, that there, you know, sometimes they click and sometimes they're diametrically opposed and that's a hard thing. How do you, how do you manage that? So that's a, yeah, that's another great question. You're definitely good at this, at digging out information. So, you know, I have an interesting answer to this, Ryan. I think you're going to like it. So what we've been doing is creating a digital experience first for our brokers. So that's how we're getting around it. So first we want to give our brokers this digital experience and that we have a little bit more control over because, you know, we can attract, like you said, staff that understands, you know, the commercial and the tech, the tech, we could train them on the tech. We, we, we kind of eat, sleep and breathe that philosophy into our business. So they come on already with that,

you know, that's the philosophy here. So we're giving them this experience, this tech experience. We're letting them be the guinea pigs. So they're interacting with everything very digitally, very tech forward. And then they can choose to give that same experience, pass it on to the client or do a more traditional approach like, hey, you know, phone calls, emails, traditional PDF documents. So once we feel that we get to a point where, you know, the client is starting to buy in slowly, we're going to push that experience right to the client. So a lot of it's backend now, a lot of the technology we're doing, our customers don't feel a lot of it yet. We're just giving them

bit by tidbit by tidbit, a little at a time, like the certificate feature, pink slips, you know, automate like rapid renewals, just little things at a time. Our producers and our staff see it all. They're interacting with this system very digitally. And then eventually it's just going to get to a point where we start flipping the switch and moving it directly to the customer. So now instead of, you know, our producer going into the system and inputting the submission info, they're gonna be able to share that URL with the customer where the customer can input that submission info.

So we're just like kind of releasing it slowly but surely to our clients. But right now it's all back end. We're just pumping as much technology to our producers as possible and seeing how the uptake is there with how they're interacting with it and how they're, how they're communicating with the clients.

Um, so I got a couple of questions out of that. Um, so one of the things that one of the, one of the mistakes that I made quite a bit early was trying to do too much too fast. So I love what you said about thinking it in small bits. I literally write down small bits because, you know, that is something that I have had my, my way, you know, I've said this before and people, you know, have had different opinions on this, but like, I'm like a wartime general. I am you, you don't bring me in when everything's going great and you just want to like maintain. That's not, that's not me. You bring me in when everything's going great and you just want to like maintain that's not that's not me you bring me in when you're like that hill has to be ours here's what you have go figure it the

fuck like that's what i can do like i and when i get to the top of the hill i'm like all right i don't want to be here anymore you know put me in and you know put go get go give me another hill to go get right i could see that i could see that that's my way. And in that way, you know, and again, I like like like, you know, one of the things I do a lot, I read a lot. And one of the things one of the reasons why Lincoln chose Grant to be, you know, to be his field general and taking on Lee Civil War. If you don't know those references, I'm sure you do, or maybe you do, is Grant was all offense. So he fired two of the generals directly below him almost immediately because they were very defensive. And his whole thing was you can play offense and defense, but you can't play only defense.

You can't win only playing defense. You can't do it. You have to push. You have to apply pressure. When you apply pressure, that creates cracks. Cracks create opportunities. And then that's how you get in. Okay.

So in war, that makes a lot of sense. How does it make sense in business? Well, you don't know what works and what doesn't until you apply pressure to systems and see where things blow up and break. Now, I believe in that philosophy wholeheartedly. However, the hard lesson that I've had to learn, and I promise there's a question in here, is that the answer in business, unlike maybe – and maybe this is similar to war. I've never been in war. I've only read books about it. So in business,

applying massive pressure to multiple systems at one time does not work. It overwhelms your people. It overwhelms your ability to understand what's happening, what's happening well. And that is a mistake that I've made is I've moved too fast, tried to make too many changes too quickly and too rapid a succession and it's created problems. So do you think that having, and one thing I've never had is a partner. I've only ever been a solo op and I've many times thought to myself, Jesus, if I just had, even if it was like a movie and I could have like the angel and the devil on my shoulders, just to have someone else talking to me, maybe it'd be better. But like, you know, I've never had a part. Do you think having a partner allows you to

