Zywave CEO, Jason Liu, on Making Enterprise Tools Available to Every Agency

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the show. And the string of dynamic guests continues as we bring you today the CEO of Zywave, Jason Liu. And this came out of a conversation that I was having with my account rep at Zywave in that we were talking about some different features and some different tools, and I've really become an enormous fan of Zywave, and we talk a little bit about that during the episode. In particular, I love how the tool has become very accessible to small agencies like Rogue Risk. I can now provide similar, if not better, services to my commercial clients than many of the brokerages that are 10 times the size of Rogue.

I mean, just about every brokerage is 10 times the size of Rogue right now. But you know what I'm saying? And it really is a competitive advantage, and I've been wholly impressed. And I was speaking to her, and I said, man, I'd love to have your CEO on just to talk about what you guys are doing and where you're going, because I think a lot of agents circle around the ecosystem of Zywave, but feel like it might be out of their reach. And I just wanted to expose you guys to what it is, what it does, how I'm using it, and why I think they're a key part of commercial producing agencies' future technology portfolio.

So, it's a great episode. Jason is a good guy. He's very kind of dynamic. You can tell that he's enthusiastic about the business and about what we're talking about. And he also has a great new book out that you can, if you go to ryanhanley.com forward slash Jason Liu, and he spells his name L-I-U, so Jason dash Liu, or just go to ryanhanley.com and you'll find the episode.

There's a, he's written a dynamic book. Actually, I really, really like the e-book. I've actually printed it out, and I've taken some notes on it and stuff, and it's actually, it's really good. A lot of times when you get stuff from CEOs of companies, it's kind of just like, blah, this is not that at all. It's really well written, and there's a lot of meaty stuff in it, a lot of good stats, and I actually really enjoyed it.

But you can get that too, and just, it seems like a pretty open dude. He even gives out his email at the end if you want to contact him. But I've been using Zywave so much, I felt that it was important to share that with you guys, and I hope you enjoy this episode. Another tool that I enjoy, and a sponsor of this show, is Better Agency. Guys, I, at first, was skeptical of Better Agency, not because I didn't believe in the founders, just, you know, they had very big goals, big aspirations, I guess is probably the best word to use, and there's so many CRMs in our system, and I know how hard it is to build one of these tools, and, you know, I just, I tried other things, and finally, I did a demo about a month ago, talked to Nick Ayers a lot about the tool, what I was trying to do, where I'm trying to take Rogue, and where I thought I was being held back with other tools that I had tried, as I kind of flailed a little bit with technology, and I just, I'm wholly impressed with Better Agency.

Just, you know, William Shaw and the entire team there, you can just tell this tool was built by agency owners, they're constantly pushing forward, constantly pushing out new updates, their new integration with Lightspeed Voice is the balls, I mean, it really is, like, when someone calls the agency, I'm now getting call pops right on my screen, I can make calls through the computer, you know, through my phone, it's, and it's tracking everything right inside a Better Agency, and guys, there's a good chance that the agencies, agencies that are started today, they may not need agency management systems, and Better Agency is a big part of that, and I've just been, I've loved using the tool, I just have loved it, I've loved every second of it, I like that the Facebook group is active and helping each other, I like that when you put feature requests in, you're seeing those feature requests come out, and I've only been, I've only been on Better Agency for three weeks now, so I don't plan on changing, I plan on building my agency around this tool, and I'm just really excited about it, so if you're checking out Better Agency, if you're thinking about it, go get a demo, this is, I'm going to say the same thing about Better Agency that I said about Tarmica, get the demo, know what the tool does, you don't have to purchase the tool now, it may not be the right time for you, and it may just not be a great fit, but know what it does, so go get the demo, all right, all right guys, with that, let's get on to Jason Liu, and this tremendous episode, talking about him, his beliefs, what he's seeing in the industry, and how Zywave can help your agency.

I'm good, thanks for coming on the show, man. Hey, you bet, no, I appreciate the invite, cool stuff, I actually listened to a couple of your podcasts, great. Oh boy, that, they go, these are, I guess my style is much less interview and more conversation, if that's. Yeah, I love it, well. It's like Joe, it's like Joe Rogan, I love the stuff.

You know, I have a hard time taking that, I'm such a big Joe Rogan fan, I do just like talking though, I feel like there are plenty of shows that have like a set questions that are just gonna like hammer you, and I'm just so much more interested in talking to people, and I've said for years, like this is free consulting for me, like this is a really backdoor way of getting free consulting, that's what I use this show for, so no man, it's great, I read through the book that you wrote, the Sales Revolution book. Oh yeah, with Don, yeah. Tons of questions about that, and you really, I want to take it wherever you want to go, I have said some topics that I'm interested in, but yeah man, we can just, we can just jump in and roll. Yeah, yeah, Ryan, as I said, you know, I think my personality is very similar to yours, I just enjoy having a passion for this type of stuff, and hey, you know, let's make it conversational and see where it goes, yeah. Cool, so, you know, I guess where I want to start is maybe not at the beginning, but I feel like, and this is one of the reasons that when I was talking to April, you know, I asked about having you on the show, was I feel like Zywave in the last few years has taken a huge step forward, like from being, and I mean this with all due respect, it very much I think was seen by the industry at large as like a big broker, kind of, a big resource, but not something very accessible by anyone outside of, you know, kind of the mega brokers, the super regional brokers, and as a single, you know, my agency, I'm a startup agency as of March 9th, which I don't recommend starting an agency at the beginning of a pandemic, that's just the FYI, but as a single agency, a single person agency, I'm a subscriber of Zywave, so everyone who's listening knows I subscribe to Zywave, Broker Briefcase, Mod Master, and MyWave Connect, and it's incredibly accessible.

