RHS 043 - The Legend of Seth Zaremba

Ryan Hanley: Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today I have a guest who sits near and dear to my heart. Our philosophy, methodology, everything about the way that we approach business is very in tune and aligned. The way that Seth Zaremba thinks about his agency and his work and the industry, it forces me to be better at what I do. It forces me to think deeper about this industry and about my agency and about the impact that the work that I do has on all of you.

Ryan Hanley: It is such a pleasure and an honor to spend time with Seth and bring the conversations that we would normally have in private—though there would probably be more cursing and we'd be talking faster—to share just a part of that with you guys. I think they're important conversations. I think going below the surface of our industry makes what we do more worthwhile, at least it does for me.

Ryan Hanley: That is why it is my great honor and pleasure to bring you Seth Zaremba, the founder of Be Atomic and the Neon platform of Zinc, co-founder of Indium Market Access Network that I am a part of. Everything Seth touches turns to success and he does it through hard work, trust, partnerships, and authenticity. I hope that you will give this episode as much of your attention as is possible because it is worthy of that.

Ryan Hanley: Big shout out to the sponsors of this show, Tarmika. Tarmika is changing the game for small commercial agencies. They're making small commercial profitable. They're making profitability possible and they're improving the platform every day, adding carriers. I'm in Tarmika every day, quoting small businesses as it comes in. Especially if you have a book of business that's renewing, instead of making your customer service reps go out to seven different carriers, bring those seven carriers to your CSR. They only have to input that information once, get the quotes back, and you can turn them around and still do a tremendous job for your customers while saving time, energy, and money. You can provide that service out to more people. Tarmika is a game-changing technology. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com. Tarmika.com. Go check it out today.

Ryan Hanley: With that, I hope that you guys take in what we're talking about because this is really important stuff. If you haven't subscribed to this show, go to ryanhanley.com right now. Stick your email address in there and get new episodes by email. Okay, that's all the pitches. On to Seth Zaremba.

Ryan Hanley: You're looking all spiffed out today, man. Are you pitching somebody for some money or what's going on?

Seth Zaremba: I am. I just had Nationwide this morning at 9:30.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So nice.

Seth Zaremba: Yeah. And then the air conditioning was on like sub-zero all weekend and I just wore shorts and I'm freezing too. So I found a jacket that was in my thing. I'm like, I'm putting a jacket on in June. I'm like, this is crazy.

Ryan Hanley: It is funny how quickly you acclimate to warm weather. We had basically a week of 80s and 90s and all of a sudden it hits 75 on Saturday and you're like, got long sleeves on, walking around the house like, what the hell? You can see why all those Florida people get so soft.

Seth Zaremba: Oh, it's something. So yeah, I was freezing alone in my dark office and I'm like, you know what, I'm going to throw a jacket on for this one.

Ryan Hanley: Oh dude, I'm so pumped that you're on the show. We never get a chance to talk enough. A podcast episode is always a good excuse to spend an hour together and chat about what's going on. I have so many questions for you about so many different things. How's it going, man? Where's your mental state coming out of COVID? You're raising money, you got the startup. Where are you at? What's going on?

Seth Zaremba: Yeah, things are good, which shocks me to say. With Zinc, as you know, we made an investment in Zinc to invest in digital like five years ago. We've been living in that world while everyone said we were crazy for five years. Now it's like in spades, man. Zinc is crushing it, which I hate to say during it, but COVID has strangely revealed that traditional models are being exposed. Our model, which looked maybe out of touch a few years ago, is now proven. So I'm lucky to be where we're at there.

Seth Zaremba: Indium is the same thing. This idea of indie agents owning your business and doing stuff together as agents was out in left field for a while too. But even now Indium is going like crazy. Then you got Be Atomic, this crazy idea that agents could come together and use common technology and scale on stuff like that. That was really bizarre two or three years ago. People were like, what? But now, especially with what Zinc has proved out and other neons, that's looking good too.

Seth Zaremba: I don't know. I'm pretty fortunate. I have an awesome wife and three kids that are teenagers who have never given me one problem in my life, and good teams everywhere. So yeah, I'm pretty fortunate.

Ryan Hanley: I don't think that you should be apologetic for crushing it in general. I feel like right now people are very apologetic for their success. I get that there are many who have hit hard times, and obviously it's on those of us who are in positions to help to do so. But I don't think it helps anyone to be apologetic. I think we've become so apologetic for success and it's like, screw that. We need people to be successful. That's the only way that we can then help others pull themselves up and be whatever they want to be.

