RHS 045 - How Tarmika is Making Small Commercial Profitable with Raghav Tanna

Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. I'm fired up for today's episode. I'm fired up because I see things changing.

In this episode, I explain an experience I had with a tool, with Tarmika, the tool I've been talking about for months and months that is a cornerstone of rogue risk and what we're trying to do in building this hybrid human digital agency. Tarmika is an integral piece of that. I had the perfect display of that experience last week.

It just so happened that two days later, I ended up speaking with Raghav Tanna, the founder of Tarmika, on the show. I've kind of kept my interview with Raghav. I held on to it. I didn't want to interview him right away. I wanted to experience the tool. I wanted to be involved with it. I wanted to have more experience with it before I had him on the show to talk about what is happening.

I see this tool as an absolute game changer for the industry. It makes small and micro commercial profitable. That's what it does. That is its purpose. And it's just the beginning. I'm so excited.

I will say there are going to be moments where I gush over what this tool is doing. But for a startup agency like mine, and for so many other small or startup agencies struggling to get ahead with small commercial, what Tarmika is doing will completely flip the script on what small commercial can be for an agency.

I'm excited when I find a piece of technology that actually works and actually benefits independent agents. There's no sub-narrative where they're really just trying to build up enough business so they can flip it and start selling insurance themselves. So many insuretechs are constantly trying to court the independent market while still subverting it at the same time. None of that is true with Tarmika.

I'm very excited to share this with you. There probably will be moments where it sounds like a commercial. I don't care. I believe in this product. I don't care if you use it or not. I use it every single day. I see small and micro commercial becoming available at scale, making it profitable. I think you are absolutely nuts if you write micro and small commercial and you're not using Tarmika. Granted, if they don't have the markets yet where you are, that's a different story. But if they do, you need to get on this tool.

That's it. That's the deal. The only other thing I'll say is go to ryanhanley.com. Stop what you're doing, type in your email address so you can get new episodes by email. Even if you're subscribed on iTunes or wherever you listen to shows, get on the email list because there are some additional things I send out. I wrote an article a couple weeks ago and emailed it out. If you're interested in that kind of stuff, if you're interested in being in line with some of the content I'm creating, it's mostly just the podcast but there is some other stuff. Go to ryanhanley.com, type your email in right at the top, and you'll be on the list.

All right, let's get on to the interview.

Raghav Tanna: What's up, dude?

Ryan Hanley: Not much. We're having a big week. Nine new agencies signed yesterday.

Raghav Tanna: That's amazing. I'm out. [Laughs]

Ryan Hanley: So the platform worked exactly how it's supposed to work yesterday. I'm sitting here, phone rings, boom, pick it up. "Ryan, Rogue Risk, whatever." The guy says, "Hey man, I'm really in a pinch here. I called three different agencies a week ago. I own an art studio. I'm trying to get into this new building. I need to have insurance to get in the building. I expected to have it done by now. No one's gotten back to me a week later. Can you help me?"

No problem. I pull up my Tarmika installation. I say, "Hey man, here's what I'm going to do. I've built some special technology where I can get you rates right over the phone here. I'm just going to ask you some questions. We're going to pull up rates immediately while I'm on the phone. We'll at least know what you're going to pay within five minutes. Is that cool?" He says, "Yeah, that sounds great."

So we just walk through the questions. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Pretty straightforward risk. It's like a $600 BOP. Not making a million dollars, but it took me seven minutes. I get to the end. I say, "$553 with Liberty Mutual, all the coverage he needed. He's going to get $1 million, $2 million with a little bit of BPP."

He literally goes on the phone, "Holy shit. I've literally called three agencies and been waiting for a week. It took me seven minutes on the phone with you. I'm giving you the best Google review ever."

So there we go. Bridged over to Liberty, took his credit card, bing, bang, boom, binder out the door. He's into his shop today. He texts me and says, "Hey man, I just want to thank you again because I wouldn't have been able to get in today if I hadn't called you."

From my perspective, it's a $553 BOP. No one's getting rich. But it took me, all told, to take the payment and everything, 25 minutes. 25 minutes tops from phone call to bound policy, binder out the door. And you get paid $200.

Here's the other thing. The dude's going to talk to people. I'm going to solicit his personal lines. I got done with that transaction and I texted you because I was excited. I've been putting stuff in the system as it comes in the door, but I felt like that was the first time I got a call, pulled up my portal, walked the guy right through the portal live on the phone, and I'm getting rates back from the carriers.

