Abandonment issues? Agent ghosted you? Losing your trusted advisor to the M&A trend and more...

In this episode, Joshua Keene AKA The Red-Bearded Risk Guy sits down with Taryn Braseth, CFO and shareholder of LaPorte Insurance, a commercial insurance agency that is independently owned and operated in Portland, OR. He even grew out a red beard for the show! 

We go deep on the state of the insurance industry and how changes, such as the major buy up of locally owned agencies is impacting businesses in major ways including total cost of risk, loss of a trusted partner and more. Taryn highlights many other industry topics that business leaders need to hear in order to maximize their success. Areas include:

• New risks means new coverage requirements.
• Business Owners, HR, CFOs and other leaders need trusted advisors on “Speed Dial” for a variety of reasons.
• Your agent should also be your network when it comes to solving problems. 
• Must haves for businesses as we gear up for a ROUGH insurance market in the next 1-7 years. 
• Oregon PLO- Paid Leave Oregon- challenges and solutions.
• Cyber- all businesses are at risk- small to middle market businesses are ideal targets. 

Key Takeaway- Your commercial insurance broker should be seen as a strategic partner to your business, or, “on speed dial”, if you will.  As an entrepreneur, you assume risks that others aren’t willing to take, but there’s a catch. You’re not a professional risk manager or commercial insurance agent. Now, more than ever, you need a commercial risk and insurance partner you can trust. 

Be sure to comment, review, follow, subscribe etc… Stay tuned for weekly episodes on more great business topics! 

Transcript

Transcript: Provided by YouTube - Improved Version coming soon!

00:01
[Music] and someone that can deliver the resources and deliver the knowledge and to take that burden off that business owner so instead of dealing with that they can do one more job and turn their margins from 13 to 15 so that they’re able to better receive the fruits of their labor because let’s be honest like in my generation it’s gone from the employees being hold on say it again the employer when I first started working the employees worked for the employer in my short career it’s almost flipped
00:45
180 to where employee ER works for the employee is and so now these business owners not only do they have all the financial investments in the business the time investment the Sacrifice from their family but now they also have to fight to the nail to appease their employees it’s a very difficult time to be a business owner and it’s even more critical that you have those people on you know the speed dial are you feeling some abandonment issues did your agent or trusted advisor ghost you or are you losing a trusted advisor
01:19
or someone you had on speed dial because of all the merger and acquisition activity that’s going on in the Pacific Northwest or really across the country seems to be affecting every industry but it’s really been affecting the local insurance industry lately and on this episode of the red bearded risk guy podcast I sit down with Taryn brassett the CFO and one of the shareholders of Laporte insurance which is the commercial insurance agency in Portland Oregon that I call home and we go deep on the state of the insurance industry
01:50
and how these changes uh well how it is changing and how these changes are having a major impact on local businesses and business owners and we get into a lot about the m a stuff because that is a major Hot Topic right now we’re seeing a lot of that but we also get into some of the new risks that are coming along we talk a lot about the state of the cyber world and cyber crime world and how that’s affecting businesses we get a little bit into the paid leave Oregon stuff that is also on the horizon for organ businesses or has
02:24
gone into effect this year for organ businesses and just a ton that business owners will get out of this if they’ll listen it is kind of rah-rah La Porte obviously we both represent Laporte but we covered a ton of topics that again are actually impacting the day-to-day life of Business Leaders and owners and so I hope that you all get a ton out of this make sure to review comment follow subscribe all of those good things and we’ll go ahead and get right into the episode hello and welcome to the red beater risk
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guide podcast a show that helps business owners and Leaders with companies of 50 to 250 employees to protect their people profits and public relations we help business owners maximize profits by minimizing their total cost of risk your host Joshua Keane also known as the red bearded risk guy is a commercial insurance and benefits and risk management expert in the Pacific Northwest but he has dedicated his career to helping businesses stay ahead of emerging business Trends on all business related challenges not just
03:27
risk and insurance so we will get into interviews with industry experts on everything from strategy and growth to sales and marketing corporate risk management commercial insurance and even motivation these weekly conversations will provide actionable advice on the latest trends challenges and opportunities facing the business Community if you want to stay ahead of the curve and strategically position your business for Success then this podcast is for you tune in to the red bearded wrist guy and join the conversation today and also while you’re