Ryan Hanley: But for some reason these days, if you're going to say, "Oh, I'm doing well," or "Things are okay," it comes with some caveat. Nah dude, you have lived your backstory. I don't want to necessarily go there on this show because they can listen to past episodes where you talked about your history, but every piece of bounty that you are receiving today, you have earned the hard way. If anybody, you should not be apologetic for one single harvest that you reap. You've sowed them all, man, by yourself. You've recruited the people that have walked alongside you. I have so much respect for what you've done. I think you should celebrate that success, not be apologetic for it.

Seth Zaremba: I appreciate that. I do, Midwest, right? You're just humble. But I have worked my butt off, man. I put the miles in. I have suffered. I have done the thing. So now to be in a position where what we've done, the investments that we've made strategically, are paying off—you're right, I'm super excited about that. But I also realize that there's a world out there where things are not great and people are hurting. So you just try to do the best you can to balance it. But no, I'm 100% proud of what we're doing and couldn't do it without an awesome team, right? The team, carriers, everything has to come together.

Seth Zaremba: But to your point, that's time I've taken to build. I think I am proud of that because a lot of people are looking for magic fairy dust or silver bullets, and it ain't there, man. You just do the work. I'm proud of that.

Ryan Hanley: I actually wrote a post on LinkedIn last week about starting my business on March 9, 2020. In my mind, I'd love to think of myself as someone who is thoughtful in terms of trying to think through different decisions and be rational. Even in my mind, I felt like I had some secret that was going to allow me to jump the line. I'm not saying I think I'm doing the right things, but I definitely had some moments, especially in May, where I was two months in. Not that I expected the world to change in two months, that wasn't the point. But 60 days of getting punched in the face when you came in thinking you were going to be able to avoid some of that.

Ryan Hanley: I think back to some of the stories that you told me, working out of a broom closet 10 years ago. You really have to have some self-awareness in this business because you see things on Facebook, you hear people talk in presentations or on podcasts about success they've had, and you don't see the day-to-day grind that got them there. It is almost unavoidable, and everyone who has tried to avoid it, I think, has suffered.

Seth Zaremba: It's an asset, right? You're building Rogue as an asset. You can build with quality materials, with quality craftsmanship, something that's sustainable long-term and holds its value in any marketplace. Or you can slap it up, vinyl side it, and stick it in a subdivision with someone three feet away. You can't pretend that in 10 or 20 years, they're going to have the same value or be viewed the same way.

Seth Zaremba: I did not grow up in social media, but now I'm in agent forums and I watch this stuff. I watch some of the lack of long-term view of their business and some of the short-term tricks and tips that people are trying to put out there. It's building with low quality materials in a fast and hasty way. Sure, you can move in before Rogue moves into their estate, but it won't sustain over time. You can't. I really respect what you're doing. I tend to do the same thing myself. It's not faster, but it's better, bro. It's better.

Ryan Hanley: It is easy to get caught up in what everyone else is doing. I'm not trying to make this about me, but it was so hard to write that article. For anyone wondering what the hell I'm talking about, I'll have it linked in the show notes. I was carrying around all this pressure to be successful that was completely unnecessary. In my mind, I had these expectations of me, and I'm like, one, what do I care what other people think? I've never cared what other people think. Two, no one believes that in three months there's even anything there yet.

Ryan Hanley: I said to myself, "Oh my gosh, if three months in I'm carrying this much pressure, imagine someone who's been in the business for a year or two that maybe isn't where they want to be yet, how much pressure they're carrying." I think that's what drives a lot of this short-term thinking. The pressure builds and builds, you feel like you're behind, you see what other people are doing, and you go, "Oh my God, I feel like I'm just as smart, just as capable as that person. Why haven't I figured this trick out?" That's when you start making moves that aren't in the best interest of your agency long-term.

Seth Zaremba: You've done it the hard way. You didn't take investors. You didn't give up ownership. You didn't do a lot of the things that people do to get in faster. The first mile of the race, they are often out front because they have those things. The last miles, though, is where you pass them. If you're looking at your agency or Zinc or any agency as an investment, it's that last leg of the race that people remember and watch. That's where your investment will pay off.

Seth Zaremba: Don't get caught up in the first miles of the race. Let people run their race. You run your race. If you've done your work and you have the carriers you brought on, the direct appointments, the strategic associations, technology decisions—all of those things favor you in the long run. You're building with quality materials over time. That's what craftsmanship takes. Don't apologize for that, man. That's the old school and right way to do it.

Ryan Hanley: At least some of the technology decisions I've made. I won't say all of them have been the right ones. That was not a segue. I'm saying I watched you make decisions and you really ground these things out, both short-term and long-term, sacrifices, wish lists, things that would be nice and things that you need. We even had conversations about what you really needed or didn't. So it was thoughtful. The decisions you made were thoughtful, and all those can be changed over time.

