How Tarmika is Making Small Commercial Profitable with Raghav Tanna

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a happy holiday hello everyone and welcome back to the show fired up for today's episode I'm fired up because I see things changing in this episode I I explain an experience that I had with with this tool with Tarmica with the tool that you know I've been talking about for months and months that that really is a cornerstone of of rogue risk and what we're trying to do in in building this hybrid human digital agency Tarmica is an integral piece of that and I had just the perfect display of that experience last week and it just happened that two days later I ended up speaking with Raghav Tana the founder of Tarmica on the show and I've kind of kept my interview with Raghav I've kind of kept it I've held on to it I haven't I didn't want to interview him right away I wanted to experience the tool I wanted to be involved with it I wanted to to have more experience with it before I had him on the show and talk to him about what is happening and I just see this tool as an absolute game changer for the industry it makes small and micro commercial profitable that's what it does that is its purpose and you can you know and there's it's just the beginning and and I'm so excited and and I will say that there are going to be moments where I gush over what this tool is doing but you know for a startup agency like mine and I'm so excited and I'm so excited and I will say that there are going to be moments where I gush over what this tool is doing but you know for a startup agency like mine mine and for so many other you know small and or startup agencies that are struggling to get ahead with small commercial what Tarmica is doing will completely flip the script on what small commercial can be for an agency and I'm just excited about that I'm excited when I find a piece of technology that that actually works and actually benefits independent agents there's not some sub you know some sub narrative where they're really just trying to build up enough of of a business so then they can they can you know flip it and start selling insurance themselves or if they're constantly you know we're always so many sure techs are constantly both trying to to court the independent market while still subverting it at the same time and and just none of that is true with Tarmica so I'm very excited to share this with you there probably will be moments where it sounds like a commercial I don't care I believe in this product I don't care if you use it or not I use it I use it I use it every every single day and I see small and micro commercial becoming available at scale making it profitable and I think you are absolutely nuts if you write micro and small commercial and you're not using Tarmica now granted if they don't have the markets yet where you are that's a different story but if they do you need to get on this tool so that's that's it that's the deal guys the only thing I will say other than that is go to Ryan RyanHanley.com stop what you're doing and type in your email address so you can get new episodes by email even if you're subscribed on iTunes or wherever you listen to shows get get on the email list because there are some additional things that I sent out I wrote an article a couple weeks ago and I emailed that out so if you're interested in that kind of stuff if you're interested in kind of being in line with some of the content that I'm creating and different things that I'm doing it's mostly just the podcast but there is some other stuff and if you want to get on that email list go to RyanHanley.com just type your email in right at the top and you'll be on the list all right let's get on the interview so what's up dude not much we're having a big week nine new agencies signed yesterday that's amazing I'm out yeah dude so so the platform worked exactly how it's supposed to work yesterday so I am sitting here phone rings boom pick it up you know Ryan rogue risk whatever hey man I'm really in a pinch here I called three different agencies a week ago yeah I own an art studio I own an art studio I'm trying to get into this new building I need to have insurance to get in the building and I expected to be able to have I expected to have it done by now and no one's gotten back to me a week later can you help me no problem pull up my Tarmica installation I go I go hey man here's what I'm gonna do I've built some special technology where I can get you rates for you know right over the phone here I'm just gonna ask you some questions we're gonna pull up rates immediately while I'm on the phone we'll we'll at least know what you're gonna pay within five minutes that cool yeah that sounds great so just walk through the questions bing bing bing bing bing bing you know I mean pretty straightforward risk it's like six hundred dollar bop so it's not like I'm making a million dollars but it took me seven minutes I get to the end I go so five hundred and fifty three dollars uh with Liberty Mutual you know all the coverage that he needed and you know he's gonna get one million two million with a little bit of uh BPP yeah and um he's like he literally goes on the phone he goes holy shit he goes I've literally called three agencies and been waiting for a week and it took me seven minutes on the phone with you he goes I'm giving you the best Google review ever so there we go bridged over to Liberty took his credit card bing bang boom binder out the door he's into his shop today he text me and said hey man I just want to thank you again because I'm you know I wouldn't have been able to get in today if I hadn't called you and from my perspective like shit yeah I mean it's a five hundred and fifty three dollar bop you know seven minutes but it took me all told to take the payment and everything it took me 25 minutes 25 minutes tops from phone call to bound policy binder out the door and you get paid 200 bucks and here's the other thing dude's gonna talk to people I'm gonna solicit his personal lines so like I just I got done with um I got done with uh with that transaction and I texted you and I was excited because you know that's you know I've been putting stuff in the system as as it's coming the door yeah but I felt like that was the first time that I got a call I pulled up my portal I walked the guy right through the portal live on the phone and and on the phone I'm getting rates back from the carriers yeah and we need to get but that's the thing we need to get you more carriers but that's perfect because yesterday you texted me I gotta say yesterday was a great day we had 106 quotes come in yesterday total awesome so 106 people quoted yesterday you text me saying you bound a policy John Horvath texted me