Steve Pieroway, Principal at Benevolent Marketing - PIR Ep. 829

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to Pausing Risk. This is your host, Tony Penis. Today I have with me Steve Garaway, principal at Benevolent Marketing. An absolutely awesome name for a company, Benevolent Marketing, uh, and Author of the 2026 Benevolent InsurTech Trust Index. So, uh, Steve, uh, first of all, thank you. Thank you for coming on the show. How are you doing today, Tony?

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. I am doing fantastic.

Speaker A: Awesome, awesome, awesome. So, so we met a couple years ago at Amplify, uh, Broker Tech Fest, uh, in Calgary, which, where, where you are based in m. Uh, great conference put together by my good friends Sharif, Tanya and team at, uh, True fla. Uh, a conference that has been on pause for a little bit while they work on moving it to Toronto. Uh, and I can't wait to go back once they do move to Toronto because I've never been to Toronto. Uh, Calgary is beautiful, uh, and hard to get to and just not an insurance hub. Right. Uh, so, yeah, thank you for coming on the show. Uh, so now we're recording on April 23rd. Uh, I am going to guess that on April 23rd, Calgary is either like nice weather, like really spring, or you had snow yesterday.

Speaker B: You're so close. It's nice. It's been nice. It was in the 20s earlier this week and there's a snow warning for this evening into tomorrow.

Speaker A: So 20s. For, uh, my own KUT American listeners, 20s, uh, means like high 60s, uh, somewhere along the lines. Uh, and so, so they're in the 60s and maybe not in high 60s, maybe low 60s, but 60s, 70s, I

Speaker B: think it's in the 70s.

Speaker A: Okay, so, so, so 20. 20. What? 20, uh, 2. 25.

Speaker B: It was, it was 21. 22.

Speaker A: 20. 21, uh, is 69.8. You're very correct. Yes. It's basically 70. Uh, so, so, so imagine that, uh, if you think the Midwest weather is crazy, uh, 70 degrees, which is a, um, very, very, very warm, uh, spring day for Calgary, as in the world is melting. We don't have clothing for this. Uh, and then snow warning for the rest of the day. Uh, but beautiful area, like I said, the Museum of Music. The Canadian Museum of Music, where the Tufla conference was so beautiful. Uh, all right, so, um, we always give the guests the chance to give the elevator pitch. What is Benevolent Marketing? And then we'll also talk about the Insurtech Trust Index.

Speaker B: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna use the origin story approach. Right, so I'll give you the really quick Reader's Digest version. Benevolent Marketing is a marketing consultancy for Insuretech, um, startups and scale ups. So my. And, and where the origin of that comes from. I actually started in advertising, but very early on I fought tooth and nail to win my first lead account. And it was a company, a Calgary company called Policy Works. And it was funny. Um, you know, I worked with Policy Works as their account manager for a couple of years and I was going back to university and myself and one of the founders of Policy Works were at lunch and we were playing this dance of, um. He wanted me to work with them and I wanted to work with them. But you don't really want to come out and say that when it's your client or when it's your agency. So we were once. Once we had figured that puzzle out, we were off to the races.

Speaker A: All right, all right, all right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so it has been, uh, four and a half years. Just about. Right. So. So. So you used to be a broker. You used to be VP of marketing for a brokerage.

Speaker B: I, I. For, For. Yeah, for a year I worked with Insureline. Um, and that was, uh, on a fractional basis. So that was, that was pre. Uh, that was just after I had actually set up, uh, benevolent. So I, I was with. Yeah, I was with Policy Works for a long time.

Speaker A: So now, now Policy Works I've never heard of, but currently they have an applied logo, so I'm assuming they're one of the many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many. Right. Many, many, many m companies that have been acquired by Applied over the years.

Speaker B: We, We. Yeah, um, in. In 2019.

Speaker A: Okay. And. And you. You left shortly thereafter, a couple years afterwards?

Speaker B: Yeah, about 18 months or so. Yep.

Speaker A: Perfect. Were you, were you, were you a founder at Policy Works or, or just a hired gun?