Ryan Hanley: That second point is the most important. This comes from a lot of the conversations we've had. Specifically with Neon, I had wanted desperately to be part of this project on so many levels because I believe in it wholeheartedly. I have from the very first 10 minutes that you pitched me on it in Westfield. We're in this hallway by ourselves at some high top and you're telling me about this idea. I'm getting like 60% of it, but the 60% that I got, I was completely bought in on. From that day, I have been one of the biggest supporters of the project only because I believe in you, in the mission, and what it's doing.

Ryan Hanley: I've gotten questions about why I'm not part of Neon. To be transparent and honest, I just wasn't ready. In my opinion, and I think you would agree, it's not a one-man shop product. It's not for me to get up to speed maybe a year from now, even if I am still one man. The truth is, if I can continue to align my business with carriers like Cincinnati and Hanover, I can continue to be a one-man shop for much longer. Shout out to them, their customer care centers are world class.

Ryan Hanley: That was really the judgment I had to make. It wasn't necessarily the cost. The technology was there. It was a time value for me—the learning curve, trying to learn 17 different systems at one time. Not Neon, but every system in my agency I had to learn at the exact same time. I basically said to you, for now, QQ Catalyst is a nice, easy, clean system that can get me to where I need to be for these first two or three years. Get me off the ground with something where the technology makes enough sense that I'm not wasting brain cycles on it. When I'm ready, I can make that transition into a product like Neon, which I wholeheartedly believe is the future.

Ryan Hanley: If you see the people who are associated with this project, it would be very difficult for me to believe that the collection of individuals you have directly connected to this project could all be wrong. If it were one really smart person and a bunch of dopes, I'd be like, "Maybe this is a miss." But it's rock star, rock star, brilliant, genius, rock star. To have all these people in the ecosystem, it's really difficult for me to see how you've missed the mark.

Seth Zaremba: I haven't. I figured something out. I didn't figure something out like the ether gave something up. I remember sitting at that high top with you. That's when it took faith to believe in me. You had to be ordained with a certain level of faith. Like, "There's this dude pitching me something. I understand 60% of it. It might be there." I require no faith of anyone anymore. I'm tested and true. My product is solid and good. It's right. I figured something out and the smart kids are getting it. It's not just agents anymore. People always have agents coming on. Now I got carriers and technology and big technology partners. People know what we're doing is solid and true. I don't apologize for that.

Ryan Hanley: You sent me the Google Doc of your Elevate 2018 presentation that you did about Neon, the first time you kind of did this on a public stage. It's been fun—people have been sharing Elevate 2018 memories on social recently. I was reading through this document and I got to page three and I was like, "You should just sell access to this thing. Read-only access, sell it for $100. I'm going to let you look at this for 24 hours and then it goes away. If you want to see it again, you pay another $100." You'd pay for Neon right there. You wouldn't need any funding, just to read through where your mind was on this document and how far ahead you were of everyone else at this moment.

Ryan Hanley: You'd probably agree with this too—at that moment, probably a little too far ahead of everybody. But that's okay because they're snapping forward now. This is something I hope you never lose. This document, this snapshot in time to be able to say in June of 2018, "This is where my head was at." This will be a piece of insurance history, in my opinion. It is so far out ahead of where everyone else was and articulated in a fashion that I think people have thought of pieces of it but never actually put the whole thing together. That's what was so brilliant about it. To have it all in one space and lay out exactly how it's thought through—it really is a piece of insurance history.

Seth Zaremba: I needed you for that. Someone had to take a flyer on me. The reason I remember that day is because it was July 28th. That was a day that you gave me a chance to talk about this thing. I remember when you first scheduled me, you said, "I got my assignment." I was at like three o'clock in the Ontario room and I said, "Hey Ryan, I can't take the Ontario room. I need the main stage." And you said, "Dude, appreciate you, love you, but it's 750 people and you're kind of a nobody."

Ryan Hanley: I didn't actually call him a nobody, by the way, just so everyone's clear.

Seth Zaremba: That's exactly how it comes. "I'm going to be in the Ontario room. Put me on the main stage in front of a bunch of people and maybe someone will be there." Well, they were there. I appreciate that. To your ever-loving credit, you took a flyer on me. That document needed you. It needed me. Then it needed that room. In that room were a CEO and a future CEO of an insurance carrier. They heard it. I was hoping five agents were there and 50 heard it. Some technology people were there and they heard it. It's codified and it's a story. In that story is everything that needed to be done.

Seth Zaremba: I told you in that email, I did everything I told you I would do on July 28th in Cleveland at Elevate 18. I laid out what needs to happen. Two years later, I've done everything I said needed to be done and it's time. I'm proud of that thing. I'm proud of you for seeing it or giving me the chance to do it. If I fell on my face, oh well. But thank you.

