Using AI To Multiply Your Agency's Value, with Rodney Mattos Sr.

And that's what this movement has always been about for us. Not technology for technology's sake, but possibility. The possibility that this industry can move again. So we exist so that every broker, underwriter, every team who builds safety into society, they're focused on preventing coverage gaps, can once again do their work at the speed of thought.

Hey.

Hey.

Welcome back to the accelerate your insurance sales podcast. This might be my first episode where I have had a repeat guest. Today I'm joined by Rodney Maddows senior. And we are back. Because this man broke records. This to date is still our most watched episode we have had. Rodney was actually guest number one with the new accelerate your insurance sales podcast. If you recall, we changed the name from Bullpen sessions to accelerate your insurance sales. And this is our most shared and talked about episode in history. For those that did not listen to the episode back in January, Rodney is the founder and CEO of Triforda.com and Aperionics AI, which is what we are going to talk about today. And Rodney is leading a movement that's going to redefine what it means to run an insurance organization. So, Rodney, welcome back, my friend.

Yeah, Andy, thanks a lot. I really appreciate that. Always good to be with you. And you know, last time we had the chance to. To do that first, first podcast, you invited me and it was your inaugural, you know, inaugural session with your new branding. And we flew out to. And met up in. In Texas at. At the. At the beautiful makers studio there in Frisco. And it was my first time actually doing a podcast. And it was done with you, obviously, one man and the legend in our insurance industry and in a beautiful studio that was, you know, professionally laid out. And yeah, it was a great experience. You know, this time we're doing it remotely just because of schedules, but that was. That was a great experience.

You know, I've realized, you know, I don't have. One of the. One of the downsides here is I don't have my own big studio locally. And my goal this year was to do all my episodes in person. And it just became, especially with the type of guests we're trying to get on the show right now just became almost impossible to align schedules and get people to Texas and things like that. So, yeah, we're doing. It virtually works. But I'll start by saying this. If you're tuning in right now and. And you did not listen to the first conversation Rodney and I had, go back to the first week of January 2025 and listen to our first episode, because a lot of what we're going to talk about today is a, a jump off from that first episode. You know, last time we talked, Rodney Aperionics was just emerging and now it's powering agencies, it's rocking and rolling. So let's just start right there. Let's go back to episode one. What has changed since our conversation in January?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for that, Andy. I mean, yeah, that first episode is really where it all started. You know, we talked about Triforta, kind of talked about my background and really how we're trying to fix what was broken inside our own walls at Triforta. So, you know, back then it was about understanding the gaps, our flows, our automations, our tech stock, our tech stack. And we had already built, you know, on Salesforce, I was looking to replace the legacy agency management systems. And you know, that was a journey in itself and discovery, but there really wasn't anything. And at the time, this was back in, you know, 2000, early 2018, it acquired some agencies, they were on some legacy platforms. We all know the names of them. Every 90% of the industries on the same too. But from my perspective, you know, being on the carrier side and building a fairly successful organization with some, some really great technology that wasn't going to do that was the status quo for me. And so I just took the initiative and we ended up building on Salesforce and that became our backbone. And, you know, we tied it to our agency management system with, you know, all the usual moving parts and there was some work to be done to actually connect all those pieces because again, there wasn't anything available off the shelf that we could just go. Obviously you need, you know, ivans for downloads, you need, you know, documents for, for syncing and templates and management. You need quotes and submissions and you know, cases to keep track of your people and what they're doing to service accounts and, you know, kind of just the basic plumbing every agency needs to stay alive. But you know, that episode wasn't for us about the plumbing. It was about, you know, what happens after all the pipes are in. So, you know, you know, we put up the walls and the electrical and the plumbing, everything else. But, you know, once the basics were done, you know, once that data flowed and you know, the lights stayed on, you know, they didn't flicker anymore, we started asking some bigger questions. You know, we asked, you know, what could we really accomplish if we stopped thinking like users and we started thinking like builders. You know, my background prior to insurance, you know, finished carpentry, built a lot of beautiful things. And so I kind of think of that and apply that same perspective to what we're building here inside our own organization. And, you know, that's when our imagination really lit up. You know, we didn't. I've said this a lot over the years, but don't let your, you know, imagination or creativity stop it. Good enough. Or limit your, your success. We didn't say, well, you know, that's how insurance works, you know, so let's just, you know, keep going. You know, you got the same problem in your industry. People are, you know, stuck in the cold calling legacy mode. And, you know, that's just how we always done it. But we didn't say that, you know, you know, we said, what if, you know, what if, what if it didn't have to. So, you know, just, just taking a different approach and asking those questions.

Well, and I think one thing, you know, we, we complete game consulting, have gotten a chance to kind of see the behind the scenes because we work with you. Right. And one thing I think I admire about what you've done with this is you look at a lot of tech, let's call it tech stacks. You know, there's a lot of things in this industry where people take different techs, stack them, white label them, and call them something and push them out, right. I think a lot of people in the industry push them out way too fast without really putting in the kind of work that's needed to make sure they work effectively. And I think that's one thing I admire about what you've done, is you have taken the time to make sure that a periodics is built right. And what I'd love for you to talk about, if you don't mind, is it's not about the tech, it's about reclaiming time. And I think that was your ultimate North Star here in building a periodics is how can we help agencies not only scale effectively, but buy back their time at the same time? Would you mind talking about that a little bit?

Yeah, no, I mean, that's, that's exactly what this, this whole movement and mission has been about. You know, we're not trying to make insurance faster, you know, necessarily. We're trying to make it move again. And, and that's what stuck with me, you know, that that's still the heartbeat of, of what, what we do. You know, when you stop accepting slow as normal, you know, creativity becomes your engine. So, you know, we started looking at how every workflow touched our people. You know, you map everything out and thankfully, we had, you know, a system that gave us the foundation to see and control everything. And, you know, from renewals to reconciliations, everything in between, you know, we asked ourselves, you know, what would it take to eliminate the noise between intent and execution? You know, that one question, you know, it really unlocked the cascade of innovation. It gave us permission to really reimagine everything. And Andy, I'll tell you, I'll tell you what's wild. You know, since that first podcast, the response hasn't stopped. You know, we didn't run ads, we didn't have to buy lists, we didn't even do a campaign. You know, barely even had any, you know, details about it. But that, you know, that episode struck a chord even, even today, we're still getting requests for demos and, you know, just from that one conversation. So, you know, we think that's the power of, of authenticity. You know, when people hear you're speaking from truth and not marketing copy.

