--:-- Ryan Hanley: In a crude laboratory in the basement of his home... Well, we want to welcome back to the show today. We have one of my absolutely favorite guests, and that is Raghav Tanna, the founder and CEO of Tarmika.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Now, I've known Rags since maybe January or February of 2020. I was introduced to him by Chris Paradiso. I sat down in Chris's office in Stafford Springs and just immediately liked this kid. I could tell that he had the right mix of understanding where the industry had come from and what it meant to be an independent agent with the needs that our industry had. At that point, Tarmika was just barely getting off the ground. He was telling me a little bit about what he was doing, and I was completely enamored by the idea, by him, by the way he was attacking it, and by the people that he had surrounded himself with—in my opinion, the right people to have behind you, giving you advice and feedback. Most notably, in this case, Chris Paradiso. So I want to give a huge shout out to Chris for introducing Raghav and me. I just love the way Raghav thinks about the business. I do. And I think you're going to love this conversation.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Before we get there, I want to talk about our sponsors here on the show. The first is Tarmika. Now, Rags isn't on the show today because Tarmika is a sponsor, because even if they weren't, I would still have Rags on the show because he's the best. But Tarmika is a sponsor. They have been since the very beginning of my journey on this iteration of the podcast. Guys, if you haven't checked out and gotten the demo from Tarmika, you're missing something. Go to T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com. Tarmika is a huge part of what we do at Rogue, a huge part of us scaling our business now that we're in partnership with SIA. We're going to be pushing Tarmika to the limits of its capabilities, and everyone that's part of our ecosystem—whether you're a producer or a network agency—is going to be able to experience what Tarmika and the systems that we've built at Rogue have to offer. If you want that same type of capabilities in your office, T-A-R-M-I-K-A dot com today.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right, let's get after this episode. Let's do some podcasting.
--:-- [Sound of a record button being pressed]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. The best part about this is going to be all the really, really good content that none of you are going to get to hear because I didn't have it on record and I just hit record. So now we're going to do all the really boring stuff for you guys. I'm ready for it. Hi, Raghav. What's the best part of Tarmika? What's your favorite feature?
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I'm not going to answer that. I think honestly, let's get into the good stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So I want to talk about... this is my personal take on the industry. I'm going to run through this with a little bit of context, and then you take it and break it down because you are one of the smartest dudes that I know in the space. As I said off air, but I will also say this on air, despite being just a pup still, you have an understanding of how the industry works that is better than the vast, vast majority of people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So 2015, 2016, InsurTech hits. Disintermediation. Agents are going out the door. Everything's going to be automated. We're toast. It's over. I was one of the few loud voices on the other side saying that's crazy. Innovation has since changed, we've realized that's not the case. InsurTech in its first wave certainly did not disintermediate us. And it feels very much like whether this is Gen 2 or Gen 3, it's more about innovation and integration. That's amazing.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: However, there is one thing—I don't know if we call it a technology or a channel or whatever—that does actually... I'm not going to say it's going to disintermediate agents, but I think it will have a really drastic impact on the business as a whole. And that's embedded insurance. The reason for that—and then I'll shut up—is that what embedded insurance presents to the market is it removes the opportunity for businesses to even get down to the level of a local independent agent. The business is already plucked. Whether it's through a Gusto or a Paychex or a Square for Business or a credit card like American Express, they sign up for a service and then all of a sudden they're getting offered business insurance integrated right in front of them. They're off to some digital player before it even gets to the local level.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That presents what I believe is a real significant impact on our space, something we need to consider. Do you think that's legitimate? Where do you see this going? Am I completely blowing it out of proportion, or am I not taking it seriously enough?
