SPEAKER_00 0:08

Hi and welcome back to Humanizing Insurance. As always, I'm your host, Daniel Grim of I'm joined today by the co-founder of Fat Recruiting, co-founder of Insurance Nerd, the host of the Fabulous Profiles in Rich podcast, Tony Kenyan. Tony, welcome to Humanizing Insurance.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Thank you. Thank you for having me. Uh of course, to to my uh uh uncouth American ears, your accent sounds so freaking classy.

SPEAKER_00 0:35

Uh stop it. It's it's it's incredibly bad form to make an Englishman blush.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Uh I am thrilled to be here.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

We're delighted to have you, Tony. Um Tony, we're gonna dive right in. Um just I guess for the uh points of doubtful listeners, and in case it hasn't come across in the past 20-something episodes, you don't know what I'm gonna ask because we don't plan these these things because they're about you, which should be your special subject.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

I've never watched that episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

So it's gonna be it's gonna be fun. Uh I think it's it's worth pointing out that uh anyone who has been to a US conference would have seen you. Uh you you are noticeable in the insurance world because you don't wear the corporate camouflage of a of a mid-blue suit or a charcoal suit. Uh, and actually the last time I saw you, I remember it vividly because uh I I caught the the jacket and top hat out of the corner of my eye, and the next thing I knew you had opened a book or a wallet and flames were coming out of it. Uh so just if anyone hasn't met Tony yet, that is the the flame in wallet.

SPEAKER_02 1:47

It is real uh uh it is real uh analog fire.

SPEAKER_00 1:55

Amazing. It it's um it is a spectacle whenever you're around. And I mean the first thing we normally ask, Tony, is was insurance in the game plan when you were going up, growing up?

SPEAKER_03 2:09

No, no, of course not. I I I've asked that question to rooms full of insurance professionals, both on the carrier uh and on the agency side, and uh that uh uh almost almost nobody, unless your dad was an agent. In fact, when somebody does raise their hand when I ask if they grew up, I wanted to work in insurance, uh, I immediately ask, uh, was your dad an agent? And 99.5% of the time it was. So no, yeah, I no, I I I wanted to be uh a computer science. Uh I went I wanted to be a programmer. That was that was that was the plan.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Okay, so let me let me ask you this. What found you first, insurance or magic?

SPEAKER_03 2:50

Insurance. So I did a tiny little bit of magic uh when I was about seven years old. Uh and then I I I kind of forgot about it. Uh my girlfriend of 13 years, when I got back into magic, well I was like, hey, how come I didn't know you were into magic when you were seven? And why did you give it up? I gave it up uh because I discovered girls. Uh and I had to go to college and figure out how to pay myself to get those girls. Uh and I did. It worked. Uh I won the lottery, basically. Uh my my my long-term girlfriend Renee uh is uh a fellow insurance executive, uh, brilliant, like a genius level brilliant, gorgeous, way out of my league, uh, retired at 38 years old. Uh whole Guinness World World Record related to travel has taken me to 85 countries. Uh like like if we get going on her, we'll it'll take way too long. Uh wheels travelstheworld.com. Check out her stuff, wheels travelsheworld.com. Uh but but uh uh yes, uh ultimately I gave up I gave up magic at eight years old. Then I wasted the next 33 years of my life uh finishing high school, going to college, uh getting a degree which was supposed to be in computer science, and ended up being in business because I can't do math. Uh after failing Calc One for the sixth time, I ended up uh in management information systems. Uh and and uh I graduated, worked in transportation uh as a as a as a dispatcher. Uh, and then the economy crashed in 09, and I fell into insurance by accident because in 09 they had jobs. And I fell into a call center, Farm Bureau of Iowa. And magic didn't come until a few years later. Uh should I let you keep going with the questions or should I tell you how I got back into magic?

SPEAKER_00 4:35

No, I mean please keep please keep going. I'm interested about the magic.

SPEAKER_03 4:39

Perfect, perfect. So so I was very much the short hair tie every day Monday through Monday through Sunday when I met my girlfriend 13 years ago. Uh because that's what I thought you needed to do to succeed in insurance. I also got all my education, CPCU, which is the American equivalent of CII, and a bunch of other education, 10 destinations total. Uh and uh I wrote the book on how to engage millennials in the insurance industry. So, first I founded Insurance Nerds, which was supposed to be about insurance, careers, and technology 11 years ago. It's a blog, it's still around. Uh, then came the podcast, Profiles in Risk. Uh, then came uh chatwithony.com, which is my free career advised service. Uh, and I wrote a lot of articles about how to engage millennials in insurance and uh what how to grow your insurance career. So I uh one day my girlfriend was frustrated uh and uh was in manager meetings in Chicago and called, uh she got back from those meetings at an insurance company, at a broker, a very large broker, where she was a manager or a director at the time. She came home and said, uh, they don't get it, you have to write the book. So I called my co-founder, uh uh Carly Burnham, and I said, Renee says we have to write the book. We sat down in 90 days. We wrote a book on how to engage millennials in the insurance industry. It's called Insuring Tomorrow. Uh before that, I had been doing a lot of speaking on that topic of how to engage millennials in the insurance industry. And that speaking, the very first time I did it, was at the 2014 CPC Society annual meeting in Anaheim. Uh, and uh last second, like literally that day, I had submitted my my slides, my deck about three months before. That morning, I was like, this tech sucks. I hope I can say this sucks. This tech is this tech is awful.

