How did you get into the insurance biz? It was an accident. Things happened. I know nothing about insurance. I've never sold a policy. I just know what it looks like as a row of data coming out of a system, and then I know what to do with it. What's the challenge there? Their big problem is just that this stuff is so firmly buried in quarry of the building underneath everything that yanking it out is really complicated. I did a project for a small mutual in the Midwest. They've got an OS2 computer living in a closet with a padlock on the door. Wow. They're scared to death that somebody's going to look at it cross-eyed. Where do you see things going? We were up against a fairly major roadblock and trying to build it. I thought it was going to be out last month, and then we tripped over this thing. And then at that point, you know, assuming nobody dies, nobody gets arrested, then at that point I'll go into the market with it.
SPEAKER_01Talk about your book real quick.
SPEAKER_03So it's a very accessible book. It's not technical in any way, and it doesn't tie it any particular system. It just how do you think about your problem in such a way that somebody can solve it? Maybe that's a better way to put it.
SPEAKER_01What was the number one piece of advice that you would give an agency owner going into this new future?
SPEAKER_00I are in out by out. I am breakfast. I am interested. We are in. We are in turn. Boom! Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_02I think you were peeking there, Mr. Jason. You were peeking.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I got nothing more to say either. So you guys, you know, have a great day. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. That was a good one. That was a good one. So just before we realized that we were losing gold, we were uh talking about the goatee with Mr. David Kelly. So he hasn't. If you're not on the YouTube and you haven't subscribed, you need to do that. And you can see this very strong goatee.
SPEAKER_03Not to mention we were talking about a pair.
SPEAKER_02Isn't that the best? So I've noticed, and I I doubt any of my uh friends from outside of insurance uh even listened to this at all, but I've noticed a lot of the guys that that I went to high school or college with, not so much hair.
SPEAKER_03Not so much hair. Now I went back to college when I was in my 30s, and I'd see all these young kids, especially the athletes, and they'd shave their heads. I'm like, you know, I got three words for you male pattern baldness. There's gonna be a time in your life when you will regret not having that hair. Yes. This is all I was given, you know, physically. The best of me is hair.
SPEAKER_02Gotta you gotta take advantage of those traits that are working for you.
SPEAKER_03You do what you can with what you can, you know, that's all you can ask for.
SPEAKER_02I love what you wrote here, solution architect. That's great. Love it. Uh, entrepreneur, author, uh, and you are the founder of BobTrack. So that's an insurance, uh, insure tech startup. So you make software for carriers, brokers, agencies uh to manage, analyze, and incent their distribution channels. Before we get into that, we're gonna jump into a round of speed breakers. I don't know if you're familiar.
SPEAKER_03Um watched a bunch, but I haven't seen that.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Well, buckle up. Buckle up, David, buttercup. Yeah. Buckle up buttercup. Your arms. What movie is that? Legs inside at all time. Right. No time. All right. Here we go. You will answer you, you must answer the questions in rapid fire form. Are you ready? I am. That's the only agreement. Wait, let's see. He's waiting for a button, I can tell. A little more cowbell. All right, here we go. Have you ever had a mullet? Um, I had a tail. Does that count? I think it's kind of it's kind of a mullet. What did you call it a rat tail? A rat tail.
SPEAKER_03Sensible on top, a mess in back. There you go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, business in front, party in the back. Uh first crush. Oh lord. Uh second grade, Nikki Pelleton. Ooh, most embarrassing thing your mom ever caught you doing. Oh, yeah. Well, I think you can imagine what the most embarrassing. See, anybody that says anything else is a lie. Yeah, no, that's that's just a lie. Come on. Fastest speed ever driven. 122. Nice, respectable. Fast uh favorite cereal.
SPEAKER_03Uh I'm a Cheerios guy.
SPEAKER_02Cheerios, okay. We had life earlier. Life and Cheerios today. Um, how many kids? Uh Zilch. Have you made cry? Please let me finish the question.
SPEAKER_03All of them.
SPEAKER_02All of them. Perfect. Uh Count Chocula or Count Dracula?
SPEAKER_03Oh, Dracula, definitely.
SPEAKER_02Fastest mile?
