RHS 139 - EXCLUSIVE: Inside the SIAA Acquisition of Rogue Risk

Ryan Hanley: What's up guys, before we get into the episode, I just wanted to share some pretty big news for me and for my agency, Rogue Risk. Hopefully you guys find it interesting. We were acquired by SIAA. We will become part of the SIAA family. We will be a new division inside of their larger family of companies and work alongside their master agencies and agency partners to provide a digital insurance experience and platform that can help continue to boost independent insurance agencies, independent insurance professionals, producers, and client success associates on their career path. It's all in service of what has been my mission from the beginning that SIAA shares culturally, which is a no-ceiling insurance career. We talk about that today in this episode. I couldn't be more excited about this move, and I hope to share more information as we go. Let's get on to Matt Masiello.

[Transition to the interview]

Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home. All right, so Matt, this is a kind of a different show than the first time you were on two years ago, or whatever it was, a year and a half for your book. Kind of big news, at least big news for the two of us, I think, certainly for me and Rogue and all our team. You guys acquired us a few weeks ago.

Matt Masiello: Yeah, and it is a big deal for me. And this is a big deal for SIAA as well. Going back the 18 months, two years ago, whenever we did the show, you and I were spending a lot of time talking about what the agency of the future is going to look like. We work a lot with startup agencies and existing independent agencies that are trying to make that transition. I tried to get that across for our constituency in the book that I wrote and was fascinated to hear your opinion on what the agency of the future looks like. Like all good business people, you end up living what you think, and you founded Rogue Risk. We have just thought it's fascinating. A word that doesn't get used in the insurance industry a lot is "cool." It's a cool model. So we're pretty excited about this partnership.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Since it became official, I haven't wanted to make an announcement until we made a big announcement, which is obviously what this is. But I've told a few friends and people in the industry and talked through it. It's funny, every time I talk through both what our major plan is, as well as what my thought process was behind it—I think it's a fairly unique situation that an agency at our kind of existence, how long we had existed for, would be acquired or partnered or whatever the word is. But why we did it, I get more excited. Every time I talk about what we're doing and explain where we fit into the larger ecosystem, how we're able to leverage their experience and expertise and pull them all in, talk about what our master plan is, I get more excited. That to me feels like a good thing. You would hate it to be the other way, or just neutral. But to every time you talk about it be like, "Man, this is a really, really good thing." I'm completely reinvigorated. Not that I was down, but it's a whole nother level of excitement. So it's very, very cool.

Matt Masiello: I'm interested in, as much as you're willing to share, what was the initial thing about the model or the brand that caught your eye and said, "Yeah, there might be something here that could fit into what we're doing"?

Ryan Hanley: Well, I think there's a couple of things. And I think the first question is, do we actually tell your listeners where we were when we actually came up with this?

Matt Masiello: Yeah, this is my favorite story of all time. I love this.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. So you and I are both speaking at a meeting out west. The meeting's over, you're waiting to head to the airport, and I'm waiting to head out for dinner with some folks. I think two or three pints later, the discussion was—yeah, it might have been more than that. But the discussion was, "Hey, what if there were some synergies here?" I think for us at SIAA, we've been very fortunate over the years. We have helped a lot of successful agencies join and grow. We're just an enabler. We bring some of the tools and the entrepreneurs do it. But where we've been even more successful over the years is helping insurance professionals start their own agencies. These are entrepreneurs that are either producers or former captives that just want that opportunity to own their own agency. So we've helped thousands of insurance professionals realize that dream.

But over the years, we've come across a lot of really great insurance professionals that either don't have the ability to own their own agency or just don't have the desire. They like to be an independent agency and work with their customers, be in their community, provide a service, and help solve problems for both personal insurance and business insurance customers. At SIAA, we were trying to figure out how to get into that space, how to find an opportunity to help those really great individuals get into the industry or get into the agency side where they have those opportunities, but maybe they want to own an agency in the future, maybe they don't.

