Business insurance is one of those important things we often leave on the back burner until it’s too late. Luckily, Danielle has years of experience and knowledge she shares during our conversation.
When should brands consider getting insurance? What are the different types of coverage and what can they do for me? Do I choose a brokerage or go straight to the insurance company? What if my co-packer or supplier already has insurance, can I rely on that?
Listen or read below for the answers to those questions and more PLUS some stories from her clients that prove just how helpful insurance can be! Enjoy this episode all about business insurance for CPG brands!
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Taylor:
I am super excited to introduce you to today’s guest, Danielle Holyoake, COO and co-founder of Amelia Risk, an insurance brokerage that works primarily with CPG brands. Business insurance is one of those most important things that we often leave on the back burner until it’s too late. Luckily, Danielle has years of experience and knowledge she shared during our conversation.
Taylor:
When should brands consider getting insurance? What are the different types of coverage and what can they do for you? Do you choose a brokerage or go straight to the insurance company? What if your co-packer or supplier already has insurance? Can you rely on that? Keep listening for the answers to those questions and more, plus some stories from her clients that prove just how helpful insurance can be.
Taylor:
Enjoy this episode all about business insurance for CPG Brands. Danielle, welcome to the Physical Product Movement Podcast. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Danielle:
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
Taylor:
For sure. Yeah. I’m really stoked to talk with you. We connected a few months ago in the Startup CPG Slack channel. I don’t even remember how, but I think you had posted in one of the channels about what you do being the co-founder of an insurance brokerage, and we haven’t had anyone who does what you do on the podcast yet. I think it’s super valuable.
Taylor:
It’s something that a lot of brands probably don’t think about and rightfully so, they’ve got a million things on their minds when they’re launching their business and even years into it. That’s one of the things we’ll talk about, is, when should brands start to think about it and how to go about the process of finding it, and what are the right types of questions to ask? I’m really excited to talk with you and just hear your expertise on the topic.
Taylor:
Also, shout out to the Startup CPG Slack channel. For those of you listening, if you’re not in that Slack channel, highly recommend it. I think it’s over like 7,000 professionals now, right?
Danielle:
Yeah. It’s a really awesome community.
Taylor:
Amen to that. Awesome. Well, I’ll let you just kind of take it away and tell us about your brokerage and how you started it, and why the name Amelia Risk.
Danielle:
Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people think it’s Amelia Earhart, which is not accurate, but not a bad association. Yeah. I actually started my career in insurance about 10 years ago. I started just out of college and it was a total accident getting into this industry, as it is for most people in our industry.
Danielle:
I was honestly really instantly drawn to the risk management industry because I like when there’s a whole world behind the scenes that on the surface you don’t understand is going on. I think insurance is that for a lot of people. There’s not a lot of insight into how the industry works and why it is the way that it is. That was really fun for me.
Danielle:
I also really liked learning about the businesses that are insured and why they need certain types of policies and where their business risk is. I started working with technology startups for the most part early in my career. A few years in, I got the opportunity to work on some really large and fast-growing CPG brands. That’s how I started learning CPG insurance and I was honestly hooked. I just love working with these brands.
Danielle:
Then the brokerage that I was at was acquired by a really large multinational brokerage that was very interesting. I mean, I learned a lot those couple of years after the acquisition, but ultimately what I saw was startups and smaller businesses were just not getting what they needed, meaning tailored policies, your broker on the phone with you, and true risk management and consultation.
Danielle:
I left after about two years and started Amelia Risk with my business partner, Liz, and it’s been awesome. I mean, we focus on startups up and smaller businesses, but primarily in the CPG space. We still do tech. It’s what we know, but CPG is our focus and it’s probably about 90 to 95% of our clients at this moment.
Danielle:
Amelia Risk is, as I mentioned, not Amelia Earhart, but a play on the word ameliorate, to make better. We wanted something a little bit different and we are a women-owned business so we wanted a feminine association as well. Yeah.
