Nigel Walsh Explains the Important Difference Between Digitizing and Digital Insurance

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Absolutely tremendous, double tremendous episode today with the all-powerful, all-seeing Nigel Walsh, the Managing Director of Insurance at Google. And Nigel's been a thought leader in the insurtech space, the insurance industry in general. Living in the UK, he's had the ability to comment on the happenings in our space over both the European and, you know, kind of international market for us here in the U.S., not international for him. Obviously, we're international for him, but as well as the U.S. market. And to have him share his experience, his insights into, you know, where he sees insurance going.

And in particular, we dissect the difference between digitizing and the digitalization of insurance. And there is a clear difference that, you know, I had heard those two terms. And even I say in the episode, you know, in some cases, I thought they were kind of synonymous or people just use them interchangeably. But as Nigel explains, they're not the same thing. And the nuances, the differences are very important in terms of philosophy and the future of our industry.

And I think this is just an absolutely tremendous conversation that you're going to love. So I encourage you to follow Nigel on LinkedIn, also a good Twitter follow, and just have him in your ecosystem. Because as Google gets more involved in insurance, Nigel is going to have his hands in that game. And I think it's important to all, for all of us to understand what's going on with one of the biggest companies in the entire world. And, you know, whichever direction Google decides to go, I think it's worthwhile knowing what they're doing and who's behind it.

And I think Nigel is a tremendous guy. So it was just an absolute honor to have him on the show and happy to share him and his expertise with you. That being said, and before we get to Nigel, I want to give a big shout out to Tarmica. Tarmica is making small commercial insurance profitable. I've been telling you this for more than a year.

Tarmica, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. Tarmica, Tarmica is making small commercial insurance profitable by providing quotes from multiple carriers, from multiple lines of business in real time. These are true API-driven rates as if you were quoting them in the systems of these carriers. There is no one else doing this. There are other quote-unquote commercial lines, raters in the marketplace, but they use weak API connections, oftentimes taken from indications.

They're doing a lot of screen scraping. They're asking for your logins. They have limited carrier sets. They have limited product sets. And that is not the case with Tarmica.

Tarmica has built out true, deep API connections with carriers. And in some cases, they literally built the API that carriers use. And, you know, I just couldn't be happier for the success that Raghav and his team have had and all the agents who are using the platform to drive their small commercial growth. It's a bedrock. It's a core piece of the success that we've had at Rogue and our future.

And if you want to tap into that, go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. Get a demo today and learn all about Tarmica. All right. With that, let's get on to Nigel Walsh. Mr.

Hanley. There he is. What's up, man? How are you? I'm good.

Good. You have a good long weekend? We did. Yeah. Well, I could have done.

We had a lot of rain. So we had a big baseball tournament, little league tournament. My kid's seven and he's playing in this travel, whatever thing. And we were pretty pumped up for that because there was, like, teams from Vermont and other states coming in. It's, like, his first tournament where it's, like, out-of-town teams.

And, like, the fact that he's playing a team from, like, another state is, like, a big deal. And then it rained Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We played half of one game. So, you know, but it was still fun. You know, the kids have a good time or whatever.

They don't care whether it's rain or sleet or snow. They just want to get out, right? So it's never an issue. Yeah. And he's still at that cool age where, like, every things that, like, so the team's from Vermont, right?

Like, for me, it would be, like, the next town over for you from, like, where we live. It's maybe 45 minutes. So, you know, whatever. But for him, he's like, whoa, there's a team from Vermont here? Like, wow, this is awesome.

We're going far way away, Dad. Yeah, yeah. So it's, like, one of those things. That's pretty cool. I love it.

I love it. We actually got half term this week as well for the kids. So they're actually out with my wife as we speak. So, yeah, it's all good. It's all good.

In hindsight, I should have taken time off and gone out and stayed with him and chilled out. But typical Nigel, screw it up. And I'm now sat on Zoom calls and whatever else. So one of these days I learned. Yeah.

When you figure that out, can you do, like, a white paper and send it to me so that I can know, too? Because I'm basically the same way. Honestly, my wife will say to me, hey, it's half term. I won't even think twice. Unless she just says, she's got to basically say, hey, you're booking holiday.

All right. That's it. I'm done. Yeah, I had this conversation with my wife. This is a few years ago when I was traveling a lot.