and said uh just got my first submission through Grange but this is fucking great yeah it is great it is great I will say you know so I was thinking about um I was thinking about uh you know the next advisory council meeting or whatever and for those listening at home you know people know this but you know I'm on the advisory board for Tarmaca and I'll have done an intro for this whatever so um but you know some some simple things from a tracking perspective like being able to go back in and like check a box and let you guys know like hey you know I didn't quote CNA I Markel bounced out I quoted Chubb Liberty and Hanover and I bound with Liberty at 553 check you know like that would be that would be you know over time that would be a cool feature like to be able to track like what's going on I'm sure you're tracking some of that but um yeah you know we have a lot of reporting coming through now I mean there's still some kinks we have to work out obviously they're always there always will be but we're we're working on all of them day by day getting through it so it's awesome yeah no it um I just uh I was excited because I I could see the vision you know when we first met um you know so for everyone listening at home you know I I first I first met you uh we talked did we talk on the phone I think we talked on the phone Paradiso did a text message intro we talked on the phone we kind of hit it off and then I was going out to see Paradiso this is maybe like February yeah February and um and I texted you and I was like yo dude I'm gonna be in Connecticut this is before the the Rona and uh I said yo I'm gonna be in Connecticut you bombed down and then we probably spent like what two two two and a half hours just talking shop and stuff and um I was just completely sold on on value proposition because yeah I just couldn't I mean that was a profitable $553 bop profit you know what I mean so for every other agency that's not using Tarmica that account right there is unprofitable that's a profitable transaction for me now it took 25 minutes and I'm gonna cross sell the shit out of them I'm gonna get a great google review absolutely profitable transaction and uh that was what I bought into in February when you pitch you know when you laid out what it's gonna be and I mean and we're just you know what what version are you on I mean well you're just getting started you think about that I mean I'm like this is crazy just you have a bank of people just answering the phone helping them building relationships walking them through closing deals I mean it's I think I think I was jacked up yesterday I'm super probably iteration like 40 and we probably have 100 to go this year alone so I mean it changes every day but we're working on all the kinks and people like you are the ones that and when you tell me hey I just got this account found in five minutes or whatever I mean that's the most important thing to us is how can you make yourself more profitable over the next year for anything that's under you know if you have a hundred thousand dollar account obviously it's a little different but if you're talking to these five hundred to ten thousand dollar bops this is the easiest solution you can have yes yes and you know because there's so much discussion today about uh you know like um you know so take Carruthers right who I know you've talked to yeah so Carruthers and some other guys like Carruthers um are really I want to say um I don't know what the best way to say this is they are um normalizing middle market right they're making they're helping more and more agents feel comfortable address middle market accounts which is something that is very uncomfortable you know unless you unless you're taught how to do it it is very uncomfortable to approach somebody with 150 250 400 000 500 000 of premium and and start talking to them before you've ever done it before and they're starting to normalize that and it feels very sexy it feels um you know you sign a big account you get the macho going you know you know whether you're whether you're male or female you know that machismo you pull the shoulders back a little bit you walk a little taller and um and what I love about this is uh if we all only sold middle market then 75 of the marketplace would have no no one to go to we'd all be going to progressives call center and I believe that independent agents kit with a tool like this get the best of both worlds and I don't just want this to be a I don't want this to be just be a pitch for tarmunga but I just this is like the perfect time for the call since I came off of that thing yesterday where I was like it worked exactly as it's supposed to and now I'm jacked out of my mind yep I love it that's what I like to hear this is like my favorite type of conversation it's someone like you calling me and saying hey I I had someone call me I plugged it in it took seven minutes because realistically if you had picked the market that you would have went to and went directly to that carrier on the phone chances of them coming back with a quote that you could have found right on the fly there are slim yeah you're taking you're taking a risk or and here's the other thing what I and this is what I'm kind of doing this is what I've started doing on personal lines too uh shout out to my shorty uh for for telling me to do this even though you know I it seems intuitive now but she she my shorty is my wife Lauren um she uh uh just pulling up the portal while you're on the phone with them because what do you normally do right you you have a piece of paper and and I have them I mean look at look at this right here this is this is the other side of it is this disaster of notes which no one can see in red ink on a yellow piece of paper which I can barely read my own handwriting and now I'm supposed to take this and plug this into seven different carriers and figure out you know who's you know where do I save an extra hundred bucks Liberty or Hartford you know I mean like and then what ends up happening is you do a disservice to the client because your csr goes I'm not plugging that into seven different carriers I don't care if the quote comes back at $775 or $650 not to the client that $125 that could mean the world to them but to your CSR they're like f it don't care Liberty is easy to use I'm just going to go to Liberty um and and that's what it's going to be and um you know the beauty of again of having this ability is you're talking to them on the phone you're plugging the answers right into the system it's it's pushing back real rates so now you you know even if you want to go in and bridge to two different systems and kind of work some some more of the stuff in the system that's fine but at least you know where to start and uh um I