Taylor:
I love that. I love that. That’s awesome. Let’s talk a little bit about when a CPG brand should consider insurance. Is it ever too soon? Is it ever too late? What are your thoughts on that?
Danielle:
Yeah. It can be too soon and it can be too late. Too soon is when you have an idea and you do not yet have your product. Maybe you are in the planning stages. It’s a good time to talk to a broker perhaps, do a little bit of research so you can start planning on the costs that you’re going to incur, but definitely too soon to be buying it. Too late is there’s some give and take there. I see a lot of folks that are millions in revenue that haven’t bought insurance yet.
Danielle:
I think that’s a little too late, a little too risky. Generally, my recommendation is once you have products in people’s hands, it’s time to buy at least product liability. You may have different things that happen that are the catalyst to getting insurance. Maybe you hire your first employee and you need workers’ compensation. Maybe you get funding and you need D&O right away.
Danielle:
For most CPG startups, it is after the product launch. Whether it’s samples that are in the hands of family and friends and maybe buyers or a farmer’s market or you’re selling, you want to have product liability in place at that time.
Taylor:
Okay. That a hundred percent makes sense. That kind of segues well into another question. You already talked about some of them, but what are … You mentioned as far as what are the reasons that a business or that a … specifically speaking about CPG, that a CPG business would want to have insurance?
Taylor:
You already mentioned if they’re hiring their first employee if they’re getting their products into the hands of customers. What are some other reasons or some motivations that they would want to have insurance?
Danielle:
Yeah. I think that again, in the beginning stages, the biggest one is products in the hands of people. Because for CPG brands, you’re making something that people are consuming or using, right? Mostly consumption. Although there could be household cleaners and things, if your product makes people sick or it causes injury to them somehow, so whether that’s a chipped tooth or there was mold in the drink or the glass bottle that your drink came in, broke and cut their hand.
Danielle:
It’s not even necessarily the consumption, it’s the interaction with your product. Those are all claims that a general liability or a product liability policy covers. That’s the biggest concern. Honestly, it’s the biggest concern from the beginning of your company, all the way to the end. That is always going to be the biggest component of your insurance program, is the product liability because you sell a product, right?
Danielle:
Another consideration is cargo insurance. That is something that covers your stock or your inventory at any point in the supply chain. Whether that is at locations like co-packers or 3PLs or it’s in transit. That one policy can cover the entire supply chain so that there aren’t any gaps in coverage. There are a million other types of policies to get, but those are the ones that I think in the very beginning, at least you should be thinking about.
Taylor:
Okay. That totally makes sense. Just out of curiosity, with that cargo policy, since we’re obviously inventory management software, that’s one that we would probably be tied to the most and recommend that our customers get, does that kick in the moment that you purchase supplies or that you purchase inventory like even before it gets sent to you or sent to the co-packer you’re saying?
Danielle:
Yeah. This one is a really dynamic policy. Generally speaking, once you have a financial interest in the product or the property, meaning the raw materials or the finished product, you would want to be insuring it. If you own the raw materials or the work in process at the co-packer, you want to ensure it. Sometimes the co-packer is responsible for insuring it and doesn’t even take ownership until it’s a finished product and until it leaves that facility.
Danielle:
You want to understand … That’s part of what a good broker would do, right? Is sit down and ask you these questions and say, “Okay. When do you own the product? How much of it do you have there? Where does it go after that? To what degree are you responsible for this?” Yeah. Effectively you would insure it as soon as you take ownership of any part of that property, whether it’s raw materials or it’s the finished product.
Taylor:
Got you. Okay. That makes perfect sense. Let’s say that I’m on board. I’m a brand. I’m ready to kind of start to price this out for my business. Obviously, I need to work with a brokerage instead of going straight to the insurance company. Why does it work that way?
Danielle:
Yeah. That’s certainly what I would recommend. It’s not the only option. You can go direct to consumer … or sorry. There are insurance companies that go direct to consumers. You can go directly to the insurance company. I don’t recommend it typically.