I use it almost every day. I literally, it's the second thing I log into after my CRM, Better Agency, and that, to me, has been, it has unlocked the resources that I feel like for a long time have been only accessible to big brokers, and I just, I'm excited for that, I'm interested in the thought process behind it, and I'm super interested in if you see that being more of the path of where Zywave is going. Yeah, Ryan, I mean, you know, you obviously covered a lot, so I can unpack, you know, several aspects of it. I think, you know, one aspect of it was, you know, what, you know, kind of Zywave, what we've done the last couple years, and there's this kind of second aspect of kind of bringing a lot of the tools that big brokers have, and bringing it to, obviously, smaller brokers, and allowing them to be able to leverage, you know, leading-edge technology. Maybe I can just kind of start in the first one, and then we can talk about the second one.

Go wherever you want to go, man. That's why I, that's how I do this. You make my job easy. Yeah, you know, Ryan, I'll just, I'll maybe just quickly just give you a little bit, you know, my histories, I spent, you know, I've been running software companies now for 25 years, 10 years running venture-backed companies, very fortunate, you know, took a company public, you know, sold out a couple companies, and then the last 15 years, I've been doing kind of larger businesses, software businesses, and helping them grow, you know, so really coming in, in businesses that were kind of slowing down and trying to get, figure out how you really unlock their growth potential and grow them. And so I took over Zywave about two years ago, and, you know, there's been so many things that we've done to really, I think, really drive the growth element of Zywave, one of which is just being a better partner, you know, so trying to be out accessible to customers.

I constantly am in the road meeting with customers and learning and listening, and, you know, to me, that's such a fun part of the job. But the other part of it was obviously, the innovation around the product and the technology, and then all the acquisitions that we've made. So, you know, what we've been able to do at Zywave is really, I think, help drive kind of much more of an innovation around leveraging smart automation. And what I mean by that is, a lot of things that obviously are being done manually or being done with disparate integrated systems, or disparate systems, we've now pulled together into an integrated system and then added a layer of intelligence and automation on top of it, right? And so, to me, it's really an exciting time, obviously, to be part of this and to kind of have a chance to talk to you guys like you.

A lot of the ideas and visions of Zywave come from a lot of the product folks that we have, but also some of my own background. I came out of a previous company that was one of the leaders in sales tech. And so, we worked with some of the largest companies in the world, but, you know, thousands of companies and kind of advanced kind of sales technologies, whether it be CRM or marketing automation or things like that. And we're applying them to insurance vertical, which has historically been a little bit behind other verticals. So, a lot of the ideas that we have are simply just repurposing things that have already worked in other industries and then applying it to, you know, insurance agents and things like that.

That's, you basically just described my entire career for the last 10 years in the insurance industry is taking cool shit in other spaces, bringing it into this space. And then people are like, oh my God, you're in Jesus. Yeah, you feel like you're in Star Wars. And I'm like, no, I just stole that idea from someplace else. Yeah, no, I mean, I think you're right.

I mean, you think about like, so, Zywave, obviously, we're one of the three large platform players in this space, but I think we're the one that's much more focused on the front office. So, Vertifort Applied are primarily AMS back office. Zywave, you know, has an AMS on the Ben side, but doesn't have an AMS on the PNC side, but 90% of our revenues is front office. And so, you think about what are the core things that producers, brokers need to generate revenue. It's all around, you know, helping make, you know, brokers and producers more effective and more efficient, and then helping them support their clients more efficiently, right?

So, that's obviously what we do. So, if you think about the core systems, there's the CRM, and then there's, you know, marketing automation, and then there's content, content management, and then there's what we call quoting, which is basically automating the quoting process, not just a comparative rater, but also, obviously, just how you actually do benchmarking and plan analysis coupled with the quoting. And then, obviously, then how do you support your clients, you know, and automating the process digitally of supporting your clients. So, all of those areas, you know, Zywave has obviously been investing a ton of resources and trying to automate. The last thing I'll mention to you, Ryan, too, about the small broker and things is, the other thing we've really adopted is two specific things.

One is the whole concept of consumerization of IT. I mean, people now want their business applications to run like their consumer apps. And so, obviously, you see growth in things like lemonade and stuff like that. I think, ultimately, people have a disconnect when they, you know, they're used to using Google or Amazon, and then they get on their business app, and it looks like something from the 18th century. So, they really expect their business apps to be consumer apps.

So, we've invested a lot of time trying to make our business apps more consumer-like. And the other thing is integrations. When we came to this world two years ago, it was a very siloed world where, you know, systems didn't talk to each other. And so, brokers, it was maddening. They had to, obviously, re-key in everything into different applications.

