Rancho Mesa's Alyssa Burley sits down with President Dave Garcia to look back at some of Rancho Mesa’s accomplishments in 2023, the state of the commercial insurance marketplace and what’s to come in 2024.

Show Notes: Subscribe to Rancho Mesa's Newsletter

Host: Alyssa Burley

Guest: Dave Garcia

Editor: Megan Lockhart

Music: "Home" by JHS Pedals, “News Room News” by Spence

Transcript

Alyssa Burley: Hi, this is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa's Media Communications and Client Services Department. Thank you for listening to today's top Rancho Mesa News. Brought to you by our Safety and Risk Management Network, StudioOne. Welcome back, everyone. My guest is Dave Garcia, president of Rancho Mesa. Today, we're going to look back at some of Rancho Mesa's accomplishments in 2023 and the state of the commercial insurance marketplace and what we see on the horizon for 2024. Dave, welcome to the show.

Dave Garcia: Thank you, Alyssa, and Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Appreciate you having me as your guest.

AB: Thanks. Well, I'm excited to have you as our last guest of the year.

DG: Yeah, that's well, we'll talk about it, but the last of many, which is great.

AB: So you and I met last week to get an idea of all the things that we wanted to cover in today's episode. And the list was extensive. We had so many things happen this year, and it's hard to believe that we were able to pull everything off without a hitch. And yesterday I was looking back through my calendar thinking, How in the world did we do it all? Well, I think it really speaks to the type of people that we have at Rancho Mesa.

DG: You know Alyssa, I couldn't agree with you more. There's many sayings like, it takes a village and we're all one family. But I really feel like here at Rancho Mesa, we lived to that. And as we go through this and people will have a chance to hear all the things that we've done, you'll realize you think we have a thousand people and we don't.

AB: Yeah.

DG: So, yeah, it was quite a year and it was a total team effort.

AB: Absolutely. So one thing that I think was my favorite event for this year was the 25th anniversary. And I feel really blessed to actually be a part of it because I haven't been here for the whole 25 years, but it feels like I have to me. And so it was really exciting to be at that event and see what Rancho Mesa started out as and what we've become.

DG: Yeah, you know, it's a milestone for sure. And I think what Char and I started the agency we were trying to get to anniversary number one. You know, we really weren't thinking 25 years later. So it's surpassed any possible dream I had of what this could look like. And the event itself was spectacular. You know, Lori here just does an amazing job putting those things together. So it was a beautiful evening, in San Diego. We'll talk more about where it was and but just probably what brought the biggest smile to my face was just looking around at everybody there because we had clients and we had carrier partners. And of course, we had all the people from Rancho Mesa just kind of enjoying the moment.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. So Lori found a excellent venue for this. It was at the Skybox at Diamond View Tower in downtown San Diego, and it overlooks the ballpark. It was spectacular, the views.

DG: Oh yeah, it really was. And, you know, she put so much effort into that. And for those kinds of special venues like that, you can't just go and say, hey, we got something coming up in two weeks. You know, that was a venue that she went and look for, you know, a year and a half before we were going to do this. We know we wanted it in July. We know we wanted it on a Saturday night. You don't know what the Padres schedule going to be. So there was so much that went into it. I had never been there before either. And so you listeners, if you've never been there, find a way to get there. If you're a business and looking for a place to host something, it's second to none.

AB: It was a spectacular evening. So Lori did a great job. Anything else you want to add about the the anniversary party?

DG: Well, for me, selfishly, I guess it was really fun because, you know, two of my sons work for the agency now, which I never, ever projected that to happen. And the two sons that don't work at the agency were both able to attend. And so just kind of having. I’m get choked up, but when you have your whole family there, my sisters were there. So this was something we've all lived and shared. And then to share that moment with everybody that you really love and care about. And they were smiling. And I could see that they they were proud. That meant a lot to me. It really did.

AB: Yeah. And, you know, even if you're a family member and you don't work here, I'm sure that you contributed somehow to the success of the agency because, you know, there could be baseball games that maybe you didn't get to go to or, you know, sacrifices like that that the family had to endure in order to get Rancho Mesa to where we are today.

DG: Yeah, there was just you know, what we did is we invited clients that were with us from the very beginning, and most all of them were able to attend that night. And so that was really special. You know, it's kind of like a reunion in a way. And some of them are retired and, you know, their businesses have been sold. But, you know, they took the time to come down and just kind of relive the moments with us and to get a chance to see all of them and make sure that they were aware of how much I appreciated their faith in us when we started, which I'm not sure I would have had the faith in me that they did and then did take the time to come. It was that was really special. And then our carrier partners, you know, we try to treat everybody as family and the carriers that kind of believed in me from the beginning, when I didn't really have much to offer that was really special to have them. You know, some flew in from out of town just to attend the event. So that was really, really cool.

AB: I don't think that there's another agency out there that a former client who has retired comes to a party to celebrate their insurance brokers 25th anniversary. I just don't think that that is very common. So I think it really shows the type of relationship that Rancho Mesa has with its clients.

DG: I think that's what, you know, we've always wanted to be client-centric, and even though it sounds tried to say we treat everybody like family, we really want to do that. So we really try to get to know our clients and our carrier partners at a much more intimate level, find out about their families, what are their likes, their dislikes. You know, that just builds a solid foundation. And then they allow us to, you know, look behind their curtain and help them and risk manage to protect their company. So it's just and it's just , insurance, t's just been awesome for me to, you know, vicariously be a part of so many different companies and then so many different families.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. I know we enjoy it and client services, we really get to feel like we're part of our clients’ companies because they let us in and we can help them. So this year we had another really big event. We moved offices. So how long did that process take?