Danielle:
Again, I mean, I’ll admit I’m really biased in this, but here’s how it works, right? The insurance company and the underwriter that works for the insurance company, their job is to offer a policy that covers enough things and is priced low enough that they’re competitive within the marketplace and that you choose them. But their incentive is to have as many exclusions on the policy as they can because they don’t want to pay claims.
Danielle:
Your incentive as the brand owner is to have your claims paid, right? If something bad happens, you want to be able to call upon that insurance policy that you bought and say, “All right. Where’s my money?” My job as a broker is to represent you the brand owner to the insurance company, not the other way around. I don’t work for an insurance company.
Danielle:
I work for the insured or the brand in this case, and my job is to look through those policies and find problematic exclusions and say, “Hey, underwriter, I need you to take that exclusion off, or can we change it in the following ways so that it’s more competitive?” I’ve seen exclusions on clients’ policies that outright exclude the client’s products that they are not aware of on there.
Danielle:
Then you’re paying a couple of thousand dollars a year for a policy that doesn’t cover actually anything. That’s, in my opinion, why you choose a broker because you can’t be an expert in all of this, right? When you’re running a business, you’re the expert in that business, but you’re not an expert in all the different areas that it takes to run the business, so you outsource it. That’s why I would highly recommend going to a broker.
Danielle:
As I mentioned, there are some policies you can get directly from the insurance company. Not all of them are horrible. Not all of them are bad, but you don’t necessarily know, unless you happen to be an insurance expert and then maybe you do know.
Taylor:
Which I’m guessing if you’re an insurance expert, you don’t own a brand though. Maybe you do. Maybe you-
Danielle:
Maybe you pivoted.
Taylor:
Maybe it’s a little bit of both. Yeah. Maybe you had a little pivot or you have a side hustle, right? There’s a chance that that’s an option. I mean, I just want to echo that. I think that savvy business owners know that they need to think about the things that they don’t know that they don’t know.
Taylor:
So to be able to rely on experts such as yourself for anything external that the business needs is obviously a huge way to succeed, especially at first when you’re getting started, or even when you’re small and growing. It’s not like you’re going to bring in somebody in-house that’s going to do the insurance for you. Having an external resource like you, and the fact that you have worked with so many brands.
Taylor:
I think you mentioned that it’s 90+ percent of your book of business are CPG brands. There’s probably just so many nuances and so many things that you’ve already dealt with, with your customers, the clients, that you can then take that knowledge and transfer it to the new brands that want to come work with you. To me, that just absolutely makes sense.
Danielle:
The other thing too, is it doesn’t cost any more. That I think is another big misconception because how does the broker get paid? Right? I don’t want a middleman. The middleman’s taking a cut. Well, we are. We do get paid. We get paid by the insurance companies on commissions on the policies that we sell. But oftentimes going directly to the insurance company isn’t any cheaper or much cheaper, right?
Danielle:
Part of that reason is that the insurance company sees a broker as someone who’s kind of pre-underwriting things. We are taking a lot of the underwriting and heavy lifting and due diligence on these clients off of their plate. If we are doing some of that work, we can actually get lower premiums for you.
Danielle:
Most of the time is not more cost-effective to go direct. There are some exceptions to that. Some policies are just pretty inexpensive, but for the most part, it’s not any more costly.
Taylor:
That makes sense. It’s one of those things too, where you get what you pay for, right?
Danielle:
A hundred percent.
Taylor:
If you’re not an insurance expert and you don’t know what to look for, having that expertise that you offer and being able to even pay just a little bit more for that. We’ll maybe talk about price next, but it isn’t like you’re talking about the difference between buying a Civic and a Ferrari, right?
Danielle:
Right. Yeah.
Taylor:
It’s negligible increase in cost, but you’re paying for the peace of mind. Ultimately, that’s what insurance is. Like yes, if you have the need to use your policy, thank goodness it’s there. But most of the time you don’t even use your policy. It’s just for peace of mind and that peace of mind is worth so much more and actually gives you peace if you know that the policy that you have is covering all the angles and all the different aspects of your brand.