unknown 6:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

And I sat down, completely redid it, took out all the stats and replaced them with fun pictures and stories. And uh, as I got on stage, I, or just before getting on stage, I was wearing my suit and a Superman shirt underneath for good luck. About 10 minutes before people started walking in, I decided, you know what, go go big or go home. I took off the shirt, the the button-down, the broom coats button-down blue shirt. Uh, they only make them in three in three colors. Uh, and and I left, I so I I went on stage with the suit, black jacket, black pants, Superman shirt, and I gave a presentation and I killed it. I I I gave that presentation at 70 or 80 insurance conferences, and I've worn the same outfit every time because people keep asking for it. So my my author photo is that uh that became my brand for a long time. Uh happened, uh, COVID happens, and I'm wearing a mask, right? We're about to get back on the road in 2021, and uh uh with wearing a mask, I have a hard time recognizing people when they're wearing a mask. So I assume that people are gonna have a hard time recognizing me when I'm wearing a mask. So I go to Insure Tech Connect, ITC, Las Vegas, 2021. And I when I do ITC, I do ITC. What I mean by that is I don't sleep, right? I sleep for hours a night, and then on Thursday, I don't even get a hotel room. I check out my hotel room on Thursday morning because I never made it back. So I check out my hotel of the hotel room on Thursday morning, give my backs on Friday, yeah, on Thursday, on Thursday morning, give my backs to the bellhop at the uh at the mandala, and then I do the concert, I pull out all nighter, and uh uh when my alarm goes off at like 4 a.m., I grab my my Uber to the airport and I take the 6 a.m. flight to Atlanta and I sleep on the plane. So basically I'm at the airport. Uh 2021, right after ITC, I'm exhausted. I'm wearing a black top hat because I bought a black top hat uh to be recognizable at conferences if I'm wearing a mask. So I'm wearing my black leather top hat, which is bigger than this one, and it doesn't fit in my suitcase. So if I'm wearing it, I'm wearing it all day. Uh and nowadays I wear it every day, but but back then it was just conferences. And a random human, unrelated to a conference, walks up to me wearing a black top hat and a red jacket and says, Are you a magician? And I had an identity crisis, and I'm like, that sounds like a lot of fun. And I started learning magic again. If I was a rational human, I would have learned three or six tricks. And then at every insurance conference, I would go to the first booth of insured tech sponsors and I would do two tricks. I would go to the second one, I would do two tricks, I would go to the third one, I would do two tricks, and then I'd go back to the first two tricks. But I'm extremely ADHD and hyper focus hit. And it went from a hobby to an obsession to a marketing expense for my recruiting firm. Uh, next thing I know, uh, we come back from a year in Argentina and end up living on the Atlanta belt line. I give up my car. The belt line is a 22-mile paved path, rare in the US, right? There are restaurants and bars and and and people walking and walking their dogs and running and biking. And uh my elevator drops me up right on the belt line, and there are buskers. Right? They're a little more common in Europe, very uncommon here in the States, but there are people that play mutiny, they do all sorts of things, right? Uh, and I become a street magician on the weekends.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

And I love it. Uh I end up doing a magic trick for uh at Insurtic Hartford. I end up doing a trick for Brian Falchuk, CEO of PLRB. Brian loves it. Uh, PLRB is a claims organization here in the States, uh, educate claims education and and like lobbying. Uh Brian loves it. A couple days later, I get an email saying a magical partnership partnership with PLRB. Uh and and uh uh they hired me to be their uh uh their magician for for their conference last year, uh my first paid gig March of last year, and they hired my girlfriend to be the keynote. She got paid 10 times what I did, which is fine. They gave us a suite for the week and a limo, which is a little weird. And I uh she killed it as the speaker, and I was supposed to do magic the last day at a lunch for two hours. I did magic 12 hours a day for the whole conference because I love what I do. Uh and uh the last day of that conference, uh there uh I found out that one of the sponsors, a restoration company, it was a claims conference, had brought in a professional magician uh out of Boston. This was in Indianapolis, Ryan Lally. Uh and and and uh I I meet him, uh he does some little magic for me. I do a little magic for him. He's much better than me at the time. And he says, and I thought I'm an amateur, I just do insurance conferences. I'm an insurance guy that does magic. And he he says, Have you considered the Jeff McBride School of Magic and Mystery? And I say, Yes, I have, but it's expensive, it's hard to take the time, and it's always waitlisted. And he says, I haven't done it, but I I've used Mike Bright for uh for for Zoom like consulting, and some of my friends have done the school and they loved it. So that night I get to my room, I pull the website, it's three weeks, it's two weeks before the conference or before the class, before the biggest class of the year. They do six classes a year. The biggest one is the seven-day masterclass. Uh, and they have an opening. The class cost eight costs eighteen hundred bucks. I just got paid 2,000 bucks by PLRB. I look at my girlfriend and I say, Do you mind if I'm gone for a week? She says, No. I call my business partner on on the recruiting side, which is the day job, uh, a little recruiting company that I that I run, specialized in insurance. I call Kylie and I tell her about it. And I say, if you say do it, I will I will do it. You're the last thing in my way. If you say do it, I'm gonna go in earthly mode for a week. And she says, I'm not gonna get in your way. Go ahead. And I did it and it changed my life. And since then, uh I am now a semi-pro magician. Uh, I have the tools to go pro if I wanted to, I just don't want to give the insurance stuff up. Uh so not only do I do street magic in Atlanta, I am a geeking magician here in Atlanta, uh, both for adult birthday parties, for corporate events, for weddings, that kind of stuff. And I'm an active trade show magician, especially within insurance. Uh, but nowadays, also not within insurance sometimes. Uh that's a lot. So, so so yes, uh insurance came first, but insurance in a weird way led me to uh to magic. So that is a very, very long answer to a very simple question.