But at Zywave, we've opened up our platform, really put in open APIs. So, now, a broker can use Zywave for marketing automation. But if they want to use Vertifor for an AMS or applied for an AMS, we will integrate with those solutions and allow a seamless integration. So, I think all that has helped. Yeah.

You know, so, I don't know how much you know about what I'm trying to build with Rogue Risk, but when I put my plan together to launch this agency, the whole idea behind it was this idea of a human-optimized agency. And the core thought behind that is, I still believe to this day that the independent agency model is the best model for both sales and retention and really everything in between. The problem is for too long, we were leveraging humans in transaction points that humans added zero value. So, how do we take the humans out of the points that don't add value so that they can spend their, you know, a human being only has so many hours in the day, right? Like, you can then amplify the time that they're spent in the moments where they do, where they're maximizing their value.

And that's really what I'm trying to build. And how do you set up the systems and levers so that, you know, I can then, you know, duplicate myself and that person comes in and can spend time where they're maximizing their value. And in, uh, surveying the scene of technology that was, that's, that's out there. Um, it, it is, it is obvious to me, I think today, and this, this is going to lead us into some of the stuff that I want to talk about with, with your book, but, um, it's obvious to me today, the organizations that are thinking about, I, they may not be using the same words that I just used, but they're thinking the same way and the organizations that are not because this is today's problem. It's not, we're not auditing or automating away the broker, but we are automating the things where the broker adds no value.

And, and, and that is, that's really the game that we're playing. And one of the things that I've been, I don't want to say pleasantly surprised, but I just never was a client and only knew you from the outside until about March, um, has been, that is completely obvious in the tools that I use with, with Zywave has been, um, you know, everything from the content and the content management systems and being able to deliver real-time value with in-depth articles that, you know, might take me three days to write. I can go in, find something crafted to, to my, the way that I speak and deliver it to someone at tremendous value in that moment. Uh, mod master allows me to be a much deeper value provider to my customers. And then on the backend, I'm onboarding every one of my commercial clients into my wave connect.

And what I'm getting in far, as far as feedback is, I didn't even know that tools like this were available. You know, I can't believe I'm getting this from my insurance agent. And you know, that, those are the kinds of things that, you know, my process isn't perfect yet, but those are the kinds of things that I think that this next generation of broker is going to have to adopt. And, um, you know, I, I like that at least one of the big three is pushing forward into this space. You know, I, I think Vertifor and Applied are trying, they're still just very, still a little too siloed for my liking, but, um, I think they're trying, uh, you guys seem to be out in front.

Yeah, no, I appreciate Ryan. I mean, obviously I think it's, it's, uh, we're obviously trying and I think it's in our DNA is to be as innovative as possible, but to your point about like the nature and the role of the broker, I a hundred percent agree. I actually spent some time on your website and I actually totally agree with where you're heading with this whole thing is that ultimately you need to be a consultative manager. And a lot of the, the really transactional stuff, you know, obviously allow systems like Xywave to do that, right. To free you up to be a consult advisor.

I can even give you a personal story at Xywave. So, you know, um, and Xywave, you know, we're, we're a software company and, um, you know, I'd say five, 10 years ago as a CEO, I really didn't pay attention quite honestly to, uh, you know, my insurance policies. I let our CFO kind of do that, but given the complexity now, um, I now have regular conversations at the board level about cyber risk, about other types of risks. In fact, um, one of our board members, I had another company he works with who, um, actually had ransomware where their company was being held. Uh, and so we now are having significant board level discussions about our exposure around cyber security and what our policies are around cyber risk, um, all those types of things.

And this is where I need our broker to provide that value added expertise rather than, you know, some of the transactional stuff. And I think that's to your point where I think the world is going is that the need for a broker is only going to grow exponentially because of the complexity. Now you're talking about telemetrics. Um, you know, when you, when you listen to, uh, you know, I was on a, uh, a conference with, uh, the CEO of nationwide and they're talking about moving to usage based pricing, um, and, uh, and, and micro segmentation of, of, of, uh, you know, micro segmentation of customers. Um, you're talking about complexity that, you know, wasn't there previously.

And it's perfect for a broker to, to figure out, uh, how and ways that we can leverage, uh, telemetrics and usage based pricing to be better, better for us. So to your point, that's where I think the world of a broker is going to go, uh, and just allow the Zyways of the stuff to do that transactional stuff. Um, Keep going. Yeah. You know, I think the other point just brought about content, I, I, I think you'll see obviously Zyway is, is, um, done a couple things around content.

Um, one is we continue to have this real incredibly robust content, um, both for servicing your clients, but also for prospecting. So snackable content is something we're also building a lot of. So, you know, little snackable content, three minute videos, um, little newsletters, things like that, that can get someone engaged. And then you can obviously offer them more robust content, but we'll be releasing actually this month, the ability for our customers to actually, uh, customize the content, change the layout, change the logo. So it doesn't have to look like the next guys, and you can even, uh, potentially can change, uh, edit some of the wording.

So I think we're trying to do all we can to, to further the importance of content. But the other part that I would just want to quickly mention is, is just, um, once you have the content, making it easier to deliver that content. So we've been investing heavily in content management. So you don't have to go to one system to get, you know, Zywave content, another system to get carrier content and another system, uh, to get, um, your sales and market content. You can put them all into our broker briefcase product, uh, and then very easily send out email campaigns.