Raghav Tanna: We need to get you more carriers, but that's perfect. Yesterday you texted me. I got to say, yesterday was a great day. We had 106 quotes come in yesterday total.

Ryan Hanley: Awesome.

Raghav Tanna: 106 people quoted yesterday. You texted me saying you bound a policy. John Horvath texted me and said, "Just got my first submission through Grange. This is great."

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it is great. I was thinking about the next advisory council meeting. For those listening at home, I'm on the advisory board for Tarmika. I'll have done an intro for this. But some simple things from a tracking perspective, like being able to go back in and check a box and let you guys know, "Hey, I didn't quote CNA. Markel bounced out. I quoted Chubb, Liberty, and Hanover, and I bound with Liberty at $553." Over time, that would be a cool feature, to be able to track what's going on. I'm sure you're tracking some of that.

Raghav Tanna: We have a lot of reporting coming through now. There are still some kinks we have to work out, obviously. There always will be. But we're working on all of them day by day, getting through it. It's awesome.

Ryan Hanley: I was excited because I could see the vision. When we first met... for everyone listening at home, I first met you. We talked on the phone. Paradiso did a text message intro. We talked on the phone, kind of hit it off. Then I was going out to see Paradiso. This was maybe like February. I texted you, "Yo dude, I'm gonna be in Connecticut." This was before the Rona. I said, "I'm gonna be in Connecticut." You bombed down and we probably spent like two, two and a half hours just talking shop. I was completely sold on the value proposition.

That was a profitable $553 BOP. For every other agency not using Tarmika, that account is unprofitable. That's a profitable transaction for me now. It took 25 minutes and I'm going to cross-sell the hell out of them. I'm going to get a great Google review. Absolutely profitable transaction. That was what I bought into in February when you laid out what it's going to be.

And we're just getting started. What version are you on? I mean, this is crazy. You have a bank of people just answering the phone, helping them, building relationships, walking them through closing deals. I was jacked up yesterday. I'm super jacked up.

Raghav Tanna: Probably iteration like 40, and we probably have a hundred to go this year alone. It changes every day, but we're working on all the kinks. People like you are the ones that matter. When you tell me, "Hey, I just got this account bound in five minutes," that's the most important thing to us. How can you make yourself more profitable over the next year for anything that's under... if you have a $100,000 account, it's a little different. But if you're talking to these $500 to $10,000 BOPs, this is the easiest solution you can have.

Ryan Hanley: Yes. There's so much discussion today about Carruthers, who I know you've talked to. Carruthers and some other guys are normalizing middle market. They're helping more and more agents feel comfortable addressing middle market accounts, which is something that is very uncomfortable. Unless you're taught how to do it, it is very uncomfortable to approach somebody with $150,000, $250,000, $400,000, $500,000 in premium and start talking to them before you've ever done it before. They're starting to normalize that. It feels very sexy. You sign a big account, you get the machismo going, you pull your shoulders back a little bit, you walk a little taller.

What I love about this is if we all only sold middle market, then 75% of the marketplace would have no one to go to. We'd all be going to Progressive's call center. I believe that independent agents equipped with a tool like this get the best of both worlds. I don't want this to just be a pitch for Tarmika, but this is the perfect time for this call since I came off that thing yesterday where it worked exactly as it's supposed to. Now I'm jacked out of my mind.

Raghav Tanna: I love it. That's what I like to hear. This is my favorite type of conversation. Someone like you calling me and saying, "Hey, I had someone call me, I plugged it in, it took seven minutes." Because realistically, if you would have picked the market you would have gone to and went directly to that carrier on the phone, the chances of them coming back with a quote that you could have found right on the fly are slim.

Ryan Hanley: You're taking a risk. And here's the other thing. This is what I've started doing on personal lines too. Shout out to my shorty for telling me to do this, even though it seems intuitive now. My shorty is my wife, Lauren. Just pulling up the portal while you're on the phone with them. Because what do you normally do? You have a piece of paper. Look at this right here. This is the other side of it. This disaster of notes, which no one can see, in red ink on a yellow piece of paper, which I can barely read my own handwriting. Now I'm supposed to take this and plug it into seven different carriers and figure out where do I save an extra hundred bucks, Liberty or Hartford?

What ends up happening is you do a disservice to the client because your CSR goes, "I'm not plugging that into seven different carriers. I don't care if the quote comes back at $775 or $650." To the client, that $125 could mean the world to them. But to your CSR, they're like, "Forget it, don't care. Liberty is easy to use. I'm just going to go to Liberty."