When you and I started talking about your vision, I think that was the initial attraction—the vision. A lot of your listeners have heard Ryan Hanley talk about his vision and his excitement about Rogue Risk. If we can take insurance professionals that are looking for a different work environment than that traditional independent agency or that traditional broker, and give them that opportunity to create success for themselves and their families, and maybe give them the ability to become a branch office or their own sort of independent agency in the future, the sky's the limit for those folks. At SIAA, we were looking to implement something in that. It comes back to what we were talking about 18 months ago or two years ago, both of us being of the same mind of what an agency of the future will look like. Fast forward to where we are in this partnership today, actually helping create the agency of the future, not just in Rogue, but potentially setting the path for other independent agencies to follow in how they are created or how agencies evolve into a different model.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's awesome. I was talking to one of my buddies—it may have been Cass, who the hell knows—and I was like, "Never let anyone tell you that beers at the bar after the conference aren't a good idea." What's funny about my side of that story is exactly as you described it. Then I get on a plane, I fly home, the weekend happens. The number of times that I have solved all the insurance industry's problems in a half-drunken conversation. Then when you emailed me and said, "Hey, I'm thinking about that idea. Would you like to have another conversation?" I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is pretty cool." In that time period, we had mapped out and talked about where there were some synergies and certainly some combined ideas.

When I really started to think about where we had deficiencies and where my deficiencies were as a leader, and where organizationally we had deficiencies, I did something I don't think I ever told you. I took that following weekend after you emailed me and I did a full map out of how long I thought it would take to get to where I really wanted to be. I did the math and I came back and said, "Man, with these guys, we're there in six months. We're rocking and rolling and full steam ahead leaning into the wind in probably less than 12 months." If I tried to do this on my own, it might be seven years. It might be 10 years, really. When I started to map out actual growth, resources, what we'd have to do, I said to myself, "What's more important? Is it owning the maximum amount of an agent of the business that I can, or partnering with someone and being able to actually execute on the vision of what I think is truly possible?" Delivering what I've kind of coined as a "no ceiling insurance career," delivering on that promise to the industry.

It just fascinates me if we can pull this off, which obviously I believe we can. I don't know anyone else who's ever created essentially an agency incubator system with the full ability to blossom into whatever you want. There's a lot of triggers, and you have to actually be able to do the job and you have to produce and all that kind of stuff. But assuming you do the work and you execute to be able to validate into your own location or fully outright owning your own agency or whatever, I don't know that that's ever been possible before. The idea is just so intriguing to me because of how many professionals I know wake up every day and are handcuffed. I literally was texting with a guy 10 seconds before we went live who is literally disconnecting from his dad and uncle's agency because they've just flatlined him. There's no place else for him to go. This is the son and nephew of the agency principals. They have flatlined him, and he is now starting his own agency. I wish it was starting six months from now because we'd be ready to get him into the Rogue system. But that shouldn't happen. He shouldn't have to deal with all that. There should be a path for him. To be able to deliver on that makes me feel very happy.

Matt Masiello: Yeah. There's a lot to unpack there. Starting at the end, we do see those traditional insurance agencies, and we should be really clear: the traditional independent agency is a fantastic business model. I'm very outspoken in the fact that right now today is the greatest time period to be an independent agent or in an independent agency or own one or operate one or buy one, for a myriad of reasons. The market share for independent agencies is growing in all lines of business. The exclusive channel is shrinking and we're picking a lot of that up. Direct is sort of peaking a little bit in their private passenger auto. So that's a lot of opportunities for us. Technologies, which we'll talk about in a couple of minutes, level the playing field for folks to move into these agencies.

If you were to do a SWOT analysis, which is really what you did after you came back from that trip, you looked at your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and you wove that together into what could be. I think independent agencies in general need to be doing that because if you're operating like an old way of an independent agency, that's a challenge. Young people don't want to work in those environments. When people look at you and say, "Oh, you work in an insurance agency," with air quotes, they're picturing that old type of agency. So we need to create a modern work environment for those younger people. They want to be involved in technology and the digitization of the business. They also want to work with their clients and customers the way they want to be worked with, utilizing digital tools and social media and various things. A lot of independent agencies haven't made that transition. That's their own SWOT analysis that they need to do.