Well, that's awesome, man. I mean, I didn't, I guess I didn't realize since that first episode how much organic growth, word of mouth one single episode could have created. So not only was it our most popular episode we've had to date, it actually has benefited you and Periodics greatly. How did, how big did that wave get for you? I, I, it, this is, this is unknown to me.

No, I've been, I haven't, haven't shared this with everybody or anyone yet, but yeah, so, you know, I was down at ITC meeting with investors a few weeks ago and letting them know, and we got about 40 agencies now on our early access list. You know, these are, these are founders that, you know, they raised their hand after the first show and they asked for a demo. They believed in what we're building before we even had a name for it or before it was even ready. So we promised them. It's like, hey, this is, this is what we're doing. Showed, showed the, showed some videos and some recordings of the workflows and the automations that we had. And when it's ready, you're going to be the first. And so they've been incredibly patient. They've been waiting for us to just fine tune every pixel, every line of code, just to make sure that what they receive isn't just another shiny object. I mean, there's some tech companies out there. I kind of think of this AI thing as an arms race right now for insurance. But there's one thing I've learned, it's this. In insurance, reliability is, is the New innovation. Everyone wants the next big, big thing. Right. But what people really, really crave is a system that just works every single time. And, and that's why we took our time as you know, I mean, I talked to you about my background in, you know, construction as a finished carpenter, so, you know, the finished results. I'm a perfectionist, and I'll admit it. If it's not clean, if it doesn't perform, if it's not intuitive, we're not. We're just not going to ship it. So we wanted a periodics to really, what I say, feel like magic, you know, but behave like math. So every pixel you click, every automation you trigger has to be tested, refined, and rebuilt until it just kind of disappears into the workflow. You don't feel the tech, you just feel the momentum.

Yeah, that's. I think you had referenced it before as like, almost like tech that disappears. Right. It's. When you think about it, that's all we want is, I honestly, I think about who I am as a, as a user, Rodney. I'm like, I don't want to care how the tech works. I just want to know I can do something at the speed of light.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely. And that's what made the stakes so real for us, you know, going into early part of 2025. And this industry is more competitive than ever. We all know margins are thinner, organic growth is super difficult, Cervix expectations are higher, and every agency is now competing really against the clock. And we knew automation wasn't optional anymore. It's existential. If we didn't find a way to scale through intelligence, we just end up drowning in our own redundancy. And that's when I started using the phrase automation isn't a feature, it's survival. And that's what led us to build what became a Periodics, you know, not just another app, but what I think is, is a movement in this industry.

Well, and I'm going to go back to what I said earlier. You know, why I think why I'm confident this is going to have such massive success is it started as an experiment that you built inside your agency. Triforta.

Yeah.

As a way to fix your own pain. And now it's a movement that's going to help fix the industry. Anytime I see somebody, build somebody to solve their own problem, those are often the solutions that go on to have a ton of success. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, no, I appreciate you recognizing that. And that's been really our motivation. I mean, that's what makes this conversation really so special for us, Andy, is that last time we talked, we were experimenting. You know, Triforda was our, really our always on R D lab, you know, and this time, this time we're executing. And the difference between those two words, you know, experiment and execution, you know, that, that's the story that, you know, wanted to really have the opportunity to share today. Because I think it'll inspire some people that may, you know, even if they don't use a periodics, they may end up deciding to go on their own journey and invest in developing their own technology, which I think they should if they have aspirations to do that.

Well, let's go back to those first, those early months, because obviously you spent time testing and tinkering and figuring out what works and what doesn't work. And I've got to believe, especially when you're building tech, there's probably that moment where the code crashes or whatever and you're like, oh, okay, what are we gonna do here? Do we have a solution? Is this gonna work? Is this not? I gotta believe you had that moment.

Well, not just one moment. There was, there was, there was plenty of those damn moments, I'll tell you that. But you actually learned through all the tech calls that I've had. I mean, I can tell you I got development team that's just like absolutely incredible people, the programmers and engineers and everything. And, you know, being on those calls with them is just really kind of elevated my knowledge, of course. And. But, you know, there's one, one thing that stands out. You know, the day the door kept shutting on us. And I'll explain a little bit about that. You know, we were testing how to, how to push and pull information between, you know, our AMS CRM Salesforce and our language mod model. So we want to push the information back and forth and training it to do the heavy lifting. You know, getting quotes, you know, processing commission statements, extracting all the data, hydrating our system and, and just feeding it back in, into the, into the, to the ams. You know, on paper, in my mind, it was actually beautiful. You know, it was, it was elegant, but in practice, it was complete chaos. Right? So, you know, every time we ran a job, it would take two hours for the LLM to process the request. You know, two hours. That's just. It was like, there's no way anybody, we're going to be able to use this if it takes that long. So, you know, that's an eternity in the API world. And, you know, systems like Salesforce, they weren't built to wait that long. You know, APIs, they really expect instant responses, you know, milliseconds, not minutes, let alone two hours. So every test failed, you know, every sync broke while the language model was trained really well. But the connection timed out and we couldn't get it back into the system. You know, we were building intelligence, but the system couldn't stay awake long enough to receive it. So that was a big. That was a big issue.

So you had the data, you had the logic, you were lacking the delivery mechanism.

Yeah.

How'd you solve it?