Danielle:
Yeah. I mean, I think that that touches on what risk management is, right? There’s generally three ways to manage risk. You can avoid it, so not do it, not have a company and just not put product out there. You can mitigate it. That means you can reduce the chances of various things, having really good warning labels and working with various attorneys that can help you mitigate the chance of some of these bad things happening.
Danielle:
You could have really great quality controls and do a lot of due diligence on the co-packers and suppliers. Those all mitigate risk. Then the third way is to transfer it. That’s what insurance is. It’s, okay, there is this risk and I don’t want to be responsible for it. I’m going to pay a premium and I’m going to ask that this insurance company deals with that risk.
Danielle:
I think that it can give you peace of mind when you at least know what’s covered and what’s not so that you’re not caught off guard, so that you understand the risk in your business, and you can properly plan for it.
Taylor:
A hundred percent. Since we’re talking about cost, and I know that the answer to this question is probably it depends, right? It’s the answer to a lot of these, but what sort of expectation do you like to set when somebody asks you like, “So how much should I expect to spend to get the coverage I need?”
Danielle:
That’s the most popular question, again, that’s the hardest one to answer. It does depend, but I can certainly give you some factors that play into it. One is revenue. Your revenue is going to directly relate to the premium you pay. That’s the exposure basis that underwriters look at, and for an understandable reason, right? If you are a $10 million company, you have that much product in the marketplace.
Danielle:
If you are a $500,000 company, you have a lot less product in the marketplace and therefore a lot less opportunity for people to sue you or for something bad to happen because this made them sick. As your revenue increases, so will your premium because your exposure is going up. That’s one factor, right? If you’re doing millions of dollars, expect to pay more than your friend who’s doing $1 million.
Danielle:
The other huge factor is, what is your product? There are what I call really vanilla products and there are very high risk products. Sometimes the high risk products don’t match your general understanding of what is high risk. Insurance can look at things a little bit differently.
Danielle:
Anything related to baby products is extremely high risk, pet food or pet treats manufacturing, high risk, cosmetics, household supplies, those things are considered … Dietary supplements, that’s a huge one. Those are considered high risk. Be prepared if you have a functional beverage or you have ingredients like CBD, or you have a baby food, you will be paying a lot right out of the gate.
Danielle:
The vanilla products are like cookies, shelf stable cookies, and macaroni and cheese and bottled sparkling water with nothing added. Those are very vanilla products. That’s one thing too, right? Is look at, what is my product doing and how am I positioning it in the marketplace? Do I position it as solving a problem? Am I saying that customers will feel better after they drink this coffee or that they won’t experience the 2:00 PM crash from having this coffee?
Danielle:
If it’s functional in some way, you should expect to be paying a little bit more. It’s very hard to give a number, but you typically will not pay less than $500 a year for an insurance policy of any kind. Mostly if you’re doing, let’s say, less than a million for a pretty vanilla product, you pay a couple of grand. If you’re paying … or sorry, if you have a more high risk product, you’re going to be paying maybe double that.
Danielle:
It’s very difficult to give a range here. I know that it’s important too because people want to understand what they are going to be paying. My recommendation is talk to a broker about your specific product and estimated revenue, and then you can get a much more specific number.
Taylor:
Right on. Am I correct in assuming that this is kind of another benefit of working with a broker, as opposed to going direct to the company that you have access to multiple policies from multiple providers?
Danielle:
Right.
Taylor:
You can almost like shop the rate around. Or not shop the rate around, but you’re able to give people a lot more options than maybe going direct to the insurer.
Danielle:
Yeah. I mean, we’re for sure shopping. That’s our job, is to market. We go to various insurance companies and we say to them, “Here’s this risk. Here’s what we’re looking for. Give me your best shot.” Then after that, we get a couple of quotes back and we do an analysis and we determine, “Okay. Carrier A is giving us this and carrier B is giving us this. This is problematic.”
