John Fohr on Making Compliance Sexy with TrustLayer

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In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you. And it is with John Ford, the CEO of TrustLayer. Now you may have heard TrustLayer's name starting to be tossed around.

Definitely one of the players in the insure tech space from the value add segment. The real value added services segment. They're doing compliance, they're doing certificate tracking, all kinds of really good stuff. I'm not going to do the platform justice by fully rolling out all the list of features that they do. But what I will say is John is a great guy.

This is an awesome, awesome conversation. And I am very excited to expose you guys, if you haven't been already, to TrustLayer. Now, in full disclosure, they're not a sponsor and we don't use them yet. It's one of those things that is on our 2022 roadmap as we dive deeper into how we're going to add value to all our small business customers. TrustLayer is on that roadmap.

We're growing and we're young and rogue, so just not quite ready to roll TrustLayer out. But I'll tell you, completely blown away by this tool. I've gotten the demo. After talking to John, it's just something that I'm like, I can see it. And I can see the companies or the agencies, sorry, that take the time to put a tool like TrustLayer in place.

I can see it. I can absolutely see where that value is going to come from. So just excited to expose this tool for you. But I just wanted to let you know that I'm not using it, nor are they a sponsor. So just so you guys knew kind of where I was coming from.

I just think John's a good guy. I'd heard him speak before and had wanted to have him on and finally got the chance. And happy I did because this is awesome. So that all being said, I want to give a quick shout out to the sponsors that make this show possible. And that is Tarmica.

Don't call me Tarmica. Tarmica. Tarmica is changing the game in the way we quote and compare commercial insurance. Guys, I've been talking about Tarmica for almost three years now. And there's a reason for that.

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And obviously we're big and small commercial. You know, you know, we got Pathpoint. We got Coderoo. We got Propeller Bonds as sponsors. Tarmica is a big part of that.

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Donna for Agents. Go to DonnaforAgents.com. Just Google Donna for Agents today and check it out. All right. On to John 4.

Here we go. John. Ryan. How are you? I'm good.

What's going on? How's life? Just, you know, trying to keep the startup afloat. You know the game, you know? Yeah.

Strikes and gutters, man. That's the startup life. That is the deal. That constant tension of someone asked me a question the other day and I was like, well, kind of feel like I'm in a biplane and I'm flying through like the Rocky Mountains. And at certain times, I'm like, well above the peaks and life is good.

And then I feel like I can just. Yeah. At any point. Yeah. I don't know.

You're not exactly sure where you are. You're kind of hoping there's not a big mountain coming, but you just don't know. That is a very accurate and very, that's a very accurate way of describing it. Yeah. Describing it.

How long have you been on your entrepreneurial journey? I start, I officially started the agency on March 9th, but I guess technically, March 9th of 2020, but I guess technically I'd say from about 30 seconds after I was fired from my last job, which would be October 6th of 2019. Oh, man. Yeah. So you started, you started in the pandemic.

I started seven days before it hit New York, before New York state shut down. Holy shit. Yeah. So we, we, we, we, so basically from the, from the moment I got fired from my last job, which is a whole story, which I won't go into, but, um, uh, you know, 836 AM on a Monday. I think I'm walking, I'm, I was just, you probably don't, I was the CEO of a fitness frame.

I left the insurance industry basically because I had a family member who was sick and I couldn't travel anymore. And at the time I was a CMO for bold penguin and that required me to be on the road every single week. So I had this family member get sick. I had to be home. My wife, you know, basically said, I need you home.

We got little kids, whatever. Um, they would not allow me to continue my current position and not travel. There just wasn't, it wasn't part of the job. So, um, kind of separated from them, which whatever. And, and there's just not a lot of insurance work in the insurance and, uh, in the, uh, in the Albany area.

I live in upstate New York and, uh, uh, and at the time, you know, now I could have found, I think a great position post COVID, but pre COVID, you know, everyone was still, you gotta be able to show up here. You gotta be here. You gotta be here. So I've tried, I've the net, I tried to figure out like the, what's the next best thing I can find. And, uh, I, I like to work out a lot and this gym that I'd been working out at, the founder came to me and said, Hey, we've kind of stagnated a little bit.

Um, we're stuck at 2000 members. They had six locations. They're like, we really want to grow, but I'm a gym guy, not a business guy. So he actually brought me in as the CEO, which is great. Oh, really?

Yeah, it was great. You know, I, I loved it. Um, you know, he kind of kept working on the routines and the gym stuff and I grew the business and we grew, I doubled the size of the business in nine months. And, um, which was awesome. And at that point he realized the business was profitable again and growing, didn't need me and showed up at eight 30 in the morning to a, I'm in like blue lemon workout clothes.

Cause as a CEO of a fitness, I mean, now everyone's in your clothes, but you know, back in 2018, being able to wake up every day and put like sweats on to go to work. It was pretty cool. And was, was, was this like a box? Was this like a, like, yeah, so it was a really, it was actually a pretty cool concept. It was this, uh, it was strength based metabolic training.

So you were doing strength based exercise, but at a pace. So you were constantly, you were out of breath and getting that cardiovascular workout. That was that you really need, but you were doing strength based exercises and man, it was, it was changing. I was really bought in it. I'd seen some people have ridiculous transformations and just overall people being happy and healthy.

It was great. Um, but yeah, I'm sitting there in my sweats, 8 30 AM meeting. We have every Monday, just kind of like state of the union. And, uh, he showed up in a, in a suit with his attorney. I knew something was wrong.

That's not good. Yeah. So it was basically from that moment. I figured the universe was telling me it's time to start your own thing. So I did.

Cool, man. Wow. That's incredible. And then, and then you launched in the middle of the pandemic. We launched as well.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I know. I think you launched February or was it April? Well, technically we launched, like we started the year before, but when we went to the pandemic, we had, I think we had four people, uh, that were full-time and, and I think we just hit 50, uh, yesterday.