Speaker B: No. Is there a third option? Um, yeah, I know I was. I came on.

Speaker A: Uh, so sorry, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. Let m. Me pause here. Hired One is a little too American for. For a Canuck. Uh, were you just a hired hockey stick?

Speaker B: I was, I was a, uh, left. I was a left winger. Um, yeah, that's exactly right. So I came on board a Policy Works about seven or eight years after they had been founded. And they. And I came at. I was coming on board just as a company, and at this point in time, I don't think pivot was a popular or commonly used phrase, but the company had pivoted, um, from originally being a policy administration system to being a broker Commercial management system. And so I had joined at this time and actually had aspirations of doing my PhD. So I was thinking this was going to be a short term thing and I love the people, I love the product, I actually love the industry um, and decided to stay.

Speaker A: All right, all right, all right, all right. Uh, so, so since launching Benevolent M, uh, uh, Benevolent Market M and the name. Why, why Benevolent I. It's a great name.

Speaker B: Okay, so this is it. So when I did my um, actually I'll start. Benevolent is, is one of the, the core pillars of trust. Right? So trust, we think of trust as a meta construct. Think there's reliability. Right? Can I, can I uh, or sorry capability. Can I do the job I say I'm going to do? Right? There's uh, so that's like expertise and competency. There's reliability. Can I do this repeatedly? Can I do it over and over and am I reliable? Can I deliver on this? And then there's benevolence. And that can come in many forms. Some call it transparency. But um, it's this idea that I won't act in a self interested way. So I'm going to put the needs of my, my partner in this exchange. I'm going to make sure that their needs are met, not just mine. So uh, when I launched I, I've always had this and I, when I did my master's, my thesis trust was a component of this and I just thought I really like that angle because especially for marketing and hey I'm, I'm the first one to admit sometimes marketing uh, self inflicted but can get a bad name. So I think there's a, there's a good way to do marketing and so that's, that's, that that leads into the idea of, of where the name of the company came from. Perfect.

Speaker A: Perfect. So, so what exactly does does Benevolent uh, marketing does do?

Speaker B: So consulting, advisory, um really on that, that the small to mid size business B2B space and I, I'll work with, with companies outside of tech but I like tech. It's, it's where I grew up. It's what I, you know, I understand tech. So, so really it's that when you think about small to mid sized businesses, the ones that I've worked with typically um, you know, uphill battle right in terms of you know, staffing and resources and funding and to me that's where that, that challenge comes in. And marketing tends to be something that doesn't get often uh get the resources allocated to because you know you're trying to stay alive. And, and sometimes the ROI and marketing can be further out and it's not, you know, you need to get that product built up, let's say. And so for me, um, I've always had a little bit of this underdog mentality. So.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I really enjoy working with small to mid sized businesses because one, that's where it's the challenges, you know, taking on the, the, the bigger entities in the market. But two, there's, there's an element of um, freedom there, right. The smaller you are, the, the fewer people you have to answer to, typically the more bold you can be in what you do. Not always the case, but it's been my experience that the larger you get, the, the more you travel to the mean of safety. So, so.

Speaker A: All right, all right, all right. And tell me about the, the Benevolent Insurtech Trust Index. How, what is it? How long has, have you been doing it? What is the story there?

Speaker B: What is the story? Okay, so I, I had referenced earlier. I had done my thesis and my thesis was um, in part based on relationship quality and trust. So I've always had this idea of trust in the back of my head. And um, you know, I, I've, in the Canadian insurtech space, I was, I was in that space for almost 20 years and last year, you know, I have contacts and connections and you're just, you just kind of hear, there's always, there's always a, a, uh, uh, sentiment that doesn't get expressed. Sometimes you hear it at conventions and conferences and trade shows. And I thought, I just, I'm really interested in trust. And what's the state of trust? Ah, the insurance industry, I will say one of the, the colloquialisms maybe is that the industry is built on trust. Right? Everyone says that, everyone says so.