DG: It actually took years. You know, when we we bought a building in Santee and moved in there in ‘08 and there was I think 12 of us at the time, and we're in about 7000 square feet. And we're thinking, What did I just do? Like, this is a bad business decision, you know? Well, we'll just be rattling around in here and, you know, before you know it, we were kind of bursting at the seams. So right before COVID made another great business decision, of course, and took up some space in La Mesa, then COVID hit, and then we didn't need the space, but we had another, maybe 3200 square feet there. So we had to relocate some people for a period of time. And then I recognized I wanted to bring everybody back together. And that is a major challenge for me. I was looking in East County. I really enjoyed. It's where I grew up. I was looking for land to build a building, couldn't find anything, looking for an office building that would fit us, couldn't find anything. So then we started to move west and I wanted to stay as far east as west would allow and just stumbled on to a property that I didn't really know was there about a year and a half before we actually moved, found the property, got with our realtors and began to look at different options there. And then we, you know, signed on the dotted line. But then then the work really begins, you know, and Char was just so instrumental. Char is my wife. Char was just so instrumental in, in the design, the layout to make the new offices feel like home. And it's spectacular. You know, clients are listening to this. If you haven't been to the new office yet, come on down. If you're if you just want to see us, just walk in the door, I think you'll find it's really special. So it was a lot. It was a lot. It was something I wasn't you know, I'm not a real estate person, you know, so I'm kind of a fish out of water. But designing, it decided on furniture color scheme. We didn't move one stick of furniture from any of the other two offices. So everything here is designed for this space. It was awesome. It was stressful, but it actually was fun and well, I'm sure we'll talk a little bit about as we got closer. You know, I'm sure everybody listening to it has moved multiple times in their life, and that's probably, we'd all agree, one of the most stressful things the packing find in a move or all of those things. And for a business you're also like unplugging and then hoping when you plug back in, everything works. So it was it was a big task. And I think we'll talk, you know. Well, let me ask you, Alyssa, when we finally decided to move, okay, the day came. Talk a little bit about what your ideas were and what we incorporated to make that day special.

AB: Oh, wow. So, like, moving day?

DG: Yeah, the day we moved.

AB: The day we moved. It was strange because you're seeing everything being packed up and leaving it's home. So that day, everyone worked from home, right? So there were just a few of us kind of overseeing the the actual move. It was surreal. It it seemed like we were leaving our house, our home, but seeing all of this stuff come into the new office, it was really exciting. And I think you've mentioned in the past that it's like we were going from a house into a high rise, and I do feel like that's what it was like. It was like we're moving into the big city, even though Mission Valley isn't necessarily, you know, downtown San Diego, but it has a different feel. However, Char did a really good job at making it feel like Rancho Mesa in the office. So it was it was exciting, a little scary. But I think everyone knew that it was the right thing to do, that we had to get everybody back in the same office.

DG: Yeah, just I'm kind of a corny person. So we made a decision as we were building out the space and furnishing it. We weren't going to let anybody come and see the progress.

AB: Yeah.

DG: We kind of just wanted to be shock value. So there was a few people that we kind of let in prior to. But let's talk a little bit about the morning everybody came, how we how we pulled that off.

AB: Okay. So granted, this is after a weekend of long nights working in the new office, putting paper away and, you know, setting up the kitchen and doing all of that. So Monday morning rolls around and we have everybody waiting outside of the office doors and they can't see in, they’re glass doors, but we've we've covered them so they can't see. And we have balloons. Everybody has desks, is marked with their name. So people have to walk around all the way through the office to try to find out where they're going to be sitting. We have music playing and I think it was the song “Celebrate”. Yeah. So we play that song. I've got cameras all over the office to to get people's reactions as they're, you know, exploring this new space because it's quite big. It's a lot bigger than what we're used to. And so the music's playing. We let everybody in and their faces. That was the best part. People kept saying, “Wow, wow, look at this, look at this.” There's people hugging. They're shaking hands. Everybody's excited. It was, I think, one of the best days that we have had at Rancho Mesa. And I have it all on film. Yeah. So we have a nice little video that we watch every once in a while.

DG: Yeah, it was you know, we were kind of the few of us around the insides of the doors. And it kind of felt like, you know, you're opening the doors to a concert or something. People are going to kind of just rush in. And we had like a list to say where the music playing balloons everywhere. We had big gift bags and everybody's desk to kind of welcome them to the new office. And, you know, I mentioned we're kind of corny. We're a sports background agency, so we name different rooms like we need a large conference room, the Clubhouse, smaller conference room, the Dugout. And people picked up on that and they thought, that's really cool. So that just the attention to detail that the team put in to try to make this office special was recognized by the people charging through the door. And that was really cool.

AB: Yeah, I agree. There were little things done everywhere that, you know, it could very have easily been overlooked, but someone thought of it, okay, let's do this, let's do that. And and something I noticed or I heard people say was they were commenting on how much light there was in the office. I know you specifically asked to have some offices removed so we could bring in more light and have floor to ceiling windows so that everybody could see what it looks like outside today.

DG: Yeah.

AB: And that was a little more challenging in the Santee Office. Right. But I know that that was something that people really noticed when they started to walk through just how light and bright and how they could see outside.