The beauty of having this ability is you're talking to them on the phone, you're plugging the answers right into the system, it's pushing back real rates. So now you know where to start, even if you want to go in and bridge to two different systems and work some more stuff in the system. I've been plugging in the listeners of the show. I do the library before all the episodes and stuff. I really believe that what you've built here should rejuvenate, or re-enthuse, bring enthusiasm back to small commercial. Because you can just fly. It doesn't have to be sexy either. It's just profitable again. That's the most important part. It doesn't have to be sexy if it's profitable.

Raghav Tanna: A hundred percent.

Ryan Hanley: So we started with that enormous and ridiculous plug. I do think everyone should go to Tarmika.com, get your demo today. Even if you don't buy the system, know the system so that when you're ready to step into the big leagues, you know who to talk to.

With that plug out of the way, I think it's important for the audience to know more about you. People have probably heard a little bit about you on Cass's podcast. I know you've been making the rounds, so maybe they've gotten some of the story. But I want to briefly get into your background because your background was crucial to my belief in your ability to make this product successful long-term for independent agents. I would love for you to run that down.

Raghav Tanna: Yeah, so I started my insurance career, as Chris, our director of sales, always says, in diapers. My dad's owned an agency for a very long time. I was in his office when I was young. He used to work out of the basement for a few years when he first started. So I've always been around it. When I graduated college, it was natural for me to go into the insurance industry. I worked at Travelers for a few years. My dad told me he would love for me to come back and work with him, help drive new business on the commercial line side only. So I started doing that for about two years.

There was one account in particular where we submitted it. Him and I were working on it together. It was a referral to him and I also knew the person. We submitted it through our CSRs to seven different carriers. It got declined by six. This took a long time. It was a big account with a ton of workers' comp class codes. It was a staffing firm out of Virginia. It took forever. I got annoyed, naturally, and decided I was going to go find a solution. SureTech Connect happened to be coming up, so I attended. I didn't see anything that I thought was valuable for an agency. One thing led to another, and we decided we're going to start building this thing. I found a co-founder in Gita, contacted my dad, and here we are two years later with a product that agencies are using.

Ryan Hanley: How many agencies are on the platform now?

Raghav Tanna: We're over 200 now, but we have all these cluster agreements and aggregator agreements. In total, agencies that can have access to the system, it's into the thousands now.

Ryan Hanley: Wow. That's crazy, man. How fast it's going. The key piece was that you had sold before and that your dad owned an agency. What I really like is that you were building the product out of the office that your dad actually operated in as well. I mean that in an incredibly positive way. My beef with InsurTech has always been... and this is changing rapidly, so this is not really the case anymore. But I think for a lot of agents, they're gun shy on up and coming insuretech products because the curve is very natural. Boisterous young CEO comes in, tells everyone they're doing everything wrong, that the product they're creating is going to solve one very large problem or every problem they've ever had. Either way, they act as if none of us have ever even thought about that problem before. How could we have been so stupid up until this point not to solve it? Then they get smashed into the industry. Things don't work out quite the way they think. They either sell off to someone who's a competitor to us or the product just kind of dwindles. A few agents use it and you never hear from them again.

The hard part is the innovators in the industry are always looking for that edge. They get into these products, they try it, a few people follow them, they get burnt, and then they're back out still looking for something. It creates this quagmire.

What I thought was so interesting was you had a very healthy respect for what an independent agent is and does. Not just that you understood, but you lived it. You had breathed it. You had been told no. You'd ground it out. You know all the prospecting ways and felt that pain. I think that type of commitment is why some of the people in the Tarmika ecosystem who are some of the most respected people in the industry are actually there. It's a testament to you that you have people like Paradiso, like Frank Settner, some of these people who are advisors to you in all different capacities. They're the right people, man.

Raghav Tanna: Yeah. I think one of the most important things too, coming from the agency side, is that when I was on the agency side, one of the worst things is to build a relationship with someone, a close relationship, actually have the opportunity to quote their business, and then not come back for a week. That ruins the relationship. If you lose a client because you never had a real relationship with them, that doesn't matter to me. But if you actually build a legitimate relationship with someone, you can't quote it in enough time and give them the service they deserve. That's when you lose a client, and that's the worst feeling. That's one of the reasons why we built this. I never wanted to experience a good client relationship where I couldn't deliver.