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at it be sure to like subscribe follow and leave a review thanks for being here [Music] all right everybody Welcome to the red bearded risk guy today I’ll be interviewing Taryn resident I should have got that right well we’ll record how do you pronounce your name uh so it’s Taryn brassett but you know we go okay we go buy anything here it’s a real honor to be uh on the red bearded wrist guy as you will know and everyone listen to podcasts will know currently I do have my red beard but in T-minus 3 hours
04:50
and 27 minutes I do have my uh Barber appointment to get it cleaned up so I kept the red beard on so we don’t need to wear a wig for this one I guess that’s just gonna have to be a requirement for all future guests they’re gonna have to grow a red beard I think so right if you want to be with a legend you got to be like the legend yeah definitely definitely well uh Taryn is the CFO of Laporte Insurance here and um we’re just going to learn a little bit about his past today and some of the new things that are happening both at
05:22
our company and in the industry and um so um yeah just go ahead and introduce yourself beyond that absolutely yeah so I’ve been at Laporte uh we’re starting our 13th year here at the age of um really great opportunity for me a great opportunity at a young age to get into a position that I could really showcase my skill set and then also help the agency so it was great went to college pretty locally here in Forest Grove at Pacific University I went to high school in a small town about 30 miles north of there in Vernonia
05:59
from that got a couple fancy degrees and played golf which was great and fun um came out of school with accounting finance and economics degree and went into the world of public accounting so public accounting was great hard long hours but a great way you know test by fire right like you the amount of knowledge I learned by doing that really sent me where I could be where I’m at today so that was a fun little start to my career was doing a financial statement audits uh where we would go into a lot of governmental entities uh
06:38
school districts fire districts and go in and audit their books um very interesting but uh I found out quickly that I’m more of a people person and Auditors don’t tend to have the best uh uh relationships with their clients right um they’re not helping them you’re burdening them you’re not helping them sell widgets you’re not helping them with processes you’re either telling them what they did was right or you’re telling them what they did was wrong and I got to a point where my lifestyle
07:16
wasn’t fit in that so uh made a move had a great opportunity uh Mark Allen who’s another shareholder here at Laporte he was actually um College roommates with my stepdad and so I grown up knowing Mark Allen great guy long time great insurance agent uh probably one of the best in our office here uh knowledge bases off the charts reads the policies knows coverage but uh I was getting my tires rotated into Les Schwab and he randomly called and said hey you know we’ve got an opportunity here at LaPorte
07:56
um Judy who was the uh we call her the mother of the agency you know she was right here with Marv Laporte when they started the agency back in 1978 uh was getting ready to retire and they were going to bring somebody new in so you know sometimes it’s who you know sometimes it’s what you know and sometimes it’s timing and I felt like it was kind of the merge of all three of those things great yeah and um so before all that you tell me a little bit about your your family’s background because you you had
08:30
some business exposure before going to school right yeah absolutely so um it’s actually really interesting I had uh I’ve been my family’s been in the own businesses my whole life so on my dad’s side of the family um they’re located over in eastern Oregon they started they had a beer Distributing Company ice distributing company moving and storage company um trucking company and then my dad and my uncle uh you know the two businesses were getting kind of large and needed to separate and just
09:05
kind of clean up the house a little bit so my uncle took over the movie and storage side of the business and then my dad took over the trucking and uh heavy equipment rental so I’ve had that going there we’ll come back to that a little bit my parents separated when I was a little bit younger and so I then I actually grew up more in the Hillsborough Beaverton area and then my stepdad um actually owned a handful of athletic clubs of physical therapy uh spots so growing up at a very young age we won’t
09:37
say how old so we don’t get in trouble but uh you know I worked at all those businesses super great way to grow up and learn right because you’re forced at a young age to be able to communicate with customers clients um develop that work ethic and then just also you know understand and sympathize with business owners right because it’s not what it’s like on TV it’s not glamorous um you know your weekends are you spent on getting the business uh I remember multiple times uh for the Athletic Club
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portion of it uh every year we close down the clubs for one week and that was our week that would do all the maintenance right we’d repaint we would uh fix the flooring uh re-uh refinish the pool and it was one of those weeks where you worked and you worked and you worked and you worked but it’s great because it’s a family and getting to work for a family business is about as good as it gets you know and then as I got older my stepdad actually uh moved over to Eastern Oregon and is the general manager for my dad’s business is over