throttle either up or down, like, like be better about throttling up and down? Cause now you have that constant conversation. Do you, do you think that is like a competitive advantage for you that you did this with a partner? A hundred percent, but it has to be the right partner. So, you know, before getting into business, you know, we deal with a lot of business owners. So I've got a lot of advice and the wrong partner could be the worst thing to your business, you know, so we won't talk to that. Obviously we know the implications of having the wrong partner, but if you have the right partner and they compliment your skillset and they come in from like a different lens and you're right. I'm a lot, I'm like you, maybe not, you know, as, as much of a wartime general, but I like to push forward

and I like to drive results. My partner is a little bit more conservative. He's very methodical. Like he think he loves to think, think sometimes it's like analysis paralysis. Like I just like to do, I just want to get out there and do it. Let's just cross this off. Let's bang it out. Let's bang these things out. And he's more like, hey, let's stop. Let's plan. Let's drop. Let's test. Let's QA.

So, you know, it's good. It's good because it keeps me grounded. And a lot of times when, you know, I just want to jump into something that these waters, he may, you know, he may identify some sharks in the water before I just dive into it. So it helps. And getting that opinion helps as well. That second opinion, because a lot of times you're right. It's like, okay, I think this is what we should do, but I don't really know. It's nice having that second opinion. It's been a huge

help and having that backup, you know, we all have our uptimes and our downtimes. And when you're, when you're not on your game, it's, it's nice to have someone else you can rely on, but it has to be the right partner. Yeah. Yeah. Are you able to, or how much are you able to pull from say us-based insure tech companies and pull that up into your marketplace? Is there, are there companies that provide crossover for you or mostly do you have to watch what's going on in the U S and either try to find similar companies in Canada or recreate it yourself. I would say now it's a little bit more than before. You know, when we first started looking, there wasn't much that we can apply over from the U S because you know, the flexibility wasn't there, different wordings, different, you know, different docs, like wonder, right.

For example, like we, we spoke to wonder, right. And you know, they're, they're completing documents really great. What they're doing like applications the thing is it's us applications and when we first spoke to them a lot of these accord forms weren't really relative to to the forms we were using down here but they're becoming much more flexible like now they're willing to to adopt these forms and and to to program these forms into their system so now we can can, you know, we use CSIO forms instead of Accord forms and we can actually program our forms into their system. So I would say it is, it is opening up a lot more and we're starting to look at some providers south of the border. It is very exciting. There's,

there's lots of opportunity. Even there's, there was another one we're looking at as well. I forget the name Andrews, Andrew's talking to them. It's another provider from the US. I'll share it with you after the podcast, but they've been great to help us with ingesting information into our system. Yeah. So one of the things early in my career that I realized is that because the insurance industry is so far behind, I could just look at what was going on in other industries, recreated insurance industry, and people be like, I could just look at what was going on in other industries, recreated insurance industry and people be like, Oh my God,

look what you're doing. And I'd be like, well, you know, they've been doing this for 15 years in the marketing industry, or they've been doing this for this much time. And, you know, and because it's such an insulated industry, you know, people were like, it was like blowing their minds and the things that I was doing that, that has changed a lot today. Just, you know, I think people are more aware of what's going on in the world in general, outside of the insurance industry and technology has helped a lot with that. Do you find that

because you are dialed into the US market, at least in being part of InsureTech New York and having some of the connections that you do down here, it allows you to almost seem like you have superpowers because you can see just this, you know, not that the U.S. is better or whatever, just bigger. And now you have this big, huge and you can kind of pull, hey, I really like what this company is doing. Man, we could create that in our own system. And now we're a step ahead. Are you kind of using your connections in the U.S. market, pulling them up into your

market, building them into their system? And it's giving you kind of some advantage? Big time, big time. So before we joined InsureTech New York, and before we started really networking into the US with some of the, you know, the agencies, the insurers, the technology providers, a lot of the stuff that we've seen south of the border does not exist, and is nowhere even near development here in Canada. Like, especially with the, on the MGA side in the U S like you have so many tech forward MGAs with API connectivity. Like we don't have any of that here. Like it's just wild to see what's being done down there. So it has given us a bit of an advantage because now we have that foresight and we know where

things are eventually going to go. So we can see that and we can start to position ourselves to capitalize on that. So we know, you know, this API is coming, you know, in this segment, you know, because Hartford's doing it or travelers, you know, it's only a matter of time before travelers Canada starts to adopt that as well. So let's start getting ahead of it. So it has been helpful. And one for you, what would be good is to look, and I'm sure you already have, is look to like the UK, Europe, Europe and the UK. There's that InsureTech conference out there. And there, I think they may even be ahead of the US. They're either on par or ahead of the US because the technology that's