When you took your SWOT analysis and you and I kept talking about it, I mentioned earlier that we're an enabler within the industry. We enable good people and good insurance professionals to either create or grow their agencies. I think maybe a better term than "enabler" is "accelerator." You can go out and grow an agency on your own. Ryan Hanley was going to be successful one way or another with Rogue Risk and the model due to the energy, the vision, the excitement, and all the people that are pulling for you with it. But if we can accelerate it, and if we can not only accelerate our own growth—whether it's SIAA's or Rogue Risk's—but accelerate other people's personal journeys and professional journeys, that's a really big deal. It starts with understanding your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and then figuring out where you go from there. In many instances, whether it's agencies joining us on the SIAA side to have access to horsepower and tools and energy, or whether it's us now with you bringing agents into Rogue and giving them those things, those are accelerators to growth. We're in an exciting time where acceleration matters.

Ryan Hanley: The other thing too is coming back to the time period, because I 100% think that you're right. That was another big part of what I did—I didn't technically do a SWOT analysis, but I guess I did. I looked at the window that I think we're currently operating in and said, "If I continue to grow at the pace that I am, there's a very good chance that even if I get to where I want to go, I've missed the window." What I mean by that is independent agencies today really do have the ability to have every competitive advantage against every other form of doing business. I don't care how big your budget is. I don't care who your backers are. Independent agencies who properly optimize the humans in their business—I've been banging the drum about this concept of "human optimized"—have literally every competitive advantage. Local speed, connection, understanding, expertise, market access—they have everything.

So to me, if I can take instead of five to seven years and compress that down into five to seven months to get to where I want to be, and now all of a sudden we're giving people this career or facilitating this career through Rogue where you're able to live a life where you can make good money, feel fulfilled, challenged, be proud of what you're doing, and actually help people in either your community or a vertical or an industry you're interested in—to do that with the backing of resources that come from the combined effort of what Rogue's building systematically and what you guys already have in place—to me, when I ultimately got to the end of it, it was just an absolute no-brainer. I've always found more happiness in watching team members reach their potential and thrive than I have in my own personal journey. This now fits right in line with all the other stuff that I love doing around marketing and sales and growth. It just made too much sense. When I really got down to the end of it, there wasn't much internal conversation to have. It felt like the right move.

Matt Masiello: Yeah, I agree. I think anybody that's looking to enter into business relationships with anybody, the first part of that scenario should be: do you like each other? Can you get along? Not just when you're having more than three or four IPAs, I think it was. But do you have the similar mindset? How do you complement each other? What are your strengths and weaknesses and what are mine and our strengths and weaknesses? To be clear with everybody, this didn't happen overnight. You and I have been working on this for six months. Through that sort of both informal and formal diligence, you start to figure out, "Yeah, this feels good." Good relationships feel good going into them. Out the other side of that comes success, which is going to be a really cool model. There's going to be a lot of people watching it. You and I have talked about it. We're excited about a lot of people watching this and watching what we're going to do with this.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It intrigues me that to a certain extent, there's not a lot of areas of our industry that are unexplored jungle. There's a lot of innovations to happen for sure, and a lot of people are getting better at building the mousetrap, I guess. But completely undiscovered countries, such as the ability for a 22-year-old unlicensed person right out of college—just using that as an example—to come in and say... Yeah, I've had a lot of people ask me, "What does this no-ceiling career look like?" I don't want anyone to hold us to exactly the words that we're using, but understand this is the map, whether the terminology and all the triggers are exactly the same is another thing. To come in and start as what we would call a "new business coordinator"—you're calling, you're talking to people, you're gathering information, you're moving them from leads to suspects. You're unlicensed, but you're learning hands-on. You're learning the agency work. You're getting involved.

You validate. You become, say, a "select producer." Now you're handling inbound leads. You're talking to people. You're getting a million at-bats. It's minor league baseball. It's all those at-bats. You can make a mistake because there's another one right behind. Obviously, you don't want that to happen, but it's going to. So we facilitate that. We train. We educate. We give people resources. We hold them accountable. We give them goals. If you validate there, you get to go to "Premier." Premier, now you're actually teaching you how to hunt. Now you're becoming a true, chest-thumping, conference-going agent who loves to talk about their big wins. We're teaching you how to do that, how to go out and prospect that vertical or that geographic region or whatever. At that point, if you validate through that process, now you have the option. You can stay and keep doing that. You could launch your own Rogue location. Maybe there's even an option for you to start your own agency out of that.

