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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:37] SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Canada's podcast, the number one podcast for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs.
[00:44] SPEAKER_03: So I do welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:46] SPEAKER_03: Thanks for coming.
[00:48] SPEAKER_03: One you tell everyone is we always do a little bit about yourself, you know,
[00:52] SPEAKER_03: who you are, what you're doing at the moment,
[00:56] SPEAKER_03: and then we'll move into sort of the entrepreneurial journey.
[01:00] SPEAKER_03: Karen, thanks for having me on the podcast.
[01:03] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I'm the CEO in one of the co-fenders at PolicyMe.
[01:07] SPEAKER_02: My background, historically before, starting the company was an actuary for a few years
[01:12] SPEAKER_02: and then I worked in management consulting.
[01:15] SPEAKER_02: Specifically in the insurance sector for about seven or eight years.
[01:18] SPEAKER_02: So my experience is really in the insurance area,
[01:22] SPEAKER_02: not in the distribution or the sales part of the business,
[01:25] SPEAKER_02: which is where our company is focused, but more so in the product side,
[01:28] SPEAKER_02: really understanding how the products are priced,
[01:31] SPEAKER_02: how the insurance company is treated from a risk perspective,
[01:34] SPEAKER_02: and how they allocate their assets and resources towards those products.
[01:38] SPEAKER_02: So really taking a more scientific approach to the issue.
[01:43] SPEAKER_02: And at PolicyMe, what we're really doing here is we're working on how do we distribute,
[01:48] SPEAKER_02: how do we sell a life insurance, individuals, and an online model,
[01:51] SPEAKER_02: but heavily focused on the advice and guide aspects.
[01:55] SPEAKER_02: So not just saying we're going to find someone,
[01:57] SPEAKER_02: or we're going to take an existing customer who would typically buy from an advisor
[02:01] SPEAKER_02: or just say we're going to do a better process with,
[02:04] SPEAKER_02: let's catch points, let's think to sign,
[02:08] SPEAKER_02: let's put it in your interest, just an easier process.
[02:10] SPEAKER_02: We're doing that, but we're also going far beyond.
[02:12] SPEAKER_02: We're really focusing on helping people understand what they need,
[02:16] SPEAKER_02: why they need it, if they even need it at all.
[02:18] SPEAKER_02: So all that upfront education and guide is going to be buying the support
[02:22] SPEAKER_02: of being into that process.
[02:24] SPEAKER_02: And then obviously, once we're there, we can facilitate that online process
[02:28] SPEAKER_02: through the customer application all the way to policy issue.
[02:33] SPEAKER_03: You know, and this is a little bit of a revisit.
[02:35] SPEAKER_03: We interviewed one of your co-founders, Laura, about six months ago.
[02:41] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, before we dive into it,
[02:42] SPEAKER_03: I'm just interested in it because the first time we've been able to
[02:45] SPEAKER_03: have more, well, not the first time, but the suggested to have a reflection on,
[02:50] SPEAKER_03: you know, pre-COVID, post-COVID, you know, you're predominantly an online business.
[02:57] SPEAKER_03: What's that meant to you in terms of the last four months, basically?
[03:02] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think speaking a little more generically about how the,
[03:06] SPEAKER_02: not just our student industry, but how the economy has really shifted over the last six months.
[03:10] SPEAKER_02: What I think what we've seen is in general a shrinkage of the economy,
[03:13] SPEAKER_02: obviously, as there's less consumer spending in a lot of different areas.
[03:17] SPEAKER_02: But we see that the online stores are kind of still growing, right?
[03:22] SPEAKER_02: The overall pay is shrinking, but a lot of shifting away from brick and mortar towards the digital.
[03:27] SPEAKER_02: Right? So you look at a company like Amazon, for example, retail is obviously decreased as a whole,
[03:32] SPEAKER_02: but Amazon revenues are through the roof, right?
[03:35] SPEAKER_02: Is they're taking it all on that share from typical brick and mortar.
[03:38] SPEAKER_02: And I think there's some similarities to what we're seeing in life insurance,
[03:42] SPEAKER_02: where in general, the industry is actually shrunk.
[03:46] SPEAKER_02: There are less sales year over year over the last few months than there were in 2019.
[03:51] SPEAKER_02: Even though there's certainly an increase in demand for the product,
[03:54] SPEAKER_02: what people are thinking about life insurance, or speaking about their mortality,
[03:58] SPEAKER_02: but there hasn't been an overall decrease in the sales.