SPEAKER_00 12:45

That's an amazing answer, Tony. And I mean, almost fateful, right? To have all those things line up at the same time. Openings and and the the right amount of money and the right people that you met at the conference.

SPEAKER_03 12:58

And uh Daniel, I can't even explain it. Uh when I was in when I was growing up in Costa Rica, uh uh what is his name? Brazilian author Pablo Coelho was very popular with with the high school kids. Uh and his most famous book in Latin America is The Alchemist. And the The Alchemist basically says it's its idea is that when you're chasing your destiny, the entire universe conspires to help you get there. That is what happens. I this is an agnostic guy who doesn't believe in any of this stuff, uh, former Catholic agnostic, uh, quite literally. Like the money lined up, the timing lined up. I uh even the flight, uh direct flight from Atlanta uh to Vegas on Delta, 400 bucks buying it two weeks before the event, it's unheard of on Delta. And then because I'm Delta Diamond and Million Miler, I end up getting first class, and then because of a plane being repaired, first class and so being Delta One, I end up on a laid-down, full, like transatlantic uh first class seat to Las Vegas. That plane doesn't normally fly to Las Vegas, the other one was getting repaired. Uh, and I show up and it just it was amazing, absolutely amazing. I've now been there, I think I've been in Vegas seven times in the last year for further magic training.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

Okay. It's it's amazing. I remember, I remember seeing your LinkedIn post when you were going in for the first time, and I could feel the joy radiating out of my screen uh with your selfie as you were you know going in. Um and yeah, you know, a huge, huge kudos for finding a passion of following it. And you know, you call you call it hyper focus. I I see someone doing something that they love uh and that people love to see you do. So uh I think it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

I I uh ended up hiring a mentor. So so the the the owner of the magic school, his name is Jeff McBride, he he's the world's best magic teacher, 35 years running running the magic school. That the second dean of the magic school, the first one was Eugene Berger. Uh he passed away. His uh the next in line, uh, the current dean of the magic school is uh the philosopher magician. Uh his name is is uh Larry Haas, and he is a PhD in philosopher and philosophy. He was a tenured professor who gave up his tenure professor role. I don't know how his wife didn't murder him, she's also a tenured professor in philosophy to become a full-time magician and teacher. Uh so Larry and I get along really well. So I hired him uh uh for for for like continue on continuing mentorship. Uh and and uh it it has been a ridiculous, amazing experience. Uh and this is a specific reason you remember you reminded me of of Larry. What was your comment? Uh oh, oh I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know. So I I what my second or third gig, paid gig, was a 102-year-old birthday here in the outskirts of Atlanta. And I booked it, and I had uh a lot of magicians do nursing homes, old people homes. I had never done one, right? So I booked the gig. The way I booked it because it was in a competitive marketplace on gig salad. Uh, the way I booked it is by saying, I will treat that my my 96-year-old grandma still alive, I will treat this, and it was her grandson hiring. I will treat this like my own grandma's birthday. And he hired me. And I did, I showed up with gifts and everything. Uh and uh it was only five people. So grandma and uh three of her kids and one of her grandkids. Uh so after I booked it, I freaked out. I'm like, I've never done a nursing home. She's 102. I'm a card magician. What if she can't see the cards? Luckily, I had developed, I had Larry and I had developed a relationship with a lot of magicians from the magic school, and some of them had done a lot of a lot of nursing homes. They helped me figure out how to do it. I did it, it was amazing. The next day, I got I got a big tip. Uh I got like a$200 tip. Uh, and I'm in Chicago the next day for Insure Tech Chicago, and uh I get uh the review that her grandson left me, and I was crying in the Uber. And I uh sent the screenshot to Larry and I said, This is why I bring him up. I said, It is really weird to find your calling at 42 years old. Yeah, but that's yes, I I was born to do this. Uh I'm glad that I did insurance first because the average magician in the US uh full-time makes 40,000 a year. I make a lot more than that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:33

Awesome.

