--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have an absolutely tremendous episode for you with Daniel Seong, the founder and president of Great Park Insurance out in California.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You've probably heard some of Daniel's story. He's been on David Crothers' podcast, he's been on The Insurance Guy, he's been on Cass' podcast. It's wild, you know? Sometimes I listen to all the podcasts from the other great podcasters in our industry and I just hadn't had Daniel on the show. I felt like I know him so well. I follow him, we interact online all the time, I have tremendous respect for the guy. It was just weird because I think we had spoken on the phone for like 15 minutes one time a few years ago, but we had never actually spent time together. That's really what this podcast is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We don't rehash his story. He's got a tremendous story, it's amazing. We talk a little bit about it, but go listen to one of those other episodes if you want to hear the deep dive on Daniel's story. I just wanted to get to know the guy. Husband, father, business owner, veteran. Just a tremendous, tremendous guy. I wanted to get to know him better, and the beauty of this podcast is I share these conversations with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think you're going to absolutely love this show. I know I did. Even if we didn't record it, this would have been an incredibly meaningful conversation to me. It was incredibly meaningful, it is incredibly meaningful. I think hopefully now I can consider Daniel a friend, and I think he might think the same. That's a wonderful thing, at least for me it is.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Just enjoy this show. You're going to love it. If you do love it, leave a review, subscribe, tell a friend, whatever, all the things. It helps the show grow, helps more people find the show, and I appreciate that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to talk about today's sponsor, and that is Tarmica. Guys, I've been talking about Tarmica for like two years now. If you're not on Tarmica, you are missing out in the small commercial game. T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. Tarmica makes small commercial profitable. Our entire agency is based around small commercial. We could not be what we are in the 18 months that we've been in operation if it wasn't for Tarmica, hands down. They've been a tremendous partner of ours, and it has been such a pleasure to have them as a sponsor for as long as we have because every time someone signs up for Tarmica and starts using it, the industry gets a little better. We get a little better as an industry in serving small business customers.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com, go to Tarmica, get the demo. If you write small commercial, it's a no-brainer. There's not really a whole lot to say at this point beyond that. Just T-A-R-M-I-K-A.com.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: On that vein, one of the companies making small commercial profitable is Coterie. Coterie Insurance, C-O-T-E-R-I-E. Coterie Insurance, small business insurance. Guys, I had an agent on Twitter the other day ask me about who are the top tech-forward carriers. Out of the five that I listed, Coterie was one of them. The way they make quoting easy, how easy they make binding and issuing. You can even send someone a link, they can fill out all the information, quote, bind, issue right there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I know you guys are saying, "Well, Ryan, we want to touch and talk to every one of our clients." Yes, of course you do. But sometimes the customer just needs to get something done. It's not the type of policy that you need to have some hour-long, epic, fact-finding discussion with. Sometimes it's somebody that just needs a $500 GL policy. If they can answer a few questions and get that done, you're doing them a service. Coterie is one of the few companies who are stepping out front to really help agents deliver that kind of service.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's a reason small commercial is tough to be profitable. Coterie is one of the companies that is helping solve that problem. We use Coterie here at Rogue Risk, and we're proud to be partnering with them. We look forward to partnering even deeper with them and making them a more integral part of our agency because I think they're headed on the right path. I like the people. I like what they're doing. They're smart. Ray Lynch, former Liberty guy, just super smart people over there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Go to Coterie, Coterie Insurance, C-O-T-E-R-I-E Insurance. Just Google Coterie today. Get signed up. If Coterie fits your mix, if you're trying to write small commercial, highly recommend them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's get on to Daniel Seong. Ryan, how are you?
--:-- Daniel Seong: Daniel, what's going on, man? I feel like it's been a long time, no talk.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes, that's actually true. That's why it's too long. I think we chatted for the first time, what, like two years ago? It feels like I know you because we're in the same kind of network and things, but we really don't know each other. Not as well as I would like.
--:-- Daniel Seong: It was funny. I was getting ready for the show and I don't do a ton of research on anybody. Mostly because I either know the person really well, or I purposefully don't want to do research because I just like being curious. I feel like if you over-prepare, you're less curious. Whether that's right or wrong, that's just the way I've always done it.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I had our conversation filed under "I just know him really well." Then I started thinking, I think we spoke on the phone for like 15 minutes one time a few years ago, but I don't know that we've ever actually spent a lot of time. So one, I'm very happy that we're finally getting to spend some time. I think it'll be fun for people listening to hear us catch up.
--:-- Daniel Seong: It is pretty amazing that in today's world, I can live in New York, you can live in California, we can pretty much never have actually connected even over the phone, and feel like we know each other pretty well.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I agree. It's easy to find information on you because you're everywhere and you know everyone. It's an honor and I was looking forward to this.
