Ep. 222 - Protecting Physicians, Building Freedom, and Staying Small on Purpose | Matt Wiggins

What happens when a physician loses the ability to practice medicine?

In this episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, Ben Glass welcomes Matt Wiggins, founder of DocInsure and one of the nation's leading experts on disability insurance for physicians.

Matt explains why disability insurance protects a doctor's most valuable asset—their future earning power—and why many physicians unknowingly rely on inadequate employer-provided coverage. Together, Ben and Matt break down own-occupation disability insurance, common misconceptions about disability claims, and the policy features that can make a life-changing difference when illness or injury strikes.

The conversation also explores entrepreneurship, business partnerships, leadership, and Matt's journey from building the largest disability insurance agency in the country to creating a smaller, more profitable company designed around freedom and purpose.

Whether you're a physician, attorney, entrepreneur, or professional who depends on specialized skills to earn a living, this episode offers valuable lessons on protecting your income, serving clients well, and building a life by design.

Topics discussed:
• Own-occupation disability insurance
• Group vs. individual disability coverage
• Disability claims and common mistakes
• Financial protection for physicians
• Entrepreneurship and business partnerships
• Building a company "small on purpose"
• Freedom, purpose, and long-term success

Website: www.docinsure.com

Ben Glass is a nationally recognized personal injury and long-term disability insurance attorney in Fairfax, VA. Since 2005, Ben Glass and Great Legal Marketing have been helping solo and small firm lawyers make more money, get more clients and still get home in time for dinner. We call this TheGLMTribe.com

What Makes The GLM Tribe Special?

In short, we are the only organization within the "business builder for lawyers" space that is led by two practicing lawyers. 

One thing we're sure you've noticed is that despite the variety of options within our space, no one else is mixing
the actual practice of law with business building in the way that we are.

There are no other organizations who understand the highs and lows of running a small law firm and are engaged in talking to real clients. That is what sets GLM apart from every other organization, and it is why we have had loyal members that have been with us for two-decades.

Transcript

Welcome And Big Life Questions

SPEAKER_03 0:00

People can typically tell if you genuinely care about them. What is the purpose of life? To me, it's not to hoard a bunch of money.

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, the show that challenges the way lawyers and professionals think about life, business, and success. Hosted by Ben Glass, attorney, entrepreneur, coach, and father of nine, this show is about more than just practicing. For over 40 years, Ben has built a law that stands for something bigger. He's helped thousands of lawyers create practices that make good money, do meaningful work, still make it. Each week, Ben brings you real conversations with guests who are challenging the status quo. Lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, thinkers, and builders. These are people creating bold careers and meaningful lives without burning out or selling out. If you're ready to stop playing small and start thinking like a renegade, you're in the right place. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Hey everyone, this is Ben, and welcome back to the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where each episode I get to interview someone inside or outside of Legal who's making a ding in the world. Today I've got a great, interesting guest, Matt Wiggins. So Matt and I ran into each other, finally met at the White Coat Investor Conference back a couple months ago now in Vegas. And while I do a lot of claims for long-term disability insurance cases, Matt makes sure that the physicians and others affiliated in the medical community have good insurance. He's really niched within a niche. He's built a great practice in not just selling insurance, but in particular, specializing in helping professionals, mostly physicians, get involved early, get the right what I call insurance stack, and have this protection they hope they'll never need. But if they do, they'll have really good protection. And he's built and he's been a leader in that industry. So he and I hit it off pretty well in Vegas. And so we finally our schedules messed, and here we are. How are you, sir?

SPEAKER_03 2:07

Yeah, I'm I'm good. That was fun getting to meet you. I'd heard a lot about you through the years, you know, being in this space. And uh it was kind of fun to kind of finally press the flesh and chat and hit it off. So looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

Yeah, I was I was saying to Matt, so in I I talked to a lot of physicians at least two a week now, and those who come through the white coat investor world uh have largely run into Matt, been represented by Matt at Matt and Help, and they come I just letting you know, they come very well set up. Every policy is different, every set of medical records is different, every situation is different, but by and large, these guys and gals are coming with good own occupation policies. And, you know, as you know,

Why Disability Insurance Matters

SPEAKER_01 2:50

like every own occupation policy isn't a real own occupation policy, actually, as we look at it. A lot of nuance. Yeah, so let's talk. So I'm I'm curious, you know, in the legal space, Matt, something a lot of times the the situation, something happens to somebody, right? So they get arrested, they get an accident, they get hurt at work, they find out their spouse is cheating on them. So they have an event, and now they go find a lawyer. You're doing something that is oftentimes a lot harder, which is selling prevention, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah. Yeah. So let's I'm let's talk a little bit about what it is for anyone who's not really familiar with disability insurance policies, group versus individual, own occupation versus everything else. Talk a little bit about the product that you're delivering to the market first. Like what are we talking about?