SPEAKER_03 17:34

So I'm glad I discovered insurance first.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Probably the best way to do it, to get some uh top tip for anyone coming into the insurance industry that wants to be a magician, develop your insurance career first, get stable, and then go into magic.

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Now, the Venn diagram of insurance people who end up becoming magicians, uh, right, like the the intersection of magicians and insurance people is about about n equals two. And I I know what the other guy. Okay. But if any other insurance people want to become magicians, I can point you in the right direction.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah, don't make and who wouldn't want to be a magician? I'd let's Tony, if we may, can we keep talking about magic for a second?

SPEAKER_03 18:14

Of course, of course. It's your conversation, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

So when you're learning magic and you know you're you're at these incredible schools with other incredible magicians, how much of magic is uh technical repetition of putting the reps to learn the actions versus how much of it is understanding human psychology?

SPEAKER_03 18:38

96% is understanding human psychology. Uh you you and and here's here's the funny part, and and I think we all go through it. You you discover magic because somebody does a magic trick for you and you want to know how it's done. And either they tell you, which you're not supposed to, and you just start doing that trick to your kids or to your friends or whatever, or like you you buy a trick from a magic shop and you enjoy doing it. Uh and that's how you get started. So so you think that it's all about the tricks. So you start buying a bunch of tricks. It happens to all of us. I spent holy crap, in 2023, I spent, I don't know, five grand, ten grand in magic tricks, uh, something on the lines. Uh and and uh some work for you, some don't. Uh, and you start watching a lot of YouTube and you sign up to like there's like Netflix like services for magicians. Uh and and that's the first stage, right? And and and and you think that it's all about the the magic you've bought, right? And then in my case, what happened is I I went to a magic school, and on day five out of seven, I uh at the end of the day, and the days are intense, intense. Like you're exhausted, you're not getting much sleep. Uh, it is so intense. So I have my my my carry bag with that that holds like six, like 60 decks of cards. It's ridiculous. Okay. Uh, and that thing never left my side for like a year and a half. Uh, one on like the fifth night of the school, I left the school and left my bag behind and didn't even realize it. Had that happened the week before, I would have been in a panic because I would have thought that I lost it. And I didn't realize it at all until I showed up that the next morning. When I showed up the next morning and I saw that my bag was still sitting there, I'm like, oh my God, I didn't even realize I left it behind. At the end of that of the day, or actually at the beginning of that day, because we do a vision circle at the beginning and at the end, when they handed me a toy, but it's my chance to speak. One of the things I said is I left my my my carry bag uh uh yesterday and I didn't even realize until this morning. And I've been thinking about why didn't I freak out? Why didn't I realize I didn't have it? The biggest thing I learned the first five days of in the McBride School of Magic and Mystery is that the magic is not in the bag, the magic is in me. And truly, the more you learn, and and then so the next step, you go from buying tricks to buying books. Sure. Right, you stop buying tricks, you start buying books. So last year I spent like two grand in books. They don't even they don't fit in my one bedroom apartment anymore. It'll take me a lifetime to get through them, but it's part of the process. And the more you re you learn, the more you realize that the difference between an amateur magician does 30 different tricks for the same people. A professional magician does five tricks very, very, very, very well for different people. Right, understand it is all about the psychology. Nowadays, so I used to to to to need I used to to to to need uh several decks of cards on me to to to like entertain a group. Nowadays, this is my actual apartment. Nowadays, this little picture is a sponge, right? A little sponge heart and my magic wand. Okay, there's the sponge, right? It goes my right hand, my left hand, my right. Right hand back to my left hand, the hand never leaves the camera and it just vanishes. And I can bring it back wherever I want. And I can do this on loop in person, surrounded by 360 degrees. I just learned this last week. And I can with this, a little bit of rope and one deck of parts and maybe a Sharpie. And I can I can enter I can entertain a group of 30 people for half an hour. So I can't call it.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

Yeah, I can't tell you how much. And I'll make sure I put this this clip on LinkedIn because visual magic doesn't work well for an audio podcast audience. But go to go to the LinkedIn page to look at it. For me, even just virtually.

SPEAKER_03 22:52

Fantastic.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Always have been. And I'm a 38-year-old, eight-year-old, truthfully. So I I will always uh be interested in in magic. Um so just based on you know the psychology comment, a lot of magic, and you know, even just the the trick that you just did for me is based on misdirection, right? That's a key a key part of of magic. But what has what what has you doing magic and studying magic taught you about uh you people's attention and perception and how they process information?

SPEAKER_03 23:35

That is a really, really good question. Um I'm a talker, right? Uh I'm a high eye uh in the this profile. I've always believed that that let me put it this way when I was single, I haven't been single for 13 years, but when I was single, I I never won on looks. I have a great smile, but I never won on looks. In in a loud bar, I would never get that phone number. But if I can sit next to the girl for an hour and get her in conversation, I'm gonna win. And the way that I do that is simply by talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Eventually, before she knows it, we're on the third day of the first date and we're dating, right? And she has no idea what happened, and she's very happy about it. Okay, magic has taught me that the power of silence. Magic has taught me that the power of saying less, having a tight script. Uh and Jeff Pike Right, for example, the reason he's such an amazing magician, he's a trained mind.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

So what what like the biggest thing I'm learning is how to be more impactful without having to talk continuously.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Okay. Interesting. Yep. I mean, there'd be something from a salesperson's book that is you know say what you're gonna say, then shut up. Type piece rather than rather than rather keep talking.