To think that at no time, because your last name isn't on the outside of the building, you're going to have a place that you have to stop—and I don't just want to make it about independent agents. Same thing with State Farm or an exclusive. At a certain point, your territory gets to a certain size. They're just not going to let you grow any more than that. I personally struggle with any scenario where I know that I can't go as far as I want to go. So some of this is me kind of facilitating my own fantasy. But it feels to me like something that people are asking for, and it just has never been available to them. The ability to blaze that trail—I'm sure we'll make mistakes and we'll have to rework things and course correct and all that kind of stuff—but to get to that goal, to me, that's work worth doing.

Matt Masiello: Yeah, absolutely. That trajectory that you outlined of the young man or woman coming into the industry and having that path is something that's rare unless there are agencies that are willing to make that investment into those individuals, or unless they go the captive or the exclusive route first. That creates a whole other route of obstacles. The other trajectory you and I have talked about is the M&A world right now. There's a ton of merger and acquisition going on. Not everybody wants to work for the agency that acquired their agency. In some instances, large agencies are acquiring agencies and they're limiting what producers can write because only this one can write that size or only this one can write that class of business. So this gives producers or account executives in agencies the ability to say, "No, I want that ability to do it all and go out and grow and come on board and be that premier producer or that select producer that we've talked about."

When we look at the number of agents in the insurance industry or agencies in the independent agency history, there's an insurance company executive that was quoted several years ago as saying, "Look, there's 37,000 independent agencies in the independent agency channel today. 10 years from now, there'll be 37,000. It's just going to be a different 37,000. It just won't be all the same ones." When we get to the agency level and there's hundreds of thousands of licensed agents in this distribution channel and the other distribution channels, giving them the path to be in a modern work environment is a big deal.

I actually heard today, which was the first time I'd heard it, that some of the exclusive carriers, the captive companies, are actually setting up virtual exclusive agency offices where they're not a brick and mortar storefront or they're not at a direct call center, but they're working virtually out of their home to be exclusive agents as well. This model of the virtual agent, if you will, with all the tools to build their business, their book of business, either in a geographic physical community or an online community—I think it's a trend we're going to see in the industry. I think we're in the right part of the wave on this together.

Ryan Hanley: In two years, zero clients of ours and prospects have asked, "Where's your office?" Zero. It's just not a question. Unless you are leading with that in your marketing, no one cares. If you lead with it in your marketing, it's different, but they just don't care. They want—I was talking to, I interviewed Zach Mefford from Coverage Direct for the podcast a couple of weeks ago. Super good guy, very smart. We were talking about the handoff from one provider to another and what people want today is expertise. They don't care if that expertise is down the street from them. If it's over the phone, if it's via chatbot, email, text message, they don't necessarily care. People are comfortable with different types of communication methods. But I think consumers, business owners in particular just because that's our niche, are so thirsty for someone who will respond and respond with a little bit of compassion and some expertise. If you can do that in a timely manner, that is the bar. That's what they're looking for. So they don't need you down the road. They just need you to get back to them, give a shit, and do a good job. If you can do those things, you can do them from anywhere.

[Interlude]

Ryan Hanley: What up guys. Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. In exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales—the things that are going to help you grow as a person and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show. Subscribe if you're not subscribed. I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show. I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode.

[Discussion continues]

Matt Masiello: An interesting comment there. Number one, small commercial is, as we know, an underserved market. Those of us on the smaller side of the independent agency channel, I always think that's crazy because that's how we make our bones—in the small business, local community business. But when you talk about when they need you, it's when they need you, it's how they want you, and what they need you for, how they want to access you. I think that's where there's still a disconnect. If you do want to be a storefront agency with a plate glass window on Main Street or a strip mall or whatever, that is a perfectly viable business for independent agencies to do. A lot of our business is still done on the Little League fields or BNI or Chamber or up and down Main Street supporting the other businesses or the food pantry or whatever the case may be. But also, if you want to be a virtual agency, you can still do a little bit of those things too.