Yeah, I guess the easiest way to describe it would be we built a post office that's really simple terms. We created what's called an Async API, which I didn't know what that was when I first heard the term, but I had to figure it out. So what basically meant is we built a postal system for data. So the way it works is every policy request, every operation gets its own little P.O. box. It's a digital delivery address just waiting to ship. And when a process starts, say the AI extracting coverage details from a policy, we don't force Salesforce to keep the door open and just sit there and wait. We drop that request into it's assigned PO box and then we send it on its journey to the language model. And then the LLM takes its time, it does all its processing. It thinks, it learns, it extracts, it analyzes. And then when it's all done, it brings it back that finished package back to the same P.O. box. Then our system picks it up and delivers it exactly where it belongs, right back into Salesforce or the ams, populating the coverages, the schedules, everything that a human has to mundanely enter, which they hated. And the reason why we did all this, it's just. It's just elegant, it's fast, it's asynchronous, meaning nothing stalls, nothing breaks, nothing times out. And that, you know, that one architecture, that single concept that opened the door and changed. Changed everything for us.

Okay, so now, now you're probably speaking above my pay grade because again, when it comes into SaaS and tech, you're. Again, I'm in over skis most of the time. So you talked about the synchronization. Obviously, one of the challenges we have today when we're as we leverage AI build tech stacks and things like that, is making sure they all work together. I feel like what you just said, it's almost like you guys kind of stumbled on building something brand new. It's like inventing middleware, whatever we call it these days, that almost created that synchronization. Did I hear that right?

Yeah, no, you. You got it, Andy. I mean, yeah, it's not above your pay grade at all, man.

Give yourself some money. I know it is, Trust me.

But that's exactly right. I mean, you nailed it. You know, once it worked, we stepped back and we realized, wait, this isn't just a workaround anymore. This is. This is a complete infrastructure. You know, we had created our own version of middleware. That's exactly what it was. And I'm so happy we did, because, you know, like. You know, like. Like proprietary version, really, for ourselves of. You probably heard Zapier or companies called mulesoft, but ours is designed specifically for insurance data and AI workflows. So at first it was just, you know, one PO Box for Salesforce and our agency management system. But then we added other PO Boxes. You know, now we've got boxes for every AMS that has an open API, you know, every CRM, every connected network, cluster, or even carrier. So we can integrate anywhere and everywhere as long as they have an API. And there's other workarounds if they don't. But that's the most elegant way to connect the middleware or the P.O. box and the language model that we built to other systems. And so, you know, that realization, you know, that that obstacle was the opportunity, you know, that was the turning point for us.

Yeah. I love the post office analogy because I think a lot of people can visualize that. When he used it, what was that moment feel like when you saw it work? I got to feel like that was like a proud dad moment.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, I said, you know what? I can't wait for the next problem. We need to find more problems. Yeah.

I think everybody, any business operator who is trying to solve a problem. Right. Especially when it's software where you hit, like, go. And you get to see it. When you see it actually work, I got to feel that you described it as surreal. I got to believe that's exactly what it was.

Yeah, I mean. Yeah, true. I mean, it was. We watched the system run, and, you know, for the first time, you know, the API didn't crash. We were just used to it crashing or just not populating the system because, you know, the door couldn't stay open long enough. And, you know, the AI did its job quietly in the background. And, you know, when it came back, when we came back, the data was there. You know, it was flawless. It was Clean. We call it hydrated. You know, that was the first time, first time we saw motion. Not just data, but true motion. And I'll tell you, when you're staring at static screens, seeing that motion, finally, for the first time, that's what feels like magic. And from there, the ideas just exploded. We realized we could do so much more than move data. We could analyze it, we could aggregate it. The middleware gives us the ability to surface insights like underwriting, appetite, carrier behavior, renewal, friction, all automatically. So the more data that's built up and using that middleware to then have a repository to analyze that information, incredible, incredible opportunities for the future. But it was really like opening a door and realizing, oh my God, there's a whole city behind it.

Yeah, well, and I think, you know, especially with tech, the stories you hear of people building these things, they often started as failures. Right. And. And maybe what you thought you were building at first ends up being something totally different, which is the success. But that would have never happened had the first thing not been kind of a failure, would you say? Did I. Did I describe it pretty accurately as how a periodics what it is today, maybe versus what you thought it was going to be at the beginning?

Yeah. So. No, you're exactly right, Andy. I mean, you know, we learned that obstacles are really the invention. If you just keep asking what if long enough, the problem eventually starts showing you solution. And as I mentioned, give me more problems. Let's talk about what are the things that we're struggling with. And I just became really passionate about trying to find them because the experiences we had is they just turned into better outcomes than we ever imagined. And that's the paradox of innovation, the struggle in design. Design, you know, when the outcome is often 10 times better than, than you were aiming for. So that, that one Async, you know, breakthrough, you know, didn't just fix our problem. It really became and built the foundation for, for everything a Periodics has become.

Yeah, you talk about, you know, you and I work together offline and, and you often talk about like the mirror effect. Right. And it's in your pitch decks, it's in a lot of your presentations. I feel like what you just described there is a little bit of that mirror effect, you know, for. With that said, you know, talk about the mirror effect a little bit and how maybe that's impact your business grow, you know, building a Periodics, it's something you often talk about.

Yeah. You know, a while back, you know, kind of digging in and kind of thinking through, you know, what this really means for the industry, really for our people and what we've done for them internally, I coined it the mirror effect, because the mirror effect is what I see now as the soul of a periodics. It's really what separates automation from intelligence. And at its core it means that our technology doesn't replace human judgment, it reflects it like, like a mirror does. Right. And so think of it like, you know, an orchestra, you know, learning from its conductor. Every motion, every cue, every rise and fall of the beat, you know, the system watches, listens and learns until it can mirror the rhythm, not, not just repeat the notes. Right. So, and that's the difference, you know, that, that to us is the mirror effect. It's, it's automation that remembers the way you work and then works the same way, but just a lot faster.

Yeah, that's, I think, what, what I would probably call, you know, learning by observation, not just instruction. And because again, with tech and coding and things like that, probably most people would think, well, it's just instruction tell to do something and it does it. But you're saying the software, this actually is observing what's happening and learning from the observation?