DG: Yeah, that's that's I'm really glad to hear that because when Char and I toured the space, the existing tenant had offices just all the way down the side of the building, a big long hallway of offices. And, you know, as you mentioned, there's floor to ceiling windows. So what we did is we took out two offices on each end right in the middle to bring that light in and then allow our client managers workstations to be up against the window. So and people noticed that you're right. And that was, you know, we thought hard and long about that. It was not, it was more expensive to do that because we had to do go through the demolition, but we just wanted to do the right thing and it just felt right. And then when people saw it and recognized it, then you're like, I'm so glad we did that.

DG: Yeah.

AB: Yeah, yeah. It made a huge difference. And I think people appreciated.

DG: Yeah, right.

AB: Now we're, we're here for quite a bit of time every single day, so it's nice to be able to have that view outside. And even the interior offices, they all have views outside as well.

DG: It's, it's a it's a special space for sure.

AB: All right. So something else that I'm really excited about is we have four new partners at the agency.

DG: Yeah, that I mean, we've already mentioned a 25th anniversary and moving offices, and you would think that's probably enough for any one year. But one of the things I think I'm most excited about is Char and I made a commitment not to sell the agency to a third party. Not that that's bad. It's right for some people. It's just not what we believe we want to do. So in order to make sure that Rancho MEsa is viable not just today, but for the next 25 years, It was really important for she and I to try to identify, you know, future leaders within the company. And we've already have five previous owners. So we extended ownership opportunities to four more people, two were producers, which is if you're not familiar, those are the salespeople. And then two non-producers, Lori, who runs our accounting department, and then Alyssa, who we're speaking with today, who runs everything else in this office. And that, you know, when people talk to me about that and they say, how did you do it? And, you know, there's the whole how do you structure it side of it? But they really were interested in why did you extend it to non-producers?

AB: Because that doesn't seem to be typical.

DG: It's not always typical. I wouldn't say it's never done, but I think that goes back to Char and I’s base philosophies. We believe in equality. Everybody's the same. You know, there isn't a hierarchy and so we're looking for cultural fit, competency, commitment to the to the agency. And then what that person has demonstrated to the success of the agency. And, you know, obviously people are compensated well, but we wanted to give them an opportunity to actually feel ownership. And that was super exciting. Everybody accepted and, you know, we put put it together and now we have these additional partners that we couldn't be more excited about and Alyssa, do you think about that?

AB: I'm really excited. I think I mean, even before this opportunity, I felt like I was part of Rancho Mesa and this was my home. But I think being a partner now, it made it more formal that I'm not going anywhere.

DG: Yeah, well, and I think, yeah, that's great to hear. Happy to hear you say that. I think the other side of it, too, and here's what I've really witnessed is this as committed as everybody was, there's now this surge to learn more, to know more about agency operations beyond just the area of the agency that, you know, you or Lori work in. Like, how does this work? How does that work? And for me, that's so exciting because I really believe in the collective IQ. I think collectively I don't think anybody can surpass us. But when you have that energy to learn to seek something new and challenge yourself because it's not, it's foreign, you know, it's like I've never looked at a PNL like that. And now you are. Reading books, going to workshops, things like that. I think that's that's a byproduct that I would encourage any company. This is a good reason to do that, to give your your your trusted employees an opportunity to grow their careers. And we try to extend that way beyond just partners. You know, we're looking for everybody here to create a career path through education workshops, trainings, challenging them to be the best that they can be in their career.

AB: Yeah, it's good for them. And it's good for Ranch Mesa.

DG: Totally. Yep.

AB: All right. So talking about leadership, there are a lot of opportunities to have leadership roles, whether it's within Rancho Mesa or in different organizations. So we have quite a few people that take on leadership roles outside of Rancho Mesa. Some of those are Christina Haake. She's now the Secretary of the PWI San Diego, and I think she did that last year and has been reinstated in that position. I am part of the NAWIC San Diego Board. I did that last year and I have accepted to do it again this year. We have Andy Roberts. He was recently elected as the President for Surety Association of San Diego. So he'll be serving his term in 2024. And then Jeremy Hoolihan is on the board of the IBA in San Diego. So I think that that is great. You know, leadership opportunities aren't just within the company. You can definitely find those in organizations outside of the company, but it still helps your career and gives you experience taking on those roles. And I think it's it just demonstrates the type of people that are here, you know, that they're wanting more for themselves. They want to, you know, stretch themselves, become leaders outside of their what they do day to day. And so we always encourage this and to have four people all doing that outside of the office. None of this is Rancho Mesa specific work. And there, you know, the Professional Women in Insurance, the National Association of Women in Construction, the surety world, the IBA is our insurance association. So we're trying to impact a lot of different areas that don't directly necessarily impact Rancho Mesa, but it's just the right thing to do and that it's a growth opportunity and, you know, we challenged some people to take on those roles. You know, we see the opportunity, we see their potential. We when we can, we kind of nudge them a little bit to, like, stretch themselves. You can do this. And then once they do, like Christina is a great example where she's taken that on the first time, a little nervous to do it, stepping out of her comfort zone. And now she's all in and I'm sure she's going to be you know, she'll go through the chairs and probably be the president one day of the PWI. So that's super exciting for us.

AB: It really is. And I think that it shows that our employees are willing to give back and give up some of their personal time to to not only advance their careers, but to help others. And that brings me to something else. So Rancho Mesa does a lot of philanthropy and our employees do things outside of work that help the community. But then Rancho Mesa also does some of that as well. Do you want to talk about those different organizations that you support.