[04:01] SPEAKER_02: We're seeing a big spike in our revenue and in our sales largely because
[04:05] SPEAKER_02: our model is built to work in a non-physical world,
[04:09] SPEAKER_02: working in virtual environment where there are no face-to-face meetings.
[04:13] SPEAKER_02: Nothing in person, everything set up, process-wise,
[04:16] SPEAKER_02: be able to be convenient on your own time, and when you're ready to do things.
[04:20] SPEAKER_02: And that's kind of carried forward into the pandemic as we put more and more focus on emphasizing
[04:25] SPEAKER_02: that business structure and allowing people to get through the process quickly.
[04:30] SPEAKER_02: And we've seen an increase.
[04:31] SPEAKER_02: And part of that, again, is due just to the demand going up,
[04:36] SPEAKER_02: and people thinking about their mortality, but a lot of it is just a general progression of being a startup.
[04:41] SPEAKER_02: A lot of things kind of coming together.
[04:43] SPEAKER_02: We finished our fundraising rates before the pandemic hit.
[04:46] SPEAKER_02: We hired a lot of people for as well.
[04:49] SPEAKER_02: So that general moment can continue through, and we've seen a boost as well from the today.
[04:56] SPEAKER_03: Okay.
[04:57] SPEAKER_03: You know, and let's move back to your story.
[05:00] SPEAKER_03: I just was curious about that reflection.
[05:03] SPEAKER_03: You sort of studied as an actuarial science.
[05:07] SPEAKER_03: You went into insurance.
[05:09] SPEAKER_03: That's a pretty secure route in terms of career.
[05:14] SPEAKER_03: I mean, there's not too many of you anyway.
[05:18] SPEAKER_03: So why do I become into a risk-sided thing?
[05:24] SPEAKER_03: You're pretty solidly placed in a big financial sector.
[05:32] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, part of that is just my personality.
[05:35] SPEAKER_02: I've always been more of a risk-taker, but very calculated with my risk-taking.
[05:40] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I like to analyze everything I do.
[05:42] SPEAKER_02: I like to weigh out the pros and cons,
[05:45] SPEAKER_02: stay through things as mathematically as possible,
[05:48] SPEAKER_02: but also recognizing where there's opportunity and where I can kind of hit my potential.
[05:53] SPEAKER_02: And I started off as an actuarial.
[05:55] SPEAKER_02: And that was probably as conservative as it kept for someone in math and looking at that area.
[06:00] SPEAKER_02: In the last two years, I wrote my gins.
[06:03] SPEAKER_02: There's about 90 gins that you need to pass.
[06:05] SPEAKER_02: It should change as it's often, but back then,
[06:07] SPEAKER_02: about 90 gins I had to pass to become a fully certified actuary.
[06:12] SPEAKER_02: And then I did much of that job the day after I finished my last one.
[06:17] SPEAKER_02: I finished everything and I never really used that designation.
[06:20] SPEAKER_02: I jumped into management called the ASSAT,
[06:22] SPEAKER_02: which still somewhat conservative from a...
[06:26] SPEAKER_02: You know you're going to have a good salary.
[06:27] SPEAKER_02: You know there's your job security.
[06:30] SPEAKER_02: It's not running a business.
[06:33] SPEAKER_02: But it's a little more...
[06:34] SPEAKER_02: A little more up pace, I would say, right?
[06:37] SPEAKER_02: It was late night.
[06:38] SPEAKER_02: We can...
[06:40] SPEAKER_02: More challenging work in the sense that you don't know what's coming.
[06:43] SPEAKER_02: These are changing very quickly.
[06:45] SPEAKER_02: Very ASSAT-based environment.
[06:47] SPEAKER_02: And that was my kind of taking the next step.
[06:50] SPEAKER_02: I'm okay. Let's get out of my comfort zone a little bit.
[06:52] SPEAKER_02: Let's do something that's going to push me a little further
[06:54] SPEAKER_02: and help me get to my potential where I thought I could be.
[06:59] SPEAKER_02: And that was an incredible experience.
[07:01] SPEAKER_02: Again, I was about seven or eight years.
[07:03] SPEAKER_02: I've probably put all over Wyoming.
[07:04] SPEAKER_02: I was based in Toronto, but I was working in the US.
[07:08] SPEAKER_02: So I think I was average about 115 flights a year.
[07:13] SPEAKER_02: About 70.
[07:15] SPEAKER_02: So it was pretty hectic, mostly in New York,
[07:18] SPEAKER_02: but pretty much all over the US.
[07:20] SPEAKER_02: I was trying to zoom.
[07:21] SPEAKER_02: And it was like, honestly, I couldn't think of a better place to be
[07:25] SPEAKER_02: or better set up experience to set me up for what I'm doing now.
