Why Niche Beats Generalists Every Time ft. Troy Chakarun

"We knew the need before they knew the need."

Before Troy Chakarun was helping scale one of the fastest-growing firms in insurance, he was making cold calls, sorting mail, answering phones, and getting yelled at by strangers at Merrill Lynch.

His first job in business? Picking up a phone book and calling dead people.
Not exactly glamorous. But it taught him how to sell, how to handle rejection, and how to outwork almost everybody around him. 

After Merrill, Troy moved through ING and Voya, built high-performing sales teams, got deep into data-driven distribution, and eventually brought that same mindset into the insurance world at Alkeme.

And the lesson never changed: the best teams don’t guess. They don’t wing it. They don’t waste time on sludge.

In this episode of Elevate the Hustle, Dom sits down with Troy to talk about sales, scale, AI, mentorship, acquisitions, and why most people are still spending way too much time on work that shouldn’t even be on their desk anymore.

Troy breaks down:

• What his early days at Merrill Lynch taught him about pressure, training, and learning fast
• Why new producers need mentorship instead of trying to figure everything out alone
• How he used data to shorten sales cycles and walk into meetings already knowing the pain points
• Why account managers and producers are still buried in “soul-sucking, time-wasting tasks” 
  
  

Plus, Troy shares what makes a great acquisition fit, why niche expertise scales faster than being a generalist, and how the best businesses create systems that make growth easier instead of harder.

If your team is still stuck doing everything manually, still guessing in sales conversations, or still trying to scale without the right support — this episode is for you.

Real talk, real stories, and occasionally real bad language.

🌐 Website: elevateteams.io
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🎙️ YouTube: @ElevateTheHustlePodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What are the top two or three things that that were just complete time sucks for people?

SPEAKER_01 0:04

We actually called it uh soul sucking time wasting tasks or something like that. You know, it's typically things that are manual input, right? And in today's world, you know, if you can drag and drop a policy statement in and grab that information and populate it into whatever you're trying to populate it into, like those those stitches in time are are just they the table states these days. So if if my job as an account manager is an example nowadays, like that can all be done whether it's RPA or AI, it doesn't really matter, but those can all be done without the account manager. How can we how can we get the sludge off of the desks of our producers and our account manager? Elevate the hustle.

SPEAKER_00 0:57

Welcome to Elevate the Hustle, where we break down what it means to build teams, scale companies, and lead with intensity. This week my business partner is out. He's uh away at a golf trip with his kids, but I'm very fortunate enough to be here with Troy Shockeran from Alchemy. Troy, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Tom. Great to be in. Um so I guess let's just start a little bit. Uh I know you're over at Alchemy, and you know, Alchemy has has grown substantially since its inception over the last six or seven years. Um, but that's not where you got started. So if you don't mind, you know, just tell us a little bit about your start at Merrill Lynch and you know, how you got started there and your eventual segue into the insurance business.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thanks for having me on. So um how did I start at Merrill Lynch? That's a funny one. So I went I went to the University of Arizona uh and I was in a fraternity there, and uh it was summertime and you know, needed some extra cash, and one of my attorney brothers, who actually also works here at Alchemy now too, by the way, uh had it had been interning at Merrill Lynch. So uh we decided, three of us decided that we were gonna do it go do that for the summertime, which involved basically picking up a phone book and calling a bunch of dead people and getting yelled at. So, you know, that's my first my first entree into the world of business in Merrill Lynch proper. So I I graduated U of A uh with a bachelor in economics and Spanish, and I moved to San Francisco, which at the time was the West Coast foothold for all things finance, right? Used to have B of A was there, well Fargo was there, uh a bunch of smaller shops like Robbie and all that were around. And so uh my first job out of college was at Merrill Lynch, and you know, I did everything from sort the mail to answer the reception desk to cold call for other people and all that sort of thing. And at the time, Merrill Lynch probably had the best training program out there, aside from like GE's, you know, Crotonville stuff. I think Merrill probably had the strongest training program at that point in time. So I was very fortunate to to be part of the training program. You know, they sent you back east, you went through, you know, I don't know, months-long training there in San Francisco, and every morning there was a sales meeting, and every week there was a sales meeting, and yeah, I mean it was it was a lot, but learned a ton in a short amount of time. So um, you know, fast forward, you know, 08 hits and all that sort of thing. And I just kind of was getting tired of the Bay Area. So my buddies had moved up to Seattle, so I went up there for a year to do a joint venture between commercial client, uh commercial banking private client, and the uh trust company. And got up there in about six months into it, the guy that was running it retired, and then the guy that was running the commercial bank retired, and then he took the whole commercial bank down the street, started another bank, and I said, Well, kind of get out of here. So uh it's randomly I'd received a box of marketing materials to my office from a salesperson at ING at the time, and I called the number on there and said, Hey, you know, you guys sent me a box like 50 uh flyers. I don't don't really need that. I don't know who this person is. And I said, and by the way, I'm leaving, so if you guys happen to know anybody hiring up now, and I was kind of being tongue in cheek about it. And uh next thing I know, I got a call from the guy that was running distribution at ING funds at the time, and I flew down and met with him, and next thing I knew, I was covering my old office at Marr Lynch and San Francisco, plus the rest of the Pac Northwest. Uh, and so it was a great transition. You know, I went from being the client to selling to the client, had a lot of great insights there. So during my time.