It's awesome. So like, like that, you know, when it was four people, including my co-founder, who's awesome. Yeah. Uh, like you, you're constantly like, you know what everyone's doing? Like it's, it's, you're working like hand in glove.

Right. Uh, and I don't know about you, but like, once we hit, like, once we hit like 15, 20 people, things are like, I don't know, especially in a remote environment, right? Yeah. Like, I don't actually know what's happening to some of these teams anymore. Like, it's like, you're not, you're not able to check in with everyone every day.

And, uh, or like, you know, in the same way you were before, it was a tiny team. Uh, and again, everyone's remote. Right. And so, you know, just like, like a lot of the, like a lot of the challenges. Like a lot of the startups that, that really grew during the pandemic.

Um, but yeah, it was, it's, it's, it's all the time. Yeah. Yeah. It, it, to me, what the, I think the, the, the pandemic, what it, it was kind of a proving ground for leadership. I don't necessarily know.

I think, I think in general, um, I think most people, most white collar jobs basically stayed the same, right? You just work from home. Most companies, I mean, that's a broad stroke, but I think for the most part, if you were a salesperson, you were still selling maybe a little different, but you were selling. I saw the pandemic as a real proving ground for leadership. Like, I think that there were a lot of lazy leaders that out in the marketplace who, when you're seeing people every day, when you can walk the floor, it's really easy to kind of keep that level of control and, and, and, uh, you know, kind of, kind of thumb on what's going on.

And when the pandemic hit and now all of a sudden you're in a remote environment, you're not exactly sure what everyone's doing every minute of the day. Um, your success is based really on, uh, process culture, having the right people, you know, if you're, if this were EOS kind of like right, but right seat, um, it's a much to me, it's to be successful today, you need a much more thoughtful, engaged leadership than you did pre-pandemic. And, um, I, you know, I could be completely wrong, but that has been my take. No, of course you do. Yeah.

I'm sure there's a lot of crappy, like middle managers out there that are like terrified that like, they're, they're like, their teams could like, don't need them anymore. And we're like, they're like, yeah, just with like some good structure, you can now like manage a bigger team or your team can work remote. Um, and they don't need you like butting their, like butting your head in their office every like 30 minutes just to make it seem like you're busy. Uh, yeah, I know a lot of times, like I'll go to like, when we run into like hiccups or we're running to, you know, we run into challenges, like every startup, it's like, that's just like a reminding, like I just remind myself, remind the team that like, there are a lot of companies that were like, like the last company, like the last year and a half was a huge, like road bump for a lot of companies, for every company, really, but like the vast majority of those companies existed before the pandemic to actually have it, you know, to, to, there are very few companies that have grown up entirely during the pandemic, uh, especially dealing with all the like complexities. Cause if you were a salesperson before, like in your customer success person or I don't know, whatever, like before your job was to your point, pretty similar.

Like during that, it's just like, well, it's like going to the office, I do it at home. And like, here's some changes. I mean, I travel as much more zoom or whatever, but like more or less, like you're, you were trained, like the training, the infrastructure you had, everything was like, kind of, this can be similar, but if everything grew up, like, like from scratch during the, during the pandemic, it's like, we didn't have any of that momentum going into this thing. It was like completely starting from just starting from scratch. Yep.

Like, uh, really, and it's almost like a double scratch. I've described it to people as like a double scratch environment where you not only had the fact that you didn't have the momentum, as you said, you also were starting during a time when no one wanted to pick up the phone and everyone had all these personal, emotional and psychological stresses outside of work that they were dealing with. You're trying to build partnerships and connections and hire. Well, I will, I will say though, I'm going to disagree with you a little bit on that. Cause I will say, I feel like some people were more willing to pick up the phone.

So we did this and this is just coincidental. So we did this accelerator, uh, broker tech ventures. These guys, I just realized I'm wearing their shirt. Uh, these guys are awesome. Uh, and so we went through the pandemic, uh, did the, we did the accelerator.

It was supposed to be, um, in person. And these guys like pivoted on a dime, made it, made it a virtual, uh, and, uh, it was run by these guys. Um, and there's like 14 brokers that got together and then they somehow couldn't like M3 and then Holmes Murphy and a few others like got together and convinced all these like competitors function to like work together. And, uh, they did this really good thing, but we were able to meet with the, like the people whose like names are on the side of the building in a lot of, in a lot of cases because like the CEOs weren't moving or weren't traveling. Yep.

And so, so in that way we would have never had as much FaceTime. It wasn't real FaceTime. It was like virtual FaceTime. Right. But like, it was still way better to actually build like direct relationships with like, you know, 10 plus like C-level, uh, people at like some of the, some of the most innovative brokerages in the country.

Uh, so, so I thought that part was, was, was pretty slick. Uh, but it's at the, all that said, it's also nice to go to, uh, to get back on the road a little bit. Uh, did you go to InsureTech Connect? I didn't. Um, I would like to go next year.

Uh, we just, we've been in. We've been hiring like crazy, um, for, for us, for where we're at. Um, we're kind of in a, a growth phase. I didn't want to be away from, and I, and I've been doing InsureTech Connect before, and I think they do a tremendous job. I also know that it can, if mismanaged, be a tremendous boondoggle.

And I was not prepared to navigate that. I just, I wanted to keep my head in the game. So I skipped that. I skipped a couple of broker events to IOA. Um, again, not that I didn't want to be there.

You just, I don't know. You kind of have to pick, you know, right now where we're at, um, you know, I kind of have to be around and, um, it just, trust me, man. I get it. Yeah. So we, I didn't, I, you always have that FOMO though, because I love, you know, this is, well, I just, I just thought it was interesting from like, it was like the first time where I was like actually around people again, uh, at scale.