[07:29] SPEAKER_02: But it was at a point where I kind of...
[07:31] SPEAKER_02: This time for change, time to take the next one,
[07:34] SPEAKER_02: time to find an area where I can further add value.
[07:37] SPEAKER_02: And not just work on behalf of big insurance companies.
[07:40] SPEAKER_02: And then that's what followed me the most.
[07:42] SPEAKER_02: Was it that job?
[07:43] SPEAKER_02: If I did a good job, it was big insurance companies making more money
[07:47] SPEAKER_02: and being more efficient.
[07:48] SPEAKER_02: And yes, that does flow through down to the customer in some cases.
[07:52] SPEAKER_02: But there's no direct lines.
[07:54] SPEAKER_02: The customer and I saw that my next...
[07:57] SPEAKER_02: An adventure had to really be focused on, okay,
[07:59] SPEAKER_02: there's a kind of gaps here in transparency, in education.
[08:04] SPEAKER_02: Customers are buying products through advisors.
[08:07] SPEAKER_02: The advisors are often...
[08:09] SPEAKER_02: They don't have map and all that background.
[08:11] SPEAKER_02: They're often not trained all that much on the specific product.
[08:14] SPEAKER_02: It's extremely easy to get a distribution license to sell life insurance.
[08:18] SPEAKER_02: They're working...
[08:19] SPEAKER_02: They should be working on behalf of the customer,
[08:21] SPEAKER_02: to provide an advice.
[08:22] SPEAKER_02: They're paid by the insurance company.
[08:24] SPEAKER_02: Totally incentivized one-to-one to help the insurance companies make money.
[08:28] SPEAKER_02: The more they sell, the more they make,
[08:29] SPEAKER_02: whether it's the customer or not.
[08:31] SPEAKER_02: I just found that there was a huge mismatch between what the customers knew,
[08:35] SPEAKER_02: what they were buying, what they should be buying,
[08:37] SPEAKER_02: and how the industry was put up.
[08:38] SPEAKER_02: That's where I wanted to start the company and really focus on...
[08:42] SPEAKER_02: On really taking my knowledge, taking my understanding of what was on behind the scene,
[08:46] SPEAKER_02: and bringing that to the customer, and being able to distribute it,
[08:49] SPEAKER_02: and thinking about, okay, where do we place that in the process of customers,
[08:52] SPEAKER_02: and make much more...
[08:54] SPEAKER_02: Much more informed decisions on what they're buying,
[08:57] SPEAKER_02: and buy products that better suit their needs in their family structure.
[09:01] SPEAKER_03: But why set up something itself,
[09:03] SPEAKER_03: and not to do within an organization?
[09:06] SPEAKER_03: I mean, do you come from an entrepreneurial family,
[09:09] SPEAKER_03: or is it just...
[09:10] SPEAKER_03: Is this Andrew?
[09:12] SPEAKER_03: No, yeah.
[09:12] SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
[09:13] SPEAKER_02: My family is not entrepreneurial at all.
[09:15] SPEAKER_02: It's a very conservative doctor-centred,
[09:18] SPEAKER_02: try to take the space for you.
[09:21] SPEAKER_02: For me, I mean, it was just...
[09:23] SPEAKER_02: I really felt that there's no way I can have even closer to a larger impact
[09:27] SPEAKER_02: through this organization.
[09:30] SPEAKER_02: Even if you find the right company that's going to give you free reigns,
[09:33] SPEAKER_02: okay, this is your thing, go own it, go do what you want.
[09:36] SPEAKER_02: It still takes way longer.
[09:38] SPEAKER_02: There's still a lot more politics.
[09:40] SPEAKER_02: There's still a lot of competing interests.
[09:43] SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you firsthand, one of our biggest values,
[09:47] SPEAKER_02: our biggest characteristics as a company,
[09:50] SPEAKER_02: is that we recommend that 26% of our users
[09:52] SPEAKER_02: not to buy life insurance,
[09:54] SPEAKER_02: and there's a whole lot of people who are recommending not to buy permanent life insurance,
[09:58] SPEAKER_02: which is the really expensive version of the product.
[10:01] SPEAKER_02: And that directly goes again,
[10:03] SPEAKER_02: what an insurance company wants to be.
[10:04] SPEAKER_02: And they sell revenue-perfective.
[10:07] SPEAKER_02: To kind of have...
[10:08] SPEAKER_02: We felt in order to be intellectually honest with ourselves and with our customers,
[10:11] SPEAKER_02: we really needed to be completely independent from the industry
[10:16] SPEAKER_02: and from an insurance company when we built up our advice algorithms
[10:19] SPEAKER_02: and we thought about what we recommend.