SPEAKER_03 25:12

In sales, in sales, it it's uh the moment the client signs the contract, shut up and get the heck out of there before you talk your way out of it, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:21

I mean, absolutely. It's um it was it was something that I'd been guilty of in the past, and I had a uh boss, Kurt Jackson, um who taught me a very valuable lesson. I think I was I was asking to do it, it was something mundane. I asked him if I could do this thing, and he said yes, and then I went on to justify why I wanted to do it, and he he just looked at me and went, I already said yes, while you're still talking.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

I I I thought I tell that to my girlfriend all the time. Whenever she talks me into a new trip or whenever she talks me into moving, when she talked me into moving to Argentina for a year, she can't she kept she kept talking about and she's not a talker, but when she's nervous, she is. So I already said yes. And uh she kept trying to sell me on it, and I'm and babe, you already sold me on it. Like you got the sale, don't talk yourself out of it.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

I'm gonna I'm gonna ask another question about magic and then try and link it back to insurance.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Uh which if if I succeed, Tony, it will be magic. This is my magic trying to link magic and insurance together. Uh so based on my experience of magic and what what you said, you magicians don't uh sell tricks, right? You create an experience. Do you think uh that insurance is or at least should be an experience business?

SPEAKER_03 26:53

Yes, yes, okay. So let's let's let's start in in personal age, the simplest side of insurance, home and auto, or what do you guys call non-life uh home and motor insurance, right? Uh the way we do it today in the states is not an experience. It's painful to buy, partially because it's heavily regulated, but it's it's painful to buy. Uh, then you don't hear from us for six months or a year, if everything goes correctly, if you don't have a uh a claim, uh and uh get to the end of the year or or whatever the closure period, you get your renewal, and that renewal has probably gone up even though you didn't have a claim. That is a horrible experience overall. Horrible, right? Yeah. Uh instead of now, five percent of my customers had a claim this year, and and statistically speaking, and if we did a good job, which we hopefully did, then those five percent might have be might be very happy with us and might become very loyal. Uh, but the other 95%, they have no relationship with us, right? It's a horrible experience. Uh, on the other hand, uh in commercial lines, in in a good commercial alliance relationship where you you have a great relationship with your broker, and and you you get more, they're more than just a prize shopper, uh, and they're a real risk manager for you, and they work with your real risk manager, and they hip you, they'll help you overall lower your cost of risk. And yeah, that they a couple of times a year they take you out to a ballgame or or uh to lunch or whatever, right? That's a much better experience, right? How could we do that in personal life? But but yes, what I'm trying to say is is is we need to learn how to make insurance into a positive experience. Because otherwise, 95% of the time, we're doing what we promised. But if they haven't had a claim, they feel like they just wasted their money.

SPEAKER_00 28:48

Do you do you think, going back to an earlier question about your magic and people's attention and perception and how they process reality? Um, do you think we as an industry do a good enough job of educating people of what is happening or why it's happening?

SPEAKER_03 29:07

No, we are at least here in the States. I I won't talk about the London market. Uh, I have visited London, but never Lloyd's uh and I have not visited London during my insurance career. Uh, but in the in the states, the way that we we don't educate the consumer at all, period. Right? You don't learn you're you don't learn uh about insurance in college, and you don't learn about insurance in high school, you just learn about insurance. Your first exposure to insurance it is uh auto insurance, uh where like you get added to your to your parents' policy at 16 or whenever you start driving, and your parents complain about how expensive it is. Uh and eventually at 26 you you get kicked off of it and you have to get your own or whatever, whenever you get your own, and that is your your experience with it. Uh and unless you have a claim, you know, you never learn about it. Uh the commercials are wasted, completely wasted. We we we compete on humor when the reality is is that humor attracts price droppers. Humor works for progressive and geico very, very well, right? Uncle Warren Buffett uh Geico prints money for for Berkshire, progressive prints money also. But to see carriers like Liberty Mutual, like nationwide, carriers that are not price carriers competing on uh back when I was at nationwide, they had the world's most annoying salesman. They called it the world's greatest salesman, but my god, he was annoying. Uh and in person, he was downright creepy. Uh, what that attracts is price droppers. If that's not your focus, if you don't know how to do price droppers well, what are you doing? I wrote an article many years ago. It's still on insurance nerds, insnerds.com. And basically, what what what uh it was called sleeping with the enemy. It was called sleeping with the enemy. You can probably still Google it. Sleeping with the enemy is the only way to save personal lines. And I called for Namek, the National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, who I did not know at the time, and now I know them well. This is not what they do. But I called for Namek to bring together state farm, nationwide liberty, and the medium and small mutuals, and uh put together a war chest of money and use that money to educate the consumer on insurance and on the advantage, the advantages of being insured by a mutual. Never happened, of course. Uh the closest we got was Nationwide Insurance. Uh, shortly before I left, Nationwide Insurance hired Julia Roberts and had a fantastic series of commercials called Join the Nation, where with Julia's beautiful voice, they they explained why it's better to be insured by a mutual carrier. There's no shareholder conflict.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 31:49

And uh the first one came out just before I left Nationwide, and I was literally crying on at my desk. Okay. And you know what? And there were three or four commercials. You know what happened afterwards? Uh, the next uh a couple of months later, nationwide had the famous bed baby commercial at the Super Bowl. I don't know if you heard this story.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

I have not heard this story.