happening there, the plays out there are also mind blowing. We don't see too much because we haven't been participating in any, any events out there, but I'm, I am on the newsletter and I have been on a few panels where they're trying to like, I was on a panel where they interviewed, interviewed me on what's, what's happening over here. And it just was like a dinosaur compared to what they're doing over there in the UK. It's really the interesting part about the UK and even the Western European market in general is that it's almost from what I can take. And I will say that I have not spent as much time in the UK market as I think I should. It's actually, it's funny that you say that. I was listening to something the other day or, oh, I don't know what it was. Uh, I went,

I did a mastermind last week. Um, you know, again, you have all these thoughts and they come rushing back. Um, I was at a mastermind last week that Doug Benz put together. Who's an amazing agent out of Buffalo, New York, uh, go bills and not sabers. And, um, and, um, the, uh, and we were, we were in New York city. So he brought in 15 agents in New York City. So he brought in 15 agents in New York City. It was really cool, really, really well done. It was an awesome mastermind because it was event-based. So one of the things we did was we went to Lloyd's London's headquarters, which is the U.S. headquarters in New York City.

And this gentleman, Hank Watkins, who is the president of all of US Lloyd's, okay, Lloyd's is an incredibly interesting operation. And, and he gave us this really detailed, it was either 90 or 90 minutes or two hours, breakdown on Lloyd's and what it means what's going on and all this kind of stuff. And he was and he was kind of contrasting the UK and the US. And one of the things that hit me is that from a carrier perspective, from a distribution perspective, in many ways, I feel like the UK is just so far ahead in terms of what they're able to deliver from a technological experience. However, when you look at their broker model, their broker model is almost archaic compared to the US model, or at least – and I don't want – I want to say I'm sure, but this was the feeling that I got was that the – so I don't want to say this for sure.

And if someone who's listening knows, please school me on this. Hit me up on LinkedIn. I'd love to learn more about this market because it felt like, it almost felt like the broker model, the gap between what they could do D to C and what the brokers were doing, it almost got too big and it got untethered. And now all of a sudden you have this broker model and then you have this D to C model, particularly on personal insurance. I don't even think there's any brokers that sell personal insurance anymore. And it's just because the brokers didn't keep up. And in the US, that hasn't quite happened yet.

But I do feel like we would be naive to believe that it couldn't happen, especially in certain segments. I mean, we've already seen it. We're already seeing it in personal lines. With the lemonade and the hippos, I guess. Yeah, I just feel like at some point that market's going to get detached. Right now, they kind of follow each other. One takes a little bit, one takes back, but they kind of follow each other.

I feel like at some point, they're going to get detached. And I don't think it's going to be... I don't think, especially for downstream products, BOPs, standard personal lines, I don't think especially for downstream products, bops, standard personal lines, I don't think brokers agents are going to win in those games. I think eventually the way the UK has gone for some of these smaller downstream products, the market is just going to say,

if my business owner's policy is a thousand bucks, I don't need to talk to a human. I don't need to talk to a human for a thousand dollars. It's true. You're right. There is that school that think that the agency is alive and well and strong. It's not going anywhere. And it's true. It's not going anywhere in certain lines of business, but in the lines of business that you've mentioned that are very heterogeneous like that, you know, the, a lot of these smaller, very micro bot policies and small personal lines, they're not looking at coverage. Like when you're going to buy car insurance and home insurance,

you know, 90% of the buyers, they're just looking at the price, looking at the price they want. And they don't want to speak to human beings. They want to go online. They want to go on to a Bel Air direct, which is in Canada, you know, and they want to just buy their insurance online and just get the best price and be done with it. Well, here's the other thing, man, a bop is a bop is a bop is a bop is a bop. Like, you know, I have these people go, wow, you don't understand. Well, I got to make sure their coverages are set up properly. I'm like, what don't they have? That's what I don't understand. Everything's in extensions. You just, you just throw a bunch of extensions in a package of extensions.