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I think that's a valid point. I think that is a threat to local independent agencies. But the part that we're still so far away from is how many businesses actually want to buy down that path. There are so many small businesses in the country today, but how many of them are actually going to go from start to finish through that digital journey through a digital agency or even a credit card company? If you have that ability to buy insurance right online after entering in all of your data, it passes through an API to us, to one of our carriers, and back—boom, there's your quote. You have no questions. You don't need to know anything else. You're ready to buy. I find it hard to believe that there are enough of those people out there to make this business model take up 100% of small commercial.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: With that being said, there is a high enough percentage where if you're not an agency that's focused on marketing appropriately, growing your business in small commercial, focusing on the right coverages and the right clients, and you're just selling price, price, price, you're the one that's going to struggle the most with this new digital enhancement. Embedded insurance is a buzzword. I wish there was a different word we could use because I think too many people say they can do it. It does not completely destroy the independent agency channel, and it shouldn't. It makes people work harder and work differently to get small commercial business for their agency. I think that's the piece that we need to focus on.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, I think that's a really good way of positioning it. I'm going to put this back to you with a slightly different idea. I put this to the great and powerful Bobby Collies from Coterie. If you go back and listen to her episode, you can hear the way she responded, but I want to put the same question to you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: When I look at embedded insurance, what I see is a lot of new startup, young businesses, small businesses who are willing to do that fully digital, no questions asked, cool, bind, issue. A lot of independent agents will go, "We don't want that crap anyway. That's garbage. You never know. A lot of them go out of business." I think all of that is true. But thinking not three or even five years from now, but maybe a slightly longer timeframe—if a digital brokerage is handling the business through an embedded functionality with a channel partner, say like a Square for Business, we'll just use them as a talking point.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: To position this for anyone who doesn't understand embedded insurance: you're signing up for a Square for Business account, or you're logging into your Square for Business account, and a widget or a pop-up or something presents an offer. It says, "Hey, we could write your insurance for this amount. If interested, click here and we can show it." That number is pulled into the platform. We're not taking them to another place; we're pulling the information in. That's a broad stroke.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My thought is that if that digital agency is scooping up all these young businesses, today what happens is those young businesses go to the digital broker and then they start to get sophisticated and seek out a more traditional agent. I think that's the way it's working today. What I said to Bobby was: is there a concern that eventually an agency like Rogue—this is what we want to do—starts to develop a graduation process? The first layer when you're new, young, and small is a fairly automated, more impersonal, do-it-yourself model, but they have an entire team that is ready for you when you graduate. In that way, could there be a cliff coming where eventually those new young businesses stop going down as they get bigger and they just stay right where they are because they know it and they trust these people who held their hand through the first two or three years of their existence?
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I think that's the ideal insurance workflow. If you're a small, young company and you go into an embedded workflow, you're going to buy a policy and we treat that policy as low-hanging fruit. It's a BOP policy. It's a GL policy. It's something super simple with no additional coverages. It's kind of bare bones, but it just gets you in the door.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: We have a couple partners right now on the embedded side. If you're creating a new entity, we have an entity creation partner. When you're creating new entities, do you want insurance? You say yes. What are you really looking for? You're looking for a GL policy. Well, that business grows and now you have five employees. Now you need workers' comp. Is that digital partner that we partner with on the agency side going to get you a workers' comp policy? Because if they don't, you're going to go elsewhere and find that workers' comp policy.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: But if you can trust those people—that agency that's behind our embedded solution, because we're just a tech company—are they going to sell you workers' comp? Are they going to help you decide whether you need cyber? Are they going to help you with professional liability? Are they going to help you with everything else that you need? If they do that, you're never leaving. They created that digital journey. They got you in the door. They kept you with their service.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: It's a combination of two things. You have to adopt the digital journey. You have to keep them with service. The reason you see all these InsurTech carriers with a retention rate of 41% and 50% is because they don't do the second part. They do the first part really well, and then the second part is brutal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Amen. This is my big thing. I saw Newfront get $200 million from Goldman Sachs. I'm like, this is awesome. Do you know how much business is now available in the market? Because they're going to mess that up. You know why they're going to mess it up? Because Goldman Sachs and all the other VCs involved in that business are going to say, "Your margins are too high to have US-based, American, licensed professionals servicing that business." Because those individuals are too expensive, you need to take that service overseas.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This isn't an anti-VA thing because I think VAs have a really important role. But if you have an account with any level of sophistication and you don't have someone who is based in the United States who is licensed talking to that person and actually giving a damn about their account, that person is going to leave. You know why? Because 32% of the new accounts that we get are not people just finding us on Google because they're starting a business. They're people whose response when we ask why they're reaching out to us is, "My current agent doesn't get back to me. Doesn't do the thing. Has never talked to me since they wrote the business." 32% of the leads we get are because other agencies suck. That's incredible to me.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I think you and I have had this disagreement before on a general premise of founding a company, raising money, and selling the company. I think Lemonade was the figurehead that we argued about. Newfront's in the same boat.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: What is the goal of Newfront? The goal of Newfront is most likely to make a lot of money. I don't know the owner of Newfront. I don't know the CEO of Newfront. I've never talked to them before in my life. But in my opinion, that's the goal.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Well, if that's the goal, don't you agree that the margins need to change? Don't you agree that they should be going...