--:-- Daniel Seong: Well, it's an honor for me. I didn't know when I booked this that I had the fastest growing TikTok celebrity in the financial industry space. A million followers, just absolutely dominating.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're the celebrity, man.
--:-- Daniel Seong: No, not at all. We have a little family channel and I have fun with the kids and the wife with it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I didn't plan on starting at that spot, but tell me about that. You say you have a little family channel, but you do have a lot of followers. Talk to me a little bit about what it's like when you're doing this. I'm assuming you started it sharing some information that's super valuable or cool. I signed up for TikTok to watch your TikToks, which is cool, and I think they're awesome. But I'm sure when you started it, it wasn't to have all these followers, you were just sharing information. What was it like when you started to see that number spin and you were like, "Oh my gosh, people are really connecting with what I'm putting out there?"
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's a kind of a sad story. We started our first video on January 4th of this year. Christina, my wife, she has two older brothers. The oldest one being about 47, 48 years old. He's a spouse that works at home, a homemaker, and they have three kids. All of a sudden in the middle of the night we get a phone call that he had a stroke. It's been almost a year now, but he's completely paralyzed.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thinking about that, I told myself I am not going out like that. I wanted to create TikTok just so the kids could have memories and video of daddy being silly and spending time together. For Christmas, my third daughter bought me a dad joke book, 365 jokes a year. I was just going to read one joke and laugh, and that was going to be a daily TikTok video. Now it's evolved into more of a family channel.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: January 4th was our first video. Up until right around May, I think we had about 450,000 followers. All of a sudden in June, we got up to 1 million. We were growing by 100,000 a week. At one point it was 100,000 in four days. Our biggest day was 50,000 in one day.
--:-- Daniel Seong: That's crazy.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It really is. I think the people, it's all about editing and the content. But if you look at our videos, the majority of them are single frame shots. Christina and I started just answering questions that our followers would ask. It's a very simple concept. There's really no editing. We push record, we answer the question. So a lot of our videos are single frame.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Our network is growing a little bit as people reach out to us. We're talking to different influencers. They sometimes put two or three days into editing a 60-second clip. We think that's really cool because there's all this stuff going on. They're telling me, "No, Daniel, we're trying to do what you do. A single frame, no editing, no context, no fancy stuff, but still get viewers to watch your videos."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's a very simple, basic channel. A lot of it is marital advice, raising kids, or just how we do things. Then I have this silly thing about me eating and I do this "perfect bite" type of thing to make it fun. I'm noticing the audience really does tell you what they want to see. When they come to your channel, they're coming for this one specific thing. In the beginning, I thought about doing all these different types of videos, but we're really narrowing it down.
--:-- Daniel Seong: How do you feel about that? I know this was something to a much smaller scale that Sydney and I dealt with a lot at TrustedChoice.com and Agency Nation. I completely agree with you. Your audience tells you what they want by views, by comments, by shares, by feedback. What stuff gets the numbers. But one of the things we used to talk about a lot was sometimes what they want isn't what you want to create or what you think is the most important thing to create. How much does the feedback you get, how do you manage the feedback versus what you're inspired to create that day?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We're a wholesome channel. We're not edgy. We're not controversial. But a lot of the things we share sometimes become controversial. There's a war or battle within the comments from the followers. But we ultimately want to take the direction of, "Hey, look, this is for people who are having trouble in business sometimes, or just in life, or parenting, or raising kids." We really don't try to sway from that. We have a general direction where we want to take it. But also knowing that there might be a question out there that we've never thought of, and this person is really in need of some advice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We have a lot of people who are DMing us privately and sharing, "Oh my gosh, your story of being on food stamps, working your graveyard shift, it really hit home with us because that's what we're going through right now." Those are some of the best messages we get. Sometimes I'll say, "Hey, what's your phone number?" I've reached out to a few people, complete strangers. Just me reaching out for that five minutes really does make an impact on them. Not because we're huge influencers, but because it's just somebody that went through it and can share a little bit of insight to let them know, "Hey, it's going to get better. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but you have to work. You have to get after it. It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to take maybe a few years to really get through this." It's just encouraging them, empowering them.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: We started TikTok. I think the whole craze was probably about four or five years ago when TikTok was really booming. I think the best time to get into it was right when COVID hit. We're meeting a lot of people who have 5,000, 1 million, 15 million followers. They started right at that time where a lot of people were home and on their devices. We really just started right after.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The best thing about it is my kids think their daddy's cool now. They never thought we would get to 10,000 followers. Why would anybody be interested in what their daddy says? All the things I make videos of is just what we tell our kids on a daily basis. I think that almost validated my advice to them because now there's other people following.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's really neat is I think TikTok localizes it first. They spread it out to the For You page around your local area, then they branch it out. Now, Ryan, every time we go to the mall, the grocery store, Home Depot, anywhere we go, we get people who come up to us and say hi. "Hey, you guys are on TikTok." That's been really fun too.