Ryan Hanley: It was my favorite part. My favorite part was after you were done, there were three reactions from people coming out of that room. The first reaction was like, "Holy shit, how do I get ahold of this guy?" I stood by the door because I wanted to see the reaction. I knew the topic you were talking about and I knew it was heady. The reason we didn't go main stage, just for the people at home, because I want to be fair—this was some of the nerdiest shit ever delivered on an insurance stage at a marketing conference in the history of insurance. I was like, "I want people to self-select. I'll give you the big room, but I need people to self-select into this because this is about as nerdy as it gets."

Ryan Hanley: When people came out, there were three reactions. The first was, "How do we get ahold of this guy? Can we just go up to him?" I was like, "Yeah, just go talk to him. That's what he's here for." The second reaction was, "I have no idea what he just said. Where's the coffee?" The third reaction was, "Yes, but he'll never be able to do it." That to me was the most interesting. I completely understand why people aligned with it. I completely understand why it flew over people's heads because there are a lot of great people in our industry who are practitioners. This is just the way they feed their families, and that's as far as it goes for them. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

Ryan Hanley: Then there are people like you, I would love to consider myself part of this, Jeff Roy, many of us who just enjoy going down into that basement level of this. It was that third group that came out and said, "Yes, but he'll never do it." That was the most interesting group to me because what they were saying was not that you were wrong or that you would come to any inaccurate conclusions. It was that systemically the industry would not allow this to happen. In all honesty, that was my biggest concern for you too. Having played the political game that I had played for so long and watched so many people get beaten to the ground who had good ideas, I was very concerned.

Ryan Hanley: But I think your force of will, your persona, the way you attacked Twitter with your commentary and bravado—I mean these all in incredibly positive ways—and the individuals you aligned with so quickly, getting the Primorts on board at least philosophically so early, was tremendous for you. I've been so happy and proud and excited to watch you. Now no one is saying, "Yeah, but he'll never get it off the ground." No one is saying that. It's off the ground now. It's amazing to me to have seen that over the last two years.

Seth Zaremba: I knew something that nobody else knew in that room that day. I knew I could leverage the farm to do it. I had enough industry experience—that's part of it, you got to be around. I had an agency that was already starting to perform. I saw where it was going. I was betting my butt that it would keep going there. If I put that on the line, both from a performance standpoint, and if I leveraged it, mortgaged it, and drew the cash out of it, I could do that.

Seth Zaremba: I also knew that there was an opportunity coming. I was following the money and I saw where carriers were going. It had to go there. If you have enough industry experience, if you're dumb enough or smart enough to be able to leverage your one asset to play that one card right to the river, right to the river when it's time to flip the cards, and if you had enough understanding of where carriers were going, it was possible. I knew that in that moment.

Seth Zaremba: It took belief. It took people to come along with it. It took that talk. I'll never forget that talk. I went up to the lady that was mic and she said, "What do you want?" I said, "I want a podium." She said, "Nobody has a podium. Ryan's just flying around. He's in the audience. There's lasers, there's smoke, there's lights. How many slides do you have?" I said, "Zero." She said, "What do you do? Are you just going to stand up there and talk to people?" I said, "Yeah. We're going to take them to church today." She said, "I love that. Nobody takes anyone to church anymore." I said, "Yeah, we're going to stand up there with a podium and we're going to give a sermon. If there are believers in the house, they will hear the message of truth and they will come."

Seth Zaremba: Then someone proceeded to dump hot coffee on me, which soaked my shoes. I'm standing there with sloshing shoes. That was an epic moment.

Ryan Hanley: I'm forever tied to you for that. Forever. Good or bad, which I warn you, it could be a lot of bad. You are forever part of this, good or bad, when the time is right.

Seth Zaremba: It doesn't matter good or bad because I am will always be with the project in whatever way I can be. Hopefully someday I will be an agency partner of Neon.

Ryan Hanley: I already am an agency partner of Indium, one of your other projects, which I spout from the rooftops how much I appreciate Chad and his work and his entire team and everything that Indium is doing. The way they go about their business, the way they think about agency relationships—market access network, whatever label you want to put on that organization—the culture and the product is amazing. It has been such a pleasure to be part of that group of people and get to know them better.

Ryan Hanley: It's funny how good people seem to find each other. When you are authentic, transparent, and honest about what you want and how you do business, the way people find each other amazes me every day. The way you've hooked up with Ragath and Tarmika, which I think is a game-changing technology in terms of turning small commercial into a profitable enterprise for independent agents across the country. To have them as part of the project and connected, it's fun to watch. It's fun to watch friends work together. We're in the "do" phase of all the shit that we were talking about two years ago. It's really exciting.