Um, and, uh, and, uh, also, um, you know, download the content, uh, rather than having to go all these different repositories. Yeah. You know, these are the things that, that agents I think are starting to wake up to, you know, my, my, the market, our, our audience for the most part, I'd say is that is the middle sized agency down to the smaller size agencies. I, you know, I know we had, there's some bigger guys that listen, but for the most part, it's the carriers that serve the, the middle market agency and below and, and, and the agents themselves. Um, and it has been, you know, my, I've been speaking, uh, on insurance stages for over a decade now of not right this moment, hopefully again, someday, but, uh, um, and still it feels, it feels like they're just starting to wake up to these things.

And a big part of that for a long time was the lack. So one insurance agents tend to buck anything that isn't an insurance specific system. And those systems for so long were so far behind the times in terms of their ability to deliver content to clients. Now that is starting to rapidly change. And what's been nice is that, um, the agents are starting to adopt this as well.

And the good part about that from a, uh, I think from a competitive landscape standpoint, people would initially think to themselves, well, geez, that's bad. If I have more agents who are, who are sharing content and sharing ideas, then that makes it harder for me to stand out. And I actually think it's the opposite because you know, the, the, the idea that all that does is elevate people's disposition towards independent agents, right? There, what happens is people think of us so often as the lowest common denominator version of independent, you know, just hawking prices. And that's, and I think as we start to push into the market more with more content, with more expertise, um, it'll only elevate the industry and its place as a, as a, as a, I don't want to say a real professional, but like seen as a true professional alongside, you know, legal and accounting and some of these others that we wanted for so long, you know, and taking a more consultative approach.

So I think that's incredible. Well, I think Ryan, you nailed on the head. I, I, as I said, I spent some time on your website and I love where, where you're going and the way you view things around obviously mitigating risk. I mean, you think about that, you know, to your point about, um, an accountant, you know, you could do accountant just to do your books. Right.

And so you could just get a broker to just write you a risk policy. Right. Um, but to your point, the best accountants that you work with, give you advice on your business, right. And give you advice, how to potentially consider change, you know, saving money here or potentially doing things differently with your business. I see the same thing there with like, with risk.

That's where I think a lot of the content that Zyweb creates allows brokers to more easily give them advice. I mean, you've seen some of our content, you know, if you go to a, um, a restaurant owner or a, I think in your case, you had like a bar, you know, a bar example, um, you can actually give them very specific advice on how to mitigate risk as a restaurant owner or a bar. And you can give them videos now using Zyweb content, uh, on, you know, tips and tricks on how to, um, reduce, um, risk, um, and, and employee safety around restaurants and things like that. Uh, and that to me is all value add. Cause obviously I think if, if, if, um, you know, if I'm an employer, uh, and I'm looking between one agent and another agent and one agent is just writing policies versus another one has actually given me this rich, you know, uh, uh, consultative, uh, you know, analyses and, and, and information and advice, I, I think it really, it really becomes a no brainer.

Yeah. And, and for my agent friends that are listening to this, um, you know, I think the idea, the pushback on that idea is often, well, all the customers care about is price. And, and, and my pushback on that idea is always that we have, we have trained them to think that way. And, and maybe that first year when you present them with a more consultative approach, they're still in the mentality of price. But that next year, when you come back again and you hit them with that same consultative approach, they're going to start to see things a little differently and maybe it takes two or three years, but eventually this is what people actually want.

No one wants to see themselves as just a price shopper, right? That, that is not, no one wakes up in the morning and goes, you know what? I just buy crappy, cheap stuff. That's not the way anyone thinks. So if we can, but we do have to tear down, you know, they, when they wake up and go, you know what?

I'm so savvy. I get that this is just a game and it's all the same stuff. And they think that they're really smart for making these decisions. And we have to retrain them. And, and, um, I think the, uh, our, I'm not using going to use the right word here, but like our, um, our desperation to sell in the moment, um, uh, creates this situation where price is all that we sell on.

And if we can think a little further, think a little further out, two, three, 10 years down the road, that account is eventually going to swing to your consultative approach. And then they'll stay with you. If you can stick with them and hold to your guns of being a true consultant. And I, and I do think that it's tools like Zywave that, that help us do that. They're certainly helping me so far in my young agency.

I mean, I'm further along and I want to stop the sales pitch for Zywave. That's not what it's meant to be, but, but I, I just, you know, I believe in products and I like talking about products that I believe in. It has helped me get further along than I would be if I hadn't made the investment. And, you know, and for a small agency, it's not inexpensive, but that's okay. You get such tremendous value back.

Um, you know, I, I've, I've enjoyed, I've enjoyed and considered a good decision to have purchased the product. Yeah. You know, I appreciate you saying, Ryan, obviously I appreciate your support of Zywave and I love it. And, and, uh, you know, I, I guess maybe I can just maybe add another kind of way to think about it is there's kind of what I always talk about, um, efficiency and effectiveness, you know? So to me, when I talk about efficiency, it's just automating your tasks, right?