Speaker A: And, and, and it is true. Basically, uh, you're buying a promise.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Uh, literally. Other like if the promise isn't good, we're thoroughly useless and you're just wasting your money.

Speaker B: That's right. So you just hit the nail on the head. You're buying a promise. Tech is the same way, right? When you buy tech, um, you're buying a promise of better roi, better workflows. You're going to make more money, it's going to be more efficient. Whatever that promise is, you're still buying a promise. So I, I just, I thought, you know, I'm, I'm, I like research, I like kind of asking questions and trying to pull back the layers a bit. So I launched the index last fall and it was the first one to, uh, it was the first run and the results were really interesting. I'm not going to say surprising and I'm not going to not say surprising, but they were really interesting. Um, because there's, there's, I, uh, would say there's a lowered level of trust right now from, in, from in the Canadian market, uh, with brokers. And I would say overall it's a little lower than what I was expecting.

Speaker A: Uh, so you, uh, the, okay, hold on. The, the lower trust was even lower than you expected or what, distrust was lower than you expected?

Speaker B: I, Yeah, I think it's, it's that piece. Um, I mean obviously when, when I, when I took the results and then and summarized them and looked at them, I mean you, it's, it was the, the bands, right? So the, on a scale of seven, right. Do I trust my vendor or do I trust the technology? You know, one being no way and seven being. I fully strongly agree the bands were probably a bit stronger than, than I was anticipating. Right. The, the highs and the lows. And what's really interesting is that, you know, in the, in the survey, respondents could identify one or three profiles. There was a buyer, a buyer user, or strictly a user.

Speaker A: Oh, I like that.

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, so, so I, I didn't, I didn't formally publish those results or, sorry, the, the breakdown of those results because the numbers were a bit too low for my liking. Right. So if I'm gonna, I, I, I would want, when I rerun the survey again, the higher level. What I want to do is, is publish those results. But here's what they showed. Even, even at lower levels, what they showed was that the closer you are to the product and the further you are from the sale, the higher your trust. So, so users who are closer to the product and further away from the sales process tend to be higher trusting individuals. The buyer, user is sort of in the middle. Right. So they, they were, they went through the sales process, but they use the tech, so they, they're getting the payoff. The buyers, the ones who are in the sales process and yet, um, don't use the tech. Overall, their trust is materially significantly lower. Now we could, we could hypothesize what are the potential reasons.

Speaker A: That's so curious. Yes, please.

Speaker B: So my, one of my, my takes is that um, think about, think about these situations that I, I mean having worked in the tech space for so long, you would see this over and over. Um, typically, do we, do we tend to say to our Boss. Oh, hey, I logged into this system today and it worked fine. Well, no, just. You expect it to work fine. Right. So. But we do say, oh, hey, I logged in and it was down. I need to fix. I can't do my job. Right. So. So the, the messages that tend to get run up the chain of command or negative. Right. So there's a skewing there. Negative, negative. I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do my work. It won't do this. Right. Um. How are things going? Yeah, fine. But I won't do that. So I, I feel like there's an asymmetry of bad to good information that gets pushed up.

Speaker A: That would make sense.

Speaker B: The chain. Um, and then the second one is, uh, and this came out in the study that 67 of respondents felt that promises of ROI and workflow efficiency, productivity gains were overstated. Right. So maybe, you know, through the marketing and sales process, people think, oh, hey, I'm gonna. I'm gonna walk away. And I saw that this customer testimonial said that they doubled.