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, you know, 10, 20 minutes. Sure. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Favorite flavor.
SPEAKER_03Uh favorite flavor. I'd gotta go with um, I don't know, is pepperoni a flavor?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Dogs or cats? Oh, dogs to the most that's that is the correct answer. Tacos or burritos?
SPEAKER_03Uh burritos. Burritos.
SPEAKER_02And favorite video game.
SPEAKER_03Um, I haven't played a video game for decades, so I'd have to say missed.
SPEAKER_02And the everybody's favorite question, Trump or Biden?
SPEAKER_03Oh boy. Um, well, seeing as I'm trying to sell into the insurance market and it's fairly conservative, I'm still gonna say Biden.
SPEAKER_02There you go. All right, perfect. And then I believe Jason has one, and then we'll dive in. David, what was the first concert you ever went to?
SPEAKER_03Um, yeah, that's a funny story. Um, Rivy Shankar, I had no idea what a friend said, Hey, I got tickets to this Indian guy, let's go along. And I'm like, okay, great. And I'm expecting a hey, yeah, hey, oh, hey. And then up comes all the Citrar music and incense and stuff, and I was like, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto. I mean, I really had no idea what was going on, but that was my first concert.
SPEAKER_02Wow. And have you been to any since?
SPEAKER_03Uh several, yeah. Nice.
SPEAKER_02Well, there you go. Perfect. So talk to us about Bob. Yeah. Yeah. You go. Shankar. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. From from Shankar with the sitar to now, how did you get into the insurance biz?
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, it it was an accident. Things happened. Um, I, for a variety of reasons, found myself working for an incentive compensation management company, which is to say software for paying commissions and bonuses.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_03And for some reason, um, that's where the solution architect thing came from. Um, you know, we built this generic software that's supposed to work for every customer in every industry, and of course, it doesn't. So somebody had to do the magic on every project to figure out what's missing and how do we get this thing to work. And I knew nothing about insurance, but we every time we did an insurance project, the place the project would fall over and the flames licking higher and higher in the streams of the dime was always the book of business problem, which is what the Bob and Bob track stands for. There's nobody named Bob in the company. Um who's servicing this policy and what's the value of that relationship across time? Oh. It turns out they care about that stuff in insurance. Um, you know, whereas you know you sell to a manufacturing company, you sell a widget, the sales guy knows who he is, we multiply the price by the rate, and that's his commission. Well, in insurance, you got to know, you know, rolling 18 months or annualization in Trua or retention or all these things that don't make any sense just based on a hundred dollar premium check coming in. So we'd have to, you know, when we pull you know conglomco off their mainframe system that they've been on since 1970, and the last guy who understood it died two years ago, we'd pull them off that, and what disappeared, the the place there was nothing that we could tie into was Book of Business. So you inspect this out, you know, a dozen, two dozen times, and you say to yourself, why hasn't somebody built this? And that's where BobTrack came from. I know nothing about insurance. I've never sold a policy, I don't know the difference between, you know, whole life and term or any of those VUL things. I don't even know that. I just know what it looks like as a row of data coming out of a system, and then I know what to do with it. So the the the big Bobtrack product, the reason I started the company is for the carriers, but then just recently, and I guess this part might be interesting to you guys, I think the rest is probably boring you to tears, but you know, the part that might be interesting for you is the an agency guy came to me uh a few months ago and said, I need that for my agency. And I'm like, Well, that's ridiculous. You know, it's like software, you need a computer to run it and stuff like that. I can't forecast revenue and I can't reconcile my commissions, and I can't see my whole customer journey because you know, if I've got one customer with three policies on three companies, I can't see the totality of it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I can fix that. So I've been building an agency product as well, and we should be in the market with that probably in in less than a month for just you know, essentially just wrapping your arms around your finances every month is is really all it's all it's solving for. A lot of that.
SPEAKER_02Will that will that integrate with the carrier so that it's just automated?
