How to Use the Insurance Technology You Already Have with Peter MacDonald

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So unless you're trying to go, and I think this is, and I, I really think this is the answer to the question, is that you have to decide, like, are you shooting for a number and a lifestyle, or are you trying to grow something, um, that is bigger than that? And, and depending on what you ... You know, and that's a, that's a goal you have to decide. Some people wanna grow big enterprises and, and that's what they wanna do. That's phenomenal.

In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you, a conversation with Peter McDonald, one of my favorite people in the industry, one of the smartest guys in the industry, the founder of WonderWrite, a tool that we used heavily at my last agency that I highly recommend, that I think is well-positioned for fast-growing agencies, particularly those who are seeing a mix of both direct and, say, uh, ENS or wholesale business that wanna make sure that they're gathering the right information, but doing it in a way that delivers, uh, an ease of use to their customer that matches that kinda human optimized experience that I preached so much about. But, you know, we're not here to talk about WonderWrite, although Peter does give us an update at the end. Peter's dialed into the industry and just has a very thoughtful and unique perspective.

And coming out of both, uh, kinda the Boston Insurtech area, which is different than other sections of the country, as well as having, uh, gone through some of the, uh, well-known incubators and raised money, et cetera, uh, I love Peter's perspective. I love what he's trying to do. I love that his in- experience is born out of an independent agency like so many of the most useful and successful Insurtechs are. And just any chance I get it, uh, any opportunity that I get to have a chance to talk with Peter about the industry, about all kinds of different things, leadership, growth, entrepreneurship, et cetera, is worthwhile and tremendously valuable, and I know you're gonna enjoy this conversation. Before we get there, though, I just wanna remind you guys that, uh, my consulting firm, my coaching agency, Finding Peak, uh, we will be launching an official program that you can sign up for, be a part of.

The, the first iteration of this is going to be, uh, a membership program in which you can come in. We're gonna have, uh, monthly lectures. We're gonna have some coursework that you can take. But really, uh, it's gonna be kind of a, a, a DIY system for you to build out the, the three modules of success from an, from an inbound standpoint, being kinda filling the funnel, uh, uh, one-call close, and then obviously maximizing the lifetime value of those customers. And that program is gonna be open to anybody.

You can come in. You can, uh, follow the coursework, come to the lectures, be part of the community. Uh, that is gonna be launching in February, and I'm launching that part of the consulting firm first because I- this is ... What Finding Peak's, this, this, the membership part, the masterclass part of Finding Peak, the reason that I wanna get this out first, and it's gonna be, you know, an affordable price point, is because I'm building this for me when I was two or three years into the business, when I knew insurance, when I had a, when I had a good feel for the product, when I had a good feel for what I wanted, uh, this, for what I, for, for this career, but I w- but I didn't know how to consistently get business in, when I was struggling with prospecting, when I was struggling with, with branding, with, with letting people know who I was, what I did, what value I added. You know, that portion, that part of my career, I wanted to make something that was accessible all the way down to that individual, right?

So if you're in an agency where maybe, you know, just for whatever reason, you don't have the resources to, to over-invest in large scale, expensive consulting programs, and you like to get your hands dirty, I wanted to make it accessible for that person all the way up to, you know, the, the top 100 brokerage who has producers that are out in the world that, that wanna build, you know, kinda branded niches and, and drive business in, in addition to their outbound prospecting. And, and this kinda baseline monthly program is exactly what that's gonna be. And to, and to get on the waiting list if you're listening to this before the actual launch, which will be in February, masterclass.insure. Just go to masterclass.insure. Put your name, put your email in.

You'll be on the wait list. As soon as we go live, you'll be the first to know. Guys, I'm so excited about what this program is. It is a culmination of 18 years of experience, thousands and thousands of conversations. Uh, you know, kinda, let's see, I've done two, three, four.

I've implemented this program in more than four different businesses and in just under two dozen coaching clients that I've had kinda on the side that I don't normally talk about, uh, and won't talk about, uh, specifically, uh, just for reasons of, of being respectful to them. But, um ... And, and then my ongoing learnings as I go, like this program is gonna be where as I learn things, as I see things coming, I deliver that information to this group. Couldn't be more excited about it. Uh, there will be in-depth programming event- you know- Down the line, we're gonna have, have take on, you know, kind of a, a higher level kinda mastermind style.

We're dig in, hand-to-hand combat, you know, one-on-one coaching with people. And if you're interested in that, you can always email me at ryan@findingpeak.com. But, uh, guys, I just, I, I couldn't be more excited. I feel that energy coming back. I feel, uh, like, you know, helping you guys grow is what I love to do, and, uh, I've always found more satisfaction in watching the light come on for others, and success in others, and, and being that, uh, amplifier or accelerator than, than my own personal success.

And, and, and this, what we're building at Finding Peak, um, I just couldn't be more proud of. So I wanna get that in front of you, masterclass.insure. If you have questions, comments, or you're looking for something else, uh, just email me, ryan@findingpeak.com. I'm out on the speaking circuit again, so if you're... If I see you at an in-person event, I can't wait for that.

And, uh, guys, I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Peter McDonald. I'm doing good, buddy. Doing real good. I am, um, coming out of the fog of, uh, the holidays and, you know, life transitions, and my house is coming together and life is good, you know?

Yeah, man. You've, uh, had a lot going on, haven't you? Yeah. That seems to be what the universe has lined up for me, so I've decided to embrace it. And, um, and you know, I don't like to complain in general, so I just tend to keep moving forward, and that seems to work pretty well.

And, uh, if you, if you don't complain... I'm actually reading an awesome book. Have you ever read, uh, The Gap and the Gain by Benjamin Hardy? Um, my dad's talked about it a lot. This is, like, I think, uh, Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach probably referenced it.

Yes. Um- So it's a Dan Sullivan concept. So, so there's this really- Yeah ... cool series of books that I highly recommend anybody who's, like, growth-focused and, and, like, read. And, and these have been... I've read two of 'em.

I'm gonna read the third. Uh, it's not, it's not as high on my priority list 'cause I think it's one of the concepts that I just intrinsically understand a little more. But I read, uh, there's three books. So Dan Sullivan has all these ideas, and Dan Sullivan's Strategic Coach is incredible, but it's so much. He partnered with a guy by the name of Ben Hardy, Benjamin Hardy, and, and d- and is, he's a doctor.

Uh, he, uh... Well, not the, like, medicine kind, like the philosophical kind or whatever. Um, and he wrote... He basically took these three concepts and broke them down into a series of books. I'm reading them in reverse order.

So the one I read was 10X is Easier than 2X, which, which was my best and number one recommended book for 2023. Just absolutely incredible. And now I'm reading The Gap and the Gain. And, and then the first one that they did in the series was Who Not How, which people rave about as well. Although, f- you know, like I said, I, I just feel like intrinsically, that's a concept I understand a little better.

But this, this, The Gap and the Gain is really interesting because it was like, you know, I'm only, I'm only four chapters in, to, to, to be fair to the book, but, uh, when they first introduced the concept, it, like, hit me like a ton of bricks that it, like, completely defined when I feel good about something and when I don't feel good about something. And the concept was, is basically we have where we started, where we're at, and our ideal. And what most people do is they measure themselves between where they're at and the ideal, and that's called the gap. And what they, and what Dan Sullivan recommends is measuring yourself from the start and where you're at, and he calls that the gain. And that if you're always operating in the gain from saying like, "Hey, I used to be able to run a nine-minute mile or a 10-minute mile, and now I'm running a nine-minute mile.

And even though my best friend can run a seven-and-a-half minute mile, I'm actually a minute quicker than I used to be, and I should be happy for that one-minute gain, not the fact that I'm still, you know, a minute and a half behind my, my friend." And, um, and you know, the con- And the reason I like this concept, and then we'll talk about something relevant to why you're on. But, um, the reason why I liked it, I just, I read it for like an hour this morning. I, like, couldn't put the book down. I almost, my kids were almost late to school 'cause I was like, I couldn't put it down.

