Episode 258: The Untapped Goldmine at Rough Notes with Walter J. Gdowski

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromsol.

Greetings and welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast.

I. I'm not sure how to describe the intro to this podcast, so I'll just put it on the table.

Is a blessing. It is a privilege. It is an honor to have with us Mr. Walt Godowski, the CEO and owner of Rough Notes magazine company on the podcast. Walt, welcome.

Well, thank you. It's great to be here with you.

No, it's, it's, it's fantastic. And we recently had an opportunity to spend some time together and I was able to twist your arm to come onto the podcast because we learned some things in the time that we were together recently about all that Rough Notes has to offer. And we want to make sure that every independent insurance agent out there in America knows everything that Rough Notes has to offer. But before we get into that, Walt, give us a little bit of history on who Walt Godowski is in case people don't know, and the history of the Rough Notes Company. Because the Rough Notes Company not only is 146-year-old company that is influenced the independent insurance agency industry in a big, big way, but it continues to provide resources that, again, a lot of people don't know about. So, Walt, thank you for joining us. Who's Walt Godowski?

Well, I, I came with rough notes in 79, so that makes me. I've been with rough notes 40, 45 years.

I started out as a salesperson in India, New Jersey, moved to Indiana, vice president of sales and then became president. And the company was going downhill. And.

I, I was arguing with the shareholders all the time because the magazine was going out and it really looked like I'm going to say it. Crap. And so I, I redesigned the magazine and reintroduced it and all hell broke loose and they decided to sell and I bought the company and, and from there on, I got rid of the unions. Everything that I told them we should do, I did myself and we became profitable and Rough Notes became Rough Notes magazine again. The problem is, is that everybody in the industry knows me as Rough Notes magazine, but that's only 40% of our business. All are really, our businesses are Technical. And that's all the information that we have for the independent insurance agents. And not only do we sell it ourselves, but we sell it wholesale under the table to Zywave, to Vertafore, to many insurance companies that put their own name on it. And I, I just send me a royalty check, I'm fine with that. And.

We'Re not really a techie company, but yet we have servers for these different individuals and we just put the information up there, they take it off the server and they redo it into their own products. And that's where we make all our money. That's, that's, that's, that's our big business. Is our content under, under sended having it sold under the table wholesale. Now we also sell this directly, you know, to agents and that's the other part of our business. And that works out very well for us. But like I said, most don't really realize that they're using our product. If you're using Vertifore, you're using Rough Notes. If you use the XY Wave, you got Rough Notes on there automatically. So that, that's basically our, our product line.

History wise. Henry Martin founded the company 146 years ago. He was a, a Travelers Insurance agent. He sold the first Travelers Life policy here in, in Indiana. And the reason why he named it Rough Notes is that he had two locations and he rode a trolley to the locations and he wrote himself rough notes of what he wanted to talk to his agents about. So that's how Rough Notes came about. And the first, first one came out as insurance Rough Notes. And a couple months later he took the insurance off it. And it's been Rough Notes ever since. So that's, that's how the name became. And this was all the way back in 1878.

He then got into building manual systems in the 1800s, late 1800s.

We, we introduced the first insurance.

System. And that's where the words policy register and.

Comes in because he named all the, all the forms.

And this, this is Dr. Henry C. Martin.

Yes. And this is in the 1800s, yet about 1890s this was going on. And he introduced the first loosely forms. And then in the early 1900s he introduced the 1234 system. And that's what agents were using all the way up to the 1970s. And that's when the BAT systems came in. And after the BAT systems then became the computer systems. But all the way up until that time about seven, when I came with rough notes in 79, about 75% of all the insurance agents in America were on our manual system and they were going off into.

Either bad systems or.

Automated systems. Now a young man came to us and his, his name.

Got it.

I forget his name. But anyway came, came to us and said my father, I'm a insurance programmer or I'm a programmer. And I took my father's system, which is your manual system, and I automated it and I want you to sell it and I'll keep it up to date. And Rough Note said no. And he went out and sold it to Hartford Insurance Company for $7 million. So that put us out of business, out of selling forms. So there's a big mistake that we made. But I wasn't the owner then, so it wasn't a Polish mistake.