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Oh, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Okay. Two different discussions. If we're talking about maximizing owner and investor value, 100%. That's 100%. I am different because I don't care about money. I like money, but it doesn't matter to me. I want to create the unicorn digital agency. All these other people, they can drive their yachts. That's great. My boat might be a little smaller. My lake house—I might have to Airbnb my lake house a couple of weekends a year. But I'm going to have enough money. I want to have the gold standard digital agency that not only can do all the front-end stuff that these guys can do, but then has the 80% retention on the back end. I want clients tattooing "Rogue Risk" on themselves. Under here, that really sexy spot, right on their ribs. I want "Rogue Risk" tattooed there with a... if Ryan Hanley was here right now, you know, that kind of thing.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I'll make you a deal. If anyone in the world ever gets that tattooed on their ribs, I'll buy you a barrel of Whistlepig whiskey. My own barrel.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: This isn't a sponsorship, but as you can see, it's always on my desk. There's always bourbon on my desk just in case. I have a bottle of Basil Hayden's in the living room, a premier stock that I got for my two-year anniversary from my team. I'm waiting for something special to crack it because I just can't wait. Generally, if it's on my desk and it's four o'clock and I've had a decent day, I'll take a sip. If I've had a bad day, I'll take a whole glass.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The premier digital agency is going to look like this. This is my opinion. It's subjective, right? You said you weren't going to say anything interesting, but this is good. I'm taking notes.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: This is completely subjective. All right. You need to embed yourself into places where people already trust the brand. That is cases like Gusto, like you mentioned. It's places like Toast. You trust your point-of-sale system. You trust that provider—probably more than you should, but you trust them. So when they say, "Do you want insurance?" it doesn't matter who the agency is on the back end, as long as that agency is servicing you properly. If you trust them, you'll buy.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Once you buy, you did nothing. Rogue Risk did nothing to get them to buy. Toast did. Gusto did. Square did. Why can't you service them properly? All that matters now is that you retain them because you didn't have to do anything to sell them. They did it all digitally. You have to find a way to focus on retention. You're not spending the cost of acquisition for that customer—it should be relatively low. You probably have to pay Square a referral fee, Toast a referral fee, whatever it might be. It's retention.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: How do you retain that customer? It's still customer experience. It is still being digital. It is still touch points. I think you need to make 30 to 40 touch points per customer to make sure they feel heard and feel wanted. You have to do that because you have zero touch points when you sell them in a digital world. There's no actual human interaction touch point. The servicing part is where the touch points are. The ideal digital agency: you don't sell at all. Your partner sells. The third-party point of sale sells. The finance company sells. The credit card company sells. You retain. That's all that matters.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't think you're wrong. I think you're 100% right. You know that I completely and utterly agree with you. I think this is the whole game. My point—and all the power to Newfront, they put an incredible amount of premium on the book, so it's fun to take shots at the guys who've done really well—but the truth is, I do think there is a misconception over what service means and how important it is to the business. When I talk about that, it's not really to knock them as much as it is to say there is an opportunity in the space. I know for a fact they don't do a very good job of servicing because we've written accounts away from Newfront. The reason across the board is: can't get a hold of them, can't service what I'm doing, haven't heard from them. That's not to take a shot at them. I promise I'm not trying to. It's that I think there is a hybrid model where you can use a filtering system.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I like to think of it like... have you ever seen the gold mining show? What's the name of the show? They mine for gold up in Alaska.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Gold Diggers?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Gold Diggers. This might've been before I was born.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: No, it's still on now. It's like 17 seasons, you son of a bitch.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Whatever it's called, the gold digging show. For whatever reason, I enjoy watching these yahoos dig for gold. I don't know what it is. I just enjoy it at the end of the night. They have a wash plant they call it. How all of them work is they throw a whole ton of stuff into the top. They have these spray engines and they spray it. All the big rocks fall through the holes, the little rocks fall through the holes, the big ones get filtered out. Then they spray it again and more stuff gets filtered out. They spray it again until you get to the last stage where the fine pieces of gold get stuck in a mat. That's how they get the gold.