SPEAKER_03 4:53

Well, hold up. I want to back up this image.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

You know, I did get my Lightland Health license. I used that a little bit there. So that was my first sort of um entree into insurance. Uh when I moved to ING at the time, ING International Netherlands Group, a very large insurance company that was buying up asset managers and wealth managers and things at the time. So we've always had a lot of connectivity, kind of the infrastructure of the insurance um space. Uh and then while I was at ING, we spun out to Voya. Uh, you know, during that tenure, I carried the bag for the PAC Northwest in Northern California. Uh I started a the Western division of our RA and private wealth team. Um I ended up running the RA and private wealth team, and then I ended up running um our other channels as well, including our private equity distribution. So a lot of different um areas there. And um we really learned how to navigate multi-business environments and learn how to partner between different facets of companies with both of those experiences.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Thanks, Troy, for that. Uh, I think we have a lot to unpack there. Uh the the thing that kind of well, the first thing that stuck out to me is that you went to U of A and I went to Arizona State. So we're uh natural enemies over here. Um I agree. Um but other than that, uh you mentioned that Merrill Lynch had an amazing training program and with lots of meetings. And can you just maybe unpack a little bit like what was the the biggest? I guess what was the biggest thing that you learned and like what was your biggest takeaway? And then like from the overall program itself, um, as you were building out teams, you know, later in your career, like what were the big things, if any, that you took away from that training that you were in?

SPEAKER_01 7:00

Yeah, I'd say um it's kind of funny because even today, I mean, we've been standing up our or we should say, we've been fortifying our um newer to the business producer training program here, right? So it's a lot of the things that are I sort of innately know because I grew up in it, right? Uh we're we're we're flushing out here in the in the next iteration of it, right? So, you know, you know, consistency of messaging is key, right? Um regular meetings is key. Having defined goals that people are working towards uh is very important. Um, but really finding those mentor-mentee uh relationships out there and making sure that somebody who's entering the business, it doesn't matter if they've been in other industries for 20 years and they're crossing over or if they're you know right out of college or something and they're looking to get in, you know, it's still important to have that sort of guiding light that can help you navigate and and really get to where you need to be rather than trying to figure out on your own. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

What's what's like the biggest mistake or the yeah, I guess like what's the biggest mistake that um like new producers make or that the ment mentors make in training these people? Like what what are you seeing in terms of like mistakes people are making making and then also like what's the biggest activity that people are doing that leads to success?

SPEAKER_01 8:28

Yeah, so I mean organization is key, right, in in any of these roles. And whether you're time blocking your calendar for the day for when you're gonna make outbound outreach, right? Or you are um thinking about your go-to-market strategies. What we really try to do is make the um process for producers of identifying new opportunities, or opportunities is predominantly commercial real estate oper or commercial insurance opportunities to go after, right? But it's it's using it's using technology to to help remove slud, right? So instead of somebody you know going up and down Main Street to look for locations or searching for Google listings about a company that does X, Y, or Z, right? Um it's feeding them opportunities in a specific niche, right? So we ask everybody to have a business plan, what's their goal for the year, and what are their three niches that they're focused on, and what we try to do is serve them up opportunities in their niches based on their geography, right? So um, and that and that really goes all the way down to the point of contact, too. We're not just saying, hey, here's ten companies, go call them. It's here's three people at each of these ten companies. And by the way, here is some really good current news about that industry that you can approach them with when you're having those conversations.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Got it. And how does that differ from your early days at Merrill?

SPEAKER_01 10:06

I mean, it's night and day. Yeah, I mean, I I was actually when I was at Merrill, I was actually pretty um focused. At the beginning, I worked on retirement plan side, right? And so we used data out there to make sure we're calling the right contacts. And then as I moved more towards the ultra-network side, you know, I was in the Bay Area at the time, right? So we had um access to Bloomberg terminals and every every uh dot-com on the planet was going on there, right? So I actually used the SEC filing data um to prospect back then, and I always had a team of interns uh that were going through it and and creating my leads for me. So it was a little ahead of the time, but that was what I did.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

Were you and like were you making like a hundred calls a day or were you being more strategic about how you were going after these people? Like what was your process?