In either of those scenarios, and you talked about the handoff, we have to allow our clients and our prospects to work with us the way they want to. I think the problem with the traditional insurance space is we still think that we can dictate to the consumer how they're going to buy a policy or how they're going to service a policy. That's nuts because the consumer dictates how they're going to buy and what they're going to buy at Walmart or on Amazon or at Best Buy or at Target or at the local store downtown. We don't tell them. We're the only industry that still thinks we can tell people how to buy things.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Matt Masiello: The consumer is going to pick and choose those things. We have to have that right handoff when, where, and how the consumer wants it. I've got a couple examples of that. One, if we're going to be an agent for somebody, I think the agent of the future is going to be both an agent and an advocate, or an advisor and an advocate. When we talk about how we're going to be an advisor, a lot of people say, "Well, duh, agents are advisors. We help people protect their most valuable assets." But what is missed in that is a lot of people want to do some amount of that work digitally, DIY. They want to get to a certain point and then deal with a human. We sort of think that they all want to talk to us, and they don't. At the point they need us, they want to talk to us. So how do we within this industry provide the consumer both the digital tools to access us from an advisor, an agent, a sales standpoint, as well as the one-on-one tools that we have?

The other part of it is we're advocates. We're advocates because don't forget, as agents, we all work for the carrier. We all tend to forget that. But we're advocates for our clients. We're advocates for them, maybe not performing all of the service functions that we've traditionally performed, but advocating for them when self-service or a via agency virtual assistant or a service center or direct reporting claims falls down, and we have to step in and do that advocacy. If we try and do it all and we try and do it the way we've traditionally done it, we're not available to the customer when, where, and how they want. We have a lot of agencies or agents push back on things like self-service or virtual assistants or service centers. My response to them is all you're doing is giving your consumer, your client, three or four different ways. They can still call you, but give them options. Give them options for when you're not open. Right?

Matt Masiello: This is the human-optimized agency. Digitizing functions so humans can be more effective in working with other human beings. I think it's just a great time. And I think, going back again, that's what we're trying to get other agents to listen to. But that's also what we're trying to build here and what we will build with Rogue.

Ryan Hanley: I'll give you an example. During the contractual process of our deal, I had my main attorney working me through contracts. Then there was a question about something with security, so he brought in a different attorney from a different law firm who was a securities guy. He came in for 20 minutes on a call and said, "This is fine. This is fine. You don't have any worries." Twenty minutes later, call over. I didn't go, "Hey John, what the hell? What's wrong with your law firm? You couldn't supply this advice?" I was like, "That's amazing." I just got 20 minutes from a top-notch security guy who my guy knew to solve our problem, give us the rubber stamp, and on we went.

Matt Masiello: Right.

Ryan Hanley: I feel like the agencies that struggle with this concept believe any point of leakage in the process where they're not handling it is somehow them losing connection with the insured. From my perspective, I tell my people, "Be the best at the things we're the best at. We'll find someone else to be the best at the other things we're not the best at." Our customers will love us more for surrounding ourselves with the best in those other things. That simple mindset shift allows you to be even better at what you do. Now you're not thinking about... I'll give you an example. Surety, right? You can have a surety expert, but if you're a standard property casualty agent writing commercial and you tell me you know everything there is to know about surety, you are lying. Surety is a whole different monster. It's important. I think way too many agencies give it away. But with companies like Propeller and Zip, you pick whoever your favorite is or do like we do — we use both. Both have strengths and weaknesses. Do you think one of our insureds has ever cared that either Propeller or Zip is the one writing our surety bond? No. You know what I get? "Hey, thanks man. That went great." This mindset allows me to be good at property, casualty, commercial insurance and not worry about surety or something else. It opens you up to be the best at the thing you can be the best at, which is what we should be doing versus this "we're everything to everybody." I just don't know that can be the future.

Matt Masiello: Yeah. You have to reduce friction in the process. We talk a lot about reducing friction between agents and carriers, and we need to get better about that. But what you're talking about here is reducing the friction between the agent and the consumer, the client. I'll say it again: some of us who think traditionally about the insurance process are creating undue friction. If we don't smooth out those edges in how an agent works with a client and offer them a smoother path and easier resolution, we should be driving the positive outcome home, regardless of how the transaction was created. But sometimes we're still creating that friction. My client wants to talk to me. They don't really want to talk to you, right? When they need you, they want to talk to you. Or if they have a question they can't answer online, they want to talk to you. But help get the friction out of there.