And, uh, it was just, it's funny how, like how quickly people like swing back into it. Hey, what's, what's behind you? What's that, uh, that news? Yeah. Declaration of Independence.

Oh, get out of here. So you're the, uh, you're the guy who bought it from those crypto guys. Yes, that's true. Yep. That is, that's cause there's a lot of, uh, Bitcoin and ETH invested in that right now.

Um, no, I've had that, uh, the Declaration of Independence up in every, I've had the Declaration and, um, the American flag, not always that particular one, although a version of the American flag in every office that I've ever worked in since 2006. So it just kind of travels with me wherever I go. Uh, kind of reminds me of, you know, the, that you have to, sometimes you got to do crazy shit, uh, in order to get things done. You know, so, uh, so yeah, it's just a good reminder. So how are you spending your time right now?

What are you, what, like, what's like the, the biggest like pain points you're dealing with? Yeah. So our, just selling insurance really is, is what it is. You know, we, we, um, so we started, I launched this to be a digitized middle market brokerage. Um, and you know, on, unlike many of the CEOs that fortunately you were able to talk to none of the CEOs that I was trying to prospect, you know, in March of 2020, we're picking up the phone.

Well, I think, you know, that's a, that's a very good point. We were, we were engaging brokers then. And to your point, I bet the CEOs, like the reason they were available was because their customers probably weren't, were not picking up the phone in the same way. Yeah, yeah, no. And, and, you know, I completely get what you're saying.

So it was, so for, for that particular, for trying to prospect middle market from scratch, it was, there was, there was nothing. I mean, literally voicemails that said, Hey, we have no idea when we're going to be back. Right. So that lasted. Well, it, for the first three months that rogue existed, I didn't sell one policy.

I had invested all my own money. I'd bootstrap the agency on purpose because I didn't want to do a raise until I had hit a place that I actually had something to raise against since, you know, we're not like a high tech play all the VCs don't, they don't really get turned on by that. So, so, so I had to pivot and that pivot was from middle market into small business. Cause while middle market businesses had oftentimes had the bank role and whatever, you know, kind of, uh, accounts receivable out far enough that they could weather this storm, small business had to keep operating and they had to be around and, you know, as much as they could, depending geographically on where they were located. So we pivoted into small business and built a fairly substantial inbound engine for small business, which is what we do today, which is cool.

Um, the next phase of our business is coming, is swinging back around to, you know, uh, making that, that middle market, um, kind of vertical based digital agency, uh, realized. So now essentially, you know, again, I think you could either let the pandemic beat you or, or you can beat the pandemic. What it was a lot, what it allowed us to do, or what it forced us to do was basically build this really cool base layer of income and prospects, right? So we have 250 to 300 inbound small businesses calling us, you know, contacting us, calling us, whatever every month. And that kind of acts as the base layer for our business.

And, and now what, and we've gotten very good process driven at kind of working them through and that's awesome. And the next phase is now starting to build out the middle market verticals that attack that next tier up kind of sitting below where like a Brown and Brown or a Gallagher would play, but above, um, kind of your standard local personal lines focused independent agency. So we call that rogue premier, like 25,000 to 250,000. Um, and building out that is where we're at right now. So it's, you know, it's a different sales process.

There's a little more outbound. Um, you have to get a certain type of producer who can do that. There's a certain type of person who can do outbound and work, work that. Um, so there's some hiring things and, you know, all the, all the stuff. I mean, we're, we're doing very good.

Uh, just it's kind of classic, classic issues of we're in a scaled process. Yeah. How did you end up at a, how did you end up at full penguin? I'm a super rocket ship. Yeah.

So I had known, um, Ilya for geez, three years. I knew Mark for four years. Um, you know, we, I had known them when it built penguin didn't even exist when Mark was still running, whatever the company was before that. And, um, it just, you know, I had been at trusted choice.com. I don't know if you're familiar with them.

Um, and I built agency nation, which is a, was a digital media platform for them. And I didn't, I didn't work really well inside of national association politics. I'm not a real good politician. I found, I don't think that I would make it on the, on the national political, national political scene. So, uh, I kinda, I kinda, after four years, I kind of worn out my welcome, um, with the, with the national big eye and it was, it was time to move on.

And they were looking for a CMO and it seemed like a good fit. How much of that? Yeah. How much of that did you get? No, I think I got most of it.

Okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so dude, I, uh, tell me, tell me a little bit about trust layer. I mean, I've, I've heard a lot, I've heard, uh, you know, I've seen a lot of the press.

Yeah. I've seen the press releases, a follow, you know, a follow along. I've heard some people. I think you talked to a buddy of mine, David Carruthers the other day, or at least maybe, maybe you talked to him, somebody, um, that I know who was saying some good stuff. So, you know, I'm, that's awesome.

Yeah. You know, we've spent the first 20 minutes here kind of bullshit in, uh, in general, which is great, but I'd love to, um, let everyone kind of listening in at home, just to get a better feel for, for what you guys are up to, um, you know, and what problem you're solving. Yeah. So, uh, again, like I'm John, uh, I'm one of the two co-founders of a company called trust layer. Uh, and so the, the pain point we're trying to solve is that, right.

When two companies are working together, there could be a fair amount of friction. It can be like identity information. You got to do like, I don't know, KYC stuff. You might have to track, um, licenses. You got a plumber coming on, like onto the job side, or you've got like, like, uh, like for, if you're a broker, you need to have, you know, coverage or whatever, like type of license stuff, uh, or excuse me, you have to have, like, you have to be licensed.

Um, you also need to track insurance. So that plumber that's going to go onto a job site, you have to validate that they actually have insurance. Uh, if you're a bank and you have borrowers, you need to track that those guys, whether it's like auto loans, mortgages, like every piece of equipment in the global equipment leasing industry. Like time and time again, companies have to like track and validate this. And it's like all done through paper.