Seth Zaremba: I gave everybody their chance. I'm 48 years old. I have volunteered in associations. I worked with carriers. I talked to technologies. I have given every flipping person a chance to reimagine the independent channel and to make logic-based decisions as opposed to emotional or tradition-based decisions. Associations are good people. Carriers are awesome people. Technologies are awesome people. These are all good people, but in the end, they build things or they settle at the lowest common capability.

Seth Zaremba: You're in a room full of smart association people or smart carrier people or smart technology people. But what about that one guy who sucks? Will he use it or do it? So what happens is all of a sudden the right logic-based decisions go to the lowest common denominator, which let's face it in the IA channel is not a great picture. It's not a great picture. We end up building for them.

Seth Zaremba: After 15 years of watching us take great ideas and build to the lowest common capability in the channel, it was time for somebody just to say, "Wait a minute, what about the winners? Aren't we ever going to pick the winners? Don't we ever want an advanced fighting force that's going to go behind enemy lines and do it? Do we not want Green Berets? Do we not want Navy SEALs?"

Seth Zaremba: Like, why are we building everything for the infantry? I think that's what NEON is. It's like, hey, you guys go ahead and settle over there for the average. We're going to go over here and build a playground the right way, logic-based, for the people who really want to perform. That's the thing I think we've done—we've built a place for performers. And that's not wealth or power or success. That's people who want to be successful and, to use your words, will do the work. That's it. It ain't size. It ain't money. It ain't skin. It's not gender. It's none of that stuff. It's like, do I want to be better? Well, great. Here's a place where we're not going to lower the standards of anything to the least common capable person. I think that's what we've done. I just got sick and tired of being sick and tired.

Ryan Hanley: Obviously, we're so aligned on so many things in this industry. I couldn't agree with you more. I think this is one of the things that we initially connected on. Here I am in 2017, 2016, something like that. I met a young agents event in Ohio, and this guy sitting right in the middle of the room, just heckling the shit out of me during my keynote. I could tell he wasn't going to relent. So I stopped and asked you your name, and you said, Seth. I could tell right away that you were a ball buster. So I spent basically the rest of the time busting your chops, and you were busting mine. By the end of it, what we came to was this idea—an agreement that we need to be better than we are as an industry. That was really what that keynote ended up being about: a conversation about what it means to be better. Why not hold ourselves to a higher standard?

Ryan Hanley: I get that it's not easy. I'll be honest with you, I came into building this agency not understanding how hard it is and how easy it is to chase quick policies to put revenue in the books to keep the lights on. I get that whole thing. At the same time, I think the delayed gratification of doing business the right way—demanding more of yourself and the services you provide to your customers, demanding more out of the relationships you have with your carriers—going back to how we started this conversation, that is the future of this business. You can scale past the little local $300,000 shop that isn't trying hard. If you only want a $300,000 shop because that's the lifestyle you lead, that's perfectly fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But if you only have a $300,000 shop because you're not actually doing the work, you're not helping your clients, you're just sitting on renewals and not providing a valuable service, then you're no longer necessary. That carrier doesn't need you to get into that market space because you and I can be in there regardless of where we're located. And so can so many other agencies. That is what I think carriers are waking up to—that defining difference.

Seth Zaremba: Yeah. It's so funny. I was trimming trees this weekend and listening to your podcast. I was behind, so I had three podcasts. You were talking to your friend who's a marketer, and he said, "So what do you think about it?" I can't even apologize anymore. I just think the people who aren't trying suck. I'm not going to apologize for that. And I'm not either. So many times over the last 10 years, I go to carriers and say, "We should do this," and they say, "Yeah, but that guy's not going to adopt it, so we can't." NEON was just about saying, "Fine, you go serve them over there. We're going to go build something for agents that want to perform, that want to be better for their customers, that want better margins within their agencies, and want to be more closely and directly connected with services at a carrier." That ecosystem, you acknowledge it to be right?

Ryan Hanley: Yes.

Seth Zaremba: Okay, great. We're going to go build that. And you're going to come because where agents go, carriers are going to go, and customers are going to go. That's what we're doing over at BAtomic—we built that ecosystem. It's not about that person. That doesn't make that person bad. If you want to be a lifestyle agency, if you want to go golf four days a week, we don't do that. That's fine. You are well served by the current marketplace. I don't know what your future looks like, but you'll probably be on the golf course anyway, so who cares?

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Seth Zaremba: But for everyone else, the consumer has made their decision. They are on their phone, and they want professional services fast, and nobody's paying us more. So I need better margin, which means I need better connections. So let's go do that.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. To your point, carriers go where the agents are. I think that's going to be even more refined. Carriers go where the right agents are. The right agents will be different for each carrier, but that's where they're going to go. I think the days are quickly coming to an end where a carrier will look at a service or an integration or a piece of technology and say, "I can't get 80% adoption on this tool, so I'm not going to do it." I think they're going to say, "These 10 agencies are on that tool. That's worth our time." Because these 10 agencies are worth a hell of a lot more to us than the other 100 that aren't going to get on.