You're right. The people that have come around is one of the reasons why I'm happy where we are today. We have the right people behind us. We have the right people that use the system. People want to get a little more efficient in their offices. Fortunately, people like you have introduced me to the best people in the industry, and it's helped us quite a bit.

Ryan Hanley: I know you have other advisors as well, but connecting with Paradiso was a huge win for you. To be completely transparent, if he hadn't been the one that introduced me to you, I probably would have been much more hesitant in believing many of the things you had said in our first discussion. When I was at Agency Nation, I pitched every day by another insuretech. Literally every day. It wasn't like you were pitching, we were just having a conversation, but you were describing what you're doing and what your process was. With Paradiso being the one saying, "Hey man, you need to talk to this kid. He's doing something special," that really opened up my ears. I know that's the case for a lot of the other people working with you. He was a really great early get from an advisory standpoint. I think he played a huge role in moving you forward quickly at the very beginning.

Raghav Tanna: Yeah, I talk to Chris weekly. He's been a tremendous help for us, not just with introductions, but with his entire office helping us with custom UIs and making sure we have the right flow for an agency. He's been amazing. Between him and Matt Namoli, those are two pretty big names in this industry. For the two of them to back us and help us as much as they have with introductions and looking at our UI over and over again, every iteration change, making sure it looks good, it's huge. I can't thank them enough. I tell them every time I talk to them that I appreciate what they're doing. They always say they're trying to better the industry. For them to give us that respect is huge.

Ryan Hanley: Yes. It would be very difficult for someone to say... everyone can find fault in someone, but you could never say about Chris or Matt that, whether you agree with their position or not, their position wasn't in what they believed was in the best interest of not just themselves but the industry. That's a rare quality. To have both of those guys... basically for me, it was Chris told me to talk to you, we talked, and then I called Matt and I was like, "How legit is everything that this dude just said? Because Chris just introduced me." So I got the sandwich side too, and then I was like, "Yeah, I'm in. I'm in. Whatever you need. If those two dudes recommend you, I would be an asshole for saying no."

Raghav Tanna: That was a setup that we planned. That whole thing. We made sure that you chose Matt to call next instead of anybody else to make sure that we all sandwiched you together and you joined in the next week.

Ryan Hanley: Well, you got Duffy and a bunch of other great agencies that are just using the tool. All that stuff just adds up.

So what was really interesting to me... if you're not aware by now, I don't come into these conversations with an agenda. I was listening, Cass had a really great interview. I don't know if you listen to Cass's podcast at all.

Raghav Tanna: I do.

Ryan Hanley: He had a great interview with Caitlin Eggers from Quantum the other day. She was talking about buying leads online. If you put into IOA's Facebook group, which I know you're not a part of because you don't own an agency, but if you put "Where do you buy leads from?" you will get about 7,000 comments. Half the people will just put "Interested" and the other half will put "You're an a-hole if you have to buy leads." That's basically the perception. People either are interested but haven't really done the work to figure it out, or they just think that you're less than for having bought them. I can kind of understand both perceptions.

I think the reason people believe buying leads is somehow less than, like you don't get as much street cred for that, is this idea that you couldn't be profitable doing it that way. If I were to buy a commercial lines lead or just run PPC ads for small business, and they call like you, if I had to go to Liberty, Hanover, Chubb, Guard, to get quotes, by the second carrier I'm logging into, that's going to have a different UI, different information, different discounts. My brain has already taken up way too many cycles and I'm now unprofitable.

I think that's the thought process. Super smart agents who talk in terms of balance sheets and feel that somehow makes them superior, they're like, "Oh, you don't get it because you have to buy leads and it's impossible to be profitable that way." As personal lines quoting becomes more straightforward, and now with this on commercial lines, I have dialed up every commercial, small business, commercial lead gen opportunity that exists. I have them all coming in now because I can just plow through quotes all day long. It's easy.

I think it changes the game from a lead buying perspective. It opens up all these opportunities for small agencies who want to make that jump but have never had the efficiencies to do so. This allows them to do that with small commercial.

Raghav Tanna: Yeah. I won't touch on Buffalo because you know my feelings about Buffalo. But Cam Newton, by the way. We still have that agreement that you owe me dinner once the Patriots win the division. Just want to throw that out.

Ryan Hanley: Cam Newton was a gift to the Buffalo Bills. What's going to happen? He's going to come out, have a good first game, then he'll be terrible for three games, then his shoulder will hurt, and then the Bills will win the AFC East. That's what's going to happen. I'm telling you right now.