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there so that makes it really easy you know with you know usually families that have a separation it’s difficult on the kids it was not difficult enough for us at all uh even now uh my mom is this branch manager at the one of their locations for my dad which is you know their ex-spouses so it makes it pretty easy on me and my family to you know go over and see everybody and then just getting to work with them and see the struggle and help support them has been really fun too yeah but I can imagine like you said
11:26
being able to sympathize with business owners it’s um someone who comes into an industry like this where you’re helping business owners um a lot of us are having to kind of learn trial by fire and um what they’re suffering and what they’re facing and so um getting that Hands-On in-person experience is awesome growing up with it it is and then having my accounting background too right because typically people go into business because they love that business right if you’re a roofer it’s because you’re
11:55
really good at Roofing and you’re really good at Roofing if you get into going to business and you’re a plumber you’re really good at plumbing and you want to do plumbing I kind of came in right so I obviously had the opportunity to join the family businesses pretty easily and you know and if uh you get the true serum to my family they’re probably uh we’re hoping that I would have got involved in the family business um just because I have a very different and unique set of skills right uh having
12:27
that nerdy accounting background but then also being able to look somebody in the eyes and talk to them and you know actually be a value add and not just a bean counter it’s been a pretty good skill set for me yeah that’s definitely not a common mix of trade it’s not the bedside manner when it comes to crunching numbers uh isn’t always a thing so exactly yeah awesome well um you know we Laporte is a commercial insurance agency you do that but you’re also the CFO you’re a shareholder um you’ve been in the business for a
13:01
while so um tell me a little bit about you know what things are looking for for the industry in the future and maybe maybe start with how it’s changed since you started yeah so it’s been really interesting so um you know so I’ve been in at Laporte for 13 years I would say the first four to five years I was solely focused just on accounting and finance getting that situated incentive I’ve got a great team around me over there um and then at about that fifth year I kind of wanted to be able to do more
13:34
um I enjoy the process I enjoy being involved in building and growing a culture and so from that I really got more exposed to the actual Insurance side of things which was fantastic because um I’ve always been a firm believer if you’re in a supporting role and I put Accounting in a supporting role I put HR in the supporting role I put admin in a supporting role it’s critically important that you understand what Butters the bread right so you need I needed to understand insurance so that I could help the staff the our sales team
14:12
our support team to better serve our clients right so I took a big step and got licensed I really took a lot of steps to get educated because you know being an accountant um I think knowledge is very important I think knowing coverage is important and so by doing that I got quickly exposed to not only in Laporte Associates and What Makes Us good and great but also what is insurance and how it’s changing the full marketplace so um just speaking firsthand about Laporte Associates you know we’ve been here
14:55
since 1978 um we’ve got a great great crew of people um from the top Marvel report you know still comes in the office every day obviously he started the agency back in 1978 and we’ve got upwards of almost 70 people now we’ve got great teams and not only Property and Casualty Insurance we’ve got workers comp specialty people we have a bonding team we have one of the best benefits and group employee health program benefit team and then we also have personal insurance so fact that I love is that Laporte is truly a
15:36
One-Stop shop for all insurance needs which is great um and then just looking at insurance as a whole wow it changes fast I mean I was I think every generation gets thinks it does change fast right you know like the old adage you know grandpa had walked to school and two feet of snow uphill both ways right everyone has it built up in their head that theirs was tough but I mean in 13 years things have changed monumentally um there’s new coverages that come out because there’s new exposures that come out new risks there’s changes in
16:19
um and rules and regulations uh group health insurance has monumentally changed since I’ve been here um the rate I mean rates are going crazy there’s a lot of disruption in the marketplace and that’s really all those things come back to it’s critical that you have somebody on your team if you’re a business owner that you can what I call you know speed dial like I’m probably setting myself back on how old I am now but back in the day you know you had those nine digits on your phone and they were all speed dials right so