--:-- Daniel Seong: Yeah, it's wild. That's so cool, man. I think it's cool that you reach out to people. The world needs as much positivity as it can get these days. I think your message, and I haven't consumed every TikTok you've created, but in the ones I've watched, I like that you marry empathy with responsibility. I think that's a really powerful mix.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I've talked a lot about how I'm a huge supporter of Jordan Peterson and his work and his message. I find it to be similar. Obviously, he's a different person from you. But the mix of being empathetic to someone who is in a dark place for whatever reason, while at the same time helping them understand that while you're not alone, you still got to do the work to get to that place if you want to get there and not have the same thing happen again. I think it's wonderful.
--:-- Daniel Seong: As an outsider, just watching you, I couldn't be happier. The people who watch your channel couldn't have gotten a better person to listen to and watch from. I couldn't be happier for you that you had this success. I think it's a wonderful thing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you.
--:-- Daniel Seong: So we talked about TikTok. One of the things that also really impresses me is the general way in which you... I find when I consume anything that you create, whether you personally created it or someone on your team, and whether it has to do more about you or the agency, it feels like anything that you're a part of has a pretty decent attention to detail. I'm wondering, do you think that's true? And where do you think that comes from? Why is it something that you seem to consistently pull through your life?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, I think it's a level of self-respect. There's so many outcomes that have come from this. I've always taught my kids, no matter what you do, you got to put your best foot forward. At the end of the day, Ryan, and you know this, you're exactly like this, I always wanted to be able to come home and look in the mirror and say, "You know what, I tried today. I absolutely did my best today." The outcome might not always be what you want. A lot of times we don't have control of the outcome. We have control of what we can do.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Even with the office, there are a few things that we put a lot of attention to. Growing the team, I've struggled with leading by example. I've struggled with clearly getting my vision from my head through my mouth to the team. But it's something that we work on daily. I think leadership and respect from the team doesn't happen overnight. There has to be this consistency and discipline that comes from the leader throughout years and years and years. It's tough. It's lonely at the top. A lot of it just comes down to self-respect.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: A lot of people say, "You probably got that from the Marine Corps." I probably did to a certain degree. But also just watching my parents when I was a kid, being so consistent and detailed. That's something that we do at home and something that we try to carry over into the agency.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I had never thought of discipline as a show of self-respect, although that seems to make complete sense to me. Have you ever read the book *Atomic Habits* by James Clear?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I haven't.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I would recommend it if you're into reading. It's a fairly straightforward read. One of the main concepts is about building habits. What I really liked about how James Clear broke down this concept was we wake up every morning with a certain amount of willpower, almost like a video game. We have a power pack, a little green line. Through the day, every decision that we have to make uses up some of that willpower. If you get good sleep, take care of yourself, and you're healthy, maybe you have more power. If you're exhausted, eating crap, and hungover, then your willpower bar is very low.
--:-- Daniel Seong: His idea with habits is the reason habits are important is because when you develop a positive habit, it doesn't use as much of that willpower. The reason I bring that up is when we go through our day as leaders trying to get things done, there are a lot of very difficult decisions we have to make. Even if they're not earth-shattering, they're decisions. Each one of those decisions whacks down that willpower.
--:-- Daniel Seong: What I've found, and this is something I've really had to work on at Rogue, is you never know when the really important decision is going to come up. The person who calls you and says, "Daniel, I'll sponsor your TikTok channel for $10 million, but you have to change the name and do this extra segment every week that isn't part of your show." Now you have a major decision in front of you. If you only have a tiny bit of willpower because you haven't had the discipline to put habits in throughout your day, you can't be the best version of yourself when you need to make that decision because you didn't know it was coming.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I found that to be a challenge. I'm actually working on it right now. I'm trying to be healthier and get more sleep because you never know when a decision or an opportunity is going to hit you. If your willpower isn't there, if that bar isn't as filled as possible, then bad things start to happen. You cut a corner. You don't dot every I or cross every T. That's where mistakes start to come in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I completely agree. I always tell people, 50% of winning is just showing up. If you're decent, you become the top 30%, 20%, even 10%. But that 2% is a dogfight. That's exactly what you just mentioned. When it really, really matters and you have to make that tough decision as a leader, do you make the right decision or do you make the easy decision? I think you nailed it.
--:-- Daniel Seong: It's interesting, man. Your story is so complex. I don't want to make you retell the whole thing because you've done an excellent job on different podcasts with David Carruthers and The Insurance Guys. I'd highly recommend anyone who wants the full backstory to go listen to their awesome episodes.