Ryan Hanley: Some people listening might say, "That's the way it's always been. If Brown and Brown and Marsh and Gallagher get on, then they just follow." I don't think that's the case anymore. You get Simon's new agency, CoverLink, you get a Zinc, you get a Coverage Direct up in Iowa, you get a TAMS agency in Iowa. You get these types of agencies pushing forward on a singular tool. I think that's where the margin is, that's where the growth is—in these middle market agencies that are able to grow and expand. You can get huge dollars out of Marsh, but that's really just pushing around dollars that already exist. You're not actually bringing in share. It's this middle market space where the growth is. It's dry tinder.

Seth Zaremba: The bottom is served. All the current realities serve the bottom. That's fine. The top is served—they're funded by external market resources, they have their deals cut. But the dry tinder is you and me, the people in the middle who are grinding every day and need to sell. I need to sell. I got three kids, a house, and I got 12 years left in my career. I need to freaking sell. I'm going to do whatever it takes, including cut your throat, to get that done. Those are the people who are attracted because they are driving into space out of necessity. There is nothing more dangerous than a desperate insurance agent. When the last bomb drops, there's going to be me selling to cockroaches. That's it. I'll do whatever it takes because I don't come from privilege and I'm not financing all those things. I'm a stone cold killer, and I need my tools to do it. That's what NEON offers—not just to agents, but also to carriers—to arm that force. You want to mobilize that 80%, that dangerous group. You hook up with us.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. One of the tenants that Rogue was built on was this idea of being a digital human hybrid. My business plan outlines what I mean by that. It is a digital agency with a human behind it. A big part of that solution was direct connection into customer care centers. Three and a half months into building this thing—not a huge time period, but certainly enough time to tell you—I am a hundred percent fucking right. I am a hundred percent right.

Ryan Hanley: I give Cincinnati a ton of credit. I just love their organization. Their customer care center replaces a CSR for me. If I could put every piece of business that I have with Cincinnati, all of my marketing now is being recalibrated so that they are numero uno. Actually, Hanover has a great customer care center too. Those are probably my one and two carriers on the commercial line side right now. If I could put every piece of business with them, I would be a captive for Cincinnati. What they're able to do from a connection standpoint, and their potential involvement with NEON, is a potential catalyst for my moving faster into NEON as well, because they're an important part of my business. Just seeing the service level and the quality of service that the few clients I've already put with them get—I'm like, if I can have every piece of business with Cincinnati, I could just hire an army of agents. I would never need a CSR. That to me is the holy grail. Maybe an office manager at some point or someone to do the books and some of the backend stuff, but an army of agents serving customers, front end underwriters, relationship builders, true coverage experts, helping businesses get properly set up, properly built out programs, taken care of, and then leveraging the carrier. I give up two percentage points on renewal to not have to hire a W2? Are you kidding me? I'll do that all day.

Seth Zaremba: I don't even think it's two points. I think it's less than that.

Ryan Hanley: To me, this is one future model, but I absolutely positively believe I'm right. The technologies that connect those two things at a deeper level is the future of this business.

Seth Zaremba: You're a hundred percent right. The supporting technology—we use words like service center and CSR, but what we're really doing is looking at the margin inside of an operation and allocating resources to what is most relevant and most successful for the person doing it. For you, it is sales and marketing. For service, it's a better spend for someone like Jen Baker at Cincinnati. It's a movement of margin and performance, and we need supporting technology that makes all that capable.

Seth Zaremba: There's a cultural shift that needs to happen. What we're looking at here is upskilling people in different spots. The modern insurance agent needs to be upskilled with technology and data to be more human, to be more capable as an individual. They need access to things—access to information about the customer pre-call, access to the performance about that account or that type of business and who's going to be there. They need the ability to place code, not to move code around, because code is going to facilitate all that stuff. We need an ecosystem that upskills the right person.

Seth Zaremba: Keep in mind, the service center is upskilled by better technology too, because now they're getting that transaction coming to them in a way that's very consumable, better margins for them. Maybe it's not 2% in the future. Maybe it's $1.50 to get something done as opposed to two points. Maybe you're not giving it to the service center. Maybe it's staying in Rogue, but when something needs to happen, it's going to Jen over at Cincinnati. When she needs something, she's moving code to the customer. When the person responds to the code, it's coming to you as a salesperson. That's where the ball is going. That's where we need to be going. We need to empower upskilling the agent and supporting them however that needs to be. Today it might look like a service center. Tomorrow it might be something else. That's the technology we need.