SPEAKER_03Um, well, the hope is yes. Um right now, I have to point out I'm still pre-everything, pre-customer, you know, all that kind of stuff. I'm still trying to build the carrier product. I would like them to integrate with each other, but the thing to bear in mind is you know, these carriers are on mainframe systems, you know, from a thousand years ago, and nothing is going to integrate with those. You know, that's just not how their world works. So that's gonna be pretty ugly. But what I am gonna be integrating with is the agency management systems for the agency product.
SPEAKER_02Gotcha.
SPEAKER_03So I'm not replacing anything, you know, all the big names don't have to worry about that. I'm just adding to it to give them a little more information.
SPEAKER_02It's it's so interesting on the carrier side, these old systems they have. What is the like why? Why can't they put it into a new one? Like, what is the what's the challenge there?
SPEAKER_03Well, theoretically they could. I mean, it's not a real big problem, but these systems, I don't know, there's one called Life 70, for example. It's been around for a thousand years. A large carrier whose name you know probably has five, six different instances of life 70, and they don't even talk to each other, let alone the outside world. So, you know, that's why I can't integrate to them, is that no two life 70s are the same. So, you know, that's their big problem is just that this stuff is so firmly buried in the quarry of the building underneath everything that yanking it out is really complicated.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03I mean, when I first got into technology in the 90s, you know, oh, the mainframe is dead, we're gonna replace it, everybody's gonna love you know, this client server thing. It's real modern, it's real new, you'll love it. Um, well, the mainframe is still with us, it's not going anywhere. I did a project for a small mutual in the Midwest, and they've uh there's a system you guys probably won't even know the name of OS2. They've got an OS2 computer living in a closet with a padlock on the door, because if anybody opens the closet and like kicks the plug out of the wall, an entire business unit goes down. You know, they are scared to death that somebody's gonna look at it cross-eyed. So, you know, going in and trying to do I cut the green wire or the red wire first to get this thing out of there, they just uh it can be done, but it takes a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of willpower and and courage. Courage is the mistake.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, it seems like there in a in a world that manages risk, that there's a lot of risk in having all of the information in a system that was designed in the 60s.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you would think, wouldn't you? Um I'm trying to convince them of this, which is you know, why I'm still pre-customer, but you know, the the point is I don't see how you can avoid at some point modernizing, but until you can modernize, you've got to figure out how do you make the old stuff work.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_03And the old stuff is really you know inflexible. If they want to come up with a new contract for their agents or whatever, that's two years worth of work just to get it you know, snuck into the old mainframe and stuff. Well, I'm trying to get them to the place where they can do it in a week, let alone two years.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing. I just can't I can't let go of this part. It's it's so weird.
SPEAKER_03Because I it's a trillion dollar industry running on late 1900s technologies, right?
SPEAKER_02You have and you have the millennials are gonna eventually here in the next 15-20 years run the world, right? And so they're gonna see that thing and go, what the he what is that? Right? They won't even know what it is. And I mean, I at least have heard mainframe and remember, you know, war games and you know the so I don't know, and and what we see on the carrier, like the carrier we represent is anytime there's an update, it's it's just build something on top, you know, and then build another one on top of that. And it's a lot of duct taping.
SPEAKER_03A lot of duct taping, and and you know, it's like, well, how do you sneak that kidney out of there? It's really complicated. And you know, there's so many other things wrapped around it that you know I'm just saying leave everything where it is, keep using it the way you're using it. Yeah, let's you know, let's bubble the stuff up to where what I do.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Interesting. So where where do you see where do you see things going?
SPEAKER_03Um, I think it's it's catching on. I mean, the the thing that when I first you know, I spent a lot of time figuring out how do you build this thing. And then, you know, I'd go to these trade shows, industry conventions, all that kind of good stuff, and you know, people would say, you know, you're brilliant, you understand the problem better than anyone in the history of the world, and maybe in four years we'll have a budget for that. Which is depressing. So, you know, I began looking at it, and I think the real thing that that's turning the corner is I realize the business value I'm adding is analytics, not back office function. What I'm adding is now you can see, you know, an entire agent, not just you know, the stuff he does in this system and the stuff he does in that system, and so on. Bring it all together, and now you can see an entire agent's journey, or an entire customer's journey, or maybe fraud, or maybe, you know, here's somebody we could market to, because it turns out our most you know profitable customers are you know 53-year-old ex-railroad guys from the Pacific Northwest. Well, you can go to companies and buy a hundred names just like that. Yeah, market to them, and now you know you're not just sending out a postcard to everybody in a zip code, you're actually being much more surgical in who you're chasing.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_03So, and and I'm not only making that up. I actually asked some of these uh companies that sell you names, is would this work? Yeah, of course it would. You know, just sell us what you want. It turns out that's real. I thought it was just marketing.