Yeah, I mean, it wasn't that long ago where vision models became available. So before it was just all about code and text, but the vision models really changed everything. So now it's not about code telling people what to do, it's about people showing code how it should feel to do it. Right. So I'll give you an example from inside. You know, Triforda, you know, for years, our account managers, they spent hours, sometimes days, you know, verifying policies, you know, after they were bound. And you have to do these things, you got to protect your E and O and potential for gaps in coverage. And so they download every PDF, every policy after is bound, compare them to the quotes. You got to verify that the policy that was written matches what was proposed and that there was no surprise gaps. And you got to highlight the discrepancies, you got to check coverages, and then you got to key everything back manually into the ams or you got to go talk to an underwriter about something you found that was missed and then start all over again and get the policy fixed. So that process, it's super critical, right? Especially for carriers without the carriers that we work with, without direct downloads. And so with the ENS market and more agencies writing non standard business, if you don't have that accuracy, you can't trust your system of record, you can't then go quote renewals Correctly, you can't build submissions that truly reflect your client's risk. So those account managers were doing incredibly valuable work, but it's all repetitive and mechanical and draining. So. And that's where the mirror effect comes in. So, you know, we train the automation to watch our best people, how they verified policies, the sequence that they use, the logic they applied, and even how they handled exceptions. And then we built those decisions into the platform, into a periodics. And so now a new policy arrives. The system mirrors the process. It reads the document, it verifies, you know, what's in the quote, matches what was bound, and then it hydrates the ams automatically, accurately and completely without any missing fields. So it's like watching your best person's judgment.

Yeah.

Multiplied across the entire team.

Yeah. It doesn't just copy. It's learning and observing to do it the correct way.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's learning those, those patterns of correctness. So it really, it reflects what, you know, experience looks like inside your organization and then scales it. So that's why I've always say, you know, this mirror effect, it is an automation. It's truly amplification. It amplifies intelligence of your people. So now when, when that policy verification runs, our account managers don't feel replaced, they feel reinforced.

Yeah.

And yeah, the system's doing the heavy lifting. So they can focus on the exceptions, they can focus on, you know, the relationships, the client conversations and those moments that really matter. They're not typing, they're thinking, they're advising. And, and they're thriving. And, and when they open, you know, the agency management system, everything's just right, everything matches, it kind of sings like, like.

Yeah.

Etc. Yeah.

Everything's in harmony. I think this has been a big conversation about AI, Right. Everybody just assumes AI is going to replace people. What you're saying is it enhances it. It, it's technology that is in rhythm and in sync with people, not necessarily replacing people.

Yeah, no, that's, that's the, that's the whole point of this. And that's what gives it for us emotional weight. You know, you walk through our office now and you don't see people fighting their systems anymore. You see, it's like you gotta go to other agencies cursing their CRM. They're like, oh my God, what's going on? This isn't working again. You know, but, you know, you don't see them fighting anymore. You see confidence, you see a new form of energy. I would say you see people who feel like, really Seen because the system finally understands them. Them, you know, as mere effect. It's, it's really, you know, it's, it's empathy and code and it's the orchestra remembering who taught it to play.

Yeah, I actually like what you just said there. You know, I think people, you know, we talk about AI having no emotion. It shows up seven days a week, 24 hours a day, does its job, but at the end of the day, what you're really getting at is it's kind of putting the human into the code, and that's what allows the mirror effect. You know, it's not a mirror effect is not a feature. It's a philosophy. And it's really about harmonizing the human with the technology, not just having the technology replace the human.

Yeah, no, you're exactly right. You know, technology should, should bend to people, not the other way around. And that's the philosophy that drives everything else we build. Because, you know, once you realize your systems can reflect your best people, you start to imagine a future where, you know, every agency can scale like that, and, and that's the world that we want to build. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think, I think that's important for people to hear. You know, with what you've built in a periodics, you're making agencies. Yeah, you're making them faster, but you are making them more efficient and more effective and smarter. And it doesn't mean you're going to be able to run an agency with a third of the people that you have today. It's not about, well, great, I've got AA now. I don't have to ever hire anybody. It's no, how are we going to use it to make your people better? Which, you know, up until this point, I think everything we've talked about here is more philosophy. Let's, let's get to the brass tacks. Let's talk numbers, because at the end of the day, I am sure if there's an executive, a sales leader listening in, they're saying, all right.

Right.

Cool, man. I love the concept, I love where you're coming from, but let's actually talk numbers. What kind of impact financially are you seeing right now with Aperionics and what you built and the effect it's having on agencies?

Yeah, no, this is, this is the fun part because, you know, we can measure it, and that's what makes this really, really powerful. So I'll walk you through a, an example. There's a real scenario that kind of opened our eyes just to how much motion translates in into margin, you know, working on a large prospect company that had been one of, with one of the, you know, Alphabet houses, big national brokerages for years. And their longtime agent was just retiring. You know, that happens. And the transition to the new agent, you know, created an opening for us. The client felt he wasn't getting that much response or maybe there wasn't the level experience that the new agent that was coming in at that other firm. And so our team got what you typically do. You get copies of all their existing policies, so we could remarket the account. Now for anyone who's done that work, you get a copy of the existing policy, you know what's coming next, right? It's the grind. You gotta either have your people pawn it off to somebody in the organization that can do all the extracting of the information manually. They got to analyze each policy, get the information into your system. They got to populate a court forms, they got to build submissions, then they got to go swivel chair over to the carrier portals, line up the proposals. All that is essential work, but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of time. It's tedious and it's detailed. It's kind of expensive. Inside organization, we actually track how long every step takes and what it costs. We call it the cost per transaction or CPT. So we've mapped the top 25 things that an account manager does and the top 10 or 15 things that a salesperson does. And we're able to see what the cost of going out to market from the time you talk to a prospect and getting the information in the system and then going and getting the quotes. And so on average, all that was costing us about $200 per prospect just to process the marketing and the proposal workflow. And that includes the hours to enter policy data, requ quotes, import the results, build the proposal so it can present it clearly and professionally by the producer.