Well, obviously we the win and we learn, but now we know why, right?

Yes, yes. And oh, you know, you have to realize we're 146 years old. Cameras weren't developed yet. So back in the.

Late 1900s when the cameras were, were introduced, we were the first company that put a, a picture to a risk to sell it to an agent. So here's, here's a picture of a house that's on fire. This is what, how you sell fire insurance. We sold millions and millions and millions of those because we were the first ones to ever do that.

Wow.

We were the first ones to write a story about in 1906. We had a picture of our editor on, in a Cadillac that didn't have a steering wheel. It had the, you know, wheel in front or you know, the turn wheel in front. And we wrote about insurance that's going to be used and why insurance is going to be involved with automobiles. So you know, we're the first ones that do all that because of, you know, how long we've been in business.

Those are some things that we started and did. The first Accord forms, if you look at the first, I show a picture of the first Accord forms. They had a seven digit number. All our products have seven digit numbers. A court came to us and said we're going to standardize all the forms. Well, Rough Notes was printing thousands of different forms. Automobile cancellation, all that other kind of stuff like that. And Rough Notes said, no, we don't, we don't like this at all. But we'll, we'll give you the first Accord forms. And Accord Accord did standardize all the forms and knocked us out of business. So that took away all that from us. So, you know, here's stuff that, you know, we've done and got out of. And most people don't know that all, all that kind of products we had either developed and for whatever reason, not, not going on with it.

I was not aware of that myself. Thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, so it's, I, I, I do a, a story with a, with a video with. Now you know the rest of the story. So all that's with all our history.

Absolutely. So Dr. Henry C. Martin, who was out there conducting life insurance examinations, wrote a trolley back to his agen visits and he would write himself rough notes of what he wanted to talk to his agents about. And that's how we came up with the name Rough Notes. That is amazing. So you talked about so many things that I want to jump into very quickly. But one thing you haven't shared is some of your passions. And you are very, very passionate about a lot of things in life. But not only is golf something you advocate greatly, but flying some of your three Warbird World War II trainers to air shows after you got your pilot's license at age 52, is this something that is a passion or shall we say, obsession of yours? And I want to show everybody a picture. If you are watching this on our YouTube channel, check this out. If you're not, if you're listening to the audio version, whenever you can get to it, get over to our YouTube channel@unstoppableprofitproducer.com and look at this visual. Walt, I'm going to show the picture. Tell us a little bit about this picture right there. Can you see it, Walt?

Yes, that's my T28. And I'm standing in front of it at my hangar. And really what I started out with is a Stearman. I got a ride in a Stearman over Pearl Harbor. We were out. My wife got me a ride. We were out there for the big eye convention 20, 20 some years ago. And we got up early in the morning, drove all the way up on the north side of the island and did the Japanese flight run with a Stearman over Pearl Harbor. And I came home and I said to her, I'm gonna learn how to fly. And she said, you're nuts. So I went out and I found and bought a Stearman in Kentucky and had it flown here. Got a gentleman who taught me how to fly it and got my license in it, and they told me I was going to get tired of going slow. And they were right. And I bought a T6 and I had a, I have a T6. That's one step up. If you were in, in the service and learning how to fly, you started out with a Stearman. If you can fly a Steerman, they gave you a T6 because the landing gear comes up and it's more complicated. And from there you went on to fighters. Well, I went on from a T6 onto the T28. The T28 is you was used in Vietnam. You can't see on, on this picture, but it has 250 calibers and rockets on it. And this plane was a trainer, but it was used over down pilots to keep the enemy away. And I love this airplane and I fly this all the time, just about on the weekends and we go to air shows and that kind of kind of stuff. It has smoke on it, so we do smoke runs and we do funerals and that kind of stuff. So it's fun. I enjoy it.

So you still fly it to this day?

Yeah, I'm. This is going to be my, it's going to be my last year. Yeah.

Okay, fair enough. Well, fantastic. And, and thank you for sharing that and thank you for taking the initiative to pursue something that's so very important to you and just sharing the stories. I've heard some of the stories that you've told about your, your trips in the airplane. So. Yeah, you still have all three of them.