DG: Yeah, we could we could probably go back and forth on this a little bit. But I think the overall feeling that we want to promote here is to give back. And it's really important for us to be giving back to our community and trying to serve those needs. And, you know, you can write checks and we do, but sometime it's maybe a little more meaningful when you actually, you know, roll up your sleeves and get involved. So there's what you know, I'll leave somebody off when I start naming names. But, you know, some that come to mind. Nativity Prep is a says school in the Barrio, sixth, seventh and eighth graders. Char and I’ve been involved there for some time now. Drew’s wife, Lauren, used to teach there. These are children coming from homes where they're really trying to break the chain of poverty. And their parents understand the way to do that is through education. So I couldn't speak more highly of that involvement. And I'm sure his listeners are hearing me. They're thinking the same thing. You think you're you're you're helping them. But when you witness it, you're gaining so much more back. We had two of the little girls in here last week. We sat them down in our podcast studio here. I kind of faked interviewed them. They had big smiles on their face, but they're articulate. You know, if you ask them, you know, what do you like about Nativity Prep? That's not the one-word answer. Like, it's cool. They have a long, you know, direct answer to that question. So it's really fun to see. MAAC Projects always been something that we've been really involved with Family Health Centers of San Diego. We do things outside of work, Why don’t you talk a little about the Alzheimer's walk.

AB: Yeah. So Daniel Frazee, he is really involved with the organization and he just put out a offer to our employees saying, Hey, does anybody want to participate in the walk with us? And we did. We had quite a few employees show up. It was a Saturday morning. Some brought their kids, some brought their dogs. And, you know, we supported him and what he's all about. And, you know, that was something that our employees did on their own time. There was no expectation that they had to participate, but they did it out of the kindness of their heart and to support an organization that one of our Rancho Mesa family members was really passionate about. So, you know, there's things like that all the time that that if you ask, people will show up for you.

DG: Yeah, for sure. I think it's you know, some of the just the kind of Mayberry RFD type of things too, like sponsoring little league teams or soccer teams or gymnastics or cheer. You know, we really you know, early on when we started the company, we didn't have much at all as a company. But even back then we said, you know, we should designate a certain percentage of our revenue to make sure we're putting some of that money back in the community. And the percentage back then on the how big we were, it really wasn't a lot of money, but today it is pretty significant. And I think we over the 25 years have surpassed the million-dollar commitment level. So that feels really good to us. And as we continue to grow, it's just starting to put more of that, our treasure back in the community and not forget how important that is that other people's needs sometimes even before your own. You know, when we, you know, one of our clients had adopt a family for Christmas and it was really fun for me to see. I didn't really lead it because I wanted people to do it if they felt the desire to do it. And Sam Brown, one of the partners here, headed that up and he took down a car load of toys and clothes and gifts for this family. That was just awesome. It wasn't nobody, there was no pressure to do it. It's just people responded to the need. So I think that's something we want to continue. And I know as you get organizations get larger sometimes that can get, you know, you worried more about the PNL sometimes. And I think that's why we actually put a percentage on the revenue, not on our profits. So that's that's interesting. And you can think about that. We're if we're not profitable, we're still putting money back into the community because we think that's the right thing to do. And fortunately, we've been profitable too. So that helps.

AB: All right. So let's talk about a couple other things that are new for this year. So earlier this year, January, I think it was late January, we launched SafetyOne and that is our mobile app. And who would have thought that we would be able to to do something like that? I don't know of another broker in our space that that has done that. We had another platform. We recognized that we needed to get an upgrade, we needed it to do certain things and we were able to launch our very own safety app.

DG: Yeah. And Alyssa, I got to give you and Drew here. You guys were the genesis for that whole thing coming to fruition. I'm, you know, old and so technology is not my friend and when we talk about doing, you know, hey, let's create our own safety app, I'm overwhelmed. But what I loved about how you guys approached it is there are off-the-shelf safety apps, I guess, but we looked at a lot of them.

AB: A lot of them

DG: Yeah. And I think they were good. I mean, they have some quality too. But, you know, we we did trademark a word called OneOfOne and we never found it. It was not out there. So then it demanded that we create it. And that's when I stepped away, because I have no chance of helping with that process. But, you know, you and Drew did a lot of research, so we actually created it. It's ours. It's nobody else's. We launched it in January and what what are the numbers look like on that?

AB: So I just pulled them this morning. So we currently have 155 client accounts and we are at a 999 users as of today. So maybe later today we can just get one more person and make it 1,000.

DG: Sure we can make a phone call and make that happen. Yeah. Get that nice round number.

AB: And that doesn't include Ranch Mesa. Yeah. You know, none of our test accounts or anything like that. Those are real users.

DG: Yeah. I think what's exciting about, as I've seen just since the launch to now so many new things that you keep adding.

AB: Absolutely.

DG: Yeah. And so we're really encouraging our clients to like roll up their sleeves, get dirty with it, tell us whether the things they want to see in it, and then we go back to the engineers and, you know, have them design it and then implement it for us. So that's really exciting. I know, you know, I've had some of my clients comment to me, I'm sure Alyssa, you've even heard more. Have you heard anything from any of our carrier partners like that? Yes. Yeah. What did they had to say about it?

AB: Wow.

DG: Really?

AB: Yeah. So. So when I. When I show them what the application can do, the reaction is, wow, this is so easy.

DG: Yeah.

AB: So that's the point, right? If we want our clients to have these robust safety programs and we want them to be effective, they have to be easy to use. It can't be something that is complicated. You know, we've seen other platforms that, you know, there's 18 steps to do one simple task, right? That was not something that we were willing to to compromise on. It had to be easy. So when I show it to our clients or carriers, everybody's reaction is this is really easy. I respond with, yeah, yeah, that's the point. Yeah, it's supposed to be easy and effective.