It's all in there. Every year, the carriers put more shit. And again, my market is commercial. So I'm thinking, you know, bot business, like every year they just put more shit into the bot, more shit into the, what don't they have? What are they missing? Like if they go online and they click, you know, Hartford, you know, uh, uh, uh, you know, whatever, like a bakery bop what are they

fucking missing i don't get what they're missing you know what i mean like workers comp what are they missing in workers comp what are the workers come now okay commercial auto yes commercial auto you know maybe you set some can't go below this limit kind of shit. Like I, I guess, you know, I get your manufacturers, your wholesalers, your distributors, large contractors that are doing contractors, construction, general, you know, that kind of stuff. Some of the technology businesses. Yes. Okay. I get it. And that's the market where the brokers dominate and should dominate because you do need a human in there.

It's anything that requires like a substantial amount of underwriting or some like, you know, unique coverage, some specialized coverage based on a niche operation. So if it doesn't have that, it doesn't have that specialized coverage based on that really, really niche or unique operation, or it doesn't require extensive underwriting. There's no reason why they can't fulfill it D to C. And see, this is the distinction that I think a lot of the purists miss

is that I think, and I'd be interested in your take, what I'm not saying, and I don't think you're saying is that it doesn't mean they don't need good service. If they need help, that a human shouldn't be involved, that if they have questions, those questions shouldn't be answered with someone experience and guidance and expertise, but they don't need it to purchase the policy, right? To purchase the policy. A human does not

have to be involved to purchase the policy. Once the policy is purchased, it doesn't mean someone can't go behind and go, okay, this looks good. Check, check, check, check, check, check, check. Okay. This looks good. Or they call with a question and you don't need someone who's licensed who can answer that question and be there for them and care for them. It doesn't mean the service side goes away. I'm saying from purely a sales perspective, if your bop is, I'm going to go so far as to say under 5,000 bucks, what do you need a human to sell that policy to you for? I don't think you do. I honestly, in our numbers and what we're doing, I do not think you need a human to sell those policies, service, renewal, you know, some of the other stuff, cross selling. Sure. For sure. But like,

I don't think you need a human to sell those policies. I don't know. And I don't, and I think customers are rapidly getting to the point where they don't want a human involved because they only slow it down and muddy it up. Yeah, exactly. You're right. And, and as long as the experience, you know, answers the questions of the customer, cause that's the only thing that would come up while they're going through it. The customer is going to have questions. They're going to be like, okay, well, why do I, what's CGL or why do I need liability? Or, you know, as long as the flow answers those questions and you kind of have give that those descriptions, then I can't see there being any issues with that.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the only barrier we see that only barrier we see is sometimes they'll have you know some questions but if you have a really good online flow you should be able to answer those questions and if you can't answer those questions you just like you said you there's a chat there's a chat there's a line they can call and they can get those questions quickly answered yeah i i think you know i i i mapped out this like years ago. I mapped out this vision because, you know, I pitched TrustedChoice.com, the company that I worked for a few years ago. I pitched them on. So everyone listening to this is going to hate this, but, you know, we listened to every one. We saw everything that happened. So a lead would come in and they did a massive amount of leads. You know, they, they put a massive amount of leads to their system and we would see what would happen to those leads. Most of the time, the agents wouldn't follow up for days. This was 2014 to 2018. So today I think that has gotten a lot better. I think we rapidly improved our

response. Well, I'm not saying you, but I'm just in general, like that, that human is the bottleneck. Yes. So, so i'm watching all this and i pitched them on like why are we giving these to agents do you know how much money i was like do you know how much money trusted choice.com would make if we just said agents we're just going to sell this insurance ourselves because they obviously don't want it we're watching the numbers they get these emails because we would have read receipts on the email so we could see they didn't even open this email for like three days and then they're bitching at us that it's a bad lead and all you know all this crazy stuff and we recorded the phone calls so we could hear like and and like

agents on the phones would be like what what do you want what you want it's so true are you why are you calling me and i'm like oh my god we just sent you a person who raised their hands in the internet okay so i pitched them on like guys what, what if we created, you know, we still send leads, but we've given customers this option where they can do their own path. And I mapped this whole thing out. And I think that there are ways, and I'm happy to discuss this offline too, because it's probably not appropriate and we're running out of time. But like, there are a lot of ways, if you look at really well done flows around using, um, uh, uh, call out videos, call out boxes, um, ripcord

polls, uh, chat features, um, you know, uh, customers like you commonly chose these things. Yes. Good, better, best. There's all these really classic, but, but important customer behaviors that you could add into it that I have never seen ever. I've never seen it in an insurance flow that, that you can, that you could add that would drastically improve what I believe drastically improve the close ratio. But here's the other thing, man, I don't think anyone, and I would even put Lemonade in this as well. I don't think anyone has fully committed to the D2C model in a way. Because you look at Geico, Geico's flow kind of sucks. They only take a small amount of information, but their flow is kind of not great.