[10:21] SPEAKER_03: Interesting.
[10:22] SPEAKER_03: Let's sort of move to, you know, why here?
[10:26] SPEAKER_03: Why Southwest Ontario?
[10:29] SPEAKER_03: We know it's a bit of an insurance hub, for sure.
[10:32] SPEAKER_03: But I mean, there are other hubs around North America
[10:36] SPEAKER_03: and you've obviously been to them.
[10:38] SPEAKER_03: Why here?
[10:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I was...
[10:41] SPEAKER_02: At first, I was not exclusively Southwest.
[10:43] SPEAKER_02: We were a Canadian company.
[10:45] SPEAKER_02: We're operational in probably 70 provinces now.
[10:49] SPEAKER_02: We're increasing them.
[10:50] SPEAKER_02: We should be in the rest by the end of the next couple months.
[10:53] SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, we think about it as a Canadian company where,
[10:55] SPEAKER_02: again, there's no one person who's able to serve the entire country.
[10:59] SPEAKER_02: So it really came down to us,
[11:00] SPEAKER_02: which country we want to start in.
[11:04] SPEAKER_02: I'm Canadian, my co-founders are Canadian.
[11:07] SPEAKER_02: We know a lot about the Canadian market and there's a lot of time here.
[11:11] SPEAKER_02: And that's really where it began.
[11:14] SPEAKER_02: We could do Canada, we could do US.
[11:16] SPEAKER_02: We wasn't as familiar with other markets around the world
[11:18] SPEAKER_02: not having that much time there or work there.
[11:20] SPEAKER_02: So it's really good to be Canada and the US.
[11:24] SPEAKER_02: And frankly, we just saw more of a gap here.
[11:27] SPEAKER_02: There were already...
[11:28] SPEAKER_02: There was raised some capabilities in the US in our space.
[11:31] SPEAKER_02: Not so much focused on the advice and the guidance,
[11:33] SPEAKER_02: but more on digital aspects of the life and future process.
[11:36] SPEAKER_02: So we did see more of an opportunity here,
[11:39] SPEAKER_02: but also this is where we were more passionate about African-Cadien.
[11:42] SPEAKER_02: Given that we are Canadian, we've given up this.
[11:45] SPEAKER_02: This is where our home is, where we've grown up.
[11:48] SPEAKER_03: What are you most excited about in your business at the moment?
[11:52] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, the exciting part for me is really...
[11:55] SPEAKER_02: We've seen so much growth over the last six to eight months.
[11:58] SPEAKER_02: We've really seen the beginning of 2020.
[12:01] SPEAKER_02: And to be perfectly honest, the end of 2019, it was a struggle.
[12:05] SPEAKER_02: We were going through a fun race.
[12:07] SPEAKER_02: We were severely understaffed.
[12:09] SPEAKER_02: I was on the road of law trying to raise money in Japan and New York.
[12:15] SPEAKER_02: Things worked going as well as we thought we'd experienced a good mid-2019.
[12:20] SPEAKER_02: And we thought we were kind of on the uphill progression and then things flatline.
[12:24] SPEAKER_02: So to really see all that hard work come through and return in early 2020
[12:30] SPEAKER_02: and the growth that we've seen and just see the value that we're now adding,
[12:34] SPEAKER_02: the reviews that were coming in, the money that we're saving for so many people,
[12:37] SPEAKER_02: it's so exciting to see this actually work, right?
[12:40] SPEAKER_02: And I think as a founder and an entrepreneur, you're always excited.
[12:44] SPEAKER_02: You always have hope and believe in yourself and what you're doing.
[12:48] SPEAKER_02: But there are so many unknowns.
[12:50] SPEAKER_02: There's no instant gratifications.
[12:51] SPEAKER_02: No instant feedback.
[12:53] SPEAKER_02: Very difficult to tell if you're doing the right things, making the right micro decisions and macro decisions.
[12:58] SPEAKER_02: And really to see that all come together and start to really pay off in terms of growth has been so excited.
[13:05] SPEAKER_02: So for me, I'm just knowing that how good our team is and how well we've hired and how hard everyone's working
[13:12] SPEAKER_02: and being that we've barely scratched the surface on what we're keeping well out.
[13:16] SPEAKER_02: I'm very excited for what the next couple of months do a year for come.
[13:19] SPEAKER_01: This podcast is sponsored by eBay Canada.
[13:23] SPEAKER_01: eBay Canada is powering Canadian small businesses.