And so companies don't want to deal with this. Companies are like, I want to focus on my actual business. I don't want to focus on like tracking insurance of my subcontractors or my vendors or my suppliers or my tenants. I just want to like focus on like the actual business. And so we have a tool that automates that whole process with like the collection and like use some fancy OCR and AI tools to be able to extract data from it and really have like a, like automated robotic process, what's called robotic process automation, RPA, uh, to just simply like automate that workflow.

Uh, but instead of me pushing around hundreds of millions of pieces of paper, I'd much rather actually solve this pain point because when you get this proof of coverage, you don't actually know if the information's authentic. Like unfortunately for our first customer, but good, good for this story. Uh, we learned that our first customer out of his 40 vendors, one of his, one of his vendors was just committing insurance fraud, just straight up like lying about coverage. And unfortunately for our customer, there was a big problem. And, and our customer, you know, like before they came to us, like they had to write a big check.

Um, and so if we could create a way to have a digital proof of coverage, that would be game-changing because now you actually could allow for real ground truth, not just within the insurance industry, but within like the construction industry, right? Which within like the property management industry with banking. Um, and so you can actually validate this information in a more real-time basis. And then you as their, as their broker, uh, can one, like provide like additional consulting services to them if you want, uh, or really be like kind of assist with the, this like risk management piece if you want. And the nice thing is the robots do the vast majority of the work.

So you can actually focus on the complex things rather than like the admin pushing papers around, which, which again, no one, no one really wants to do, especially you as a broker, uh, don't want to do. Cause you want to, you want to be bringing in new customers and you want to help us. You want to retain your, your customers and provide like a really good service to them. Uh, and so that's what we're up to. It's a pretty big challenge.

Uh, the platform that's in market today, like I said, automates all the paper-based workflows. Uh, and then we're, we've got a number of pilots and this digital proof of coverage is a, is a very ambitious thing. Uh, but thankfully we don't have to do it alone. Yeah. So we're working with, uh, a number of really large carriers and brokers, uh, and actually in the last funding round, as of now, I think we have 24 of the top 100 brokers that actually invested in TrustLayer as well as a handful of carriers.

Uh, so they've actually invested in TrustLayer. So now we, we have like real buy-in from the industry because tracking coverage or like just proof of coverage, it's just been a big pain in the ass for everyone in this space for, for too long. And, and it's exciting to have like the industry get behind you, uh, and, and, and say like, we think you are the ones that are going to be able to solve this. Yeah, that's tremendous. I, uh, I've seen a bunch of like cert tools and different stuff like that.

And I think it's, it's interesting to me, but, uh, the digital proof of coverage that you're discussing is a, is a much, um, it's a much more dynamic and sustainable way to do it. And, you know, that to me, you know, so our, uh, the concept behind our agency to give you some context to this is, uh, what a term we call human optimized, what that means is, you know, through all the work that I've done, uh, in my career, 16 years in the industry now, probably had 50,000 conversations with everyone from, you know, single person, startup, local agencies in Western Iowa to the 42nd floor of travelers and Hartford and all these guys. And, you know, what I did, you know, in launching rogue was kind of take a derivation of what worked and what didn't in all those places and where I saw it go. And essentially what you just described is, is in essence, what we call human optimized, which is give, if you're, give your people more time to be what they really are, which is value providers and less time being transactors of nonsensical zero value add activities. And the more of these zero value add activities that you can remove from your people's day or the reduction in time that you can put what that, what, you know, what I think happens, what unfortunately a lot of independent agents look at that as, oh my God, I'm losing my value.

This is my value. And the way we look at it as all we're going to be able to do is touch more customers, spend more time with each customer and, and build deeper connections and relationships with our customers, which is ultimately where more revenue comes from. So I absolutely positively love this concept. What's up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show in an exchange for that, I need your help.

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Yeah. Thanks, man. Yeah. It's a, it's, there's, you know, I think I will say we went and we came out of, we came out of San Francisco and we, I think we, when I was first, I came at this not from the insurance side, but from like, I felt the pain. So we were investing in a handful of real estate projects and I would see some of these real estate construction projects get delayed.

And I would say, well, why, why, why, why did the plumber not start today? They're like, well, the plumber couldn't get access to the job site because he didn't have the right insurance. Uh, and you're like, okay, like, well, he can't simply prove that he has insurance. And then it's like, well, don't worry. It'll come.

Yes. It'll come tomorrow or the next day. Well, it's all two day to late. Well, the problem is like, if the plumber can't come today and the carpenter's coming tomorrow, he can't like put drywall up if, if the pipes aren't in the walls today. So, and the carpenter might not be able to come back for like a week from now.

So you have these like cascading delays that are just bananas that like, this is happening that like 2022 for God's sakes. And like, we can't, people are paying for their insurance and they're unable to easily share it with someone else that they like, that they want to control the data and they can't easily share. Like that's crazy. And as a result, it would cause like a lot more cascading delays. So, you know, from that as a broker's perspective, they don't want to focus on like admin.

They want to focus on like the complex tasks where they're really creating value. Well, it's the same thing for that plumber. It's the same thing for like every other company that, that, that has to buy insurance that uses insurance on a day to day. And pretty much, I mean, every one of your customers. So like that, I want to avoid, I will say when we, when we first started on this journey and I was like, oh, like, all right, we'll solve that pain point.

And then I think like every insure tech, you go through this like brief moment where you're like, the broker does what? Like, that seems so manual. Like we can totally automate that. And then once you learn like a monochrome, just like this, once you like, once you like actually like realize what a broker does and the complexity and all of the stuff that a broker has to deal with, you're like, holy cow. Like there's no way that like, we're going to be able to automate the broker.

You need a super smart switched on professional who knows what the heck they're doing. We just want to like automate all the crap away and allow for like ground truth for proof of coverage. But like, then let the broker be just focused on the complex staff and as well as like the plumber focused on the complex staff that they have to focus on or like whomever the bank focus on their, their thing. Yeah. So that's, that's what we're working on.