SPEAKER_01 10:56

Yeah, for the retirement side, I was making 100-150 calls a day, right? And I probably got you know five to ten decent leads, and it was like boiler, right? Call the guy that it was the senior guy on the team and hand him off the lead, and he would try to close it, and I get to go to a meeting once in a while, basically, right? So then on on the on the high net worse side of things, um what I did was I took those filings, I made I got a hold of their emails and their phone call and their phone numbers, uh, and I actually went a step further and I would work after hours and I work on the weekends and I would figure out how to navigate the phone systems, and it was usually star T and then the last name and then Pound. Right, but there's different variations. I literally had a spreadsheet of all the different codes to act to drive to be able to navigate the phone systems, so that I would specifically call when these admins were not in the office, or I knew that I could leave a message directly to the point of contact. Right. Uh and I actually got my largest account out of doing just exactly that.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Um so it sounds like you had some early success as an individual contributor. Um were you were you only an individual contributor at Merrill? And then like when you transitioned over to uh um ING Voyah, that's when you kind of got into more of a managerial role, or did you start building out teams while you were at Merrill Lynch?

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Um the only teams I had at Merrill Lynch is I always had teams of interns. So I had three going at all times because I wanted them to train each other, so I didn't have to spend the time doing it. So if one left, I was fine because the other two could train a new person, right? If two left, not ideal, but you still had one left to train them. But ideally, uh, you know, I wasn't training them after I've spent because it took about two months to really get them up to speed. Um so that was my first kind of managerial. What were they doing for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Like what type of software tasks, whatever you want to call it.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Uh so that one, they would go through the filing data from the proxy statements and look for people who had positions of ten million dollars or more for me to call on. Uh, and then we would do a physical mailing uh out to those folks, and it was kind of like a five-page kind of brochure about uh diversify diversification techniques for concentrated positions, um, because there was a lot of that in the Bay Area at that time. Um and then I would just smile and dial around that.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

Got it. Um all right, and then so you eventually end up leaving there. Uh you go to ING, I'm assuming originally as an individual contributor, and then you kind of worked your way up, or like how did how did that work? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Yeah. So the fries were there for about two years covering uh Northern California, Oregon and Washington, and carrying the bag, right? And at that time they said, hey, we're gonna start this new unit that covers the registered investment advisor space, and we're gonna pull out the the bigger producers from the warehouse shops. And I was like, uh, hey, if we're gonna pull out my biggest clients, I want to go do that. Right. So I started the West on that initiative. It was a ground up, literally. Uh we had no data at the beginning, and then we started buying like RE database data and and uh getting lists from this is when the broker dealers first started sharing data on their producers, right? So, you know, we had a pretty targeted list. It took a while. Uh it's more of an institutional sale than than the retail sale that um really I'd been accustomed to the two first two and a half years at ING. Um and then um you know, we started getting some good traction, and I remember I was in in Hawaii at the UBS manager's office uh in a meeting, and my phone rang, and it was my boss's boss calling me, and I said, like, uh Sean, can you give me a second here? I think this might be my boss's boss offering me my boss's job. So, yeah, no problem. So I walked out of the office, I talked to him, hey Troy, yeah, yeah, sure. I'd love to. Okay, thanks, cool. I'll call you later.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

So I walked back and I'm like, yep, I I just got from the Is this the same guy that you spoke to when you like uh when you got the flyers and you called them and you were like, hey, if you need someone for the job, or is this like a completely different person?

SPEAKER_01 15:09

No, this is this one's completely different. This was this was his uh that guy had been gone for a while, but this was this would have been his his boss at that point. So but um so you know uh started running the private wealth team at that point in time, and I was wearing two hats, and you know, I did that for a number of years, two, three years. Uh and at the time at the end of the day, I just kind of threw my arm up and yelled on to them like, look, I gotta bring in a producer to take my old role because it's not fair to compete with um, you know, the mind share that I should be using to run the team uh when I'm sort of self-serving in certain directions. And quite frankly, it was exhausting doing both. So I brought in a guy, he did really well after me, taking the taking the reins. And so I ran that team and really applied the methodology that I use in running the territory. And and the coolest part was when I first moved over to INT Boy, it's just like there's a ton of great information about all these producers I was calling on, right? And I didn't really have that in Maryland. You had to create your own data, if you will, right? Um so at first I just used it for my own territory management on my book of business. Um, but as I moved into management, I helped the others apply the same strategy to theirs. And it was really about time management, looking at the number and size of opportunities within your region, you know, breaking it down into zones. So we we typically had six or seven zones per region based on the best opportunities. And then, you know, as time drove drove on, we got really more and more focused. Opportunities weren't just a numeric value, they were a particular product in how how we could compete in there. Um but you know, I guess transitioning a little bit more into the data side of things, um, you know, it started to get really interesting in the wholesale distribution side about 10 years ago. And at that time, he began starting to see consortium-led data uh and very precise buyer data from those that were processing transactions. Um, you know, in the world we're in now, they haven't quite done that yet. I mentioned it to a few folks.