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Yeah, you're asking the right questions, Andy. And the short answer is they love it. The long answer is the automation doesn't just make you efficient, it makes you predictable. And predictability, that's really the currency of valuation. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So traditional agencies, like I mentioned, we've been one of them in kind of our different seasons of our organization, but you know, operate around 25 to 30% EBITDA margins. You know, I would think private equity and venture capital think, you know, hey, you got to be at least at 30% EBITDA in order for us to even consider giving you a valuation and acquire you. And you know, they're, but they're labor heavy. You know, every point of efficiency is tied to a person, you know, hour. And that's why Most trade around 6 to 8 times earnings, you know, some maybe a little higher if they're in growth mode, but because buyers have to, you know, in the private equity firms, they have to price in volatility. But when you reduce opex by 20%, when your workflows are, are mirrored, measured and moving automatically, you really flatten that volatility. So your revenue becomes smoother, your cash flow becomes predictable. So suddenly you're not just a service shop anymore, you're a precision company.

Well, you know what? I think that, what I think about that, Rodney, and I think what I want people to hear, and I'm hoping I'm hearing it correctly, when people hear pe, sometimes it's about PE coming in. And, and what is the quickest way to reduce overhead, get rid of people? What we're really saying is. No, wait a second. With what you've built, we're speeding the path of the work being Done how it's synchronizing with humans. So it's not necessarily getting rid of the human overhead, it's just making things more efficient, which drives down overhead. And I hope every agency owner hears what you're saying. I want you to unpack that for the agency owners that are listening in and the investors that are trying to make a determination like what is the impact behind the numbers, what a periodics can do for an agency. That's it right there.

Yeah. No, it's never been about replacing humans, just amplifying their abilities. And, and again, I think about the account manager that wants to get to her daughter's recital at the end of the day, but because she's got some deadlines and renewals that have to be done, she's weighing whether or not she can make it to that event in her child's life. And to me that's part of the motivation. I mean I did spend, I'm guilty of it early in my career. Wife was a stay at home mom and she got to spend time time with the kids and she did a lot of the events. Unfortunately I missed quite a few of those. And yeah, a little bit regretful of that. But that's part of the power of the motivation that drives me to give people back their freedom and their time so that they can not miss out or they don't miss out on those life's moments that are so important because you never get those back.

Yeah.

But when I, when I think about, you know, the real the numbers, you know, for an agency and an agency owner too, because you know, there's both sides of this equation, right? I mean your people need to feel empowered, they need to feel like they're actually doing meaningful work. And again, I'll repeat it again, you know, working at the top of your license, that's what I think makes people feel like they can thrive in their organization, like doing their best work. But you know, simple terms on the numbers, like you know, just kind of getting into that, let's say you're an agency doing a million dollars a year in revenue at 30% EBIT. So that's 300,000 in profit. And if that business PE firm says all right, we're going to give you 10x out multiple, you're looking at a $3 million valuation, right? And then there'd probably be some earn out or some other things that would go on top of that if you stayed on with the agency. But now keep that same top line, same clients, same everything, same team, but reduce your operating expenses by 20% because you're using automation, your EBITDA margin jumps from 30 to 50, just say pretty easily, and your profit is now 500,000 instead of 300,000, that same 10x multiple, suddenly your valuation moves from 3 million to $5 million. Yeah. A $2 million increase in enterprise value purely from efficiency. That's pretty amazing.

Again, if I'm an agency owner right now, I can imagine them, if they've got their earbuds in, they're going to, they're turning that volume up, go. Wait, wait, what, what did you just say? Because efficiency, I think a lot of people, when they think of the word efficiency, they think savings, right. Saving money, whatever it might be. What you're saying is. No, this, this is a, an example where efficiency not only does save cost, it enhances your value.

Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. So investors see that kind of margins stability, that predictability, they often raise the multiple itself, you know, because lower risk deserves higher reward. I think everybody would agree with that. So the same agency could move from 10x multiple to 12 or even 15x. And now that 500,000 turns into 6 plus million in valuation. So that's the compounding magic of automation and empowering your people. You're not just saving time, you're multiplying worth.

Yeah. You know, you often talk about the idea of, of, you know, we've talked about people hours. I think a lot of agencies are very proud of the manual work that goes into what they do. They're proud of the people they have and all the, the, the, the hands on service work they do for their clients. I think a lot of agencies pride themselves on that. Well, as we move ahead, it's not just, just people hours, it's precision hours. Right. It's great. You've got the people putting in the time, but are they precise? Are they effective with that time they're putting in? Talk about that, that shift from people hours to precision hours.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, yeah. Every hour you reclaim becomes part of your, your, your story. We call it the valuation multiplier. Because, you know, automation creates lift in two ways. It increases margin and decreasing that perceived risk. So those are two levers every buyer pulls when determining worth. But when your cost serve drops 20%, your cash flow smooths, your human dependency compresses and your risk profile transforms. Not theory, math, of course, but getting into imagining a world where valuation is no longer about how many people you have, but of course how precise your operation runs. So where buyers don't ask, you know, how many CSRs are on staff, they ask how many processes are self correcting. You know, in that world efficiency isn't, you know, a back office metric. It's a market signal. It tells investors your business can scale without strain, that you can handle growth, you know, without, you know, having to, you know, hire necessarily equal proportion. But you've transcended the gravity of human bandwidth. You know, that's the world we're building. And that's why I say, you know, efficiency is the new equity.

That's a great one liner right there. That's it. I think the efficiency is the new equity. You know, I think about agencies and they're touting how proud they are of their people and their culture, which are still very important. But from a valuation perspective, them being able to tout the level of efficiency is going to be a very important moving forward.

Forward? Yeah. No, I mean it is, you know, it's where the markets are heading. You wouldn't see so much aggregation in agencies. And you know, what is the average age of insurance operators are well over, you know, 55 I think now. But you know, private equity, strategic buyers, even carriers, they're all chasing, you know, durable margin. And a durable margin only comes from intelligent systems that keep moving while people sleep. So that's the mirror at scale, you know, not just reflecting human performance, but reflecting financial discipline as well. Well, so what we're seeing is, you know, the, the periodics gives agencies a valuation story that really used to be impossible. You know, not necessarily that we're bigger, we're smarter and that's, you know, why we're worth more.