So, um, Zywave is spending a lot of time just automating things that you're doing manually, right? Uh, you know, so marketing automation, instead of you having to send out individual emails, now you can do dynamic lists and, and really do, um, uh, very easily set up very, uh, significant marketing campaigns. Um, you know, with, um, as you said, uh, doing mod analysis, we can obviously do it in a very automated way. Um, you know, but we also now we're kind of increasingly trying to add this element, which is effectiveness, effectiveness, which is how do we actually help you close more business? And, um, how do we actually, um, help you, um, you know, close bigger deals and, and, and, and, and, and, and win more customers.

And to me, that, that is a lot of what you were talking about with the content is such a critical component is it actually makes you more value add to your customers. Um, which obviously will help you, you know, generate more business, but even some things like, you know, I do want to plug another acquisition we made, which was called my edge. Yeah. No, I was going to ask you about my edge, please do. Cause I think a lot of people are wondering, they saw it.

I don't know if they knew of the tool beforehand and now it's kind of on people's tongues. Yeah. You know, so, um, you know, my edge, you know, I think the analogy I would give is, you know, when Microsoft bought LinkedIn, um, people were like, well, you know, why did Microsoft buy it? And one is obviously to keep at the time, obviously people were using it, uh, as a, as a primary, um, you know, contact manager and, and, uh, and recruiting tool, but it was the rich data within, uh, LinkedIn that ultimately was going to make all of Microsoft's products smarter and better. Right.

So if you look at my edge, it is an incredible prospecting tool. It is the best data source for plan data that's out there. So you might go to like zoom info and get like contact, you know, information of, you know, Zyway that here's Jason lose, you know, phone number and, and, uh, email address, but it doesn't give you what plan, you know, who, and what broker I'm using for, um, my commercial business or what broker I'm using for my benefits business and what my renewal dates are and, uh, how much am I paying, um, for those and, uh, things like, you know, feed a number of feet away from a fire hydrant or the size of my facility, all of that information sits within, in, uh, in, uh, my edge. And what that then allows you to do from a prospecting standpoint is you can obviously do start doing prospecting of here, all of the, uh, renewals that are coming up in, uh, a zip code in Utah, um, and, um, do targeted campaigns for those, you know, employers that are coming up for renewal, or you can look and see how many DOT violations have happened in a certain zip code in, in Florida and actually do a specific campaign, uh, around that. Um, so this type of really rich kind of plan information allows you to do such incredible prospecting, micro prospecting.

Um, so instead of it being like shotgun, or you just happen to bump into someone at a, at a luncheon, you can actually, um, uh, have all that information to prospect. But ultimately what allows you to do over time is, uh, is have a lot more kind of rich, um, intelligence, right? So before you go into an account, you already know, you know, all of their, all their, uh, DNA of their plan, um, and be able to obviously spin up quotes or potentially send them content because you already know, you know, they got into a, uh, you know, uh, a safety violation or they had, uh, this type of facility or, or things like that. You know, I, I, and this is one of the things that I've learned. I think in, in, in, in what's coming down the pipe, uh, in terms of, you know, you're looking at a company like lemonade, right.

And, um, I have my own feelings, which I've shared multiple times on lemonade. Uh, but I think the idea here is simple products like renter's insurance can be automated. They can be, um, but the more sophisticated products, high value homes, businesses, um, you know, just diving deeper when you're, when you're having to figure out a risk every time capture what, what, you know, seen when I'm asking someone what year their building was built, when I'm talking to a business owner, I'm like, Hey, what year was your building built? That is a stupid question to have to ask a business owner because it is not helping with the risk management discussion in any way. And they're like, Oh, you know, I think like 1979 and you're like, you know what I mean?

Like it doesn't matter to them. They don't care when their building was built. And then the next, well, what year was your electrical updated? And they're going, what is this guy talking about? Why am I even at, what am I, what is he, who is this Yahoo?

These are, these are questions that I think as, as brokers, we should not be asking these questions, not because they're not necessarily important. Although I would argue that they are not to underwriting, but, um, but, but because they do, they're not allowing, you're wasting time in points of conversation that are not allowing you to actually do your job, which is find out where the real risk is, right? Like you need, we need to find out where are these people exposed? Is it a cyber risk? Is it EPLI?

Is it that they're, you know, something's going on with their commercial auto program. And we, we, what we realized is that they're not actually requiring personal liability limits above a hundred thousand on their own drivers, or they're allowing, um, inexperienced drivers to be part of their commercial auto. I mean, this is where we need to dig in and spend that limited time that we have with someone. Like we're only going to get 20 to 45 minutes with somebody, right? It's, you know, no business owner is going to give us four hours of their time.

So if we can get rid of all these silly questions and get rid of the questions that as much as we possibly can, that are really just transactional underwriting stuff and get to the meat and potatoes quicker. Um, I, this is an enormous win for a broker and I see tools like my edge, which I, so I've used insurance X dates for since, since the beginning to as kind of my source for this information. And, um, I actually just did a demo of my edge last Friday and, uh, I have a feeling I'm going to be, I'm going to be making the move over since the price is basically the same. So, um, you know, that, that to me, it's, it's dispensing with transactional data, uh, accumulation that just almost weakens the relationship where you can then spend more time on the points that strengthen it. Yeah.