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My point is, when I think about the service model that a digital agency has to have, there is a triage mechanism. There is first layer automation, second layer self-service, third layer virtual assistants—non-licensed employees—fourth layer, you get to what I believe you should have, which is American licensed, someone who can be like, "I'm in Jacksonville today." I think that still matters. If we can layer and triage that system, and if you can have the tumblers in place to make sure you're spending only as much on service as that particular account and case needs, then that is how you're able to keep your costs as low as they can possibly be on the service side while still maintaining the highest level of customer service.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: But how do you find that out? How do you know what they want? How do you know what type of communication that customer wants?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think you ask them. You provide them with options and you watch. You have to analyze what's actually happening. But that brings in another layer of more data, more technology, more analytics.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Isn't that what AI does? Let's just throw AI out there. I don't know what AI does. I think it's fake. But you just smother some AI on it and it solves all these problems. Generally, that's what I've heard on all other podcasts.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think I know how to talk on a successful podcast. You're supposed to say all the buzzwords. If we say AI, if we say embedded insurance enough, if we say data analytics, I think this podcast will skyrocket.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Yeah. We just got to keep repeating.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, honestly though, if we ask the customer—I think this is what digital agencies don't do. They don't ask. How do you want to talk to me? Do you want to call me? Do you want to email me? Do you want to text me? Do you want it to be a robot? Do you want it to be a chatbot? If you don't know the answer to that, your retention won't be 80%. That's for sure.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: It's the onboarding survey. It's a simple onboarding survey.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't want to talk tools, but I will say I had a really interesting conversation that actually released the same day we're recording this with Andrew Darlington. Andrew's been on Salesforce for 10 years. I recently made the switch to HubSpot. What I was talking to him about was the system doesn't make the process right. You have the process, and then you build the system around the process. That being said, when you have the right systems, they can help you adapt and actually expand your processes in a really positive way if you're able to not chase them too far.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: One of the things that we've been able to do at Rogue is implement something that a lot of local agents do. As part of their onboarding, when they sign an account, they'll ask, "How do you want to be communicated with? Text, email, phone?" It's pretty straightforward. Many of you listening are probably like, "Duh, of course I asked that question." Many of you don't, but many of you do. With HubSpot, it's a very simple thing. Account closed two days later or one day later, they get a simple survey that's like three questions. One of them is how do you want to be contacted. We tell our salespeople, you tell them that email is coming and you say, "Look, it's really important. It's three questions. The reason it's important is because that's how we're going to communicate with you." We're just getting off the ground, so I have no numbers to back it up, but that kind of stuff, when you have the right systems in place, becomes pretty easy to do.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Take it a step further. It's not just that that's how you're going to communicate with them. It makes you better. That's what you want to tell them: it makes us better for you. We know that you didn't talk to any of us when you signed this, but now that you're talking to us to bind this policy, we're going to be there for you. How would you like to communicate? How would you like this to happen? If you actually follow through with that, retention stays above 80%.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I've been on the agency side. I know that world better than I know this side. Tarmika is not really second nature to me, but the agency side is second nature because I grew up in my dad's agency for 20 years. You've got to know what they want. If you don't know what they want, it's not going to work. I think that's the combination of embedded, digital, and all that stuff.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode. 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 listening on your favorite podcast platform—I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating and review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes. 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 and review. I love you for listening to this show, and I hope you enjoy listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace.