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Yeah, well, I just want you to know the product itself and everything else that I do is actually pretty boring. Um, but I try to make it engaging and educational. So hopefully we'll do that here too. But, you know, here's the thing uh a lot of people don't realize, but at 20%, one in five doctors gets disabled during their career and goes on some type of long-term disability claim, not short term, but long-term. And so I used to be a financial planner. I did investments and, you know, fee-based financial planning, all this kind of stuff. And I really just said, look, I want to do something that doesn't just help rich people feel richer, that's fine. But I really want to find a group of people who strategically get taken advantage of a lot because they don't know a lot about finances, and I want to protect them in some way. And so, you know, young doctors are preyed upon by financial people all the time. And at the end of the day, disability insurance protects their largest financial asset. It's their their whole career income. So if they get injured or they get sick and they can't do the duties of their specific specialty, like if you're a cardiologist and you can't be a cardiologist, or even if you're uh some type of a surgeon or orthopedic surgeon can't do your procedures anymore, we sell the kind of disability insurance that will pay them a full benefit and replenish around 50 to 60% of their income post-tax and allow them to keep living the lifestyle they wanted to live. And here's the trick they can still go do another job and it won't cancel out the payments they're receiving. So that's what own specialty or own occupation disability insurance is replacing income if the doctor can't do their job specifically. And it would work that way for an attorney as well, and it does. But doctors are sitting there saying, hey, look, I I'm doing, uh, I'm doing I have to intubate people, you know, I have to do these things, you know, like I need my hands, I need this and that. So they're really keen on getting this own occupation coverage. And the the main thing to note, too, is that employers, a lot of them provide disability insurance for for doctors in particular, but it's kind of one of those benefits that only benefits the employed physician after they no longer benefit the practice or the hospital. And so they they save money on it, they buy really cheap, not very good disability insurance. It's taxable, it's not portable, it's not own occupation or own specialty. So, you know, doctors are lucky to get paid anything out of their group policy, and if they do, it's normally a fraction of what they thought it would be. So that's why all of that just to go to say it's really important that doctors have this kind of protection in place. It's their largest financial asset. And so we just want to make sure we do it right. I always say get it done right the first time. And if we educate them well enough, I don't have to sell it to them. They know they need it. I educate them, and they self-select in and I help them get it.

SPEAKER_01 6:33

There's there's so much to unpack there because I don't think that this happens in legal, that the young lawyer is, you know, quote unquote taken advantage of or, you know, assaulted with all sorts of financial products and things that they don't know anything about. Maybe it's happening now, it's been a long time since I was a young lawyer, but

Group Vs Individual Coverage Traps

SPEAKER_01 6:55

I do know that this happens in the physician industry because we have them like there's a whole hospital full of residents, and so that's a good target, right? Fish in a barrel. And it's easy to get them all in a room, I think, and and do a pitch or get them all out to dinner when they're poor residents and and sell them stuff. And I do, I do want people to understand this because I have seen physician practice group policies that advertise the the physicians thought it was an own occupation and own specialty policy. And it even said it. But when you actually looked at the definition in the policy, it really wasn't. Right. And so, you know, the thing for people to understand is that there's people like Matt who are just Uber experts in understanding like all of the ways physicians' stream of income could be limited or cut off entirely because of something that maybe doesn't even affect their entire life. Like, you know, like you said, like a surgeon with a tremor or a slight vision issue, like they ain't operating, but they maybe don't do a lot of other things, including teaching and consulting and have other streams of income. And what Matt and I want you all to know is that there are policies out there that will provide a stream of payment, even if you can live the rest of your life pretty well. Now, Matt, I'm sure that you that you hear, but you know, I'm I'm young, I'm healthy, haven't had any health issues, I'm I'm 26 years old, and it seems kind of expensive. I I just know that this is one of the things that young'uns say because, you know, in part they're inundated with a lot of different, you know, auto and maybe homeowners, and they got a mortgage, and they got a lot of debt perhaps coming out of medical school. So talk to us a little bit about the education side, because that's big for you and for your company, which is Doc Insure. So talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

You know, someone I don't have to convince to get disability insurance are ER docs. Don't have to convince them. They see that all the time and they go, yep, yep, yep, I see it all the time. This can happen to anybody. I would say that, you know, younger physicians, when they're in med school, they do kind of have that, well, you know, it's not going to happen to me. Nothing's gonna happen to me. Once you talk to a resident who has been a little bit more experienced, seeing more patients, you do see a lot of residents getting into the mental health arena of having anxiety, having uh some forms of mild depression or stress-related issues. It gets real, real fast for them in residency, the amount of work they're doing for the limited pay that they're making. So I would say that most of the time, I'm not educating most residents and beyond on their need for disability insurance. But what I'm doing is I'm educating them on um the best policies, how much they do need. Maybe that's that's maybe one of the biggest things. How much disability insurance do I need? Because that's kind of nebulous. People go, Yeah, well, I'm just gonna cover my expenses and my employer is doing that. Well, now I've got to teach them about, you know, the fallacy of employer-based disability insurance. We need to talk about how not just covering your expenses, but increased expenses from life after a disability and educate them on um the fact they still need to save for retirement. Disability insurance plans do quit paying you at some point in time, age 65, 67, something like that. So you do need to have some retirement income. So it's it's an education um in and of itself. But a lot of the um the own occupation, all of that, that's that's what we're really trying to teach them. It's not so much that they need it, they get that. A lot of times it's the so who do I go to and where do I get it from? There's there's roughly 40 disability insurance companies out there just coming at them, you know. They've got their employer coverage, they've got associations trying to get them to take their coverage, which is just like employer coverage most of the time. Or worse. Or worse. Or worse, or worse. So yeah, I'd say those are the things we're really trying to trying to press upon them is to say, look, uh, you know, these are things you need to know because at the end of the day, I I asked a question. I go into different groups of residents and everything, I say, hey, get let's dialogue for just a minute. At the very beginning of our conversation, let's dialogue. If your income's not protected, what really is? And we'll have this discussion, and by the end, they come to the same conclusion that I am, which is nothing. I had a real smart resident one time say, My marriage, I don't need disability insurance, my marriage to be protected. I said, really? I said, you know, most divorces in America come from financial hardship or financial problems, things like that. You're telling me if you get disabled and you can no longer work and earn income for that family, but you're still requiring clothing and food and housing and everything else, you're telling me that's not going to cause financial hardship and potentially lead to just tension at least, if not potential divorces on their own. So I, you know, I just think that your income affects everything in your life, whether you want it to or not, and it needs to be protected appropriately. And, you know, uh it doesn't need to be done halfway. You know, some people I term life insurance, ah, just give me the cheapest company. And that's okay. Life and death is kind of binary, right? So life insurance isn't quite as nuanced. Disability insurance, you really got to dig into, understand it, pay what it takes to get the right kind of protection for your income. So that's my two cents anyway.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Yeah, I know. And and and one of the things you and I both know is that uh, at least my experience is like everything is negotiable or everything you like, you can find the solution that fits you as an individual, you know, whether or not you have a perfectly clean health record or you've got some issues. And then there's all sorts of writers that we see on these policies. So and maybe that, maybe you spend more time like having to walk through like here's the like, okay, I understand I need this. Matt's got five or six great options of different companies and policies within companies. And then there's these quote unquote, the add-ons, like the