yeah I I uh yeah I saw it I just think I've been well obviously I've been plugging in the listeners of the show know because I um do the live read before a lot all the episodes and stuff but uh I really believe that what you've built here is should rejuvenate um or re-enthusi bring enthusiasm back till tomorrow's a vacation day bring enthusiasm back to small commercial because you can just fly I mean you can just fly so it doesn't have to be sexy either it's just it's profitable again I think that's the most important part doesn't have to be sexy if it's profitable 100% so okay so let's uh so we started with that enormous and ridiculous plug and I do think everyone should go to tarmika.com that's tarmika.com and get your demo today even if you don't buy the system know the system so that when you're ready to step into the big leagues you can uh you can you can know who to talk to but um with that plug out of the way I just want I think it's important for the audience for this audience for my audience to know more about you and people have probably heard a little bit about you on Cass's podcast and I know you've been making the rounds so maybe they've gotten some of the story but um I want to just briefly get into your background because your background is um your background was crucial to my belief in your ability to make this product successful long term for independent agents and um I I would just love for you to run that down yeah so I I started my insurance career as Chris our director sales always says in diapers my dad's owned an agency for for a very long time um and I I was in his office when I was young he used to work out of the basement for a few years when he first started so I've always been around it and when I graduated college it was natural for me to go into the insurance industry so I worked at Travelers uh I did that for a few years and my dad was telling me that he would love for me to come back and work with him uh help drive new business on the commercial line side only uh so I started doing it and I did that for about two years and there was one account in particular where we submitted it him and I were working on it together uh it was a uh referral to him and I also knew the person so we're working on it together and we'd submitted this through our CSRs to uh seven accounts seven different carriers and then it got declined by six um and this took a long time it was a big account it had a ton of workers comp class codes I was a staffing firm out of Virginia and it took forever so I got annoyed naturally and I decided I was gonna go find a solution and ensure tech connect happened to be coming up so I went and attended and I didn't see anything that I thought was valuable um for an agency so one thing led to another and we just decided we're gonna start building this thing and I found a co-founder in Gita uh contacted my dad's and one thing led to another and here we are two years later and we have a product that agencies are using and how many agencies are on a platform now so we're over 200 now um but we have all these cluster agreements and and aggregator agreements so in total agencies that can have access to the system it's into the thousands now wow it's crazy man I mean just how fast it's going um so so the key the key uh piece of that was that you had sold before and that your dad owned an agency and and what I really like too is that you were building the product out of you know building the product out of the office that your dad actually operated in as well and I mean that in an incredibly positive way because what it said to me was so so my beef with insure tech has always been that and and this is changing rapidly so this is not really the case but I think for for for a lot of agents they're gun shy on up and coming insure tech products because the curve is very natural boisterous young ceo comes in tells everyone that they're doing everything wrong that the product they're creating is going to solve either one very large problem or every problem they've ever had and either way they act as if none of us have ever even thought about that problem before and how could we have been so stupid up until this point not to solve it and then they get smashed in to the industry um things don't work out quite the way they think and then uh they either sell off to someone who's a competitor to us or the product just kind of dwindles a few agents use it and you never hear from them again and the hard part about that is um the innovators in the industry were they're always looking for that edge and they and they they get into these products and they try it and then a few people follow them and then they get burnt and then they're back out and they're still looking for something and it creates this quagmire and what what what i thought was so interesting was you had a very healthy uh respect for what an independent agent is and does um not just like you not just like you understood but you lived it you had breathed it you had been told no you'd grinded out you know all the all the prospecting ways and and felt that pain and um i think you know i think that type of commitment is why some of the people who are in the tarmica ecosystem who are some of the most respected people in the industry are actually there i mean it's a testament to you um that you have some like paradiso like frank setner you know some of these people who are advisors to you in all different capacities you know but that that are spending time and talking to you i mean they're the right people man yeah i think one of the most important things too is and this is this is coming from the agency side as well but when back when i was on the agency side one of the worst things is to build a relationship with someone um a close relationship with someone actually have the opportunity to quote their business and then not come back for a week and then that ruins the relationship right if you lose a client because you never had a real relationship with them that doesn't matter to me if you actually build a legitimate relationship with someone you can't quote it enough time and give them the service that they deserve that's when you lose a client and that's the worst feeling so that's one of the reasons why we built this is because i never wanted to experience uh a good client relationship where i couldn't deliver yeah um but you're right i mean the the people that have come around is one of the reasons where we've been uh and i i never say we're successful but it's one of the reasons why i i'm i'm happy where we are today um we have the right people behind us we have the right people that use the system um people want to get a little more efficient in their offices and fortunately uh people like you have