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one was mom two was Dad three was your brother four was your girlfriend you know I mean like it was all those ones well now it’s the same thing but it’s like as a business owner it’s critical that you have that person you can call right and that’s always been the goal of reporting Associates is your producer is that speed dial person and it’s not always just about insurance right being the fact that we’re so well connected we’ve got relationships with lenders we’ve got relationships with
17:27
human resource teams we have relationships with lawyers like there’s so many things that we can bring value to our customers and that’s the best part about what we do I think like insurance is a byproduct of truly what we do we’re there as a consultant and a risk advisor definitely definitely and you mentioned earlier the plumber wants to do plumbing and the roofer wants to do because they’re really good at it yeah and it this is its whole own profession where that person shouldn’t be expected to
17:56
know these things they should have someone that they can just call and Trust to know what they’re talking about and someone that can deliver the resources and deliver the knowledge and to take that burden off that business owner so instead of dealing with that they can do one more job and turn their margins from 13 to 15 so that they’re able to better receive the fruits of their labor because let’s be honest like in my generation it’s gone from the employees being old I’m saying again the employer when I
18:35
first started working the employees worked for the employer in my short career it’s almost flipped 180 to where the employee ER works for the employees and so now these business owners not only do they have all the financial investment into the business the time investment the sacrifice for their family but now they also have to fight to the nail to appease their employees it’s a very difficult time to be a business owner and it’s even more critical that you have those people on you know the speed dial right like
19:09
that’s where it’s critical so you can the compartmentalize those issues that you’re dealing with so that you can do what you do well and put food on the table you know yeah definitely true that’s a true partner I mean the average Insurance person is just handing you a renewal every year maybe talking about the coverages but we’re finding especially right now the biggest risk to a business is losing its most important employees or you know there’s Head Hunters out there that are capitalizing
19:38
on the all the churn and um and so yeah there’s other questions that the average um you know not to pitch Laport here but the average Insurance Agency is just doing checking those basic boxes but here’s your business Auto policy you’re covered here’s your general liability it’s rated properly you’re covered and those are all very important things that need to be done right but it’s really the bare minimum and right it really is yeah yeah and it’s the clients are not getting the value
20:08
they deserve when those things come up right definitely definitely um well I mean you’ve kind of talked about you know how things are have changed and um so I I what about you know and I kind of leading the witness here a little bit but what about the local Insurance scene in general as far as agencies and M A stuff and what that looks like compared to just a couple years ago yeah so that’s a really good topic to bring up um it’s no store insurance agencies are a valuable commodity um because Insurance professionals are
20:50
needed everywhere as Things become more complex more you know there’s contracts to read coverages to apply to it there is the value of an insurance agency um there’s also a lot of money out there Venture Capital money where you know they’re trying to uh produce an investment for their customers and so what we’re seeing a lot of is these Venture Capital companies coming in purchasing insurance agencies because they think they can better run those insurance agencies and run them at a much higher profit and that’s good and
21:25
great right everything is about that’s great as a business you want to see that the problem we’re seeing with that is there’s a lot of customers that are kind of being left right because all of a sudden now your account manager that you’ve worked with for seven years isn’t there anymore because they had to let her go because they’re trying to increase profits for the next dividend yield okay that’s unfortunate um your trusted advisor your speed dial contact’s no longer there because they
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were able to find somewhere else to not have him be on the employment role and that’s how they increase their profits so we’re seeing a lot of upset in the marketplace Oregon is a little bit of a a lag in this so we were able to see a lot more of this happen on the east coast and in Texas California but now all of a sudden the last three to four years it really came into Oregon they came into Oregon pretty hard um I mean we like to say that we’re the last true independent left here in the Northwest
22:27
um we’re we’re a large agency we’ve got great talent great employees and we’re special now right being truly independent is fantastic because it allows us if we need to to address what we’re doing to better serve our customers our clients so if there’s a new um insurance company is trying to come into the Oregon Marketplace they call us first because they know we have a track record that we can properly build clients with them they know our clients are better than your traditional clients