--:-- [Sound of record button]
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's get back to the episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The other thing too, and this is not different or separate, but just part of the same conversation, is one of the things that we've really tried to work on—haven't always done well, but are trying to get better at—is setting expectations with people. A lot of frustration, a lot of people switching. We find a lot of people who switch to us because we do a very good job of tracking why people come to us. A lot of it has to do with just, "I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know who to contact. I didn't know." From that, we've started to do just tell them what's happening next. That's all you've got to do before you get off this call. If nothing is happening next, we're done. It's concluded. Let them know that. If there's something else that has to happen, say, "In three days, you're going to get an email from the carrier. Here's what I need you to do. I'm going to follow up, but I just want you to know that's what's next." People just want to know what to expect. When they look out in the ether and they have no idea what's going on, they get antsy and they make change.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: That's sales 101 though. It's not just selling insurance. It's just selling. Tell them what to expect. Ask them questions. Ask them probing questions. Find out what they're looking for and tell them what's next.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're assuming this is a sales business though.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: It is. If you're in a business—and I know you said earlier you don't care about money—but if you're in business not to make money, then you should not be running a business.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'd like to reframe that. I know I'm not in the business not to make money. But I personally—and this is probably a failing of mine as a CEO, for sure—I would never want an enormous paycheck and have someone say, "Yeah, but look at how crappy that thing is that you have," or "Yeah, but you cut all these corners over here." I would know that I cut corners just to make money instead of delivering the best possible thing that I could and make as much as I could delivering that best possible thing. Does that make sense?
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I don't disagree with you. But I will add: you play golf, right?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do play golf. Yes.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Does anyone ever know how your ball got on the green two feet from the hole, or do they just know it's there? If you birdie a hole, if they see your scorecard, did anyone ask you how you birdied the hole?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But this is my point. The lowest I've ever shot on a legit 18-hole course is 82. Let's say I shoot an 81 and I foot-wedged one under a tree. I shot an 81 and everyone's like, "That's amazing. Your best score ever. That's great." But I know I foot-wedged it out from under the tree to get a better line.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Now we're talking about cheating and lying. That's two different things. I mean a legitimate round of golf where you put your entire effort in. It wasn't perfect. The way you got there wasn't the way you wanted to. Every once in a while you had to take some risks or you failed or broke whatever. That's a legitimate round.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let me try this. I'm taking this golf analogy. What I'm saying is, I think there's a course over here. It's a golfer's course. Very, very challenging. If I were to shoot my best score on that course, it's a 90. There's another course over here. Also an 18-hole course, also a private course, good shape. My best score is an 82. If I shoot an 82 here, that's great. If I shoot an 82 over there, I'm a baller. I'm not a baller shooting 82 over here. Now, 82 is an 82, right?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I can tell you my best score ever is 82, but if I want to get my 81, I ain't getting it over there. I'm getting it over here by playing the easier thing. You know, wide open, kind of flat greens. Aren't really that undulating, although they are fast. This course over here, I can drive the ball 80 down the middle and I still got a freaking three wood to the green on most holes. But again, over there, that's the Masters. Over here, you're talking about the Waste Management.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: How much more money do you make from winning the Masters versus the Waste Management?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So it's still different because it could be harder. You could have to work harder to get to that point where you're shooting 82 on the harder course. But if you do it, people know that was the harder path. So again, I want the Masters win. I'll take the Waste Management win for sure, take every win, but I want the Masters win.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: You take everyone along the way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I hear too many agents say, "Oh, I want to help people. I want to make them feel better. I want to do this." Now you're running a fucking business. You want to make money. You helping them is a by-product of you making money. Yes. I agree with that. I think that's the new front, right? The point of New Front is to make money. And I know you're not shitting on them, but the point of New Front is to make money. The point of Lemonade was for Dan Shriver to make money. Well, guess what? He did it. I know he's also a douche though. I've never met him. I just know that he made money. And that's what I care about because he ran a business. His goal was to make money. It had to be to make money. And I respect people that set out to make money. They do it the right way, which is they run their business. They grow their business. And you guys can't see me, I'm doing Rags is right, in air quotes, "the right way." The right way to me is that he didn't win the lottery. I want people to make money by working hard.