RHS 055 - Shefi Ben-Hutta on Why Being an Outsider is a Superpower

Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Yes, we're back and today we have a tremendous episode, just an absolutely tremendous episode. It's an episode you're going to love, especially if you're like a geek, a nerd, if you like to dig into insurance and you're just kind of into it. You're into thinking about it, the way the industry works, the people, the systems, the institutions, not just the coverage or sales, which is cool. That's a huge part of our business. But if you dig a little deeper into how the industry actually operates and mixes, you're going to love this episode because we have Shefi Ben-Hutta on the podcast. She's one of the co-founders of Coverager, the publication for InsurTech News in our industry.

Ryan Hanley: What's funny is we talk a little bit about my Agency Nation days. When she was building up Coverager, I was building Agency Nation. Obviously, Agency Nation isn't a part of my life anymore, but Coverager is very much a part of hers. Where Agency Nation was talking about sales and marketing, Coverager was focused on insurtech, technology, startups, and that whole side. What I love about Shefi, and we talk a lot about how we actually disagree on different things, but our vision for the industry and our perspectives and the way we approach it, we both have tremendous respect for each other. I dig the way Shefi thinks about this industry. I don't always agree with every conclusion she comes to, but I ultimately think that having her voice, her mindset, and her perspective is incredible. The industry is better because she is commentating, reporting, and supporting various businesses and parts of our industry. Shefi Ben-Hutta, Coverager, you're going to love this episode.

Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to talk about Better Agency. Better Agency is changing the game for me, absolutely, positively changing the game for Rogue Risk. I am looking at this tool as the first tool that I log into every single day. It's the first tool I log into. I will look at my Better Agency before I look at my email. The reason is it does everything my agency needs, absolutely everything. There's a decent chance that eventually I don't need an agency management system because I have Better Agency. I basically have to figure out how to get accords and accounting. I'm getting close on accounting, and accords are super easy. There are a million places you can get accords. I think what they have built is tremendous.

Ryan Hanley: I've been with Infusionsoft. I've been with Agency Zoom. Both of those tools are great, and there are amazing agents that use both of them. This is not a knock on any other tool. I have found Better Agency to be built by insurance agency owners, and that is obvious. I think that's the part that works for me. I look at it, I see the way that William Shaw, Nick Ayers, Preston, and McBilly, and everyone else involved interact with agents and roll out new features. It just makes sense. I am digging it. I am loving every day of it. I use it every day. I've never questioned my decision to move over. When they said they wanted to be a sponsor of the show, it made me very happy because I get to talk about it more.

Ryan Hanley: If you are unhappy with your solution that helps you connect with customers, cross-sell with customers, and get in front of customers in the moments of their need, give Better Agency a demo. Like I said with all the tools, I don't care that you buy the tool. That's not why I talk about them. Do the demo. Know what the tool is so if you have a need, you know what it's all about. That's all I'm asking. Go to betteragency.io. Betteragency.io. Betteragency.io.

Ryan Hanley: All right, let's get on to Shefi.

[Transition to interview]

Ryan Hanley: Ryan. How are you?

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Hey, how are you?

Ryan Hanley: I'm good. I'm good. It's Friday. It's not 100 degrees and life is good. So how are you?

Shefi Ben-Hutta: It's a bit cloudy in New York City, but it's still warm.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. I'm excited that you're on the show. Have we started the show yet?

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Yeah, kind of.

Ryan Hanley: I just kind of roll into it.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Okay. Okay.

Ryan Hanley: I just like going because whenever I do one, two, three, go, it's always weird. You're looking at each other like, "Oh, now it's official." When it's just meant to be a conversation anyway, there's not really a casual start. We'll just put it that way.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: You're the boss.

Ryan Hanley: Well, I don't know that that's true, but I do have the start-stop button. So I guess that does make me the boss. After our conversation we had a week or so ago, I was super excited to share as much of that as we can or just hit on some of these same topics and share with people who are listening. I think a lot of people are familiar with you and your work who follow my show. And I think there are a lot of people that aren't. I want to expose more people to what you're doing. The conversation we had around InsurTech, its role, agents, and some of the stuff we're talking about — fat old white guys with whiskey making deals in park rooms in the back of bars that only certain people can get into — I think that's really interesting stuff. We'll hit on all that and anything else we want to talk about.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: For the record, I was never part of any club.

Ryan Hanley: Well, I'm not part of any clubs either. They didn't want me either, so don't worry. That's why I own my own agency and do this kind of renegade podcast, I guess.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Yeah, no one wanted me in their club either. I think this is a bit of fluff, but one of the best things to come out of InsurTech is that you're getting a diverse range of employers coming into insurance. For people like me, this is a good thing because I always felt like an outsider. For a period of time, I was the outsider because I was working for an Israeli startup. Then I joined corporate insurance. I guess I'm not corporate material, but what does that even mean? I've done a lot of good with CNA and I've managed to influence a lot of people. But when you're in corporate, you have to know how to manage sideways and above and to get noticed. I've done that through blogging. Nobody wanted to hear my opinion, but when the crowd or the public liked what I had to say, that gave me clout. I'm a big believer in blogging. Just because people internally may not want to hear or act on what you have to say, stick to it and good things do come out. But that's not what we want to talk about, right?