introduced me as the best people in the industry and it's helped us quite a bit yeah i mean i know you have other uh advised as well but um connecting with paradiso was i think a huge win for you because you know and i'll say you know just to be completely transparent if he hadn't been the one that had introduced me to you i probably would have been much more hesitant in you know believing many of the things that you had said in our first discussion because you know you just i've you know when i was at agency nation i pitched every day by another insurance like literally every day um and it wasn't like you were pitching we were just having a conversation but you were describing what you're doing and what your process was and um you know with with paradiso being the one that's saying hey man you need to talk to this kid like he's doing something special uh that that kind of really opened up my ears and i know that's the case for a lot of the other people that are working with you he was a he was a really great um early get from an advisory standpoint for you i think he played a huge role in and moving you forward quickly at the very beginning yeah i mean i talked to chris weekly and he's been he's been a tremendous help for us not just with introductions but with his entire office helping us with custom uis and making sure that we have the right flow for an agency um he's been amazing i mean between him the first two guys that really helped sever him and matt nomoli and yeah matt those are those are two pretty big names in this industry so for the two of them to back us and help us as much as they have with introductions and and looking at our ui over and over again every iteration change and making sure it looks good it's huge so we i i can't thank them enough and they'll tell you that i tell them every time i talk to them that i appreciate what they're doing but they always say it it's trying they're trying to better the industry and i think for them to give us that respect is huge well yes yes that it would be very very difficult for someone to have to say i mean everyone can find fault in someone but you could never say about chris or matt that whether you agree with their position or not you could not say that their position wasn't in what they believed was in the best interest of not just themselves but the industry yeah and i think um that's a rare quality and uh to have both both of those guys um you know because after so basically for me it was chris told me to talk to you we talked and then i called matt and i was like how legit is everything that this dude just said because chris just interviewed introduced so then i got the back the sandwich side too and then i was like then i think i texted you back and i was like yeah i'm i'm in i'm in that's awesome whatever you need if i think if those teams recommend you then uh you know i would be an asshole for saying no that was a setup though we planned that whole thing we made sure that you chose matt to call next instead of anybody else to make sure that we all sandwiched you together and you joined in the next week yeah well i mean and you got duffy and you got a bunch of other great agencies that are just using the tool and yeah um you know all that stuff just adds up and i think uh i so it was really interesting so what was really interesting to me and um if you're not aware by now i don't come into these conversations with an agenda but uh i i was listening cast had a really great uh interview i don't know if you listen to cast's podcast at all i do but he had a great interview with caitlin eggers from quantum the other day i don't know if you uh heard that one but she was talking about uh buying leads online so if you put into ioa's facebook group which i know you're not a part of because you don't know an agency but there's you know if you put um where do you buy leads from you will get about 7 000 comments half the people will just put like interested and the other half will put you're an a-hole if you have to buy leads right that's basically the perception is people either are interested but don't really want haven't really done the work to figure it out or they just think that you're a let you're less than for having bought them yeah and uh i guess i can kind of understand both perceptions but i think the reason i think the reason that people believe buying leads is somehow um i don't know like you're you don't get as much street cred for that is because is this idea that you you couldn't be profitable doing it that way right if i were to buy a commercial lines lead or just run ppc ads for for small business right and and and they call um like like you if i had to go to liberty hanover chubb if i had to go to all these different places guard to get to get quotes it is now by the second by the second carrier that i'm logging into that's going to have a different ui that's going to be interested in slightly different information it's going to have different discounts you know my brain has already taken up way too many cycles and i'm now unprofitable and and and i think that's the thought process is he's like super smart agents who you know you know talk in terms of like balance sheets and stuff and and feel that somehow that makes them superior they they're like oh well you don't get it because you have to buy leads and it's impossible to be profitable that way so you just don't get it and you know i think as personal lines quoting becomes more straightforward um and now with this on commercial lines i mean i i have dialed up every commercial small business commercial lead gen opportunity that exists i have them all coming in now because i can just plow through quotes all day long i mean it's freaking easy and i think it changes the game from a lead buying perspective i think it opens up it opens up uh and i'm gushing but i just we haven't talked in a while and i'm in a good mood today and i'm going i'm going to buffalo tomorrow so i'm super excited um i just think it opens up all these opportunities for small agencies who want to make that jump but have never had the efficiencies to do so this allows them to do that with small commercial it allows them to do it yeah and i won't i won't touch on buffalo because you know my feelings about buffalo but yeah no cam cam newton by the way so that means we still have that agreement that you owe me dinner once the patriots win the division just want to throw that out cam newton cam newton was a gift to the buffalo bills it's gonna happen he's gonna come out he'll have a good first game then he'll be terrible for three games and then his shoulder will hurt and then the bills will win the afc east that's that's what's gonna happen i'm telling you right i disagree but i'll touch on what