All three of them. And the one thing I didn't tell you about is when I bought that, I bought it out of Vancouver, I hired a guy to fly at home because I never, I never was in the front with it. The first time I got into a front in it out of South Dakota, we were flying it back to Indianapolis and the engine went and I had to put it down in a small field in South Carolina or South Dakota. And the guy in the back said, don't worry about it. We got a big field in front of us that's 5,000ft and you put it down, you need at least 4,000 to put this point going down. I'm in a front cockpit first time and I'm going to land this thing the first time. And I'm looking and I'm going, it's not 5,000ft. He's gone. I'm telling you, it's 5,000ft and I'm arguing with him. I'm putting the gear down, I'm going to land. It was 1500 of grass, a thousand, 2000 of concrete and 1500 of grass. And it was an old field and didn't have any hangers. It had warehouses and looked like hangers So I got it down, and we put a circus tent over it, and we put a new engine on it in two months. Wow. That was the first time I was in a front cockpit at that. Wow.

What a great story. And thank you.

And.

And, you know, that's another story of Walt's passionate pursuit. He's passionate about helping agents. It's evident in everything that they do of Rough Notes, and we are super, super grateful. I. I didn't know the depth of how you've helped us in my now 36 years as a licensed agent. Thank you for all you've done. And one other thing I want to add. I've been privileged to tour the Rough Notes facility in Carmel, Indiana. It's kind of a bit of a museum.

The history of Rough Notes is. Is present all around your headquarters.

That it is. And I. I laugh because, you know, I'm Polish, and I'm buying back my old stuff that agents are calling me and saying, you know, I got a desk that my grandfather had, and would you want to buy it? Or, you know, would you want it back? And it's got your logo on it, and I'm buying this stuff back because we don't have it, and I think it's great to have it here. So we have a desk that we sold in the 1800s, and we have a. A cabinet that we sold in the 1800s with our logos on it.

Yeah, that is fantastic. So if you ever get a chance and you have the opportunity to take that tour of the Rough Notes, if you will, museum of the insurance industry and its history. Absolutely. Take advantage of that. It's a great, great opportunity. And thank you for your willingness always to help us and to share with us the history of this great industry that we're privileged to be in. So I want to talk a little bit about two things because I want to make sure we get to this. I've got in my hand my most recent copy of the Rough Notes magazine. Jim Schubert and their agency, which is the Rough Notes cover agency. And people may not know about this as well. The Front cover, I believe, is the name of the podcast. It's just starting. We learned about that recently as well. So make sure that you jump onto the, quote, Front Cover podcast, which is gonna, if I'm not mistaken, Walt's gonna be profiling the COVID agents every month, Correct?

You got it.

Yeah. So, anyway, definitely jump. Join that podcast, learn more about the agencies, because success leaves clues. And so Jim Schubert and his team, they're on the COVID So you know, I always thought that, you know, Rough Notes, they've done so well and they got advertising the magazine and all of that. How do they do it? And then I was recently reminded, I'm sure I've heard it before, but sometimes it takes me more than once to hear it, that the majority of your revenue is not the magazine. You're just doing this to show some of the best agents in America. Thank you for that and thank you for sharing the history of when you converted it. And I may or may not get some pictures up in the follow up on this of what the magazine used to look like before Walt took control and made it what it is today. But the other things that Rough Notes helps with, helps the independent insurance agency channel with for use in their agencies, not only to better protect people, but to bring them the better value and to serve them at a higher level, whether it be risk management or everything else, is Rough Notes in its historical documents and everything else. So. Well, I just received this in the mail as the most recent updated version of Rough Notes Advantage Plus. Tell us a little bit about. Again, you touched on it just briefly, but what is the history of this and what does it bring to the table?

Well, believe, believe it or not, agents. Yeah, believe it or not, this, this has 13 products in it. And how, how we started with this was back with Jim Kellner applied called me and said, PS4 is kicking my butt. Do you have anything to help me with that? And we thought about it and we decided, okay, we put a personal lines and commercial line survey together and we hooked that to our PF&M, which is policy forms and manual analysis. So that's basically how we started with this product. We gave it to him and he put it on his product and they had it on their product for about four, about three years. And then we had developed ours and he came off of that and he just recommended my product to all his agents. So that's basically how we started. Now, PS4, I'm going to say this easily was stolen from us.