Raghav Tanna: I disagree. But I'll touch on what you said before that, because I guess that's more important for this conversation. It's funny because when we first started this, everyone said, "You're commoditizing small commercial, and that's not what we want to do." I feel the exact opposite. We're rewarding carriers that have the technology to actually implement it and help their agents be more profitable, more efficient. Those agencies by nature are going to reward those carriers in return for doing it. That's proven true time and time again. It's not commoditizing anything. We consistently customize our platform for each individual carrier to make it fit what they're looking for. Their agencies are rewarding them by placing business with them. That's the most important thing to me. I don't treat it like personal lines because it's not. It's not a lowest premium wins. 18.4% of the premium in our system is the lowest that's bound. It's extremely low. The most important thing for us is how do we reward these carriers that are actually trying to help their agencies be more profitable, be better. And in return, how do we get the agencies to reward those carriers?

Ryan Hanley: I've been calling bullshit on this idea for basically since I started stepping on stages 10 years ago. The things I was talking about from a digital standpoint 10 years ago, people were like, "Oh, our clients don't go online. That's the commodity business." Even personal lines, it's not. If you're saying that online rating and comparative rating in this type of nature is somehow commoditizing the business, then what you're saying is that what makes independent agents not a commodity is their ability to log into carrier systems and stick information in. That's what you're saying. Because that's all you're doing when you give an account sheet to a CSR and say, "Hey, go market this." That's all they're doing. They're taking the information and plugging it into systems. And then everyone goes, "Single sign on. How come we don't have that?"

Raghav Tanna: You don't need single sign-on if you have one platform that's already API'd in. And I got to say, the carriers that we work with — and now we have 23 carriers that are contracted with us — the carriers that we're partnering with don't feel that way. They don't feel like it's commoditizing. There's a reason behind it. They're partnering with us because they think it's beneficial to the agency, not because they think they're being commoditized and they have to do it. No one has to do this. We need carriers more than they'll ever need us. I'm talking about me as an insurtech company, not you as an agency. We need them more than they need us. And they're willing to do stuff like this because they recognize the value in it for the future — the future value and the current value. But there are going to be carriers that are going to say it's commoditized. And those are the ones that we don't work with. There's no loss to them. There's a loss to us. But at the end of the day, you're not going to change someone's mind if they've already made that decision.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So what has been for you, going from working for a carrier to then working for your dad and being an agent to now running an insurtech company — what was one of the things that maybe has been a challenge that you didn't see coming? Not like, "Hey, we got to get carriers on the platform." That's obvious. But was there anything that kind of snuck up on you that's been a challenge?

Raghav Tanna: Yeah. I mean, interviewing people. There's two things I don't like. One, I buy snacks for the office — that was always done for me. And two, interviewing people. That's the biggest challenge for me, though, honestly. It's been making sure that everyone understands the goal of this company. When you're interviewing people, culture fit is huge and understanding is huge. If you think that we're coming in here and the only goal is for our sales reps to close 150 agencies a month or whatever we tell them to do, then they're missing the point. The goal is to make sure that the agents using the system to the best of their ability to be more efficient. And hiring new employees that are outside the insurance industry, but also don't necessarily understand the independent agent model — teaching them what that means and how it's actually working for them was by far the hardest thing. Because I grew up in it. I knew what insurance was. I knew what an independent agent was. Our director of sales knew, our COO knew. Until we hired our first person outside of the three of us, I never thought that was going to be an issue. But training insurance is way harder than training technology.

Ryan Hanley: When you talk to a non-insurance person, sometimes I feel like I'm talking to a Martian. You know what I mean? When you're surrounded with other insurance people and there's that one non-insurance person, and then you see that look start to creep over their face where you can just tell that they just don't — they're just not following along at all. The words mean different things. What you would think should happen doesn't happen that way. All the nuances of our industry — it's always so funny to watch someone's face during their first real nerdy insurance conversation. All my conversations are nerdy insurance conversations nowadays. But it is entirely different. And I think the people that build companies that came from outside the industry that try to sell to insurance agencies and insurance companies and go in with this hard sell tactic — it doesn't work. You have to build a relationship with the person, show them where they're gaining their value. Instead of saying, "Look at all this stuff we did. It's better for you. You should use this because you'll be better." That's not true. They're great as is. We're just trying to help them become more efficient. And you have to train all these employees that you hire. The last eight that we've hired, we've had to train on insurance more so than technology.