23:04
and our loss runs have proven that over the past 10 years um and that allows us to better serve our customers so I think there’s a lot of that going on um and again as with everything usually when stuff like that happens the unfortunate reality is it affects the customers the clients the most and they’re the least involved in the process so it’s our goal to not have that happen because we’ve built up relationships with our customers and clients it’s important to us there are more parts of the community there are
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parts of the community and we’re trying to truly serve them so that they can take care of themselves their employees their staffs like it’s pretty important to us yeah yeah it’s that’s huge and I actually have a pretty recent story I was just meeting with a flagger uh construction flagging traffic control company and uh she went through that where their agency was acquired and she had a great person she’d been working with for 10 plus years but for whatever reason it didn’t make sense for that person to stay after
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the acquisition and um she wasn’t even notified that this had happened she called for that person and was automatically routed to a call center with the carrier and it’s really unusual she I mean and this is her where she’s like no I know I’m not a huge company but I pay over eight over 80 grand a year for my insurance premiums I should be able to talk to someone and um and it was shocking for me too because it’s like it’s one thing to have you know I hate to say it but you know one person solopreneur small policy who gets
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routed to a call center because there’s just not a whole lot of complexity with that account right and they’re better served there right they’re able to get that instant response their coverages are much more um the policies are designed for those smaller type of clients but the policy can actually be robust and not to cover a lot of their needs yeah so you’re exactly right when you’re dealing with someone I mean flagging is a a very interesting and unique type of business you need to have expertise on that
25:17
because there’s lots of there’s lots of innate risk with flagging I mean it’s just one of those businesses that you need to be top of your class because something bad can happen and something bad can be very expensive and it can absolutely if you don’t have the proper coverage it can be game over and that’s not what we want to see yeah definitely definitely so um yeah the other thing too talking about a little bit about insurance in general you know we’re in this unique environment right now with I won’t say
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hyperinflation but I mean aggressive in inflation um you’re there’s these what they call nuclear verdicts out there now where claims are being settled for what sounds like astronomical dollar amounts yeah um there’s a lot more you know in the insurance world uh you know an umbrella policy is a coverage that goes above your um your traditional lines your auto your GL we’re seeing a lot more losses pierced that umbrella layer so those are really large losses um we’re also seeing you know certain
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areas in the certain parts of the nation where uh juries are not afraid to award very large um settlements to parties that have been wronged um there’s also private Equity groups that are investing in litigation and yeah right so you know so all of this goes through you know um not to get nerdy but like the definition of insurance is the losses of a few are paid by the premiums of the many as losses increase unfortunately that exposure gets pushed into uh markets get very very aggressive at pricing and again I come back to the business
27:16
owner like it’s not it’s our job to make sure we’re doing everything we can to provide first and foremost the best coverage possible Right but secondly in we can’t lie about it we’re trying to get in the best price possible too right um and that’s where it’s just so nice that us particularly Laporte we have so many of the top markets that we have access to that we’re able to really support the customers and our clients through that time because unfortunately and no one’s going to want
27:50
to hear this we’re going to be going into a period in the next 18 months to I’m going to say seven years more insurance premiums are going to go One Direction and it’s a direction that nobody likes yeah because positions are going to shrink down they are right because let’s take a look at let’s do California so California’s on the west coast that’s fairly in our neighborhood and it’s something that Oregon and Washington can get could get the same exposure to they’ve had fire Wildfire losses and stacking years
28:24
right so they’ve had shock losses of wildfire and not even wildfire that you think about when we’re watching like TV shows we’re talking wildfires that go through cities yeah we’ve never seen this before um uh uh loss control Specialists never thought that could take place what that does is that has total upset in the marketplace because carriers are getting large amounts of losses and they weren’t anticipating to have that take place and so now you have carriers that are jumping out of the market saying hey we