DG: Right? And it's something that I think as it's one of those things that the more you use it, the more you find uses for it.

AB: Yeah. Like with anything.

DG: Right. And we keep, it's almost like a little bit of artificial intelligence. We're learning from it, from the users, what could be more effective and then we challenged the designers to incorporate it. And you know, I love some of the things just blow my mind, like, you know, putting a QR code on somebody's hard hat that if you scan it, pulls up that individual's all the safety trainings they've had. That's pretty exciting to me. Yeah. So no more paper, you know, you can just discard that and you don't have to worry about a binder and things out in the field that maybe are cumbersome now or get lost or misfiled or all of those sorts of things. So yeah, I think that's a it's funny because, you know, we're we were, you know, San Diego based agency, but we have clients in 22 different states. So our safety app is literally all over the country. And it's just a funny story, but who was the was it a Parks and Recreation of Chicago or someplace that called us?

AB: Yeah. And they were interested in it. And unfortunately we're only giving it to our clients at the moment. But we do have a wait list of non-Rancho Mesa clients that are interested in using the app. So who knows? We may be making that available to non-clients.

DG: Yeah, maybe when we're sitting here next year. That'll be something that we accomplished in 2024. So stay tuned on that.

AB: Yeah. And you know, it's really fun to watch our clients start to use it and it's so flexible that we're finding new ways to use the functionality. You know, it could be our mobile forms where someone has put a QR code on a company truck and in order to check out that vehicle, you know, the employee has to scan it with their smartphone, fill out a form. Maybe they do a checklist to make sure, you know, the lights are working and, you know, the tires look good and all of those things. And they're literally just doing it from their mobile device and they can check out that vehicle. And now it's in the system that that this person has this truck and, you know, they can fill out another form when they return it if you want. So our clients are really finding some really cool uses for the functionality in the mobile app, and that's just really exciting.

DG: Yeah and I think, you know, we’ll talk a little bit about the insurance industry a little bit later, but there’s an application for that for us as well. What our clients are using, some of the areas that are listed just mentioned, we can present that to the marketplace and there's going to be subjective crediting applied to their premium because essentially the app is making them a safer risk.

AB: Yeah.

DG: And so there's that kind of we talk a lot about icebergs, you know, there's the obvious and then there's all the below the surface of that application of pushing what they're doing out into the marketplace to negotiate terms for our clients is a big plus for us. And that's something I think is only going to get stronger.

AB: Yeah, absolutely. So we're sitting in the studio right now. We had a pretty, pretty big year. So do you want to guess how many articles our team here at Rancho Mesa, both our producers and our our staff here. Do you know how many articles we've written?

DG: 60, 70.

AB: 130 articles this year.

DG: Oh my gosh.

AB: So that includes industry articles, topics that we've researched. These can all come from. You know, maybe there's something in the news that we're responding to or we've had questions from our clients that we want to address that we think other clients might be interested in. So all kinds of things that we're writing about, it could be different events that Rancho Mesa has participated in. So definitely, you know, take a look at some of those articles that are really well written. We've also done a 100 podcast episodes, so this will be our hundredth podcast for this year. And we hosted 66 workshops and webinars this past year. It was a lot and I'm sure that next year we'll have just as many or maybe even more.

DG: Yeah, it's what you just spoke about is so incredible to me. Again, this is an iceberg thing. You write the article intending you know, for somebody to read it and understand it, but it's also educating the person, writing the articles. We require them to research it and really mind down, we're looking for areas of need in that our clients would have from a risk management standpoint. So there's a real big benefit to that. And then many times the, your team, is able to turn the article into the podcast. So there's another use of the article and then that gets pushed out and it lives forever. I mean, you were you were just walking us through the other day in our meeting, some of our podcasts that we did a couple of years ago are still getting plays.

AB: Yeah.

DG: Yeah. And that, you know, that just tells us where we're picking meaningful topics that are things that people are going to be interested in forever, not just today. That's super cool. And you know, we have our carrier partners as a part of our podcast and they sponsor them. They come to me and say, Dave, how many plays did we have this year? And so how many plays do you think we had this year? And then how many plays that we had since we started?

AB: So since we started, I think we're getting close to 18,000. This year we're definitely in the thousands. Yeah. And I think that that shows that people are really interested in what we have to say. And who would have thought that a podcast about insurance and safety would be that popular?

DG: Yeah, certainly not me, right? I mean, this is not the thing that you walk into a party and say, Hi, I'm in insurance. That would be the last conversation you have. But I think it's a need out there. And we were trying to get to people. Everybody learns differently. So people like to read, some people like to listen, some people like to watch some are all three. So I guess our our goal here at Rancho Mesa is to provide risk management capabilities in any one of those three ways of receiving the information. Yeah. So the 18,000 plays sounds like people enjoy the the audio.

AB: And I do think that it makes it easier if it's just on your phone. You can listen in the car, you can listen while you're working out, things like that.

DG: And I think our workshops and webinars that you guys host, I mean, you've really have refined that and I took a peek at the ‘24 calendar already and there might already be more than 60 workshops planned. So that's super exciting. And you know, we're looking for good ideas for workshops. You know, we go to our clients and ask what else, what else, what else? And so I'm sure there'll be some that we've done in the past and then they'll always be the new ones too. So that's exciting.

AB: Some of the best topics that we have are requests from our clients, and after each workshop or webinar, we do send out a survey asking people, what else do you want to hear about? Yeah, so we do get some really good suggestions from our clients and.