SPEAKER_02The riches are the niches. If you could segue it down.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So that's so you said the agent product will be out next month?
SPEAKER_03That's the hope. Yeah. Uh we were up against a fairly major roadblock in trying to build it. I thought it was going to be out last month, and then we tripped over this thing. Now we're fixing it. Now we're on the the short strokes in terms of getting the product out the door. And I think you know, we've got three or four agencies that want to pilot it. And then at that point, you know, assuming nobody dies, nobody gets arrested, then at that point I'll go into the market with it.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome. So is it essentially like a dashboard kind of?
SPEAKER_03So it's it's a dashboard, but a little bit more than that. I mean, like I say, if if you you can't predict exactly what your commissions are going to be this month because you're selling new policies and your old policies are canceling and you might not even know they canceled, right? So but the best I can do is say, of your book of business, this is the stuff that's expiring this month, you know, or you know, renewing this month, more to the point, you know, this is what your commission should be on that amount, and we also know your new business, so we'll throw that into the mix. I would expect a check from this carrier to be oh, about that large. And then when the check comes in, we can then reconcile it back to the you know policy by policy. I thought you were gonna get 100 bucks for this one, you got 90. Why do you suppose that is? Well, now that now let's figure it out. I can't tell you why they shortchanged you, um, but it happens. Right, right. So the first the first agency I was talking to, the guy says, I've probably got a hundred thousand dollars in unpaid commissions at this point. I just want to find them. I don't expect to ever see them, but I want to know it. So I can give them the tools to do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's interesting because those reports you pull it's like, well, who knows? I'll trust it.
SPEAKER_03What else can you do?
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_03And you get the statement from the incentive comp system from the carrier, and they say you got paid X amount on this policy, but you're like, well, why? You know, I thought first of all, we have a special program going this month for 12% instead of 10 or whatever, but you know, at least I can find that the mistakes, and then we you know, from there you can figure out in your AMS what what the really you know what their situation really was. But that's the hope anyway.
SPEAKER_01And is it uh is it gonna integrate with like you you said some CRMs too as well?
SPEAKER_03Um I'm more concerned with the agency management systems at this point. You know, and there are two big ones that everybody knows the name of, and those are gonna be the easy ones to to integrate with. All the little agency management systems I understand are even harder to integrate to than than the big ones, but you know, that's uh I'm I'm gonna start with just take a report out of that system and upload it into mine, and then we'll figure out how do we, you know, plumb it together and you know, use duct tape to tie the systems together. But I, you know, at this point, I just want to see if I can get it to work, let alone it and be spiffy. So cool.
SPEAKER_01Well, what's the one like from everything you've seen from your agents uh that have used the system and stuff, well what what have what would be the number one piece of advice that you would give an agency owner going into the this new future with all this data-driven stuff?
SPEAKER_03Take good notes. Um one of the agency owners that I've been talking to says, you know, we we get these emails from the large carriers saying, okay, this month, you know, every policy you sell in July will pay you 12% instead of 10. And I'm like, okay, that's cool. Then they say the checks come in for 10%, but we haven't got any place where we can say, but wait a minute. Right. You know, this was supposed to be 12%. You know, so and apparently, and this is something that you know may be different than every, but apparently the agents are not always really good at filling out all the information and you know when they're selling the product as well. So, you know, partly because there's never been a reason to be. You know, it doesn't matter what I write, I'm still gonna get paid what the carrier wants to pay me. But you know, that's I think I had one one carrier incentive person say, you know, these people work for 100% commission, they're not like you and me. Well, you guys are like that because that's the world you're in, but you know, normal people like, you know, salaries and some idea of what's coming, and you know, but anybody who's willing to work for 100% commission is probably going to cut corners on certain things and and you know just do what's easy and do what brings in the most money and all that kind of stuff. And filling out, you know, all these fields in your agency management system, you know, who wants to do that? So no one.