Ryan Hanley: No, no. I love this topic. Diversity in our industry is a huge issue because we have been pale, stale, and male for so long. I have nothing against white people, but for the most part, we're boring as shit and we tend to think inside standardized boxes. I love when we can allow... I don't know that my vantage point is to tear down the system for the purpose of tearing it down, but I certainly believe that our systems constantly need to be reformed and constantly need to be reexamined. You have to create structures in which voices that are not the norm can rise up and have a place. Unfortunately, like with all hierarchical structures, I believe in hierarchies of opportunity, not hierarchies that segment and segregate. Ultimately, I think we want cream to rise to the top. If we didn't operate in a semi-meritocratic hierarchical environment, your Coverager would not be in the place it is today. You were able to rise up, become a voice inside the insurtech space, and provide a vantage point that I don't know anyone else could. You were doing such good work for so long that people started to take notice. They started to listen, then they started to believe, then they started to trust. Now you're able to operate a business based on that trust. So I guess it's a very long-winded way of saying yes, I agree.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Well, our point is, because I know there are two types of audiences that Coverager has. One, people that add us on social media or via email and in public. But then there are others that keep their opinions to themselves because corporate wants it to be a certain way. I kind of ignored the corporate mindset, but I had the privilege to ignore it and blog when I was part of CNA. I did it in a smart way where I asked permission. Back then, CNA didn't have a blogging policy. I think this is all really important because at some point you have to take ownership of your career and say, "If this is an industry that a lot of the time doesn't necessarily promote based on merit, what am I going to do to make sure that I stay ahead?" It's all about personal growth at this point. My tip is just stick to your voice. I like solving small problems. I never set out to be an entrepreneur. I just wanted to influence the little things that I thought weren't working in my space. A lot of it was working with commercial insurance agents and trying to make them act in a more digital fashion. Back then, it was a lot of Facebook marketing, and thank God we moved away from that.

Ryan Hanley: Yes, yeah, contests and giveaways and gimmicks and tricks and gags. Some of that stuff still works, but it's not necessarily best practices anymore like it once was. If you had a Facebook page, you were literally ahead of the curve at one point, which is interesting. The point you made about our space, the insurance industry as a whole, is that it really does have a space for everybody. I feel like oftentimes when we feel points of friction, it's that we just haven't found the right spot in the industry. It's not because the industry doesn't have opportunity in so many forms. You can be a commentator in the media space. That's kind of where you operate. I guess I used to, and kind of still do, operate in the agent space, which is more sales-oriented, more entrepreneurial, leadership-focused. You can be someone who is just interested in a solid salary and a good life, where your work is never going to be your passion, but you would like to do something meaningful. You can operate inside of an agency. If you are into more of the corporate political game and the shield on your chest, that's meaningful to you. That's not a judgment. If that's what you're into, some people really like corporate life. There are huge mega-towered organizations you can go become part of and work your way up that hierarchy. If you're interested in the nerdy shit, you can become an actuary or an underwriter. You can get into claims. There are so many different spots you can find yourself in. You can become a technologist. You can become a vendor. You can create and run conferences. You can work for Tesla.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Yes. Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Well, now, yeah. Which is unfortunate because I drink from the Elon Musk fire hose and I believe basically everything he does is going to work eventually. That should scare the shit out of every personal auto carrier who isn't making a deal with him and every PL agent. But I guess that's what I love about this space. When I left, what I missed about it is that there is a space for everybody. At different times, maybe we're not in the right part of our industry and we need to move over here or move over there. But I do think there's a space for everybody. I think that's a good thing. I think it's an exciting part about our industry.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I second that opinion. I think you can do a lot of things within insurance. That being said, I wouldn't tell my sister to come join the industry.

Ryan Hanley: I tell everybody this. The thing I do, and this might sound bad, but there's just so much money here. Even a job that isn't some big, sexy entrepreneurial sales position or executive, you're still going to make good money and you're still going to have decent job security. I know every once in a while, one of the big carriers will do some layoffs, especially if there's a merger or something. But for the most part, you have good job security, usually good benefits, and usually good pay versus that same position in another space. I find that to be reassuring if that's something you need in your life. Not everyone does, and some people are just like, "That product is boring. I don't like it," which I also get. When I was in the fitness industry, that was sexy as hell. You're surrounded by fit coeds everywhere. You can dress in shorts and a t-shirt. Now, pre-COVID, we were in suits and ties. It was a little different. There was some cool stuff there too. As I get older and now that I have kids, I think about it. I think, "Geez, with everything that happened with COVID, there are few other industries I would want to be part of other than insurance." We were still working. There were still opportunities. You might have to think a little differently, pivot a little bit, but the opportunities were still there. It's not like a lot of these industries where they're just like, "Nope, you're done. Have a nice day. You're not making money anymore."