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Well, there's no doubt that they worked hard. Yeah, I agree with that. That's the right way.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That's why I don't want to take anything away from what Lemonade did. I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to take anything away from these companies that have grown super big, right? Because I haven't done it. So I would be an asshole to try to criticize them. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is though, it would bother me. It would really fucking bother me if I did all that work that he did and launched that thing and yeah, he made a shit ton of money, that's great, and it's never made a dollar. Their policies are a dumpster fire. Every investor who invested after the IPO has lost money. Awesome. You made a shit ton of money and that's great. And you worked super hard to get there and you deserve every penny. But that would suck if that's your fucking legacy. That would bother me too. I want to build a successful business long-term. I want to make sure that everything's working properly. If I went public, I wouldn't want my stock price to plummet.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: You also have to be—if you're going to invest in something, you should know better. You should look at those numbers and say, "Okay, that doesn't make sense long-term." I blame the investors for that. I don't blame him. He did a great job. He built a good company, went public. The stock price went to 180. I'm sure he sold it at 180. I hope he did what he was supposed to do. And I think the number one—you're a capitalist, I'm a capitalist. The point of running a business, no matter what, is to make money. The reason we got into embedded insurance—we have this entire agency tool that's doing great and we love it—the reason we got into the embedded insurance is A, because we could, and B, because it makes more money. It's something that people aren't doing properly. No matter who says they're doing it the right way, they aren't actually embedding insurance into anything. They are creating a lead funnel. That's very different. You need to be able to buy on the glass, you need to be able to complete your entire flow on the glass. And you need it to run through someone that can handle digital capabilities. That's it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You make a lot of good points there. I guess where my brain was going was the legacy part. I would hate to do all that stuff and then have your legacy be that you're really good at making money, but not so good at building a business that people actually give a shit about.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I completely agree.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I guess that's the dichotomy that I have there. But here's the other side of it. Those dudes have done things. You're going to be there someday. This thing's going to sell for a billion dollars in a few years, so you're on your path. But for me, I never built a company that went public yet. So I think for anyone to take shots beyond a very trivial legacy conversation would be insincere. Because if anyone could sign up for Daniel Schreiber's ride, the ride that he took, they would fucking sign up in a heartbeat.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: That's my point though. This goes way past insurance. There's all these little keyboard warriors on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and they're shitting on companies worth billions of dollars for making decisions that are going to drive business to them. There's this whole Disney thing going on right now. What Disney did was smart because they didn't piss anyone off. They tried to stay politically correct. Guess what? If they didn't do that, all the people that go to Disney—a majority of people that go to Disney—would have stopped going because it would have pissed them off. They made a business decision. Nothing to do with the politics around it. They don't give a shit. They wanted to make a business decision that made them more money. That's every decision that's ever made. The NFL does it all the time. You kick someone in the head, you don't suspend them because if you suspend that person, you're gonna lose money. This is what capitalism is so great. You have Disney do their crazy shit, which people are yelling at them about, and I'm with you politically, I kind of disagree with what they did. But my view of America is they get to do whatever the fuck they want. So that's fine. What I love is that because capitalism is amazing, and this is the greatest country in the world, the Daily Wire—this conservative fucking company—I mean, I like Ben Shapiro, but what is the Daily Wire compared to Disney? Now they're positioning themselves as a competitor. And I'm just like, that's amazing. It is amazing that we live in a country where this absolute behemoth that's been around for 75, 80 years can make a decision, and then this little company over here can position themselves as if they even have a fucking chance. It's just amazing. I just love it. That's the greatest thing in the world. But with capitalism, you got to remember people are in it to make money. So not everyone has the same morals or the ethics that you're talking about. Sometimes you just want to make money and it doesn't matter.