Um, the reason I like it is 'cause, and, and this is what they were getting into, was this idea that, uh, and it's something I've been talking about, it, success is often just outlasting, n- you know, outlasting your desire to quit, not necessarily, you know, hitting some mark. And, and that's really what Dan Sullivan's concept is, is that as leaders, as entrepreneurs, as growth-focused people, when we operate in the gap, we get frustrated, we get, you know, we get depressed, we start having negative thoughts, and, and, and that's where we, "Oh, I'm gonna give up," or, "I'm gonna make a bad decision." Where in the gain, you're always coming from a place of positivity 'cause you're like, "Yeah, our goal may have been 300 customers by the end of the year, but we started with 50 and now we're at 275. And even though we missed our goal by 25, geez, we put 225 new customers on the books, and that's, that's pretty darn good." And I just thought that's, um...

I, I've just... That kind of stuff, like, really just resonates with me. I know it's kind of ethereal, but I, like, live off that shit. No, yeah. It's, it's funny.

My... So my dad did Strategic Coach for, I don't know, a decade or something, and, um, he, he taught me about gapping the game when I was in high school. He'd be like, "Peter, you're gapping on me. You're gapping on me." Um, so it's funny 'cause he's, he's been talking about the book.

I've never read it. I probably should. But, uh, the concept, I think you did a great job explaining at least how I've, how I've learned it. Um, are you a big reader? You know, uh, recently, honestly, Ryan, like, haven't been.

Um, and it's, it's one of those things where I'm like, "I should make time for it." Um, but, uh, I've, I've just been... It's like I have k- I have young kids and then the startup, and it's just like- Wake up, get the kids off, work, and then kids go to bed, like back to work. Yeah. So it's one of those habits where I'm like, "Ah, I should probably make time for it."

I also think like, you know, you ... I know my, my brother reads like a, a book a day, a book a week. I know you're a big reader. Um, I feel like, I feel like some of the times you read books and you're just like, man, there's so much filler content- Mm-hmm ... you know, like they could just condense these things down to like, you know, a quarter of what's in there. And then I think, and, and you commented on that thing I posted from Daniel Goggins, 'cause I, I do, I do read a ton, by the way.

Like I'm on Twitter a lot, I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on, I'm like reading a ton of news stuff relevant to the industry. So I d- I, I do read a ton, just like not necessarily books. Yeah. And I do listen to a lot of podcasts. I love audio.

I li- I, you know, I li- listen to audio or videos at 2X speed 'cause it's just like, it's so much better. But that Daniel Goggins, he, he's like, "You already know what to do. Like just go do it." Yeah. Like you're trying to build a business, it's like, just go get those 300 clients.

Yeah. Like it doesn't matter if half of them come from cold calling and half of them come from an intro and, you know, whatever. It's like just go ... Like you know what you need to do, just go do it. Yeah.

And so, um, I do love reading. Man, if I could get into reading right now, I feel like I'd wanna read like The Hobbit or something, or like Lord of the Rings, you know? It wouldn't even be like a business book, it'd be like I need to just e- Yeah ... escape and unplug. You know what I read, uh- And- I, I was, I read, um... Oh, my gosh.

Not 1984. Um, Brave New World. I ha- I- I have that right behind me, by the way. I literally had it like on my background, 1984. Yeah.

Both great books. Yes. So I read 1984 a long time ago, uh, just after I finished college, but not for the reasons that I would read it today. I read it mostly for the story, um, not with the political undertones. I just didn't understand all the- Right ... complexities that were interwoven into the narrative, um, which is a great story.

Just if you're not even reading it for like the, the political commentary, the, the narrative is phenomenal. Um, I will say, and, and I almost feel like my understanding of, of, of the political undertones of Brave New World, uh, wrecked the story for me a little bit. It's a great book and I, and I loved it. I, I finished it maybe like a- 'Cause it's like, it's like real life too much? You're like, "Hey, this is like reading the newspaper."

But the... Yeah. Unfortunately today, because... I wanna say I do... I, I hate to say this 'cause I know like every guru success expert is like, "Don't listen to f- politics and don't get involved."

I, I do enjoy... I... So if I go back and do my, do my like- It's hard not to ... Uh, y- if I could go back and do my, my college career again, I would've done economics and psychology. Because I love business, I love how business works, but I also, I love- Would you have gone to college - What? ... if you did it again?

You know what I mean? Would, would you have gone to college, you know, if you did it again? Uh, in that day, without the internet, without the access to- Right ... information that exists today. Now today, like if I were to go in 2024, would I go to college? If I wasn't playing sports, I would not have gone to college today.

Um- Yeah ... I also think that- It's like, it's like a country club. It's like a country club with like- Yeah ... an academic component and like networking. Yes. Yeah.

I, I... Given the option today, without sports... So at the time, you know, I, I, I have to talk a little bit about this. I came from this little shit town of less than 900 people. My parents did the best they can.

I was blessed that I had two parents that loved me, but they had nothing, right? So for me, college was like the only way I could envision getting out of that little- Fair ... shit hole. Yeah. So like that was it. Like playing sports, even though I loved them, was like my way out.

Getting good grades was like- Yeah ... my way out. It wasn't that I loved school. I mean, I did love sports, but like it was how I got out. So, so back then, yes, just to like escape. But to be honest with you- Yeah ...

I love, I love economics and financial shit, and I love psychology. So like, so like I get into politics not so much for like the, like my side winning or whatever. Like 'cause I don't really have a side, 'cause I've flip-flopped so many times. If you were to like look at my political regist- you know, what I've registered, I've been Democrat, Independent, Republican, Independent, Republican, Independent, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Republican. I mean, it's like that.

And 'cause it's more for me like I just, the psychology of how all this stuff works and like how you could say something and I could say it, and the way you look, how you deliver it, the timing, the venue, the color shirt you're wearing, who's standing next to you or behind you, how loud the crowd cheers when you say, all these things impact whether I believe you and don't believe me, or believe me and don't believe you. And like that's what I find fascinating, is like why? Like why is that the case? I just, I don't know, I'm so intrigued by it. I think, I think that the smartest people are like the hermits.

They're like the prophets who go out into the wilderness and they just shut themselves off. Um, and I know people like this. They're like, "Ha, don't, don't read the news anymore, don't watch it because it's all made up." Yeah. And I, and I, and they go off and they have these, these breakthrough ideas because they're not bombarded with the thing of the day.

Yeah. And there's so many things of the day, and it just gets your blood to boil if you feed into it, and you start believing all the conspiracy theories that are out there. I know you and I chatted about like aliens and other things- Yeah, yeah ... that are out there. But like, um, I think as a leader, you need to be well-versed in it. Yeah.

Um, you need to know what's going on with sports. Like if you look at someone who's running for president, it's like they gotta throw that pitch to open the game, and like they need to know who's like, who's going to the Super Bowl, who's going to the playoffs, who are they rooting for. Yep. Um, it's just like one of those things where you kinda have to be... It's almost like you have to be aware of it and operate your business within it without getting mentally sucked into it.

Yeah. Which is, which is the challenge. Dude, I think it's, uh, seasons of your career, right? When you are in- A, like I remember the early days, and I'm sure with Wonderite it's the same thing. And I, and I wanna talk about Wonderite.

I wanna talk about the industry a lot, so I don't, I don't wanna get too ... I know sometimes when we get on here in these shows I could go off the rails. I, I wanna talk, I, I'm very interested in some of your takes on some of the things that are going on in the space, and I wanna get to that. But- And I have some notes too, by the way. I, I prepared for this.

Oh, yeah. And I love- I'm usually not focused on- I love it. I love- You know what I mean? ... I love that. Um, but this, this idea, and I'd like your thoughts on this.

Like, so in examining my own career, obviously I've had ... If like you look at my LinkedIn, you're like, "What?" You know, I did this, I did this podcast. I got invited on this like entrepreneur's podcast randomly by two guys I didn't know, and it was, it was a lot of fun. And, uh, they were asking me, they saw the like Rogue story of like s- the startup and the insurance industry, and they were, they were interested in like entrepreneurial stories and what they were calling like, uh, almost like Cody Saint- like boring businesses kind of thing, right?

And, um- Yeah, sure. And, and it was in ... And that's why they brought me on. And then they're like, "Well, give us the 10-cent tour of how you got to here." And I was like, "I don't know that I can tell it with 10 cents, but I'm gonna do the best that I can."

