Ramblings of a Gen X-er

My Kind Of Town

2008-01-09T21:00:00.000-06:00

Now this could only happen to a guy like me

And only happen in a town like this

So may I say to each of you most gratefully

As I throw each one of you a kiss...

This is my kind of town

Chicago is my kind of town

Chicago is my kind of people too

People who smile at you

And each time I roam

Chicago is callin' me home

Chicago is one town that won't let you down

It's my kind of town

My kind of town

Chicago is my kind of town

Chicago is my kind of razzmatazz

And it has all that jazz

And each time I leave

Chicago is tuggin' my sleeve

Chicago is the Wrigley Building

Chicago is the Union Stockyards

Chicago is one town that won't let you down

It's my kind of town

An Old Friend Breathes New Life Into INDEMNUS

2008-01-02T19:04:00.000-06:00

It sounds hard to believe that a progressive company like ours that was only three years old could benefit from new ideas. It would be hard to believe for a lot of firms. However, as I mentioned in yesterday's blog we are obsessive about pushing the envelope and at the speed in which we work, in our world one year seems like three.

Vipul (vee-pull) Shah and I grew up together in a suburb outside of Des Moines, Iowa. He had moved here with his family from India when he was very young. I met him while in the fifth grade. We hit it off almost immediately. We were both planners and dreamers. Had we been adults at the time you might have called us 'visionaries'. We were both very creative in different ways. I was interested in temporal arts (music, movies) and Vipul was great with numbers and a great problem solver. I'd have a hard time remembering now all of the home movies we produced or pseudo-businesses that we invented. Anyway, it was always great fun brainstorming with Vipul.

One Friday night in the fall of 2006 my wife and I were having dinner with Vipul and his wife. The conversation of business and automation began between Vipul and lasted most of the evening.

Unbeknownst to each other the two of us spent the entire weekend independently thinking about our conversation. I woke up in the middle of the night more than once to write down the multitude of ideas that were pouring into my head. I keep a notepad by my bedside just for this purpose. By Monday morning Vipul was at my office eager to pick up the discussions and share with me all of the thoughts that he had in his head since our dinner.

I welcomed that opportunity to share with him all of the things that we were doing at the agency. By this time Vipul had spent the better part of 12 years as a business consultant travelling throughout the United States. My business partner (and brother) Ryan and I welcomed all of the free advice that Vipul would offer.

We started by sharing with Vipul our expenses. Vipul managed to come up with several easy to implement ideas that had a great impact on our bottom line. Over the final months of 2006 he saved our company 20% off of our expenses. Remember I've already told you that I am the left brain thinker (creativity, etc) of the group. Complex financial modelling and spreadsheets are clearly not my forte.

After months of brainstorming and implementing some of our better ideas, genius struck. Genius had hit on such a grand scale that no idea before or since have ever compared in terms of scope and potential.

Vipul had spent a lot of time thinking about the workflows and automation that we had developed (I'll never divulge them here as our competitors read this blog too :) ). Anyway he was sitting in a church service. The pastor was requesting that the congregation consider a donation to the church's capital campaign. The church was building an addition and needed to raise money. Vipul looked around the room. Everyone in this room buys auto and home insurance and some even buy life insurance, he thought. Even in a state like Iowa, where premiums are among the lowest in the nation, the commissions that insurance agents earn on their policies must equal about $200 per family. And because of the unique nature of the insurance business, that $200 is earned by their agents every single year that their policies renew. To Vipul that meant that in a church with 2,000 members, their total opportunity represented $400,000! That's $400,000 the first year, $400,000 the second year and every year thereafter. Now obviously he knew that one could never come close in capturing 100% of anything. But if 10% of the congregation participated, that would equal a $40,000 contribution to the church every year. A sizable and perpetual income borne out of an everyday household expense. No donation required!

So there it was. The Indemnus Fund. Our minds went wild thinking of the possibilities that a program like this could create. Non-profit organizations could rally their supporters to save money on their insurance and support cherished causes at the same time. It was the ultimate win-win.

We've spent the past fourteen months researching similar programs (not many exist--believe me). We've met with attorneys, insurance commissioners and countless non-profit organizations. One of the last pieces to fall into place is a web-based quote to purchase solution. Ironically all most of those solutions arrive this month. With plans for Progressive and Allied Insurance to deliver an online rating and e-commerce solutions for us and EMC National Life to deliver a term life solution, the final piece of the Indemnus Fund puzzle has been laid.

Over the course of the next several months look for big changes at indemnusfund.org. All of the tools will soon be in place to allow you to quote your policy, vote for your favorite charity and research insurance terms and different types of policies. We are working with our insurance providers to offer you group discounts to ensure that our rates will always be among the lowest offered anywhere.

The potential for this program is overwhelming. We're excited about this opportunity and what it will mean for charitable organization throughout the United States. We look forward to hearing from you and your ideas about how we can make this program even better.

Regards.

How I Found Success Selling Insurance

2008-01-01T22:00:00.000-06:00

OK. It's time to come clean. I sell insurance. There I said it. Well, that's the short story.

