--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous guest, a tremendous conversation, just so much fun. Someone that I probably could have talked to for like four hours. We actually talked for another whole half hour after we turned the mics off just because we got into something after I said, "Hey, that was great, man." And then we started talking about something else. We talked for another whole half hour.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And it's Todd Tams from the Tams Agency. Todd is just a tremendous professional. I mean, great dude, awesome cook, and someone who I've connected with, especially since I launched Rogue. Todd is a comp master, a workers comp master. I had the pleasure of getting to know him better at a dinner at the last IAOA event in San Diego, and that has kind of blossomed into us communicating quite a bit and finally having him on the show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I was very excited to have this conversation because he's somebody who gets what we're doing. He gets this business and he's not just resting on the way the business was always done. He's taking his very coverage-focused, traditional expertise and experience and applying it to a whole new way of doing business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I see Todd as one of the guys who's going to come out of this crazy COVID, wild atmosphere that we're in with everything that's going on culturally and all the anxiety and loss. I see Todd as one of the guys who's going to be able to pull his business through and be more successful on the other side of this. There's just so much here to dig into. It is such a pleasure to deliver this episode to you. I think you're absolutely going to love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, guys, if you're not already, I'd really love for you to subscribe to the show. If you want to get email updates, go to ryanhanley.com. Right on top, you'll see a box. Stick your email in, and when new episodes come out, I'll email them to you. Oftentimes, I'll also have little nuggets, maybe resources or something that I'm reading that I plug in there. Like last week, I linked to David Carruthers' new book, *The Extra Two Minutes*, which I think is absolutely tremendous. I was halfway through when I put it in there. I've now finished it. The book's a must-read. You can get it on Amazon. I'm not trying to make any money off this and Dave's not paying me. I just think it's a great book and I want to expose you guys to it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Subscribe by email. There are little ditty extras that you get that maybe you don't get just by listening to the podcast. It's great to be here sharing content with you. I took a few weeks off to get Rogue to a place where I could start doing podcasts again. We're there. It's a pleasure to be speaking to you guys again. I hope you're enjoying it. I hope you'll tell a friend about the show. I hope you'll help us grow this community as we do what we do, which is just talk to cool people and hopefully help expand different ideas that'll help you grow your business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A big part of how I've gotten Rogue to the point where I was able to get back into podcasting is Tarmica. Tarmica is the primary sponsor of this show. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Get a demo. Know what Tarmica is about. This is small business commercial lines comparative rating done the way it should be done. It's a game-changing product. It's a game-changer for me. Now, instead of me, solo shop, having to go into five different carriers, figure out their systems, play with all their dials, I can put the information in one time and get rates from CNA, Markel. I think right now in New York, there are seven carriers that I get quotes back from. I now know what the best price is for that business in the market. I only had to plug the information in once. That is a game-changing piece of technology for agencies that are trying to be profitable in the small business marketplace.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't just have them as a sponsor because they wanted to be a sponsor. I have them as a sponsor because I believe in what they're doing. If small business is a space that you're trying to play, it is worth getting a demo from Tarmica.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Alright guys, wrapped up the business side of the podcast. Let's get on to this absolutely tremendous conversation with Todd Tams. Here we go.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah, if I could get... I almost had a nervous breakdown last week because I can't get away from babysitting duty. It's freaking killing me, man. It is killing me. I said to my wife, because my dad takes the kids. I usually have the kids Monday and Friday, which is hard enough. Then my dad, two years ago, three years ago, got prostate cancer. Got rid of it. Cancer free since he had all the surgeries and stuff. He's doing really well. But this week, when he has to go in for tests every six months, he's basically out of commission for a couple of days. So this is the only day I have the kids again tomorrow. The only day I've been able to focus on anything without kids running around. It literally breaks me down.
--:-- Todd Tams: I said to my wife, "I'm doing okay. I'm writing business. I have an account I'm going to sign today. It's like $9,000 in premium comp and a package with an umbrella." But one $10,000 premium account every other week doesn't get me anywhere. I need to be doing four of those a week, and I can't build up the steam to get to that point because when the kids are here, it's 10 minutes and then I gotta go do something, then 10 minutes and I gotta do something. That singular thing has been the hard part. The insurance part, trying to get things going, hasn't been as difficult. It's just finding eight hours in a day.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're not meant to multitask, right? They say you can. Can you multitask? Can you do all these things? I'm terrible at it. I can't. There are certain things you need to focus on and rock out. You need your undivided attention. Distractions, phone ringing, people coming in, kids at home. Can't do it.
--:-- Todd Tams: I have seriously been considering finding some money so that I can hire somebody. If I had just another set of hands, it would... When I'm freed up to work, I honestly believe that I'm three to one. I can do the amount of work that maybe three people can do. But I got to get rid of all the nonsense stuff. It's killing me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Is New York slowly opening back up right now?
--:-- Todd Tams: Slowly. Very slowly. Unfortunately, Emperor Cuomo will occasionally pull that back. He'll be like, "Oh, you thought you were phase two. No, you were mistaken." So it has been a challenge. But the insurance part is not the problem. Digging up business, getting in front of people... I'm cold calling, cold emailing, pressing my network, doing content. Getting the opportunities has not been the issue. For a two and a half month old agency, I'm consistently quoting business. Smaller, larger small commercial. I haven't gotten too much middle market stuff because I just haven't had the time.
--:-- Todd Tams: I don't feel bad about what I've been able to generate versus the amount of time I've been able to spend. I said to my wife, right now my issue is I'm a one-man show handcuffed by watching kids, handcuffed by COVID. That'll change soon enough.
--:-- Todd Tams: So I need those little fuckers to go back to school, and everything will be just fine.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If it makes you feel any better, I was talking to a marketing rep the other day. They said, "Do you know, I keep seeing this guy on YouTube all over the place. All he does is talk about comp." And they pulled up your website. So people are seeing it even out in California.
--:-- Todd Tams: Dude, all this shit works. It does. Content marketing works. The advertising works. Cold calling. You just have to keep doing it. I've never faulted from that. My stresses are not the ability. I just believe in this stuff too much. I talked to Carothers about it. There's always another hack or another trick, but the truth is you just pick a couple of things and you press forward. You're going to generate business. It's just going to happen.