And I was like, just be super specific with what you want me to do. Because my decisions are not based on me not wanting to be around or not wanting to be with you. Just understand that, like, maybe it's guy brain. Maybe it's just my brain, whatever you want to call it. But like, I'm just locked in on something.

And until you go, hey, why don't we take a long weekend, I'm just going to keep operating. Like, it's just, here's the direction I'm pointed in. Until you tell me to go in a different direction, I'm just going to keep going. Honestly, I said to Emma, my wife, Emma, I said, I'll just work no matter what. And, you know, I've switched my hours.

So I, like, this morning, it's what? It's 20 past one UK time. This morning, I've been out boot camp and all that sort of good stuff. And I've just been painting the garage floor. That's how as exciting as it gets.

Because I do my mornings on my own these days. And my evenings, I'm working Google hours in North America. So, yeah. So, but it's beautiful. It's just stunning here.

It's like, I won't mean anything to you in Fahrenheit. What is it? It is currently like 24 degrees. What is that in Fahrenheit? I don't know.

I have no idea. We'll call it 75, 80. It's going to be, it's heaven. It's just heaven. Yeah.

So, well, 75 to 80 is pretty much as good a temperature as you can get. It's 75 here right now. Perfect. Yeah, there we go. Hey.

Hey, now we can do the conversion. You just say heaven. And I go, hey, 24 equals 75. There we go. There it is.

That's the conversion. I love it. And tomorrow, actually, no. This afternoon is going to be 26 and 27. It gets better.

That's beautiful. Jesus. Not bad. Not bad. So, what are we doing today?

Are we doing a podcast? Yeah, just quick, quick, quick podcast. I just wanted to, I think the insurance world wants to know, you know, now that they have acquired the talents. You've taken, Nigel Walsh has taken his talents to Google, as LeBron would say. I think the insurance world just wants to know what the heck is going on.

And, you know, I think mostly what I want to talk to you about is, you know, not so much. I'm interested in whatever you want to talk about with Google and some of the things you have guys have going on. But I'm really interested in your take on where the industry is headed. Because I think we're in such an interesting place. There's so much happening.

I feel like in general, I feel like in general, the industry is starting to work together. Right, we hit that 2015 to 2017 period where it was like, these guys are blowing up these guys and disruptors and all this kind of stuff. And it was very tumultuous, at least here in the States, it was, it was very tumultuous. It was, everyone was kind of pitting against each other. There was a lot of land grabbing and chest thumping.

And I feel like we've kind of gotten past that to a certain extent. And it very much feels like now everyone's pointed in mostly the right direction or same direction. And now everyone's just kind of figuring out where they fit. And there's going to be people that win and there's going to be people that fall behind. But, you know, I'm just interested.

Do you see that from where you're sitting? And, you know, I guess what a generally like macro, high level macro trends. What are you seeing? And we can drill down from there. It is exciting.

You saw the news this morning as well, right? You might not have seen it. Well, we foxed at $3 billion, bought by many at $2 billion, and we, Joe, at $1 billion. So there's loads and loads of folks that are raising money and going after things. And almost, hey, the destructors are dead type conversation feels like a little bit out of date now, right?

Yes. Because these guys are going after things in a really big way. Yeah, it seems to me like, and this may be something that, especially the listeners of this show, which are primarily people in different functions inside the independent insurance agency space in North America. That's primarily the audience. We do have some international listeners, but for the most part, just based on the topics we touch on and very specific to the 37,000 independent agencies and agency owners and the carriers and vendors that serve them.

It almost, to me, is something that, you know, these companies that were talking, using the term disruption and all this kind of stuff, they're kind of doing the same things they've always done, except they're just not attacking, you know, maybe traditional space anymore, but they're still moving fast and forward. They're building new products, more integrations, the speed and automation that's being used. We're getting into the podcast, aren't we? This is almost the, isn't this the debate between digitization and digitalization, though? So I would love to know the difference between those two things, because I've heard that and I've read some of the articles and stuff, but I don't know that I necessarily have my brain wrapped around it enough to be able to say I know the defining difference between the two.

Yeah, fair. You know it in a heartbeat. You just haven't heard it in a way that makes sense to you in that case, because it's easy. It's, you know, digitization is taking what we're doing today. It's replacing your fax machine with an email web form.