you said before that because i guess that's more important for this conversation um so it's it's funny because every when we first started this everyone said you're commoditizing small commercial and that's not what we want to do and i feel the exact opposite we're rewarding carriers that have the technology to actually implement it and help their agents be more profitable more efficient and those agencies by nature are going to reward those carriers in return for doing it and that's proven true time and time again so it's not commoditizing anything we consistently customize our platform for each individual carrier to make it fit what they're looking for and their agencies are rewarding them by placing business with them so that's the most important thing to me is i don't treat it like personal lines because it's not it's not a lowest premium wins 18.4 of the premium in our system is the lowest that's bound it's extremely low um most important thing for us is how do we reward these carriers that are actually trying to help their agencies be more profitable be better and in return how do we get the agencies to reward those carriers so i i love that you brought up the c word because um this is i i've been calling bullshit on this on this idea for basically since i started stepping on stages 10 years ago because the things that i was talking about from a digital standpoint 10 years ago people are like oh our clients don't go online that's the commodity business but even personal lines it's not it's not come on because so so basically what you're saying is if you're saying that online rating and comparative rating in this type of nature is somehow commoditizing the business then what you're saying is that what makes independent agents not a commodity is their ability to log into carrier systems and stick information in that that's what you're saying because that's all you're doing when you give a when you give an account sheet to a csr and you say hey go market this that's all they're doing they're taking the information they're plugging it into systems and then everyone goes single sign on how come we don't have you don't need single sign on if you have one platform that's already api'd in and i gotta say though the carriers that we work with and now we have 23 carriers that are contracted with us um the carriers that we're partnering with don't feel that way they don't feel like it's commoditizing and there's i mean there's a reason behind it but they're partnering with us because they think it's beneficial to the agency not because they think they're being commoditized and they have to do it no one has to do this we need carriers more than they'll ever need us i'm talking about me as an insure tech company not you as an agency yeah they need we need them more than they need us and they're willing to do stuff like this because they recognize the value in it for the future the future value and the current value but there are going to be carriers that are going to say it's commoditized and those are the ones that we don't work with um and that's there there's no loss to them um there's a loss to us but at the end of the day you're not going to change someone's mind uh if they've already made that decision yeah yeah so what has been um for you come you know going from working for a carrier to then working for your for your dad and being an agent to now being you know running us an insure tech company what what was one of the things that maybe has been a challenge that you didn't see coming you know not like hey you know we got to get carriers on the platform like that's obvious but like was there anything that kind of snuck up on you that's been a challenge yeah i mean interviewing people there's there's two things i don't like one i buy snacks for the office that was always done for me and two interviewing people that's the biggest challenge for me though honestly it it's been making sure that everyone understands the the goal of this company when you're interviewing people culture fits huge and uh understanding is huge and if you think that we're coming in here and the only goal is for our sales reps to close you know 150 agencies a month or whatever we tell them to do uh then they're missing the point the goal is to make sure that the agents using the system to the best of their ability to be more efficient and hiring new employees that are a outside the insurance industry but b um don't necessarily understand the independent agent model teaching them what that means and how it's actually working for them was by far the hardest thing because i grew up in it i knew what insurance was i knew what an independent agent was our director of sales knew our coo knew and until we hired our first person outside of the three of us i never thought that was going to be an issue but training insurance is way harder than training technology when you talk to a non-insurance person sometimes i feel like i'm talking to like a martian or something like you just you know what i mean like when you're surrounded with other insurance people and there's like that one non-insurance person and then you see that look start to creep over their face where like you can just tell that they just don't like they're just not following along at all like the words mean different things and like and like what you would you know uh what you would think should happen doesn't happen that way and you know all the nuances of our industry it's always so funny to watch someone's face when they're like their first real nerdy insurance conversation they're just and that's all no idea all my conversations are nerdy insurance conversations nowadays but it is you're right it's entirely different and i think the people that build companies that came from outside the industry that try to sell to insurance agencies and insurance companies and go in with this hard sell tactic um doesn't work now you have to build a relationship with the person show them where they're gaining their value instead of saying look at all this stuff we did it's better for you you should use this because you'll be better that's not true they're they're great as is we're just trying to help them become more efficient and you have to train all these employees that you hire uh the last eight that we've hired we've had to train on insurance more so than technology yeah i believe that i believe that the first the first time like um the first time as as a vendor to an agency that you tell that agency owner that they either are don't understand the problem or are somehow like wrong in the way that they've chosen to solve the problem regardless of what they're doing you have officially lost that agency as someone you're ever going to sell to like like that person what