Danielle:
Then you do a little bit of negotiation and you can apply some level of leverage to these insurance companies. If it’s a particularly low risk product with a lot of revenue, you get the most leverage because every insurance company wants it. If it’s high risk, low revenue and they just started, you have a lot less leverage because most insurance companies are going to go, “Eh, pass.”
Danielle:
That’s the other thing. We are experts in this particular niche in CPG niche and so we know which carriers want what, and we know where to go for certain types of brands.
Taylor:
I love it. What sort of commitments do brands need to make? Is it like they sign up for a policy for a full year, like a quarterly policy, biennial? How does that part work?
Danielle:
For sure, you should expect to have … So policies are issued on an annual basis. You should be planning to have that policy enforced for a year. You certainly can cancel the policy. If let’s say you went out of business or you were acquired and you no longer need your insurance, you can certainly cancel the policy, but they’re issued on an annual basis.
Danielle:
Then every year you go through a renewal process and that’s when you either renew with your current insurer or perhaps things have changed and there’s an insurer that’s more competitive, you can switch at that time.
Taylor:
Okay. That totally makes sense. You mentioned before the cargo insurance and how that ties into co-packer, suppliers, protecting your inventory at different steps in the supply chain. What if your co-packer or your 3PL or your supplier already has insurance? Like, does that already cover you a little bit or do you have to have your own too? How do those kind of play together?
Danielle:
Yeah. That’s a really good question. The answer is really it depends. All of this can be worked out for your particular needs. Most of my really new startups rely on the insurance that the co-packer and the trucking carriers and the 3PL might be providing, particularly the co-packers and the trucking carriers or shipping carriers. Ultimately you might grow out of that, right?
Danielle:
The most prudent thing to do is have your own insurance, because there’s a lot of things that you can’t control for. Your co-packer’s insurance might have lapsed due to nonpayment, or they were late on their renewal, or they might not have bought good insurance. You aren’t in control of what they buy and how much insurance they buy. It’s certainly more prudent to buy your own program and have that supply chain covered.
Danielle:
There are ways that your cargo or stock throughput insurance can work with that. I had a client who they had a semi-truck fire, the trucking carrier caught on fire and they lost about 25 or $30,000 worth of their product. Thankfully, no one was hurt in this fire. That’s good, but they lost product. We turned that claim into the stock throughput carrier and their job, the policy responds to make them full right away.
Danielle:
Even though the shipping carrier’s responsible for that product loss, the cargo insurance underwriters, they pay out right to our client. They make them whole, and then they work on the backend with the trucking company’s insurance and then they get recouped for their loss. Then it’s as if you didn’t have a claim, the insurance underwriter considers that you didn’t have a claim if they were fully paid back for that.
Danielle:
There’s a lot of ways that yes, their insurance policies, these third-parties’ insurance policies may actually respond, but your policy is there to make you whole right away and then not have to manage being paid by that insurance company. It can really work in a lot of different ways. The first thing I would do with your supply chain is understand, when do I own the product? Where is it? How much is there at that place? Is that something I can handle?
Danielle:
If you have three or $5,000 sitting somewhere, and that building burned down, could you deal with three or $5,000 loss? The answer is probably yes. You want to understand if there was a worst case scenario, is that a bad day or does that put my company down? Am I going to not be able to recoup from that?
Danielle:
Those are the things you want to ask yourself and then decide, where’s the tipping point? At what point does it make sense for me to buy this type of insurance? Or should I just rely on these other are third parties to insure?
Taylor:
Absolutely. I love how you think about that more in the broader context of what are the risks that I’m taking on at the different parts of my supply chain? I mean, you’ve put in the name of your company the word risk, because insurances, like you said before, it’s helping to mitigate the risk of damage or loss and to be able to keep your company alive and going forward and afloat.
Taylor:
I think that’s another kind of feather in your cap or a reason that somebody would want to work with you, that would want to work with a broker in order to get insurance. I love that story that you told, not because the truck caught on fire, I’m glad that no one was hurt. But I like hearing stories like that because it makes it more real. It makes the reason more real about why you need to have insurance.