Next is the same way. It's just a, it literally looks like a freaking wedge in an iframe. Like it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's clunky, crazy stuff. And I look at it, I'm like, wow, no one is really committed to, to, to this full experience online. They're just kind of like, we ran an ad click here, you know, buy this thing. And you're like, geez, your business model is DTC and your flow is kind of like, I don't, I don't understand. And so I feel like there's still a tremendous amount of opportunity for, for DTC out there for certain segments. The flow is everything. When you get a chance, have a look at, you know, they're competitors, so I don't really want to shout them out, but I'm sure you've heard

of them. Zen insurance. So they're in Canada. They've done a pretty decent flow on BOP policies. And they are a brokerage, but they're backed by an insurer. So they do have a direct flow. And it's pretty interesting, but you're right. When you're selling direct and you're selling online, the flow is everything. And you got to put everything into it. You have to run through that flow over and over again and find out where those friction points are, where they're dropping off. You have to have trackers and tags on every page. Okay, where's the customer dropping off?

Where are they unsure? Where are they reaching out to us, chat with an agent? And then it's just, it's a huge undertaking, but you're right. If that's your business, you need to invest in that area. It's number one. I think that what happens to a lot of these DTC companies, and I don't, I don't, I don't think, I don't know their business,

but this is my best guess, is running the insurance part of the business is so hard that they put up with, they get a certain amount of inbound business that allows them to make money. They, they kind of stop there from an improvement of flow standpoint, because it's so difficult and so labor intensive and cost costly to actually run an insurance company. And I think, you know, when you're, when you're reporting to a board of directors or investors, and you're like, yeah, we're putting millions into improving our flow. They're like, eh, how about you put millions into your underwriting? Because that's where we make more money. And I get that. But I think it leaves opportunity

for idiots like you and me who are stupid enough to try to take these things on and figure them out because it's all there for us. We started that flow. We have like a little online capture and we just saw what a big undertaking it is and it's a big it is a big undertaking we're going to revisit it uh you know next quarter we're visiting it we're going to use a third-party provider to help us with that we're going to connect in but you're right it's it's a massive undertaking building that flow out we don't have the resources like you don't have the resources to do it all, you know, to build the technology, to run the brokerage, to manage the insurance partnership side, to manage the employees

and the service team, the SOPs, the KPIs, you're like literally spread so thin amongst everyone amongst everything. And you only have so many brain cycles. And that's the part, that's one of the biggest lessons that I've learned. And I think it's probably a good place to leave this conversation, has been tremendous and i appreciate the hell out of you um likewise likewise i think that i think it is very difficult to explain to people who who aren't in this space how how hard it is to manage all the different all the different veins of thought that you have going on in your head at one time just look and you probably only listed a third or maybe even a half of the things that

you have to think about every day and in your brain has to jump from sops to some service persons having a baby and now you have to figure out a way to backfill him or her you know whatever and you know and you're like and all these different things you're like you're right. Generate leads. And then after you generate the lead, the producers want leads and then they don't call the leads. Like you said, it's true. We have that problem too. Okay. We got leads for you. Call the leads. Why aren't you calling the leads? Do the training. It's, it's endless. It's endless. But dude, I think this has been absolutely wonderful. Um, I I'm, I'm rooting for you. Uh. Hopefully we can do this again. You got to anytime you want to come back on and just chat, let's do it. Where if people just want to connect

with you a little bit more about you, LinkedIn, where's the best place to learn more about you and your business? Yeah, absolutely. I would say LinkedIn, just look me up Michael Malfa, or BoardWalk Insurance. We're also on online at myboardwalk.ca. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, or you could send me an email at michael at myboardwalk.ca. It's been a pleasure being on the podcast, Ryan. I got, you know, nothing but respect for you. Kudos to you for doing this. And, you know, this is not a sprint. We're in a long race. We'll get to the end. We'll get to the finish line. Absolutely, dude.

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