29:01
don’t we can’t play here anymore we’re going to go out of the market okay so back to economics when you have less Supply but the demand stays the same price goes up so we’re seeing that we’re also seeing carriers who have taken these huge losses so they need to increase premiums to offset their losses yeah prices go up and then there’s also the around the uh the US that affects everything too I believe I talked to you the other day how many losses have been over a billion dollars in the last period of time like
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18 over a billion dollar catastruct like property losses and so and just think about that that’s that’s crazy I mean that used to be uh that used to be the once every 10 year and like oh it’s terrible and you know and uh the nation would send support to that region you know there would be um you know um the the if it was our football season they’d have a whole week of the football season where it’s dedicated to helping the flood victims and fill in the blank city um it’s almost become so regular that it’s
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just a part of the news and that’s what we’re starting to see so what that does is that changes the um the cost of insurance for the insurance companies and so that has not only a localized effect but a national effect so long-winded um it comes down to you got to have somebody who’s on speed dial who you can trust and call to help you through this time because it’s going to be a very different and changing you know as I said 18 to 18 months to seven years because of all these things have been stacking up
30:55
yeah and I don’t want to keep going on this but then there’s cyber which is a whole other piece of this which they’re saying might not even be insurable in that time frame right not even be able to write insurance for it anymore because of how catastrophic those losses can be and absolutely because we’ve all seen I mean big companies are getting hit right and so we’ll talk about seven for a second just because it’s so fascinating customers need to know you know everyone always thinks oh Target yeah Target got
31:20
hit with cyber well you know what the big companies they have the resources and the capital to truly help defend on that now you can never be perfect but they can get to a point where they’re very safe hackers have seen how fruitful their work has been albeit it’s illegal and it’s wrong but they’ve seen how fruitful it can be the next wave when they can’t start getting those big whales they start going off that mid-market account well the mid market account they’re very successful they’re doing well but they
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don’t have the infrastructure in place to be able to take on something like a target one in a go forward basis so now all of a sudden the companies they we see all the time as our clients are truly at risk of these losses and so you know we’ve got right now um there’s a lot of carriers that still do cyber and there’s a couple carriers that are coming out that are being uh that are cyber only and we have access to them and they have great tools and resources because similar to cyber you know and epli
32:35
the best coverage those policies provide is the training and the front-end support to not have those losses yeah right so yeah yeah and that could be game changing similarly like you know when Washington had their uh ruling coming about long-term care and with there was so many people that went to the individual Market to try to get that coverage in place that every carrier got out yeah because we’re you know it’s unfortunate but similar to our clients being business owners our insurance companies that we’re providing coverage
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to our clients to our business businesses too and when they see something is going to yield a red number they’re not going to do that right and so unfortunately you know we’re in the middle and sometimes we have to be in the middle and that’s the unfortunate reality of it but it’s it’s something we just had to deal with and kind of help best serve our customers yeah yeah and uh with less you know saying on the Cyber just because I thought of it while you were talking there um just because I actually have a fresh
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one here um last year last few years it was all about ransomware and that was how people were and that’s still long-term like where the money is going to get lost a lot of the time but the way that it’s getting in mostly now is fishing horse machine SMS yes I get a text almost every day from Marvel report but it’s not Marv Laporte it’s and it’s a hey or I urgently need this person’s birth date so that we can send them a present on this day or throw a surprise party or just weird stuff like that and
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please please make sure you get back to more of immediately on that because yeah yeah yeah that would be you know we all love more but uh and those who that don’t know Barb is the uh the uh the original shareholder of Laporte Associates um and he’s done good on technology uh We’ve brought him to the point where he can get his Blazer tickets on his phone and so he uses his phone to call me or to get into the Blazer game so uh for those of you at home uh don’t text Marvel the port because I don’t believe