How Much Coverage Do You Need

SPEAKER_01 13:10

writers. So talk about some of the most important things that someone who maybe is shopping for this should at least know exists and is up for a decision to be made.

SPEAKER_03 13:22

Yeah. These are really important because they do add cost, but they also add benefit. And there are certain writers that most doctors and and most people won't need. Um, but I do see agents and people trying to sell them the full Cadillac package of everything. And, you know, you really want to make sure you get the right writers. They're not bad. Some people hear writers and they think, oh, these extra add-ons, somebody's gonna try and sell me. But I'll I'll give you some examples of good ones. And um, you know, the first one I had to start off with is called the partial or or residual writer on these policies. It basically says that if you get disabled and can still do your job, but maybe you've lost the ability to do some part of it, or or you can still do it fully, but not to your fullest capacity. Maybe you had to cut back to three days a week working, or you can only work half days. We see this a lot with illnesses, such as some types of cancer, where the treatments make you more easily fatigued, and so you have to cut back the amount of time you're working. I'm a pediatrician, I can still see kids and talk to their families and everything, but maybe I can only see half as many patients and I've lost 40% of my pay. That would be like a partial disability situation. And according to the companies, the carriers, insurance carriers, about 70% of all claims that come in are partial and not total. So if you don't have that writer on your policy, it's either all or nothing. And so that's 70% of the claims, you ain't getting paid anything if you don't have this writer on there. So that by far is the most important one. A second one, if you're a younger, if you're in your 30s or even maybe 40s, you want to think about a cola, cost of living adjustment writer. All that means is that if you get disabled and this bec this policy becomes a big source or maybe all of your income, that you have uh up to a 3% raise. You can get even a 6% cola with some companies, but 3% should be sufficient. That you're gonna get a three up to a 3% raise, kind of matching inflation as best it can all along the way. So you don't have this constantly eroding quality of life, even though you're on a disability claim. Uh, because inflation, you know, you get on a 10-year disability claim, get the same payout every year. You're gonna you're gonna be at a tough spot down the road buying less and less. So, yeah, you want to keep your quality of life up if you go on a long-term claim. And the last one, which is interesting, um, I'm good friends with Dr. Dolly over at White Coat Investor. This is the only one that he says is more of a nice to have that I push more as a need to have, and it's called catastrophic coverage. And catastrophic coverage typically will double your payout up to an additional 10 grand or so a month. If you're ever disabled to, there's different definitions by a different company, but basically you can't take care of yourself. And the reason isn't because it's so frequent, like the partial disability, you need to have it because it's so frequent. This one's because of the severity of it. It's so expensive to pay for in-home health care and therapy and medications and things, treatments that aren't covered by health insurance. So I've seen it cost up to $6,000 a month for additional cost for someone who is catastrophically disabled. So this is going to give you extra cash to pay all those extra expenses so it's not eating into your normal quality of life income that's coming in from the policy. Because that changes drastically. So it's also really cheap. It's a really cheap rider. If it was really expensive, I'd say it doesn't happen a lot. It's really cheap. I think for the price, that one should be on there. So those are the three main ones, along with your increase riders. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

Some of the catastrophic ones, I think it can be, it doesn't necessarily have to be like you're totally unable to take care of you. So it could be like total loss of use of both hands or total loss of vision, or I've seen like total loss of voice, right? I so I've seen some with in and sometimes I've seen sort of a flat, a flat incremental benefit like a $20,000 payment or $50,000 payment. I've sort of seen variations of that. But the the residual disability provision is interesting. And I have had people come to me, Matt, who have great policies, but I didn't understand them. I had an OBGYN a couple years back, who, and I forget the nature of his disabling condition, but he could no longer operate, could no longer deliver babies. He still had a great clinical practice. He made over a million dollars a year, but his income had been cut in half. We were discussing like the next days, like the progression of disease. I said, Well, tell me, like five years ago you had to quit surgery. Like, what did you make a claim? He goes, no. I said, Well, let me look at your policy. I said, it had a very typical residual disability policy. So just as you described, still able to practice, but a huge chunk of the practice and a huge chunk of income was gone. He says, My friends told me, I said, What do you mean your friends? This is my my doctor friends told me I still made too much money, I would never qualify. Like, well, you can't qualify now because it's like too late, probably, and it was too late in his case. And the insurance company said, no, it's too late. But I find, you know, just like auto and homeowners, like people have policy, and they might have a great policy. You might have explained it really well. They don't fully understand it, and then they they don't even think, some people, about calling you when the tremor starts and saying, now what do I do?