Taylor:
Are there any other stories that come to mind, whether it’s a client of yours or another business that you’ve heard of that had insurance at the right time and grateful for it? Yeah.
Danielle:
Yeah. I mean, another cargo, one that comes to mind, and this was actually working with the same stock throughput insurance company. What happened was my client had a shipment that never showed up, and this was actually a tech company, not a CPG company, but same situation. They had a shipment that never arrived at the destination and this shipment was worth a lot.
Danielle:
They come to me and they go, “Well, it just never came so we need to call upon our insurance policy for this.” The insurance company actually, because they do so much cargo, they have relationships all around the shipping industry. They were able to track down the shipment. My client had tried so hard to figure out where this shipment was and couldn’t find it.
Danielle:
The insurance company was actually able to figure out where it ended up and get it to the right place. That’s just another resource that they have being premier insurers in that area. Then on the flip side, outside of stock throughput, we’ve got things like product liability claims. Those can be pretty nasty. A lot of what I’ve seen with my clients are nuisance claims. I don’t want to say that every lawsuit out there is fraudulent.
Danielle:
We’ve seen a fair amount that appear to be, but things like chipped tooth claims, or … and I’ve seen a couple of those, there was one where the claimant said, “Well, your products has the vegan label, but this wasn’t vegan. I wound up in the hospital and I wasn’t able to attend my senior prom because of it.” They kind of tack on a bunch of mental anguish type of claims or allegations.
Danielle:
Those are the types of things that we see. It’s not necessarily that there are enormous … I mean, there can be enormous claims, but there can be a lot of little stuff that build up and can be pretty bad over time.
Taylor:
Got you. Okay. All this to say, I mean, we’ve talked about so many reasons that it makes sense to get insurance for your business. The next logical question to ask you is, okay, I’m sold, I’m bought in. I know that I want it. I know that I want to work with you. What is the process like of getting in touch with you? What’s it like from that first chat to having a policy that is awesome and solid?
Danielle:
Yeah. To get in touch with me, you can go to my website, ameliarisk.com or email danielle@ameliarisk.com or find me in the Slack channel too.
Taylor:
Love it.
Danielle:
Honestly, the first thing that I like to do is get on the phone and talk about your company. I want to know what you sell. Who do you sell it to? When did you start? Are you planning any new SKUs? I want to know about your supply chain. I want to know about your marketing materials. What do you say this product can do for people? Those are the things that I want to better understand.
Danielle:
The other part of what I want to understand is, what are you learned about? What’s your level of risk tolerance? I have some clients that want to buy every single policy and limits higher than I think they need to be, because they’re really conservative. I have some clients who are like, “Meh, I’m okay with that happening. Maybe next year I’ll think about that type of thing.”
Danielle:
It’s up to you how much and what type of insurance you want to buy. My job is to explain risk and explain what products are available to you, but it’s your job to make that decision. Then the next step is that you fill out applications, which I know is not fun. That can sometimes be the hardest part in the beginning, because underwriters want to know all the things about your business and applications is how we do it.
Danielle:
We really try to be technologically advanced in a very archaic industry. I admit that we are very behind the times. We use a number of products that help make your life and our lives easier. One of which is a smart application tool so you don’t have to fill out four applications and enter your name and address and phone number and revenue and number of employees each time.
Danielle:
That process should be a little bit better than … If you’ve done this before, you’ll know what that process is typically like. Then once we get those applications, we go out to market and we talk to underwriters, we see who wants it. We do review of the policy or the quotes and the policy forms. Then we put together a recommendation. Then that’s when we’d reconvene and I say, “Okay. Here are your options. Here’s what these things mean to you.”
Danielle:
Sometimes it’s really straightforward, again, if you’re a very vanilla company, and sometimes it’s a lot more nuanced and you have some decisions to make, but then we walk through that.