SPEAKER_03 32:11

Nationwide Financial, I can't remember the year, must have been around 2015, 2013, so maybe 2013, 2014, something about right. Nationwide insurance, uh Nationwide Financial, which is the life insurance company by Nationwide, uh, runs a big a ad on the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is leading this to say a big national party where Americans and the entire world watch a bunch of of grown men play eggbowl, not football, because the real football, you and I understand the World Cup is this year. Uh we understand. But they play egg bowl, uh, and the whole country freaking watches, and a lot of people around the world watch it. The commercials are a big deal, it's a big party. Well, nationwide's commercial that year, or one of their commercials, was a PSA, a public service announcement by the Nationwide Uh Financial Foundation about, and at the end of the commercial, you found out the baby is dead, right? And and the it wasn't trying to sell you life insurance, it never talks about life insurance. It talks about about safety proofing your your house for your baby. Okay, it was a good message, it was a good message, delivered in the wrong place, uh, to the to the wrong crowd. The reaction was in here, it played once in the Super Bowl. And the outcry was horrible because everybody thought that Nationwide was trying to use a dead baby to sell them life insurance.

SPEAKER_00 33:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:32

The chief marketing officer of Nationwide got fired a couple weeks later, and with him went the excellent Join the Nation campaign. You can't even find them on YouTube anymore. I wish I had an old copy of it.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

Huh. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, like you say, probably a really good message that was misunderstood and certainly shown at the wrong time.

SPEAKER_03 33:54

It was a little bit the wrong way, in the wrong place.

SPEAKER_00 33:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:59

And and that's that's the thing. That's the closest we've gotten, at least in the US market, to educate people about insurance when it comes to that billions of dollars the industry spends on marketing.

SPEAKER_00 34:11

Yeah, I mean, it it's not it's not a US problem. From the UK, we have so we have price comparison sites, which were arguably the original insure tech, right? Put your details in once, get 150 quotes from all the major players in the market. But all that does is just it drives everyone down to the bottom because it it reduces insurance to three ticks and a price.

SPEAKER_03 34:37

Here in the States, it's getting slightly better. So uh the first, I don't know, 20 comparison engines that I interviewed on the podcast uh on promising risk were completely price focused. Today, every once in a while I interview a comparison engine that is more coverage focused. So we're getting a little bit better.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Awesome. Uh and obviously with the potential for AI, I'm not sure whether how that will help hinder or hallucinate uh people into thinking they have the right coverage.

SPEAKER_03 35:10

So I don't know when we're when this will come out, but we're recording on March 2nd, a couple of weeks ago. Uh uh some, I think Australian company uh put their coding engine on Chat GPT or on whatever GPT, and all of the big brokers took like big dives in their stock price. Right. Gallagher lost like 10% or something overnight. Uh and I I think I I'm not an investment guy, uh, but I think that that's a horrific overreaction. Uh, it doesn't matter how you get the quote. I I've had my PlayStation offer me a quote. Right? I I I I've been at a rest stop in a highway in California uh sponsored by Geico. Uh it doesn't matter how you get the quote. Uh the broker will never go away. Uh especially what when it comes to uh people like people who own significant assets and commercial lands.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Yeah, I think to your point, I think it was uh a really short-sighted, probably ill-informed knee-jerk reaction. Because the big brokers, for all the wood in the world, Tony, you and I do not go to Marsh or Willis or Gallagher or Aeon for our insurance. They will always be required by all of the big, medium, and small companies to do that. The the ones most at risk, that's only the US um scenario, probably the agents, right? It's personal lines where if if the if the risk manager or the chief risk officer of Coca-Cola or Walmart was using Chat GPT to get their insurance quoted, I I I think they'd probably be fired uh as soon as it was found out.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:00

No, it's it's not a risk to those. Um anyway, back to you. Uh and I'm gonna keep a magic theme running, Tony, um, because it would be, I get to talk to magic. Like said the Venn diagram is two people in it, and I don't know the other one. So uh you're the only person I'm gonna get to speak to about this. Is Tony the magician and Tony the insurance nerd different people or the same person just expressed differently?