--:-- Todd Tams: You just keep producing the content. My wife writes business every day because of videos that I did seven years ago, eight years ago. So it just works. Just think about what you're doing today and the ramp that that's going to lead you to in seven or eight years from now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's the thing. That's why everybody in this group of people who are creating content, whether it's more advertising-based and they're building their brand that way, or it's more content-based, it works. It pays huge dividends down the line. It just does. I have never wavered from that. You just keep producing the content, keep putting it out there. People find it, they share it, and it starts to flow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Did you hear that we just hired a full-time marketing coordinator?
--:-- Todd Tams: I saw that you talked about it. I haven't dug into it too much. What was the deal there?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The deal was, with Direct Work Comp and Tams Agency, I think that we need to start doing a better job of meeting our clients online. The model that we have in small town has always been go out, cold call, and write business that way. It's who you know, and it's referral. But if you want to grow beyond that and be a multi-state and multi-regional player, you got to be online. And I'm too busy doing it. Between running an office, accounting, dealing with renewals, dealing with employee problems, dealing with vacations, I have zero time right now to create any content online and to make it look like I even know what I'm doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We had an opportunity for Haley is her name. When I heard she was coming back, I reached out to her. Seems like a good fit. In her first... so what is today, Wednesday? She's been on board for exactly two weeks. Our email signatures look better. We already created a video. She is making sure there are keyword targeting keywords in our blog posts right now. She's just going gangbusters. I think that's going to pay dividends in the future.
--:-- Todd Tams: That is such a good decision. Talk to me about the Direct Work Comp thing. I see what you're doing. I love it. Let's back up a little bit. How did you get into the business? I'm interested in your focus on comp. In our space, there aren't a tremendous number of people who dive into comp in general. You are one of them. I sat with you at that epic comp table discussion in San Diego at IAOA, which hopefully the emperors and empresses of our kingdom will allow us to meet again in person at some point. We were all talking comp. I felt like a tiny little mouse listening to these giants talk about the industry. What got you into comp? Why focus on that in particular?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I love comp. I don't even know how to say it. Everybody hates comp. I love comp. When I joined the family business back in 2004, you got to put food on the table and you write everything under the sun. We wrote personal, we wrote commercial, we wrote health. About six or seven years into my career, there was an account that we brokered that had a very large comp exposure. The large broker brought in a Bondmaster report. It was the coolest thing that I'd ever seen at that point. I'm like, "This is what I'm talking about. This is how we can help people change their premium, change their culture, share with them what their lowest premium is." I went all in on comp probably 2012, 2013.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We would use that as the lead-in to maybe help pay for benefits because benefits costs were going through the roof at that time. It was 30, 40% renewal increases. When we could go in and show a business how to save $30 or $40,000 a year on comp and how to do that over four or five years, it paid for benefits. I struggled internally because most large shops, you can't do benefits and P&C. It's either one or the other. We found out that we were doing both, and I had this epiphany: workers comp is an employee benefit. It covers your employees. So let's just bridge that gap.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A lot of our clients, we not only do the benefit side but also the P&C side. We drill down into workers compensation claims because you'll see things like high deductibles or low participation in the employee benefits plan might lead to high work comp claims. That might lead to people using workers compensation as the pay-for for their medical care. It's not an either-or, but it's a together package. You need to look at both of those to see what the usage is, what the claims are, what type of claims you're seeing, and then put together a proposal based on that.
--:-- Todd Tams: Why do you think so many of our peers ignore the intricacies and nuances of comp? Comp is obviously where I'm focused as well, as one of my leads. I find it incredibly interesting. I think I love the human side of it. The fact that you're not just getting someone lower rates on something, you're actually helping improve the culture and that idea of total cost of risk. It just resonates with the way that I like to talk to people.
--:-- Todd Tams: In some of the early cases that I've come across, the programs are ignored. It's just, "Here's your comp, have a nice day." I'm writing a small account today. It's like $4,000 or $5,000 comp premium. They were paying $1,500 more than they should simply because the agent had just said, "Here's what it is." Didn't look into it. Didn't consider any other carriers other than one of the major national brands. Even to someone who has only really been focused on this for six months, it's immediately obvious that this is wrong. Those changes save $1,500 on a $5,000 package. That's a large sum of money. Why do so many of our peers just disregard this?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know. I wish I did. Our industry is doing a disservice to every business owner out there by not talking about workers' compensation. That table we had back in San Diego, we had some of the loudest voices in the industry and probably some of the most knowledgeable people there. With what you're doing and what Carothers is doing, I find that even going back to your $9,000 account, they probably don't want to talk to you at all about workers' compensation as a pain point. They may not have had a workers' compensation claim. When they do, most times they screw it up.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For me, that is a big light bulb. I want to talk to people and I want to change that experience that their employee has when they have a claim. The employer tends to think that the employee may be faking it or maybe it's a Monday morning claim. There's this instant animosity of "I saw him lifting 50 pounds and he's not supposed to." Rather than trying to understand what they're going through, we owe it to every business owner we do business with to do a better job of workers' compensation.
--:-- Todd Tams: What kind of formal training do you have in comp? Have you gone and gotten any certificate programs? Or have you done any real formal work into the product? Or is it just experience and learning and your own self-study?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's the second. I don't even have a college degree. I subscribe to the school of thought that you never stop learning. It's constant reading, constant education, constant surrounding myself with people like you and other people in the industry who are thought leaders, and clients that make us be better. I'm sure there's some stuff out there with comp that you can take a class, but is that really talking about how to make a better experience for that injured worker? Or a better experience for underwriting? Or a better experience for our client?
--:-- Todd Tams: The episode that will come out right before our conversation now was with Micah Salas. What Micah talks about is packaging up your insurance program to the underwriter. How do you sell your case to an underwriter? How do you tell that story? How do you build that program? This is one of the things that I've learned, kind of been forced to learn in having Cincinnati as one of the carriers that I work with. They want a cover sheet of sorts. They want that narrative. Being forced through them to do that and think about it that way has really forced me to change my perspective on how you approach a client.