No, I think Ron, you know, you kind of just unpack a couple of things you said, you know, what one is, I think, as you said, all of that data, that forensic data about the accounts, that is definitely the vision of where my edge is and is continues to go. You know, we have this team of folks that are collecting all of this data. Some of it is public. Some of it is private. Some of it is, is things that like, you know, with workers comp, we're now, uh, petitioning each individual state to collect, to get all of the, uh, granular workers comp information around plan data.

Um, to your point, ultimately we don't want you to have to like spend time asking those questions. Ideally you can use my edge and have access to that. But, but I'd argue we can, we're trying to even think one step better is to actually start giving you recommendations, right? Is, is to basically say, oh yeah, you know, uh, this, this, to your point about, you know, a facility, we can actually say, yeah, if there's some potential flood risk with this facility, maybe you should pitch them on flood insurance. I think we're going to increasingly try to be more intelligent about how you have given you real, not just giving you the data, but the real intelligence behind it.

So then you can then, uh, leverage that. So, you know, stay tuned on that. I know it's, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's seemingly Star Wars stuff, but you know, we, we've been spending a lot of time with AI and different, um, uh, ways to actually parse this data to start providing in smart recommendations for you. Um, you know, I think the other thing, just to your point about, um, you know, with, with the whole kind of quoting process, um, you know, it'll, it'll be interesting. I mean, obviously there's now been a lot of attention spent, you know, with lemonade on the consumer side and you're seeing companies like us and Vertifor and applied, um, particularly start really look at looking at this and on the, on the commercial side, uh, as you know, on the, on the personal line side, there's already been commercial raters out there for a while.

Um, on the benefit sides, I wave made two acquisitions to really build by far the leading now comparative rater quoting system in, in the, uh, in the bend side. And, and, um, all I can say is there's a lot of attention being focused here because I, I think that's the next frontier. I mean, obviously applied made a big, uh, uh, uh, uh, acquisition of the Indio, uh, and, um, you know, Vertifor clearly is, is, is looking at this space and, and there's players, as you know, um, you know, Simcy and, uh, Tarmac and others that are in this space, bold penguin. So, uh, you know, to me, it's an interesting area and I can spend time talking about it, you know, as much about as I do, but, um, I think that that area is starting to come. And I think ultimately people are trying to figure out how you digitize more and more of the experience, um, and just make it more of a push button experience for the quoting, which then frees up the time of the broker to actually do the consultative selling.

Yeah. You know, I think slowly, but surely the, um, forward leaning agents and some of the insure techs are pushing, uh, legacy players into the idea that it's not that control is less important than being part of the process. And, uh, that to me is, is exciting when I can take, uh, you know, you know, I know you guys have, have partnered with, with Simcy. I'm obviously a Tarmaca user. I'm looking forward to the day that you integrate with them as well.

Um, you know, we have, you know, I can push data from my edge into Tarmaca, which spits out my quotes, which then I can push through my, my better agency, you know, CRM, which is, you know, quasi replacing my, my, uh, AMS at this point. And now I'm having, I'm having what is almost a seamless, seamless push from, I'm seeing, uh, a prospect's data in my edge, pushing it through my rate or I'm able to get at least a pretty decent indication of what that rate is. And now I'm prospecting on real rates to, to customers. I mean, that is, that is the holy grail opportunity that I think we're super close on. I mean, that that's, we're not far from that being a reality for agents.

And when you can couple that with, um, expertise and insight and a true consultative approach to selling, you've now digitized the stuff that wastes time, right? I mean, that's a, what I just described as a five hour process today in standard form. And you could do that in minutes. And now all that time is redirected into being a consultative advisor that that that's the game changing, that that's the game changer right there. That's how you scale the human experience in, in, in property, casualty insurance.

And I'm, and I'm, I don't do a ton on the benefit side, but I'm assuming the benefit side as well. Yeah, absolutely. Ryan, you know, I would tell you that to your point, um, I mean, like just a couple of points about the quote, you know, one is I think your, your, your vision is exactly where, you know, where everyone's heading. And I think obviously we think that my date, my edge, my, uh, uh, my edge is the key. And obviously we will work with other comparative raters as well.

Um, you know, but ultimately to provide that information in an automated fashion, um, not only condenses the, the time it takes to collect that information, it also removes steps. Like you gave that example of, you know, what we've seen is like for something like a bot policy, like, you know, it takes literally somewhere, um, in the neighborhood of about 15 minutes to get all that information inputted to write a bot policy. A lot of times, some of that information, the, the, the person you're interviewing, the business owner doesn't even know. Right. And so they've got to go get it.

Right. So now you've all of a sudden created an extra step in the process. It's added in another week or day. Like you ask him, you know, like what's the facility size. They may not know you.

What's the, how far are you from a fire hydrant? You know, all these great extra steps. So it's not just about saving time. It's also removing steps. So you can actually go, go from, can, can, um, automate the quoting process.

So then you can focus on the selling and the closing and then the, the servicing. Right. So, um, I think that's, you know, direction we're going on. The other thing I would add just on the, on the process that ways I wave thinks about things is on the Ben side, we've obviously already done this with a small group quoting, uh, level funded and, and, uh, and, uh, and what I, the thing I wanted to share there, it's not just the actual quoting. Whenever you do this type of, um, quoting, you obviously have to do, we have to compare it to other, um, uh, you have to do some type of claims analysis or plan analysis.