So I broke down like the last 18 years of my life, and the guys got done and they like had nothing to say. And I ... They're like, "Holy shit, like that's quite the journey that you've been on." And I was like, "Yeah." So, so I reflect on that quite a bit, and what I've come to is this idea, and I'm very interested because you are obviously past initial startup phase but still probably still feel very much in that startup mode and growing Wonderite.

But I feel like we have to be very intentional with the season of our career, and what I mean by that is in the early days of Rogue, I mean, uh, I mean, you couldn't avoid COVID, but other than that, a bomb could've went off in, in my town and I wouldn't have known, right? I'm 16 hours a day. Like you said, if the kids aren't awake and home, I am at my computer doing some sort of work trying to grow my business. Literally. And I didn't know anything else that was going on.

And then as I kinda started to add some employees and hit a next phase, and, and I don't know that we ever actually ... We were almost at escape velocity when, when Rogue was shut down, but, but we did get to a point where I had to pick my head up and start to say, "What's going on in the industry? What's going on with the economy? What is this hard market all about? How are we gonna position our business?"

You know, like I had to take my head out of like that, what you would- like that hermit mentality and engage because otherwise there were, there would be blind spots that I could run my business into. And I think that we have to be very cognizant of that. If, if you wanna be that high-level leader of an organization, I don't think you can have your head in the sand. If you wanna be that unique, disruptive creator, then going into the woods maybe is the best play for you and, and, and being smart about those things. Does that make sense, and how do you feel about that?

No, a hun- 100%. I think, um, by the way, you talk to any startup founder, and I know you've gone through this, like there's a season where you need to go fundraise. Yeah. Um, people think that you're always fundraising, and that's not true. Like for, for the, I think for the best it's like you might be building relationships, but like honestly, like the best investors, like you don't necessarily need a relationship.

It's like if this is a great investment, I wanna, I wanna buy right now. Yes. I don't care about the relationship that I've had historically. And so when I go into fundraise mode, it's like a- all I do the entire day until midnight every day- Yeah ... is fundraise activity. Yep.

It's like, and, and, and I stack my calendar morning to night, meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. That's all I do. You get ... And, and you get really good at the conversations. They get better every time.

You get a sense of the market, and I block everything else out. There's nothing else that I do. I ignore everything. I ignore my emails. I ignore my texts.

Nothing. I remember in the earliest days of Wonderite, Ryan, when I was literally coding, I couldn't check my email. I just, I, I, I would wake up and I would, I, I would just code all day, and I'd code all night every day. And you ignore everything. Like that's the way that you get to be successful.

Yeah. And I think the, the hermit mentality is like, it's like you go out, you shut off everything, and you just, you focus, and that's where you get, you know, the brilliance. But on the flip side, when you come back and all of a sudden you're running an organization, you need to be aware. Like, hey, and, and this is one of the things I'll talk about that I see coming this year, like what's happening with non-competes? What's happening with pay transparency?

Yep. These are like political issues we need to be aware of. Some of them, it's like they might be like, you know, maybe m- more make your blood boil, where it's more of a current, you know, current issue, social work setting, layoff stuff that's going on. Like it's, it's good to be aware of but it doesn't really impact your business. But like if you're in insurance, you're like, "Hey, what's happening with non-competes?"

New York just shut it down. Yep. Like California's accelerating it. Massachu- like what, what does that mean for me? What does it mean from hiring?

So there's things like that are good to be aware of, but for the most part, I would 100% agree. Like you just, just gotta shut it out of your mind and just focus on what you need to do right now. Yeah. You know, it's funny, I get asked a lot, "If your agency was so successful, why did you sell?" And there's a bunch of reasons.

One reason that I don't talk too much about because I am not in any way a financial guru, so I do not wanna even, you know, even pretend to position myself as such. But I will tell you that part of the reason that I sold when I did had to do with the fact that I saw hard financial times coming. Because I read, I have like, I have like a half dozen independent financial journalists that I read. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode.

But as you know, we do not run ads on this show, and in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, uh, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales The things that are gonna help you, uh, 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 wanna 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 'cause 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. They're, they're not M- M-C, it's not Jim Cramer. It's stuff that I get directly to my inbox. Two of them I actually pay for every month, and I read these things in my downtime because to, because I feel like this cross-cut of individuals, you know, give me a good feel for what's happening.

And no one ever knows exactly what's happening. But what I did know for a fact back in 2022, something was coming, right? Some- we had seen some initial rate increases. There was COVID had impacted us in a way, and I was like, "You know what? If I don't raise money and/or sell this business today, what am I going to be able to do two or three years from now?

Like, what is this gonna look like," right? And we had to make a move because for, for different reasons. So there were other variables, but it was like ... And then you see people in 2023 talking about how they didn't see the hard market coming or what do we do about this hard market? And it's like, guys, if you had had, if you were, had your head up, right, and had been ...

You know, I'm not talking every minute of every day scanning the environment, but if you had been looking a little out ahead and reading some things and being aware of your environment, maybe you could have started position your agency, position your business in, in a way, whether you're raising funds or just the products you're selling, how you're setting up your employment or your, your staff, you know, et cetera. You could have made some adjustments to handle these huge rate increases and some of the, some of the disruptions that have come from them. And again, no one can pra- prognosticate what's gonna happen in the future. But I do think, to your point, as a leader, we have to. It is, it is mandatory that we every once in a while put our periscope up and see what the heck is going on.

Yeah. I, I think if you've seen that movie The Big Short- Yes. Yeah, yeah ... um, I think Christian Bale, and he, he predicts, like, you know, he, he predicts, you know, the basically the mortgage crisis. Yes. And he profits from it, and I think that's a good perfect example.

Like, like this crazy guy w- who doesn't wear shoes in the office- ... blocks himself off, and he, and he figures something out that the, the, the biggest banks in the country are laughing at him. Yeah. And that's where I think ... And this is where I think, Ryan, where, where I think you've done a great job is, you know, being true to yourself. I think you've always kind of looked internally and been like, you know, "Who am I?

What do I want?" And you haven't been, you haven't been, uh ... I think a lot of people self-censor themselves on their thoughts and whatnot. I think you've done a good job of like, "This is who I am, and this is what I believe, and this is what I know." So, yeah, I agree.

You gotta kinda know what's, uh, what, what you think's coming in, in the next, you know, year or two, three years. Yeah. I, uh, some of that might be the hardcore ADHD, ADD that I have that I just can't stop my mouth from moving, and if I don't keep it moving at all times, then all those thoughts get bottled up in my head, and I start to get crazy. That could be what it is. Who the hell knows?

Um, but dude, you took notes, so I'm interested. What did you take a ... You came prepared. I, I'm, I'm gonna let you drive this. What, what, what, what, uh, was so relevant to your mind that you wanted to do some preparation on?

I'm excited 'cause, guys, in case you don't know- Oh, just ... and I will have said this in the intro, we have one of the smartest dudes in the industry on, on, on the show today. I absolutely adore Peter and the way his brain works. And plus, on the sneak when you get a, when you get a pop in him, he's also a conspiracy theorist, which makes me- ... enjoy and admire him even more. But we won't go, we're not going there today. We won't go there today.

I wanna talk, we wanna talk insurance. So, so what was the first thing that came to your mind, man? Let's, let's dig into it. Um, yeah, I think the, the conspiracy theories, Ryan, man. It's just, it's, uh ...

I don't believe a ton of conspiracy theories, but I think that you can't believe everything that's on the surface. Oh. And like, like it's just, it's like there's just too many things where it's like ... And I, and by the way, I tell my kids this. My kid- my kids are in, uh, preschool and in second grade, and then even younger, you know, baby.

But I'm like, they, they'll tell me things and I'm like, "Why do you believe that?" I think this, a skill that we need is to ask questions- Mm-hmm ... and, and to, um, think critically. Um, that, that is the number one skill you need to learn in school is, like, think for yourself, think critically. Just don't accept the answers that are given to you. Like, you, you, you have to think.

Yes. Um, it's, I think it's okay to like ... W- when your doctor tells you something, it's okay to be like, "Hey, net, net, like I probably should listen to my doctor." Um, but you gotta think critically, so. Yeah.

I think that's why conspiracy theories are so interesting and, and probably just like f- if nothing else, they're just fun mental gymnastics to think through. That, and most of them have ended up being true recently. So, you know, I think that's the other part that's- Exactly. So you can, you can leave that in the follow-up ... Oh, I love how every Thanksgiving now the meme is, uh, me- Yeah.