That's digitization. Digitalization is why are we asking these questions in the first place? It's nothing more than your, and I feel the agency world, this is where you and I will probably disagree, is going through a digitization to make ourselves more efficient, but remain relevant, whereas the folks that are disrupting it are asking us why we need these in the first place. Yes. So I wholly agree.

And this is actually one of the things that I've been trying to get more people on the show recently to talk about this particular topic. So thank you for that description. Now I clearly have it in my mind, because I think in some cases I've heard the two words used ubiquitously, and that's obviously a mistake. And I think maybe that's where I was just a little like, are these actual different things or are, you know, and that kind of clears it up for me, which I appreciate. But I do think you're right.

I think right now I see this in a lot of my peers. And I see people who are like, oh, what CRM should I have? That's, they're just digital, right? Instead of keeping, you know, papers on their desk, they're keeping the same information in their computer now. And then I talked to someone like, I talked to, you know, Fenris Digital, or I had the guy from Branch Insurance on, or we had Kyle Nagasuki from Clear Cover on, and they are completely different conversations.

The idea of even coming down as low as what CRM are we using is, you know, that's remedial stuff. That's kindergarten stuff. But equally, the flip side to it, and I can play both sides of the coin. The flip side to it is digitization is not bad. It just might not be, it might not be a long-term thing.

When I say long-term, it might not last past the next 10, 15, 20 years, right? Yeah, I completely agree. It, I completely agree. And this is kind of a lot of the stuff that's going on in my own agency. So I launched with the mantra, or the mantra is the wrong word.

You can tell it's early here in this. My brain is not fired up yet. So I launched with the mission of being a digitalizing agency, the agency that only asks the five questions, not the 50 questions in a web form. But to get there, right, to get there, I had to digitize first. So in order to get the contracts, in order to get up off the ground, to make the initial revenue that was necessary to start to put, to put business on the books, I basically had to digitize the traditional model.

And we did that. I buy that. I buy that. And in many cases, you had to go through those loops to get to that piece, but you might, is that true for everyone going forward as well? Can we, is there other ways and means we can stop that going forward?

I don't know. I think, I think the very real reality is it depends on how much of the business the founder wants to own. I think it depends on how much money you need at the start. So if I had, well, one, if I was flush enough at the beginning, and I don't mean like having a couple hundred thousand, I mean, having, you know, real cash in the bank to start from scratch, we would have started digital to begin with, not digitized. But being that we were kind of a classic startup model and that, you know, I bootstrapped this thing for the first 12 months, there was no digital option for me.

I had to take a traditional agency model and digitize. And now what I'm doing is synchronously taking the processes from the digitized agency and building a digital agency alongside of it that will essentially take, that will overtake and then I'll, I don't know, I'll put the digitized agency away and just be a digital agency. But to do that, I had to operate these first 15 to 18 months as, as more of a digitized traditional agency. If that's not, does that make sense? What I just said to you?

Yeah, no, it does. It does. And as I said, don't forget, I don't think the digitization on its own is a bad thing. Yep. And I wonder about digitalization being, so your next, you keep going through the lowest, you can only move through the network at the slowest, the speed of the slowest thing.

And if we, if we create a fully digitalized agency that customers aren't ready for, then we still fail, which is why digitization also works. Yes. Yes. And I actually think if I'm being completely honest, I will never get rid of the digitized agency. It will be a piece of the larger puzzle.

And this is like, I had this whole, the first two words I wrote down when I started thinking about Rogue were human optimized, which is, I wish there was like a way cooler way of saying that idea because it kind of, well, it doesn't roll off the tongue super nice. But the idea is I want to take the best aspects of digital and marry them to the best aspects of traditional. And I feel like in that sweet spot for the first, for as long as I need to be in business, that will be the Holy grail of producing. Like I'm a distributor. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not manufacturing insurance.

I'm distributing insurance as a distributor. I feel like that will be the sweet spot where I'll be able to serve the largest market while still having a really solid flow at the least cost. That's my personal opinion. And that's why I think, that's why I'm kind of starting to build up the digital side because I have the digitized side. If I need to do pen and paper stuff, if I need to do anything that's kind of standard agency, I can completely do that today.