And so we, we're also trying to automate the process of doing that as well, which we have on the Ben side and obviously looking to bring it on the PNC side. Cause it's not just showing them a quote. You've also got to show them, um, obviously, um, uh, a lot of information and detail in your presentation as you consult it itself. So it's giving you the tools as a, as an independent agent, um, to basically not have to build out spreadsheets, um, you know, and, and in a much more professional and very consumable way, you can put all that and show that, um, in real time. So like the last thing I'll say is like on the Ben side, we can actually do now, or you can actually adjust, um, the premiums or adjust the contribution level real time and actually show what the impact is on your policy.

You know, while you're meeting with a client, um, I think that's the type of tooling we want to give you. So you don't have to go back and just rerun analyses. If they want to change, you can actually do it all real time. There's nothing worse than, okay, I'll make that change and I'll get back to you tomorrow with your quotes. It's just that disconnect in every minute, like literally every minute between that moment that you have their attention.

And when you have to resend them stuff is a minute that someone else could get in something else gets in their head, a new expense comes up. They just get frustrated and step away. And now you've done a tremendous amount of work that, um, that, that doesn't actually come to fruition. The other thing I would say there is I have had more and more often smaller and smaller accounts. Um, almost expecting to see multiple quotes from different companies in a comparison on the property casualty side.

This actually just happened to me. Um, geez, it was like two days ago. It was like a $1,200 range, right? Companies are kind of in like that $1,200 to $1,500 range. That's a relatively small account.

And, and the expectation from the business owner was, well, Hey, what else was in the market? And at the, you know, I didn't really have, um, I didn't come, let me put it this way. I had the ability, but I didn't come prepared cause I hadn't expected it. You know, I just presented them with, with whatever was best, but in he's in there in, in, in her mind, she was thinking, well, geez, like, how do I know that's the best, you know, what, what were some other companies? And I said to her, well, geez, you know, travelers came in a little higher, you know, uh, this Hartford was close, but you know, and I ultimately put them with Chubb, but like that expectation, I think is only going to become more a part of the culture of, of business owners and commercial buyers of, you know, I, you know, I want to see multiple quotes from different carriers in, in your proposal, like you might see traditionally in a benefits proposal.

Well, I think you're spot on Ryan, you know, uh, you know, I think, you know, we kind of mentioned earlier about the consumerization of it. I do think now in the, um, insurance world, these consumer it, um, solutions, um, in the insurance world, like, you know, like, uh, policy genius or lemonade, you know, you can now, you know, look at your auto or your home insurance and get quotes and you see like five quotes, people are going to increasingly expect that, um, you know, in, in the commercial and business world, you know, um, you know, so I think your point is extremely well, well-founded. And I think, um, over time that that's going to be more and more of the expectation. Yeah. Okay.

So I want to, um, I want to be respectful of your time and your energy and all that. Uh, but I do have, I want to ask you just a couple of questions from, from kind of your seat. And I, and I took these out of, and, and, uh, I'll have it, I'll have it linked up in the show notes. And obviously you can, um, get this, uh, at Zivewave as well. The, the, the sales revolution, um, um, uh, digital disruption, demystified the ultimate guide to driving agency growth.

That is, that is a heck of a name. I like it. It's a heck of a name. So, um, I, just from your seat and the conversations you had, and like you said, you were talking to, uh, you were recently in a conversation with nationwide CEOs. You're, you're able, you're sitting in rooms with people who are thinking big about the industry, thinking deep into the future.

Although I do think telematics is a mistake, but, um, and then we can talk about that. Uh, but I'm super interested in not necessarily who, cause you don't have to share that, but what are some of the other, um, bigger ideas, bigger concepts that you see? You know, we talked a little bit about consumerization of technology. Uh, you know, we've talked about some of the tools. What are some of the other major ideas that the idea is maybe around different types of competition that people see coming, different types of change in how we differentiate ourselves?

Like, what are some of the big concepts that you see or hear other leaders in our industry talking about when you're sitting in these rooms? Yeah, no, I think, I guess, you know, first of all, you know, I would mention that, you know, at some point, I'd encourage you to get Don Bailey, who was my co-partner on the book. Don is a fantastic guy. You know, he's, you know, the former CEO of Marsh, of North, Willis, North America, and the president of Marsh, and then was, before that, executive all-state. He's phenomenal, and he, you know, these type of questions are probably much better directed to him, because he's definitely a big thinker, and has a lot more to say about it than I do, and a lot more wisdom about it.

But, you know, if you think about, you know, to your point, Ryan, some of the big things that, you know, Don talked about, which, you know, I do feel are the right ones that I think accentuate the, you know, when Don, you know, talks about it, you know, he does talk about, you know, and to paraphrase him, you know, he's been in insurance for 30 years, and nothing really changed, and all of a sudden, now, he believes the world is changing now. Like, it is changing. And, you know, the obvious question is, why now? Why do you think things are changing now? And, you know, some of it, obviously, is things like COVID, and things like that, that have really changed the dynamics, or accelerating the dynamics.