Thankfully we got a really good feedback also from like, like, like I was saying before, like the industry. So like the industry was able to buy, you know, really buy into this, um, early on and, and, and, uh, and, and we wouldn't be able to do it without the support from our broker partners. And so, yeah, that, that's the, it's a good time. You know, that, that is the thing that crushes so many, um, insurance technology startups that, that hit our space is they come in, they have what is a beautiful vision. And then they realize that every single carrier does business differently.

Every single agency does business differently. Every single agency management system captures data and pushes data differently. There's this wacky thing called download, which uses AL three technology from 1979 and controlled by a monopolistic all, you know, oligarch who, you know, plays favorites openly. Uh, you know what I mean? It's like this wacky, wacky system.

And you're like, yeah, this is, this is the undercurrent of our entire economy. Right. So if you, if it wasn't for insurance, empire state building doesn't stand, New York city doesn't exist, right? Like the, these, these entire, it is the underpinning of the entire economy yet. It is still operated essentially by horse and buggy and it's, and done fairly well, which is the crazy part, right?

Like things happen. Buildings do get built. New businesses do start. Buyers are financially recouped. And that is like the hardest thing.

Um, how do you manage this? Is this, I don't want to say broken, but it obviously is in need of drastic innovation with it is also currently incredibly financially successful. So how do you make that business case of yes, your job is tough. And yes, you probably have more people doing things that they shouldn't be doing from all these manual processes. But at the same time, you're basically printing cash.

So I can't really tell you, you know, it's hard for me to tell you, you're going to make X more. If you use this process, that is like the weird, um, tight rope that you have to walk to get to a place where you really are implemented. And it sounds like you're, you're on the right path, but it is a very tough thing to do. Well, also there's a clear difference for us. We're an insure tech, but our customers aren't insure tech, excuse me, aren't, um, aren't brokers.

Like we work with brokers, but like we think about the customer as the end user of the platform. So that's the home builder. That's the, that's the, that's the property manager. That's the financial institution. That's the franchise that has to like track his franchise, her franchisees.

Like, so that's the, that's the, um, uh, that's the end, the end customer for us, the brokers and the carriers, we want to make them money. So we've somewhat flipped this on the, on its head. We're like, we want to be a profit center for them. Uh, we're not talking about just saving costs for them. We're, we want to, we want to make revenue for them.

Uh, and which is what, which is what we're doing, uh, with all of our broker partners. Uh, then at the same time, uh, what's challenging when you have like a multi-party workflow, we have different stakeholders, right? Carriers, brokers, requesters, like your certificate holders. Um, and then like, and insureds, every one of those parties has like their own objectives. Uh, it's not the same.

So when we first launched, for example, we brought in a bunch of home builders. Uh, they're like, this is great. Like you can, I've got like 50 subcontractors. I've got five different subdivisions. Like this is a nightmare for me to like track.

I'm getting audited every year. Like what a pain in the ass. Uh, but is, and so they like, they liked it, but initially they, they then said, if you're already going to reach out to my subs and ask them for information, can you get the W9? I really need that article of corporation, passports, driver's license. And it became COVID forms, OSHA documents, surety bonds.

So, so now we can handle any of these additional documents and workflows as well, because it's important that we provide value for carriers, brokers, risk man, like risk managers, or like certificate holders, or like what I call them, requesters, as well as that like individual plumber. Uh, and so if you have to make sure that you can add value to each one or else I don't want to use like the platform, uh, it needs to be super streamlined. They're already working inside. I don't know. Let's say for example, construction companies might work inside Procore, uh, or you're already inside QuickBooks or what have you.

And so that's why we want to make sure that we have the best integration possible with, with Procore, uh, where you can actually have as much of your process work within, within Procore. You're already in QuickBooks, like a seamless relationship with QuickBooks where like, you can stay in the platform as long as possible. And you only need to bounce out, uh, occasionally, like when setting up the, you're in, when setting up trust layer, uh, but people don't want to do like con they don't have context switching, uh, with all the different tools that are out there. So really making sure we meet the user where they are is, is vital. And I think that's another thing that a lot of people don't do it.

They try to like, think that they're like, everyone's going to come to them and they're going to be like the epicenter of everything. And so for us, like we're trust layer, right? It's, it's just a layer where we would love to, we're happy to be that middle layer. And if people don't even know that we exist, that's fine. Cause we can work on the, just building infrastructure for the insurance industry.

Yeah. So what is the, uh, talk me through the broker use case. Like if I were, Oh yeah, if I were going to use trust layer as a, as a, as a broker, um, and I was going to like, what am I doing? Am I getting my clients to sign up for it? Like, how do I use it?

What am I, what am I doing? Think about it. Like you're, uh, the same way an accountant might use QuickBooks. So I never, we didn't actually pay for QuickBooks originally. Um, I, I signed up for a bookkeeper, um, I found a bookkeeper and she was like, okay, well, we'll put you on QuickBooks.

Uh, so I just paid her and then she pays for QuickBooks. Uh, and she also charges a whole bunch of additional, uh, money for, for, for providing services for us. Uh, and so, and that's the same way a lot of brokers are using trust layer where they will offer trust layer to their customers and it's a substantially discounted, uh, for insurance brokers. And then they will have insight into what trust layer is, or excuse me, the, the workflow of their customer tracking all of their subs or suppliers or whoever, whoever there were rideshare drivers, whoever they're working with. Uh, but now like you have clarity into what your customer is doing.

So now you have a much like deeper relationship with them. It's a super sticky relationship also. Uh, and so at the same time, like you also get a whole bunch of leads too, because like you just imagine that home builder that has that sub that has to get access to the job site today. Like he would love for you to reach out to that subcontractor and like fix the glitch. Uh, and so, and so we see that a lot of, uh, a lot of our brokers that one, they can make additional revenue and they can like get a better relationship with their customer, uh, and make it stickier.