Yeah, I think that's, that's the message right there is, is what are you get, what are you doing as an agency to use automation and AI to make you more valuable and not just to your clients, but to the outside world who might see you as in a very, a very appealing investment opportunity. And you know, I think for most agency owners, let's be honest, there is a finish line at some point and they would like to go out on their terms and probably get a value that they believe they deserve. And that's where these agency owners that started their age building their agencies in the 90s, Rodney did not think AI was going to be a component of this, this and here we are. And AI is a massive component of increasing the value of your agencies. So I want make, I want to make sure people heard that because what you're talking about here isn't just teaching automation, it's teaching ownership and how to use AI and automation to that advantage to make your agency more valuable. Because in this case, as the system, you know, the AI improves, so does your team.

Yeah, no doubt about it. I mean, you know, no one knew AI was coming when it came. Right. Or what it could do. But I think, you know, I was pretty lucky, you know, making the decision early on to buy insurance agencies and to, you know, replace the legacy technology. And I was in the right place at the right time, making the right decisions for once, I guess, in my life. Right. So, you know, but yeah, everything kind of fell into place. And then because we had a platform that was, you know, that was open and, you know, API enabled and it wasn't waiting for someone else to give us APIs or didn't have to pay for them, I was able to, you know, have this R and D lab that we could experiment with. And when AI became available, we knew we had to jump on it. And we're in a position, unlike many of, you know, those in the industry, they're just now trying to have conversations to figure out, where should we start? You should have started quite a few years ago, honestly. But it's not too late to jump in and start to take advantage of this, because if you don't, I think you and I were talking offline a little bit. You know, there's a train rolling right behind you if you don't like. It's common.

You like it or not.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, as we get to the kind of the, the, the, the whole nine here of the, of the talk, of the conversation, let's talk about that pivotal moment. You know, everything up until this point, talking about how you built this tool to help your team internally at Triforda.

Yeah.

Obviously there was a moment when you decided, like, all right, maybe this is something, something other agencies could take advantage of. How did you arrive at that point where it wasn't only, hey, I want to build something for my agency, but maybe I have a solution that I can offer to other agencies in the industry.

Yeah, this is funny. You remind me of kind of that pivotal moment for us, you know, in this entire kind of transformation or this process. And, you know, we, we weren't. We weren't, you know, really thinking about this as something that we would make available to. To other agencies. You know, Periodics was, was. Wasn't designed to be a product. It was our internal engine that, that, you know, became the connective tissue inside of our agency. You know, we built everything, integrated everything, and, and it worked. It worked. Beautifully for us and it continues to get better every day. But we never planned to necessarily from the beginning to share it. But when the phone started ringing, you know, just, I was just thinking I would help people, you know, explain to them how they could get started in building their own agency management system. And you know that first podcast that you had me on and we started getting the calls from agencies across the country and people wanted demos. It's like, well I'm showing you a demo but it's all my data. I don't know if I want that recorded, you know, my customer information. So. But that's win realize is like hey, we, we hadn't, we, we just hadn't built it in a way that others could actually, you know, use it or, or we could, we could, you know, share that technology. So our tech stack, you know, it lived inside Salesforce and there was a lot of work to build that out for organization. You know, Salesforce is like this erector set and you can't just copy and paste it and hand your, your Salesforce Org to someone else. You know, the only way for another agency to access it would have been to, you know, actually join our organization. You know, in other words, they'd have to become part of Triforta, which that's a story now for another, another topic or another conversation. But you know, that didn't feel like, you know, necessarily the right path and we didn't want, you know, ownership of necessarily of their success. I thought, you know, I was kind of thinking about like, how can we democratize this technology and make it available to all, all other agencies. And as you know, I felt like, you know, when I look at what Elon Musk has done with you know, electric vehicles and EVs and you know, sharing the patents and now everybody's got charging stations and you know, helping to reduce carbon emissions around the world. It's like maybe I could, you know, have an impact on this, on this industry by, by democratizing this technology for, for my fellow, you know, insurance agents and operators.

So is that when you decided to build the portal then for other people?

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we realized, you know, if we wanted others to see the motion to feel it for themselves, we needed to give them a door, a way in. So that's when the portal became our digital gateway for the industry really a self service experience where agencies could use the same automations that had transformed our agency and not through onboarding into our company, but by onboarding into their own future and just going into our platform. So so you're right, it came later than most people would expect. Most tech startups, I've been to itc, I've been going for the last couple years and most tech startups, they've rushed to market with something that's not quite ready. They call it an mvp. The term is minimum viable product. I've never liked that term. I think it's terrible. Insurance minimum, it's not acceptable. Minimum is not acceptable in insurance. Right. And we don't have time for tools that, that kind of work, almost work, or becoming an unpaid, you know, tester while some tech vendor iterates and waiting for our feedback. And our people don't have time for that. They got work to do. So we weren't interested in being first. You know, as I, as everybody knows, I'm obsessed about perfection. I was obsessed about being ready. So we took our time, wanted to perfect it and because in our world, you know, reliability is credibility.

Yeah. And when I, and that, that thinking is very different probably from anybody familiar with, say, Silicon Valley. That's, that's a very, very different thinking. That is about the speed to market. And hence we had the conversation in January, we're recording on November 1st, and there was a lot of iteration, tinkering and, and changing going on because you wanted to make sure it came out right. And I think that's important is it's, you slowed down to build something that could actually scale, not. How fast can I get this to market?

Yeah, yeah, no, yeah. I mean speed without stability, it's, it's not progress, it's, it's chaotic. And we wanted to build, you know, a system, you know, this complete entire system, not just the point solution. We could have gone out with one of our modules, one of our solutions, but I wanted everything to sing and fit together. To me or for us, a foundation is really what was needed, not just another feature. And once the portal was ready, we've opened it. So not just to deliver software, but to deliver self sufficiency, you know, and that was, that was the day Periodic stopped being ours and started becoming a movement. So I say this all the time. Inside our company, we reflect our best work so others can build their best work. Periodics isn't about ownership, it's about illumination. And that's how our movement begins. That's how industries evolve. Not when one company wins. Like it could have been just all about Triforta, but when the entire, you know, ecosystem accelerates. That's, that's where the power is.