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I slightly disagree. I think the world you're describing is changing. I don't see a lot of job security. But maybe that's because we cover layoffs. We tend to be on the side where people come to us and say, "Have you heard of an opportunity?" or "We had to decrease force." Obviously, Glassdoor and layoffs.com and a lot more carriers are looking to become more efficient. That often means automation is up and certain roles are going down. It all depends. You said you can be many things in insurance. It's also on the insurance professional to make sure that what he's offering or bringing to the table is relevant today and will be relevant in five years from now. It's hard to change when something hits you, but if you have time to think about what you're doing... From the longest I can remember, just talking about myself, I overthink and overanalyze. It's a blessing and a curse. If you're passionate about what you do, you can't stop thinking about what you do. That has been my world. But I do think that claim adjusters may have a harder time. Customer service roles where you don't know how to ladder up can be a challenge. Again, InsurTech is bringing new opportunities. But with that, it's not the same job security as some folks had.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, for sure. I think that's fair. The world I always think through first is the agency world. I think job security in an independent insurance agency is very secure. I don't think there's going to be a huge hiring push in agencies because many agencies are looking for ways to become more efficient. But what I don't see are people getting fired from agencies. I think agencies are saying, "Okay, we have a team of 10. We might not need to hire another person, but we can grow with this team of 10 and we don't need to get rid of anyone to add efficiencies." You operate from a different angle and see different pieces, so I think that's a fair point. From the agency side, I do still see a lot of job security, if not more, particularly for people who are willing to operate in some function of a sales position. It doesn't have to be a hardcore outbound sales position. It could be a service-oriented person who's willing to cross-sell. The deeper I get into the agency, the more I realize how valuable someone who is willing to ask someone else to buy something is, and how few people there are who are willing to do that. Even if you're bad at it, if you're willing to ask someone else to buy something from you, that is an enormous asset in your skill stack. Maybe my mind is skewed more towards those sales-oriented organizations. I'm sure if you're running a startup right now in insurtech and you're looking at investment dollars drying up and people getting scared and holding back, you're probably nervous. You're probably thinking about letting people go.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Yeah, I agree.

Ryan Hanley: One of the things we didn't talk about on the phone, and you can talk about this as much as you want or don't want to, but I think it's interesting. I don't know a tremendous number of people from Israel. I'm just interested in a little bit about how you came from an Israeli insurtech. How are the worlds different? Do they operate differently? Is it basically the same, just slightly different cultures, or are the cultures dynamically different? Whatever parts of that experience you're interested in sharing, I'm just interested in that.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I can only speak from my experience, obviously. When I worked in Israel, I worked for an insurance agency. I joined when I was 19 years old. Back then, my understanding of insurance was very little. It was a lot of asking people. I was the one asking people to buy. It was around home insurance and auto insurance. But you did many things at once. When you needed to follow up on billing or on claims, you did that too. I was always wearing many hats. Back then, we had something that was very similar to comparative raters right now, and I didn't trust them. I would just go directly to every single personal lines portal that we had and use it. My colleague, who was older than me probably by 20 years, loved that efficiency and being able to see a spreadsheet of about three quotes at the time. Then she would go and finalize one. It had nothing to do with age or being digital savvy. I don't think I called myself digital savvy at the time. It was just about wanting to do it. I would take the long route. In everything in life, I take the long route. Coverager is still 90% family business, and now we have Nick. My brothers were like, "Well, you will take the long and safe route." That was me from the beginning.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: The culture back then, I don't know if it's different in the U.S. When you're in a sales role, you want to sell. I had no problem saying, if a person is on the phone, you're always very polite. You know your shit. You know what you're selling. You pay attention to coverage. But my first question was, "Okay, are you shopping? What's the quote? Where do I need to get?" I'm not here to waste your time or my time. Price was really important. Even though it was a lot of fun working, sometimes I would leave work tearful, and sometimes I would leave work happy. Salary was awesome. Hours were flexible. I was able to go to school and finish my math degree while working in insurance, and nobody was making the money I was making. That was the reality of it. Maybe here in America, things are done differently. Maybe in Israel, there's a more open culture where you could just ask. But I'm not entirely sure about that because I do hear other people's feedback. I think it all depends on the relationship in the state and where you want to get. As an agency, you have the carriers that you represent, so you have an idea of where you can go. If someone came with a really high Mercedes and they didn't have a loss history, that would have been a challenge for us. I would have to knock on my boss's door and say, "Do you actually want this? Do you want this risk?" It was a lot of backstories. It was not all automation placed to risk and go. We used to get a lot of fun stories.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: We actually had one where somebody was going to a gala. Israel is not big on galas. Back then, we would go to weddings in heels and nice jeans, Diesel when Diesel was something. But he wanted to rent a really expensive necklace for his wife, and we had a few hours to insure it. We called the underwriter. There was no way it was going to be done just by going through portals. You pick up the phone to the underwriter half an hour before she needs to leave and catch the bus to go home, and you say, "Do I have your word? Is this covered?" She was yelling, "No, what are you doing to me?" and then, "Yes, okay, go for it." We all came back the next day, no claims. We're good. Bring that necklace back to the jewelry store. I learned that it's not all black and white. Sometimes with an agency, which you don't always have on the carrier side, you want to ensure the risk. You want to give service. You want to say yes. I think these were all helpful lessons along the way.