And it was taken out of coverage as applicable. But I was just becoming president at that time and didn't have the time to go after and do all that stuff. But anyway, we came out with our own product and we knocked them out because we have our own content. So what we did is we put these products together and this, this product is basically for the agency. Now we have a smaller product that is what we call a producer online that is just for the producer and it has six of these products. But this is for the agency because you have videos, you have.

Visit business building letters, and everything else an agency needs to survive and to ensure risk. The commercial line survey is basically, you know, if an agent is in Miami and does.

Marinas, we probably can't help him. But if you never insured a bar, we'll tell you everything you need to know about sharing a bar. So the thing is that if you're into a risk that you're not sure of, we can help you with it. And we back it with PF&M, which is policy forms and manual analysis. It tells you what ISO has, what ISO doesn't do, and it makes you much, much more understanding of that risk. That's, that's what we're doing. So coverage is applicable. Same thing. It's a short biops of what a risk is. What you should know about that risk. I was at a, a young agents conference and.

I was on a program that they were going to sell me insurance and I was supposed to be a concrete contractor and I had a CFO and so forth. And, and they, they studied all, all night and whatever. And in the morning they were going to sell me.

Insurance for my company. And I asked him what a rebar was, is that insured? Nobody knew what a rebar was. Well, if you read my coverage is applicable, you wouldn't know what a rebar was. And that you would be able to answer because you would have known. Well, that's the kind of thing that we produce and give to the agents so they understand those types of risks. So that's, you know, that, that, that's some of our products.

And I've got it, I've got it all right here in front of me. It's, it's vast, it's deep, it's historical, and it's got everything that you need if you're willing to jump in and spend some time, invest some time, better said, learning the depth of information that Walt and his team have put together for agents everywhere. And just to reiterate, there's some other companies out there that take this information on a wholesale basis and reproduce it under their own cover. But the secret is, and we don't want this to get out to public.

Right?

Public. Right, Walt?

So it's okay.

You can go in.

The back door and get it directly from, shall we say, the horse's mouth, directly from Rough Notes. And all you need to do to, just to make it easy for you, just Google Rough Notes Advantage Plus. It'll pop right up. It'll Take you to the portal and you can get started today. And we'll be putting some information around the reminders of this podcast on how you can get this information as well. But rough nodes, Advantage plus, it's a simple to use. It's a portal. You just log in and it's got everything right there for you and for your teams. So if you got somebody on your team who's just starting out and might be new to the industry, needs a place that they can learn everything they need to know on how to better protect your prospects, your clients, people in your communities and everything around that. It's got everything there. Commercial lines, risk evaluation systems, personal lines, risk evaluation systems, policy forms and manual analysis coverage is applicable. Property and Casualty Insurance by Gordis. What's Gordis, Walt?

That's a. An education book that's used in a lot of the insurance universities and Gordis was the publisher of that many years ago. He's passed away, but we've kept the book on and keep on updating it.

Yeah, well, thank you for doing that. That's fantastic. All about the insurance marketplace. You don't know a market to place a risk. It's got lots of information there to help you at your fingertips all the time. Insurance words and their meaning. Especially if you're newer to the industry and you come across the word. What does that mean? How does it apply to the particular situation? You mentioned this a few minutes ago. Business building letters, examples and samples of more than 300 professionally written correspondence, policies, account development and prospecting, relationship building, service surveys and so much more. It's all cut, paste, edit, customize and save it in your own word document files. That's all available to everybody in this particular portal. How to ensure training courses of all types. E Marketing for agencies. Of course, the magazine itself comes with that. And in action, you have a monthly newsletter. We talked about the front cover, podcast, user resources and then of course the 1,2 7 items available for producers only. So wow. Just an incredible set of resources available to agencies everywhere out there to use to help build your business and serve and better protect more people.

So yeah, and it's all integrated too. That's, that's the, that's the key. If you go into a certain word or whatever, it'll go to insurance words and their meetings, it'll be into PFM or whatever. So it's all integrated.

I've heard, I've heard you say that two, three, four times, but just for people who may not know what it means. PFM expand on this for me.