--:-- Daniel Seong: You've gotten through some of these hard times. The business went, you were on food stamps, you worked through it, built yourself back up a second time, you've been in the military. Life hasn't been easy. But now you're in a place where if someone were to snapshot your story today, they might get some of the nonsense. I've gotten this at different times in my life too, where they're like, "Everything's so easy for you, Daniel. Look at your life. You got this great agency, the branding, all these people, beautiful family, everybody loves you, the TikTok thing." They could snapshot it and start to tear you down a little bit, diminish all the crap you had to work through to get to this moment, which from the outside looks amazing.
--:-- Daniel Seong: How do you, from here, now that you're not grinding every day, a little bit of money in the bank, things are a little better, a little more comfortable, how do you keep yourself sharp today in this next phase of your career and your life?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What a great question. First, I want to say life is a lot better now than it was when we were really struggling. But just so everybody knows, we are nowhere near where we want to be. It is not as good as it seems.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It was interesting because the business that we're in, Ryan, I never knew how good it could get. I don't have a huge agency. I think our size is we're an $8 million agency now. 95% personal lines before the beginning of this year. Then we have about 5% commercial. Our sole focus this year was to really grow the commercial side. Now what's really encouraging is every month we're looking at about 50% premium being commercial. We're really growing that. It's a lot of fun, new goals, and things are working.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's so many points I want to make here. You know what I did this summer, Ryan? This is how good we have it now. My son, who was six years old a year ago, started tennis. Then my fourth daughter started tennis two months later. Then my third and fourth, and now everybody plays tennis. We do about 22 hours a week during summer for each kid. We're just in it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I gotta be honest, I have not been so unfocused in my life with the agency. During summer, my schedule was I was in the office a couple days a week because I was just out with them. I thought about, man, I couldn't do this 10 years ago. To have premium keep growing every month this year, and to have revenue increase with me less in the office, what a joy. What a joy, the business that we're in.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's really interesting now is my oldest daughter is a junior. We're having that talk about, "What's your future? What do you want to do? What school do you want to go to?" One of the conversations was, "What if I come work with daddy after college?" It hit me like a box of bricks. I knew that time would eventually come because I have five of them. One of them's got to come work with me, I would imagine.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To realize that she's possibly going to be here sooner than later, I almost felt vulnerable and exposed. Daddy talks to them about business up here where they have no experience at all. Everything I say is wisdom. But it hit me because they could actually walk into the office and find out that there's all these imperfections. There's so many areas that we're not doing right that we can improve on. It scared me a little bit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's kind of my next thing. I'm getting pumped up just even talking about it with you. There's so much room to grow. Why are we an $8 million agency right now? Why can't we be a $30 million agency? What do we need to do to get there? I always talk to the team and my kids about operating with the end in mind. If that's your goal, then all the work from now to that goal, you should welcome it. You should welcome all the sweat and the work and the hours that go into something like that if you're focusing on the end in mind.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm really excited for this second part of my life with the agency. We have new tools. That's what's pumping me up. I'm more excited now than I think when I first started the agency. My first five years, I took seven days off working a couple jobs. I was working from home, I didn't have a team. I was building, doing EOIs, ID cards, binds, code, everything by myself. With the second job, my income was around $400,000 that year. I could have done that forever, it seems. But I had a goal. To get to that next goal, there's some changes that you have to make.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't know why I mentioned that. There was a point I was trying to make. But I'm just excited. I'm excited to grow it. I'm excited that my kids are going to be coming into it. I'm going to make the decisions now so that when my kids do come into the business, I'm not embarrassed.
--:-- Daniel Seong: That is one of those fears that I can completely understand why you have that. But hopefully you don't take this the wrong way. I can say probably with 100% certainty that it's irrational. They would come in and be blown away by what you're doing. I get it, I completely understand what you're saying. At the same time, there's no way that you would be embarrassed when they got in there.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I just think about how emotional it would be to have your junior in high school daughter tell you that she's considering coming and working for you versus college. Or college in addition to, although save the money and go work for you, you'll get a better education today. I shouldn't say that. But what an amazing testament to the amount of respect, trust, and caring, and how you've built the relationship with your children that she would consider that. That's wonderful.