But I think what he would tell you is the digital disruption is the biggest denominator that's, that's changing what's going on. And, and, you know, so, you know, ultimately, it seems like a fancy term of what, what, what is digital disruption. But it is absolutely the advent of all of these technologies that are flooding the markets, whether it be telemetrics, whether it be big data, whether it be wearable devices. All of these things are bringing enormous change to the to the equation, that obviously is disrupting the industry, you know, on my board. You know, I, I have the CEO of Mitchell, are you familiar with Mitchell, Ryan?

Alex, so Mitchell is the largest, they provide, they're a billion plus in revenue, they're one of the largest providers to the big carriers around a bunch of areas, including a lot of the the claims tools. And, you know, they've gotten to a point now where, you know, as you know, in the past, you'd have claims adjusters, you can now digitize, you know, take a picture of the claim of the debt in your in your truck, send it to them, and they'll automatically without humans even being involved will actually estimate the damage, and then actually immediately give you an in a quote on what the damage is, and obviously suggest where you can get it fixed, right? I mean, the ability to take, you know, digital photography, use AI to analyze that, which no longer requires a claims adjuster, which took a week, and process a claim, you know, that's where the world is going, we talk about telemetrics, things like that. So, to me, that disruption is, is real. And it's also allowing carriers to then start thinking about usage based pricing, which I think is going to be something that's going to start coming more and more.

And people go, What is usage based pricing? Well, it's the ability to actually micro target your customer segment, and to find out, you know, you know, people that maybe have trucks that drive a lot, but get into a lot of accidents, or maybe their drivers drive really fast compared to another one, they can actually start charging different rates. So, increasingly, with obviously, the technologies, you'll be able to, they're going to require, obviously, the monitoring of, of these vehicles, and then telemetrics will be sent back to the carrier knowing that this employer, their drivers constantly speed versus these other ones don't. And they'll actually charge you more money for that. Or you'll be paying by the drink, you know, the further you drive, or the more you drive, you'll start getting different pricing.

I think that's kind of the next wave. And I don't think we're 20 years off, you know, maybe two to two to five years off, where you're really going to start this stuff to start changing more meaningfully. Yeah, that that's, that. And so I think wearables, also from a workers comp perspective, I think, you know, healthy employees keep comp premiums down. That's, that's just, that's a point of fact.

So wearables in comp, and as in if, you know, companies, you know, I think it's something that I know is floating around is, if companies have employees with wearables, and you can track steps, and you can track health, then you can ultimately, you know, rate comp. And then I know they're doing that already in health, I think that can come over to the PC side a lot. I, you know, I made the, I made the offhanded comment about telematics. I struggle with telematics, because I feel like, specifically in auto, I think it works better in commercial auto. I think in personal auto, I've seen the struggle being the standard, a tele, telematics rating in personal auto has yet to produce more profit, or, or certainly more consistent profit, than the standard rating process, where we're just looking at, hey, if you're under 25, you're probably drive like a jerk.

So, you know, I think I think it's really interesting. I think in the commercial side, that's a completely different story, because of the more structured nature in which people drive and the routing and all that kind of stuff. I think, I think I also see companies coming in and using a lot of this AI and helping businesses from that more consultative approach around things like, like routing, right? Can you come in as a, as a commercial auto carrier to a business with a fleet of 50 vehicles and help them, you know, safe, you know, safely route their trucks through, throughout wherever they're trying to go, better position them, better fuel them, help keep their drivers, you know, make sure their drivers aren't driving to an extended period of time where they start to fall asleep, which is a major issue with commercial auto. So I think all these things are tremendous.

I, man, you know, I could keep talking about this stuff all day. I think I, I'm just glad that you were willing to come in, spend some time, talk about Zywave. I know since I announced a few months ago that I'm using your tool, I've got a tremendous number of questions about the tool. I think a lot of people, um, see you guys as a leading technology and kind of watch from the outside. They feel, uh, I'm hoping that more agents and brokers who want to take a consultative approach to their business will start to consider Zywave as a tool.

As you know, I can tell everyone firsthand, it is much more accessible today than I think we would have, you know, five, 10 years ago today. I'm a single person. I told you, it's the second tool I open up. I open up better agency and then I open up Zywave. That's my first two apps that I open up, you know, after probably Facebook and Instagram and all that crap.

Um, so I, I, I appreciate that. I appreciate your time and, uh, man, I just hope you keep pushing because, um, I'm rooting for you guys. I've, I've seen it as a serious tool in my business and, uh, I'll most likely be a, my, my edge customer as well. Yeah, no, Ryan, it's been a pleasure being on your show. And to your point, you know, I, I think, as you said, I think we, we definitely feel like we're giving, you know, you guys as a smaller broker, the same tools and the advantages of a large broker.

Um, and, uh, and I think obviously that's a lot of our, our mission right now. And I do also want to mention this from the accessibility, you know, my, my, my email is jason.liu at zywave.com. If anyone has any questions or, you know, has ideas on how we can do things better. So many of you are our customers and I really appreciate that you're our customers. Um, if there's things that, you know, you've seen that Zywave needs to improve on, our products can improve, or even the way we handle it from a customer standpoint, please, please feel free to email me.

Um, as I said, it's been exciting, Ryan. I look forward to obviously having a chance to, to continue to get to know you better. And, uh, and I really enjoy your show. It's been a fantastic show and, uh, look forward to hearing more. Thanks so much.

All right. Take care. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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