You know, it'll be like some guy, like, walking in all happy, and it'll be like, "Me walking into Thanksgiving dinner with all my relatives who do, who told me I was crazy for my conspiracy theories." You know what I mean? And then it's like the list of all the things that actually - Right ... that actually were true. Right. Um, you know, this is also ...

So that's basically what you're advocating for, and I completely, I'm, I'm with, is like the Socratic method, which is basically just that. Yeah, exactly. Continuing to ask why until you can't ask why again. And I'll tell you, I saw Jordan, one of the guys who I think embodies this, and it's why I love him so much in terms of, like, following him and listening to him and, and I don't e- agree with everything this guy says, but Jordan Peterson, I saw him live this year. Uh, Chris Paradiso invited me to an event out in Utah, uh, and I went along.

Wasn't he just censored in Canada or something? Yeah. C- Canada is basically a communist country at this point. I can't even stand it. Um, the ...

So we went to Utah, and Jordan Peterson was speaking at this event live. And you got to see this dude. I mean, I, I, I think you would really appreciate the way he works. I mean, you can ... It's cool to watch him on video, but dude, live He is working through a problem.

Y- I mean, obviously it's a problem he's thought about and talked about before, but you can see him literally, he's asking him- so he'll say something, and then he'll-- you can literally see him asking himself, "Why did I say that? Do I believe that?" And then he'll either reframe it, or he'll ask himself another question to go deeper. And, like, he's basically operating the Socratic method on himself in real time as he works through these thoughts. So by the end, like if you were to take where he starts and where he finishes, it isn't the standard speaker stump speech where it's like, "I'm gonna start here, and then I'm gonna say this, and then I'm gonna say this."

It's like he starts with an idea and, like, he kinda wants to get somewhere over here, but how he gets there and exactly where he ends is 100% based on him working through this process in real time. It is freaking amazing to watch, and you can tell- That's cool ... and you just can tell how honest it is. Whether you agree with him or not, you could think his conclusion is completely crap and you don't believe it, but you, what you do believe, and I think this is important for people who are in leadership positions as well, when you work this method that, that, that you're de- that you're describing, people believe that you believe it, which I think is incredibly important, right? They believe that you are giving them your honest take on this topic wh- and I think that's almost more important than whether I agree with you or not, it, I th- in today's world, right? 'Cause you just don't know who's telling you the truth. No.

You gotta be able to think critically. You gotta be able to put yourself in the other person's shoes. Mm-hmm. Like think through from their perspective, steal man the argument. But yeah, so r- I think, Ryan, you had texted me, I think I was on like ski vacation- Yeah ... um, with my kids for a few years.

Which we're gonna do this winter. We are going to get out this winter. We're gonna- I promise. I've already been out nine-- I've been out nine days. Five days, man.

It's middle of January, I've been out nine days, and like it's, I, I basi- I went all in. Like we're doing it, season's pass, like we're going every weekend. Um, but you were like, "Hey, you wanna come on the podcast and discuss what you see happening in 2024?" Yes. That was kind of the text.

And so I'm like, "Yeah." Like, "What do I see coming?" And then I'm like, "What do I see coming?" I'm like, I'm-- it's one of these things where I'm like I'm, right now I'm the hermit working on the, the business. Yes.

Like, just like in the weeds, and I'm like, "Dude, I, I, I haven't even thought about that." Um, I probably should think about what I see coming. I know what I see coming from my business. But I think like, so when you said like, "Hey, what, what, what notes have I taken?" I just, I put down a few thoughts.

I think one of the things that I see is data warehouse/data lake. So in the insurance world, every conversation, every top brokerage is talking about like data warehouse, data lake. So for those who aren't initialized, like a warehouse is like, just think of like an actual warehouse. It's like you have this stuff that lives in it, and it's like packaged and like ready to go, ready to use. So if you have a lot of data, packaged, ready to go.

A lake is like, yeah, you have this data, not necessarily structured, but it's there. You could use it later at some point. It's like raw data. And I think as agencies, um, w- you know, we're all excited about AI. You know, we see it.

We know there's a huge potential. We think about voice, you know, interfaces. We think about training AI models. We think about targeting prospects better, identifying prospects better. I think right now you go to the average agency, and I know this because we work with hundreds of them, and we look at their data when we do integrations, like the data's a mess.

Um, even our own, even at Wonderite, our own sales force, like is it, do we use New York or do we use NY? Um, do we use USA or United States? It's like small little things and, and you have to go through systematically thousands and hundreds of thousands of records. So I think we have bad data, um, across the industry, maybe a key contact left. There's just a lot of issues.

But so if you can get that data in a clean spot, how do you take all that data to run your agency much better? I think for agents, we've, agents we've had an AMS system, like AMS360 or Epic or whatever. We have a sales CRM, Salesforce or AgencyZoom. And then we have a forms tool like an Indio or a Wonderite. You have a website and web chat.

You have photos and videos. You have contacts. Like all this stuff. How do you like, how do you use that to advance your business? Um, I think that the big picture theme is if you think about the customer journey, how do you make a seamless customer journey, um, for your customers from beginning to end?

And it's not gonna happen if you have things living in-- well, if you have 20 different systems to make the, the experience happen, you, like how do you get that data to live and talk to each other? I don't even know-- So I don't know how to like make this whole thing work. I just know that I hear this. It's, it's definitely, you know, people are talking about it. They wanna basically get a place to have all their data where they, whether it lives in your AMS, whether it lives in your Salesforce, whether it lives in your LinkedIn or whatever, or any correspondence or email, how do you pull that data, extract it, and do what you need to do before you get back to your, your team or your customer?

So that's probably one of the biggest themes that I've heard that I, I, I would double down on for 2024, and I don't know how relevant it is for small agencies. I mean, they still have the same challenges. I just don't know how to solve them at scale, um, without getting- Can I ask you a technical question? ... like paying attention to-- Yeah, for sure. I wanna ask a technical question about data warehouse and data lake, and, and this is, this is an honest question that I, that I've just always wondered. When it comes to data, uh, quality, and, and the, the really kind of, uh, specific example that you gave, do you use, in your AMS, do you use NY or New York or NY State or whatever, right?

Like what, what do you use in that field? And, you know, we, we've e- you can even see this if you run a report in your agency management system and one of your CSRs is using NY and your producer is putting New York, and you run a report, and you're like, "Where's all our New York accounts?" And it's like, "Oh, wait, we also have to run a separate report for th-" Right. Okay. Right.

So- Yeah ... and, and again, this is, uh, a neophyte. This is a naive question I'm d- I'm asking. Why is there not, uh, a-- like Google has like semantic search, right? I remember back in like the early 2012 to 2014, a big, a big, uh, leap in search functionality was semantic search, where if I typed New York Google knew that NY in a page meant New York. So if I typed like best insurance in New York, Google could...

Google knew that if I had created a video that said best NY insurance, that those were the same thing, that that person was asking the same question. That's like semantic search is what they called it. And again, I'm, uh, naive, so clean up my speech if, if you need to. Why can't we do that? Like, why isn't there an algorithm or a bot or something in our industry that you can run through our AMSs and, and clean that shit up?

Like, then it doesn't matter whether Tammy's writing NY and Tommy's writing New York. It... The, the, the semantic, you know, this, this, this, this bot can tell that they're the same thing. Like, I guess, what, what is the hold up to that or, or is there, or maybe that exists, I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, I, I think that broadly the issue is economics. Um, I- I've just come like, uh, if you, you know, you, I think you said you, you're interested in economics, right? Like, you'd study- Yeah ... if you went back to college. I think the insurance is the prime industry that's driven by economics. You have thousands of competitive, um, companies that from, you know, a high level perspective, not that it's a commodity product, but it's like, it's more or less the same who you buy it from.

Obviously you can have risk management and whatnot, but it's like there's so much in general commoditization. I know, again, differentiation, you wanna sell differentiated process, win through broker of record, et cetera. I'm not saying that's not fair and true. Um, but it's commo- It's, it, it's, it's literally, it's just like driven by economics, and it's such a vast industry. So, and then it comes down to like the economics of your insurance agency.