that person is doing is sitting there and i had to learn this the hard way when i was at agency nation right like no i'm trying to sell advantage subscriptions for trust choice.com and you know met whatever and you they're looking at you going you son of a bit you have no idea how hard my job is and how many things i have to think about and you're telling me that i don't know what i'm doing like i will kill you i will eat your face like what are you talking about and in your mind you're like wait a minute you're still using a typewriter this this keyboard thing is so much easier and they're like no no no you don't understand this typewriter works great i make five hundred thousand dollars in personal income you're going to tell me this typewriter yeah people have to remember insurance agencies have existed for so long and there's still 38 000 of them because they're successful they're doing something right yeah so you can't go in there and say you're doing something wrong fortunately for me when they say i'm running an agency i i i was the person that insure techs were selling to at our agency yeah i wasn't on the agency side so i know i know what the problem is i know what a bad sales tactic is and we're not it's about building the relationship it really is insurance is 100 relationship driven and if you think otherwise you're an idiot and the truth is how things how products get sold in this industry is 100 agent to agent referral that's what it is i mean and all the insurance insurance groups that i'm part of you know for whatever the product you know what i mean like uh like i just i just signed up for stamps.com and i because i was asking people like hey have you ever used this tool you know it's like the silliest i mean it seems silly right it's like a you know i need to mail shit i don't feel like going in the freaking post office all the time i'm getting stamps how do you stamps.com oh i use it it works great it's you know blah blah blah and it's like and i probably wouldn't have purchased it if i hadn't seen two or three other agents go yeah we use it yeah that's what we use and there's different services um and uh i just was like oh okay this is easy it's pretty cheap you know i don't send that many letters but i don't certainly feel like driving and getting stamps all the time and sometimes i send bigger bigger stuff and every service is like that every single one over you know from crm to agency management system to telephone system to every tool in the agency agents are constantly talking about them yeah and if you don't get referred by another agency really i mean the hardest part is going to be the first one on a new product yeah because one if you're the first one you're the only one trying it out and that was i mean that was literally mark duffy chris parity so that was the for us they were the two yeah they were our first couple agencies that started using it and then it spread but you're right everything needs to be agent to agent because it's a small community as many agents as there are it's a super small community yeah and and and i kind of at first um when i first kind of broke out of the murray group inter not necessarily when i left but when i first started visiting other associations and spending more time with other agents um at first i didn't really understand i didn't understand that nature of the business how how you know you and i could be bitter rivals in terms of you know we're both in the same town and we're looking for the same advertising opportunities but then we can go on the golf course and talk about sales tactics and tools and all this this marketing reps giving me a hard time you know how do you deal with it and that that aspect of our industry i feel like is very unique and and the other and i also feel and i was actually talking to um donielle smink on the episode that'll have come out right before this one um about how the industry has become even more uh collaborative and and agents communicate even more so if you you know you think about like um uh what was that marketing company in rhode island that that burned at every bridge um astonished results right you think about those guys and you know they're like writing these deals and they're cutting this guy like an amazing deal and then this guy over here they're basically taking his first born and in order to pay for the deal that they cut this guy over here and like you know back then i mean so that was probably 10 15 years ago about 20 10 12 years ago now back then they could kind of get away with that because you know there was today you you do one of those bad deals and you know 5 000 agents in iowa know tomorrow they know tomorrow you you treat someone poorly like that and the next day everybody knows and you know people start to pump the brakes on that vendor so you have to be much um you know you just have to be more careful in how you treat and obviously you should treat people the right way but yeah you can't get away with that smarminess no i think that's the most important thing you should be doing that anyways but at least now there's some some justifiable action that can be had against you if you don't treat people the right way and there's a lot of companies in this insure tech space in my space that are a little sketchy they do things the wrong way um so when we started you know the most important thing to us like i said is the culture how do we make sure that we're always up front honest transparent with everybody and we've hopefully we've held to that across the board for all of our employees yeah no i love it certainly uh i certainly haven't heard a bad thing so let's um i want to talk a little bit about um so um we've talked a little bit about your origin story and i've gushed a little bit um and now i want to talk a little bit more about the future right so um different parts of the country different agency uh different carrier mixes carriers the number one number one thing you know more carriers helps more agents because the more carriers and on the platform and this is kind of the chicken and the egg with everybody but i i will say uh if you are if you are a carrier uh um if you work for a carrier in any capacity that can help this help connect with tarmica i would encourage you to do so because um you know this this this type of relationship is this is where it's going for small business and you know i know i know some pretty badass agents that are literally just waiting for like a couple carrier relationships to fall which may or may not already be in the in the works um uh and bam they're going to be on and moving so you know where what do you see as some of your biggest challenges moving forward and and kind of getting past those what does the future look like