Speaker A: Let me, let me pause you on that one. So, so promises that ROI were overstated.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Not shocking. Not shocking at all. If we could get AI to go over my 800 and some episodes and maybe just the last 200. Especially in the age of AI. So let's call it the last two to 300. Uh, and have it find every time Tony pulls up a website or uh, reads a website on air and goes 3x faster this and uh. Right, an 8x faster this and 75% savings on this and, and get back 16 hours of your week. Right. And it sounds very impressive. You're talking about. Talking about the Personas. I am not a buyer. I am not a user. I'm an interviewer. I. Right, you m. And maybe you show me the platform, maybe I just see your website, but I don't. I'm not a user. Right. Even if you allow me to play with it for a little bit. Like this is not in production. Right. I don't have the data for. To take it in production. Right. Uh, because I'm not an insurance company or agency or anything. Um, so. And I'm a very positive interviewer. So if we put ourselves in the shoes of the entrepreneur.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: Many of whom are tech people with limited insurance experience, maybe they did bring an insurance expert to join them. Uh, I hope they did. Otherwise they don't comply with the able travelers rule and they're dead in the water until they figure that Out, Uh, they in some cases have VC funding. Right. Even if they just have angel investors. Somebody wants a return on this. Insurance is a slow business and there's 3,000 competitors that to us non technical folk look the exact same. It's uh, it's hard for me to differentiate the different companies I interview. Right. Lately, for the last three years they all claim to be AI companies. For the last year and a half, they all claim to be agentic AI companies. I have no freaking idea who's who. Right. With very few exceptions. Um, so in that environment, if you, if you game theory, it makes sense that they have to over promise. And also the tech way is you promise it. Ah. And you create a nice UI and once it sells, you see how you can build it. You build that mvp. The whole idea of an MVP is M minimum viable. Right?

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: Uh, so yes, it makes perfect sense that the buyers would feel like the promised roi, which is always super high. Uh, even if so. Right. If you promise me that you're saving me 20 hours a week. Generally they don't promise that much. If you promise me that I'm going to bind that it's going to take me 70% less time to quote something. Uh, and in production it's saving me 25% of time. That's still awesome.

Speaker B: That is still awesome.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Ah.

Speaker A: And if you have promised me 25%, I might be a very happy camper. But because you promised me 75, because there were 16 competitors, right. And I couldn't differentiate between them and I couldn't test them all. So I went with the one that promised me the highest reduction and you could only deliver 25. That's still awesome. And I might be annoyed that you. Right. It's basically like you promised me that the electric car would have a range of 500 miles and I'm only getting 325. It's still awesome. Uh, right. Or you get what I'm saying, right? The. Yes. Uh, under promise over deliver is a very smart thing to do. And every marketer will tell you that it is a very hard thing to do when you have a seemingly undifferentiated product that the buyer doesn't understand that is deeply technical and that um, that has so much competition and limited Runway. And I just came up with that and I'm glad we're recording because I might make a video about that and call it the Kanye's rule. Every. Everybody will over promise in that situation.

Speaker B: They have to. Well, so here's. Okay, I, I'M I would, I would push back to the counters rule slightly that they have to. But, but what I would say is you hit the nail on the head. It's, it's, it's the framing and the anchoring. Right. It is. Uh, am. I do. I think I'm going to get 200% ROI and I end up getting 100% still. Fantastic. And from a tech standpoint that should be.

Speaker A: But I promised the board 200 to get the money for it.

Speaker B: That's right. And so, and that's the, that is the challenge. Right. And then I mean I've seen others. No. So I'm going to go back for a second. I think you, you hit a really good point that it's the uh, perceived. Right. So there's this comparison point and what is the comparison point? That's an important thing that we should look into. And secondly is, is I wonder do how good tech companies are in general. And even at policy works, we were only okay at this at helping those understand where they are seeing that value that we, that we've said we deliver versus you know, we, we sell you, we get you onboarded and we're like okay, we hope things are going well. Right. So there's, there's. Because you have to think buyers are only hearing typically about the things that might go wrong because they, they need those fixed or problem solved or whatever that is. Um, and it's a really challenging thing. Right. So, so here is the chicken and the egg. If you don't have an roi, does that to your point earlier, does that, does the buyer behavior conditioned to look at that ROI and really have to see that. Right. And feel like they have to believe it. Um, you know, have we as a, as a tech industry pushed ourselves into the ROI corner? I mean how often do you, do you ask? I don't know. Like uh, I've rarely seen anyone talk about the ROI of a cfo. Does anyone ever or, or hr. Right. Or legal. I you just that, that I don't feel like the application is, is put on to that. But with tech it is a very significant piece of the marketing in the sales process. Super significant. So I, I don't know. I mean it's. Is it self inflicted? Maybe a little. Right.