Ryan Hanley: I really love that story. I do think there are two types of people drawn to agency life. I think it's people who just like to make money, are sales-focused, growth-focused. That's just the way their mind works. And then I think there are problem solvers. People who just enjoy solving problems. They enjoy helping people. Anyone can get burnout. We're seeing that a lot with baby boomer agency owners. We're seeing agency owners that are just a little burnt. The ecosystem is so different from when they started, from when they were trained, from when they learned. Not right or wrong. But when you've hit a certain amount of personal income and now you're being forced to learn it entirely, it is different. This is a different way of doing business than it was. Not even just the core issues like writing coverage or underwriting still mattering. Communication is different. Speed is different. Technology is different. My father-in-law has talked to me before about how he communicates with people in their twenties when he has to sell them. Not that he can't do it because he's one of the best salespeople I've ever met, but he's shared with me that it's different. It's way different than how he used to talk to people. Everything about the transaction. I can see why they just kind of revert back to what they know because they're like, "I don't want to have to learn another new way of doing business." I think everyone got in the business either because they were looking for a way to feed their family and they're cool with sales, or they like solving problems. Probably somewhere in between for all those things.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Well, to your point, we're not always wearing that salesperson hat. For me, I stayed because I was probably one of the shyest girls you'll know, and it forced me to communicate with people. We had a very successful insurance agency. It's not mine. I worked for a very successful insurance agency. We started working out of probably an illegal space as part of a building in a city close to Tel Aviv in Israel. Right now, he's actually owning a building in Tel Aviv. Always growth, always more people, always more stuff to do. I would get bored easily, but to be honest, you're never bored when you work with people. At a certain point, you want to say, "What do I want to do when I grow up?" That's when I gave in my notice and left and decided I wanted to do something with my degree. By luck or by accident, I ended up working for an insurtech vendor. I took a business analyst role for somebody that was selling comparative raters — that same product that I wouldn't use. It was my job to go ahead and write requirements for it and then come to the US and work with agents to get them to adopt the product. I was always on the phone and always doing demos. If you know anything about online demos and an early-stage tech company, there are going to be a lot of hiccups. I had my mental rule: we don't talk about politics because in Israel it's a no-no. I'm not really good with sports. We'll start talking about the weather and chit-chat, and you get to learn. I had the best of time. Sometimes it wasn't always where I wanted to be. Insurtech doesn't move as fast as you like. If you want to do a lot more, that may be a frustrating point working for other people. That was my professional career. I had a lot of frustrating points. Then I realized the problem is me, in a sense, because I can't expect my managers to move as fast as I want to move. That was the importance of blogging. It's about controlling your own fate. It's bringing the crowd to where you think the industry can go or needs to go.

Ryan Hanley: I think we share that in common. I don't do well with bosses because I move very fast. You have to have a very special boss for them to allow someone they manage to run unbridled. I do not work well with a bridle in most circumstances. So I completely feel you. It's funny listening to you tell your story and talk about different frustration points and different jumps. You said you were a math major?

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Yeah.

Ryan Hanley: I was a math major too. It's just funny because blogging was my outlet as well. That was how I released whatever was going on. My wife used to ask me all the time, "Why do you feel this sense that you have to write or create or do a video or a podcast? Why do you have to?" Now she's kind of accepted it and it's good. I was like, "Lauren, if I don't get whatever's up here out of me, it's like poison. I just need to get it out, whatever it is." If it's just a blog post about workers comp, that's fine. It's not as cathartic as other pieces of content, but you just got to get it out of you.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: You know what it is, Ryan? It's not just about the act of creating and writing because it's really tedious and lengthy and you're not always on people's positive side with what you have to say. It's because it works. We put ideas in people's minds, or we emphasize or echo what they've been thinking and they're afraid to say out loud. What you're seeing is progress. I can look at progress in different ways. Progress is an insurance professional going from career A to career B because he's more knowledgeable of the space. I can look at it as a partnership or a really early-stage startup that's basically a landing page and two people getting a call from an incumbent, an established carrier saying, "We saw you being featured. What is this about?"

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Right. It's all these encouragements along the way. Back then, when Coverager was Insurance Entertainment, before it was Insurance Entertainment, it was just a chef, a business analyst from CNA. I would go to... I think I once emailed Insurance Journal. I write really nice emails for a living, you guys know that. But I wanted to cover an article about commercial insurance agents and the digital space. Didn't hear back. Property Casualty? Didn't hear back. I volunteered my time at different associations for marketing and whatnot. I can't even remember which ones. Never heard back, never heard back.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I thought to myself, hold on. If I'm an educated insurance professional working for a carrier, never not worked a day in my life, why is it so hard to offer my time to be a part of a community association or anything? I do want to give credit to Marty Agather. I don't know if you used to work with him. Marty Agather. I'm sorry, Marty. He's one heck of a guy. I met him in person at an event. I was doing infographics at the time, back when President Obama was president and he got a puppy to the White House. I thought my whole world was insurance agents, and I thought if I could help insurance agents create content for social media, so it was an infographic about pet insurance. It was just current events leading into pet insurance, really basic stuff. Kind of embarrassing to say this, but it's been years ago.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: He paid attention to me. I thought, okay, he didn't know me. I guess he just saw the passion and saw what was in it. We had a follow-up discussion. It was just so nice. But these are such rare encounters, where a complete stranger supports your cause. I can say that about all the 30, 40 seed readers of Coverager or Insurance Entertainment that have been with us throughout the years. So it's just a way to say thank you. That's all I can say.