SPEAKER_03 37:32

This is a fantastic question. Um in magic, we spend a lot of time educating ourselves about character. Uh Robert Robert Houdin, who uh who uh Houdini would name himself after later on. So Robert Houdin was a French magician in the uh 1800s and he defined the very image of a modern magician. Uh uh Houdin uh didn't put it on a black top hat and a black jacket because he wanted to be fashionable. He put he put it on, he put it on because that was that was what gentlemen of his day were in Paris. Uh, and he just happened to become a really famous magician, and to this day, that is the image we have of a magician. But in magic, we there's entire books, entire classes, etc., about character. Oh, Houdin also said a magician is an actor playing the role of a magician. My best friend uh in Magic, uh, the incredible uh Richard Lord, who is a 27-year-old magic savant who's now has has had two shows on the strip in Vegas. I just wanted to see it, it was amazing. Uh he is a great magician, a great pianist, a great actor. I'm a good magician, I'm not a great actor. Uh so in in the conversation about character, some magicians uh create a character. And and so, for example, the the shocker. I just got to meet him in Vegas. The the shocker, his character is a wrestler, an ass wrestler, like a not very nice wrestler, right? Like a heel, uh a bad guy wrestler. Sure. Uh and offstage, he's a nerd and a nice guy, right? That is a character. The shocker is a character. He could have a different character. Uh uh, what's what's her name? Uh Lucy. Lucy has been going. Lucy Darling has been going crazy on social media, right? Lucy, like look her up. Lucy Darling uh uh has been going crazy on social media. The magician, Carissa Hendrix, who plays Lucy Darling, they're different people, they are different people. Okay, the dress is different, the accent is different, the personality is different, the magic they do is different. Lucy Darling is a very successful character. Carissa Hendrix is a very successful magician.

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

Me, uh, the the other type. So some magicians create characters, other magicians just play a amplified version of themselves.

SPEAKER_00 40:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:06

I play an amplified version of myself. Uh my my my mom's second husband, they've been now being together for 25 years. I don't call him my my stepdad because he came around when I was 16. We're very good friends. Uh, he's a psychologist. Uh my mom's uh second husband said that I didn't invent a character to do magic. I the the the magician emerged out of me and I just couldn't hold it back anymore. So no, no, this this is the like insurance Tony and Magician Tony and Tony in the grocery store on Sunday morning are the exact same person acting the exact same way. Uh and all of them are thrilled to show you a magic trick, and all of them talk too much. Uh and my girlfriend gets annoyed because we go for dinner, and even if I'm not wearing the top hat, people will recognize me in the street and go like the magician, and she hates it. Uh, and and recently she said, you know, I hadn't made peace with you being insurance famous because I don't deal in the insurance world much anymore. But you being insurance famous in Atlanta is annoying.

SPEAKER_00 41:22

Yeah, I could I could I could get that. But I also imagine you're the sort of guy that always has a magic trick on you.

SPEAKER_03 41:29

Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. No, and that's oh that's that's another thing. So so uh uh the way that that magicians define me, I I learned this last week in in Vegas in the in the class this time. Uh uh my my best friend Richard's uh fiance, who who is uh who is his theater director, Ace said, or one of Ace's friends, I think it was, said, Oh, you you're you're you're a box of tricks, aren't you? And I'm like, what do you mean? And she's like, Well, you're always dressed in your magician outfit, wherever you are, and I bet you that in that jacket you have 15 different tricks. And I'm like, Yeah, definitely. In fact, the jacket, give me just a second. So this is the old jacket, this is the original jacket that did a lot of of uh uh insurance conferences with me.

unknown 42:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:22

Notice that it's the new jacket, brand new. I've only had it for less than a year. This jacket was custom made by a tailor in New York that specializes in magicians. You can only get in by referral, it was ungodly expensive. I had to fly, I I I was in New York for Insure Tech Insights when I went to see him the first time, and I had to fly back to New York the second time just to get measured. Literally flew to New York and flew back and flew back, and then he then he mailed it to me. Uh, this beautiful investment of a jacket has a ridiculous amount of pockets in it. He he literally does the suits for Penn and Teller and several other famous magicians. Um so basically, yes, at any given time, I have like 20 tricks on me. I'm a I'm a boxer tricks, basically.

SPEAKER_00 43:16

That that is one of those jackets where you can say that there is nothing up your sleeves, but it is not true.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

So I I don't do anything with sleeves, uh, but but yes, like that is my that is my my style is I can be in the grocery store on Saturday, and if you ask for a trick, I'll probably do you know how how to get a and this is very true for me. How do you get a magician to to show you 10 tricks? You ask him to do one. That's me.

SPEAKER_00 43:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 43:49

By far.

SPEAKER_00 43:50

Yeah, I mean, every every time I've seen you, Tony, at every conference, you are always surrounded by by people doing doing tricks.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Um what happens all It's all the time. Uh, I get on a Zoom call, whether it's a candidate that I'm interviewing for a job or a prospect company that that wants to recruit for them, or a chat with Tony that'll come conversation, just career advice. And when I get on the call, or they found the YouTube channel or whatever, and they they say, Oh, I saw you at such and such conference, but but uh I want to say hi, but you were always busy. And I'm like, okay, let me make this very clear. I've said on the podcast too. If you see me at a conference, I'm either talking or doing my day for somebody, come interrupt. Because otherwise, I will never not be talking to somebody. It's what I do. When I stop talking, you'll know I'm dead. That should be my biography.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

I I may title the this podcast episode that.