--:-- Todd Tams: You can't win in that method by just quoting and praying. You have to dig deeper. Once you start to dig deeper, what you find is so much fun. It's so interesting. There's so much you can do and help and advise. I don't understand why we still sit in this commodity space. I'm struggling with that at this point, how we can continue to play in that space and see ourselves as value providers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you think that most people don't want to talk about comp because they don't understand it and they don't have any tools to help?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of my favorite clients that we picked up a few years ago, the agent that he was with every year was commodity. "Let's drive down price. Let's drive down price." This is the cheapest workers compensation quote. The business owner thought, "Well, this is the best strategy based upon what my agent is telling me." So every year we're going to move, which we all know is the worst thing a business can do is go out to market every single year. Suddenly they had two years in a row of bad claims and they had no longevity with the carrier. They've known to bounce around. Next thing, they're in the assigned risk pool with a 1.85 mod. Nobody had talked to that business owner about how to reduce claims, how to bring employees back to work, what they could and couldn't do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: They were actually a benefits client of ours that approached the subject with us. "What do you know about workers' compensation?" Ding, ding, ding. I know this. What do you want to talk about? We pulled five years of loss history and just dug into that. "Why did you have this claim?" "Well, it was because of this and that and employees are no longer here." In a lot of cases, this business owner had said, "We identified a problem in our manufacturing. We corrected it with new safety guards. There's no way an employee can get injured anymore." We went through his facility and that was the way it was on so many of the claims they'd had before. They couldn't happen anymore.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We took a narrative to one carrier and said, "Here's what we think you guys should do with this client. Let's go out, let's send out your inspector. I want to walk through this with you." We pulled the guy out of the assigned risk pool. We put them with one carrier. My conversation with every large client is, "We're not going to remarket you every year. That's not what we do. If that's what you want, if you want me to find you the cheapest price every single year, there's a good chance you and I aren't going to do business together because I can't do that. What I can do is bring you value and build a relationship. We're going to look at a three to five year plan. Unless something goes awry, we're not going to market you out for three or five years."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When you tell them this, they're okay. The clients that we want to work with, if they're price shopping, I don't want that. It's just too much work annually. In the case of this guy, we've had a great relationship with the carrier now for five years. He renews every year with them. Pricing has been stable. Even when they wanted rate, the company has gotten the rate. He stayed with them because that company was also there at his worst moment. I think that's what the carriers miss sometimes. They miss the loyalty that they can bring to the table or they can have with that client when they do something out of the ordinary.
--:-- Todd Tams: My experience, and this has been such an interesting time for me because I had this experience as an agent, then went away and lived this national thing where I was talking to millions of people, then coming back and being an agent again, my perspective is very different. What's been interesting to me is if you're writing $500 BOPs, I get that it's really difficult to have a conversation with a client about loyalty to a carrier. That's a difficult conversation. But when you get into seven, eight, ten, even something as small as that with premium that is a little meaty, it makes a difference that that carrier knows what's going on. Especially if your client has real risk. If we're talking about an office risk and it's just large, maybe that's not even as much a concern. But you get into any kind of woodworking and millworking...
--:-- Todd Tams: I'm sorry, my wife is home and obviously the dogs are. Those are nice shoes, man. What are those?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: These are Nike Air Maxes, the no laces.
--:-- Todd Tams: Nice. I like the yellow.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I like a little splash on my shoes.
--:-- Todd Tams: Are those sockless? Are those the ones that you don't wear socks with?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You can not wear socks. I just don't. To me, I like the slip-on feature. You could definitely go no sock if you want. I'm just not into that. I can't figure it. I bought a pair of shoes, I think they were Cole Haan sneakers with the sock built in. I can't figure out. It just doesn't feel right with socks, but it doesn't feel right without socks. So there we are. I'm more of a "just give me the sock shoe relationship." I'm still there on the sock.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What the hell was I saying? Oh, so I think that this idea you're bringing up about establishing a relationship between the carrier and the agent is vitally important. The other side of that is I think a lot of carriers are at a decision point. Their decision is either, do we go national, Travelers, Hartford, Liberty model where we don't necessarily have a relationship with our insurance? It's just, "Here's our product. Here's our price. Do you want it? Do you not want it?" Which tends to be the case with a lot of those carriers. Not that the products aren't good. Or are you going to play more in the super regional mutual space where the underwriter literally knows who the CEO is, knows what they're doing, has possibly been in the place? Those are very different things. When you expose somebody to that mutual mindset, you watch a lot of business owners' eyes light up. They didn't realize that relationship was even something that was possible for them. Do you agree with that?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know if I agree that every carrier needs to have a relationship. I like Amazon. Amazon has changed the way that I buy a lot of the stuff that I can't get in the town that we live in. I wouldn't say that I have a relationship with Amazon, but they've made things super easy. Two days from now, it's at my front door. It's easy to return things. I know there's other vendors out there. I'm not even looking at those other vendors because they've just made it so simple and so easy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When it comes to the smaller premium, the more transactional stuff, that needs to be super easy. It needs to be super easy for the company and it needs to be super easy for the client. When they have a touch point or a billing payment or something like that, if they would just focus on making things super simple and super easy for the client, I think that's the best way to have a relationship on some of the smaller stuff.
--:-- Todd Tams: I completely agree. I am not knocking what Liberty, Travelers, and Hartford have in terms of a product and a situation. I'm saying it feels like a lot of carriers are hitting a decision point where they have to decide: is "easy" the methodology, or is it more richness with the relationship? The void between those, it's very difficult to have, and no one seems to have yet figured out how to be both incredibly easy and quick and have a rich relationship. I agree with you that neither is wrong. It just feels like that's the decision point that a lot of carriers are starting to make.