Ryan Hanley: Well, Marty is one of my favorite people in the entire world. He's also one of the most genuine people in the entire world. He is a real treasure to our industry who I personally believe has been underappreciated by many people. It makes my heart sing that you would bring him up. I hope you remember the story as I remember it. But I do remember some of the people that said yes to me, because not so many people said no to me as much as it's just something that kind of goes ignored. Maybe they don't trust her. You know, we shouldn't trust her yet because is she committed?

Shefi Ben-Hutta: By the way, I ask myself the same questions. We get emails from startups and sometimes people don't understand that I have a daily deadline and we're a short team. Get to the point, tell me in an email if I can help, I'll help. But people just want to have coffee with you pre-COVID days. Now they just want 30 minutes of your time, and 30 minutes becomes 60 minutes. There you go, the day goes. Sometimes I just want to go out for a walk, and I'd always be around Coverager or insurance. So I do the same thing where I say, is this person for real? It takes a lot of commitment to do something. I always say patience, patience, power, because I know my journey. Maybe people were asking that about me. Now they realize.

Ryan Hanley: I think that's probably the case. Much of what you just described, I've felt. It's only from doing what you did: you just keep banging on the door. You keep banging. Then eventually you realize, fuck the door. I'm just going to create my own. I'll put the stick of dynamite on the wall next to the door, blow my own hole, and walk through. You can choose to appreciate that or not appreciate it. I think you've done that with Coverager. It's one of the reasons Marty actually initially introduced me to your work when it was Insurance Entertainment. He said, "Yo, Ryan, have you ever heard about this Sheffy girl? Come read this." That was my introduction to you. Then I saw something you wrote for Insurance Entertainment.

Ryan Hanley: I think you've done that. It's one of the reasons I've always had respect for your work. There are certain things you have said that I just disagree with. We've talked about that. That's not a bad thing; I think it's an amazing thing. But what I wish more of the industry would acclimate to, and I do believe this is rapidly changing, is that we agree on a lot of things. We disagree on other aspects. Some of it we just see from different vantage points, but we can also have complete mutual respect for each other's work. There was a time, even not so long ago, when that was not the case. If you did not act in lockstep with the standard operating procedure of the industry, you were pushed aside.

Ryan Hanley: There are countless people. My best buddy in the whole space, if not in life, Jason Cass, has only recently been accepted. This is a guy who for a decade was banging on the drum of change, digital, pushing forward, new business models. He has only just recently started to be accepted in the mainstream. They kicked him out twice. I've been blackballed from speaking events twice. I had an 18-month hiatus where literally no one would hire me to speak, and then another six-month hiatus. Both times you got to come back and go, "Hey, I'm good." Then finally, I realized that was probably the last time I was blackballed, probably 2015, 2016.

Ryan Hanley: Then I did something that I hated myself for. I was like, "Oh, I'll be more thoughtful of the things that I say and do in the future." A year later, I was just kind of like, why did I do that? I kind of hated myself for that because it didn't change my perspective, but I did dial back my perspective for a period of time. It ended up being an informing thing. I dislike that I did that. When I came to the realization that I don't need to kowtow to this position just because it fits a narrative that someone else thinks is the correct narrative, I stopped dialing it back. I said, "I'm never doing that again. I'll do pirate radio for the rest of my life if that's what it is."

Ryan Hanley: I have sponsors of the show. I only take sponsors who believe in independent agents, who believe in the movement forward. As soon as anyone starts acting in a way that isn't in the best interest of the industry as a whole, that starts grabbing onto the ideas that made our industry so stagnant and stale and one-sided 10 years ago, they're out the door. I don't mean to speak so much about me, just the idea that we need more people. There are people like you, hopefully like me, like Cass, like Marty, and many others starting to bubble up who just speak about what's happening. We don't have to agree to get along, I guess.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: For sure. I know your point about sponsorships. When Avi came on board, my experience is insurance, obvious experience is advertising and marketing. He said, "How are we going to roll?" I said, "We're just going to roll. You have to stick to what you believe in and always dial up the positive." People at the end of the day want to hear our different opinions. That's really why they come to Coverager. They come for the opinion. Even though people will say, "I disagree with you," I say, "Okay, good. What do you disagree about?" I don't always hear that follow-up sentence. We're not here for all of us to think alike.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I say this from a humble standpoint, even though I know at Coverager, we see details in and out all the time. We cover our bases. We talk to employees, we talk to ex-employees. We read so much. We read the fine print. We read what consumers have to say. Yet I'm still going to say nothing is easy in this world. Everything is super competitive. It's not what it used to be. It's not how our father or grandfather made money. People have options. We need to be new. You have to stand apart. You have to stand for something. Insurance is such a difficult business. It's complex. You sell a product, but then you make money on investment. People talk about focusing on the customer. I hear that all the time. "Focus, start with the customer." Meanwhile, you've got this indifferent consumer that will shop every six months. Not every customer should be treated equally or regarded equally. I think you should just start with a product, because there are so many products. The devil is in the details, or God is in the details, whatever train of thought you want to adopt.

Ryan Hanley: I like "God is in the details." I like that phrase too. A buddy of mine, I don't know if you know him, he runs Advisory Evolved. His name's Chris Langell. He was an agent and saw a need in the website industry, not just for new pretty pictures, but for people's websites to actually be tools for agencies. Advisory Evolved is a sponsor of this show, but I would support them even if they weren't. I watched this kid go from hawking Holman Autos to running a wonderful business and doing really good work for agents. He said the other day on Twitter, "We don't sell insurance to sell insurance. Period." I think that can mean a lot of different things for people, but I also believe it is absolutely true.