Have every piece in place. The digital side, because there is an entire market that wants that, that's the side that we're building right now. But you, you as an individual agent can't move a market or can't educate the entire, we're back down to education. And I wonder whose role is it to educate? So, so were you, were your eight-year-old buy insurance the same way that you and I do or seven-year-old?

No. And if they do, we've screwed, we've right, really screwed up. We've really screwed up. Yep. Yeah.

I don't think that, yes, I agree that I don't think one company can do it, but I do think one or, and I do not think that Rogue is alone in what we're doing. So I don't want to say we are the, the, the leading edge of the sword, but I think along with a group of other players, some of which are, are more well-capitalized today, some of which are growing alongside us, I feel like there is a group of, of industry professionals who are, who are telling this story, who also have the, um, um, and I'm going to say this in a way that, that, that might not come off as what I want. There are people saying some things and they're wholly right, but they haven't earned the, they haven't earned the respect of people in order for anyone to listen. I think eventually they will, but they haven't yet. And I think that more and more, we need people who have spent time in the space to say that, to, to, to, to start saying these types of things.

And I think we'll see an even larger and quicker adoption. That's my opinion. Or, or, or is it just a case of actually, we just need people to start doing these things before we get anywhere? Because we can say it all we like, we've been saying things about insurtech for the last five years, but it's only when you see we Fox's 3 billion valuation, it's only when you see lemonade and root and Metro mile and all these guys not talking about, but just doing it. Yeah.

I think, I think, I think unfortunately there is an entire generation of insurance professional that can't wait to see all the companies you just named fail. And I think that is unfortunate because they still have voice in play in the space. And again, I'm speaking almost specifically to North America because I just don't know your market as well, but here, and I think that holds things back. I also know that if you live in Tennessee and run an independent insurance agency, you could make more money than you could ever need in your life with pen and paper today. But that's exactly back to the point about digitization.

Sometimes good is good enough. It doesn't need to be bleeding edge, bleeding edge. You just need to make sure that you can pay your claims. You can service your customers. You can do the right thing.

Well, it also depends on what your mission is, right? So if your mission is personal income, kids go to college, you know, spouse has a seven series in the driveway. We got a second house in Florida. If that's your mission, if that's what you're trying to do, which is an amazing mission. Don't get me wrong.

I'm not knocking that anyway, right? Like, Hey, I'll sign up for that today. If I, if I could, I think if that's what you're trying to do, then it honestly doesn't matter. Just figure out where you are in the world, who you're trying to serve and deliver those products and you'll be completely successful. That's the brilliance of our industry.

So is it nevermind human optimized? Is it more along the lines of insurance for the next generation? Yeah. Because then you go, how do you serve each of the participants or constituents along the way? How do I serve your kids and my kids that are, you know, seven, 11, eight, whatever, what are they going to buy?

How are they going to buy it? How are they going to think about home ownership or car ownership? How are they going to think about setting up their own business in the UK? For example, I was chatting to someone earlier where we said more businesses have been started in the last 12 months or the prior 12 months. So even during a pandemic, people become more innovative and are out there taking risks using government support or whatever else to go and take start businesses.

If you're a first time business owner, how do you know what insurance that you need and what you don't need? Where do you go to go trust it? Real grist YouTube channel. But so you just answered a really smart way of saying, how do I educate people? Do you know what I was doing in the weekend?

I was painting my garage floor. Do you know where I went to go and ask the question about how do I go do it? What's the right way to do it? I went straight to YouTube because YouTube is my default learning channel where I want to go learn something. I jumped in there and said, here's what you do.

Here's how you prep it before you paint it. And that was it. I learned about the anti-inflammatory diet in which I lost 20 pounds and changed my entire life, including my mental clarity. I learned about- Are you still doing cold hours? I did.

I took one this morning. Jordan Peterson. I've watched all his biblical series, which I've watched now three times. I've watched on YouTube. I learned about cryptocurrency on YouTube.

I learned about- I mean, just- I could list all these things that are literally core pieces of who I am today. There are things I'm certainly interested in. Hobbies, you know, things I like to spend mental cycles on. It's YouTube. It's all YouTube.

My kids- my kids can barely navigate a phone, but if I get them to YouTube, they could find anything for me. Literally anything. So, my kids will literally sit there watching other kids playing Minecraft. I don't get it. I don't get Minecraft.