SPEAKER_03 18:31

Yeah, yeah. We always say, file a claim, the worst they can do is say no. But if you have any injury or illness, and actually the majority of disability claims are illnesses. Yes, not not injuries. So uh we say whether if you have an injury or illness that affects your work at all, time, income, abilities, duties, procedures, if there's anything going on that affects that, you should start the claims process. And they might shut it down really fast if it's nonsensical, but you want to start at ASAP because there's a lot of times you can get a partial payout or something. It's just, yeah, but uh, but that's not uncommon. I mean, it's hard enough to catch doctors uh for 30 minutes and do a thorough educational job in 30 minutes to the point that they go, I understand this well enough to get this now. And as soon as they get up the phone with them, they've lost half what I told them. And then by the time they get the policy, we kind of remind them what's in it. And so they're back up to speed a little bit. But it I'll have doctors, you know, a month, three months, six months after we get the policy for them, literally

Riders That Change Everything

SPEAKER_03 19:35

reach out to me. Can we get together and you tell me what's on this policy again? So I unfortunately there's not really like an ongoing educational piece of these policies once they buy them. And the policies are going to be 50, 60, 70 pages long, and it has applic the full application in it, plus all the writer definitions, you know, nowadays. Some some attorney wrote this big long, you know, contract. So, anyways, it's it's it's really a lot for them to go through. So I I would totally I agree with you. That's probably a big problem.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah, and you know, here's the other thing it's not like your auto policy or your homeowners, where if you make a claim or too many claims, your premiums go up. I mean, once you're insured, right, you have a schedule of premiums, correct me if I'm wrong, for the life of the policy, you know in advance. And if even if you make a claim that's denied, I mean, they're not gonna come back and cancel you because it's it's still a contract between you and the insurance company, and they're not gonna increase the rate because the premium is set. Is that that's my experience, is that right?

SPEAKER_03 20:40

It is. Well, that it depends. So you have some companies out there, like Guardian has a graded premium and it is scheduled, but it does go up. Northwestern Mutual has a DI RD annually renewable DI policy, so it goes up in price every, but even that's scheduled. So you're gonna have the schedule, you're gonna note prices, but in most cases, we sell level premium insurance, and it's gonna be the same, and it's what's called non-cancelable and guaranteed renewable, which means the policy can't be canceled, the rates can't be changed, the definitions can't change. I mean, this thing is a legally binding ironclad contract for the insurance company to fulfill. You can change it, you can cancel it, you can go up or down with your benefit, you can drop off writers, you can do a lot of things. But yeah, no, if you file a claim, but basically uh money only goes one way. If you're not disabled, you're paying them premium. If you get disabled, you stop paying premium while they're paying you the benefit. If you come off the benefit because you recover and you go back to work full-time doing everything you did before, then you go right back to paying the premiums and they stop paying you. But those premiums are the same as they were before.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

You still have the yeah, you still have the policy. You know, I'm I'm old enough. I'm old enough, Matt, to your point about the policies don't change. For I don't see them anymore. But in my younger years, I would see claimants and client my clients who had disability policies. Policies that paid for life. Do you remember?

SPEAKER_03 22:02

Are you been around long enough to see that? Yes. Yes. Well, yeah, lump sum and paid for life. Now you can you can negotiate with them to settle on a long-term disability claim. If you're going to be disabled for the rest of your life, they may just say, we don't want to pay this for forever. Here's what we'll pay you up front one time. You could do that. But yeah, you used to have companies that instead of getting a monthly benefit, you'd get a lump sum, or you could get a lifetime benefit, like you said. In fact, yeah, that was That was old. That was that was interesting.

SPEAKER_01 22:32

When interest rates were 18%. Like it was insurance made a bunch of money on that and did that. Sure. Yeah, you know, I do a lot of uh counseling consulting when lump sum offers are made. And, you know, there's reasons to take a lump sum offer. Most of the time, if it's straight math, the math runs in favor of the insurance company. Oh, sure. But I've had people that come to me like, hey, I have now, you know, a group policy, they're disabled, it's any occupation at this point. They're like, I have figured out a way to make money over here, and they're offering me X, and X isn't really good mathematically, but because I know something they don't know, which is I can go now and make some legit money in a different space. You know, a lot of times the internet, right, internet businesses. It made a lot of sense. But I I you know I get to talk to people, and here's the cool thing it's like an insurance company will say typically, hey Matt, we're gonna offer you X, uh, your policy otherwise would pay to age 67, and and here's and we'll pay for you to go consult with Ben. Like we'll pay for you to go consult with a lawyer because they want you know a blessing so that they're not seen as taking advantage of somebody. Right. Smart. Okay, you got one of the biggest businesses in the country in terms of the physician market. Um I know you didn't start that way, and you alluded earlier, Matt, to starting in the sort of the general financial advice, financial services space. Take us on that entrepreneurial journey a bit of how you decided to specialize or niche down, and then how you built, because this isn't the this company that you have here, Doc Insure, isn't the first one you built. So take us through that journey because I think there's a lot of lessons that carry over to law.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

There are. And if you talk to any entrepreneur who's started one or more businesses, they are probably remiss if they don't highlight the mistakes they've made and things they've learned from them. So I'll be sure to do that as well. It's uh, you know, is a little while ago you said something about Matt being one of the, you know, experts in disability insurance in the country. It's funny how, you know, I I was supposed by age six or seven or eight, I was supposed to be either the president of the United States or a fighter pilot. Or, you know, we have all these big dreams, right? Instead, I end up becoming one of the country's experts on disability insurance for doctors. And it's like, I don't know, man. Yeah, yeah. And that's not something you I mean, you pull that out of a party. When people, when people ask me what I do, I used to struggle with it because my wife finally looked at me and said, Matt, you help young doctors get disability insurance to protect their income. And I'm like, wow, you said it so succinctly. I used to be like, I educate physicians on financial matters that are important to, you know, I just wanted to massage it because I was like, this sounds so boring, you know, but it's okay to be boring if you love what you do. And I've done over 17,000 meetings with doctors in my career. And I still, I'll have them tell me, it seems like this was like the first meeting you've ever done because I get excited about it, and you'll probably even hear me as I talk about it. I love what I do. So, but the journey really was it was starting out being a generalist, a financial planner. And I saw a guy in his 50s who is the owner of the company, and he had to on a weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, whatever, every so I mean he had to come back and say, Oh my gosh, I gotta hurry and scrounge up some business to pay everybody and pay myself. So I got to go find