Ryan Hanley: That's why forever I will be a supporter of what you're doing. This is how you get to the promised land. I have so many things flying around in my head. I can't wait till I can get on stage again and just vomit all this stuff that I've learned over the last three months onto people. It's going to be awful. But I can't tell you how many times I've already heard, "Hey man, I can't believe how quickly you got back to me." In my head, I'm like, "Wow, it took me like three hours to get back to this guy." In his mind, he's like, "Holy shit, it normally takes you three weeks. It took you only three hours." The bar is so low. These types of things are not just incremental improvements on process. It is playing an entirely different game. This is little league versus the major leagues. I don't mean that in the quality of the business. I mean in the way in which you can provide service.

Ryan Hanley: An agency today that takes three weeks to get a quote back to somebody—they can upscale too. It's not like they can't. But for the people who do, they are taking themselves so much further ahead. It's not even the same game. I'm outpacing agencies that are 100x, 1000x larger than me simply because I have these relationships with a couple carriers that allow me to get quotes back faster. That simple conversation, a little bit of technology, and in the customer's mind, they're just like, "Wow, this guy must really be hustling because he got back to us quicker." That's the kind of stuff that's changing the game.

Seth Zaremba: July 28th, 2018 at Elevate, the title of my talk was "The Opportunity Bandwidth is Not the Limiting Factor." We are not limited by opportunity. This is not a zero-sum game. The world is ours for the taking. The limiting factor is the road systems, the sewer systems—the things that have not been improved to facilitate or open up the opportunity. The opportunity is not limited. If you are an agent, you are sitting on the number one most valuable thing in the world: relationship. Relationship is the thing, and you got it. The limiting factor is we're still running on roads and sewers that were built 40 or 50 years ago. Replace those and make it a high-powered, high-speed freeway, and all of a sudden the opportunity will be coming so fast. That's what I'm focused on. While everybody else is at the opportunity now, roads and sewers, baby. Fix those things, get stuff moving fast, start moving code back and forth between carrier and agent and customer, and not be dependent on these legacy systems. Oh man, watch out.

Ryan Hanley: I think it was Paradiso that tweeted the other day something about big data without trust. I'm going to butcher the quote, but basically he was saying you need to have both. You need to have data and the ability to move and understand and implement data. You also have to have trust. Traditionally, we independent agents are very good at trust. Very good at trust. The insuretech experience we had in 2016—I think the idea of it being a revolution is probably over at this point. But since I've started being propositioned by Lemonade to sell as an IA partner, which I declined wholeheartedly, they asked, "Why would you decline it?" I said, "Because of everything you've said up until this moment. I just morally cannot sell your product." Others can, God bless them, but I would not be able to wake up in the morning and say, "This is the right product for someone," after everything they've said about our channel.

Ryan Hanley: That's a side tangent, more apt for whiskey than for podcasts. But the idea here is that you have data providers starting to realize they need more trust and moving into the trust space. And you have these traditionally trust-based organizations starting to move into the data. The ones who can combine it first with a tool that may or may not be called NEON through BAtomic—that space, whoever can get there first, they're going to set themselves out far enough that it'll be tough to catch them.

Seth Zaremba: You're 100% right. Data scientists are not coming to my agency. They're not coming to Rogue. But we need that. So what we need to do is take the ability of data, bring it in, and upskill salespeople, upskill service people with knowledge, with insights. Upskill managers and business operators so they can analyze and provide not only insight but services and suggestions in a proactive way. If you look at what NEON does, it aggregates data that agencies have typically just let wash down the drain. It aggregates it together, then it democratizes it so that anybody can access it. Now Rogue's in there and Zinc's in there. If Zinc did a hundred things, you can learn from it. If you did a hundred things, I can learn from it. It's democratized. Anybody who wants it can get it. Then we can monetize it, meaning it is an asset. Over time, as you build your agencies, you build Rogue, why wouldn't you support and invest in assets that are going to grow in value? Big data coming to trust, trust needing big data to be relevant—bringing it together is the thing. I'm in the business of the thing.

Ryan Hanley: It's exciting, man. I'm so happy for you.

Seth Zaremba: It has to be done by someone who cares about it. It's not even about getting this done, Ryan. It never was. It was about getting it done right by the people who need to benefit from it. It was first to market because we've seen this movie before. If the wrong players get in, they just become another toll road that we have to go through. Eventually we're just all throwing our quarters in the basket. Kids, that's a reference to tolls. When you went through tolls and you threw quarters in—most of you won't remember—quarters are little pieces of metal which represented 25 cents. We don't need more tolls on the road. We need to move stuff back and forth. That's what I'm doing. I'm doing it because I know it'll be done right this time.