I don't get why they sit there watching other games, but they love it and they learn and it's great. What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show and in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow.

It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales. The things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business, but they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help.

Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed, and I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show and I hope you enjoy it. Listening as much as I do, creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace.

Let's get back to the episode. This is a conversation I have with my seven-year-old. So I'm doing a little work yesterday, right? And I could hear him because he got his phone time or whatever, right? We're pretty, I don't want to say we're restrictive, but we definitely try to be good about the phone.

We're like all parents. We lose frustration at the point that screen time becomes whatever else, right? Yes. So I said, okay, man, you can have a half hour phone time. Okay, cool.

So he's doing his phone. I'm, I'm banging away on some work or whatever. And I hear this thing that you're saying Minecraft and there's this guy and he's cackling and he's talking about all these things and the screen's moving around. I'm like, so I just come over and I'm like, Hey man, what you watching? And I, and I knew it was like in the, um, G rate, you know, I knew I had the setting set up.

So I knew it wasn't, well, hopefully it wasn't something crazy. Um, didn't sound like something crazy, just something I didn't know about. And I'm watching this going, this is, I said to him, do you understand what he's saying? Cause he's speaking English, but not English that I understand. And he's going, it is a whole brand new language.

Then you can jump into things like, uh, Mr. Beast and all these, I mean, they are, it's a world I should know more about and I'm getting to grips with it. And actually on my induction to Google, I learned some really cool things and it was all delivered obviously remotely because I'm still remote with the pandemic, but things like, Hey, did you know, and this is a great thing to think about insurance, right? Did you know that half the photographs that we receive are upside down? Why is that?

Because we're left-handed or right-handed. Oh, geez. Right. And I'm assuming you didn't know that cause you're right-handed, right? Yeah, no, I had no idea.

Yeah. But if you're like that and take your pictures, it's fine. If you're on the other hand and you're doing the way around, all of a sudden insurance carriers or any, any organizations receiving photographs that are, appear to be upside down, but actually you're not. So imagine if you are the left-handed or ambidextrous and you're submitting something, you're submitting it in the wrong way or perceived wrong way. And there's so many good examples that I sat through and just watched many of the many, many years old, but just great examples of businesses that have started up and then just accelerated through the pandemic or whatever.

So it's, it's a phenomenal channel and goes back to our point about actually, how do we go and get people to educate things or educate on certain topics? I'm not sure you've probably seen the same in the States where people go, Hey, where do you get financial advice? So I look at things like Facebook or TikTok and the amount of people that go onto the local village group and go, anyone recommend anyone to help me with a mortgage? And they recommend personal recommendations or people posting their personal situation onto Facebook and then saying, what should I do in this scenario? I'm sitting there going, you need to speak to a financial advisor because you're, you shouldn't be answered by the local village person that probably isn't qualified to give you financial advice.

Yeah. If they're on Facebook at this moment, probably not the person that should be giving you financial advice. But it's just balancing all those things out. And I do think content, you know, the other way to look at it is, and then if you've, the last time you bought a new car, be buying a new car, I've bought one for a long time, but it comes with like a huge chunky manual. Whoever opens the manual and reads the manual to a car.

I don't know that anyone ever has. I think the only time I've ever looked for it was when I had to go and find how to change the oil or flip open some sort of thing to get water in somewhere. And I couldn't find the fuse or whatever, but outside that we don't do it. Everything's straight to the dash or straight to the phone. You want to, you want, you want to learn something these days?

It literally straight to YouTube. So how do we get insurance to be that cool? I, I have the perfect example for this. I got a flat tire. I'm on the side of the highway and I've never, and I got a truck.

I got a Ford, Ford F-150 and I never changed the flat on this particular vehicle before. So I get out of the car and I've changed flats, right? I'm from the woods. I'm relatively handy. You know, this is a task that I can perform.

Okay. So I'm like, okay, no big deal. 20 minutes. We're back on the road. I cannot find the jack.

Can't find it. Like I'm, I'm, I'm under the car. I mean, now there's cars, you know, zipping by 70 miles an hour. I'm under the car. I can't find them under the truck.

I'm looking. I can't find the jack. I'm going, I don't have a jack. I can see the tire. I can literally see the tire.

Okay. So finally, um, I, I, I pull a string in the car in the back and the thing, this, the whole seat pops out and there's a jack. I'm like, this is amazing. Okay. We're good.