--:-- Daniel Seong: The other side of it too is she's probably going to be a baller. She comes into the business at 18. Think about how much of a start she'd have on everyone else in the space. You don't need a college education to do this job.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, yeah. But you know what I would do, right?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Just so that I make sure that they appreciate it more, I would have them go to school. And then also, I would have them work somewhere else in the insurance space. Then come work with daddy, probably in their mid-twenties, late twenties, just so that they can appreciate what they have here. That's what my wife did. She went to University of Rochester, that's where I met her. She went and worked for Marsh & McLennan in New York City. She worked for Marsh in New York, then Boston, moved back to the New York office. She worked for Marsh for like three years doing the mega, huge accounts, the Fortune, Dow Jones 30 accounts. Then when we decided to move home to Albany, where we're both from, she actually went and worked for another agency in the Albany area versus her dad's agency because she didn't want to just come back and go right to her dad. She worked there for like six months. I was basically telling her, "You're an idiot." Not that she's actually an idiot, but I was like, "Your dad has this amazing agency and he needs you." Then she moved over. When she came in, she came in with both. One of the cool things for her dad was now you're bringing in someone who has all this experience and understanding that they can then compare against what you're doing and add different processes and features and thought processes that may not be there. So it gives you this amazing advantage. And they have an appreciation for what you've built. So I think that's a smart idea. But it's got to be a pretty cool feeling.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm going to raise my hand here because I've always had a question for you. I never reached out to you. In the same respect, with your daughter not going into her dad's agency, I bet that was an option for you too, but for whatever reason you didn't. And you started Rogue Insurance, or Rogue Risk, at the start of COVID. For the first time in history, the world shuts down. Businesses 40, 50 years in business are shutting down. Everyone is scared. You've got to share with me the mindset and the thought process. Once you did it, a month or two into it, were you second-guessing it? You've got to tell me, because you've got to have walls of steel, my friend.
--:-- [Host interjects with a personal request to the audience]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, either that or I'm a moron. I was too dumb to quit. To give a little context, the way things ended with TrustedChoice.com was less than optimal. The way things ended with Bold Penguin was less than optimal. And I was straight shit-canned by the fitness business. I walked out of there saying to myself two things. One, I was floored. I started to say to myself, "Is something wrong with me? What's wrong with me that I've had three jobs that by all accounts should be good jobs, and all three of them ended suboptimally, with the third being the most..." I won't get into details.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So it's 8:36 on a Monday morning, October 6th of 2019. I'll remember it forever because it was this surreal moment. You want to talk about a business-style "never bring a knife to a gunfight." I show up for our 8:30 meeting, which the founder of the business had confirmed, which he never did. So that was kind of weird. He says, "Hey, you're going to be there, right?" "Yeah, of course." And I'm in gym clothes because as the CEO of a fitness business, that's what you wear. You wear Lululemon. You work out during the day because you want to be around your members and engage with them. He shows up with his attorney in a suit. I knew I was in trouble.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I leave that meeting and I said to myself, this is the universe, God if you believe in God, the muse, whatever you want to say, telling me that I have to go do something on my own. It was time. I had had these opportunities. All of them ended suboptimally. I learned lessons from all of them, but what was I going to do? Go work for someone else again and have the same thing happen? Obviously, there was some friction that I wasn't seeing. I called my wife and I said, "It's time." I have notebooks, both figurative and literal, filled with ideas and thoughts from conversations I've been a part of. 10,000 conversations in my TrustedChoice days. Conversations I should have never been part of on the 42nd floor of the Travelers Building, listening to executives who know the industry, who sweat out things that you and I will never know about the business. I was sitting there listening. I said, "I would be doing myself, my family, and whatever is pulling the strings in the universe a disservice if I don't take a shot at this, because it keeps ending poorly. To keep doing this would be a mistake." And she agreed, for some reason.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I did go talk to my father-in-law. I sat with him and said, "This is what I want to do. Is this something you would be open to me doing with you somehow in the agency?" He said, "I think it would be a better idea if you did it on your own." He wasn't being a jerk. He's my father and I have a tremendous relationship. He just said, "This sounds like something you need to go do on your own." I've been working every day since. Because our industry takes forever to get anything done, I wasn't able to open the doors until March 9th, even though the business was formed January 2nd. And March 16th, the zombie apocalypse hit upstate New York. That was really tough. I was fully committed to killing commercial middle market. We were going to go out and dominate. I'm going to marry digital and what David teaches. And all of a sudden, I couldn't get anyone. Who are you going to call in March of 2020?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This is going to sound crazy, but a big part of me says that COVID, at least for me, was the universe, God, showing me that middle market commercial was not my path. That this wasn't what I was meant to do. I was raised in a town of 900 people. The moments that you've had in your life, I lived those as a child. Small business, the people that run those businesses that bleed on the floors that they sweep every day, those are the people that I care about, connect to, want to help, give a shit about. During that time, the fact that I couldn't do anything with middle market is when I pivoted to small business and ultimately became the driver of what Rogue is today. Our tagline is "Small Business Insurance on Autopilot." That's been my mission. Our goal is 125,000 small business accounts in five years. That's what we're trying to get to.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I think that's so smart, Ryan. I think that's so smart that you were able to identify exactly where you naturally fit in. I don't think enough people take a step back and evaluate. To be honest with you, we were 95% personal lines, but it just sounds cool to say we're 70% personal lines and 30% commercial. It just sounds cool. I think a lot of us just get trapped in that. That's why people like you and all the other leaders in the industry, it's so good that you guys are creating these platforms. I guarantee you probably have never turned down a Facebook request where some new agent comes into the business and wants some advice. I think it's so neat. I don't think people do that enough where they reach out to people and just say what you did, or what I did. For you to have that self-awareness, because to be honest with you, there are a lot of small commercial agencies that are very successful. And there's a lot of PL agencies that are successful. I didn't know there was such a thing as a cluster when I first got into the business. I had to read up on deductible. Personal lines was just the path of least resistance. It was just easy for me. We're in Orange County, California. We'll never run out of potential personal lines clients. I wouldn't even dare step into middle market. I just don't know it. But how cool is that you went through all that? You have all these connections, all the knowledge in the world so that when the middle market does come up for you, you know how to attack it. I think that's so cool.