SPEAKER_00 17:22

But uh what type of data were you really looking for? And like can you just elaborate a little bit more about you know what what you were actually selling to these retail financial guys, right? Because I I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you you were on the wholesale side where you had specific products that you're pitching to retail advisors trying to get them to sign their clients up for your products. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Yeah, so I would I would say the term wholesale in my old industry is not the same as what it is in this one, right? In this industry, it's the same as the carriers calling on the producers, right? So I was essentially led a team of carrier types that were calling on producers. And um, you know, the products that they were selling uh were predominantly wealth-managed products, so you know, whether it was private equity or mutual funds or SMAs or annuities or whatever it was, right? It didn't it didn't really matter the product, it's really more of the structure around it. Um but you know, it was really the birth of data-driven distribution at that point in time. And you know, I was sort of fortunate to be in the right place at the right time, right, to be able to leverage it. Um and you know, at the end of the day, what we were doing, we were making salespeople more efficient, more effective. So you no longer had to guess how to position yourself when you walked into a meeting, right? You already knew. So instead of us saying, hey, our blank product is better than the one we know you have, we never told them we knew we had that data, right? We just came in and said, hey, you know, we're seeing a lot of interest in our product, and these are the three reasons. And those three reasons happen to be why what they held was inferior, right? So um it was it was really cool because you know you went from in that world, you may meet with somebody each quarter for two or three years, and they never give you their list of who they're using, right? So we knew before we walked in the doors. I'm not gonna say they were shooting fish in the barrel, but I'm not gonna say it wasn't, right? So it was just it was a very fortunate time to be in possession and optimizing and utilizing that that information to make our sales better.

SPEAKER_00 19:26

Yeah, I mean, I was gonna ask if you know what and you probably don't remember at this point, but like what was your conversion rate and like what was the the time it took to close these deals, being that you had all this data and information, like it sounds like your your time to the main it and the channel where we really proved it out, so we did a POC and then kept growing from there and adding other information, but you know, it would take the normal sales cycle was probably about 18 months.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

Okay. Um and there's still our sales cycles that are probably ongoing from when I was there, right? I mean, the longer ones were usually three years uh because you had to get in, you need to be known as a thought leadership, they had to trust you, they had to meet your investors, all that sort of thing. Um, and so you know it took it took time. So we were able to truncate that period of time in which because you know I may I may meet with you four times over the year, every quarter, right? And um maybe I'm trying to just ask the right questions and uncover the right need to match your need with the product that we had. We actually knew the need before they knew the need, or they knew we knew the need walking into the meeting. So, like, you know, if we had two or three products that we knew competed the best, it was kind of a culmination of the right time in the market plus you know how our product performed compared to the one that they held on to that really sped up that cycle, right? So it it wasn't poking around to try to find the answer. You walked in knowing the answer and you just kind of figured out the best way to position it.

SPEAKER_00 21:01

Right. Yeah, I mean what I'm hearing is you know, having all the information and like knowing your you know, your prospects' pain points and how you're better than the better than your competition uh really helps to close sales not only quickly, but um at a higher clip.

unknown 21:21

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Um I would say, you know, just to follow up on that, I'd say that you know the prior knowledge of how to pull all the pieces together in a cohesive manner is what I've been able to bring into the insurance world because there's a lot of different components that go together to make it where it's useful at the point of sale, right? And so, you know, to put it simply, you know, what can we do as an organization? It's you know, we want to do things that help producers and account managers spend more time doing what they do best, which is growing uh their book of business and servicing clients, right? So that is what we've been hyper focused on at Alchemy since I got in the door. Uh and now we get to do it, you know. World where AI exists, right? Which is very exciting time, right? To be able to really take that knowledge that I came here with to the next level for this organization. Because things that we're doing today, I mean, you couldn't even have done half of it six months ago, quite frankly.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Um so after I guess after and running the wholesale is when you went to um to alchemy, or did you have like another pit stop along the way? Nope.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