Taylor:
Love it. That sounds super straightforward. I like that it’s very consultative as well. That you like to start with a phone call and you ask a lot of questions about the business just to get the lay of the land before diving into policies and recommending things. I like that you-
Danielle:
Right. Yeah. I mean, I think.
Taylor:
Oh-
Danielle:
Yeah. Go ahead.
Taylor:
… go ahead.
Danielle:
I was going to say, I think that I’m a consumer too, right? I’m a business owner too and I hate when I’m having to make a decision and I don’t understand how to make that decision. My goal is to teach you how to make that decision. It’s to explain to you, “Here’s the reality of this situation. Here are your options, and it’s really up to you.”
Danielle:
Then I’m going to guide you based on what best practices are, what I would do. Then you get to sort of dial that notch, or you get to decide how important various things are to you and how much you want to insure. I have some clients, like I said, who are like, “I can’t sleep at night thinking about this $20,000 sitting at this location. I need that insurance.”
Danielle:
Some clients are like, “Well, I really don’t think anything’s going to happen to that.” You get to make that decision.
Taylor:
Yeah. It’s kind of funny how … and I’m sure you’ve seen people’s personalities on all different sides of the spectrum, but it’s kind of fascinating how one person is going to stress over $20,000 and someone else doesn’t.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Taylor:
That’s really what it comes down to, is that peace of mind, at least in my opinion. Obviously you want it when you need it and that’s the reason why you get it. But to have that peace of mind so that it’s not taking up any of your brain power like that. It’s already stressful enough to build a company or even to just work for a company in today’s world and to be able to take some of that stress away to ameliorate some of that stress, right?
Danielle:
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Taylor:
I think is awesome. The other thing I was going to say is that I like that part of your process too has that smart application system. The fact that you don’t have to fill out a bunch of repetitive documents. I think that’s awesome because it sounds like you-
Danielle:
Right. Or that we send things to via DocuSign. That’s how old? And most insurance brokers don’t use it. They still ask you to mail a check. There’s a lot of ways in which our industry is really, really, really outdated. I can’t change everything because a lot of it stems from the insurance companies and there are just bigger things at play here, but we can change what we can change and we do. It’s helpful for all involved.
Taylor:
I love that. Well, I want to be respectful of your time. I know you’ve got a hard stop in a few minutes. Just want to thank you for your time today, Danielle. Then just is there anything else you want to share with us? Is there anything else about your business you want to tell us about or anything else that I didn’t ask you that you wish that I would have?
Danielle:
Yeah. Well, so I think that just to leave people with the understanding that you are not going to be forced into anything you don’t want, other than maybe workers’ comp, because that is required by all 50 states and is not a choice. Aside from that, I think the folks are often scared to talk to an insurance broker because they’re scared they’re going to be told, “You need this, you need that.”
Danielle:
And they’re going to be shoved into this. You’re not. Not with us anyway, because again, I want to give you the tools to make better decisions and the right decisions for your company. I think don’t be afraid to just ask some questions and you can walk away when you want. You can also always choose your broker, right?
Danielle:
If you made a choice with an insurance company and your broker, and it’s not working, do not continue, do not waste your time. There are better people out there for you to work with so go find someone that you trust as a really good partner and advisor. That’s all I would say, is life’s too short to work with people that you don’t want to work with for your business. There is someone there for you.
Taylor:
A hundred percent. Well said. Again, thank you for your time.
Danielle:
Thank you.
Taylor:
Yeah. Thank you. It was great to chat with you.
Danielle:
Yeah.
Taylor:
Like I said, this is the first time we’ve had a guest with your skill set on the podcast and I learned a ton. I hope the audience learned a ton.
Danielle:
Good.
Taylor:
Maybe we will have to do a round two down the road at some point.
Danielle:
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been really fun to talk with you.
Taylor:
For sure. All right. Well, thanks again and have an awesome day. See you later.
Danielle:
Okay. Thank you.
Taylor:
Yeah. Bye.
Danielle:
Bye.