--:-- Daniel Seong: How cool is it that we're in an industry, on the independent side? I'm having lunch with a buddy of mine who is with a very, very big captive carrier for a very, very long time, 15 plus years. Very successful. One of the highest producers in the captive world here in Orange County. We're having lunch because he wants to come independent.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Going back to your point about the Facebook requests, I see this in the people that I envy. Envy is the wrong word. The people that I want to emulate, the Chris Paradisos, Cruz is a great example, Cass is a great example, as crazy as that asshole is. There is a serendipity to life that I believe in. You have to have a pretty big ego to believe that you can predict what's going to happen. All you can really do is connect with as many people as you can, help as many people as you can, give as much as you possibly can, and hope that when you need to take some of that back, you've deposited enough into the karma bank account. I'm mixing like 17 religions and thought processes here. What I've found in my life is that has been true over and over and over again. If you're just a taker, if you just connect with this person because you want to sell them something or want them to give you something, if that's all you ever do, then your road is much, much harder.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're reading some business consultant book about time blocking and all this nonsense, they'd tell you, "Don't take that 20-minute phone call with the rookie from Illinois who may never be anything to you ever. Don't take that 20-minute phone call." I feel the exact opposite and always have. I'm going to take that phone call all day. Did I make one less sales phone call or send one less sales email? Yes, I did. But to me, the 20 minutes with the kid from Illinois is a way more valuable deposit into the universe than the sales call. I can always make another sales call, but I may not always have the opportunity to connect, share time, and add some sort of value to the life of some other person. That is how I've lived my life as much as I can. Obviously, I'm not perfect. But that has been a valuable strategy. What it ends up being is a very zigzaggy strategy. You have to be okay with that.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I think that's why our industry is so great. I'm not sure if other industries are like this. I've talked to clients and other people who are in business. They'll knock out the competition as soon as they can. They'll punch them out. But today after our podcast, I'm having lunch with five other agency owners because we haven't seen each other in a while and we're just going to hang out. When we all hang out, all we talk about is the business and family. We're sharing what we're doing, how we're doing it. If somebody online searches insurance, they'll get our offices, but we're there to help each other out. There's enough for everybody. I love it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've been in the business for 16 years, started in 2005. It has not always been this way. This is a relatively new thing. Were there always groups of agents? Yes. But they would be like Scott Addis's thing where you would have one in each geographical region so you weren't really competitors. If you went to a Big I event, and this is not a knock on Big I, everyone would kind of keep their cards close to the vest. They'd shake hands, have some beers, go on the golf course together, but everyone would keep their tactics and their people very close to the vest. It was like, "Don't send your producers. They'll get poached." That has changed. I don't know if it's generationally or because of social media. I think social has a big thing to do with it, us being able to connect. That is completely changed.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: There's a guy right over here, Coleman Agency, Sean Coleman. He holds the New York state non-tested, the heaviest deadlift in the history of New York state, 895 pounds. Insurance agent right over here in Troy, New York. I see him in my gym all the time. We go and have lunch and I tell him what I'm doing. He talks a little bit about what he's doing. Ten years ago, we would have never done those things. It would have been a culture of "you do not share secrets." Today that is different. It's one of the things I'm the most happy about in our space. You can go have lunch with six independents and you're not enemies. You're like a little mafia. It's a wonderful thing.