I came came here. So um Curtis, who's a CEO and founder, and I also went to college together. Um and I give a shout out to the uh McHale Center at Alchemy Arena that we recently put our name on. Nice. Um but um so Curtis I know each other since college, and you know, among my friends, you know, he and I were the two that over the years it really when we got together, we talked about business, right? And and I think we both have sort of this insatiable appetite for you know being the consummate student and learning more and more about whatever industry we're in or how to um you know right size a business model or how to make things more productive. It's these are just I know it sounds dorky, but these are what we would talk about, you know, in the hot tub with drinks over the years, right? And then, you know. And so, you know, Curtis back in the day said, you know, started to tell me and a few other guys about commercial insurance, and we had no concept of it. We just thought like, oh, like it's like the farmer's guy down the street that I got my car and my my renters from, right? And so um, you know, fast forward 20 years later, um, you know, I'm talking to Curtis. I think we were on a ski trip in Park City, and I said, you know, hey, I'm gonna make a move in the next, I don't know, year or so. And you know, I can stay in my current industry because I had started kind of the newer areas of distribution where a lot of companies are trying to get into it, especially those on the alternative investment side that were bringing institutional products down to to the retail world. Um, so you know, it was a hot commodity, if you will, in in that business. And quite frankly, I was just tired of it with the business. And I said, you know, here's all the things that I do on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual basis. You know, here's the ones that I own, here's the ones I drive, here's the ones I consult on. You know, let's see if there's a fit there. Um, and so July 24, I um my boss actually at Boya had called me and said, Hey, you know, for whatever reason, um, you know, I'm gonna get out of here. I said, Well, give me the date that you're leaving and I'll make sure that I resigned to you the Friday before that. So I did that. Came here, I threw the dogs in the car, and I moved down to Southern California. So uh and I've now we're working out of the Orange County office. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:08

It's it's funny. When I before I got into insurance, I was dating a girl actually in high school whose stepfather owned an agency and he drove like a really nice car and he had like fancy stuff. And I was like, what does this guy do? And they're like, Oh, he's in the insurance business. I'm like, like Allstate or State Bar? They were like, no, like he insured some of like the biggest fashion brands or some of the biggest gene manufacturers in the US, and you know, a bunch of like higher-end commercial risks. And like that, before that, I'd never heard of anyone that did that before. And that was like super interesting to me. And I ended up that's how I ended up getting into this business. You were saying you ended up leaving and going to Alchemy. Um so when you got started there, I guess what were the biggest differences between what you were doing versus like the insurance distribution space, and what were like the parallels that you saw between the two models?

SPEAKER_01 26:04

I mean, there's a ton of parallels. I think, I think me, um having spent basically my entire working career working in public companies, right? And then the the closer you get to the top of the public companies, um, you know, there's a lot of quarterly things that you have to do. Um, there's a lot of annual things you have to do. Uh, and you know, there also had been a lot of sort of initiatives from the top down that you know, I think was a diversion from where people's um reality was in a lot in a lot of ways. But, you know, by but the reason I left that world is essentially I was in an environment where we were continually stripping cost out of a distribution budget, right? Uh and so I basically went to the polar opposite of that, right? Which is a private equity-backed, you know, fast growing, inquisitive shop where we're all we're literally doing is investing in distribution, right? So it's a complete juxtaposition from that world that I was in where it was, you know, optimizing cost cut, optimizing cost cut. And you know, it gets to be a point where you cut too far and you're too thinly staffed and and you're not able to bring in the talent you need because of the expense and that sort of thing, right? So um coming over here was refreshing, right? Because we're out buying companies all the time. Um, we're investing in distribution, we're looking at ways to better distribution. Um didn't have a lot of the same bureaucratic sort of headaches that you have to go through in in a larger company to actually achieve something. Um and for me, I was always gonna achieve something in my old world. It just sometimes took a few years because all the hoops you had to go through. Um but the the worlds are very similar in terms of you know, there's different types of you know, commercial insurance brokers, there's different types of um data providers, there's all different types of carriers and wholesalers. I mean, there's a lot of parallels really between the two worlds. So that from that perspective, it was kind of hop in, like figure out what data we had, what data existed in the industry, um, and then really start building from the ground up and organizing them. I did a ton of bottom-up, talked to every agency leader, fill out a spreadsheet work for the first during my first year really, and then as as I started getting my arms around things and I started getting um the approval to bring some key hires in, you know, we took basically what I did in a spreadsheet, you know, ran it through AI and created portals, you know. So I mean it was it's been a pretty cool build process because you know I've seen the other end of that stick where you spend lots of money on a consultant to tell them what to tell, you know, whatever CRM provider or AMS in this world provider you're gonna use, right? And then they waste two years building it, and then you have a crappy product which isn't what you were promised on the front end, and you hire another consultant to try to come in and clean it up, and at the end of the day, you never end up with what you want. Here, we literally created our own producer portal, MA portal, list manager portal, you know, in a matter of weeks. And the team is great, we can iterate on it immediately. And so you save a lot of money on the build, you save a lot of time, you save a lot of consternation. Um, but at the end of the day, it's a very similar um distribution model. It's just tweaking it a little bit to make it relevant for the industry.