like where are you going with this thing yeah i think the carrier the carrier stuff was difficult at first uh for the first you know year of operation getting carriers just hard even even you know last year was difficult but this year it's really all come together for us um persistence hard work getting those carrier relationships showing them the value is was important so that hurdle has been hopefully crossed now and we've we've passed through the most difficult part as a as an insured tech company which is building relationships with insurance companies but now i mean for us the biggest hurdle moving forward is understanding and this is every startup in the world is understanding how to scale responsibly um not being too aggressive not hiring too fast not doing anything crazy and actually understanding where we need people which for us is customer success i mean that's the most important part for us is you know if you're an agency quoting and there's a technical error or if there's a question you have you need someone to call you need a spokesperson at tarmica so that's where we're really focused our energy right now and it's been huge it's been working yeah next biggest hurdle for us is figuring out or we're currently in the process of personal lines right um and figuring out which states to start in uh how many agents to start with it's the same issue we had with commercial lines is which states to start in how many agents and you know figuring that out understanding who's going to use it the the most who can benefit the most from it as our beta testers personal lines that's important and we have a couple already so you know we got bradley flowers down in in alabama we have you we have matt namoli we have a bunch of beta testers that are going to do personal lines um zach and ryan from coverage direct but you know that's that's probably our focus right now is how do we continue to grow the commercial on side with the team we have and then hire this whole other engineering team this whole other sales team for personal lines now and that's what we're in the process of now yeah i'm i'm just the workflow that you guys have i'm so excited for personal lines too um because it's just you know i i think i want to give i want to give credit where credit is due because pl raider and and uh easy links tool like you know they blaze they blazed a trail that did not exist oh yeah i mean they sold a lot of carriers i'm building out the technology for those tools when the idea of comparative rating was just bringing it up was like blaspheming but i think there is tremendous opportunity from a workflow standpoint from um a reporting and functional functionality standpoint that you know i still have to log in to internet explorer to use pl raider right that loses me accounts because i have to go to a whole separate computer because i'm a mac user so the fact that i'm a mac user i literally had someone say to me well maybe you should just stop being a mac user and i was like fuck you why should i have to stop being a mac user which i can you know i've been on for 10 years yeah you just because you haven't figured out that chrome is the you know chrome is the number one uh web browser on the internet you're using a web browser that microsoft doesn't even upload doesn't even um update anymore and i'm the crazy person the guy that's hard for me and i'm not i don't want to bang on pl reader because it works right the product works they have a ton of carriers they've done the hard work so i'm not banging on them but i do think there's a lot of um i think there's a lot of green field there in that space and um and when you can log into one system and quote personal or commercial that to me feels like a huge win too and that's one of the reasons why we're doing i mean commercial is our primary focus was our primary focus for a long time um and it continues to be a focus for the team that's currently here but you know we can we can have a separate team working on personal we can have separate employees selling personal being the customer support for personal and it's all in one system so it's easy for them to use uh that's a challenge though is making sure we scale responsibly on commercial while also building out personal and it's that i mean everyone always says what keeps you up at night that's it that's the only thing that keeps happening that is how do we scale properly without overdoing it well i think that's smart because um you know i know a concern for me when i get involved because the emotional investment that you in time investment capital investment that you have in a tool is not insubstantial i think you know and i know you guys have an appreciation for this and i've heard the way that uh chris talks to agencies on the phone so i know he has an appreciation for this when he's you know we'll call it selling but you know building relationships talking people through the process but you know he one of the things that has been you know that really is like smacked me in the face as now an agency owner is when you make a decision on a piece of technology whether it's a software or whatever you're not just investing some money in it right there's like this mentality that ah it's 150 bucks a month you know about it's like well it's not just that because now i have to build workflows processes i have to take brain cycles and figure out how to use the tool i have to teach my team how to use the tool you know and that's that is probably more of a concern than necessarily just the price of the tool oh yeah it could be 25 or 10 000 a month and it wouldn't make a difference if you don't actually use it it's a waste yeah and i think that idea what you just said about um about i think the concern is if i invest my time energy and and mental cycles mental process into this tool in two years are you just going to bounce and it's going to blow up or get sold to somebody some system that i can't even use and now all of a sudden i'm left you you know i gotta find something new because that's scarier i mean i think that's a big reason why people still stick with applied is they're just like i know they're always going to be here they're never going away so even though i don't love them maybe it's not perfect although i know epic is a is a decent system if you like the applied ecosystem um like they're never going away so you never have to have that concern and i think that's a big part of it it is i mean it has to be right and i think one of the the hardest parts of starting the company was my age and one of the best things about telling people i'm not going anywhere is my age so what what was once terrible is also a a blessing so starting a company at 25 people don't really trust you all that much no what the hell