Boom, boom. I cannot figure how to get the tire off the car. I mean, I'm now we're an hour into this project. So finally, what I could have solved in two seconds, cause I go Ford F-150 remove tire into YouTube. One minute and 30 second video shows me exactly how to do it.

If I had just used my brain, like I would have for any other project, I would have been out of there in the 20 minutes instead it was an hour and a half, but I'm like, I didn't go to the manual. I didn't even think to look in the manual. Didn't even think about it. I didn't even, I forgot it was even there. As soon as the problem got to the point where I could not figure it out.

I just went to YouTube. The answer was the first answer. It was a minute and 30 seconds. My problem was solved. And on, I went.

So I'm with you by the way. And the next question therefore is at what point do we rely on this too much and then not work out what we can and can't do? But I think this is the battle that we're currently in over authority, trust, and content creators, right? We're in this, we are in a second generation. So my background is content marketing.

That's, you know, any success that I've had in business is because I think everything through the filter. But you can tell the story, you can tell the narrative, you can picture what people actually want and see. So I look through that and I look right now, we're in the kind of second or even maybe the third generation of content creators, which are people who entire lives are based around educating, right? Now you need to be very careful with that. And that's where I come back to, we need more people who've earned the right to have an opinion.

I know, I know a lot of people listening to this may hate that term, earn the right, because we kind of are in a point in society where, you know, everyone should just be able to say whatever they want, regardless of their, what they've done or not. But I feel like in order to have true authority, you have to have earned some validation of your thoughts and your skills. And the more people cycle out of doing into teaching, who've also, who've already done the thing and you see this with like in the, in the event, like Paul Graham, right? If Paul Graham tweets something, you're like, that's probably true. Probably true.

Right. Like probably true. He's done it. You know, now he mostly just creates content. Yeah.

He still advises, but he's not really doing startups anymore. So he is a treasure because when he has an opinion on a topic, you're like there. And I think in the insurance industry, we haven't gotten to that yet. We haven't gotten enough. That's, so that's back to brands that you trust.

Yeah. And let's assume that you and I are both 21 years old and we then go back to our eight and 12 year olds. Will do the brands they trust different from the brands that we trust? Yes, but they're dumb because they're 21 and they're going to make a whole bunch of mistakes just like we did when we were 21. And they're going to learn how to validate who to trust and who not to trust.

And then when they get to be in their late 20s, 30s, and 40s, they'll have a really solid filter on how to pick people that they should trust and people they shouldn't trust. Yeah. And I think that that grows or you back to your point, you earn over time, right? You earn, you earn, you earn that respect. You earn that insight.

You earn the, how people understand, learn, deal with logic. And I've built up that narrative to go, actually, if my business is in these things, I'd like to know, these are the things that I need. These are the nice to have, but these are the must have. And that would be a really cool, a cool way of presenting it. I think the other side of this is brands, not content creators or educators, but brands who, who, who have earned it.

Right. And in some cases, this will be companies that today are still growing, right? Like there'll be a day when a, you know, potentially a clear cover or a hippo or some of these, right. Really smart, innovative companies. Like, like if I, if I were hippo and I was in home insurance, I would have a whole module inside of Minecraft somewhere where you're building these places and you can insure them.

Right. Like that's the way my brain goes is I would want every eight-year-old insuring with some sort of diamond force, whatever the hell my kid was talking about his Minecraft thing with hippo. Well, what's hippo fricking home insurance. Oh, well, when they, in 10 years from now, when they're looking for homes or 12 years from now, when they're looking for homes or their parents are looking for home insurance and the kid says it at the kitchen table, you know, they're learning what we're one, they're learning the concept. And two, you're, you're validating very early on a brand in their life.

And like, that's where my mind goes for some of this stuff is either the creator validates because they've done it and earn that right, or the brand attached to that creator gives that, you know, by, by, by being the filter, the brand is the filter to the creator. And again, there's always going to be cases where this doesn't work, but I do think that that one side or the other can validate them, right? A really well-respected creator can validate a brand or a really well-respected brand can validate a creator. And if they're constantly working together, you do start to paint a picture of, you know, what's actually going on. But you've just given me an idea, and one that's been thought of many times in the past as well.