SPEAKER_00 29:48

Gotcha. And I I think I mentioned this earlier, but you guys have done over 80 acquisitions over the last probably six-ish years. I think your number five largest uh probably privately held insurance brokers in the United States. Um what is it driving that growth? Is it more uh MA growth? Is it more uh organic growth? Is it both like where are you guys focused now? And you know, how do you continue to to drive the growth that you've had over the last six years?

SPEAKER_01 30:20

Yeah. Um so you know, I think if you if you sum it down, I mean you gotta you gotta make sure you're bringing in the right talent, right? So the most important thing we look for is is a core cultural fit, right? And I would say second to that, we really are looking for niche players who have gas left in the tank, right? So we're looking for and and there we want them to be looking for a partner that can help them scale, right? Like we want them to come and say, hey, this is what we're looking for. Like, hey, yeah, great, we have that, right? So our goal, our goal with them is to ingrain them into that the alchemy platform in a steadfast manner to really help the agencies focus on the client uh rather than spending time on things like HR and vendor management and financials and that sort of thing, right? And so, you know, if you look at kind of you know the cultural aspect of it, you know, we're evolving together with these acquisitions as a culture, right? So it's really a culmination of, I'd say, leveraging skill sets that come in the door, you know, at the time acquisition with cross-pollination across the various offices that allows us to unlock the full potential of alchemy, right? So we strive to build on what people have brought to the table and have created internal mechanisms for them to find each other for partnering. So we've got a great insights tool where it can say, hey, I've got this risk and this state, you know, who should I call on? It'll tell you the top five producers and account managers and what they've written, how many accounts, and all that sort of thing, right? So and then it's you know getting together as a group. So several times a year we get together, whether it's um our partner meeting, whether it's our annual um alchemy week, uh, you know, we do have an incentive trip for the top producers. Like all those, all those events are you know just great opportunities to fortify relationships, right? And and they have fun while doing it. So that cultural thing we really try to keep front and center. Um, but growth, we go back to your original question, growth comes from various forms, right? And you know, that number in the in the in the rags you're talking about is focusing mostly on on MA side equation. Um, you know, where we do have that strong internal and external partnership that's allowed us to bring in new talent at a steady clip. But you know, we want to make sure that we're doing our jobs as insurance advisors to make sure it's sure the clients are fully covered as part of that. And so when we bring on those new producers or partners, um, you know, we're looking for people that have a specific DNA. We specifically that they have built a strong mousetrap for what they're doing uh and that they have a niche that they that they play in, right? Curtis loves to say the n the riches are in the niches, right? Um, which is true. I mean, you can put you take any industry. If you're an expert in your or subject matter expert in that domain, I mean that's that's the name of the game, right? So we want them to continue uh to do what made them successful to begin with, excuse me, while we help them surround themselves with all the resources that we have to offer at Alpme, uh, and also relieve them from sort of the non-client focused activities that can bog them down. So last year we did a big sludge survey. I think we had uh I don't know, 1,200 respondents to it. And yeah, so it was kind of ironic because some of the answers were basically let us know that we need to help them adopt better technology we already have on the door before before we even go out and try to get new stuff. So from that perspective, I mean there's there's key learnings that we're focused on. But at the end of the day, we just want to make um producers and account managers job as easy as it can be and let them focus on doing the fun parts of those jobs, not get bogged down to the manual stuff.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

What are some of the things like what are the top two or three things that that were in those surveys that were just complete time sucks for people?