Claims Reality And Filing Early

SPEAKER_03 25:55

somebody to sell some insurance to or to get them to invest some more money into their account to buy some mutual funds or whatever it was. And I was in my 20s at the time, and I just looked at two other guys in our 20s and I said, Well, we said together, we don't want to do this. We don't we like the financial world, but we don't want to be in our 50s still trying to figure out where our next meal is gonna come from. So we wanted to create a content-heavy inbound marketing business that met a niche need, and we looked around for needs, and we actually met with uh an older gentleman who was working at a hospital in Cleveland, I think it was. And he was uh he was actually, this is fascinating, he was using attorneys, local attorneys, to do contract reviews for the residents, their first contract. And he would come along and do like a benefits analysis, and then a part of that benefits analysis was always, I mean, obviously your first uh job, you have employer coverage, it's not good enough. We need to hurry up and get you this disability insurance while you have these discounts and training. So he was partnering with attorneys to do that, but it really just it he he gave us all these little secrets and how you talk to residents and everything. So we said, this is it. And if we can protect income, protect these young doctors and their families uh right when they're coming out of training, and we can reach them while they're like you said, if you're fishing a barrel, they're right there in a static position, in a group in residency or in training and fellowship. Let's let's do this. So we started it. We started this company. And uh, so I've started three companies. The first one, we had no idea what was going to happen. And it grew beyond what we could have ever imagined because it was honestly the first disability insurance company where doctors could quote, I mean, doctors could go online and request their quotes, at the same time, book the meeting within 24 hours, and then hop online and do an online meeting. And if they liked what they saw, we could get them to do the e-application right then and there. And we had to fight some battles with insurance companies. I remember sitting with principal up in the top of their building in Des Moines, Iowa, and we just said, if you want our business, you have to accept DocuSign. And this was like 2000, oh goodness, what was it, 2008, somewhere around there? And of course it was like, well, no, that can't be secure. And I'm like, but you'll take a fax from any number that comes in, you'll take an application. So we proved that it was good enough. And so they started taking DocuSign. So we were one of the first, all completely online, all online meetings, all online everything companies to do disability insurance. Back to Toll were the first to do all that. Um so that was my first company. It grew, it grew so much. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of that the 50-year-old, the 50-something-year-old guy. His son was one of the 20-somethings uh that we were making this company with, and pretty soon it was clear this was a much better company than he had ever had. And so, needless to say, we hadn't drawn up a lot of contracts. There was a lot of good faith there, there was friendships, there was all this kind of stuff. And the father and the son came to me and the other partner who wasn't a family member, and I called it a nepotismic hostile takeover. They basically said, Yeah, thanks for helping us get this started. We'll give you 5% of the company, but we're gonna get contracts in hand now, and you guys are pretty much you gotta do what we say. You gotta take it how we're giving it to you, or nothing at all. It's pretty nasty. It wasn't super fun. Um, I learned right then contracts are not offensive. Like you don't have to like tiptoe around your business partners and, oh, we'll just shake hands or something. It's not offensive. In the same way that fences, good fences made good neighbors. I think good, clear contracts make for good partnerships. It keeps you from being tempted to do things that you shouldn't do, or do things in ways that wouldn't be advantageous to your partners. It really keeps things in line. So learn pretty quickly on that one. That's the first company. Uh second company, uh, me and the partner.

SPEAKER_01 29:56

You say, you guys say no thanks.

SPEAKER_03 29:59

No thanks. We're out. We we parted ways. I mean, I had six figures owed to me and some uh commission and some some income. Uh the other partner had some money owed to him as well, but he at the time was more of a uh secretary, like an assistant type thing, so he didn't have quite as much money at stakes. I had a really wise person at a time who happened to be an attorney, say to me, you'll never miss the money, but if you draw this thing out and you go to court, you do all this stuff, you'll end up spending more than you would get back, and it will literally be this thing that haunts you for the next two to three years, probably. Yeah. And so um, you know, I'll be honest with you, it was hard to let go of. But uh, and I don't know where obviously all your listeners stand, but as a as a Christian, as a person of faith, I mean, I prayed about it with my business partner, the other partner. We felt comfortable saying that money's not the end-all be-all. We there's more important things, our our peace of mind, our our families, everything else. And so we did. We just we we dropped it and moved on.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

That made for a much cleaner break because the the the mental emotional energy, like set the money aside for a second, the mental emotional energy of fighting somebody in litigation, like that's just it's huge. Uh so good for you. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

Good for you. Well, I was I was standing at the I was standing at the uh sink one night, and I'm sitting there and I'm actually rehearsing what I'm gonna say the next day when we get together to hash all this stuff out. And I'm sitting there rehearsing it, and I'm just talking to myself for like, I don't know, 20 minutes. And my wife is like, are you going crazy over there talking to yourself at the sink? And that that was part of it. I just realized I was like, yeah, this is this is weighing so heavily mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever else. The financial aspect of it is the least of it. And so, anyways, so yeah, so we were able to break away. The good news there, we didn't have any non-competes, so that was the good side of nothing.

SPEAKER_01 31:49

Another contract that didn't exist.