[13:26] SPEAKER_01: Go to eBay.ca forward slash up and running, Chopen Your New Global E-commerce Business.
[13:33] SPEAKER_03: You're moving on to yourself, but what's the best thing about being entrepreneur for Android?
[13:39] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for me, it's really, it's the economy, right?
[13:43] SPEAKER_02: It's the ability to not have to answer to many people, right?
[13:49] SPEAKER_02: There's definitely negative to that.
[13:51] SPEAKER_02: There's some aspects where it's helpful to have people watching what you're doing.
[13:56] SPEAKER_02: And you have to definitely be the right person to be able to handle that.
[14:00] SPEAKER_02: But at the same time, we don't have to do, if we don't have to answer to an intern's company,
[14:04] SPEAKER_02: we don't have to answer to the corporations.
[14:07] SPEAKER_02: If we feel that there's something that's right for us to do for our customers, we can go off and do it.
[14:12] SPEAKER_02: And that's an incredible feeling to have and a lot of smooth very quickly and a lot of this to really add value.
[14:17] SPEAKER_02: And that was one of the things that bothered me a lot about working for big corporations.
[14:21] SPEAKER_02: And before there's other aspects, right?
[14:23] SPEAKER_02: You can't always do the thing that you think is right.
[14:26] SPEAKER_02: Whether it's the noble thing or I mean, there's other competing interests.
[14:29] SPEAKER_02: And it's fair. I mean, companies, that's how companies operate in the past.
[14:33] SPEAKER_02: And I know one day, or I'm hopeful one day we'll get to a size where we're very large.
[14:38] SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure at that point, some of these things will come back in.
[14:42] SPEAKER_02: But we've been very careful about who we picked as our investors,
[14:46] SPEAKER_02: how we built our culture and our board and everything, my perspective,
[14:50] SPEAKER_02: keep that economy and make sure that we're not our pop metric is not revenue.
[14:55] SPEAKER_02: And then we're looking at a lot of value-ready entrepreneurs.
[14:58] SPEAKER_02: And if that means selling products, it don't maximize profit.
[15:01] SPEAKER_02: And by me, that's one of it.
[15:03] SPEAKER_03: And that's really been very important to how we built our company.
[15:06] SPEAKER_03: So far from raising money, what you did say was a bit of a challenge, six months back.
[15:11] SPEAKER_03: What's the greatest challenge you particularly faced in your entrepreneurial life today?
[15:20] SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So I think one of the issues with being a disruptor,
[15:25] SPEAKER_02: and again, we're not, the disruption that we bring isn't just process oriented.
[15:29] SPEAKER_02: Which I think I'm a lot of digital company, especially in the insurance patients being,
[15:34] SPEAKER_02: we're just making a manual process digital.
[15:36] SPEAKER_02: That's very easy to define and to articulate and to be for a customer.
[15:42] SPEAKER_02: But we're also really focusing on value from the advice perspective, right?
[15:45] SPEAKER_02: And again, educating the customer.
[15:47] SPEAKER_02: And we go, we go again status close more so many, so many different cases,
[15:53] SPEAKER_02: where we're recommending thoracic of our recommendations are very different than the industry.
[15:57] SPEAKER_02: And we get a path. I mean, there's, we see brokers disagree with us.
[16:01] SPEAKER_02: It's very different, right?
[16:03] SPEAKER_02: And I think that that's one of the biggest challenges we face is how we sell ourselves to our customers.
[16:09] SPEAKER_02: How do we convince them that we're the ones to be trusted?
[16:11] SPEAKER_02: We're the one putting it up for them.
[16:13] SPEAKER_02: And I think it's been challenging.
[16:15] SPEAKER_02: It's been really challenging to fill that for in.
[16:16] SPEAKER_02: I think we're getting there.
[16:18] SPEAKER_02: We focus a lot on PR lately and getting our word out.
[16:22] SPEAKER_02: And really being making sure customers realize how honest we are.
[16:26] SPEAKER_02: But it's very different than what many people are used to in terms of what the advice is.
[16:30] SPEAKER_02: And that's the most challenging for me as an entrepreneur, but also a policy-reason company.
[16:35] SPEAKER_02: And really making sure that it's clear what our value publishing is and how we're actually getting through the better education and better value.
[16:44] SPEAKER_03: What's the best piece of advice you've been given that you still use on a regular basis?
[16:52] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the first one is the best advice that I was given.
[16:57] SPEAKER_02: Initially before starting a company was don't do this by yourself.
[17:01] SPEAKER_02: You need good partners.
[17:04] SPEAKER_02: At least one, hopefully two.