Ryan Hanley: It comes back to what you're saying. If you're going to be all about the client, then you need to be all about the client and everything that that means. Not just selling the next person whatever gets them in the door, because then you're not all about the client. You're just saying that because you think it sounds good. If you're going to be all about the product, then you really have to invest in your product and make it differentiated and make it interesting. Look at Lemonade. They have made it all about the product, even though the product is like whatever. It's nothing special, but they've been so focused on the product that they've got an IPO that some computer bot somewhere is telling people is worth $75 a share. For a company that doesn't make money, I can't understand how that's an actual evaluation when they sell policies that net $17 in actual revenue.

Ryan Hanley: I think they are a case... We talked a little bit about this. Sheffy and I had a wonderful hour-and-a-half-long phone call a couple of weeks ago. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I wouldn't share it with you guys because you haven't earned listening to that part of the conversation yet.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: That's a good way to put it.

Ryan Hanley: I guess what I'm saying is I think too often we're only playing lip service to the thing that we actually want our business to be. Be a thing, whatever that thing is going to be, but actually be it. Don't just talk about it. We're all guilty of this at certain times. I'm not trying to say I'm above this because I make fucking mistakes every day and I love chasing rabbits down holes that add zero value to my life or to anybody. But I do think that is the key. You have to be differentiated and you have to be better, and it only comes from being that focused on the thing.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I will share another story with you that ties to what you're talking about. There is an agent called Ed Gilman, I believe from Georgia. I met him once or twice. Back when I was working at CNA, I didn't start blogging at the time. He said two and a half things that are still in my mind and got me to really blog, because I was concerned: "Do I have something smart to say?" is the first question. He said that the average in the industry is really low, that agents are not marketers. He also made a comment that people are satisfied with very little, kind of incremental growth.

Ryan Hanley: That is the most bush league podcasting move ever. I just allowed my phone to ring while we're on. I apologize.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Oh, come on. It's just informal conversation. Hi everybody, bye everybody.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Agents can't be all that great at marketers because of budget, and because they're marketing other people's product. You're always in the middle. Lemonade wasn't in the middle, so they were able to do more, and obviously a lot more cash to begin with. There is an element of people just being satisfied with the status quo. We know that. I won't say that insurers don't innovate. You will never hear me say that because we cover change all the time, and there are always things that carriers are doing. Maybe people will say, "Well, they're not innovating fast enough." Again, our customer is indifferent. Are they expecting that innovation to occur? What does that look like? We have seen cases where you go a certain technology route one way or the other, and it doesn't really pan out, and it's still costly. Insurance has an issue with margins here.

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Telematics is the best idea that doesn't produce positive results. I'm not bullish on telematics, home or auto. I'll just put it as that.

Ryan Hanley: That's very good. I do think home telematics in terms of water sensors and some of that stuff can have a long tail impact. But the tail is very, very long. I don't know that customers stay with a particular home carrier long enough for that long tail to pay off. Auto telematics to me are a boondoggle. That's my take.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I think anybody that cares about their home can have that few hundred dollars to get the sensors they need and keep the carrier outside of that equation. Especially when for the carrier, everything he's left with until he actually understands whether there's actual claim mitigation that he's enjoying is that element of engagement. I think engagement is an overused word, just like community. We hear community, we hear engagement a lot around insurance. Really hard to do. You can aspire to do that, but I wouldn't bet all my money on it.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: The point is agents are stuck in the middle. Nobody ever wants to be stuck in the middle. Sometimes they are squeezed from other carriers. The question is what carriers they have in the mix and are these carriers true partners. Everybody's going to respond to that differently. There's an element of competition and collaboration. The space is so competitive nowadays that nothing is an easy answer. If it is, someone didn't do the homework.

Ryan Hanley: I have a couple of thoughts there. One of the things that has been the most eye-opening to me now that I'm an agency owner. I didn't see this when I was just an agent. I heard about it in my Agency Nation, Bold Penguin days, and I could empathize but never experienced it firsthand. Now that I'm the one signing the carrier contracts, connecting marketing reps, underwriters, internal staff, claim staff, service staff at agencies, and having those conversations, there is such a clear delineation between the carriers that are manufacturers of a product. You want to hold our product line, purchase X amount of it, put it in your store, sell it. If it goes great, if it doesn't, who cares? That's the way they operate.

Ryan Hanley: Then there are the carriers who come into your store. They put up a pop-up. They give you one of those wiggly worm things that goes outside your building. They're giving you dollars to do commercials on TV. They're helping you talk about their product and giving you talking points. They'll walk in. They'll go into the customer's house and do case studies with you. Both of those things exist, the full spectrum. I'll give a case in point because I think these things need to be highlighted: Cincinnati Insurance.