--:-- Daniel Seong: I think you nailed it. I think social has a lot to do with that. Dave Jackson, Nick Ayers creating IAOA is huge. David Carruthers, you with your podcast, with Bradley and Scott, just bringing people together. You're not going to have somebody come on and not talk about the business or what they're doing or how they're doing it. That just creates opportunity for other people who are listening to reach out to them and start sharing. You guys have created this ecosystem and really changed the industry culture. There are a lot of agencies who are not a part of our groups, but with the small percentage that we do have, look what we're doing. You guys are the pioneers of it. I would be proud to say all my five kids are in the business. I would just be so proud. The opportunities are endless. I'm happier today than I've ever been. I don't have millions in the bank by no means, but I'm doing all the things I want to do. It's wonderful.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to go back quickly to a comment you made about during the summertime when your kids were playing tennis. The videos of your son playing tennis were awesome. I heard you on a different podcast talking about how proud you were about how hard he's worked. It's amazing. I'm kind of going through the same thing. My oldest is seven. This was his first year of real baseball, and he was on a travel team. I was coaching. It is a very interesting feeling to watch your kids do something and the pride that you feel for them. I'm going to get emotional just talking about it. Now my youngest one is in it too. It's pretty cool.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You made a comment about you were only in the office a couple of days a week and that you were amazed that you were able to do that, that you've set your business up in a way. My thought when I heard you say that was, "That's amazing. You're obviously doing something right, both from a hiring and process perspective." I know that you've had some really smart process-driven people into Great Park just from your social. I would love for you to talk a little bit about the mental side of dealing with that. I feel like a lot of people struggle to detach themselves and say, "My role here, if you make one decision a week that drives the business forward, that puts your people in a place to be successful, that's you doing your job." The buck ultimately stops with you. I think it's really difficult for a lot of leaders in our industry to say to themselves, "I can't get out of the business. I have to be here. What if something happens?" They drive themselves into a place of bitterness and a little bit of depression. I think it's a wonderful example that you're able to do that. How do you deal with that mentally? Or did it come naturally?
--:-- Daniel Seong: It did not come naturally at all, Ryan. To be completely transparent, this January is when I walked away for the fourth time from quoting and binding. You know what it's like walking away. I've accepted the fact that I'm probably not the best at doing something. There are probably people who are better. I've accepted the fact that I'm going to think, "You should have written the email response this way." What really helped me was if I'm trying to get to this end goal, I know I'm not going to do it by producing myself. I figured the team is more powerful than me by myself. Do I get anxiety about, "Oh man, they canceled this month"? I always wonder, "If I would have just stepped in or handled that, I wonder if they would have canceled." A lot of it was trust in the team.
--:-- Daniel Seong: A lot of people ask me, "How big is your team now? You're growing so fast." I tell people, we post all the new hires, but we don't post the fires. I go through a lot of people. I don't hire off of a resume. I don't at all. I look at the resume to be respectful when they walk in, but I want to see how early did they get there? What are they wearing? How are they talking to me? What are their mannerisms? I look at all those little things. A lot of people that I hire aren't licensed, but we get them licensed and trained. Some people are licensed, but it's about picking the right people. I fire pretty quickly. My fastest fire was at lunchtime. They started that morning and I fired them at lunch. It was best for them and best for us. They were fully licensed. I thought it was going to be amazing, but I figured it out pretty quickly. You have to accept the fact that you're going to train for two, three months and they might not work out. Did it cost time and money and energy? 100%. But if you don't do that, you're not going to grow.
--:-- Daniel Seong: First, hiring the right people, firing the right people, and then really just trusting them. In the very beginning, they were giving me a hard time because they're not used to me not being there so often. To be honest, it was a couple of days a week, but it was a couple of hours every day. I would go in Tuesdays and Thursdays for a couple of hours in the morning and I would bounce. Everything now is online. I can see everything. All of our phone calls are recorded. Not that I don't trust them, but they know they're aware of that. Training them, trusting them, making it fun, letting them know that they have complete control of how they handle this situation. As long as you're not abusive to the client or you're not stealing or doing anything illegal, I trust you 100% that you're going to handle this situation the right way. I think that is very powerful, letting them know that no matter what happens, I got your back. Even if they cancel, I got your back. That's been really helpful.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have a similar hiring process. I look at the resume, but I just care so much about the person. I've made hiring mistakes in the past. My first hire for Rogue was my first non-VA. We have a VA who's actually coming up on his one-year anniversary with Agency VA. He's been great. His name is Nathaniel, and we love him. But my first person here in the States, she had never worked in the retail side of the business. She was coming from Claims at USAA. She was marrying a state trooper up here in New York, so she was moving from Texas to New York. I got on the phone or the Zoom with this woman, and in five minutes I was like, "I'm going to hire her." I just knew it. She was taking the piss, in the British sense, not actual. She wasn't putting up with my crap. Not in a jerky way, but I need people who are going to be honest with me. Bam, bam, bam, bam. She was coming back and I was just like, "This is what I need."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I hired her as an account manager, but it was right person, wrong seat. She was the right person for our business, 100%, but the wrong person to be an account manager. She had a very good friend from Florida who had six years of experience and had had kids and needed to take some time off, but now the kids were older and she was ready to come back. I hired her to come in and replace Sarah as our account manager. We call them Client Success Managers. Sarah became an operations person. Now I have two people who are right person, right seat. I knew I had the personality right for the business. I just didn't have the right seat for her. Once I found the right seat, and she was great as an account manager, but I could tell. It's funny, man, when you see that click over and you get right person, right seat, it's like something changes. It's almost like a little confetti explosion. Boom, you found it. Square peg, square hole. Sometimes it's just wrong person, wrong business. That happens too. But that right person, I think sometimes you just got to find the right seat for someone if you hire on personality.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Or you could do Billy Wagner's thing. I love Billy to death, but his 65.3-month hiring process or whatever it is. I got 15 minutes into him explaining that in a webinar one time and I was like, "Billy, this is why you are who you are and you dominate." You've boomed at this last year. How big is the team now?