[17:06] SPEAKER_02: You need people who care about this and are as passionate about this as much as you are.
[17:13] SPEAKER_02: And that are smart, that are hardworking.
[17:16] SPEAKER_02: That will really put the same level of effort in and just care.
[17:19] SPEAKER_02: Right? And I think I see another down there is trying to say, you know why?
[17:24] SPEAKER_02: Like I want my idea.
[17:25] SPEAKER_02: I know everything about the why am I going to give up 50% or 66% by company before we even start.
[17:32] SPEAKER_02: And it's just it's the wrong approach.
[17:34] SPEAKER_02: And so happy I was given that that guidance before because I mean having Laura and having Jeff on the team.
[17:41] SPEAKER_02: There's no way I can have done this.
[17:43] SPEAKER_02: Zero chance.
[17:44] SPEAKER_02: And I think that's so so important to think about what you're building.
[17:49] SPEAKER_03: So what advice would you have given yourself when you're about just graduating?
[17:57] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I would say I mean start earlier, take the risk earlier.
[18:02] SPEAKER_02: There's some level of getting the experience working for the company.
[18:06] SPEAKER_02: And I think that is important.
[18:08] SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it's a good idea for entrepreneurs just to go right out of school and ready to start on it.
[18:13] SPEAKER_02: I think there's a lot to learn and a lot of professional maturity gain before you do it.
[18:18] SPEAKER_02: I don't need to wait that long.
[18:20] SPEAKER_02: There I worked for about 10 years before I did this.
[18:23] SPEAKER_02: And I think I cut up the jump table earlier because you learn a lot.
[18:27] SPEAKER_02: And there's so much even knowing what I know now.
[18:29] SPEAKER_02: This is what I knew two years ago.
[18:31] SPEAKER_02: It's from going through this.
[18:33] SPEAKER_02: Having learned some of that earlier would have been would have been very beneficial.
[18:36] SPEAKER_02: And I'm sure what I'm going to learn the next two years.
[18:38] SPEAKER_02: It's been beneficial for me now.
[18:40] SPEAKER_02: So it's finding the right spot.
[18:42] SPEAKER_02: I don't think there's a certain amount of number of years that's right for everyone.
[18:44] SPEAKER_02: But I do think it's valuable to have to get some experience in an industry that you want to disrupt in working for a bigger company.
[18:52] SPEAKER_02: Learning how to be professional, learning how to communicate with different people.
[18:56] SPEAKER_02: Even now, I talked a lot about how autonomous we are and how to kind of have our own business.
[19:01] SPEAKER_02: But we're always looking to do new innovative things and some of that relies upon coming to big balance, insurance barriers.
[19:08] SPEAKER_02: And I'm meeting with them.
[19:10] SPEAKER_02: We're building some stuff with them and just understanding how to navigate.
[19:15] SPEAKER_02: How those companies make decisions, how to navigate the process and the culture and talk to different people.
[19:21] SPEAKER_02: And who needs to get on board and who I don't need to.
[19:24] SPEAKER_02: All those different areas I learned so much about as an industry consultant.
[19:27] SPEAKER_02: I really got a fitting need in my role now.
[19:30] SPEAKER_02: So there's always a balance.
[19:32] SPEAKER_02: But I think it's important for people to get that experience.
[19:35] SPEAKER_02: If you have an idea and want to feel like you've learned a lot, just jump right into it and try it out.
[19:41] SPEAKER_03: So let's move to the sort of quick repertoire of questions.
[19:45] SPEAKER_03: If you weren't doing what you were doing now, what might you be doing instead?
[19:50] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think I would have stolen my own company.
[19:53] SPEAKER_02: I think I'm hoping I would have made a partner by now, although it's a blessing in a curse.
[19:59] SPEAKER_02: But yeah, I would have been well, would have been traveling, although not a lot of six months.
[20:04] SPEAKER_02: But it's been another hundred and half years.
[20:06] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I think it was kind of a moment where I made that decision to go.
[20:10] SPEAKER_02: And I think I didn't have a hand made it because you know what I mean.
[20:13] SPEAKER_02: I was for sure.
[20:16] SPEAKER_03: So what book are you currently reading or what books would you recommend to somebody that you know those that made an impression on you.
[20:27] SPEAKER_03: Again, that kind of that you've carried around with you.
[20:31] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah. Honestly, one of the books that I love the most, Moneyball, I know that it's a bit of a cliche, but I just do the way that they took an industry that was just a job that was just done so qualitatively for years and years and years and really broke it down to numbers and math and took a sport.