DG: I love that you and your team, in many cases we do them live, but there were also able to video them and record them. So if the client, if you're not able to attend that particular day in time, you can certainly just come into the website, search the topic and watch it at your leisure. So that's been I think that was a really great way of you guys promoting those things beyond just the day that they occur.

AB: Yeah, I think it expands the number of people that can benefit from it, you know, because we can't all, you know, make a webinar or drive in to attend a workshop. But if we can record it and the presenter allows us to, then we can make it available to everybody.

DG: Yeah.

AB: So you've recently were in a video with a career partner. Do you want to talk about that?

DG: Yeah, it was really exciting. It was sensory insurance. And there in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, that's where their corporate offices are. And so they called. We're terrific partners with them. I think we're their largest retail broker in the United States. Wow. Not just California or San Diego, but the whole United States. So they called us and said, hey, Dave, listen, you know, we're a 100-year-old company. We like to do these testimonial videos and involve one of our clients. Would you be interested? We've never done one in the West. Would you be interested in being a part of that and then having one of our mutual Sentry Rancho Mesa clients be in the video as well? And so of course, I come to you and I say, What do you think? And you're like, Yeah, let's let's do that. You know, we'll pick up some different tips. And so they did, and we organized it, got one of our clients Greenbrier Landscape to participate with us. And I don't know if any of you know Sentry Insurance well, it'll be coming up here in a few weeks. But the Sentry Open, which is a golf tournament and it starts off the year over in Hawaii, when you see the interviews at the golf course, you'll see the interviews being done in these two big overstuffed blue chairs. And sure enough, these two giant crates arrive to our office. Only the crates were so big that they wouldn't fit through the door. Yeah. So that was the funny, problem number one. So they had to uncrate the chairs and then bring them up the elevator. We set it up and it was super fun. They set out how many people were there with somebody they bring up.

AB: There had to be a team of six or seven people.

DG: Yeah. And they, you know, we kind of it wasn't really scripted like read this, but it was talked about let's cover these things. And so we did we filmed a lot of it here. And then the next day they went out and filmed something similar out at our client, Greenbrier. So it was super fun to be selected. When you think about how many different clients they have and how many different brokers they work with, to be chosen to be a part of that is really exciting. So, you know, they've sent us the, I guess, the rough draft of it. So we'll be looking forward to the final publication and be certain to share it on our website, no doubt.

AB: Yeah, I really enjoyed the whole process because as being part of the media communications team, you know, we don't really get to interact with many other media teams. So it was really cool to have another team come into our office. We could talk about different equipment that we're using and how you do this, how you do that, and we got to spend an evening at dinner with them. And so that was really cool too, to get to know them as people. And, you know, that always makes the project that much better.

DG: Yeah, and Sentry, I think we worked so well with them, in part because, you know, they're kind of a Midwestern family oriented company and all their people are like that. Yeah. So, you know, as you mentioned, you know, we weren't anticipating going to dinner with them, but we did had very nice dinner over in Coronado, sat outside, but it was like we were just having a family dinner with friends. And that's the that's kind of what they promote and that's what we promote. So I think that's part of the reason why we worked so well together with them. So Sentry, thank you so much for that opportunity. We really appreciate it.

AB: Yeah, and I think that was their media team, but you know, their underwriters and everyone else over there, the rest of our team has the same type of relationship.

DG: Totally. Yeah, they had their, you know, their regional president was a part of this video and testimonial and he came to dinner with us, too. So it's just, you know, we have great relationship with them up and down the line. So that was really fun.

AB: So that's not the only video we did with someone else this year. So Sam Brown, our vice president, he runs the Human Services group. He was in the MAAC Projects video and he's done it a few times where he got to speak about the relationship that he has with MAAC and the mission that that he's trying to support.

DG: Yeah, Sam Brown has been working with MAAC now probably for over maybe ten years or so. Amazing organization, does so much good in the community and I think Sam's involvement and the agencies involvement. We've gotten to know their leadership team well down there and we really believe in their mission. This kind of goes back to what we were talking about earlier with putting time and effort back into the community, not just writing checks. And I think they appreciate that. They they see this sincerity in ours and Sam's relationship with them. It's not just business. It's much deeper than that. So when they put their video together, we were honored that they called and asked if we'd like to participate. We said, certainly. And Sam did a great job representing not only Rancho Mesa, but himself.

AB: Yeah, he always does. Yeah. We also were in the IIABA Magazine. Do you want to talk about your interview? You were featured.

DG: Yeah, that's.

AB: In the magazine.

DG: That was pretty funny. As Alyssa knows, we laugh about this. We get asked between her and I probably couple of times a month, you know, that we've been chosen as, you know, the one of the best agencies in the country or best places to work or whatever. And so, you know, as we looked into that, we found that it's, you know, it's advertising. You know, you don't want to say you buy the award, but you kind of pay the advertising fee and then you're featured. So when this organization reached out to us, honestly, I was a little skeptical and get to the end like, well, what what are you looking at from us?

AB: You know, what's the cost?