SPEAKER_03 31:51

Yeah, that was the other good thing. We hadn't gotten all legal, legal up, you know, so we didn't have those uh non-competes either. So we literally just started up the exact same company. I knew what I was doing, I had experience with it. He had done all the applications and stuff like that, so we were a good pair to be able to do it. And we started up, and uh within a

Niche Marketing And Going All Online

SPEAKER_03 32:10

short amount of time, we were doing more business than the prior company. And so it really, I think it was two and a half years into it, maybe three years, I don't know, but it wasn't long into it before we left them behind in terms of production and income and revenue to the company and everything. So it was, it was, it ended up being a good move. All things happened for a reason, so we were we were pretty happy with it. Needless to say, the second company ended up becoming the largest disability insurance group in the country. And to this date, uh, I'll get to the this part in a second, uh me breaking away from the second company, but um, to this date, I still go to conferences where people are given out awards, and you'll have an award for someone that did, you know, 300,000 of business with this particular insurance company and 400,000 and 500,000, and finally they'll announce the winner, and it's my last, my second company at you know, 1.6 million or whatever. So it is still the biggest disability insurance group in the country, and I'm super proud of it. It's a it's it's it's a wonderful thing to have to have built and to see it still succeeding. I know a lot of the people there still love them and their families. But that company started in 2013. We were able to run it much more how we wanted to. We didn't have another partner or father, you know, the the all of that involved. And um, we were really able to tech this thing out. A third person in was actually an engineer by background, but kind of a marketing tech guy by training and hobby. And so we brought him in. And um, you know, the three of us, I was doing all the sales, the partner that came with me was transacting all the business, and now this guy was doing all the marketing, and before long it took off. And we were number one at at uh certainly three or four out of the five own occupation companies that doctors uh go and get on an annual basis. So growing like leaps and bounds. And then one day I woke up and I was like, COVID actually added to this. It was about 2020, and it was like, hang on a second. We grew the business by 60% last year. We're the largest DI group in the country. We've got 40-something employees, and I did most of this from home. We like to travel, we school our kids at home so we can travel and do all kinds of things like that. Why am I going into an office five days a week? And so it just so happened that uh my business partners and I had a divergence right around that time period where they had been doing some Dave Ramsey things, which is all about leadership and management, and they were so excited about all this, growing this business and adding more employees to everything. And I was like, we grew our revenue last year, but our net profit went down as an owner. That's not good. I don't know that we need to keep adding people. And besides, I'm tired of sitting in a boardroom getting bored, making logo killer decisions. Like I loved what I did when I met with doctors, but I'm I'm sitting here having to run this company and this person, yeah, yeah, on this person and whatever. What I basically learned was my American dream, anyways, was not owning a big company that has all these employees and managing it. I didn't like managing all these people. And so, not that it was wrong and that the my other business partners liked the managing the people aspect of it. It's just we didn't like the same thing anymore. And so we ended up parting ways fairly amicably. We got into a little bit of discussions and differentiations of how we felt about how my stock should be paid out and over what time period and how much and how evaluated. That was all in the contract, but there were different stipulations too, which I would do differently next time, too. But, anyways, but the point is that ended pretty amicably. We still see each other. At least one of the partners and I are on a hugging basis. I was best man at his wedding. I mean, it's it's pretty good. And I still cheer for them. I'm sad, I'm super happy for what they're uh what they're still accomplishing. So here I am with Doc Insure. If I had to write a book right now, it would be called Small on Purpose. I have three employees, so check this out. My second company is the largest disability insurance group in the country. I now have three employees, and last year my business made more net profit and I took home more income than I ever did in my second company. With three employees. Yeah. So I would if I wrote a book right now, which I might end up doing, it would be small on purpose. I think I learned a lot of lessons from the first two companies on efficiencies, on uh when you really need people and when you don't need people, when it's okay to say no to certain business that's not profitable, and just to really streamline it and make it efficient.

SPEAKER_01 36:26

So this is such an interesting conversation, Matt, because as you may remember, I'm in practice with my son, my oldest son. And we have this discussion a lot because we are a good, strong regional brand in personal injury and a decently strong East Coast, eastern half United States brand in the disability claims space. And on every stage of the conferences we go to to learn about the business of a lot of people talking about grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, private equity, come buy you, get a million dollars, get millions of dollars, whatever. And we're like our lifestyles are really good. And the team we have is really good. So rule number one, don't mess that up. Right? Right. Like the money is good, and there are things that we could do for sure. Like we're actually good at the law and we're good at marketing, and there are places we could go. We look at each other and we go, you know what? We have a lot of freedom of time, and we have a lot of choices as to who we're gonna deal with and what kind of cases we're gonna take. And we could 5x, 10x, the dollars, but it would not materially affect our lives in a in a good way. Whereas building a you know a bigger infrastructure world can can lead to adverse consequences. So it's good. So I do think you should write the book because it's it's counter it's counter a lot of the current business culture, which is all about grow, grow, grow, you know, grow, grow, grow, and and don't like don't have to do any work. But you people like you and me, like we actually like the human interaction, right? Helping people, like, like I I like that part a a ton, right? And litigating stuff, I get people that can go litigate stuff, but helping a doctor and his or her spouse, like figure out, holy crap, we have this diagnosis, I'm not gonna be able to keep doing my eye surgery forever and maybe not for long at all. And I'm really scared and I'm not really sure what to do. And like, all right, let me explain, I'll explain the policies Matt sold you. But we're also gonna have a conversation about life and the world and abundance and opportunities. And a lot of times, Matt, as you know, like no one else has had that conversation with them. Yeah, they don't they don't hang with entrepreneurs too much, right? They're yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:10