Like, how much money are you as an agent willing to s- to spend on stuff? And I think the reality is, and I think you actually asked this question when, when we did the CEO panel back in August at Indie Tech. Yep. The question that you kinda rudely grabbed the microphone. Well, you didn't, you didn't know you weren't supposed to grab the microphone.

I didn't know I was supposed to not ask live questions. I didn't know that. I said, "Can I ask a question?" But you were like, "How do-" They acted sure. Yeah.

But you basically were like, "How do you build..." And, and this was for the leaders of, you know, I think Vertafore and Applied and IVANS. You're like, "How, how do you build a product when, you know, a third of your customers or a quarter of your customers are the leading edge customers, but the m- the middle just like doesn't care, won't care, can't implement?" Yeah. And I think, so the reality is h- how, how many agents out there would raise their hand like, "I want this tool-" Yeah ... and, and implement it?

And I, I... If you're listening to this right now, you're like, "Oh, I would definitely want that. I want clean data." It's like, well, there's a company right now called Relativity6. Yep.

You, uh, you've interviewed them. Yep. Like, y- you... So if you listen to Ryan Hanley, like you probably should know about Relativity6. But they can literally like just tell you like what the appropriate NAICS codes are- Mm-hmm ... for all your customers, like the end- Yeah ... um, pro- programmatically.

And so I think that like the, the tools are out there, it's just the economics of like are people interested in hearing about them and paying for it? Um- And the answer is no ... and it, and it's like, it, it, it's a huge market, but it's also a small market when you compare it to like Google is looking at like every business in the world- Yeah ... not just like insurance agencies in the United States. You know, it's funny, um, I, I love, I love this... So obviously customer journey, all this, th- this is like core to what I love. It's, you know, all my work comes back to how do we create this experience for our customers that maximizes their lifetime value for us.

So, so it's not just the, the, uh, uh, virtuous, you know, I want you to be happy as a customer. If you're happy as a customer, it maximizes my lifetime value or your lifetime value- Absolutely ... to my agency. So that's, that's why I enjoy this process. That being said, one of the things that I've found over and over and over again is as much lip service as we give to data, you... Our industry, I believe, is unique in this one characteristic, is it doesn't matter, right?

Like, you write the business with the carrier, the carrier sends you a check, and you cash the check. Does it matter how much data you have on the client? It really... To be suc- Now, there is a certain level where I think you start to, there's a diminished return on crappy data, but when you're in the ear... This is, and it...

I think this is a big part of the problem is in the early stages when you're grinding it out and you gotta sell every policy you can just to, just to put enough revenue on the books to keep the lights on and keep going, to slow down and make sure you have good data quality is not an option. It's just, it's quite literally not an option to move that slow. And then what happens is you get to 500,000, 750, a million dollars in revenue where now you can maybe exhale a little bit depending on how your operation is set up, and you're like, "Oh my God, my data is horrible," right? I have some just in carrier, some's in my agency management system, some's just in my CRM, some's in my phone in text messages, personal text messages to my clients, right? Right.

And, and the, and then you go, "Oh my God, it doesn't matter because I'm making this amount," which I never imagined I would make. And but, uh, and all of a sudden you're like, "Eh, wh- why would, why... I gotta spend 50 grand to clean all this up and da- for what?" Right? So unless you're trying to go, and I think this is, and I, I really think this is the answer to the question, is that you have to decide like, are you shooting for a number and a lifestyle, or are you trying to grow something, um, that is bigger than that?

And, and depending on what you... You know, and that's a, that's a goal you have to decide. Some people wanna grow big enterprises and, and that's what they wanna do. That's phenomenal. I think in that case, stepping back, doing things like cleaning up data, really focusing on customer journey matter.

If all you care about is making enough money to provide a lifestyle for yourself and your family, then- You don't need any of that. You could run it all off a spreadsheet or off your phone. The carrier's got all the data. You can just log into their back end. You literally don't even need to have an AMS or a CRM or any of it.

You have WonderWrite for the forms that you need. The carrier send you the things- There you go ... in the mail, and that's all you freaking need. I mean, honestly, I don't know that you need more than that. To, to, to get to a number. We need to...

We, we, we, we we, we need... You know that, you know the... I need to do a meme generator. You know like the bell curve meme- Yes ... where you have like the, like the, the total, like, whatever, loser on the left and the total like, like whiz kid on the right- Yeah ... with the hoodie on, and then the, like the weird mid guy in the middle? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Who's like the middle... The, it's like the, the middle guy is like, "Uh, I need clean data and I need to spend all this money to clean everything up." And like the guy on the left and the guy on the right of the bell curve are just like, "Sell more insurance." Yeah. Right?

Sell more insurance. Like if you wanna make more money and run a great business, like just sell more insurance. Yeah. Right? But on the, but on the edges, it's like...

Or, or you know, the, the, the part about the clean data is like if you really care about this stuff, like once you get to a million dollars or $2 million in revenue, now it's like, "Hey, how do I optimize my placement-" Yes ... "in my book of business? Because I can get an extra point of commission-" Yep ... "by like getting rid of my bad carriers and only working with the good ones," right? Yeah.

There's just like so much stuff that you can do. And again, for the most part, it's like if you try-- If you're starting to really focus on that and you distract yourself from just sell more insurance, like you probably could be losing. But that's why I said in the beginning with data warehouse, for the really big agencies that have scale, that point really, really matters. Yeah. And so they...

You ha- you, and you can afford to employ teams where that's all they think about, customer journey, like optimizing their, their, their book of business placement. But the producers, the sales people, like they're not, they're not necessarily looking at that. Yeah. They're just like, "How do I sell more business?" A- and really, they shouldn't be.

I think it's the leader- I think it's leadership's job to, to, to make those, to, to make those decisions. I mean, I was, um, I was talking to, um, the... It wasn't a top 100 broker, but they were probably top 250. It was, uh, like a vice president, regional vice president, whatever. We're just chit-chatting.

And in his region, they used four different agency management systems. So as a producer, you could be in one, you know, in one segment of that region, you could be working on an account in Applied, and then have a renewal for another account in Vertafore, and then another one's in, uh... or AMS360. Another one's in Sagitta, and you're just like... I'm like, "Oh my God." Like just, just think about that.

That's data warehouse, by the way. Yeah. 'Cause like I think there's one idea which is like, "Hey, like get everybody in the same AMS," and it's like, do you know how much, like you know how much like people are gonna cry? Oh my gosh, yeah. How many gallons of tears you're gonna have? It's brutal.

So like what if you're just like, "Hey, you know what? Let's just keep all the AMSs in like data warehouse"? And I think- The data can live in s- sales CRM, it can live in Vertafore, it can l- live in Epic. Who cares? And I think there's people trying to do this.

Uh, it is definitely the agency management systems are fighting it. I think some people have tried to do it with Salesforce. I do not think Salesforce is the tool to do this. It's too big, it's too expensive, and, uh, and I, and I don't think it's the answer. I do think there are companies out there trying to solve this problem, and probably could if the vendors of the industry wanted to solve it, and I'm not just blaming the agency management systems, right?

I'm, so I- But, but let's just talk about y- your- Yeah ... your example, right? You're talking about a sales guy. You're like, "Hey, my sales guy needs to access data from Salesforce, Vertafore, Applied." Like it shouldn't be that hard via API to pull like just basic account info from all three of those systems and put it into one interface. Mm-hmm.

It shouldn't be. Um, and maybe Salesforce as, as well. Like well, yeah, but like if it, it's... Hey, I don't need to have a thousand fields. I don't need to have everything that ever happened under the history of the sun with this account.

I just need to know the account names so that my producer can know like whether the account's in our books already. Yeah. You know? Like there's, there's, there's some things you can do. So I, again, I'm not an expert on data warehouse.

I just, I hear it a lot. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense to me. I think the biggest agencies are going after it. 2024, I'd be like, this is probably a theme that's gonna continue is like data warehouse.

And I don't know what it means for small agencies, um, but there's probably a thread there of like how can you, how can you leverage your data across multiple systems? And, and I think to some extent, honestly, like, and I, even chatting with, uh, you know, with Jason Cass, I know he's doing some stuff with tech to kind of like create this whole tech stack and ecosystem where it's basically what he's trying to do is get the tools to talk to each other better. Mm-hmm. So you can have better flows, more integrations, and I think that's, it's kind of a similar idea, um, is like, you know, integrations. Um, you're trying to have like a unified experience.