Well, you've talked about this before insurance won't fix itself. We will. And I think this is the moment where that line really means something. Am I right about that?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The portal was proof that, you know, we're not just chasing efficiency, we're. We're chasing freedom. You know, I talked about the account manager missing their daughter's recital, right? So the freedom of time, you know, focus in motion. Because when, you know, when motion aligns with meaning, you know, everything accelerates. You know, Andy, you know, I think about this all the time. Imagine a team member who wants to catch their child's baseball game or kids, you know, coach their kids basketball game. I mentioned when I was building insurance, I tried to make those moments, but, you know, too many, too many were missed in the, in, in the name of growth. You know, I was chasing ebitda, you know, chasing deadlines, chasing success. And you know, unfortunately, you know, too many of those moments slipped, slipped away. But, you know, I think about, so what if that same producer or their support team could meet, you know, every renewal deadline without being buried under those mundane tasks? What if, you know, technology handled that repetition so the people could handle what really matters in their lives. Lives and their business and the relationships they have with their customers. And that's what this portal represents. It's not just a tool, but it becomes permission. Permission to step away. Permission to breathe a little bit, to live a little bit without the guilt of falling behind. How many times do people lay awake at night saying, oh my God, did I get that done or not? I've had those moments.

Moments.

And that's the future we're building. You know, one, one on one, where automation, you know, gives time back to the people who've given this industry their lives.

Yeah, I am, I'm guilty of being the guy that lays, lays up at night asking myself, did I, did I complete every box on my to do list today? Even though the to do list is never meant to be finished, I am a guy who likes to finish the to do list and so I totally know how that feels. Well, let's, let's bring this on home, man. I think we've talked about a lot here, and I hope some agency owners that are tuning in understand the importance of where we are at as an industry. You've been in the business 25 plus.

Years, at least that. Yeah.

You've worked for a carrier, you've owned an agency, you've integrated into a Fortune 250. I mean, you've lived a lot of the problems we have in this Industry. So let's look ahead over the next, you know, two, three, five years. What does the future of execution look like for an agency, especially if they're running out of periodics?

Yeah, no, great, great question, Andy. Thanks. You know, I, I can, I have, I've seen every corner of this business, you know, and every corner, unfortunately has friction. You know, whether it be in operations, sales, marketing, you know, new business prospecting, service accounts, you name it. Binding, collecting payments, premiums, paying carriers, licensing, renewals. I mean, it's all over the place. You know, every step is, is a, is a handoff, and every handoff slows things down. So for 30 years I've been obsessed with finding ways to dry, you know, turn that drag into drive. So when I imagine the future, you know, two to five years out, I see, I see a world where, you know, all that motion has meaning again. Yeah. So, yeah, I think, I think that, that that's where I see the future where, where all that motion has meaning again. For sure.

Well, let's go there. I mean, give us an example. What would a, you know, if I'm an agency, I'm using a Periodics. What might, I don't know, a typical Tuesday morning look like for me?

Me? Yeah. Yeah. So just imagine an account manager comes in, it's Tuesday morning, they log into their portal, but that account manager, you know, doesn't run reports anymore. The system's already hydrated it overnight. I imagine every policy, every renewal, you know, every certificate request has been extracted, verified and reconciled while, you know, before they came into work. And that account manager starts their day not by typing but, but making decisions. You know, the dashboard shows where attention is needed. You know, what, what exceptions exist and which renewals have already been maybe pre modeled and presenting those and, you know, in intelligent ways to the client. And account manager clicks, you know, wants to see side by side comparisons. You know, the prior policy, the quoted renewal, the alternatives that were in the markets, that were shopped. And a few minutes later, the proposals assembled, you know, the court forms are ready, the emails are pre drafted, meanwhile their producers, you know, on a call with the prospect. And while they talk, the system's actually listening. You know, there's a lot of data in those phone calls. It's logging the conversations in the organization, in the CRM and the ams, and it's updating the opportunity, syncing it, you know, in real time to the ams and generating a submission file in the background. And I don't think we're too far away from that. I mean, that's, that's the rhythm of the future. The human speaks and the system moves for us. Yeah, and when you walk through that agency, you don't hear chaos anymore. You hear focus and you hear that motion.

Yeah. All hands on deck. You know, as we're recording this right now in Q4, I'm sure there are probably some account execs that just heard what you said and said, oh, it's like the picture of the couple at the end of the pharmaceutical commercial sitting in a bathtub in their backyard. It's like that. Oh, whatever he just said, I wish I had that. Because what you just said, honestly, is, look at most agencies, that is a completely different operating experience than what they're used to right now. It almost sounds peaceful, honestly.

Yeah, well, I mean, that bathtub moment's not going to happen overnight and it's going to take a, Take us a lot of work to get there. I know the one you're to trying talking about, but we won't, we won't do any marketing for that pharmaceutical company here. But yeah, I mean, you think about, you know, pieces is what happens when everything finally works together. So, you know, if we, if we build, you know, you know, automation layers for commercial lines and what we've done already, you know, on the commercial line side, extracting the policy data and hydrating systems and processing commissions and all that, but for us, that's just the beginning. Our roadmap takes that same intelligence into personal lines and employee benefits, the full Triforda triad. TRI stands for commercial employee benefits and personal lines. So we're using the same playbook that we've done for the commercial lines to eliminate the friction and restore the flow to those other lines as well. So whether it's quoting home and auto policies or reconciling a group benefits renewal, the principles are the same. Same. You have data extraction, you have hydration, and you have automation, and that creates the motion. And the beauty is the same infrastructure works everywhere. So it's just now about applying it to those adjacent areas of insurance.

Well, and I think that's. Again, I'm going to bring it back to why I think Periodics is going to have such a massive impact in the industry. It's not just about selling a product. You're actually trying to change the pattern of how this industry has done business.

Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, Periodics is, you know, it's isn't just solving for agencies, it's solving for the insurance distribution chain. You know, already in talks with several carriers Underwriters and channel partners, CRM developers, to see what this means for them. Because the same inefficiencies we fix in an agency, those data silos, the reconciliation delays, the manual double work, redundant entry, they exist everywhere from underwriting to claims to accounting. So we're building bridges across the whole ecosystem from quote to bind, from carrier to client, from data to dollars. So when you zoom out, that's the future of execution, really. Having total alignment, every player in the chain, so there's no more lost data, no more double entry, and hopefully no more waiting.

Well, it's almost like the industry's breathing again a little bit, because I think there's a lot of stress right now and anxiety, especially on the employee benefit side with renewals and requirements and late, you know, delays in getting the numbers and all that stuff. I feel like what you're building or what you've built is giving agencies a chance to breathe again.

Yeah, exactly. That's what we've always stood for at Tri Forta, you know, three pillars for us, of coverage, but forta from fortuity, meaning the favorable outcome born from what was once, you know, seemed accidental or an accidental occurrence. So, you know, we're taking the friction out of every one of those pillars, you know, commercial, personal, employee benefits. So the outcomes are no longer accidental, they become intentional. And the impact isn't just technical, it's human. Our teams feel lighter, our clients feel heard, and our data feels alive. And this is what I call the future of execution. Not technology for technology's sake, but technology that restores time, trust, and tempo to the people who make this business move.

Yeah, it's, you know, the goal of technology. Again, a lot of people have a fear about this. The goal is not fewer. It's freedom. It's. We're not here to have fewer people in the industry. We're actually trying to make the people freer to do what they do best.

Yeah, exactly, Andy. I mean, freedom is. Is truly the goal. The freedom to think, the freedom to focus and to create. When we say insurance won't fix itself, we will. I know that's a bold statement and, you know, might seem, you know, arrogant, but we're talking about restoring that freedom. And that's what, you know, that's what the portal that we've built, you know, makes possible. It becomes an ecosystem of intelligent execution where motion finally aligns with. With meaning. And. And every person in this business can work at the speed of thought. And that's. That's how. That's how, that's Our purpose.

That's awesome, man. Well, before we close, I'm going to give you a minute or two here to talk about, you know, when you created the idea in the first place, what you were really trying to do is bridge the gap between chaos and clarity. 30 and now looking back, what does that mean to you now?

Yeah, you know, this whole journey has been, yeah, been, been very kind of an awakening experience, you know, along the way. And, and what I've seen, you know, what weights beyond kind of the horizon of automation, I can tell you it's, it's not a world ruled by machine, machines at all. It's a, it's a world liberated by them. The future I foresee, or, you know, maybe I've seen it, I'm not sure, you know, maybe one that I've simply envisioned, you know, long enough to start building, but it's quieter, it's faster, it's astonishingly human. And in that world, people no longer wrestle with their systems. Their systems actually move with them. Them, their systems learn from them and protect the one thing that truly matters, the time that makes their lives worth living. And that's what this movement has always been about for, for us, not technology, for technology's sake, but, you know, possibility, the possibility that this industry can move again. Yeah, the bri, the bridge between chaos and clarity, you know, isn't built overnight. We know it's going to take, take, take some time. We are well on our way and it's built one intelligent decision at a time. So with every workflow is reimagined in every process. You know, we made it simpler. We've empowered and re. Empowered, you know, the operators in this business. We believe that, you know, this is that bridge. Not a product, not, not, not another portal, but invisible current beneath an industry that had really forgotten how swiftly it can move. So we exist so that, you know, every broker, underwriter, every team, you know, who, who build safety into society, you know, they, they, they're focused on, you know, preventing coverage gaps can once again do their work at the speed of thought.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's important. People here again, machines, what we're saying, it's not about replacing people, it's about replacing time. And it's giving back time to the people so they can, I'll say it again, work at the top of their license.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, you know, with the mere effect that that bridge doesn't just, you know, connect systems, it reflects us, it reflects our ethics, our precision, our purpose, and puts those values back into the Work we create. So what happens next? I mean, I. I think it's really up to, you know, up. Up to everybody, you know, up to me. It's up to. To other agencies out there, you know, listening to this, to the agency owners, the, you know, the operators, any innovators out there right now listening right now, the ones, you know, brave enough to take the next step. You know, I'll. I'll. I'll part with this, you know, build with courage, you know, automate, you know, with. With conscience. And always remember, you know, clarity is freedom and automation is motion.

Well, I think this is a good place to end, man. Rodney, it's been a pleasure to have you on. I know this is the second time again. You are our first guest we've had on twice, but I think I want to thank you for showing, you know, not just what's possible, but what's next. This isn't theory anymore. Anymore. It's here. And if you're an agency owner, and again, you're still contemplating your stance on AI, there is a train right behind you blowing its whistle. That is not slowing down anytime soon. So thank you again, man, for taking the time to be here.

Yeah, thanks, Andy, so much. Really appreciate it. You know, the work you're doing in the industry is. Is. Is impactful and remarkable, and it's. It's helped. Helped us immensely and can't thank you enough. It's. It's always great to spend time with you.

Yeah, no, you bet. I mean, for. For everybody tuning in if you're. Especially if you are an agency executive. I hope, I hope you took this episode to heart again. If you haven't had a chance to listen to our first conversation back in January, go do so. Don't be too proud of the manual labor you are putting into your agency right now. For most agencies, there's a lot of chaos, especially in Q4. But your goal should be able to bridge the gap between chaos and clarity. You just have to decide to cross that gap. And I hope everybody does. Be good. That's all we got for this episode of the Accelerate your insurance sales podcast. One of the most valuable things you can do to help us and other other new potential listeners find our show is for you to rate the show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a review, take a screenshot of your review and send it to me as a DM to my LinkedIn profile. I will send you a free copy of our LinkedIn Diamond Playbook, our proven four step strategy to grow your business on LinkedIn. So go right now, leave us a review, screenshot it, and send me a DM on LinkedIn. Also, please share this podcast with anyone you think would enjoy it. That's it for now.