DG: Yeah, yeah, what's what are we got to pay to have it put in the magazine? They're like, nothing. You know, you you've been recommended to us by several people that we hold in high regard. So we'd like to feature you and tell your story. And so we agreed. And it was the same kind of a process, although it was done virtually, they didn't come out. We did a podcast with them. They they wrote an article from the podcast. They had pictures taken of us so that they could put the pictures in the article. So it was that was pretty, pretty exciting. It was really I honestly was really honored to be selected because it wasn't a participation trophy, you know, it was something they felt like we actually earned. And I'm all for that. I'm not a big participation trophy guy, so, you know, I don't want to pay for my recognition. I want to be recognized if I'm going to be recognized truthfully for what we do, you know? So get a copy of the magazine. I think it was the November edition of The Independent Agent magazine. So that was pretty funny. When it came in, a couple of people here subscribe to it, and I hadn't even know it had been put out. And I came out of a meeting and two of the people walked up to me with the article open to my picture, and they're like, what's this? This is awesome. And I'm like, yeah, we're a little understated here. We don't really kind of talk much about ourselves. So it's kind of funny that they found out not because we had promoted it. They found out because they actually subscribe to the magazine flipping through it, and then they they find the article about us. So that that was a pretty cool way for them to find out. And it was pretty fun for me to see their reaction.

AB: We know that you were in the magazine, but you're not the only one who is asked to talk about insurance or their background. We've had several of our producers our account executives be asked to be experts on podcast and in webinars, and I'm not even sure how many of those they've done over this year, but I think that we've recently done a couple actually in the studio that were online. So I do think that that shows that we are trying to be experts in our field, right? We're writing these articles. We're constantly researching. It's not like get your license and then you're done learning. We really focus as a group on learning as much as we can because we know things are changing all the time. I think that that shows that our employees are really at the peak of understanding the insurance industry.

DG: Yeah, I think as we’ve grown, we've realized, we really have moved away far, far away from being a generalist where we'll just write any type of business and have virtually just dedicated ourselves to becoming a specialist. So as you all probably know, we have two sides to our agency construction and then Human Services. Self-explanatory really are both. But within either of those sides of our agency, the producers, the salespeople within there are tasked with becoming the specialists in just one segment of that. So landscape, you know, I've been doing that for about seven years and have made national presence with that. And I think when they're asked to do that because they don't just know the insurance that's required for the landscape industry, they understand the issues within the landscape industry. We we talk a lot about business acumen, where we want you to know more about that person's business than just the insurance aspects of it, because when you do, it leads you to be able to protect them better. And seemingly these third party people appreciate our approach and then want to feature us on their podcasts or their videos or things like that where we can talk about the insurance needs but also talk about the other things as well.

AB: Yeah, and with all of that, Rancho Mesa is growing. Yeah. So how many new employees have we added this year?

DG: Yeah. So you know, we've added nine and so you kind of like, well, if you're a 1000 employee company, nine is not so many. We're about a 50 employee company. So, you know, that's about 20%. And, you know, we talked earlier about, you know, we grew out of our space in Santee had opened an office in La Mesa. Now we brought everybody back together, got a lot more space. Well, in six months, we're kind of starting to run out of space, which is super exciting and we have the capability to grow our space where we're at. So we won't need to move if we need to grow. But yeah, I'm just I just love seeing young people come into business. You know, we have a very young agency and I think that draws a lot of people to us because, you know, they're the next generation. And you know, as a as a dad and a grandfather, my biggest joy in life is watching. You know, as you're a parent, you watch your children grow and your grandchildren coming up through the ranks. It's just really so to watch people jump in and then the nine people that we've hired this year, you know, they're excited. You know, they're they want careers. It's not a job it's a career. And that's kind of what we're looking for. So we hire what we need, you know? And so it's hard to say, how big are you trying to get? Don't have an employee goal number, but we just want to make sure that we really are able to service the needs of our clients. So whatever number of people that is, that's how many people have.

AB: Yeah. So that was a lot to go over in one year. And I'm sure that there's got to be things that we've forgotten about.

DG: At my age, there's a lot of things I've forgotten about actually. Alyssa, So yes.

AB: And all of these amazing things are possible because we're so focused on providing a OneOfOne experience for our clients. And our clients are really the reason why we're here to develop solutions, build trust and protect our clients. So let's talk about the state of the insurance industry that our clients dealing with. So where are we right now?