Raghav Tanna: Yeah, I believe that. The first time as a vendor to an agency that you tell that agency owner that they either don't understand the problem or are somehow wrong in the way that they've chosen to solve the problem — regardless of what they're doing — you have officially lost that agency as someone you're ever going to sell to. I had to learn this the hard way when I was at Agency Nation. I'm trying to sell Advantage subscriptions for TrustedChoice.com. They're looking at you going, "You son of a bitch, you have no idea how hard my job is and how many things I have to think about, and you're telling me that I don't know what I'm doing? I will kill you. I will eat your face." And in your mind, you're like, "Wait a minute, you're still using a typewriter. This keyboard thing is so much easier." And they're like, "No, no, no, you don't understand. This typewriter works great. I make $500,000 in personal income. You're going to tell me about this typewriter?" People have to remember insurance agencies have existed for so long and there's still 38,000 of them because they're successful. They're doing something right. So you can't go in there and say they're doing something wrong.

Raghav Tanna: Fortunately for me, when they say "I'm running an agency," I was the person that insurtechs were selling to at our agency. I was on the agency side. So I know what the problem is. I know what a bad sales tactic is. We're not about that. It's about building the relationship. It really is. Insurance is 100% relationship driven. If you think otherwise, you're an idiot. The truth is, how products get sold in this industry is 100% agent-to-agent referral. That's what it is. All the insurance groups that I'm part of — whatever the product — I just signed up for Stamps.com because I was asking people, "Hey, have you ever used this tool?" It seems silly, right? I need to mail stuff. I don't feel like going to the post office all the time and getting stamps. "Oh, I use it. It works great." I probably wouldn't have purchased it if I hadn't seen two or three other agents go, "Yeah, we use it." Every service is like that — from CRM to agency management system to telephone system to every tool in the agency. Agents are constantly talking about them. If you don't get referred by another agency, the hardest part is going to be the first one on a new product. Because if you're the first one, you're the only one trying it out. That was literally Mark Duffy, Chris Paridy — they were our first couple agencies that started using it. And then it spread. But you're right. Everything needs to be agent-to-agent because it's a small community. As many agents as there are, it's a super small community.

Ryan Hanley: When I first kind of broke out of the Murray Group — not necessarily when I left, but when I first started visiting other associations and spending more time with other agents — at first I didn't really understand that nature of the business. How you and I could be bitter rivals in terms of we're both in the same town and we're looking for the same advertising opportunities, but then we can go on the golf course and talk about sales tactics and tools. "This marketing rep is giving me a hard time, how do you deal with it?" That aspect of our industry is very unique. I was actually talking to Danielle Smink on the episode that'll come out right before this one about how the industry has become even more collaborative. Agents communicate even more so. Think about that marketing company in Rhode Island that burned every bridge — Astonish Results. Those guys were writing these deals and cutting this guy an amazing deal, and then this guy over here they're basically taking his firstborn to pay for the deal they cut the other guy. Back then — that was about 10, 12 years ago now — back then they could kind of get away with that. Today, you do one of those bad deals and 5,000 agents in IOA know tomorrow. You treat someone poorly like that, and the next day everybody knows. People start to pump the brakes on that vendor. So you have to be much more careful in how you treat people. Obviously you should treat people the right way anyway, but you can't get away with that smarminess anymore.

Raghav Tanna: No, I think that's the most important thing. You should be doing that anyways, but at least now there's some justifiable action that can be had against you if you don't treat people the right way. There's a lot of companies in this insurtech space that are a little sketchy. They do things the wrong way. So when we started, the most important thing to us is the culture. How do we make sure that we're always upfront, honest, transparent with everybody? And hopefully we've held to that across the board for all of our employees.

Ryan Hanley: I certainly haven't heard a bad thing. So let's talk a little bit about the future. Different parts of the country, different agency, different carrier mixes. The number one thing — more carriers helps more agents because the more carriers on the platform. This is the chicken and the egg with everybody. But I will say, if you are a carrier in any capacity that can help connect with Tarmika, I would encourage you to do so. This type of relationship is where it's going for small business. I know some pretty badass agents that are literally just waiting for a couple carrier relationships to fall, which may or may not already be in the works, and bam, they're going to be on and moving. So what do you see as some of your biggest challenges moving forward? What does the future look like? Where are you going with this thing?