--:-- Todd Tams: How have you seen your relationship with your carriers since COVID started? Has it changed at all for you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have found some to become more difficult and some to become much more connected. There's one carrier in particular that I was very excited to take on that COVID has made it so difficult to get in touch with them that they've almost become like a market of last resort. There are a couple other carriers that have been so accommodating and so willing to pick up the phone. In particular, Hanover and Cincinnati for me. Those have become my two first markets. A lot of my marketing, my messaging, a lot of the niche target markets that I've gone after are really just lining up with them because I can call the underwriter on the phone and say, "Here's what's happening. This is the situation." I can talk them through the account. Even though they're unwilling to send a loss control person in there right now, they're willing to accept my depiction, the pictures, the narrative that I send them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hanover specifically helped me out with a situation where I had a coworking space. They were completely misclassified by the previous agent. Coworking spaces, at least in New York, almost everyone was an immediate decline. Hanover said, "Hey, we actually don't write a lot of these, but let's take a look." We were able to get a three-location coworking space, one of which was in Rhode Island, all squared away. The client is incredibly happy. That was because the underwriter picks up and answers the phone when I call.
--:-- Todd Tams: That's so key. When you answer the phone, that's how you build a relationship.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. That's how you build a relationship. Pick up the phone when I call. It's funny how that happens, how people seem to be willing to talk on the phone more. I think it's changing. I think people are settling into COVID and it does seem less hectic. Have you found that?
--:-- Todd Tams: I think it's a lot less hectic even in our office. And I hate to say this. It seems like, I love the marketing reps, but all the marketing reps want to have a Zoom meeting. I mean, I could spend a whole week, every week or two every month, just having Zoom meetings with all the marketing reps that are just checking in to see how things are going right now. When we're in the midst of COVID and remarketing and trying to write new business and work from home. And I think we were certainly set up well to work from home, but not every carrier was, and that was a struggle for them to transition.
--:-- Todd Tams: So I think there were some just chinks in the armor or breakdown that I think we've seen some more, maybe just auto declines. And I don't know if the carriers don't want all the new business right now, or if they only want vanilla type business, or they're just not set up to have, you know, some of those carriers do roundtables on meetings and I, or roundtables on risk. And I don't know if they're, you know, if it's a $50,000 account and it needs to be roundtabled and they've got all of these and they're all working remotely on Zoom trying to figure it out, that it's just easier for them to say no or what the deal is right now.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I had a couple of carriers just send out moratorium lists. We're just not even going to consider, the most common ones were fitness, restaurants, hair salons. I'm actually writing almost more of a cathartic diary post for a LinkedIn post about launching, because I launched the agency on March 9, 2020, which was one week before the large scale and complete and utter shutdown of the state of New York. It was actually that a Wednesday? What day was that? It was a Monday. It was Monday. Launched on a Monday. The following Monday, they basically the entire state of New York was shut down.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And my entire game plan to launch on that Monday was the fitness space. I was coming off of my brief time out of the industry in the fitness space. I kind of could speak the language. I knew what their issues are. I was focused in on things like EPLI and some of that kind of stuff because trainers and clients having inappropriate relationships is really one of the largest risks outside of injury to the client. The professional risk of someone getting hurt. So I had this entire program set up, cold marketing, PPC campaigns, this whole thing I was sending out hard mail to people. And whack, completely shut down. Game over.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And then all of a sudden, all these moratorium letters started coming out from carriers like, "We're not even willing to write it if you can get it in." And I was like, that was really wild. But I will say, to kind of take us back to comp, the good part about that was it forced me to refocus on comp, which is what I wanted to build the agency on. It forced me to refocus on that. And that's been a good thing. That's been a great thing. So it's interesting.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. What do they say? The niches are in the riches or the riches are in the niches. I got it backwards there.
--:-- Todd Tams: So, okay. I think if you're going to be an expert on comp, dude, with what you're doing, I see it all the time. Just the content. You're going to rock it out real soon, man. Yeah. Throw it over. Get businesses opening back up. Yeah. And you'll be right there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'll tell you one of the industries that, so I've written two accounts so far in the manufacturing space. And I really have come to enjoy some of what's going on. I like the systems. I just like the setup of it. I like there's a lot of premium. There's a lot of, you know what I mean? So the business owners tend to be slightly more, I don't want to say sophisticated because I don't want to say that anyone's unsophisticated, but they tend to be more engaged with the day to day because in order to run a profitable manufacturing shop, you have to be focused on process and stuff. So there's, I have enjoyed those two accounts and I want to focus more on that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I just read an article and I think this is the case, but the Northeast is already seeing a resurgence of investment into homegrown manufacturing in the United States. And I think that there's opportunities, not just in manufacturing, but in a lot of industries for insurance professionals to start to find some of these new opportunities that are going to sprout up because of COVID, because of who the president is and the fact that he is building policy around a more America-centric workforce. And I think that there a lot of opportunity for agents there to try to find spaces to fit in.
--:-- Todd Tams: A hundred percent. A hundred percent agree.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So I'm supposed to be interviewing you, but I'm doing a lot of the talking. If I'm counting the words, I, you know, the reason I reached out was, was one, I've just wanted to chat with you, but the other side of it was I'm super interested. So you've taken this love of comp and expertise in the space. And you're doing something that I think not a lot of people have been able to crack. And certainly, so let's see, very few have had the guts to try and even, and I don't know that anyone has yet cracked comp, direct comp, people coming in and marketing directly and driving people in. And I'm just super interested in this project. So as much as you're willing to, I would love for you to chat about what was the impetus of it and kind of where it's going and what you're doing. So you want to talk about the beginning of Direct Work Comp and how that got started?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right.
--:-- Todd Tams: So I would say that there was a period probably, let's go back five, six years, where I've been in the industry 10 years now and I'm just frustrated. I mean, I'm just frustrated with how everything works. I'm frustrated with the submission process. I'm frustrated that some carriers want us to quote online. Some of them take applications. Nothing is fast. And I'd beat my head against the wall. And I found at that time, I started on Facebook, I got to find people like me that are interested in what I want to talk about and what I want to do with comp. And I ended up finding IOA and met some people through there. And so suddenly like, hey, we're going to take on some projects. We're going to upgrade our website. We're going to do some of those stuff.