SPEAKER_01Especially not salespeople.
SPEAKER_02No, yeah.
SPEAKER_01They do not know.
SPEAKER_03But that's one of the things that you know, if if your life depends on getting this commission accurate, then you should do the things you need to do to make sure that the commission is accurate. But I think a lot of people have just said, you know, I'll type in the minimum amount I need and then go off and sell to the next guy. And so that's one reason why this agency owner I'm working with has no idea how much he's supposed to be getting because people aren't even filling out the AMS properly, let alone, you know. Oh yeah. Yep. Um talk about your book real quick. Oh, yeah, my book. Um yes, it is it's the book on incentive compensation management, and I called it that so I could walk into a meeting and say, you know, I wrote the book on incentive compensation management. That was entirely intentional. Um it's basically about any kind of system. How do you think about systems when you're implementing them? And it has to do with commissions and bonuses, but that's not really what it's about. It's really about how do you well, okay, one of my soapbox issues, and I'll I can give you, you know, half an hour, 40 minutes just on this, but how do you treat a downstream system versus an upstream system? So an upstream system would be your policy management. Your downstream system would probably be, you know, uh your CRM or Book of Business or Incentive Comp. Well, upstream systems have all the data they own, all the processes, and anything they say is true. And then they pass that to the downstream system that has to interpret it and do things. And it's only true until somebody realizes, oh, I typed in your your height as five feet eight or eight feet five instead of five feet eight, and so we need to change that piece of data. And now all of a sudden it has ripple effects that go through. I live in the ripple effect world. You know, if you look at if you data is easy to get the answer right the first time you see it, it's really hard the eighth time you see it, but you know, that's where the the challenge is in the systems I I work on. So it's really how do you think about what a system has to do? Don't don't base it on what the business looks like. Think about what are the the you know, when this bad thing happens, what do we do next? And that's kind of my approach to to building systems and and looking at systems is you know, anybody can get the world, you know, the answer right when you know the world is perfect and it's the you know the first time we ever see it. But you know, oh you're not five feet eight, you're five feet nine. Well that changes everything again. And now you know third, fourth, fifth time I see that. Now I've got an agent wondering why I just got docked a hundred bucks on his commission, and I don't know what to tell him. So I'm trying to create a world where I can tell him this is what broke.
SPEAKER_02So interesting.
SPEAKER_03So it's a very accessible book. It's it's not technical in any way, and it doesn't tie it any particular system. It just how do you think about your problem in such a way that somebody can solve it? Maybe that's a better way to put it.
SPEAKER_02So it is called the Book on Incentive Compensation Management: The Systematic Administration of Variable Compensation in in the Enterprise by David Kelly. Well, it explains what it is, there's no question. Plus, you get to say, I wrote the book on incentive compensation management.
SPEAKER_03And I do, I say that a lot.
SPEAKER_02So I think we're gonna have what called the book on insurance, and then we can say we wrote the book on insurance.
SPEAKER_03You'd be crazy not to. I mean, this is built-in marketing, you can't screw it up.
SPEAKER_02I wrote the book. Well, David, thank you so much. This has been awesome. How if somebody wants to learn more about BobTrack, I am guessing they could go to www.bobtrack.com.
SPEAKER_03Uh that would be correct, or send me an email, david.kelly at bobtrack.com.
SPEAKER_02And that's without a C. It's just that is correct.
SPEAKER_03That is without a C. There was a farm implement company that built up the C before we can get there.
SPEAKER_02So Pesky Farm Implement Companies. Yeah. Well we squashed them. Yeah. Can they find you on like LinkedIn and all the other good places?
SPEAKER_03Uh LinkedIn, basically, yeah. That's a good place to look. So if you David Kelly Bob Track, you'll you'll find me.
SPEAKER_02Great. Well, thank you for making it through Speedbreakers and for uh passing along this this awesome information. Uh we will catch you on the flip side.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm really grateful that you reached out. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Have a good one. You too. Me too.