But two, they can get a whole bunch of leads, uh, generated for them. Yeah. That's, um, okay. So that's, that's how, that's how they're used. It's super flexible.

We, we are either revenue neutral or we are revenue positive for the broker. We're, we're trying to help you guys make more revenue and then we'll take a percentage of that, but like, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. The, um, the, the cool part, you know, this, this is one of the aspects of where I think we have to go as, as an industry.

I think some people will listen to this and, you know, like you said, you, no one wants to bounce in and out of a million systems, right? Right now that is the life of an independent agent or broker. Yeah. It's, there is literally no singular system that you can use that will allow you to do most of the stuff that you even want to do. And I don't want to go down the hate spiral of, uh, of our technologists, our, our legacy technologists in this industry.

But, um, you know, that being said, if, if it's a low touch system that allows you to add additional value to your customers, then it's well worth it. Like we use, um, uh, a similar, a similar concept would be, uh, the, uh, client portal that Zywave has. So we use Zywave client portal to offer HR solutions. They have all kinds of safety training, safety manual creations. If you need to get one of those posters up in your, you can go in and do kind of like a, uh, uh, uh, a Mad Libs version of that poster, then, and print it out and hang it in your office.

And there's all kinds of cool. Um, there's all kinds of cool stuff. The struggle that we have, um, and this, this is kind of where the question comes from the struggle that we have is it's another system that our clients have to log in and out of. So how are you, um, how are you training brokers? How are you recommending brokers get that adoption from their customers?

Because everything you've described seems like a home run to me. And I, I can, I literally wrote down, reach out to trust layer to get a demo as we were talking here. Um, so that's a good thing. 37 minutes in you sold me. Um, but we talked about bullshit for the first like 30 minutes.

Yeah. Yeah. So it only took you like 16 months. Uh, yeah. So no, which is perfect, which is great.

Um, the, uh, but my, my, I guess my point is like, okay, so I can see it. I'm bought in, but I got a lot of tools that people use or don't use. How are, how are you seeing brokers get that adoption that really is meaningful and, and, and, um, and adds the value that you're discussing? Well, remember like, this isn't value just for you. It's value for your customer.

Yeah. So your customer has to deal with this. So when you're going up for renewal also, and one thing I think brokers kind of get this sense of like, when you're going up for renewal, you're going to market and you're trying to put your customer in the best light, especially in a hard market, right? Trust layer is one of those tools that we can easily position your customer. So that when you're talking to carriers, that, that like, this is not just a run of the mill customer.

This is a customer that's actually taking like a proactive stance with their risk transfer. Uh, and so in that way, like, it's just, it's a value add. It's good for the value. We don't need the broker to do a lot of work by most, I would say, I would say the majority of our brokers, like they bring on the customer. They're there if their customer has a problem, but it's not just like, they're not, they're not really offering.

They're not really doing that much. Um, because one, it's just like a lot of the admins like automated and then their customers kind of handling some of the things, but again, like the can automate a lot of it, but the broker is there if their customer has a problem. And so for that, it's like a really slick, like, I don't know, like this guy doesn't have the right coverage. Should I waive this requirement? I got a broken pipe, right?

Like, do I really care if the guy's got workers comp? Like how big, like what, what is my liability risk here? Uh, and so that's, that's something where like the broker can hop in, provide like value add and then like pop out where they don't have to do any sort of like admin or pushing papers around. Yeah. Cool.

Um, the other challenge is like, those are all tools that are like nothing against any of the insurtechs, but like, those are all tools that are insurance focused. Your customer is not focused just on insurance. Insurance is one of the 10 things that they got to deal with today. That's, that's, you know, making them get like loser hair. Like they want something that, that can do things other than insurance.

And so that's where like, even something as small as like tracking W9s or like doing surety bonds or like all this other kind of stuff. We have, we have one customer that's coming on, they've got a 30,000 vendors that they work with and they need all 30,000 vendors to like sign some document and to prove they have in coverage where it's like, okay, great. Now, like in our platform, you can just like upload it and get 30,000. And that has nothing to do with insurance by the way. Uh, and so if you don't provide value beyond just that, you're, you may be focused on insurance, the carrier's focused on insurance, that home builder, that franchisor is not just focused on insurance.

Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. Um, and they run into the same thing too. We can get a bounce around all this stuff.

Yeah. So that's why like the open API structures, like the integrations with all these different platforms is really key. Yeah. This, this is going to sound, this may sound, uh, I'll left field or whatever, but it was, uh, yesterday I was talking to a buddy of mine and we are convinced that, um, that the blockchain technology will have a major impact on our industry, but just way longer than we would probably than it will in other industries in this. Yeah.

But we were doing some brainstorming over mostly because we're nerdy losers who just think about insurance all the time. But, uh, we're brainstorming over like, where do we think, where do we think a blockchain could, or the technology, I'm broad stroking the tech, but, but where do we think that type of technology, um, could drastically improve efficiencies in our industry? And one of the places that, that we kind of thought of was COIs, right? Like, yeah. Like to your point, why in the world do, does a vendor have to request a CI from a contractor who then sends a request to us.

Then, unless it's perfectly aligned with his current coverage, we then have to resend a request to the carrier, wait for the carrier to approve, deny, change, endorse, whatever, then come back, make sure it matches what the customer actually needs, then produce a CUI who we give to the contractor who then gives that to the vendor, right? So that's like the standard process that you, you know, you kind of, Oh my God. Is it just, it's just, it's just, it's almost laughable just listening to. Yeah. That's right.

So, so we, what we were, what we're brainstorming is imagine if there was just a place that held in real time at all times, the current situation, right? In force, not in force, you know, coverage level, you know, whatever, like, but just that block holds that at all time. And people can just ping that block to say, this is my insurance block, right? This is, this block is ABC contracting. And if we need to make changes to this, we have a mechanism to do that.