Policy forms and manual analysis.

Policy forms and manual analysis. Got it.

That came out in 1926 and it was based on, back, back then they had fire rating companies. And when ISO became ISO, we wrote about the policies and what was good and what was not included in the ISO.

That goes all the way back to 1926 and we're still doing it.

Today.

It works out very well for us. And there's two other products that I compete against. One is FCNS and the other is ermi. Those two are written by lawyers, we're written by average CPC use. And I don't mean this in any kind of way, but we dumb it down so you can understand it rather than lawyeries. So that's, that's the difference between our product and those two other products.

It really is a simple layperson's industry. I will respectfully say that's why I survived so long and so well. I, I never had a problem printing out a policy, laying it on the conference table and looking at page two, subsection B3 where it says refer to page eight, section A7 and figuring it out. Yeah, because that's right before I got to battle those lawyers and which after a period of time I never had a problem with that either and taking them on because I mean the agreements are the agreements. And thank you for simplifying it for all of us and making our lives better through your work at Rough Notes. Just great, great stuff. And, and that's again, I have to emphasize it's the huge value to everybody out there of the Advantage plus product. Again, I recommend just Google it. Rough Notes, Advantage plus, it'll pop right up and you can get in. Very, very budget friendly. It's less than $1,000 a year if I'm not mistaken. And $900. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, a great, great product. Well, what else, what else is going on in the industry? What are you seeing out there? And just other thoughts in general.

Well, the AI that's coming on strong, I can't get into it too much, but we have a couple companies who have took a look at our product and said, you know, let's make a deal here. The, the, we'll program it and we'll, we'll do this and that to it. So we got a couple people out there who are programming in AI and we saw some of the.

Some of the examples that they're coming up with and boy, I'm telling you, it's knocking my socks off what they can do with my stuff. And What AI is going to do, it's going to change the industry.

It's not going, it's going to help the agent more because you could say something and all this other stuff comes up right, right next to it, and you don't have to, you know, type it in or you don't have to do anything with it. You answer a question and then three other questions come up and it's automatic. It's really something else. So that, that's, that's, you know, that's a being in this industry and, and going all the way back to, you know, when Direct Bill is coming out, it's going to kill the agency system and all this other kind of stuff. That's never going to happen. And AI is not going to kill the industry either, but it's going to help the industry.

Well, and, and Peter Diamandis, I believe is the gentleman's name. And I learned this a couple of years ago, and this is for everybody. But before I, I go into that, quick story, I love the way you put that. AI does this and that.

And it will begin to change everything. Yeah, that's a cup about the, the size of it. Right. AI does this and that. But I learned a couple of years ago when AI hit the forefront and I heard a quick comment by a gentleman by the name of Peter, Peter Diamondis, who's the Silicon Valley business leader who said, ten years from now, there's going to be two kinds of businesses out there. There's going to be businesses that have embraced AI and are using it to its highest and best use, and then there's going to be businesses that are out of business.

So we want everybody that's here either listening or watching this, to be on the side where you are using it and you've embraced it and you're using it to its highest and best use and in our world, to better protect people, to better serve people, to help them grow in their own realms as well. So, super, super excited about that futuristic point and we'll just let it do what it does and we can't wait to help it evolved. And you can again, just take the information that Walden, his team provide via Advantage plus and you can start using, you know, GPT and everything else in that particular realm to help that flourish more specifically and on a custom basis to your customers and your prospects.

Yeah, this, as I understand.

This, this new product this company has today, I will probably be introduced in about three months and it'll be, it'll have its own name and everything else. But it'll be our content and I'm excited for them to, to come out with this. So it should work out and it, it'll be a great product for agents.

So is that something that's going to be available to agents as well, Walt?

Yes, it'll be out there for, for agents. It'll, it'll be their product that they're selling, but it'd be my content. And here we go again. We working with a group of people who are, who are programmers and know, know that and that that is not what we are. We're content and we'll keep producing that great content and they'll be able to have their, their, their product so that, that'll work out whether they'll give a product, whether they'll give us a product back and we'll go under our name. We haven't discussed that yet, but I'm, I'm looking for them to come out with this new product.