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he knows how to text back quite yet that’s uh next year’s goal yeah and that just helps you rule out those texts right away if you get one from him he doesn’t know how to send it yes yes but you know on that topic you know with my career uh also being the CFO of the agency obviously I get targeted pretty well and the part that I want to stress to all people out there is hackers are smart don’t don’t take what they’re doing and think they’re just bad people they’re brilliant and how they
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can mimic emails is getting quite good so um we’ll stay on Mars because Marv’s fun so Marv is the great um uh Ron Burgundy in the office he loves the random question mark at the end of a sentence right so that’s something he always does he’ll send an email and say hey great job today but we could do better right um he also is notorious that he believes emails should be signed like a piece of paper so he’ll type his email to you and then he will tab over seven times and put Marv so Marv is on the right side of
35:57
the email those are two very unique things in the email game like there’s not many people that do those two things I’m starting to get people requesting wires and they’re doing those same things yeah yeah and they’re also you know and then we spoke about Mark Allen Mark Allen they’ve figured out Mark Allen very well too like Mark Ellen is hey straight to the point here’s what I need get it done Taryn they’ve copied it to be just like it’s I can hear Mark’s voice when I’m reading
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the email to myself you know so they’re brilliant people and you just gotta have your guards up take the time double check if something feels fishy 99 of the time it is um there’s never an email that’s what I would like to tell people if someone has a true emergency they don’t email it ready if someone has a true emergency they walk over to your desk or they call you on your phone so just remember take those two things two things as uh knowledge points going forward is no one ever sends a uh SOS
37:02
email it’s that’s the last phone call yeah definitely definitely yeah well and um you know not not to be too much of a fear Monger on that note but yeah with all I mean all this AI stuff that’s coming out is cool but one of the things that’s coming out is um people that have a lot of content out like on the internet where their voice is recorded AI can take that voice now and sound exactly like you um not just your voice but the style and how you speak and so we will start getting phone calls from people we know
37:36
that aren’t the person that we know in the near future and maybe AI can change my voice so I sound a little bit better right like that would be my goal in the whole process yeah well um yeah I I think that’s a a good overview of the industry overall but I’m glad we touched it on the Cyber stuff just because it’s been such a big big part of our day but uh or days but um so you know what talk a little bit about as much as you can without showing too much behind the curtain um yeah sort of our goals for the agency and
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um just what our our plans and for the future of LaPorte yeah absolutely so we just went through uh our uh goal process the shareholder group uh we’re very bullish on how we’re going to do this year because we’ve got I would say for the first time since uh what I call the Dan and Lindsay producer crew we have some great new producers to the agency that have got their footing so we’re trying to get growth uh of almost 13 which is a a big number uh but we have a lot of confidence in the team that we have and
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we also have a lot of confidence in the markets that we have that we can go into customers and know we’re going to help that right it’s always more fun when you know you’re not wasting the clients or prospects time when you’re like I don’t know if I could truly help you it’s the point where you can confidently talk to any customer any client and they can talk to their friends and say hey Laporte can help you out and it’s going to happen so that is really a positive thing uh we’re really
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staffed very well uh we spoke about it a little bit earlier but um our group our group benefits departments I would be like your health insurance Vision Dental uh group life disability policies I think is one of the strongest in the region uh we have access to a lot of Association plans that are limited distribution that can help customers immensely when they’re trying to because we all know uh the one insurance cost that is a runaway train health insurance yeah and that train is not going to stop for a while so having
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more and better options for our customers there that’s critical and we have a great team over there um we were one of the agencies that really uh tried to help our customers and kind of proves what we do right is with the Oregon paid leave a new tax that was brought in that the state allowed private plans to be an option well we were to find we found out that we can save customers large amounts of money and get them better service and get them someone they can call when there’s a scenario so all those things lead to