Ryan Hanley: If you were to say, "Are they cutting edge?" People would go, "No, they're not." They don't have a bot product that you can rate on Tarmika or SEMCI or whatever. They don't even have a bot portal that you can go into. I still send them ACORD forms for everything that gets quoted. I prefer the ACORD forms. Outside of the bot business that fits a tool like Tarmika, which I absolutely believe in, this small commercial rating space is huge and can be very profitable beyond the accounts that fit those products. That tool provides a huge benefit. Going into all these raters and punching information in is a nightmare. I hate it. I can just put an ACORD form together and ship it off to them, and in two days I get a quote back. Then I can talk to the underwriter and go, "Hey, I think we could get this account if we could put like a 2% IRPM credit on it because the management's been in business for 10 years and they're wonderful." They're listening and going, "Okay, yeah, I think we can do that here. We'll adjust."

Ryan Hanley: Is it this slick? Does it have APIs and asynchronous load, all these stupid terms that technologists use all the time? No. They have none of that stuff. Do you know what I write? Like 80% of the accounts that I quote with them. My clients are incredibly happy. I'm incredibly happy. Their customer care center is probably the best customer care center in the entire country, if not in the top three. I literally have someone that when I get a service request, I forward it to her like she's sitting right behind me, and she takes care of everything. Everything that could possibly happen, she takes care of all of it. It's seamless. It's amazing. Nothing about it is overly technology forward, but it is still a best-in-class relationship and product delivery to the customer.

Ryan Hanley: The customers don't care that I didn't quote it through some fancy freaking HTML5 portal. They don't care about that. They don't care that I'm not geo-synced into a Slack channel with automatic pings and text automations on the service center. Clients could give two shits about that. You know what they care about? When they forward me a certificate request, an hour later, a certificate shows up in their inbox. That's what they care about.

Ryan Hanley: I worry about this. I actually told them this because I had a call with them yesterday. I said, "Please don't change. Please, please don't chase the technology rabbit too far. There are some things you can upgrade, and I'm positive there are some improvements you can make, but you have some core things that other carriers have lost and can't get back. They've gone too far down the technology rabbit hole. They can't get back to where you are. So please don't lose this. Please don't read the headlines. Stay who you are, because I love you just the way you are." I worry that all of a sudden there's going to be these machines. I just don't want that. The question is, how many Ryan Hanleys can Cincinnati Insurance get? That's really the challenge.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I think you are absolutely right. The client doesn't care. For them, you're doing the work for them. Give them the certificate of insurance. It's not necessarily about 60-minute quote and bind. It's not going to be like that for every single product. But with Cincinnati Insurance, obviously you have some say in their premium and the coverage, so it's relevant to a lot of your customers. That's why I say start with the product. We like and we disagree on the Tarmika model, because I came from this world and I didn't see it being adopted, especially when you're looking for scale and you're pushing towards apple-to-apple. You said two key words: "those products." The whole issue with small business is that it's fragmented business, and we want to give people the sense that you can actually compare.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Even with Coverager, we thought we were a perfect fit for somebody like Hiscox. We also tried Next, and we ended up shopping through CoverWallet. There was an awesome agent there that was willing to pay attention to our media coverage needs, which wasn't something that we were qualified or capable of doing ourselves online. We went to an independent agent before that. They gave me the feeling that the amount of premium they're going to make on me wasn't worth their time. I understand that. It's a really bad place to be in because I can't influence that at the moment. I can't create more insurance needs than I already have. I already questioned my need for cyber liability insurance, but okay, fine. Neither Avi nor I are going on our account balance and saying, "Deduce, deduce." That's not our mindset. That's not how we roll with Coverager.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Small business has big problems because it's all over the place. Sometimes when you're too focused, there isn't a lot of scale. When you want to expand, you're dealing with different kinds of risk. That's a challenge, and that's the beauty of the space. I wouldn't necessarily tell Cincinnati Insurance to change everything. Not having a portal though? Come on, you need a portal.

Ryan Hanley: Well, they have one. They just don't have one where you stick all the underwriting information into a thing and it pushes back a number.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Okay, well, so yeah. If the product is good, and obviously you're going back for the product and for the service, to the end user they don't see that because that's the service you provide. That's why you're still relevant. You're still in the game. It's all a matter of how much of a commodity product are you selling. Lemonade renter's insurance? Absolutely commodity product. But if there are nuances because it's small business, small business still needs media coverage or different kinds of legal coverage, D&O. Sometimes these are relevant coverages even when you are a five-person shop. Sometimes the end user doesn't understand that.

Ryan Hanley: I think about how short-sighted a decision it is for someone to look at your account and say, "That's too small." I know agents do it all the time. I wrote one the other day. The guy was... I've talked about this on the podcast before. I made $60 on this account. I don't care. You know why? Because I have someone out in the world who thinks that Rogue Risk is a problem solver. Someday that guy is going to tell somebody, and they might own a freaking manufacturing plant. That's a hundred thousand dollars in premium. To the average person, they don't care. It doesn't mean anything to them. They're just like, "Oh, this is my buddy. He owns a business too." It doesn't matter to him that his business is a small art studio and his buddy's business is a $50 million manufacturing shop. That's just his buddy who owns a business.

Ryan Hanley: I know this is what agents do, because I heard it when I was with TrustedChoice.com. One of the things they did very well was the recording of phone calls. I've listened to thousands of agents take phone calls from clients. The amount of agents that do revenue triage is, in my mind, horrifying. You're literally saying, "You're not worth my time." I get that from a straight dollars and cents mentality. If you're stacking up the ones and zeros, talking to this person doesn't make time. It doesn't make sense. It's why I disagree with you on Tarmika. I feel like you take that person's information, you shove it in there, you get a quote, you can turn it around and quote and bind in 20 minutes. Now it becomes profitable. But you don't know who that person knows.