--:-- Todd Tams: And the farther I started going down that rabbit hole, I'm like, I want to build an online company. I want to create an Amazon-like experience for people to buy workers' compensation. And I want to be able to help the bigger companies and I want to be able to help the little companies when it comes to claim time, when it comes to audit problems. I mean, the list goes on and on of the things that we see of carriers not reporting the correct payroll on overcomp experience report, claims going wrong, reserves too high. And I'm just like, I'm going to dig into this and I'm going to go whole hog. I guess that's what I was going to do, whole hog.
--:-- Todd Tams: And ended up going to an InsureTech vendor or conference last year. We found the vendor that we partnered with, which was Insured Mind, Rodgersson's company, and worked with him to help us build out the back end and front end to partner with the carrier. And that's been going on for probably five or six months now, a lot longer than what I want it to. But we're getting real close to going live. And there's things that come up that you just wouldn't even think of. Like when you have this question, what do you want the next page to be? Or what do you want to do if they have two losses or three losses in a year? And how does that work out in the API? And what if they don't have a group health plan? What page do you want to show them? And what are we going to refer? And I mean, just the logistics of building out a fluid quoting system, I've learned a lot. And that's been a lot of fun. I'm excited to get up and going. We've only written a couple policies through Direct Work Comp right now. But what else you want to know, man?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to know you're just going to be so slick. I mean, yeah, three minutes or less. We're down to 14 questions. 14 questions and a quote. How did you get the carrier that you're working with to agree to this?
--:-- Todd Tams: The carrier that we're working with has an API, but it took, you know, it's like selling insurance. I knocked on a lot of doors, had a lot of awkward conversations, had a lot of no's. And actually the carrier that I'm working with right now, which I can say we partnered with Employers. They're in 48 states. I love Employers. So they've got a digital distribution channel that we work with. But I bet I knocked on that door I don't know how many times and I got told no, no, no, no, no. Because when I said, "Hey, we have Direct Work Comp," they say, "How much work comp premium do you have?" I say, "None. We have zero dollars at Direct Work Comp." And they say, "We're not interested." I said, "We're trying to build something here." So I was able to kind of show them the vision and sell what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. And they agreed to take us on as one of their digital carriers or digital partners.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's its own company separate, separate of Tams Agency?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Okay. So you had to get the whole thing. So it's a completely separate thing and that book of business will be its own. So Tams is the local, your market, the normal stuff that you're doing. And I don't mean normal in a negative way, just standard operation. This is going to be its own entity, its own thing built up, and you're scaling regionally, statewide, nationally. Eventually nationally, obviously, it's probably where you're going. Is that the goal?
--:-- Todd Tams: We'll see. We'll see if we need to go nationally. Right now, we're focused on seven states in the Midwest, the state of Iowa where I live, and then the states that surround and touch us. And I want to say there's 700 billion dollars, 700 million dollars. Is it a billion or a million? I think it's a billion. It's got to be a billion. It's got to be 700 billion dollars in workers compensation premium in those seven states. So I think we've got a pretty good market just right here in our own backyard.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is one of the early mistakes that I made with my agency because I have this human hybrid vision that I have for how to operate an agency moving forward. And this is not an excuse, but COVID has punched that plan squarely in the mouth and I've had to set some things aside, but I will get back to it as things change. But one of my initial visions was I'm going to write Pennsylvania in the Northeast, right? That was going to be my footwork. Give me Pennsylvania in the Northeast. And a lot of that is because, and anyone who's in this area, I'm completely cool with you not appreciating this comment, I feel like the Northeast in particular is so behind the times digitally from an insurance agency perspective that it's easy to stand out.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You start to get Midwest South, the agents in those areas for whatever reason have taken to digital a lot faster than the Northeast. Case in point, I've never been hired in my own state to do a speaking engagement. Massachusetts, the last time was five years ago. I've never been hired in Vermont. I've never been hired in New Hampshire. I've never been hired in Maine to do my content marketing speech. I have been to, I've been, however, I've been to 37 states. So it's like, think about that. The most innovative online agencies and perspectives. So, okay. So this was my plan Northeast. I immediately realized that to get off the ground, there was so much premium just in the, we'll call it a hundred mile radius from my house, that spending resources to go that far out wasn't necessarily even worthwhile at first.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, eventually I want to get there because the vision is still the same. But I think a lot of agencies that take on digital, I believe they make that mistake. They would look national first. They would go, you reach out too far, spread yourself too thin, and you're never able to go deep enough to make a real impact. So I think that's a really smart play to pick just seven states to start with.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. So we're picking seven states and then, you know, certain carriers like to write certain target classes of business. So I just hired my good friends on Fiverr to find out who some of those target people were. And that's, you know, that's our plan going forward. We're going to hit those people hard, do a lot of target marketing, a lot of Google AdWords. And that's the beauty of our new marketing coordinator is, she's going to help coordinate all that and take that job on full time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Did she have any experience in the insurance industry?
--:-- Todd Tams: She has zero experience in the insurance industry. But she did come from, her last previous employer, she was managing their online, they had an online retail company for pet supplies.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you, or did you have any hesitation hiring someone from outside the industry?
--:-- Todd Tams: No. You know what, everybody who I've ever hired has been outside the industry. And then you kind of build them and train them to the culture and what your company, how your company operates and what you're looking for. And so we dumped her in the Total CSR training for a couple weeks to get her familiar with everything. But her position is not to know necessarily insurance. She's going all in on work comp and researching stuff and sending me things. And "Todd, we need to write a blog here. We need to do this and let's get some video going." But her skillset is not necessarily insurance. It's going to be producing insurance results and producing quotes on the website.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So you're thinking, and I asked those questions almost facetiously because I think that's a hangup that a lot of people have. And I actually just saw a thread somewhere on one of the insurance forums on Facebook about this particular question. And I think the issue ultimately comes down to like, you're going to have to lead her, you're going to have to be a mentor to her to get her to where you want to be, coming into the insurance. I do feel it has some nuanced differences versus a lot of standard marketing. But as long as you're willing to invest some of your time into her, she'll be completely fine. If not, she won't have bad habits that insurance marketers have, and will probably excel beyond what those who develop bad habits would do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think so often, the conversation on the other side is the argument against hiring someone from outside the industry is that you have to train them, is that you have to invest them. And you think a tool like Total CSR gets them, that ramps them up fast enough. I mean, that's a really good idea to have her invest in that tool to invest her time.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. So I think she said that Total CSR training was great. They helped us so we can kind of fly through and pick out some topics, but she doesn't need to know how to fill out an accord form.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Honestly, nobody should ever really ever fill out an accord form. We should just do away with those things entirely. But I don't know that many agencies even have a full-time marketing coordinator.