Speaker A: All right. Uh, I'm looking at the report by the way for the listeners. It's a 45 page report, really nicely presented. Show, uh, notes. Uh, actually uh, you sent me the report. You didn't send me the link on where to get it. So send me the link. For the show notes, uh, it's in the doobly doo. Uh, okay. Real insurtech. Success isn't about disruption. It's about reliability, partnership, and making brokers better at serving clients. So it's. One of the respondents said, and I agree with that. Uh, so the Key Insights. We went over the, uh, overstated promises. Uh, we go over the. Only 22% agree that the vendors are honest during the sales process. Did we go over that one?

Speaker B: We haven't, but it's tied into the roi. Right. So I feel like, uh, there's a big opportunity and this isn't, uh, a coming down on vendors or those involved in the sales process, but there's an opportunity to maybe reframe that conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah, this slide is so good that I want it to be in the video version. Uh, for those of you listening through the audio version, uh, this is worth, uh, checking out the video version. Uh, the Key Insights page is very, very, very interesting. I think I. There we go. Yeah, this is very, very interesting. Basically, it's overstated roi. No trust in the vendors. No trust that the vendors will be benevolent and do what is right. Only, uh, slightly more than half of brokers believe that tech adds value. Only 14% believe that it's worth the price. Um, only 9% feel that the vendor has made sacrifices for them in the past. That is a really interesting way to phrase that. Uh, because I don't really expect my vendors to make sacrifices for me.

Speaker B: Uh, we're going to pull that thread in a second then.

Speaker A: Trust in tech is higher than trust in vendors. So basically, uh, basically like they do think that AI et cetera, et cetera, et cetera is going to make a difference. They feel that the vendors are not delivering on that.

Speaker B: Yes or.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Think about it this way. Okay, let me, let me, let me frame it slightly differently. Um, how often have you seen or heard. And I mean, I think this extends just like the concept of trust, this extends into our industry. But how often do we use partnering language? Uh, oh, we're, we're not just a vendor, we're a partner. That comes up quite a bit.

Speaker A: That is the very thing that we say on our side of the recruiting firm. But recruiting. It's easier to be a partner in recruiting.

Speaker B: Okay. Uh, we all use it, even in tech. We used to use that at Policywork. So we're, we want to partner. We don't want, we do. We just don't want to be this to be transactional. We want it to be more relational. You know, you can Call us that kind of stuff. So, so if you use that framework and you, and you buy into that framework, right, of partnering and relational versus transactional and vendor. So if we, if we have this very simplistic view, but these two bookends, um, what that, that statistic I think was the 9% feel like, uh, they've done sacrifice for them. That's, that's one measure of this idea of benevolence. So this idea that you're gonna, uh, that we understand that we're in an economic exchange. I give you money, you give me technology. There's that, that's, that's baseline. Um, but it goes beyond that. That's one way of thinking about do I think my vendor is going to put their interests first, above and beyond mine as a partner, uh, can I count on them to do what is right? Maybe that's in raising fees or, uh, you know, if, if I'm, if something happens and I need something done, maybe I need to extract my data, that, that can be done and I'm not going to be kind of held hostage or whatever that is. Right. Whatever those situations might look like. But that's the, to me, that's that kind of where the partnering framework comes into play and maybe we don't hit the, we don't deliver on what we're saying we're doing from a partnering perspective.

Speaker A: Makes perfect sense. Right? Makes perfect sense. All right. I'm, uh, just kind of quickly going through it. But there are other parts that, that, uh, that you think are, are important to, to, to cover. Um, I love how you explain how it was done. Like you give us all the data on, right. The methodology. 96 total brokerages, uh, and MGAs, 80 of them in Canada, 16 in the U.S. uh, 67 broker responses in Canada. So this, so this is probably, I'm guessing, the, the best data that exists for Canada, uh, kind of is a much smaller market and a much more consolidated market.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a really good lens to use. It is consolidated. Um, and, you know, and to me, when I did this, I, I could have used, uh, the other responses. Right. There were a couple MGAs, insurers, those from the U.S. but I didn't want to really contaminate. So ideally we would have a much larger study and it was year one, so my expectations were met.