DG: Yeah, it's a it's a difficult marketplace right now. You know, as I mentioned, I'm 65, so I've been doing this for 37 years. And you do go through cycles in insurance jargon. It's hard market, soft market soft meaning coverage is easy to place pricings down hard, murky means coverage is difficult to find. It's expensive. So we're really experiencing right now the hard market in the package, what we call the package lines of insurance, which is your your property, your automobile, your general liability, your access. As all of us that are listening to this recognize, we've had a lot of natural disasters, from floods to hurricanes to wildfires. And the insurance industry reacts to that. And typically, if it's not a major situation, the insurance carriers, reinsurance carriers don't get involved too much. But because of the size of some of these losses now, the reinsurance marketplace has really been hit. So they're going to raise their pricing, which then raises the pricing to the carrier, that raises the pricing to the consumer. So it's a very difficult time on that side of the business. And what we would recommend for anybody out there is goes without saying, safety needs to be at the top of the list. But I think best practices, which we definitely subscribe to, you need to be meet with your insurance advisor 90 to 120 days prior to your policy expiration. If you get inside of that, it's really difficult to get the types of terms and pricing that you think you're going to want. So we try to live by that here. I look at challenging your risk consultant to look at different ways of transferring risk. Maybe it's increasing deductibles on your policies, maybe it's aggregate losses on your policy limits, things like that, think a little bit more out of the box. We've got some real big challenges. Keep your lines together if you can. When I say that, I mean try to keep your automobile packaged with your general liability and preferably with your property and equipment, which we call Inland Marine. When you start to buy those individually in insurance that's monoline and any monoline coverage other than worker's compensation is going to be more expensive than if it's packaged with other lines of insurance. And that's just common sense of the carrier being able to spread the risk amongst multiple lines. So on the package side, we're forecasting that again next year to continue to be hard. So if any business out there, given zero losses, I'd still be telling our clients to expect some kind of an increase. If you've had claims, expect larger increases. And again, work with your advisor there, have their finger on the pulse of your of your business in the marketplace. That can give you a pretty accurate estimation of where the pricing will go. On the workers compensation side, I think the overall view there is it's it's still a little bit soft, meaning the pricing is a little bit it's not spiking out of control. I have the, you know, the great privilege of sitting on three different work comp councils. So I get the perspective behind the curtain, what their leadership is thinking. And without going into too much insurance jargon, there's two ways to look at a policy year for them. One is calendar year, one is accident year, and then they're focused on their combined ratio, which simply means for every dollar in premium we collect how many are we paying out. And for a carrier to be successful, they obviously want that to be below 100. So historically, in the last decade or so, work cut carriers have been able to manage that combined ratio into the low nineties or upper 80 percentile. But I think most carriers, if they look at it from an accident year standpoint, which is kind of the true, true costs are really creeping close to that hundred or even exceeding that. When that occurs, there will be a point in time where pricing is going to harden there. So if you're a business out there, work with your consultants. I think for that's why we launch SafetyOne, the safety app, that's why we do all the workshops and trainings. The more that we can enhance the safety programs of our clients and then most importantly, communicate that to the marketplace, let the marketplace know what you're doing to be safe. You know, if you're if your EMR, experience modification, is below 100%, what are you doing to see that that occurs? It's not luck. I'm sure you're doing certain things, but if those things aren't articulated to the marketplace, then the subjectivity in the pricing, you may not get what you should be getting. Conversely, if your experience modification is higher but you're working on some things, make sure the marketplace knows that. So right now there's still the thought out there that worker's compensation is kind of bubbling along. So if your experience mod doesn't change or you haven't had significant claims, I wouldn't be budgeting for any dramatic increase in pricing. You might still see a decrease. But if you have a high mod and you've experienced significant losses in the current policy term, you're going to need to get out to market early and expect probably a double digit increase. So it's nothing to be afraid of. You know, we really kind of look at your overall costs as a percentage of your sales because we specialize. We know what those costs should be within each market segment and that's what we you want to be managing too. And so, you know, find a way to benchmark yourself, see where you're at in comparison to your competitors in the marketplace, and either be happy because you're below the market or roll up your sleeves because you're above. So sorry. That was a long winded answer to that, Alyssa.

AB: That's okay. And along those same lines, our clients get the KPI dashboard that compares them to the marketplace so they can see how they compare to their competitors.

DG: Yeah, that's a really innovative tool that we've created and trademarked for ourselves. Now, the work comp side, we've broken it down to the finite. You now know any one of our clients will know what one point of experience mod is worth in a claim value, and that really has opened so many eyes to them. And we talked again, getting a little techie here, but we've talked about the primary threshold with them so they understand kind of where their ceiling is on a claim as to its impact in the experience modification. Still going to impact their loss ratio if it goes higher, but it stops having an impact at some point. So it's nice for a company to know at this dollar amount that's equal to one point of claim, and at that dollar amount it stops having an impact. But we can give them an accurate number is if you have a claim that peaks at the primary threshold, we can tell them specifically how many points that is to their mind. And then the KPIs you mentioned, it tracks historically for ten years. So you can we've inserted the industry benchmark for their industry. So if their a landscaper we have that as the benchmark, then we can see very quickly visually, are they above it or below it and kind of gives us insights to, you know, as I mentioned earlier, if you're below it, what are you doing? How can we even get you lower? If you're above it? What are things that we can do? Let's look for the root cause and try to determine what safety trainings that we can implement for you to to get you back in shape.

AB: Yeah, and we have plenty of resources for clients that need help in all of those areas, and we can implement a number of things to help them get that mod down.

DG: Well, that's what I really appreciate, Alyssa, about your team, because, you know, having the safety app is is awesome. But in many cases, if somebody has an application like that, it gets introduced, it's a brochure, you get a quick training and then you're left on your own. But I love the fact that you have your team going out to the clients on a regular basis, looking behind the curtain at the analytics to see where they're using, what they're using so that you can identify areas to help them grow it on a consistent basis. So I think that's a OneOfOne approach, and I'm proud of you that you initiated that with your team.

AB: Yeah, we're here to answer questions and help our clients implement the best practices using the tools that are available to them.

DG: Through the COVID years, it seems to me so much has been pushed away from face to face, and I think we believe because we're looking to develop those deeper relationships with our clients that we want to encourage a little bit more face to face from all of our team members. So from your team to our client management team to our client advocate team and to our producers and to our leadership team, you know, we want to get out and meet those people face to face because inevitably something comes up that would not have come up in a team's call or in an email. Would you agree with that?

AB: Absolutely.

DG: Yeah. It's really important.

AB: All right. Well, Dave, it's been a long episode and it's always a pleasure having you in StudioOne. So thank you for joining me today.

DG: Thank you. Yeah, it was a it was a super exciting year. You know, every every year has its own challenges this year in particular. A lot of the challenges were all really fun things, you know, moving office 25th anniversary, launching the app. So I'm looking forward to whatever challenges present themselves and opportunities in 2024. And, you know, we'll be checking back in throughout the year. But let me take this time and just wish everybody a Happy New Year. Be safe. You know, hug your kids, enjoy this time. It's a very special time of the year. Thanks, Alyssa.

AB: This is Alyssa Burley with Rancho Mesa. Thanks for tuning into our latest episode produced by StudioOne. For more information, visit us at ranchomesa.com and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.