Yeah, what I what I have found is that people can typically tell if you genuinely care about them. And uh, I mean, I've built all three companies based on on the fact that we care more and that we, you know, we're gonna have conversations with you about so own occupation. A lot of people say, here's the definition, and it sounds like a robot spitting something out. And a lot of times what I say is, I see doctors who go on claim, and the first question is, is this own occupation? Well, kind of, really what they ask is, I can't be a doctor anymore. Can I still do something else and still get paid this? Because here's the thing if you're if you're 45 years old, 52 years old, whatever, and you get disabled, you got a lot of life left to live, right? And so the thought of I have the wrong disability insurance, it's gonna force me to sit on a couch at home and do nothing with the rest of my life if I want to get paid, that's actually the worst part of non-owned occupation disability insurance. It's that feeling of I have to either sit at home and do nothing to get my disability payment, or if I go do anything with my life and it earns a buck, this insurance company is gonna try to find a way to pay me less or nothing just because I did something with my life. And so that's we talk about it in those kind of terms, like the freedom to still pursue your desires, your hobbies, your passions, whatever else in your life in a slightly different way. You can't do it in your own occupation like you did before, your specialty, but you can still pursue a lot of life and you got a lot of good and a lot of things you can still do. And you're not having to constantly look over your shoulder and say, oh my gosh, someone paid me to come and speak, are they gonna take away my disability benefits? So I'm with you though. The interaction, the helpfulness, treating people like people and not cases or tasks is a huge reason why I do what I do. So even if someone came along today, private equity, and said, We're gonna buy you out for $10 billion. I'm just anyways, now we're gonna buy you out for some crazy number, right? I my first question would be, yeah, you can buy me out. Can I still work in the business? Is it cast on and work in the business? I don't want to get bought out. And then, I mean, what am I going to do with my life? Like, what is what is the purpose of life? To me, it's not to hoard a bunch of money and uh, you know, end up at the end going, I can't even possibly spend all this. My my mother-in-law right now has terminal cancer, probably has a few weeks left to live as we speak. And she said that to me recently. She looked at me and said, I can't spend or give this away fast enough. She spent her whole life, you know, accumulating it and she was wise with it, and she has a good, good size amount of money. She's gonna die with money. And she's like, I wish I could have given her or spent more of it along the way on things that matter. This is so important.

SPEAKER_01 41:43

Anyways, this is so important. This is really so important. I know that you were a big sponsor of White Coat Investor and maybe some other organization I don't know about. But today, Matt, where are

Partnerships Contracts And Painful Lessons

SPEAKER_01 41:55

the new doctors coming from who find you? And how what are you guys working on to keep the marketing, to keep that position of, hey, we we care and we know what we're doing, and we're gonna get you set up right.

SPEAKER_03 42:11

Well, I'll answer that question in something. Jim Collins' book, you know, Good to Great. One of the things he talks about there is getting the right people on the bus and figuring out where they sit. What I took away from that was I can teach anyone to sell disability insurance, to do applications, to, you know, follow the business through underwriting. It is imperative and difficult to hire good people and to entrust your clients to them. But the one encouragement I have for any entrepreneur or anybody who owns a business and hires people is hire for character first. There has to be some level of competency, but hire for character first. The last person I hired, or my fourth employee in the business, was a missionary and a pastor for like 25 or 30 years. He loves people and he loves deep things about life. And so he's a teacher. He can do exactly what I do, but he cares about people and he loves people. So I would say, I know that's probably not what you're asking, but I was just gonna say, I have hired people who have proven character and a love for people so that when people come to us, they're not getting someone who's like, I'm gonna talk you into the biggest policy I can sell you because it makes me more money. You're talking to people who genuinely care more about you than they care about themselves. And if it means they say, you need to go over here and get this from someone else because they have some special deal, or we need to start off small and we can always make it bigger later, even if it means they're not gonna get paid a whole lot on the scale. It's like we're gonna make the right decision for the clients every single time. So that's that's a huge part of it. That's a huge part of it. That's that's that. And then, you know, I'm always pushing the technology aspect of it. Uh disability insurance is still a dinosaur industry. I mean, like, what I mean, picture this. I went to I yes, I had to go to a Fortune 500 company principal in 2008. Uh no, no, no, no, no. This was 2008. Yeah, uh roughly 2008, 2009. We had to go to them and convince them to use DocuSign so that we could do online applications. Otherwise, we were having to mail paper applications or send them faxed applications. And two, it was either 2008 or 2013. It may have been as late as 2013 when I was starting a second company. I think it was, absolutely. Yeah, 2013. We're having to go to them and and and beg them and talk them into using DocuSign. So my whole point is, and here's the funny part. Two years later, they developed a uh they developed an e-application. But what they did was they kept their old system, and you would send an e-application in. It would come to a person who would physically print it off, walk into another room where the old system was on a computer, type it all into the old system so you could submit the application. My whole point is to answer your question, I'm always pushing the envelope on technology. How can we get quotes and education and applications and everything online fast? Do it yourself. Let the doctors, they're smart people. If we can do it in an educational format, why can't they do this whole process without an agent? Maybe there's 30% of them that could do it without an agent. I know that's what I do, but still there's a good number of them that could possibly do that. So I'm just trying to push the envelope to put more of the power into the hands of the clients to maybe say, hey, I still got to go through an agent, but I'm gonna know what I want, why I want it, and how much of it I want 90% of the way before I go talk to an agent. So I don't if I end up with the wrong, if I don't end up a doc insurance and I end up somewhere else with a bad agent, I'm not gonna get talked into something I don't want. So I'd say that's it. Looking out for them on the education and technology side, trying to put more power into there.