Raghav Tanna: The carrier stuff was difficult at first. For the first year of operation, getting carriers is hard. Even last year was difficult, but this year it's really all come together for us. Persistence, hard work, getting those carrier relationships, showing them the value was important. That hurdle has been hopefully crossed now. We've passed through the most difficult part as an insurtech company, which is building relationships with insurance companies. But now, the biggest hurdle moving forward — and this is every startup in the world — is understanding how to scale responsibly. Not being too aggressive, not hiring too fast, not doing anything crazy, and actually understanding where we need people. For us, that's customer success. That's the most important part. If you're an agency quoting and there's a technical error or a question you have, you need someone to call. You need a spokesperson at Tarmika. So that's where we've really focused our energy right now. It's been working.

Raghav Tanna: Next biggest hurdle is figuring out personal lines. We're currently in the process of that. Figuring out which states to start in, how many agents to start with. It's the same issue we had with commercial lines. Figuring out who's going to use it the most, who can benefit the most from it as our beta testers for personal lines. We have a couple already. We got Bradley Flowers down in Alabama. We have you. We have Matt and Amoli. We have a bunch of beta testers that are going to do personal lines. Zach and Ryan from Coverage Direct. That's probably our focus right now — how do we continue to grow the commercial side with the team we have, and then hire this whole other engineering team, this whole other sales team for personal lines. That's what we're in the process of now.

Ryan Hanley: I'm so excited for personal lines too. I want to give credit where credit is due because PL Rater and EasyLinks — they blazed a trail that did not exist. They sold a lot of carriers on building out the technology for those tools when the idea of comparative rating was blasphemy. But I think there is tremendous opportunity from a workflow standpoint, from a reporting and functionality standpoint. I still have to log into Internet Explorer to use PL Rater. That loses me accounts because I have to go to a whole separate computer because I'm a Mac user. Someone literally said to me, "Maybe you should just stop being a Mac user." And I was like, "Fuck you. Why should I have to stop being a Mac user just because you haven't figured out that Chrome is the number one web browser on the internet? You're using a web browser that Microsoft doesn't even update anymore. And I'm the crazy person?" I don't want to bang on PL Rater because the product works. They have a ton of carriers. They've done the hard work. But I do think there's a lot of green field there in that space. When you can log into one system and quote personal or commercial, that feels like a huge win.

Raghav Tanna: That's one of the reasons why we're doing it. Commercial is our primary focus, was our primary focus for a long time. And it continues to be a focus for the team that's currently here. But we can have a separate team working on personal. We can have separate employees selling personal, being the customer support for personal. And it's all in one system, so it's easy for them to use. That's a challenge though — making sure we scale responsibly on commercial while also building out personal. Everyone always says, "What keeps you up at night?" That's it. That's the only thing that keeps you up at night — how do we scale properly without overdoing it?

Ryan Hanley: I think that's smart. A concern for me when I get involved — the emotional investment, time investment, capital investment that you have in a tool is not insubstantial. I know you guys have an appreciation for this. I've heard the way that Chris talks to agencies on the phone, so I know he has an appreciation for this when he's building relationships, talking to people through the process. One of the things that has smacked me in the face as an agency owner is when you make a decision on a piece of technology, you're not just investing some money in it. There's this mentality that, "Ah, it's $150 a month." Well, it's not just that because now I have to build workflows, processes. I have to take brain cycles and figure out how to use the tool. I have to teach my team how to use the tool. That is probably more of a concern than just the price of the tool.

Raghav Tanna: Oh, yeah. It could be $25 or $10,000 a month, and it wouldn't make a difference if you don't actually use it. It's a waste. I think the concern is: if I invest my time, energy, and mental cycles into this tool, in two years are you just going to bounce? Is it going to blow up or get sold to some system that I can't even use? Now all of a sudden I'm left — I got to find something new. That's scarier. I think that's a big reason why people still stick with Applied. They're just like, "I know they're always going to be here. They're never going away." Even though I don't love them, maybe it's not perfect. Epic is a decent system if you like the Applied ecosystem. They're never going away. So you never have to have that concern.

Ryan Hanley: It has to be, right?

Raghav Tanna: One of the hardest parts of starting the company was my age. And one of the best things about telling people I'm not going anywhere is my age. So what was once terrible is also a blessing. Starting a company at 25, people don't really trust you all that much. "What the hell do you know?" was a pretty common thing up front. Fortunately, I grew up with a dad who worked in insurance for 40 years and knows more than anyone I know about insurance. I'm not going anywhere. I'm 27. I have a long career ahead of me. I love this company. I love doing what we're doing. I love our employees. I think they're all awesome. I love doing this work. I always say this — not planning on going anywhere.