Speaker A: But the first time you do it.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so as we keep going. Right.

Speaker A: That would be the, the fantastic. If we can help promote it. If we can. If we can help get people to fill it out. We'd love to help. Uh, uh, demographics. So now we're talking about language. I interview InsureText, because they're available to interview. But, uh, I wrote the book on how to engage millennials in the insurance industry. I spent a lot of time thinking about demographics in the insurance industry. Uh, I'm not a primary researcher. Uh, but, yeah, my book Insuring Tomorrow, and I'm currently writing the book on how to engage GNC in the insurance industry. So this part, fascinating to me. Uh, so the average tenure, 22 years with a range of 1 to 45 years. That average tenure, very insurance. Very insurance.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like. Like, this is, uh, when I was at Liberty Mutual, I. Well, I, I. Overall, I have met so many. 25, 30, 35, 40 years in the industry at, uh, Liberty Mutual, I. I met an underwriter named Skip who celebrated his 50th year at Liberty and then retired the next year. Uh, incredible. Uh, so regions Ontario, 40. Not surprising at all. I wonder how that matches up with the overall population of Canada. Is. Is.

Speaker B: That.

Speaker A: Is 40 of the. Do you have any idea?

Speaker B: Uh, I'm not sure if 40 would be Ontario, but definitely heavily skewed in Ontario.

Speaker A: And actually, let's quickly ask ChatGPT.

Speaker B: Yeah, there you go. I would say Ontario probably has close to 20.

Speaker A: I was guessing, but. But I'm not an expert in Canadian demographics. Uh, what percentage of Canada lives in Ontario? 38 to 39%. So actually, it is very representative.

Speaker B: Very representative. That's amazing.

Speaker A: I would have thought that Ontario was overrepresented because you always hear about. About how, uh, about how all the brokers are in Toronto, but apparently it's just that all the people are in Toronto, uh, or in Ontario. Okay, so, so British Columbia. 19. I don't even know what a B stands for.

Speaker B: Alberta. Abbreviation. Yep.

Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Perfect. Perfect, perfect. Uh, I just realized that I had lost this. Huh? Uh-huh.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, that's fine.

Speaker A: Size of the organization.

Speaker B: Huh.

Speaker A: Huh?

Speaker B: The one area that I didn't heavily promote, this was Quebec. Uh, mostly from just a, uh, timing and resource. I didn't have.

Speaker A: You. You. You didn't want to have the translator French.

Speaker B: I didn't translate.

Speaker A: Of course.

Speaker B: So next, this coming fall when I rerun it, Quebec. I love you guys. I'm. I'm coming for you.

Speaker A: Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, just. Just get. So we.

Speaker B: We.

Speaker A: We should. We. In order to protect your. Your. Your life and livelihood, uh, we should just cut out the part where you say that you don't really Speak French. Uh, because, you know, or Canada CEO. Uh, but, but yeah, just. Just get somebody on Fiverr to translate it for you. Like, should be pretty easy.

Speaker B: You know, I have to. I have to say this. I don't know if I've found this. I've. I'm. I was this. This many days old when. Kind of thing I learned this. But in Chrome. You know those three dots in the top right in Chrome.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, there's a translate.

Speaker B: Yeah, translate for you. That's crazy. I should have done for this.

Speaker A: I would recommend getting a human get one on fiverr for like 20 bucks. Uh, uh, because, you know, like, machine translation can be tricky. Uh, it's. It's better and better, but with how sensitive Quebecois are to. To. To French not being, uh, you know, respected. You don't want to piss anybody off. Uh, all right. Uh, what type of tech studios at your company? Okay, so we're past the demographic piece. Okay.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. All right. By the way, for. For my own good American audience, BMS in Canada is the same thing as AMS in the States. It's just that Canada has advanced, they've evolved, and they use the word broker correctly. They don't mix and match broker and agents like we do in the States. Um, so in fact, uh, if I applied, maybe you can change this for us. If applied and vertifor get together and maybe Hawksoft and decide that from now on they're going to refer to their system as an. As a BMS for the rest of humanity. Eventually we would come around. Uh, all right.