Ryan Hanley: I think we're in a really cool time to be in the industry. There's always room for an agent in insurance. This is a complex product. You can plug a VIN number in and buy an automobile policy with lower limits, but you won't know if you've got the right coverages. As people acquire assets, they want to know these things are being taken care of, and they want it done smooth. Our competition isn't Rogue Risk or the agency down the street or the captive agency or the independent agency across town. Our competition is how people transact business in other parts of their lives. It is much smoother. What we have to do is define our place in the insurance cycle where we're delivering value that the consumer views as value. If they don't view it as valuable, they will migrate to a process that does deliver what they perceive as value.

Matt Masiello: The other thing I want to say to people — a little piece of advice for their next conference trip — is the beauty of running a digitized agency, a human-optimized agency, is that you can figure out the way you work best and then find the customers that appreciate that way. As an agency as a whole, you need to be able to take in all forms of communication. You need to do online chat, text message, email, phone call, whatever. But as an individual agent, if you write badass cold emails and you're really good at them and that's how you like to start conversations, that's all you should do. If you like to cold call, if you like to develop referral partners, you get to be that thing. Once you digitize, you go from 15 miles from my agency location to a much broader area.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah.

Matt Masiello: I did a great podcast with Andrew Darlington in Eastern Tennessee. He always makes the joke that you couldn't find this place on a map and neither can I, even though I've lived here. But because he's a digitized agency and uses Salesforce and other tools, he expanded his base. Now he has as much ability to capture business as I do living in the Northeast in a semi-urban area in Albany. That to me is the big opportunity. If you can figure out how you like to do business, you can expand your geographical footprint or expand to another vertical and be exactly what you want to be for people in the way they want you to be it. You can find them, whereas before you were handcuffed by whatever was given to you in your local market. That should be a really exciting piece for agencies and agents.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. Your point about finding the right customers — it's the right customers for you as an agent or agency. I've talked a lot over the years about comparative rating. I've had agents come up to me and say, "I can't compete with this one or that one." It's usually a direct writer they're talking about that spends a couple billion dollars in advertising. I'm like, "Man, you're fighting over your weight class. Stop punching above your weight." Let's figure out who in your community — and let's come back to community again because I want the listeners to get this — who in your community wants your services, needs your services, and sees value in your services. Somebody who sits in front of a comparative rater and offers the lowest rate every time the phone rings — that's a diminishing value. Price is not the value proposition of the future for an agent's career. Finding that right community is important because even if you're in a geographic community, you can still use the digital capabilities at your fingertips, which are less expensive and create speed to build a digital community within your geographic community. Building that digital community where you've got somebody in Tennessee — that digital community can be anywhere. We get licensed anywhere, carriers are in 48 or 50 states. Expanding your digital community and being seen as the expert within it — that's a fascinating thing that didn't exist for years. The agility of the independent agency and the independent agent is real right now because large organizations are hard to be agile. Even though we play in the local agency space at SIAA, as a large organization, it's hard to swing the ship. I love seeing the agility of these small businesses or individuals who can pivot to increase their own success. Geography and digital community are such great opportunities in this day and age.