And that block gets changed, but ultimately this block is ABC construction. And what's in this block is the, is proof. And we don't need to have 16 emails and 47 PDFs to get it. It's what's in this block. And you know, and there's so many things inside our industry that again, whether it's blockchain or whatever, but that concept of how is there not at this point databases that are anonymized, they need to be whatever, maybe Chubb doesn't want Hartford knowing that they're the one on this policy or whatever, but the contractor doesn't care.

And nor does the vendor, the vendor just wants a green checkmark or a red X, right? Is it, are we good or are we not good? And that, you know, to, to a certain extent, that's kind of what I hear you describing is this is that kind of green checkmark red X type system where, you know, based on what's in there, your, your customer can ping their sub and go, is it a green check or a red X? And if it's a green check, rock and roll, let's go to town. If it's not, you know, then we need to solve this problem.

And these are those type of, so because we're fully digital, I, I, I track, uh, not in a draconian or micromanaging way, but I do track the time spent fairly closely on different tasks. And to me, understanding the, the time cost of certain tasks and working to re to either reduce the cost or just remove that cost is a huge win, even if it's small, because as you scale those, those small increments add up. And to me, what, what I hear you describing is, you know, it's not a be all end all solution to every shitty non-value add tasks that exists, but it's a, it's a really nice reduction in what's probably a heavy time cost in just about every brokerage that exists in the country. You talked to almost every broker. Um, I honestly, I'm smiling.

I just like, yeah, you're like this whole broker thing. Like you want to roll it up into trust layer. Let me know. Cause like, yeah, you're way better than I am than, uh, than, uh, than, uh, synthesizing and pitching this. Um, this is bananas if this is, and it just, but your, to your point, it, it touches so many other things.

Yeah. So again, our, we're dealing with proof of coverage, but like really what we're talking about is ground truth. Yeah. Yes. You're that, you're that plumber.

You walk onto the job site. You, there's some thing that's off, right? You need to make this guy an additional insured or whatever it is. Like if you have ground truth, then in real time, you can then have some kick off some workflow for, I don't know, making someone additional insured. Now we're not doing that, but like, I mean, we can see what we could in the future, but like, that'll be some other startup.

Like that's what we want. Like the, we want to focus on building that ground truth for the industry. Yeah. Uh, and, and, and you, you also identify another thing, which was travelers doesn't want Chubb to know their business. Of course not.

Like you don't want your competitor down the street to know your customer list. So, so the, the, the North star of everything that we've done so far has been users control their own data. And so from that point, like with, with, uh, for the next time, I'll, I'll, I'll, we can geek out on this a little bit more, but like the way we are building this infrastructure, users actually will retain their data privately siloed behind their firewall. And in a lot of cases, when data is shared, it'll actually be less data than it is now. So we have, we have companies that, that, that we know of companies that they have such little faith in, uh, certificates of insurance.

So ask for the entire policy. Yes. Which is, which is a major, major, major issue. Right. It's like, that's a tremendous amount, but why are they asking for that?

They're asking for that. Cause they know that this, like the COI has such little value with like, don't even know if it's authentic. Like, like again, our very first customer learned that the hard way. And they don't know if it's still current, right. Just cause you had insurance six months ago doesn't mean you haven't just because you had insurance two days ago doesn't mean you have insurance today.

So, and, and then third, it's like, it's a pain in the ass to like track all this information when you have to like use paper. I just had a buddy who caught one of his contracting clients, just basically Adobe acrobating COI forms. That's funny. And it came to him because one of his clients did business with a, none of it, one other, one of his clients who said, Hey, can you just check this cert? And then he's like, uh, you know, now the good news was the guy did have insurance, but he was budging his cert.

So we didn't have to ping my agency. And we've, we've run into that a lot. In fact, before we even beat, uh, excuse me, before we launched a trust layer, like when we were still in development, like ideation, right. Um, I, I interviewed someone and he was like, I don't understand the value. I'm like, well, it's, isn't it a pain in the ass to like get all these documents?

He's like, well, no. Cause I don't know if you're familiar with this program. It's called Adobe Acrobat. And, uh, it's incredible. So I can, I'm like, Oh, tell me more about this program.

He's like, yeah, it's incredible. I could just go there and change the date. And if the guy needs to be an additional insured, I could add it down here. I'm like, stop, hold on. I'm going to press, I'm going to press record.

I want you to repeat everything you just said. You've just broken about 17 financial regulations. Yeah. You're going to go on our homepage. Yeah.

Uh, so anyway, this is, we're just trying, we're just trying to do our bed. Yeah. Right. We want to, we want to like build this infrastructure layer. We're not competing with, we're not a carrier.

We're not a broker. We're not competing with, uh, our partners. We want to drive as much business as we can back to our broker and our carrier partners as possible. Yeah. And, uh, and then have some fun in the meantime.

Yeah. That's awesome. I think it's cool. Now, are you doing anything with blockchain? Um, so sort of, I don't usually say the B word, uh, make my day.

I just want, I just love it. I'm so bought in. I, I, I just want something in insurance to be blockchain. But so, so to your point, um, so actually when we first, when we first launched, uh, we, it was like during the last, uh, 2017. Mayhem.

When we were first like thinking about this, right. Into, into like 2018. Um, and so when we first came up with this and part of like, we, we thought this this part of our infrastructure is built on a part of, part of our infrastructure can be leveraged using, using DLT. It's like a distributed ledger type of technology. Yeah.

Yeah. The challenge though, is we found that when we had the double spend problem with the, or maybe, excuse me, the double buy problem, uh, where, when we would approach somebody and say, here's this, like, this is what we're doing. And I would say, okay, great. We're in like, we want to like, this is a big pain point for me too. So we said, great.