Yeah. I think for smaller agencies, less, more accurate data is always, is the answer. You don't need... Like people are like- 100% ... "Well, what, I need to know the li- I need to have the liability limits in my AMS."

Do you really? Do you really need to know the liability limits in the AMS? Because one- If you're a small agency, all you need to do is sell more insurance. Yes. That's it.

And- That's literally your job ... yeah. What policies they have, maybe the policy numbers and effective dates. That's about all you need for the policies. And then basic contact information, et cetera. Like, and notes around the account.

You don't really need anything more than that to cross-sell, up-sell, to service the accounts, and then to know where else to go to write more insurance. Like, and I think we get bogged down sometimes, es- uh, especially someone who's, who's, who is, you know, growth focused, maybe technology focused, et cetera, maybe younger to the industry, not necessarily young in age, but younger to... And they're coming, coming from another space and they've seen what other industries can do, and they're like, "Well, I need to know this and th-" And it's like, you don't. Get the basics, have the basics be accurate, and j- and as you said, sell more insurance. If the tool is not helping you sell more insurance, then it's, it's not valuable y- to you until a certain point, until optimizing your book becomes rele- relevant.

So okay, awesome. I love this. Data warehouse, data lake, structured, unstructured data. I love it. Um, and, and I completely agree with you.

It's an issue of economics. I, I, um, because I can't not go contextual when it's there. I was wa- There was a post on this, um- ... uh, economic like Instagram channel that I follow called Financials Simplified. And it was a, it was a graphic, uh, meme, and it was, um, 85% of all, uh, 85%, something like 85% of all, um, uh, uh, post 40 research goes into erectile dysfunction, yet only 19% of men- ... have erectile dysfunction. Where only 15% of post 40 research goes into PMS and menopause, yet 100% of women, uh, you know, experience PMS and menopause.

And I was like... And, you know, and, and the point of the thing was like men will pay to make sure, m- men will pay anything to make sure that this function in their body is operating properly. And it's, and it was like, you know, his point, it's a guy that puts this channel together I think. Um, and, and he, uh... I'm, I'm...

That is a inference. He probably has some good graphics. I don't know that for a fact. Um, but, uh, it was just, his point was like the research goes where people will pay. Right.

And if you can't do that function and you're a dude, you will pay just about anything to make sure that you can, and that's why the research was there. It was just, it was funny. I don't know. And I saw it 10 minutes before we went live, so that's why it was on my head. Um, okay.

Uh, erectile dysfunction aside. May- maybe you can put that in the, put that in the show notes for the listeners to go check out the graphic- Yeah, yeah ... so they can be like, "What the hell is Ryan talking about?" All right. Um, so okay, what el- what else did you have? Well, I think, so I think the next thing, you know, obviously, you know, insurance just in general.

I think like, um, w- hard market, like, um, that- that's been a massive change for those of us who's been around for more than 10 years in the industry. Like, we never seen this before. Um, so I think like that's just a theme. Like, uh, let- let's talk through a couple things I see in insurance. So hard market obviously one, with just like the cash in the system.

Um, I think like housing, commercial real estate is like interesting. That- that- that's already happening and like if you're listening, like you're probably, "Yeah, duh." Um, and again, I think that's like an economics problem because insurance is driven by economics. There's a ton of free... There was a ton of free cash, and now there's not.

And there's less capacity, there's less surplus at these insurance carriers. They don't, like they can't sell as much insurance. Um, I think like what are some of the impacts you might see from that? I'd be curious if like insur- I- I'm hearing this actually, that, um, some insurance companies are forcing agents to use portals as opposed to raters. It's been a theme forever, but like almo- almost like now it's like, "Hey, if you come to our website, you're more intentional."

Mm-hmm. And we're trying to be more selective. And this is like now like a decision driven by the economics of like who's the best, uh, client for an insurance company. Most profitable, you know, least likely to lose customers. So like what are some of the im- impacts of like hard market?

Um, what are... Like it- it'll be interesting to see like h- what the carriers do. 'Cause I think if you're an insurance carrier, you need to implement multiple strategies to make sure that you are writing the best economic business. Um, so I think some will be solved with tech. Um, I think that, you know, you might s- you, I think you're gonna see, I, I know one of my, a person that I know started a venture capital firm focused on wildfire startups. I think you're gonna see better, you know, f- you're gonna see some tech out there for better underwriting.

Um, I think, y- you know, the insurance industry's been behind a lot of things like two-factor authentication on computers. It's like if you don't have two-factor authentication, you can't get cyber insurance anymore, right? If you don't have airbags, anti-theft, anti-lock brakes, you can't like get car insurance. If you don't have building codes and sprinklers, like we can't insure your restaurant. I think in the construction industry there's so much opportunity, um, to be building better buildings, and I think, you know, you'll continue to see that.

Yep. And m- m- more push just from the economics perspective. I think, um, you know, self-driving cars. Waymo did over 700,000 trips with no human behind the wheel last year. Mm.

Um, which it's like no human behind the wheel. Um, and so it's like this thing that, that has been promised forever is like full self-driving level five, which may be f- you know, and again, just I guess for high level for your, for the listeners, level zero, no driving automation, right? Level one, you have driver assistance. It's like adaptive cruise control. Um, level two is partial driving automation, so it's like y- your car can steer and do the speed control like in a traffic jam.

Like when it pulls you off the rumble strip automatically, right? Like you get a little close- Yeah. I mean, I don't- ... and it pulls you back to center. Yeah. Yeah.

And I, I'm not an expert on the different levels, but I think it's, yeah, more or less the car can kinda steer for you in a traffic jam. Yeah. Um, probably like what a Tesla does. Level three, conditional driving. It's like the car can do all aspects of driving.

You can take your hand off the wheel and your eye off the road. That's level three- Mm ... in most situations. But you gotta be ready if the car beeps at you to tell you to take over. Level four, high driving automation. It means the car's fully autonomous in most situations.

So when I was driving back in the snowstorm, it's like, hey, the car probably couldn't do that, you know, at level four. But level five it's like no, the car can do full automatic, don't need to have a driver anymore, drive you in the snowstorm. Um, maybe we never get to level five. Um, but like clearly, clearly when there's 700,000 trips with no human behind the wheel, it's like something is h- interesting is happening. Yeah.

And when you look at insurance, like I have a whole thing on triggers to shop for insurance. Why do people buy insurance? A lot of the times, most of the times, it's because a government body's requiring you or a bank is requiring you to buy insurance. Yeah. So car insurance, you get a car, government requires you to buy insurance.

You know, what's the impact of having 700,000 trips and no driver behind the wheel? That's something I think about. Um, what does that mean for our industry in the next 5, 10 years? And, uh, and I think just like electric cars in general. Um, there's a lot of regulation about...

I think in Massachusetts apparently, like y- they won't be allowed to sell gas cars in 2035, which it's like the, it's crazy 'cause you're like h- how is this ever gonna work? Like the economics gonna work of this? No. Um, are, are there enough batteries that are out there? Are people gonna want them?

It's like a regulation as opposed to a market demand. But I think like the, our grid's not ready. You're already seeing issues with like fires from batteries. Um, you know, scooters had the same thing. I know, and I had read in Norway, um, a shipping company banned electric cars from going on the ferry.

And Norway is like one of the biggest purchasers of electric cars in the world. And the, and the ferry operator was like, "It's, it- it's a critical," you know, "the risk is too high," basically. Yep. Um, and so like, i- if, if people are like, "Hey, if you have a bunch of electric cars together and one catches on fire, like this is not good." And so we're insu- in the insurance industry, like underwriting.

Um, and it's not just, it's not just cars. You're gonna have the Tesla power walls in the house. I had read recently about a stove, a startup that builds a stove that has like a giant battery inside of it because it can, it can heat your water faster, and it can also like recharge your, your house when the power is low. Like so they're just ... And it's like what are the new risks that come from this?

Like even if, you know, what if you're plugging your car in to be the generator for your house if you have like one of the new F-150s or whatever. There's just a lot of things with like cars, self-driving cars, batteries, second, third order effects that it's like these are gonna be questions on your, on your application, right? Like do you, do you use your car as a generator? Like that should probably be a question on home insurance and auto insurance if it isn't already. Or, you know, may- may- maybe it would in the future.