Matt Masiello: The other exciting piece is where a lot of the technology is going. We made a move to HubSpot. It wasn't a small endeavor, but we did it for a couple reasons. One, the internal user experience. As I described to you, Matt, one thing that sold me — and I did 10 months of research, and many of you listening are probably sick of hearing me talk about this, but I'm going to say it again because it's my show — I did a demo with Salesforce and a few others. I brought some of my people and tried to train them, watched where their eyes went. When we got to HubSpot and I started showing them around during a free trial, in five minutes they had 90% of the basics. I thought, "Wow, I can train somebody on this in a week. I can have them fully up and running, rocking and rolling, with a knowledge base ready to go." That's a huge win versus the months it takes to train people on other systems. The other thing we were able to do — and HubSpot's not the only system, some AMSs and Salesforce allow this too — it condensed 10 tools into four. Instead of having 10 tools for text messages, payments, e-signatures, and all these different things we need to log into, we went down to four tools. As the leader of the agency, I'm constantly thinking about how much time people spend on things. If I can find a system, process, vendor, consultant, or partner who can take this wasted time — we waste so much time with logins and nonsense — and streamline it so the humans can do what they do best, which is talk to other humans and solve problems. That's what they do best. Systems are better at processing things. Humans are best at talking to other humans and solving their problems. If I want to maximize that time with every person in my agency, because they're also energized by it — if you talk to your people, they're not energized by processing TPS reports and sliding them across their desk. They hate that. That drains the soul out of their body. But when they're given a challenge and they need to go solve something, they may complain a little because situations are frustrating, but that's what keeps them coming back. They felt like they helped somebody at the end of the day. The more you can get your people doing that, the better. Digitizing your agency is the best way to optimize that time.

Ryan Hanley: Yeah. You're not going to get a lot of instant gratification from entering VIN numbers. But when you've helped solve a problem for somebody, that's why we do what we do. We protect people's most valuable assets. When they need us, we solve problems. Entering mind-numbing amounts of data into 12 carrier systems and our AMS is not a good use of time.

Matt Masiello: Humans are pack animals. We want to hang out with the pack.

Ryan Hanley: Yes, we do. And drink IPAs.

Matt Masiello: And drink IPAs and solve all the world's problems. Yes.

Ryan Hanley: All right. I want to be respectful of your time and our audience's time. I'm going to shift gears slightly and ask you — not just about Rogue, since we've already talked about that a lot — looking out over the space, the SIAA ecosystem, what else has you excited? What are you waking up and going, "This is going great. I'm loving this project"?

Matt Masiello: Thank you for that. It has been a year since the executive team and our private equity sponsors took over the business. It was a family-started and run business for over three decades, approaching four decades. It's been a pretty exciting year. The biggest thing is we've seen very little change in our execution of the core business model because it worked. It was already working.

Ryan Hanley: You never break things that work. You just make them better.

Matt Masiello: Where we've put a lot of enhancements is in two specific areas. One is creating a clear path for people to own their own agency and start their own agency. We've invested heavily in what we call our Agency Foundation 3.0, a new version of our program where we're actually in these agencies, helping people create and build a foundation for their independent agencies of the future. We've got about 65 people around the country who are growth coaches supporting agencies on that. I think we're going to continue to see a significant shift of the exclusive channel coming into the independent agency channel. That's really exciting. The other place where we've made most of our investments, along with our master agencies around the country, is helping those existing independent agencies understand their strengths, how they can get better, how they can evolve, how they can grow. Our business model works. We put a lot of incentives back into the agency's hands so they can reinvest into their business. If you bubble those three things up, what we're really trying to do is make sure we're in a good leadership position as the industry continues to evolve. Those are big shoes to fill because it's an industry that doesn't evolve very quickly. We want to stand with other like-minded people and organizations and be the leaders to help independent agencies into the future. And while you said "other than Rogue," I think Rogue is just a big part of that. It's introducing this model into the channel. For carriers listening, these are distribution points that we're all investing in to help produce with them. It's been a really exciting year for us, but a lot of it isn't inventing a new wheel. It's making our wheel better.

Ryan Hanley: I love that. I'll tell you, while I would have never handicapped where we are, I personally couldn't be any happier. The people inside the organization — not just you and my relationship, but everyone I've worked with so far has been great and very professional. I'm excited about the challenge of living up to the professional standard that so many people have set. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a little bit of a chip on my shoulder when I get those hate messages — "What have you done? What does this mean?" — and I think, "You guys are going to see pretty soon what I've been talking about all this time." Hopefully we can help a lot of business owners and professionals in our space do some really cool work, have some fun. It's an exciting time. I think we finished where we started. It's an exciting time to be in this space. If we're not having fun, we're doing something wrong.

Matt Masiello: I agree with that completely. I agree.

Ryan Hanley: Matt, thank you so much, man. I appreciate it. Guys, thank you for listening as always. Lots more cool episodes coming down the pipe. This is not the end. This is just the beginning.

[Closing music fades in]

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