do you know is is a pretty common it was pretty common up front and fortunately i mean i like i said i grew up with the dad who worked in insurance for for 40 years and knows more than anyone i know about insurance right so i'm not going anywhere i'm 27 i have a long career ahead of me i love this company i love doing what we're doing i love our employees i think they're all awesome um i love doing this work so right now i always say this not planning on going anywhere um other good news is even at 27 you have very adult hair and you look very mature which is the opposite for me i'm almost 40 but i look like i'm like 17 so i'm not really sure i'm not sure if i don't shave and you see all the grays in the beard and i look like i'm in my 40s like that guy knows tech right there he's been around for a while exactly maybe i should just keep it so people think i'm a little bit older but now it's it is like i said it's a blessing to be able to say that you know i one of the best things i've ever said is i i always admit that i don't know what i don't know yeah i know what i don't know sorry i i'll tell you straight up if i don't have an answer and that's a good thing because when you're talking to agencies and carriers they have way more experience than i ever will yeah they give advice they tell you how they think things should work and you have to listen and actually implement their advice and if you don't um you're going to be obsolete too yeah i was having this conversation with caruthers the other day about um it's it's easy to tell the individuals who have never sat at the big kids table before right when they've never they've never um had the humility to sit there with their glass of scotch and just shut the hell up and listen to people who have done really amazing things grown very successful companies just talk about stuff just not felt just listened and uh i you know i think you i mean what i hear you saying is you were lucky enough to you know being around your dad to get some of that i unfortunately had to wait much longer to learn that lesson until i was part of trustedchoice.com i i had the opportunity to sit with a lot of people and listen to a lot of agents who credibly successful um you know the the spencer holdens and you know all these different all these different agents um and agency owners talk about the business and it really it helps you understand how what we're actually doing you know we're not just like selling a policy to someone we're making sure that someone's life isn't ruined on the worst day that ever happens to them and i think it's so easy to lose sight of how big a thing we are actually doing and that's why i hate that word commodity because all a tool like tarmica is allowing us to do by by lining up uh commercial small or small business carriers against each other all it's allowing us to do is focus more on making sure that things are right so we because we're not thinking about the transactional shit like oh i didn't punch that number you know i didn't punch the sales number correctly into the seventh system that i'm rating today and um and what allows us to be better what's the focus though if you're spending too much time quoting is your focus trying to get all this data into the system is your focus finding the right coverage for your client it's probably entering the data into your system so speed up the process that's tedious and and unrealistic and focus on selling your client the best coverage that they need for their specific business because at the end of the day agencies are the experts on it and that's what's important so i know this is probably sounding for everyone like a 51 minute commercial for tarmica and i guess in part maybe it is but i don't mean it to be i just um you know it's hard for me to be anything other than authentic in in that i just believe in what you're doing man i uh since the first time we spoke on the phone i'm obviously i jokingly was talking you know talking about parody so you know in in the intro and stuff but um i have been i've seen your vision since day one i've i've believed in your vision and you know uh you you know being part of the advisory committee and being able to help shape it is an honor but whether i was part of that or not i i i think what you are doing is going to help so many agencies um sustain through the storm of small business you know um that and and and thrive and potentially thrive if they can work on things like workflows and that kind of stuff and and really move um i just i think i'm just a huge believer in what you're doing huge proponent and um i couldn't i you know i i just feel uh i feel like i'm part of a very cool club to be able to you know give feedback and and in whatever regard and help grow this thing because um i think it's important in our industry i appreciate that that's that's huge for us to hear from an agency um especially i mean you're a new agency too and you're growing quickly so it's cool for us to hear that yeah i mean i i'll be honest um you know the last couple weeks since at least in my in the ecosystem that i operate it feels like things are opening up people are starting to take phone calls um calls are starting to come in uh i don't know i don't know that i would be able to scale this business if i didn't have tarmic i don't i don't think that i would i think it would be impossible if i that guy yesterday again not a huge account so don't you know there's some of the some of the more douchey members of our audience are going to be like that was 553 bob you know but the idea is that's that's one of what will be 20 accounts and if i can write 20 500 bops in 20 minutes at a time i'm making money i'm making real money and those accounts are going to renew and i'm going to get their personal lines i'm going to sell them life insurance and they're going to send me referrals and that's how the agency is going to scale and if i was spending all that time logging into each individual system seeing if they had an appetite figuring out what the best rate is um it wouldn't be possible so i appreciate you i appreciate the work you do obviously um you know i text you random all the time too and you actually respond so that's fun but um dude i wish you nothing but the best and um you know i'm sure this won't be the last time you're on the show but where can people besides uh t-a-r-m-i-k-a.com where can um where can people learn more about you hey people can learn more about me by texting me that's the way i get in touch with people so uh or you can email me raghav.jana@tarmica.com and i'm more than happy to talk at any point dude appreciate you man be good so so so so so so so so so you you you you you you Thank you.

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