SPEAKER_02 44:44

Perfect.

SPEAKER_00 44:46

Um, Tony, final question for you. Uh, and again, I'm gonna try and blend insurance and magic together uh in honor of having you on. If you could make one misconception about insurance or change one thing about the insurance industry by magic, if you could abracadabra something to change, what would that one thing be?

SPEAKER_03 45:09

Can I get two?

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Because here's because I'm a benevolent host and I do whatever I guess want.

SPEAKER_03 45:17

So here's the problem. I spend most of my time living in insurance as a career, not insurance as a service. I I've never been licensed, I don't sell insurance, right? So, but I think the answer this is supposed to be answered on both sides. So let me start with the side that I care less about. Okay, on the insurance, when it comes to the consumer that buys insurance, the one misconception that I would get rid of like that is that insurance is a scam. Uh that and this is a wide perception, a very broad perception. Anybody hasn't but had a claim before or had a claim go badly. Um that perception that that that insurance is is a scam, or the perception that that insurance is a bank account, and when you do have a claim, you're supposed to squeeze it for all its worth to try to get your premiums back. That's what that's what I want to get rid of, right? And and what I would implant, what I would inception in everybody's head, and the way that we can do this is through education. Let's teach this in high school for real. Yeah. Uh and in college also. Uh the understanding that the right use of insurance is nothing happened. You got protection that you didn't use. And when something else happened, we're here for you. But it's a legal contract, right? Uh so and and on the career side, which is the side that I live on and that I think about most of the time, I would eliminate the perception that insurance is boring. Insurance is not boring. Insurance is absolutely freaking fascinating. And you will never run out of stuff to learn about it. There's no other industry for anybody that has a degree in business of any sort, undergrad or whatever, there's no other business that doesn't know the cost of goods sold when we sell the product. Sometimes for years, sometimes for decades, right? Hello asbestos. Uh we're almost almost put voids out of business, right? Yeah. Um that so if if we could if if every kid could be born or learn in kindergarten and then again in elementary school, and then again in high school, and then again in college, that insurance is fascinating and it's a really interesting, profitable career, that would be my greatest magic trip.

SPEAKER_00 47:45

Amazing. Well, Tony, I think you are doing your part. Uh I I genuinely do. And you know, hopefully, podcasts like your your fabulous profiles in risk podcasts, and the yeah, what I humbly try to do in a vain attempt to try and keep up with with what you do, uh, will have will have an impact and hopefully you know show that there are exciting roles, exciting problems to solve, uh, with some some fantastic, genuinely some of the most fantastic people uh that that I think you could get to work with within it.

SPEAKER_03 48:22

That I I I every once in a while, um, and I hope it'll make you lick your next meeting, but we'll we'll do that here in a second. Every once in a while, I get a chat with Tony Cole from a finance major, somebody who went to university, studied finance. Of course, they went they went to study finance because they wanted to work on Wall Street, and they graduated, and for whatever reason, they didn't make it onto Wall Street, and they ended up for working in insurance, and they're calling me in a panic because they think their life is over. Yeah, and I started the conversation with you got lucky, you got really lucky. This is a much better career, and it is, and there's a lot of competition to grow here, and my favorite part about insurance insurance attracts and especially retains people, the people that stay here for 20, 30, 40 years, sometimes 50. I've literally been to a 50-year anniversary for an underwriter at Liberty Mutual. Uh, the people who stay here for for a long time stay here not because they can make the most money. If you want if you're entirely coin operated, go work in finance, go sell real estate, right? Uh go sell mortgages when when the market's part, whatever. Uh they stay here because they like that what they do in one way or another helps people get back on their feet. And this goes for commercial aids, it's just for personal aids.

SPEAKER_00 49:49

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 49:50

So they're good people.

SPEAKER_00 49:53

They are great people, almost almost without exception, I found across the industry.

SPEAKER_03 49:59

Um Tony this has an incredible, we get it all loaded up, right? And we all see we did that. And like everything else in magic, it's just an illusion. Now, every miracle does have its price, and the price for us, number one, we have to modernize our systems. We we have to be competitive with with the with the user experience of Amazon or of Google or of Apple. Competitive, competitive, that's what the client expects. Number two, we have to modernize our careers, and yeah, those things uh have their cost.

SPEAKER_00 50:45

Uh for those just listening on the podcast, Tony just did another magic trick, which is why I'm a little bit um lost for words. But what a way to close. Tony, I have had so much fun doing this conversation. Uh thank you so much for agreeing to come on, for talking to me about magic, for putting up with my attempts at segue and magic into insurance.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

I do it every day.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

And yeah, it's it's been it's been a fantastic chat. Thank you so much for for taking the time to talk to us.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

Thank you, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

And that's it for this episode of Humanizing Insurance. If you enjoyed the conversation, the single biggest way that you can support the podcast is by sharing it. Send it to a colleague, post about it on your socials, or bring it into a conversational work. Every chair helps us reach more people across the industry and keeps these stories going. You can follow Humanizing Insurance on LinkedIn, where we share new episodes, clips, and reflections from across the insurance world. As always, thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.