Ryan Hanley: Let me close with this. What can we do to continue to help you? By "we," I mean every single person who listens to this, regardless of their place in the industry. Even if you never become a member of NEON, if you never buy into the platform, how can we support you? What's the lowest bar to support? How do people get involved in the movement? There's the platform itself and doing business and using it, and then there's just the philosophy. A lot of people for a lot of reasons may say it might be a while before I can become an official paying member, adding data, using the platform—contractually or different things. But I want to support what you're doing. How can people do that?

Seth Zaremba: Wow. It would be my honor. We're all at different places in this independent channel. Everybody's coming at it with different places. So you're completely right. The first thing is take time to learn about what we're doing. There are too many people drinking the Kool-Aid served up by whoever, and they don't really think about the power they have. This is a power. This is a partnership—manufacturing and distribution, agents and carriers saying, "Enough. We don't need anything between us anymore. As a matter of fact, we need to be more connected than ever."

Seth Zaremba: If you're a carrier listening to this, you put 100, 150, 200 million into your systems, or you're about to. Why? If it isn't to connect directly with an agent and directly with a customer, then why do it? If you're an agent, think about what connection with a carrier means. It means access to information about the customer. It allows you to do things or understand things because they have access to that in a way that makes you a better relationship and more trustworthy for your customer. If you think about just that mindset—nothing between carriers and agents is actually everything. When you do that, when you connect everything, you can know everything, and then you can do anything. That's what I want for me, for my agency, for Rogue, for any other agency out there. If we connect everything so that we're not dependent on all these old wires, we can know everything, which makes us better relationship people, better purveyors of trust, better purveyors of advice, which makes us better for our customers. If we can just get there, you're going to do okay.

Seth Zaremba: There's a group that's there right now. NEON hosting technology is empowering agents to run on it. You can learn about that. Go to beatomic.com. You can learn all about it. Schedule a demo. We'll show you exactly what we're doing. Donate your data to the center so we can aggregate, democratize it, and distribute it, and then allow carriers to access it. If you're a carrier, we have five carriers now piloting this and making the API connections from their system into customer transactions in the end. Go to beatomic.com, schedule a time to talk to me or Clint or Sid or any of the two new members that are about to join us next week and three in the next month. Come and learn. You will find two things: you'll find wicked smart people that you wouldn't necessarily expect, and you'll also find partners who want to get it done. They want to get it done for the customer, not for themselves, not for anybody's pocketbook, but to get it done right this time.

Seth Zaremba: I would say everybody is welcome at this party. This is a dance. It should be a packed gymnasium where everybody's having the best time of their life. This is not some private country club. This is not some select group of people that have fallen from heaven into fortune. This is the place where the whole community should show up and do this together. Because when we do, we all win when we all win this time.

Ryan Hanley: When are you having your first conference that I can emcee for you?

Seth Zaremba: I actually have an offer for Ryan Hanley today. Talking to our wicked smart CMO Sid Rowe—mid-July, beatomic.com is going to launch. Right now we have an embarrassing site. Don't go to that. That was put up really fast with no money. We're about to roll out that new site, and we're going to have a countdown for an online event. We're going to let anybody come in and do that. We would love—not like, but love—to have you present during that too. There's a lot that we can talk about offline and what we want to do. If you look at tenderizing meat, you do it so that you can cook evenly and season it the right way. If we can both together, like the old days, tenderize and season the meat, we can serve up something real tasty for the industry.

Ryan Hanley: Wow, that's an obvious yes. Love to talk about it. That's an easy yes for me.

Seth Zaremba: All right. That would be my great pleasure.

Ryan Hanley: The takeaway from this is get involved, learn more, follow BAtomic on the socials so that you can be updated when the website goes live. Is there a newsletter or anything that you guys have?

Seth Zaremba: We've been heads down selling. Believe it or not, we're sold out this year and we're selling out Q1 of next year. Sid's back on social here with our next two hires. YouTube: BAtomic. Social: BAtomic 30. Website mid-July. There'll be a countdown to an online event where we're going to reveal a lot more about NEON and where Ryan Hanley is going to be doing his thing. That's next.

Ryan Hanley: Awesome. Well, dude, I have all these questions that I wanted to talk to you about Zinc, and we didn't even get to any of those. So I'll have to have you back in a couple months maybe just to talk about agency life and some of the things you have going on there. You said at the beginning you digitized this thing and it's rocking. So I have another reason to bring you back. I appreciate your time. I want to be respectful of it. I have nothing but love. Thanks for coming on, man.

Seth Zaremba: Back at you. I would not be standing in this place, and the industry would not be as capable, if it wasn't for your work and your recognition. I'm down for you anytime.

Ryan Hanley: All right, buddy. Thank you.

[Music fades in]

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