SPEAKER_01 45:42

Your dinosaur comment is exactly right. And I, because oftentimes my clients would be, they're pissed off about because their their claim has been denied. That's how they get to me, right? And I'm like, I said, but Matt, like these poor people, they're they are sitting there with legacy systems and dashboards that pop up, and and they are still like we'll ask for a claim file, we'll get like a 3,000, like a box, a box shows up. Like, are you kidding me? Like somebody printed it out and put it in a box and wrapped the tape around the box and sent it to them.

SPEAKER_03 46:17

Yeah. Like Yeah, here's something funny. You you want to talk about that? So here's something that on your side of things, on the legal side and the the claim side of things, all these companies like to brag about, well, we're double A plus rated by S P or we're A minus rated by Moody's. Or you know, they they talk about their ratings, their financial standings. Do you know what a doctor cares about? Are you gonna pay my claim if I get disabled? I don't care how strong you are finance. I mean, I do, but these companies are gonna be around. I mean, the the ones we're talking about, they're gonna be around. The question is, are you gonna pay a claim if I get disabled? Are you gonna hassle me and also so my my thought is I I think I may even tell you I was a white coat, maybe not, at the conference. But my thought is I'd love to, I would love to come up with a rating system for how these companies pay claims and hold them accountable to doing a good job of paying legitimate claims and of being kind in how they address people and professional and succinct. And if it right now, there's virtually no score, there's no nothing holding these insurance companies accountable other than their reputation might get dinged amongst a small pocket of doctors or something. But how great if instead of a financial rating, which means it's kind of nebulous, it means something to these doctors, what if there was a way of scoring them based on how they handle claims and holding them accountable to doing it efficiently, effectively, to doing the right thing for the clients? I think that's one of the next things we could do to improve this marketplace, give confidence to the marketplace in the insurance carriers, hold the carriers accountable to a higher standard with their claims processes. That's my two cents. You got but you got me on my you got me on my soapbox. That's one of my soapboxes.

Small On Purpose And Better Profit

SPEAKER_03 47:55

I'm excited about.

SPEAKER_01 47:56

You asked me that question in Vegas, like, all right, which which which company is it best? And you know, the answer is like every policy is different, every stack of medical records is different, so it's kind of hard to judge. However, and I may I may tell you this, like we don't see a lot of people complaining about let's just say Northwestern, right? But there's other companies like we've had a like, thank God for I'll name them, like Reliance, Reliance Standard group policies have put like my kids through college, like with kind of bad decision making that that we fixed. And so you can do like you could do a search through cases and see like which companies are showing up the most as is having some issue of litigation. Again, the companies might might win those, right? But it's a hard, yeah, it would be really if you come up with that system, it'd be great. It's just so hard because you have those two big variations. A, the policy language, and then B, every medical record. And then and then you layer on the occupation, right? So for most of what the work we're doing, it's like to your own ock, and it makes a big difference whether you are working behind a desk, using your brain to make money, or you are doing something that's uh, you know.

SPEAKER_03 49:05

Yeah, I don't think it could be released like after the first case or two. But I think I think that by collecting uh the data on all these claims and and having it somewhere, I do think certain trends would emerge. I think you would see, okay, it gives it, you know, own occupation for a pediatrician and an orthopedic surgeon are very different, how they play out and everything. But I think over you'd eventually get to a sample size large enough that trends would be there to make some kind of judgment. Okay, maybe it's a bad idea. I I bet if any of the carriers hear this, which they probably will, they're gonna be like, what are you saying, Matt? You know, they're gonna freak out about it.

SPEAKER_01 49:36

Go look at the annual report and see if there's a litigation line item. That might be a quick. Well, Matt, look, this has been terrific. Folks want to find DocInsure, I'm probably pretty easy. Uh, but what's the what's the website to go to?

SPEAKER_03 49:52

Yeah, it's docinsure.com. And I made it really easy. My email address is Matt at DocInsure.com. So come find us. We're here to help. And even if you find yourself as a different type of professional, an attorney or whoever I have conversations with attorneys, with CPAs, with engineers uh all the time who say, I'm not a doctor. Do I really need disability insurance? Sometimes the answer is no, sometimes the answer is yes. Um, but just no, I'm happy to have the conversation anytime. It's not a, I'm not gonna start billing you the second you reach out to me or anything like that. I'd love to have the conversation. Um, or if you have any questions about any of this.

SPEAKER_01 50:23

Well, I think the important thing for people to understand is that there's people like you who are really Uber niched and expert in this. And again, you have experience across a wide variety of insurance companies and policies, right? And so whether someone like ends up going with you or not, they're going to be educated about just the the breadth of opportunity available uh to them. Versus, you know, talking to an agent who's maybe captive to one insurance company. So there's like one one flavor of vanilla or something. Absolutely. Well, look, good luck to you. I'm sure that we're uh we will our paths will cross again at some point here. Anything I can do for any of your uh clients, let us know. And I'll do the same for you. Um, again, I talked to a lot of people who have come through uh and I thought, who sold you this? Uh well, you know, it's a company called Dock Insure. Or or one of your predecessor places where you've

Where To Find Matt And Wrap

SPEAKER_01 51:20

been.

SPEAKER_03 51:20

I'm glad to hear it. We're doing we're doing our job.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Yeah, you're doing a good job. Proud of that. Proud of that. All right, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate you, Ben. See ya.

SPEAKER_00 51:31

That's it for today's episode of the Renegade Lawyer Podcast, where we're rewriting the rules of what it means to build a great law practice and a great life. If something sparked a new idea or gave you clarity, pass it on. Subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who's ready to think bigger. Want more tools, strategies, and stories from the trenches? Visit GreatLegalMarketing.com or connect with Ben Glass and the team on LinkedIn. Keep building boldly. We'll see you next time.