Here's how it really happened.....It seems like it was just yesterday.....(insert harp glissando here).

After leaving the University of Iowa in my junior year I went to work managing a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in West Des Moines IA. I was single and mobile so they transferred me around a lot. I spent time in Dallas, Chicago, Madison WI and Davenport IA. I realized quickly that although I would never starve to death working in a restaurant I wanted more.

After a few years with Chuck E. I decided to call upon my Dad who had forged a successful career for himself in the insurance business. I had always assumed that working for my father's insurance agency would be my destiny but I fought it for years. Although I've always had a pretty easy time making friends and I communicate well, I wasn't sure that I could feed myself (let alone a family) by selling insurance. I thought to myself selling insurance has to be the most 'unsexy' vocation that I could choose. Would I like it enough to be successful?

Anyway, one night in the summer of 1995 I invited my Dad over to the restaurant for a pizza and allowed him to give me the 'pitch'. Although, I was still unsure about how things would play out at the time, I shook his hand and we agreed that I would study for my license and start learning the insurance business.

I worked for my Dad's agency for eight years. I held licenses for personal lines (auto, home, etc), commercial lines (insurance for business) and life and health insurance. I had that benefit of working with some very good agents. However, I quickly realized that most of the older agents were using badly outdated workflows and were extremely resistant to change. It was out of necessity that my interest in automation and workflows began to consume me. I began writing a book that could be used to instruct new independent insurance agents on how to optimize their workflows to produce (sell) more policies in less time. At the time very few resources existed to help new 'independent agents' break into the business. This manual would become the basis of and business plan for what was about to happen next.

In April of 2003 I founded, INDEMNUS with my younger brother Ryan. INDEMNUS was to be a real-time approach to selling home, auto and life insurance. We were only focused on policies that could be quoted and sold in over the phone or via the web. That meant no business insurance. Just like GEICO or Progressive, we were able to deliver immediate solutions. Unlike GEICO and Progressive (at that time) we were a one stop shop for homeowners and life insurance too. We invested heavily in technology. We were a paperless agency from the beginning. We the first agency in the nation to offer 'e-signatures' for insurance applications. We employed an intricate call flow matrix that leveraged the service centers provided by our insurance carrier partners. This obligated the insurance companies to handle customer service issues such as billing questions & policy changes which allowed our office to focus primarily on sales.

My older peers in the industry thought that I was completely nuts, a dreamer. Almost no one shared my vision in the beginning. I was told that this type of agency would fail and that we would never be able to sustain ourselves. Well, one of my guilty pleasures in life is working as hard as it takes to prove someone wrong.

Within three short years INDEMNUS was the largest Progressive agency in my home state of Iowa. We were also one of the Top-30 largest Allied (Nationwide) agencies in an eight state region.

We had done it. We had built an agency for the new millennium. A lean operation leveraging all of the latest technology and automation. An agency that grew to a size in just three short years that would have taken a conventional agency an entire career to grow.

One thing that we've never done at INDEMNUS is spend too much time patting ourselves on the back. The year of 2006 had been a banner year for us. We had record earnings. There was much to celebrate. As I said though, celebrations don't last too long in our world.

So In the late fall of 2006 I sat at my desk wondering how we were going to push the envelop in 2007 and beyond. What could we do on a grander scale. Around that same time a childhood friend of mine who had had a successful career as a business consultant started spending time at our offices. Now I must confess that my growth plans for '07 at the time didn't involve serving the less fortunate and the poor. But fate has a strange way of taking you places that you never guessed you would go. Serving charities would be exactly where we would end up....

Next chapter: An Old Friend Breathes New Life Into INDEMNUS

So This Blogging

2007-12-26T16:11:00.000-06:00

I decided earlier this month that I would try and discover what the vast world of blogging is all about. I had always dismissed blogging as merely a pointless waste of time perpetrated by Generation-Y. I liken this activity to 'text messaging', a counter-productive use of one's time. Don't get me wrong, I understand sending someone a text message during a meeting or class when you can't make a phone call or send an email, but entire 'conversations', c'mon! Speaking in terms of effifiency, 'texting' seems to be the worst form of communication there is.

To me blogging always seemed like an awful way to get information. There is no 'fact-checking' here, no verification of information. I asked myself why do people spend so much time reading other people's 'take' on things. I know that everyone has an opinion, but does everyone deserve a public forum in which to share it? A lot of people have enough trouble forming good arguments or supporting their points of view. It seemed like giving them the lecturn might be a bad idea. Why should I respect someone's political or philisophical views that I do know personally?

I know we Gen X-ers are famous for complaining about things so I'm going to try and refrain from further ranting. I'm not ready to conceed that blogging isn't a waste of time, I'm just saying that I am willing to keep an open mind and will be ready to admit if I am wrong.

I'm asking the blog community to help me through this volatile time and to help me better understand this new communication frontier. Please feel free to leave me constructive comments.

Regards.