So these are some of the things on, on the insurance side between hard market, you know, technologies that can solve it, self-driving cars, EVs that I've kind of thought would be interesting for 2024. Yeah. I think I, I love the idea, and again I think this goes all the way back to the beginning of our conversation when we were talking about as a leader. Again, if you're, if you're grinding out in a production role and you're, you haven't hit escape velocity in your life yet, don't worry about any of these things. Write more insurance.

Like don't waste your time. 100%. And I say if you're an entrepreneur starting a company, you're, you're in your production career, et cetera, don't worry about these things. Don't think about these things. Like right?

Think about tactics, think about strategy, think about prospecting, you know, et cetera. But if you're a leader- Unless you're a niche specialist, Ryan. I know you love niches. Um- Oh my gosh. Yeah, I love it ... if you're a ni- if, if Talk about taking a shot.

If you're- I couldn't, I couldn't help myself. Yeah. I, uh, um, I, I couldn't help myself. We can get to that in a second. We can get to that in a second.

I, um- But if you're a niche specialist in electric something with insurance, like maybe you should pay a little bit more attention. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. You wanna know this stuff.

So if it's your, if it is your target market, et cetera. But like you think about second and third order effects. Like I have, uh, so I, I'm renovating a home, uh, that I, I live in currently. Um, very excited. Uh, post-divorce, had an apartment, finally got a house, but uh, uh, needed some renovation.

Doing that okay. So something I didn't realize when I purchased the house is that, uh, we are actually bel- slightly below the water table in our basement. Now, it's not bad, and we're not in like a high volume water area, but at all times water is trickling into the home. And, you know, every, depending on how, what's going on, every 15, 20 minutes some pump kicks on, pushes the water out. Okay, great.

Don't currently have a, a generator. It's something I have to do, but just, you know, of all the things I have to do, I haven't got there yet. If the power went out today, in about five hours that would overflow into my basement. So I have a backup battery powered sump pump as well, which would get me 24 plus hours on the backup. So it's not like I'm completely out to lunch.

But the idea here is, uh, look at California, right? As they push towards, uh, EVs only, their, the power grid cannot sustain it. We do not have the capabilities. And because s- for some reason climate changers don't, won't embrace nuclear or nuclear or what however you properly pronounce it, um, I want to do the other way than George Bush, which I always forget what it is. Um, you know, since, since, since nuclear power is something that we seemingly can't wrap our head around, there is no way to produce enough electricity for every, even every American, let alone the world, to have an electric vehicle.

Not even close. Not even 10%. So like- Or a heat pump in your home- Yeah ... or a battery backup. So, so when we're talking second, third order effects here, and just things to consider in that the insurance industry, and this is why I love the industry that we're in because it's ever evolving to what's coming. So say rolling blackouts become an issue which, if the Democrats have their way, is most likely gonna be in our future.

Um, well, probably all of our establishments, 'cause Nikki Haley would do it. I mean just to that point, like my, my furnace is breaking, Ryan, and I have a gas furnace. And like there's big subsidies to put an electric- Yes ... heat pump and an electric water heater in the house. Yeah. And it's like y- like literally the government would pay like half the cost- Yep ... and give me 0% loan.

If you do gas, it's like you have to pay it 100%, there's no subsidy. And it's like, okay, like we have gas, it's already here. And so what you're saying is we're gonna have a, an electric vehicle, we're gonna have electric heat pump for heat and air conditioning, we're gonna have electric heat pump for water heating. All this stuff, yeah, what's it all add up to, right? And if you don't eat- It was a great idea- ... your bug pills, Peter, they're gonna turn off the power and you are out.

Uh, no. And it, yeah. I, you know, you think about these things, uh- And if you're paying with your digital wallet- Yeah ... that the government controls, then they're gonna shut you off like Canada did with the truckers, right? Exactly. Exactly.

This is the conspiracy theory part. Yeah. This is why you have to bury all your gold around the county in which you live. Um- The, uh, like, like Ron Swanson from Parks and Rec. No, h- I do think, I do think it's interesting.

Like you look at, um, like areas that have been dammed, right? I mean you, again, not to bash California because not all of this were, were Democrats in California. Republicans did this too. But what they've done with their water supply and how they've dammed off different water systems and different things have drastically impacted water issues related to California which, you know, in part, in part, you know, some would say have played a role in some of the wildfires because the, you know, rivers don't flow the same, they've changed ecological systems. Okay.

I know it's not the only reason, whatever. My, my point is not who's to blame or what it is, but there are many decisions being made at all times, and there are second and third order decisions. And as leaders in our company, I think that's where we need to spend our time is thinking what's happening today- And then if this, if X happens, then how do I make sure that my business is set up to sustain such a thing? And something I've just- So but you were gonna fi- I interrupted you. You were just gonna say that if the battery, the power went out for a certain amount of time, like your house is gonna flood, right?

Yes. And that, and that's kinda my, my thing is like, okay, let's say I'm a, let's say I'm a homeowner's insurance carrier, and I know that you have some whack job communist Democrat like Kathy Hochul running the state, right? Who has, who has literally said electric s- you, uh, gas stoves- She's the same one who just shut down non-competes, right? Yes. And is putting an exit tax into our state.

How shitty a fucking leader are you if you have to put an exit tax into your state so that people don't leave? All right, that's another point. But my, but the thing is she has passed a, she has passed initial legislation- No, she shut down the, I was saying she shut down the non-compete so they weren't gonna be a thing in New York. Yeah. I thought like- Yeah ... right?

That was like a big deal. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think, I think- Anyway ... there s- I can't remember if that got beat and it's now being repositioned or something's going on.

But oh yeah, this, we do, we, New York is going full communist and, you know, it's working out really well for us. No, but I, I just, not, not to beat a dead horse here, but I thought non-competes, it like, it was going nationwide and then New York was like, "No, no, no. Like we, we need non-competes." Oh, no. And I thought Kathy was like- No ... like, "We're keeping them."

No, the other way. Oh. We're, I'm pretty sure that, I'm pretty sure that, uh... I'm pretty sure the big eye of New York was fighting the fact that New York wanted to go Ca-... So in California, if you hire a producer- Mm-hmm ... in California, which I did not know, I had, at one time I had three producers in California.

No non-compete. Great guys. Uh, uh- Yeah ... this is not an, an indictment of them. Just in doing research and having people in California, which I had never had an employee in California before, they could, at any given time, say, "Hey, I'm out," take their entire book with them, move it to someone else, move it someplace else, and there was literally nothing I could do. When you say take their book, I mean they, they would have to actually like solicit them, have them sign BORs or something like that.

Yes. But I mean, I could not go, I could not go after them for taking- Right ... their book with them, right? Like yeah, there's not like like a document they sign, but like they could just say- But yeah ... "Hey, come over, come over, come over, come over, come over," and that would be nothing I could do. New York is headed that way if Hochul gets her way.

And- But so, so, s- so yeah, go ahead. To finish my point on this, on this electric thing. So say you have, regardless, it could be whoever. Say you are in a state that is hu- that's doing all this electric stuff, and you know- Yeah ... from past experience, looking at California, looking at some of the Norwegian states, et cetera, that when you over-index on electric, you get rolling blackouts. So now you're looking at homeowners, you're looking at your homeowners book going, "Oh my gosh, if it's the wintertime in upstate New York and they start getting rolling blackouts," what happens is now you start to have frozen pipe issues.

You start to have flooded basement issues. You start to have, um, so what hap- you get, uh, all kinds of shit with the eaves because the water starts to melt because the heat's, you know, the heat issues, and then it freezes- Yeah, yep ... under- underneath the eaves. So like it, you know, this is a second or third order problem to the, to, you know, someone just, you know, some legislator being bought by the, by the, uh, by, by whoever's buying up, um, all these politicians around this electric stuff, and saying, "Okay, we're gonna make our state this fully electric by 2035," yet we do not have the infrastructure to do it. You get rolling blackouts, and all of a sudden homeowners claims go up. Um, you know, that's the kinda thing that I think we have to be thinking through.

And what makes our industry so interesting is because now that's a problem that we have to solve and protect our clients against, which continually makes the insurance industry relevant and important to the, you know, sustainability of, you know, our lives. Absolutely. Um, I think like it's, it's, it's not a pure market adoption. It's like an accelerated adoption. And when you have accelerated adoptions, like there's impacts.