[20:52] SPEAKER_02: That is emotions and the way people's behavior and just said, okay, we're going to ignore all that.
[21:00] SPEAKER_02: It's all law of large numbers, it's all the volatility and variation.
[21:05] SPEAKER_02: You're never going to be perfect with an individual decision, but at a whole it's all going to ever go out and just understanding it's being how that kind of played through.
[21:12] SPEAKER_02: I thought it was like really really reached me a lot and I really helped me through okay, I can take that model and apply it in other areas where you're still managing people and still randomness and that's really what life in turn says right even at the individual basis.
[21:30] SPEAKER_02: You're predicting mortality of an individual person and it's obviously a binary event right the person has a way in the payout, but the person doesn't and there isn't and when you think about putting people on scale, you're going to be wrong or you're going to be right because the idea is if you can get where they are not scale for a lot of people on average, you're going to be right and that's what I saw in that book and taking that notion of planes industry where you would never do it would make sense.
[21:56] SPEAKER_03: A little bit less serious, are you a morning or a night person?
[22:00] SPEAKER_03: I'm more of a night person for sure.
[22:02] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean I still get up quite early, it never gets easy.
[22:08] SPEAKER_02: You think after doing it for 10-15 years, it would be easy to wake up and so never does but I am also up pretty late.
[22:13] SPEAKER_02: I like to work late or see before I go to bed.
[22:17] SPEAKER_02: Definitely more of a night person.
[22:18] SPEAKER_03: We are in the 20% of the people answer that question, essentially.
[22:25] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I can't pick one word to describe herself. What would it be?
[22:29] SPEAKER_02: I think, I mean mathematical is how I always think about it.
[22:33] SPEAKER_02: It's really for me it's a lot of breaking down the analyte together and I do.
[22:38] SPEAKER_02: Especially when it comes to work and we really try to take the life insurance, vice models,
[22:45] SPEAKER_02: remove as much emotion as we can really think about it as some pure numbers and pure analysis.
[22:51] SPEAKER_02: I think that's how I make a lot of my decision.
[22:54] SPEAKER_02: I definitely get some pushback from my fiancee, from 10-15 numbers.
[22:59] SPEAKER_02: I'm hard to argue with, I try to be logical, I'm not going to let everything and sometimes it's not needed.
[23:06] SPEAKER_02: I have a lot of stuff going on in my life.
[23:09] Speaker UNKNOWN: I have a lot of stuff going on in my life.
[23:10] SPEAKER_02: So what's giving you up at night these days?
[23:12] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, at this point I think one of the biggest fears for me is we're up to 20-24 employees now.
[23:20] SPEAKER_02: We're starting to get into that range.
[23:22] SPEAKER_02: We're not a tiny company anymore.
[23:25] SPEAKER_02: I think that hustle and the aspect to come with a small company is we're all in this together.
[23:33] SPEAKER_02: It's very easy to see an individual impact on the big picture when you're a big person.
[23:38] SPEAKER_02: Right, but as you get bigger, it might be harder for employees to maybe recognize where they fit in or how much value they could have.
[23:45] SPEAKER_02: So I think for me a lot of it is how do we maintain that scrapiness?
[23:49] SPEAKER_02: I mean, maintain our culture that's got us where we are while we're growing because we certainly need everyone we have.
[23:56] SPEAKER_02: We're going to need more people and we need to grow.
[23:58] SPEAKER_02: But we also don't want to lose sight of who we are and trying to get a small business scrapiness mentality.
[24:04] SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the biggest, I wouldn't say fears, but it's not the time I think about quite a bit.
[24:10] SPEAKER_02: And it's interesting to kind of transition.
[24:12] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we transition now from being even my role, thinking about okay, just helping the business grow and thinking about what's the best for the business.
[24:21] SPEAKER_02: And now taking a little bit more of a mini-charge standpoint of what are my employees going through?
[24:25] SPEAKER_02: How do I help them succeed?
[24:28] SPEAKER_02: And that's definitely a different mindset.
[24:30] SPEAKER_03: What are you kind of non-negotiables?
[24:33] SPEAKER_03: I mean, you kind of obviously, math and logic is one pretty non-negotiable.
[24:39] SPEAKER_03: Yeah. So what's the other couple of them?
[24:41] SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think a lot of it is non-negotiable from my perspective and from the company's perspective.
[24:47] SPEAKER_02: I've always been, and we're doing right by the customer.
[24:50] SPEAKER_02: And it's been so, it would have been really easy for us to, I mean, the way we make our algorithms, the way we recommend products.