But if, if Minecraft turned around and said, eating your greens and broccoli and cauliflower was good for you, I'm pretty sure our kids would be, you know, eating their greens and cauliflower and broccoli all the time because Minecraft said so. Equally, if you think about things like, is it, um, uh, second life or all these virtual worlds that you lived in, if there was real things in there that you could buy, which there is, what if Minecraft had for the base or house that you set up and my daughter did the same, she creates houses and my son comes along and destroys it or whatever else. What if she could buy insurance from a brand for some false currency that sets that brand off in her, in her mind, at what age do you start doing that? Get them at three, get them early. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of joking about that, but I do think that there's like, I think about that scenario you just played, right?

I mean, how freaking, I mean, just the PR alone would be amazing. And again, I'm going to use hippo as an example only because I'm, we just got a point in with them. So, um, and thank you for that hippo people. Um, so let's say hippo says we're launching brother insurance. So when you, when you build a home in Minecraft, you buy insurance against your brother, who I, who we know is going to come in when he logs in and blow your house up, right?

Well, however that's done. And, you know, I'm just making this up, but like, but like that very simple, stupid thing, but you can do a whole, I can just see like a whole PR campaign around it and kids going, Hey ma, can I have 50 cents or 50 credits or whatever to, to ensure my Minecraft house against Johnny. Who's who I know when he logs in and now it's going to blow my house up. I love that because it starts to teach them the purpose of some of these things that you can get, what you can't get. What you need to do is make sure you obviously, you obviously then protect them.

Yeah. The Mr. So quick scan. He's a 23 year old guy, Jimmy, Jimmy Donaldson. Yeah.

He's got 62.4 million subscribers on his main channel, 99 million combined. He said 10.7 billion views. Imagine buying access to that sort of, Hey, it's hippo, it's root, it's metromile. It's bought by many. It's whoever you've got, you've got a dog or a pet in one of these worlds.

You want to ensure where the best pet insurance comes from. You're building your own business on there. Remember, remember we, you and I grew up probably playing Sims, right? Or something like that. Yeah.

Yeah. Sim City and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. So you've built your own world. How do we manage to ensure those things along the way if we needed it against events?

What are those events? It could, you know, and we'll go back to, we're still in education, right? We go back to the whole, I get frustrated. We leave school. And you picked it up exactly going, I know all these things in math and geography and history, but I can't change a tire at 150.

Sorry. I can't change an outlet. And I've got absolutely no idea what a bank account or compound interest looks like. Yeah. Why are we teaching those things to get us by at a different level going forward?

I mean, think about how much, how much different our world would be. And this is going to sound crazy, but I honestly believe this. If all math, if all we did in math was teach them like the four basics, right? Like addition, subtraction, multiply, division. We don't need derivatives or any of that crazy nonsensical stuff.

Maybe a little bit of geometry, just a little of the basics, right? And compound interest. If everyone knew what compound interest was, we all would live very, very different. Like, right? Like we would be investing in things and nurturing things and watching them grow.

And even the simplest and smallest, I mean, right? Like you put $10 a week into something. You buy one less coffee. How much is it? I mean, these are like simple concepts that would change our entire world.

Honestly, I agree with that to some extent. I don't agree with other nonsense, but we should learn it all. But we should absolutely learn the practicalities of these. My best advice I was given personally when I left university was pay off your debt quickly and start paying into a pension. Even if it was a tiny amount, I put in 50 bucks a month when I was 21.

And it was a big stretch back then. But funny enough, 25 years later, it's worth a little bit of money. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I just wish, I guess the thing is, where do that generation go to get that insight and advice? If you want to be a dancer or an actor or whatever else, you go to dance school.

You go to acrobat school. You go wherever, you know, all these things. You go to acting school. But the reality is most of us come out of school and become someone in a white collar job, blue collar job, whatever it might be. But you go, or if you start your own business and you become an entrepreneur, where's the business school piece without going to business school?

Where's the, actually, these are the things, when you set up, these are the 10 things you need to get going. I tell you what, the banks did a good job. Some of the banks did a really good job of going, starting your first business, here's what you need. Seed capital, protection, space, insurance. And it's just digging into each one of those things one by one that's important.