Yeah. And I think, yeah, 100%. I, uh, all these things are pretty interesting. I, I was chatting with a friend of mine recently, he has an electric car. He's in a condo association.

He's like, "We need to install hookup pedestals so you can plug your car in." What are the insurance impacts of like installing, you know, electric pedestals in a condo association- Mm-hmm ... from a liability perspective? And it's, there's interesting questions. Um, so I think a lot to be aware of. I think, you know, the, the, the insurance companies that are out there, like they don't have to ask questions on the underwriting right away because they'll look at the claims data.

Yeah. Um, but the, but I think you need to be aware of like, hey, high level, what are some trends that are happening? Oh, electrification's a theme. What are some of these second, third order impacts? Oh, let's, let's go reanalyze our claims and be like, was there a, an incidence of like, you know, uh, w- was there some sort of data that can tell us about incidents about an uptick in freeze-ups because of heat pump systems failing- Yeah ... and not having a backup?

Something like that. Yeah. Like- And like, like let's go analyze our claims and see if this is like, if there's something there. And I think you made a point earlier as well, if you're an agent, you can look at these things and say, "Can I talk to my carriers, find out who maybe is looking out ahead at electric vehicles, electric, you know, electric appliances inside of homes, and become an expert or find some way to prospect these types of people who are building homes this way or are improving their homes in this way, and can I be the agent or agency for that type of client?" And I, and I think, you know, again, we can use these things in, as both from prospecting and from risk management, et cetera.

Um, but I think it's really interesting. Before you go, um, and I know we're getting close to the number and I wanna be respectful of your time, uh, I wanna just hear a little bit about Wonderai. I'm big fan. We were a client for almost three years at, at Rogue Risk. Uh, I love what you're doing.

I love you as a leader, and, uh, I'm obviously, uh, always trying to promote Wonderai just 'cause I think it's a great tool for the industry. But tell us a little bit about what's going on and, uh, what you're up to.Brian, we didn't even get to AI yet, so we'll have to save that for another day. Yeah, we'll have to come back. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

We'll come back on AI. Let's come back on AI. Yeah. Um, no, so no, th- things with WonderI, you know, they're going great. We, um, we have a, an integration we've been working on with Vertafore, a direct integration.

Um, and it's, it's in production with a number of agencies. It's really cool to see. We've put a lot of time into it. Um, that's been a big thing we've been doing. And, um, but yeah, I think y- you know, big picture, what is WonderI for those who aren't aware?

It's, like, the fastest and easiest way to complete insurance applications. Yeah. Supplementals, uh, accords, whatever. You, you literally just type in the name of the form you're looking for, and chances are we already have it in our forms library. We have over 6,000 forms.

Um, and so you, you can instantly share it with your customer the same way you would share, like, a Loom video. It's so fast, it's so easy or, or anything, like a Dropbox link. You just share the link or you send them an email. They can fill out the form digitally. At WonderI, I went through this with my own family agency.

We bought a, a bigger, you know, tech, you know, cyber liability policy. I literally was sitting in bed at 10:30 at night, filled out a few quick questions, assigned the cyber questions to my VP of engineering. He answered them, and then I signed the document with, like, WonderI's equivalent of DocuSign. Um, it goes back to the agency, and with the Vertafore integration, it can automatically, like, put that back into your agency management system, system of records. Like, that's exciting.

Um, I think that's, like, a big thing. Another big thing we've had going on is, you know, cross-form mapping. So let's say you are marketing cyber insurance. You fill out one application, you know, with Travelers. Because it's a hard market, you wanna go to multiple markets.

You wanna, like, be the first to market so that you're not getting beat out by a competitor. Um, we can map the data from one form to, like, five other forms, and that's a, it's, it's a huge undertaking to get that right because if you're familiar with, like, the AI tools that are out there, you have to have, like, this level of precision, and it's tough to do well. So we, we built that tooling about a year ago, and we've been rolling it out slowly, um, across our forms library. It's like that's pretty exciting. As I think about not just filling out, like, a cyber form, but let's say, like, a single intake form that isn't even tied to a PDF or a supplemental.

But now you can take that data, and this was kind of the whole thesis of WonderI, is like capture the data once and then use it, like, infinitely wherever you need it to be used. Yeah. And so that's, like, a pretty exciting thing that's out there. Um- Yeah, I know, right ... those kinds of things. Uh, uh, towards the end with Rogue, we had, uh, we dropped DocuSign, and we were using WonderI as our, as our, uh, eSign tool, which, you know, I know that's not your primary value proposition, but, you know, in conjunction with these forms, you don't...

You know, with a lot of other tools, you have to export the forms and then import them into the eSign and then send them out and, you know, it was saving us a tremendous amount of time. And to your point, just, just data quality in different places, we, we just, we would build everything into WonderI and then, you know, any questions we didn't gather in the initial kinda... I mean, if you're thinking through, if anyone's been listening to me around my one-call close system, right? We try to gather everything we can. Anything we missed, we s- we would send out two or three questions that we needed answered just from the WonderI form.

That would come back, market it. Once we had our c- you know, whoever we were going with, bam, we just send it right out of that system back for eSign, and it just created a, a much easier flow. One of the things that was very important to me or is very important to me, um, when I'm bringing on any piece of software technology that I do not think we think about enough is how easy is it to train my team on this tool? And that was one of the things that I really liked about WonderI, is that, uh, it was, like, s- finger snap easy to train. You know, there are tools that are really, really well done.

Uh, and I'm not, you know, not knocking anyone else. Like, tools that have tons of firepower are great for your agency, but it might take three months for someone to become comfortable using the tool. And for me personally, how easy it is to train my team on a tool is a, is a really important data point when I make a decision on what to use, and I found that to be the case with WonderI. So, uh, dude- No, I- Yeah. I was gonna say, I app- I appreciate you mentioning that.

I think, like, that was something that was critical for us, um, even, like, in the software. We, we actually wanted something you could try for free, and we didn't have that originally. When you signed up, you couldn't try WonderI for free because it, it wasn't easy enough. Yeah. It's actually easy enough now, I think.

And so we actually turned on, this is new for us as well, is we have a free trial. You can use WonderI for free today for 14 days, and we have, um, we opened up power producer pricing for, like, one user. So it's literally like we, we wanted to have something that was the easiest thing to buy. You don't even have to talk to a salesperson. You can try it.

Um, and w- and we're seeing really good conversions from people that they, they sign up, they try it, um, 'cause I think when I was at my agency, like, that was... Like, you just wanna try it yourself, and if you can figure it out in, like, 30 minutes, you're like, "All right," like, "let's give this a shot." Yeah. Um, so that's, like, something else that's big for us, but yeah, definitely. It's tough to pitch the boss on a tool that you've never actually had your hands on before.

You know? Like, if you've never actually gotten in and used it, and you wanna bring it- Oh, yeah ... to the boss and say, "Hey, I think this is something we should integrate in the agency," it's, it's almost impossible to make that pitch if you haven't, if you haven't actually had, had a chance to, like- Yeah ... get your hands in there and use it. Yeah, especially in this climate where, like, there's so many tools. That's another theme for 2024, is like, hey, what tools are gonna stick it out? But there's so many tools, and, like, everybody's looking at belt-tightening and like, "Hey, what am I doing with my, with our expenses?"

Yeah. "What are we keeping? What are we cutting?" Yeah, I love it. Dude, um, well, now I, I wanna bring you back in to talk about the AI thing, but I also wanna be cognizant of your time and of the audience's time.

I appreciate the hell out of you. I love our conversations. A big fan of what you're doing at WonderI, have been from the beginning. And then, uh, any chance we get IRL to, to dive deep into conspiracy theories is also, uh- ... is also, um, a fun time for me 'cause you're one of the few people who will placate my, uh, assert- uh, absurd viewpoints on certain topics, and, uh, and I appreciate that about you, so thank you so much, man. Oh, that's the best.

Hey, thanks for having me, and yeah, I can't wait to, uh, to go deep and, you know, to s- uh, scratch that itch, that curiosity itch, which I think is what it is. You're pu- it's, like, pursuing curiosity- Yeah ... right? And thinking critically, so 100%. All right, brother. Be good.

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