Speaker B: Um. I think it's all good. Ams. We're so close.

Speaker A: It's the same thing. It's the same. Yeah, it's just like. It is so annoying and so confusing how legally broker and agent mean different things in the States and we just insist on using them. Uh, right. And some people will even like, meet halfway and call them all agent broker. Uh, I received it spelled agent broker. Uh, and legally, they're different things. Uh, right. The agent represents the carrier. The broker represents the buyer. The broker has access to multiple markets. Uh, it's just very confusing for the. For the consumer. That's like. I get it. It's very confusing for the consumer.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: All right. What, what, what, what. What surprised you the most from the report?

Speaker B: Uh, what surprised me the most that

Speaker A: is this is listeners. So you know that, That I don't give them the questions ahead of time because I don't know the question ahead of time.

Speaker B: No, that, that, that's a really good question. Um, you know, I honestly, I think the, the biggest one was the overstatement of roi. That one, that one was.

Speaker A: It's pretty heavy. Very heavy. Yes.

Speaker B: Yeah, it hit hard. Um, and honestly, so, and I think partly why, because I'm old and I'm anchored in, uh, you know, I'm back in the early 2000s. But, but when, when we were, when we Policy Works was. Was in the mix and we were in the game, I feel like nobody was really going heavy on ROI at that time. It was there.

Speaker A: If I had to guess, number one, Policy Works was, was large. That's like, maybe not applied large, but how many employees at the end when they got acquired? Oh, okay, so it wasn't that large. Uh, but okay, so if I had to guess, Policy Works did not have 1500 competitors.

Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker A: I think that's the driver. Like the combination of so many insurtechs, all of them claiming we do AI, uh, and the buyer having no idea who to buy for, uh, who to buy from. It seems to me that the easy and pressure because of limited Runway. It seems to me that the easiest way to.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: So just game theory. The easiest way to, to get some sales to keep my job and keep the company going while we figured out is to exaggerate roi.

Speaker B: Well, I, I have a, I, I agree. Right. And I think it becomes an arms race, right?

Speaker A: Oh, yes.

Speaker B: I say 20, I say 20, you say 30. Like, and so there's a ratcheting. But I, I think the other, to me, one other factor that I believe has contributed to this has been the idea of the tech stack. Right. So you think about 25. The, that tech stack. 25 years ago you hadn't, you had a, you had an AMS or a bms. And then maybe you were like, oh, I'm gonna add this system to do my commercial lines. And that was it. But now you have, you have your core system. You have, uh, a customer touch point. Right? Some solution that's going to be reaching out to customers. Some solution that's going to be, uh, maybe doing your commercial lines, something doing workflow automation. So you've got this layering and layering and layering. And I think the more you layer, maybe the, maybe I'd look at this way, the further you go from the core and the more you layer. Well, you have to justify that spend.

Speaker A: I just noticed. Yes, A thousand percent. Uh, I just noticed that you actually included the survey itself in the appendix. So, uh, you treated this, uh, as seriously as my girlfriend's dissertation. Uh, and for a marketing report, that's pretty impressive. Yeah, um, that, and that also means it's less than 45 pages. It's more like 30 pages. Yeah, it's a very easy read. Uh, so for the listeners, uh, download it in the doobly doo. Uh, it's well worth a read. It might take you 45 minutes if you like, really nerd out on it. Might take you 20 minutes if you just kind of browse it. And it is well worth a read. Um, Steve, uh, one thing that I'm not super clear on. So benevolent marketing.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You guys work with insurance organizations on their marketing. Does that include insurtechs?

Speaker B: Yes, absolutely.

Speaker A: So how do you help insuretechs?