Ryan Hanley: If you think about it just one level deeper, what about their personal stuff? What about all the referrals they can send you? What about the positive Google review you can get? On and on. You just go a few layers deep, and now all of a sudden that person is incredibly valuable. Revenue-wise at that moment, did they buy you your yacht? No, they did not. But they just stacked up four or five really incredible pieces of value. Most people just don't think that way, but the opportunity is there for those who are willing to think just a few more layers deep. I believe it. It's a tough business. Don't get me wrong. Small business is a tough business, but I do believe it's there for the taking for the organizations who want to engage with it and set their business up properly to serve it.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: This goes back to what I was trying to say in terms of having the mindset of "we're satisfied with how we're growing" versus your mindset. I'm doing business. I'm hungry. I want to get every customer. I want to give service. I just want to grow. It's not just looking at how many dollars can I generate for that agency at the end of the year. Still to this point, we were currently doing a survey for commercial insurance agents, and a lot of the responses are still, "We're growing through referrals and word of mouth." I do think Coverager will change that. That's what I like. I look at it like really little things: a new website, a new landing page, a new logo, new management, whatever it is. Small changes. But sometimes not everybody is feeling the change all at once, or depending on the line of business. For a lot of agents, they're still doing business how they used to do it. Eventually, it's going to stop.

Ryan Hanley: Sheffy, you realize that "we do most of our business through referrals" is code for "I don't have a fucking clue where my business is coming from."

Shefi Ben-Hutta: I once had an agency council at CNA, and I was responsible for the digital session. I asked, "So how do you get your customers?" They said, "Referral." I said, "When you have a conversation with them, do you ask how they learned about us?" Most of them said no. I thought, well, don't you just want to have a conversation? I ask people about Coverager all the time because Coverager is word of mouth. We don't advertise at other media companies to say, "Subscribe to the newsletter." We don't believe in that. I still like to ask, "How did you hear about us?"

Shefi Ben-Hutta: And see what their response is. Somebody forwarded it, or it was a conference back when there was a conference. But most of the time, it was somebody forwarded the email, or you wrote this piece of content. Right.

Ryan Hanley: Right.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: So. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. We've just put an hour on the books. It went by in a snap.

Ryan Hanley: I appreciate your opinion. I love that you are out there, that you're doing this work, because I think it's very important. I think your opinion is important. I think your perspective is important. I also really appreciate that you're someone that I can disagree with and have a wonderful conversation about that disagreement that is smart, and that you don't take your perspective too seriously. Because I think that's what gives it power—is that you have a perspective. It's an educated and learned perspective. But at the same time, you're not taking other people down to make your perspective validated. And I think that is a testament to you and to Avi and to your organization.

I would just encourage everyone who is listening, if you're not subscribed to Coverager and you're not following Shefi on LinkedIn, absolutely do both those things as soon as you are done listening to this podcast. Thank you so much.

Shefi Ben-Hutta: Everything you said, it goes right back at you. I think we're playing in the same space in terms of creating content and serving kind of the same purpose. I think there's an opportunity to move people forward. I really believe that content is king if the kingdom is interested, but that's the thing. We're in the business, so we know what interests them because we get to see the behind the scenes of what they click and what they like and what they comment on.

So thank you so much for having me. I told you, we shouldn't be strangers. And I know everybody has—you have your startup to work on and Coverager takes time. It always comes back to time. But let's not be strangers.

Ryan Hanley: Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thanks, Ryan.

[Music begins to play]

Ryan Hanley: Hey guys, how good was that episode with Shefi? I just love her. I think she does a tremendous job. I have so much respect for her. And I hope that if you aren't subscribed to Coverager, that you're going to—as soon as this episode is over—you're going to go subscribe to Coverager, which is free, right? You just pop your email in and you get the emails. It's that simple. We're not talking about investing money. Just be part of the ecosystem. Learn what Shefi and her brother Avi have to say. You're going to be happy that you did.

What I want to tell you right now is we have three additional sponsorship slots. If you are a company looking to get in front of independent agents, looking to get in front of independent carriers, want to get your message out into the world, we have three slots open for sponsorships for this show. And if you want one of those slots, just email me, ryan at ryanhanley.com. Email me, let me know what your business is about, and we can talk about sponsorship.

One caveat to this is, this show supports the independent agency channel and supports it in a very discerning way. For that reason, if you are not in support of the independent agency channel, then this is not the right show. And you can still reach out. That's cool. I'm not hating or whatever, just because everyone's got their thing. The only sponsors I will allow on this show, however, are organizations that support the independent agency channel and are in it to win it for the long term.

So if you think your company fits that, if you want to get in front of the largest audience in the insurance podcast space—you're right, you heard that—then email Ryan at RyanHanley.com and we'll get you hooked up.

All right, let's get on to the outro music, which is The Balls.

[Outro music plays]

The Balls: [singing] Thank you. You go fuck yourself with your fat fucking ass. Do you want to have a few drinks and smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes! Take it! Story! Take it! Oh, oh, oh. And smoke a joint, Bubbles? Yes.

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