[24:58] SPEAKER_02: There's countries we come in and ask for extensive permanent whole life policies that were we make 10 times the commission.
[25:05] SPEAKER_02: And it's so easy, you can not an individual case.
[25:08] SPEAKER_02: So saying, like, yeah, we can help you with that.
[25:10] SPEAKER_02: Here it is, of get through.
[25:11] SPEAKER_02: And I think one of the big non-negotiables for us has always been, we're not focusing on the individual payout from the individual case.
[25:19] SPEAKER_02: It's not what we're judging here.
[25:21] SPEAKER_02: The volume business, the reputational business.
[25:24] SPEAKER_02: It's focused on do right by our customers.
[25:26] SPEAKER_02: What would you recommend if this was you in a situation, what product would you need to sell that, and relevant on what we make out of it?
[25:33] SPEAKER_02: And that's one area where, especially when you're, I would say we stopped chasing revenue targets.
[25:38] SPEAKER_02: So we were certainly trying to take some going into our fundraise, which was a huge lesson in the zone that get into as well.
[25:44] SPEAKER_02: But I think you start to see those kind of goods come in and say, okay, well, we can discover our whole monthly target with this one sale.
[25:51] SPEAKER_02: And it's, you know, it's the wrong thing to do.
[25:54] SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the, when we talk about the, anyone who's on the marketing side on the sale side on the customer's website.
[25:59] SPEAKER_02: It's very important that they, we get that across and we believe that they're the type of person who will stick to that.
[26:05] SPEAKER_02: And not get ahead of her away from what we believe.
[26:08] SPEAKER_03: So you've heard the tropical island question.
[26:13] SPEAKER_03: I think before in terms of, you know, we leave you on an island, tropical island.
[26:19] SPEAKER_03: There's no form of communication.
[26:21] SPEAKER_03: No devices anywhere except an old-style phone.
[26:25] SPEAKER_03: You can call us in the boat and come and collect you.
[26:31] SPEAKER_03: What do you do, Andrew? How long do you last? Can you last?
[26:36] SPEAKER_03: I have no surprise.
[26:40] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, I think I would last a little bit.
[26:43] SPEAKER_02: I definitely am a person who likes to be alone.
[26:47] SPEAKER_02: I can definitely do things on my own.
[26:51] SPEAKER_02: I'm generally not that reliant on others for different areas.
[26:54] SPEAKER_02: So I think I would be okay for at least a short period of time making do the, I think the boredom would have been.
[27:02] SPEAKER_02: She takes over for me.
[27:04] SPEAKER_02: I don't like to sit around.
[27:06] SPEAKER_02: I like to be doing stuff like this, playing golf or sports or being out with friends or whatever it is.
[27:12] SPEAKER_02: I like to be active and move around and do things.
[27:14] SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean, I think I would probably actually enjoy it for the first little while, but again for one pretty quickly.
[27:21] SPEAKER_03: And what about it? I mean, it's been very interesting actually.
[27:24] SPEAKER_03: I think you've seen the inside of the life insurance side of things a bit.
[27:31] SPEAKER_03: And we've interviewed two or three people from there as well as you've go found it.
[27:35] SPEAKER_03: And it seems to be a place of change at the moment.
[27:39] SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of interesting.
[27:42] SPEAKER_03: So people listen to this.
[27:45] SPEAKER_03: How can they get a hold of you?
[27:47] SPEAKER_03: And people want to get a hold of not a, not a maid of you to discuss things.
[27:52] SPEAKER_03: What's the best way for them to do that?
[27:54] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, the best way is just to email the company.
[27:59] SPEAKER_02: Everything kind of flows through and gets through our straightaway.
[28:02] SPEAKER_02: So I'm not anyone reaching out to me through our general mailbox.
[28:06] SPEAKER_02: I get that email right away.
[28:07] SPEAKER_02: And you respond right away as well.
[28:09] SPEAKER_02: So I thought on our website, but they can reach that info at policy.
[28:14] SPEAKER_03: That's great. And once again, thanks for coming on.
[28:17] SPEAKER_03: It was great helping you on Canada's podcast.
[28:19] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, they've surrounded me on the show. Really appreciate it.
[28:22] SPEAKER_01: This podcast is sponsored by eBay Canada.
[28:25] SPEAKER_01: eBay Canada is here to help.
[28:27] SPEAKER_01: They've been supporting Canadian small business retailers for 25 years.
[28:31] SPEAKER_01: And their up and running program is getting Canadian businesses online today.
[28:36] SPEAKER_01: Visit ebay.ca forward slash up and running.
[28:40] SPEAKER_01: Stay local and sell global with eBay.