--:-- Todd Tams: No, most don't. Vast, vast majority don't. You and I have talked about this. And I'm 100% positive that the way that insurance agencies marketed died on March 16th. It's over. And most of our businesses have their front doors closed. They may not reopen the rest of the year. I'm not sure if they're going to open ever. And a lot of businesses have put locks on the doors. They don't want to see solicitors in there. So it's now, how are you in a market? How are you going to sell your product or service to the masses when the days of in-person delivery drops and in-person cold calling is no longer allowed? And I think it's going to be on the digital front. And I mean, it sounds crazy to say digital front in 2020 because the digital front's been out for 20 years. But I think we as agents are so far behind in where we meet our clients at and how we service them. There's so few carriers out there that are even direct to consumer in the insurance space.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I think now more than ever as well, brand becomes so incredibly important, right? Because the ground and pound could get, you didn't need a brand when you were ground and pound growing, right? You just had to bludgeon your way into situations, be able to talk through it, be a value provider to some extent, and you were perfectly fine. Brand didn't matter. But in a world where someone doesn't want you to walk in, where you're not going to breathe the same air, at least until somewhere way down the transaction, and maybe at the signing, you do that maybe, but certainly that first interaction today is most likely not going to be in person. And certainly not if you're trying to grow at scale. And if that's the case, then your brand becomes infinitely more important.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I think it was Steve Anderson on Cass's podcast the other day who said, the industry was just forced to evolve five years worth of evolution in two months. And if you're able to make that jump, then you're going to be fine. If you're not, then you're right now you're flailing and struggling. And there's a lot of agencies that are that's the case.
--:-- Todd Tams: I think that's the same with carriers too. I've seen some carriers rock and roll and the carriers that have the online ability to quote versus the sending the submissions. I mean, we're going to see what makes or breaks carriers here pretty soon too.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Is it crazy that I prefer the carriers that I can just send accords to right now?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Because I will tell you that going into each carrier's individual platform to quote business is awful. It's awful. I mean, it's a determining factor in where I write the business. I mean, I literally look, I have, let's see, right now for commercial, I have five or six direct appointments. And I'll just be like, "Nope, not doing that one. Not going there. That's too much work. Oh, wait, I can do accord forms once and just email them to the underwriter. Like, okay, I'll quote them. That's pretty easy." Because you got to do the accords anyways, at some point for most carriers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, and this is where a tool like Tarmica, I can't wait for Tarmica. I just got an email from Chris yesterday. I'm like, "Where are you at? We're going to do business together someday." I know. I had a call with Raggedy today, just a brief one, because I just can't wait for it. The larger accounts, you have to do accords for anyways. The smaller accounts, I don't want to have to go into multiple systems. And for some of my carriers, I have to log into this piece of crap PC Windows-based computer in order to quote them. So I literally have to go into a different machine to quote. And I'm just like, "Oh my God, is this for real? Like, how is this the case?"
--:-- Todd Tams: You want to hear something cool?
--:-- Todd Tams: Do you want to hear something cool?
--:-- Todd Tams: We were able to partner with the carrier Selective earlier this year. We send them accord forms. They data scrape the information off the accord forms, puts it into their quote system and produce a quote.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, I love that. Like, why is every carrier not doing that? Oh, I love that.
--:-- Todd Tams: So we can send them the accords, we don't have to use their website, but then we can go in and manipulate the quote right online.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: How far forward are they? Oh, I love that. Because that's really the thing is like, I see you send in the accords, you get the quote back. And then it's like, okay, so what I really want to do is take this down and move this up and here and let's, you know, really, I put this, but then I had another conversation between the time I submitted and the team, I got it back. And really the revenue is a hundred thousand less and let's meet, but then you got to email somebody, explain it to them. Then they got to take two days. Oh my God. What a great, what a great solution.
--:-- Todd Tams: We could talk at length about my frustration with carriers and the submission process and just how it's broken.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do think, I will say I like the idea of a certain size risk. I like telling the story. I like feeling like I can help the underwriter understand why I'm submitting this piece of business to them. For a certain size and certain type account, some of the just put the information into the computer and get the rate back type rating, it feels colder. It feels like I'm not able to, I'm just manipulating numbers to get to the number that I want, which again, isn't, I'm not trying to bash that, but those are like such different experiences. And as you're trying to market an account to have one be this version and one be this version, and this is a hybrid of that. And then trying to keep it all straight. I can see why the complaint that I've heard so many times during my kind of Agency Nation days of agents just find one or two carriers they like and they put everything with those carriers. I'm like, yeah, because the process is so different.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, we're not talking about different auto raters. I mean, we're talking about a wide margin of difference between rating from carrier to carrier, the same risk. And you definitely just fall into a pattern and use those carriers. I mean, that's a hundred percent.
--:-- Todd Tams: I think Tarmica has the potential to be a solution to that for an account of a specific size. If I have a $50,000 risk, I may not, you know, I may get an indication from Tarmica, but I'm still going to want to, but for those, geez, $10,000, $5,000 below accounts that you just want to get in, find out who's got the best rate and move forward, like those type of accounts, it is a game changing solution. I just can't wait for it. I think we're going to see that the number increase rather drastically.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I agree with you. I agree with you. I think quickly that will go up as well.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah, I'm with you on that. I think when they figure out what their touch points are and what data they really need, a $30,000 manufacturer is not that different than a $10,000. They're just bigger and do more revenue.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The interesting part about this, and again, I'm kind of looking out a little bit, is that the other thing that's going to be interesting is where, like if you're a carrier actually looking at the data from a company like Tarmica, you're going to get to see at what point you're being kicked out of the process versus your competition. You'll be able to say, "Geez, on the third page, we're not available, but these other three carriers, we write that risk, but we're getting kicked out as not available. Why are we asking for this piece of information if our four competitors aren't? Are we looking for something that's not relevant?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I had this conversation with Basilios from Employers, and I know they're doing a ton of work in that space to really figure out, you don't want to give up too much where you're starting to become unprofitable, like you can't estimate what the loss is going to be. But you certainly don't want to be asking questions that kick you out of a process when the information is irrelevant to the success of that risk. And only a tool like Tarmica will be able to show them that because right now they have no idea. It's all anecdotal because they're not able to compare themselves to what other carriers are doing. So that to me is just, it's really exciting stuff.