Speaker B: Um, many ways, but I would say the most common would be helping them identify how they are going to win, what, what is the game they're playing and how are they going to win. So, um, and that typically will take the form of saying, hey, we've, we've got this product and here's what the messaging has looked like. Rethinking the messaging and then that execution of how it goes from marketing to sales to service. So it's, it's a clear line all the way through. And then there could be different, uh, applications or execution on that. Whether it's marketing campaigns, which I love as a marketer, to me, my favorite unit is the campaign. Um, so it typically campaigns. Right. Campaign design and execution, that kind of thing.

Speaker A: All right, all right, all right, all right. Um, all right. Uh, what does it look like to engage you for our insurtech?

Speaker B: Uh, when you say what does it look like? What does the process look like?

Speaker A: Yeah. Yes. So one of my listeners happens to be Canadian and they run, uh, a fairly early stage insuretech that they have no idea how to market yet they have somewhat of a product, maybe a little bit of revenue, MVP level kind of thing, but they really don't have a marketer yet on staff. Uh, uh, it's a bunch of engineers right now. Uh, uh, and they're like the Tony tells them what you really need is somebody who understands how to market this stuff. Uh, uh, so they reach out. What does the process look like?

Speaker B: Process looks like an initial intake. So I'm going to just ask questions that I've learned and say, hey, here's. You answer these questions, we'll get together and then right away start to look at how do we think about how you are viewed from the market. Right. Are you. Where, where in the stack Are you located? What is your position? And then how do we start to, um. How do we start to make your product worth talking about?

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: In my mind, that's the.

Speaker A: How do we make your pro. It just hit me like it took me a second to, to understand the phrase, to process how do we make your product worth talking about? Yeah, that is great. Uh, how much of a commitment are we talking? Like, like can we hire you just for a few hours or is it like a three month commitment, minimum?

Speaker B: No, I, I don't love, um, long timeline commitments. Because if I don't know you and you don't m. Know me, there's always a getting to know your phase. So.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker B: Um, I'm, I'm quite, I just, I love the work, so I, I'm, I'm quite happy doing a one hour consultation.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: If that's what I have or.

Speaker A: Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. So we're running out of time here. Any final words?

Speaker B: Uh, no. I just want to thank you for having me on.

Speaker A: My pleasure.

Speaker B: Have thoroughly enjoyed it. Um, I love the magic tricks. I love the firewall.

Speaker A: Did you catch this one? This appears, never leaves.

Speaker B: Where did it go? Right, I love that. But yeah, no, thanks for having me on. And, and like I said, I, you know, this isn't. Trust is a, is a, is a weird thing, right? Because trust is a weird thing, right? You can, you can have it, have it, and then in one second it's lost, just like you said.

Speaker A: So Warren Buffett's line, it takes 30 years to build a reputation and, uh, and 30, uh, seconds to destroy it. Uh, and it might not be possible to rebuild it. It might be, but it won't be fast. Uh, let me put it this way. If you lose your girlfriend's trust for whatever reason, uh, let's say the relationship starts. And it starts on a basis of she's trusting you, and then you screw up that trust, but not so bad that you break up.

Speaker B: Mhm.

Speaker A: It'll take years to rebuild.

Speaker B: We're always.

Speaker A: There's no other way.

Speaker B: Yeah. We're looking for signs. Right. And I would say this too. You know those, those three elements of trust, right? Capability, reliability, benevolence. They differ over time and the stage of relationship. So if I, if I know your product delivers and I know I can count on you now, now maybe you know, you. Something happens and you're you jack the prices 50. I go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's, what's, what's that all about, right? I feel that way sometimes. The, uh, subscriptions I have, uh, streaming services. If the bill just goes up and you're thinking, what, watch nothing changed, but you're gonna. You're gonna do this. So there's different. There's a temporal aspect to it.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Anyways, I have thoroughly enjoyed this. Uh, you're a great.

Speaker A: Thank you so much.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: 800 times. And I love what I do. Like you. I love what I do. Thank you so much for time today.