--:-- Daniel Seong: I have three people here in the States. I don't take a salary in the business yet. I'm reinvesting. I'm lucky enough with the podcast and having a wife who has a great job. I'm not taking any money out of the business. I'm reinvesting everything back into people. I have a salesman who lives in Chicago. His name is Matt. He's awesome too. I don't want to discount Matt. I just wanted to tell a story about right person, right seat. I have an operations manager and a client success manager. The three of them, I went to New Jersey for four days and logged in like twice, and the three of them rocked it. They're awesome. My goal now is to figure out how to keep them.
--:-- Daniel Seong: So that's pretty big success. Starting in COVID, in the thick of things, where do you see Rogue Risk?
--:-- Daniel Seong: Not even 20, but just five years from now, where do you see Rogue Risk? Five years would be really tough. My five-year goal would be kind of crazy because of what we're doing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So where do you see it?
--:-- Daniel Seong: Our game plan is everything that everyone talks about with home mortgages, the home, the mortgage referral process — we're doing that, but for small business. So if you are any kind of platform with business customers, particularly small business customers, we are the engine that you attach to. We build a deeper moat around your business, offer additional value to your customers, and monetize those customers by offering them either an embedded insurance product where we can actually embed the ability to quote right inside your solution, or we have a full referral platform where people will just forward us emails and calls. We build custom landing pages for our partners as well.
--:-- My belief is small business is so fragmented because small business owners don't know who to trust. The customer experience for purchasing small commercial insurance is often terrible. My methodology is I'm going to go find people who are — because I don't care if the small business knows Rogue. I want them to be properly protected. Obviously, I need them to know Rogue over time. But there are so many small businesses either underinsured or improperly insured because they don't know who to trust and they don't take the time. So they do things themselves.
--:-- If I can take a platform that has their trust — because they're doing their payroll there — and we can provide them with the opportunity to get good coverage reviewed by one of my licensed people, who then cross-sells things like cyber if they need it, and we're tracking their comp and handling them... We went very broad, very fast, contrary to common belief. We write in all 50 states, the lower 48, and we write every class of small business that exists. I have wholesale partners, direct partners, network partners. It's a lot to manage.
--:-- But the reason — and this is at the core of our business — is no customer left behind. I believe that no customer should be told your business is too small or your business is too difficult to work with. "I got to fill out a cord form, so screw you." That's the kind of stuff these guys do. Or, "It's going to take a month to get back to you because I don't want to deal with you, so I'm just going to hope you go away." I don't believe that's right. Small businesses are the crux of our country. It's what makes our country so special — that you get to own these businesses that are yours. I want to be as supportive of that ecosystem as I can.
--:-- Our goal is to have 6,000 clients by the end of 2022. That's our goal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Wow. 6,000 clients. Wow.
--:-- Daniel Seong: Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's refreshing and actually really encouraging to see how passionate and excited you are. In this podcast, there were two moments where you were really excited — when you were talking about your kid playing t-ball, and right now. To have you be that excited, the same as your kid playing t-ball, is encouraging because not too many people feel that way about their work.
--:-- I think you did the right thing. You picked your niche and you're running with it. I think it's so smart. I hope what people take away from this show is how with some passion and determination, you can build whatever the F you want. Your thing is different from my thing in a lot of ways. No better, no worse. It's exactly what you want it to be and can be whatever you want it to be in the future. It was 95.5, now you're moving towards 70-30. That's what you wanted it to be. That's tremendous.
--:-- And my thing is different. I think that is the absolute beauty of the independent insurance space — you get to build what fits you, your life, your family, and what makes you happy. All the mechanisms are there, all the people that support you exist. You could pick up the phone and call any number of a dozen people and they would either give you an insight, a tool, a connection, whatever you needed to help you get further. That's available to everyone if they ask. It's not just people who go on podcasts. It's available to all of us. That's why I love this space, man. It's why I do this stupid show. And it's why I love talking to dudes like you.
--:-- I love it, man. Hopefully next time we won't take so long to make it happen. But hey, I appreciate you. Obviously it's been from afar to a certain extent, but I have the utmost respect for you and what you do. I couldn't be more happy for you that you are now in a place where you can take some time for yourself and be with your family. I think it's a wonderful thing. I just wish you nothing but continued success.
--:-- Daniel Seong: Likewise, my friend. Thank you again.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Absolutely. Be good, man. Bye.
--:-- [End of episode. Promotional message follows.]
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