Ryan Hanley: The other good news is even at 27, you have very adult hair and you look very mature, which is the opposite for me. I'm almost 40, but I look like I'm 17. If I don't shave and you see all the grays in the beard, I look like I'm in my 40s. "That guy knows tech right there. He's been around for a while." Maybe I should just keep it so people think I'm a little bit older.

Raghav Tanna: But no, it is a blessing to be able to say that. One of the best things I've ever said is I always admit that I don't know what I don't know. I'll tell you straight up if I don't have an answer. When you're talking to agencies and carriers, they have way more experience than I ever will. They give advice. They tell you how they think things should work. You have to listen and actually implement their advice. If you don't, you're going to be obsolete too.

Ryan Hanley: I was having this conversation with Carruthers the other day. It's easy to tell the individuals who have never sat at the big kids' table before. They've never had the humility to sit there with their glass of scotch and just shut the hell up and listen to people who have done really amazing things, grown very successful companies, just talk about stuff. Just listened. I think what I hear you saying is you were lucky enough, being around your dad, to get some of that. I unfortunately had to wait much longer to learn that lesson until I was part of TrustedChoice.com. I had the opportunity to sit with a lot of people and listen to a lot of agents who are incredibly successful — the Spencer Holdens and all these different agency owners talk about the business. It helps you understand what we're actually doing. We're not just selling a policy to someone. We're making sure that someone's life isn't ruined on the worst day that ever happens to them. It's so easy to lose sight of how big a thing we are actually doing. That's why I hate that word "commodity." All a tool like Tarmika is allowing us to do by lining up small business carriers against each other is focus more on making sure that things are right. Because we're not thinking about the transactional shit — "Oh, I didn't punch that number correctly into the seventh system that I'm rating today." What's the focus though? If you're spending too much time quoting, is your focus trying to get all this data into the system? Is your focus finding the right coverage for your client? It's probably entering the data into your system. So speed up the process that's tedious and unrealistic and focus on selling your client the best coverage that they need for their specific business. At the end of the day, agencies are the experts on it, and that's what's important.

Raghav Tanna: I know this is probably sounding like a 51-minute commercial for Tarmika. In part, maybe it is. But I don't mean it to be. It's hard for me to be anything other than authentic. I just believe in what you're doing, man. Since the first time we spoke on the phone — I was jokingly talking about Paridy in the intro and stuff — I've seen your vision since day one. I've believed in your vision. Being part of the advisory committee and being able to help shape it has been an honor. But whether I was part of that or not, I think what you are doing is going to help so many agencies sustain through the storm of small business. And thrive potentially, if they can work on things like workflows and really move. I'm just a huge believer in what you're doing, a huge proponent. I feel like I'm part of a very cool club to be able to give feedback in whatever regard and help grow this thing because I think it's important to our industry.

Raghav Tanna: I appreciate that. That's huge for us to hear from an agency. Especially since you're a new agency too and you're growing quickly. It's cool for us to hear that.

Ryan Hanley: I'll be honest. The last couple weeks, at least in the ecosystem that I operate, it feels like things are opening up. People are starting to take phone calls. Calls are starting to come in. I don't know that I would be able to scale this business if I didn't have Tarmika. I don't think that I would. I think it would be impossible. That guy yesterday — again, not a huge account. Some of the more douchey members of our audience are going to be like, "That was $553, Bob." But the idea is that's one of what will be 20 accounts. If I can write $2,500 BOPs in 20 minutes at a time, I'm making money. I'm making real money. Those accounts are going to renew. I'm going to get their personal lines. I'm going to sell them life insurance. They're going to send me referrals. That's how the agency is going to scale. If I was spending all that time logging into each individual system, seeing if they had an appetite, figuring out what the best rate is — it wouldn't be possible. So I appreciate you. I appreciate the work you do. I text you random shit all the time and you actually respond. That's fun. Dude, I wish you nothing but the best. I'm sure this won't be the last time you're on the show. But where can people — besides T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com — where can people learn more about you?

Raghav Tanna: People can learn more about me by texting me. That's the way I get in touch with people. Or you can email me at [email protected]. I'm more than happy to talk at any point.

Ryan Hanley: Dude, appreciate you, man. Be good.

Raghav Tanna: Thank you.

[End of interview]

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