Well, you know, everything I've heard from you so far and nothing that I hear from you or about you surprises me one bit. But I think the 20,000 foot level is the history of Rough Notes and how Rough Notes has influenced the insurance industry and more specifically to Walt Godowski and Rough Notes, Walt has given everything within his being to our industry and it's made us all better. So Walt, again, thank you for that.

And thank you for the opportunity.

You, you just keep giving and keep giving to the AI story. That's what you've done. You just, you've given everything you've got to that particular effort which will ultimately be available to agents to make us all better. And whether it be Accord or any of the past stories that we just talked about, you, you just gave, you just gave and you didn't want anything in return. You didn't take anything in return, but you just keep giving and, and you know that's all of our goals, right? Be after our time is gone, after, you know, we've gone on to other things. We want it to continue from a perpetual standpoint to help impact and influence other people so. Well, thank you for sharing. As we wrap up today, anything else to add? What, what else? What, what didn't we get to.

I think, I think we covered just about everything. Not, not all the history, but enough to, so that you'd understand where we came from. Yeah.

Yeah. How we, how we got to where, where we're at right now?

Yeah, well, the Rough Notes magazine, The Rough Notes Company in Carmel, Indiana. 146 year old Rough Notes magazine company started by Dr. Henry C. Martin, who conducted life insurance exams. He wrote a trolley back to his agency after visits, and he would write himself rough notes of what he wanted to talk to his agents about. Didn't know that until I got up this morning and shared with me, Walt, so thank you for that. So what. What a great history. And as it's been said, we're just getting started, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

You and your team are just absolutely phenomenal. You're on it all the time. Just always thinking of ways to give back to the independent insurance agency world out there. And so, again, we couldn't be more grateful. So we can't wait to see what the future brings. And good luck on your. Your year of flying this year. And that's something that I know you greatly enjoy. So take lots of pictures and enjoy every moment this year as well.

Thank you. You take care and good luck.

All right, hang tight, everybody. We'll wrap this up. Mr. Walt Godowski, owner and CEO of the Roughness Company in Carmel, Indiana. And if you ever get the chance to be in the area.

You know, maybe reach out and.

Go ahead.

Walt, welcome to having a visit.

Yeah, so go ahead and reach out and make arrangements. I would recommend reach out in advance because I've been to the facility. You need to do that to make the appointment. But, you know, just the museum of the history of our industry, it's just absolutely breathtaking and phenomenal. I remember walking down the halls and seeing all the machines and I. I ran across some machines my day back in 1986 when I started in the industry. I remember some of those things. I had the carbon forms and I had white out. And, you know, I'd make a mistake on the typewriter. Remember what a typewriter is? Right?

Well, yes, I do.

And I go, oh, I made a mistake. I gotta get this over to escrow.

Trying to get the white out to dry.

Right, I agree, I agree.

So, anyway, just great, great time. So, Walt, thank you. And again, thank you to you and your team for just continuing to give. And everybody, thank you for joining us. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromso. I'm widely recognized as leading author, speaker, and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can learn more about us atunstoppable profit producer dot com. And again, if this is your first time on the podcast, please make sure you go to unstoppable profit podcast.com go up to the top. Make sure you click, click, subscribe. So you don't miss one valuable episode of everything that we have for you to help you grow your business, create wealth and have more freedom so you too can live life on your own terms. Or you'll learn things like the 146 year story of your industry. And that's what we bring. Just things that will help you not only become more knowledgeable, but help you become a better agent and a better contributor for your communities and sometimes your family. So thank you for being here. We're out there on all the channels, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, our YouTube channel, Amazon, and so much more. Thanks for joining us. And if you got great value out of this podcast, please share the link with somebody else that you know and care about so they too can experience the incredible value and the story of Rough Notes magazine and the story of Advantage plus, which is the big hidden gem that we uncovered on this podcast. Make sure you share that with everybody as well so they too can become better at what they do, serving and protecting their clients, their prospects and their communities. Mr. Walt Godowski, thanks again.

Thank you. Thank you.

All right. All right, everybody. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, be unstoppable, leave no regrets, and remember this. You got this. We believe in you. We'll see you on the next episode.

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