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we’re hoping for some really good growth we’ve got a great team we’ve got um a lot of opportunities so we’re very very excited about the year yeah on that pay leave theme real quick um that was one where you know back to being like someone on speed a lot of people just didn’t even I was surprised how many business owners didn’t know this was even on the horizon because it got delayed I think it confused people um but uh you know I just saw another example within the agency of a customer
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that’s going private and over the next two years it’s going to be 119 Grand I think in savings yeah yeah um and um and you know you’re dealing with a private carrier and not the state where the state is trying to do a whole new thing they’ve never done before and so exactly um yeah and that’s something you know I I sold a lot of those coverages to prospects and clients and it’s a different one because we’re helping them in a situation that’s not great right but the fact that we’re
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helping them make a not great situation a little bit better and the education right letting them know what’s coming down so they can properly budget I was shocked at how many large size companies but we all know like no one starts a company in whatever discipline they’re doing because they’re really excited about paying taxes or they’re really excited about human resources or you know you those come with the territory but you don’t start a business because you’re like I’m really excited about making a
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handbook right like right but it’s all important parts of the process and we can help with all those things it’s just so much and you know where I felt like you know back when you were in grade school and you were drinking water from the water fountain and the old every school had the one water fountain that had the little dribble of water right and you got used to getting really close to it yeah you just got to put your mouth on it and then there was the other one that had enough power to shoot across
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the school cafeteria right and so I felt like we went from a little dribble water fountain to now information and changes is the other water fountain that your head is outside of the actual water fountain to be able to drink the water so this has changed so fast awesome yeah well it’s yeah there’s some stuff that’s um like I said with the the rates and inflation that’s not positive but there’s also a lot of exciting things both with just changes for the agency but industry in general is finally
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catching up on technology um it was a little little bit of a lag there I think with the insurance industry um but yeah I know that uh that’s all all great so I think um we’ve talked a lot about the agency and insurance and I asked you a little bit about yourself at the beginning but um I think a good way to wrap things up and it might interest some of our audience is yeah tell us about your trip to Bandon oh absolutely so um I’m a former good golfer and still hanging around to be a decent golfer um and so every year uh a little bit of
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backstory uh my wife is a shareholder and an accounting firm and so uh this time of year time is very valuable and so we always do this band and trip at the end of January and it’s kind of the passing of the torch I would say between you know my work being high level stress getting things done and it’s you know the passing of the Buffon to over to Sharon who then you know now it’s taxi is in she’s putting in 75-hour work weeks so it’s always good for me to get away uh the weather was fantastic we’re
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so fortunate here in the Northwest to have a world-class golf resort that has um you know all the courses down there I believe are top 74 in the nation so we’re just so forth we get to go down there uh I go down there with um you know High School buddies and college buddies so great time played well and only got rained on for one hole so anytime here in the state of Oregon you can go play golf in January and get rained on one hole it’s a good time that’s awesome that sounds awesome well I’m sure they’ll be happy to hear about
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it but they might be a little jealous too but that’s okay um so yeah thank you so much for uh taking time to share with us um you know I’ve been working with you for a while but I learned more about you and uh I think our audience will definitely find your insights uh helpful in terms to what to expect on insurance renewals coming up in the benefits world and everything else so um I appreciate being here on the podcast too you know and supporting the Red Beard so awesome T-minus two hours and 10 minutes now yeah yeah no that’s
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uh that’s commitment to to grow out and keep your red beard just for the episode so I appreciate appreciate that we won’t tell the audience that there’s a little bit more gray in mine we’ll keep that on the down though yeah yeah maybe we can add some editing or something there we go I don’t know if I’m sophisticated enough to do that but we’ll see what we can do we’ll see what we can do yeah all right well awesome thanks man absolutely [Music] thank you [Music] [Music]