I'd say that the more digitized or digital banks have done a good job at that. I still, as much as I appreciate a community bank, and there are a lot of community banks, at least around where I live, I still have to go in and wet sign, like, 17 forms to set up a bank account. And it is freaking bananas. Like, it's just bananas. Like, it's, I'm in the worst bank ever right now.

Like, the bank that I use is awful. I hate every part of it. It won't let me do the things I need to do at the speed I need to do them. It's awful. And the idea of changing that bank to another bank is like a day of my life.

Like, I literally have to take a day to get all the money out of one bank and into another. I just haven't done it. And, you know, you look at that and you think, but I want to put down a pause. I want to go back to your question of where are these people going to, where is this next generation going to be learning from? It's not, well, here's what I know for a fact.

It's not going to be CNN. It's not going to be Fox News. It's not going to be the New York Post. It's not going to be the New York Times. It's going to be YouTube and TikTok and obscure blogs and Reddit subchannels and whatever the else comes out that we haven't even thought of yet that's happening.

WhatsApp, group channel things. Like, I mean, that's going to be where they get educated on stuff. Like, I don't have any of those things on my phone. You know where I go for news in the morning? I go to Reddit, subreddits and Twitter.

I have subreddits that I follow and Twitter. And that's where I get my news. If it's not happening in those two places, I don't see it. But then I also get reminded on a regular basis that we are the exception rather than the rule. Because most people, you know, I'm a big fan of Pivot podcast with Kara Swisher and Professor Scott Galloway.

And he was talking about explaining to another fellow dad about cryptocurrency and all that sort of stuff. And it's amazing the folks that understand it, know it, or have a small bit of knowledge or have a huge bit of knowledge. I'm in the camp of having a tiny bit of knowledge. But we're still in the top, you know, couple of percent. There's not, it's alien to most people.

And it's still early days for most of those things where most of those folks can't get past just the basics. So we're just going to work out where our audience is and how we, back to our very first point, are we dealing with the folks that are mass or the small niche that wants super digitalized or whatever else? Back to my point, digitized as in an improved, less broken process. If you didn't have to go wet sign or whatever else, you'd be happier. You wouldn't bother changing.

Yeah, I think the balance, and this is the balance that I constantly struggle with. Not struggle, but I'm considering. Where your audience is today, very few people. I mean, I was at a party on Saturday night. It was a charity event.

There were a lot of people there that you would think, with the amount of money that they had, would be aware of crypto more than they were, right? And this small pocket of four nerds, we found each other. And that's all we talked about for two and a half hours, where everyone else drank champagne. And I, you know, and I got a Coors Light in my hand, just dissecting Ethereum versus Cardano. You know what I mean?

And it's like, my wife's like, what's wrong with you? But, so yes, but the puck, I guess my thought is, right? So the puck is here today. This is where we are. But how do you balance that versus where, to me, it is inevitably going, right?

And that's my perspective. I think there's an argument to be made. Hey, maybe this particular topic fizzles, or this never becomes as important. Or maybe we have a counterculture revert to localization, where everyone goes back to, you know, barter trading. I mean, who the hell knows?

But, you know, where I see it going versus today, and how do you balance that as a business is a really big question. It almost reminds me of the debate for many years about software companies that used to sell perpetual and then move to cloud or SaaS-based models. And that valley of the shadow of death between the two is a really hard place to manage. If you're a public company, you're managing, even if you're private, you're managing investor or shareholder expectations on one hand to show perpetual increases, while you dip and move to an annual recurring revenue perspective. Yeah.

And that is a transitionary state that most folks have jumped. Yeah. But going through it, it's quite painful. And I feel like we're in that painful point right now, whether it's ownership of assets or creation of businesses or whatever it might be. But once we're through the other side, the acceleration is going to be through the roof.

I couldn't agree with you more. Nigel, I know you have to go. It is such a pleasure to spend time, man. We could wrap for three more. I actually avoided a bunch of topics because I was like, these are rabbit holes that will take us hours to get to.

So, man, I just appreciate it. We had our first conversation like a month or two back, but always been an enormous fan. I'm so happy. Google absolutely hit a home run by snatching you. And I just hopefully sometime in the future, we can do this again or just talk offline so we can just talk shit about everyone and no one can hear us.

100%. Likewise, I've always enjoyed the content and keep creating stuff that makes people easy to understand. Yeah. Thanks, man. Hey, be good.

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