SPEAKER_01 34:28

Oh, I mean, it's all that's all it was was what was a time suck for you. I forget. So Ryan on my team called it uh soul sucking time wasting tasks or something like that. Um, you know, it's typically things that are manual input, right? And in today's world, the more you know, if you can drag and drop a policy statement in and whatever you're using can grab that information and populate it into whatever you're trying to populate it into. Like those those stitches in time are are just I mean, they the table states these days, and it's you just gotta make sure that people are adopting you know those types of um job accelerators that are out there. And you know, I went through this similar um evolution in my old world too, um, which is you know, people come with a certain mindset the way they've been doing things for a number of years, right? And you know, the world's evolving, right? So if if my job as an account manager, as an example, was to input all the policy information, um, you know, looked at this and that, upload a file, these types, those types of things nowadays, like that can all be done whether it's RPA or AI, it doesn't really matter, but those can all be done without the account manager. And so if I'm an account manager, my role really changes from a data input person to a QA person, right? And that happens in in a lot of different industries and and and the like. So you know, we're going through that evolution now, um, you know, looking at our SOPs, looking at what's licensed work, what's non-licensed work, you know, how can we how can we get the sludge off of the desks of our producers and our account managers?

SPEAKER_00 36:18

Yeah, I mean, we we talk about this all the time, like probably depending on your role, it's probably 60 to 80 percent of the work that your account managers or producers are doing is unlicensed work. Um and so for us, you know, we're providing high-quality Latin American people to our clients, which allows them to free those people up. Um in terms of like the riches are in the niches, you know, we my my business partner, Stan and I both had generalist businesses uh for many years, and we realized that uh people around us were still were scaling a lot faster that were specialized in what they were doing. Um so I think it's really interesting. One that you guys are looking for those types of businesses because uh I think those are those are really the the businesses with the most room to run in our space right now. Um but also thank you for validating our our thought process there as well.

SPEAKER_01 37:20

Uh I would just add on to the the riches and the niches thing, what what that really allows us to do is cross-pollinate too, right? Um because you have somebody who's I don't know, an EPLI specialist in real estate, right? But maybe they're not the best at uh cyber, right? So it allows us to have cross-pollinization internally. And that's a big focus of us for for the go go forward. I mean, you know, won't throw out figures, but they're substantial uh if all we did was cross-pollinate or book a business.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

So how how do you get people to adopt the cross-selling and like referring leads to one another within the organization? I you know, I've heard uh it can be challenging to get people who are kind of used to holding on to their clients and not sharing their clients to, you know, call up one of their colleagues and say, you know, hey, I have this uh manufacturing risk in a state that I'm not located in, but it's a good opportunity. And you know, I'm gonna call in one of my partners to help me or whatever it might be. Like is there anything that you've done to get people to adopt that mindset?

SPEAKER_01 38:30

Um I think giving people visibility into who to partner with um is a good standing starting point, right? You know, we are I'd say, you know, at with every acquisition, that information set gets bigger and better. Uh and you know, we've created a lot of tools. So we've got um a cross-sell tool, we've got a round out tool where people can look at their book of business and say, you know, at a client level in the next you know, 90 days, I've got these 10 accounts that are my top decile that come up for renewal. It'll show them which coverages are missing, and they can go in there, select it, and they'll get an email about each client and say, Hey, remember Bob at XYZ Corp. Uh, you wanted to talk to them about DNO and uh cyber in the next meeting. So then they can go ahead of that meeting and be like, well, who's our good DNO guy, right? And so they can go look up who's the DNO guy, you can look up who's the cyber person, right? And really come in there with that team approach. And it's really an introduction, right, for those particular areas where that producer doesn't have a level of expertise. But at the end of the day, like if I can do that all day long and go refer, you know, parts of my client's opportunity set to other producers, and I get paid on it for making the referral, and the other person gets paid on it, like you know, your interests are aligned, and it quite frankly it saves me time and having to learn stuff that I don't really have in my core wheelhouse, right? If I'm staying up within my niche.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

Right. And then also I think a lot of these people are probably shareholders as well. So like a rising a rising tide lifts all boats, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:12

Let's let's let's not uh let's not let's not forget that part. So, you know, all of all of our um agency leaders are shareholders, right? Mm many of our producers are shareholders, right? So at the end of the day, everybody should be rowing in the same direction because it's their own financial health or well-being that it's riding on it too. Outside of your regular cash comp.