So the carriers and brokers became like, wanted to get in pretty quickly, but then they would say, I would say, oh, we're going to use this like DLT solution. They're like, okay, wait a second. What is that? Like, we don't even have APIs or web hooks. Like, so it just, it just became like this, like this sidetrack of a conversation.

And then like, again, it's, it's a very cool technology. There's a lot of really interesting things going on. And, and so we are in a, I think we're, I, to your point, I think it's possibly one of the best use cases I've ever heard for web three. And so to that point, I think there's, this is going to evolve in the future. And this probably will be the solution that, that over time evolves into it.

But for the time being, we don't necessarily need. Yeah. And part of that is because the use case for like, if AIG says you have insurance, it's unlikely that AIG is going to lie about that, where you then have to go back to it. And like the more likely scenario is that AIG has see some service like systems that don't talk to each other and getting data out to actually confirm ever that you have coverage is going to be a bigger problem. Yep.

And so whether it's like, we don't have APIs, so we're just going to like export data and like put it somewhere. Uh, so that's like, you don't need blockchain for that. That's the bigger issue is like, just how do you have like integrations in a more like efficient way? Yeah. Uh, and, and so to that point, it's like the connecting the digital proof of coverage with the legacy workflow is going to be the most important.

Yeah. It's too early. It's I, I, I joke about this and my buddy and I do all the time we are, uh, we're, uh, we're, um, we're like, man, let's just, let's form an LLC. We're going to call it a insurance blockchain exploratory fund. And we'll just go, we'll put blockchain on the first page of the deck.

We'll go raise a ton of money and we'll figure out how to make a business in 10 years off of it. Cause you know, the coolest thing about being part of the insurance industry is all you need to know is about this much about tech and you're officially a technologist where, where this wouldn't get you in the front door, like in, you know, in many other industries here, you're, you know, you're changing the world. So, um, it's just, it's just interesting. I, I think that, um, I, I think there's so much opportunity in our space to, for, for micro and, and, and, and maybe larger than that innovations, right? Like, you know, not, not, nothing against what you're doing, but making the COI process is not a revolutionary to the entire industry, but it's a drastic improvement in a major pain point.

And there are, and it sounds like you're starting to address some of these as well. And probably the COI process, again, it's like, to your point, the COI process is just one part. Like that's not, that's not trust layer. Trust layer is creating ground truth for the industry. Yeah.

And that, that to me is stacking up all these different processes in this, in, in this layer of, of, and I love that kind of term ground truth. I think that's a really important concept for people to grab out of this conversation that we're having is there, there is like, if you were to ask a broker today, and I know we're running out of time and I want to be respectful of that, but, um, if you were to ask most brokers today, is the carrier, your agency management system, your CRM, your, your email, an Excel spreadsheet, like what is the system of record for where, for what that client currently has in place? I think if you asked five people, you'd get five different answers. If you asked 50, you'd get 50 different answers because there is no, like if the broker says you have coverage, you have coverage because that goes back. That's essentially goes back to their, you know?

So is that the point of truth is what comes out of your agency management or is your agency management system really just a capture for you? And it's the carrier. And then, you know what I mean? So there's all, and then which system inside the carrier is actually the system of record. Is it what the underwriter tells you?

Is it what's actually produced that? So for me, this singular concept of getting to a place that we'll all agree, this is the ground truth, right? That is an incredibly important project. And, uh, I'm super glad that you're taking it on, man. Thanks.

Thanks, man. Well, I will say we're not doing it alone. Like we have a whole bunch of really great brokers, great carriers, risk managers that are, that are, um, helping us. And so if I can make like the one, the one plug, like if anyone's interested in getting involved, we'd love for you to reach out to me directly. Uh, this is a big pain point.

We need as many brokers, uh, supporting us. It does mean customers. That means like we need folks that are just passionate about this. And, uh, cause we've got, we're having like conversations with carriers, of like, what are the right way to do it? We're talking to the AMSs.

We're saying like, what are the policies in the policy administration systems? Like, what is the right way for us to really like solve this pain point for carriers and brokers? Uh, and, and also like your customer. Just build a Salesforce integration and let's go around those dirty bastards at the policy management system. They're just going to hose you up.

I bet they're like, yeah, we love your solution. $50,000 a year, and we'll love it even more. Um, I know how that extortion is. No, they're all great people. We love them. Oh yeah.

I love them. Um, no, dude, I think, I think this is great. So, okay. So to that plug, so some, you know, you got 12,000 people listening to the show right now, where, where do they go? Where do they go to trust layer.io?

I want them to email me personally. Okay. And we'll get, and we'll get in touch with them and, uh, put them in touch with like whoever the right person is. Uh, John, J O H N at trust layer.io. Let's build something really big guys.

Yeah, guys, I, I, forever you listen at home, you know, I, John and trust layer are not a sponsor of the show or anything. I don't want you to think that this is a paid plug. These guys, I just, they've come highly recommended me by a bunch of people. I've done my own research. I think you heard from the, from the call.

Um, you know, this, this kind of stuff, and you've heard me for a year now, plus talking about the concept of, uh, building a human optimized agency. And while that will be different for every agency, I think this con, uh, this, this, this, this idea of removing valueless transactions from our day to day. So our people can be, can, can, can hone in on where they really add value, solving problems, building relationships, that kind of stuff. Um, this is one of those tools that's going to be part of our, our tool belt moving forward. And, uh, it's, it's worth the look.

So I highly recommend, um, reaching out to John and, and, and getting involved if, if COIs and, and, and having this is, you know, just if it's about COIs for you, if you're working with contractors, if you're working with manufacturers, uh, habitational, uh, home builders, you know, this is going to be a major solve for you. So, uh, highly recommend what they're doing. Please reach out. John, it's been great, man. Thanks, man.

Yeah. Good seeing you. I'm going to be doing it twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not.

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