--:-- Todd Tams: So how quick do you think our industry capitalizes on that? I mean, go back to Amazon. 2000, not doing anything. 2010, huge. Think of Tarmica, yeah, companies like that right now. What's that look like in 10 years for carriers and how the ease of agents doing business?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I cannot wait. It's why I sing Tarmica's praises. I mean, in all honesty, they do also sponsor this podcast, but that is not why I'm so interested in them. I honestly believe that what they're doing allows one, every agency in the country to take on small commercial, right? So if today you're a personal lines only agency and you have struggled getting into the small commercial space, this tool immediately allows you to be a player immediately.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: And I look at their partnership with Indium, who's a market access company. Seth Saremba's involved. Chad Eddy's a CEO. Tremendous market access company. There are many others, but they are tremendous. And now as a small agency, I can take on Tarmica as a tool. I can plug into a market access company like Indium. And now I have seven nationwide commercial carriers that write the vast majority of class codes that I'm going to run into on Main Street. And I am immediately competitive. Immediately. Why wouldn't you build a model on that?
--:-- Todd Tams: I mean, that's kind of what I, that's exactly what Direct Work Comp does. I'm like, yeah, if it's not, if it's outside of the appetite, I'm not interested. Why am I going to make that process so much tougher when you've got a Tarmica there and they take on 70 or 80% of the industry and you can write it quickly and easily? I mean, this is where I'm going. This is what I'm doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So like, not that I'm, my whole model here at Rogue is I want to have three divisions eventually. I want to have a small commercial division that is based basically on what we just described. And there is marketing driving in. I want to do the exact same thing for personal lines, particularly home and rental properties, because I just think personal property is just the bedrock of a profitable agency, or can be the bedrock of a profitable agency. I look at my wife's agency, which is 85% personal lines. 2007 to 2009 was a blip on her radar, nothing. I mean, they continue to grow through it because they just have all this property on the books. And they rolled right through that time, where many commercial lines focused agencies had to step back and work on different things.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I think that, and then I'm so interested in some of this middle market stuff, you can reach out. And the best part is if you have the right tool and the right process, an agency can be really good at these different things. I'm thinking five to seven years out. This isn't like I'm going to do this tomorrow, but this is what I think happens when you partner with good technology vendors, when you think through a process, when you have the people in place. These allow you to differentiate and add value in ways that were never possible before. They just were not possible. And it's such an exciting time. And from my perspective, if you're willing to dive down these paths, and it's happening like this, COVID has only exacerbated the need for these types of tools and push the technologists to build faster.
--:-- Todd Tams: I'll have to send you, I stumbled across a startup. I think they're in Indiana or Ohio. And it's a personal auto quote that does a couple, they'll ask a couple different questions, but they go out and they pull all the data from the assessor's website. They pull your cars from the DMV based upon the home address and consumers get an instant personalized quote, three or four questions. How amazing is that experience versus the way that we're doing it today? What's your electrical panel size? When was it last replaced? Do you have copper or PEX? Everyone lies in these freaking questions anyways. I mean, is it not, I mean, why do we all play this game that we're like, "Well, when was your, when was the last time that your water tank was replaced? 2015." Ryan, do you know what all of our personal lines claims are? Hail. They're always hail. The water heater replacement date has nothing to do with hail.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I just, I don't, well, so I will say, one of the personal lines carriers that I have here at Rogue is Plymouth Rock. And I don't, you know, Plymouth Rock is a six state, they're in six states, six or seven states. They just came to New York. Dude, homeowners, it's a dress. It's all this stuff about Hippo and nothing against Hippo. Plymouth Rock does this. They have pre underwritten every single property in the state of New York. All you do is put the address in. Whack, price. That's awesome. Here's the, what?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh yeah. Incredibly competitive, incredibly competitive. I wrote, and the really interesting part about their pricing structure is inside of that, they have class A to class E risks. So a class A risk, you're getting 26 or 24 points commission on that homeowner's property. Class E risks, you're getting like 18 points. So if the standard is 20, they're actually helping you prioritize the risk because they've already underwritten its profitability. They've underwritten everything about it and classified it. And you can get a quote. I can literally have a home quote as fast as it takes me to auto fill the address into their rater. It's un-freaking-believable.
--:-- Todd Tams: It's unbelievable. Imagine the carrier incentivizing you to write business that they want. Yes. That's awesome.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. And I called my underwriter the other day and I was like, dude, we have to figure out a way that we can work, that we can make this easier than I have to do it because this is like solid gold. I mean, this is, it's unbelievable what you're able to do. And it's a perfectly fine policy and it's not like there's anything weird about the policy. You know, this is a carrier that's been around for a long time. They've already proven it in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and now brought it to New York. Their auto rates are competitive. So if you want to package it up, they're releasing an umbrella policy, I think July 1st. So you'll have home auto umbrella and you can get a home quote in, I mean, literally if I type in 17, main street, water of elite, here you go. Click rate. It's that easy. It's crazy. That's the way it should be.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. And for a risk-like property, I mean, the hard part, I think too, and I didn't realize what time it was, but the thing about, I really hate personal auto. I just hate personal auto. I know that there's a lot of premium there, but it's just, it's the worst. It's just, I really, if I never wrote another personal auto policy ever again, I'd be completely happy. But I do like writing the property a lot.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My least favorite question on personal auto is, "Hey, I'm thinking about buying a car. It's red, whatever make a model. What's my insurance going to be if I trade off?" And they'll do that five or six times as they go dealership to dealership just to find out what the premium impact is on my two thousand dollar auto policy. Yeah, so now it's 1998, the next one's 2012. I, you know, whatever. Yeah. I, um, just a grind.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. I get that consumers want that and there's no easy way to do it. I mean, in what other industry, if you're going to do something, can you not find out what it's going to cost you?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, no, I'm with you. I hate doing it, but it's gotta be done.