SPEAKER_00 40:38

Right. Right. And, you know, I also back to what you said earlier, um we've had a few uh MA advisors on the show. Uh and one of the things that was brought up was that you know, not waiting too long to sell your business, because you know, if you think you're gonna wait till the end and then you're just gonna get a big pile of money, like the pile of money that you're gonna get is probably not as large as you know, if you're on an upward trajectory, if you still have energy left, if you're still building and growing a company. Um, and it sounds like those are the types of people that you guys are focused on on bringing in, bringing on board.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yeah, and and you know, it's um it's hard to scale your company beyond a number. And you can say that number is 10 million in revenue or five million in revenue or whatever the number is, right? It doesn't really matter, but it's when you've sort of exhausted your re your own resources, and unless you're literally taking no money out of the company and you're continually just investing your own back in it, it's pretty hard to get any kind of exponential growth beyond that point from from a sort of a um you know breadth of market share perspective. And so, you know, when when producers come to us, they're looking for it could be access to markets, right? It could be um a way to scale their current sales process. It could be um you know doing a digital marketing campaign that gives them leads. It could be um quite frankly, just getting the HR and financial crap off their plates because they hate doing it, right? So like whatever it is, you know, that's where we really try to help them grow their books of business. And every agency we buy, you know, they have an earnout that they're focused on um for the first several years, right? Um and so everybody's aligned from that perspective because they want to hit the earnout so they get more money out of their deal, right? Whether it's cash or stock or combination of it. Um, and so you know, alignment is definitely there during that earnout period. And you know, what what we work on is giving the producers, the agency leaders, and the regional presidents the tools that they need to really manage the overall sales process effectively.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

Got it. And like what do you what do you think the biggest thing holding people back from from like really scaling these businesses? Like what's holding them back, and then what are the biggest advantages uh that like Alchemy is providing to these people that's gonna allow them to scale much faster than they would by themselves?

SPEAKER_01 43:26

Yeah, I mean it's they're attaching themselves to a company that's growing more quickly than they probably ever could, right? Um, you know, I would say most producers, any industry really, if you look at growth goals are typically about 10% a year, right? Um you know this company's growing at multiples of that per year. So I think it's getting them to understand that component and you know, do they do they want to clip what they've been clipping for the next ten years and are they happy with that? Fine, or do they want to change their their mindset a little bit and take that you know lifestyle business that a lot of them have created uh and change it into more of a generational wealth event, right? Um and I think the ones that are hungry want to do the latter, right? The ones that aren't just kind of they enjoy coasting and you know throwing more and more bodies at the system to you know so they don't have to work.

SPEAKER_00 44:31

So hey God bless them, you know, but to each their own I think it's a good segue into our rapid fire question section. So I'm just gonna rattle off a few questions here and yeah I just just give us your quick answers. So my first question is what's your favorite ski resort you've ever been to I would say Saint Anton am Arlsberg in Austria. Why was it so good?

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Um it's great. Um so I think there's like 20 different towns or villages that you can ski around in a circle there on the Epic Pass. Um the Opre is probably the best in the world I thought you might say that I'll leave it at that but no you can go have a crazy meal in in uh you know left or any of the any of the little zoog any of the little towns you can ski around to sit out you know out you're outside in the sun eating just like five star meal and you pop your skis back on and head down to the crazy kangaroo that sounds amazing. What's the best advice you've ever been given um I would say never make a lateral move interesting um what's your go-to karaoke song? Yeah I don't know if I really have one these days um I could probably do any of the Chris Stapleton songs even though I'm getting a little rusty on those probably most songs from the 80s and 90s what's your Starbucks order I don't go there.

SPEAKER_00 46:38

No what you drink coffee or no coffee for you?

SPEAKER_01 46:41

No I do espresso martinis at night that's what keeps me going what's a secret talent nobody at Alchemy knows about you hmm secret talent I would say well my dad was a geologist growing up and so I'm pretty proficient at gold mining and sluice boxing which probably nobody knows.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

So have you you've actually gone like gold mining like you got in the river and like shh like how do you do that? What is what does that entail?

SPEAKER_01 47:26

As a kid I used to sit on the back of a dredge when they went underwater and sucked the hose into the rocks and then you know I probably met my dad a hundred times in the mines when you know they go in there and they set the dynamite they yell fire in the hole and you yell out you run outside and you hear the boom.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

I know pretty much all aspects of that Wave so how old were you when you were blowing shit up and like fishing for gold or um I mean I was sitting on the back of the sluice box when I was four or on the dredge.

SPEAKER_01 47:57

But you know it got it got more fun as you got older, right? You got to drive the loader around the yard and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Yeah no in the summertime we would go my buddies and I would grab a sluice box like a five foot one we go down to the banks of the river up in Downville, California and just go you know take like moss and scrape cracks and and run it through the sluice and we'd end up with a bunch of gold by the end of summer.

SPEAKER_00 48:24

Oh nice you get to sell it or yeah they'd buy it in town that's cool. That is a hustler mindset for sure. Well with that I just want to say thank you Troy for uh coming on today uh before we leave let us know where we can find you um if you want to give us your email address or website for alchemy yeah um I'm at t chakrin at alchemyins.com. Awesome well good to see you as always and uh hopefully we can meet up for a ski trip here sometime soon.

SPEAKER_01 49:00

Yeah absolutely great catching up thanks Don thanks Troy have a good one yeah thanks for having me on