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I do think, and I've said this before, and it's probably why none of the 54 VCs that I met with actually invested in me, but I think they could probably sniff that he won't knife his own son to get this thing across the finish line vibe for me. I have this vision for what is possible. It's building what I think is possible more than just, "Dude, if I wanted to build just a business that was worth a shit ton of money, it's really not that hard." Any of you out there who are listening to this that are struggling with lead acquisition, it's the easiest part of the fucking business. The fact that you can't put business on the books is insane. Putting business on the books is not hard. Putting the right business on the books that's going to stick with people who are actually going to make you money over the long-term, that's very difficult to do, at least today. And that's the game that I'm trying to play. But the acquisition game is the easiest game out there. There's no easier game than the acquisition game. Embedded SEO, buy leads. There's a million fucking ways to acquire business. And it just boggles my mind that people have such a hard time getting business in the door at a broad scale. I just never wanted to be—probably wrongly from a personal wealth perspective—I just never wanted to be that. I want to get to that, but I also want to retain it at 80%. That's what I want.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: You're trying to build a legacy, and it's very different than what a lot of people are trying to build. And I will say at some point, I will sell Tarmika a hundred percent. I've never been shy about saying that. I'm not doing this for 20 years. I'm not doing this to change the world. I'm doing this because I think it was a useful tool for agencies. I think we helped, but I also want to make money. And I want it to be done the right way though. When we do sell, I want people to say that we built something that actually helped them. I want to make money on it, but I want that first part too. I won't settle for anything less.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think the good news for you is that it already is helping people. What you guys have done, not just to the tool itself, is tremendous. It has been since day one. Obviously I've been one of your biggest advocates for two plus years now. I think as highly of you as anybody in the industry. And I think that's amazing. I think the other thing you guys have done is, even though I know it's not finalized yet, I think you already have built a legacy in the space. Because at least from my perspective, and I try to take a broad view of this, there's Tarmika and then there's everybody else. There are a lot of other players, right? But in terms of functionality, features, quality of work, the conversations that have happened because you guys exist—even if people were trashing you or saying whatever—the conversations that you've forced to happen, maybe not as controversially as Lemonade, but certainly as broad spectrum as someone like them, has already had a lasting effect on the industry. I think you should be very proud of that, even though I know the journey isn't over.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I appreciate that. There's still a lot more to do in my opinion, but I do appreciate that. And I think we've had good advocates behind us, you being one of them. We have a lot of agencies that helped us early on. And now I hope we're doing the same for them. But we did it differently. That's all we tried to do, do it differently. I think that's important. We tried to do things in a way that no one else was doing it. And we were Switzerland. I know you hate that and you're supposed to pick a side, but we were Switzerland for a long time and we stayed neutral. And now it's like, okay, we did something. Now we don't have to be Switzerland anymore. We can go the route we always want to go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't think there's anything wrong with being Switzerland as long as you are. I think where the problem is, is when people try to be or pretend to be or present themselves as that thing, when really everyone knows they're skewed in one direction or the other. I think that's a lot of where animosity comes from. With you guys, you were building a tool. You've never tried to be anything other than this very useful, functional tool that was very difficult to build. And I think it played out, man. I'm super happy for you. And in terms of being open about selling the company or whatever, I mean, dude, I sold Rogue. By the time this comes out, it will be public knowledge.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: I didn't know we were talking about this on this, but yeah, that's one of the biggest things. That's a huge congrats to you because what you built worked. You built a model that was scalable that people wanted to use in the future. And that's why you got acquired. And I think we're not shy in saying this. It wasn't like you were doing this for 20 years and you grew your book to 50 million and that's why you were purchased. You were purchased because of what you built. Not the size of what you built, but just the actual concept and the complexity around how that functions. That's why you were bought. And I think that matters. I think it's an important note to make.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thanks, man. Well, dude, I know you don't do a lot of podcasts. I appreciate you sharing your vantage points. I think as much as you downplayed what you were going to actually say, you delivered the value.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: My plan was to sit in silence and drink bourbon the whole time because it's almost four o'clock, right? I'll be honest with you. If we ever do this again, let's just do that. We'll just watch each other drink bourbon for an hour and then we'll hit stop. And we'll talk about the different tasting notes that we taste. And the drunker we get, the better the notes will be.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I like that. And crypto maybe? Can we talk about crypto too?
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Yeah. I don't know much about crypto, but I do know that we should talk about it.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: All right. I like it. Yeah, there we go. Be good. Thanks for having me.
--:-- Raghav Tanna: Thanks for having me.
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