--:-- Todd Tams: Dude. I was at the, when COVID first hit and commercial, you know, all businesses kind of shut down for a while. I turned to personal lines, right? So I started running Facebook ads to drive personal lines just to have activity because New York was black, it was shut down. There was nothing happening here, nothing for a month. So I turned to personal lines. I get these personal lines risks in, and because New York is so heavily credit score, I'm getting people who've lived in the same house for 20 years with no claims, but they just don't have a good credit score. So their rate is through the roof, and Geico was writing them all day. I'm like, there's no way this is an unprofitable account. These people have not had a claim in 20 years on their auto. They own a home. They've lived there for 20 years. Nothing's happening. They're 55 years old, but because they don't have good credit, now all of a sudden we're going to charge them through the roof. It's stuff like that that I'm like, I can't even wrap my head around that. I'm just not interested in it. It just feels like I can lean on why they do it and I can rationalize why they do it. I just, to me, it is such a terrible experience to think that because my credit score is 650 instead of 750, I'm going to pay an extra $500 when I have a clean drive and comparable driving records. That to me is nuts. It's just nuts. That is why I hate personal auto. I just hate it. I mean, I'm going to write it. I'm still going to write it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: In our office, it's funny because you'll send something to a standard carrier and maybe the driving record or the credit score or it's not eligible. And you go put it with Progressive. My Progressive block of business makes money year after year after year for the carrier and they take everything. And it's super simple and super easy. All the stuff that the other carriers don't want. And I mean, Progressive, they take some good stuff too. They'll take a good driver and it's just cheap, cheap, cheap.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah, but so Progressive in New York is no longer cheap really.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, they're making this move to being... New York is such a crazy state. Like a lot of times you guys talk about stuff and I just kind of... I was talking to Greg Hogan about this the other day. I love Greg.
--:-- Todd Tams: So do I.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're taught where I call him and I was just like, man, because Caruthers said something in Killing Commercial the other day and I just called him. I said, "Greg, don't you ever fantasize about what it would be like to operate in a state that wasn't New York?" Crothers is describing these processes and I'm like, you know, NCCI. So we're not an NCCI state. So to get a mod, you have to pay seventeen hundred dollars to get access to a database that is worse than the NCCI data. The setup, there's no way to trigger a preliminary mod release. It's just basically plug in company name, get mod. That's what it is. So it's just stupid crap like that. I'm like, ah, it's crazy that we live in this state.
--:-- Todd Tams: See, in Iowa, they locked that all down. You can't see anybody's mod history at all. All you can see is their renewal effective date.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So it's crazy. Cause we wanted to even like, one of my plans was to go look after people who are in the assigned risk pool. They protect that here too.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah. You can't see that here in New York, but you can see it in... So I also, Vermont is a state that I'm like 20, less than 20 minutes from Vermont. [Gestures in a direction] I'm pointing in a direction that means nothing to you, but Vermont is like right there. And so I have written a couple of accounts in Vermont because it's so close. In Vermont, it's NCCI. You can find accounts that are in the assigned risk pool. It's a completely different ballgame. Your access to be able to target people who have issues and try to help them, it's completely different. You come to New York, and I feel like the state thinks they're protecting people, or at least some politician with an agenda feels like they're protecting people, but they're not actually. Because what ends up happening is these companies that don't know any better get stuck in programs that their agent is not getting them out of and they just sit there because no one can figure out. You randomly bump into them and hope that the person who works with them knows what they're doing. I can understand at some level protecting all of the people in the standard market. I cannot wrap my head around the decision to protect the database of the people in the assigned risk who are overpaying. And why the state would not want to publish that information, or obviously they can't publish it, but let it be searchable so people like you and I could go in there and drill down and see if there's a way to help them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I mean, it's claim cost, it's high risk hazards. It's some reason they're in the assigned risk pool and they shouldn't be. Nobody should ever be in the assigned risk pool.
--:-- Todd Tams: Yeah, I agree with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, you know, yeah. I agree, dude. We're way over time. I appreciate this conversation a lot. This has been, we've been all over the place, but it's been great. So just in case people are going to want to connect with you, they're going to want to see what you're doing, where's the best place? LinkedIn?
--:-- Todd Tams: Dude, I'm all over the place. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Facebook. If you're friends with me on Facebook, I'm doing a lot of cooking and posting a lot of videos.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I saw that. A lot of 3D. It's like 3D you and Caruthers, 3D pictures of what you're cooking. It's like you're battling.
--:-- Todd Tams: Oh my gosh. I started doing sous vide over the pandemic and I have had, I bet I've had eight wives reach out to me and say, "Todd, what is it that you're cooking with? That's what I'm getting my husband this year for..." They've seen the videos, they think it's awesome. But yeah, Facebook, LinkedIn. You can always find me at tamsagency.com or directworkcomp.com. My email address is pretty simple: ttams at tamsagency, or TTams at DirectWorkComp. So I appreciate it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: For me, big things coming for you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, dude, I can't wait to see. I honestly, I would be remiss if I didn't say that I was slightly envious of your Direct Work Comp thing where you're at. Because I think you're going to kill it, man. I think this is, I think the fast movers to these type of spaces are going to be there. I mean, you see what's happened with life and how well that has worked. And I know P&C agents like to disconnect the two, but the consumers don't. And if you can figure out the mindset, man, I think you're going to dial in on it. So I'm just super excited for you. And I think you're going to dominate, man.
--:-- Todd Tams: Thanks so much. Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Appreciate you, brother. Be good.
--:-- Todd Tams: All right. Later.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thank you.
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