[00:00:00.000] – Mickey Serebnitski
All right. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Beyond Page One podcast. My name is Mickey. I’m your host today. I got Curtis here from KBD Insurance. Curtis from Slinging Drinks as a bartender back in the day, helping people understand the ins and outs of the insurance world. Even having your podcast, I want to welcome you. Excited to have you today.
[00:00:19.250] – Curtis Killen
Welcome. Happy to be here, sir. I appreciate the invitation. It’s cool how people can connect over LinkedIn now. For everyone else who’s listening, this is the first exchange. The exchange we had two minutes ago is the first time we’ve ever had a real exchange, so this should be an interesting podcast.
[00:00:34.660] – Mickey Serebnitski
Exactly. It’s fun. I do a lot of outreach on LinkedIn, find the people that I want to interview, and then just press the record button, and here we are.
[00:00:41.190] – Curtis Killen
People like to talk about themselves, so it usually goes pretty well.
[00:00:44.300] – Mickey Serebnitski
We’re all in business so we all love our egos.
[00:00:46.450] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, exactly.
[00:00:47.840] – Mickey Serebnitski
I want to know what sparked your interest in the financial world and the insurance world. What brought you to the path of becoming the President of the company?
[00:00:55.160] – Curtis Killen
What sparked me to get into finance? I’m the third generation. My grandfather started the company KBD Insurance. We do home car and business insurance for people who live in Ontario or Quebec. The company itself started in Montreal. I’m the third generation. Coming out of university, I went to Concordia University in Montreal. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My grades were pretty shit. I didn’t apply myself in school like school, to be honest. One day, I was raking the leaves with my father, and he was working. He didn’t even ask. We never really had the conversation. He didn’t even ask. He’s just, Okay, you’re going to start on Monday. This was like a Saturday. I was still living at home. Okay, you’re going to start on Monday. You’re going to start cold calling. You’re going to do this for two, or three months. While you’re studying to get your license because there’s this whole thing, you have to pass the licenses, do the exams, and all that stuff. We did that, and then I started in insurance. I had a pretty easy in. I was dealt a good deck of cards. Not going to say I wasn’t, but that’s how I got into the financial industry.
[00:01:56.330] – Curtis Killen
That’s awesome.
[00:01:56.970] – Mickey Serebnitski
How many years have you been with the company and when did graduate to that role as president?
[00:02:01.670] – Curtis Killen
I’ve been here for 11 years. I started in February 2013. That’s 11 years today or this month. Oh, congrats. Thank you. How did I get to become the president? My last name helps. My Dad, I will give him credit. Just to take a little tangent here. KBD Insurance, yes, it’s third generation. He worked with his father and his siblings. Actually, at one point in the early ’90s, he went off on his own, and he only did commercial insurance. He was a very good role model in the sense that he would come home late, he worked hard. He had to build his own business. He had to feed the kids. He had a nice little business, a nice little nimble, profitable business. But he worked his ass off. There were many times when I’d be in the car going to hockey or something, and he’d still be talking to clients at 6, or 7 p.m. That was always instilled in me, a good work ethic. No, suck it up. Do what you have to do and just get the job done.
[00:03:03.410] – Mickey Serebnitski
How long have you been president?
[00:03:04.760] – Curtis Killen
I’ve been president officially for four years, I think, or five years, something like that. He’s still part of the business, but he’s pretty, I’d say, 80% retired at this point. He’d like to be 100% retired, but he’s not for a couple of reasons. I guess when I became president, this was the first job I ever really took seriously. I worked hard. I take my craft seriously, and I want to grow a business. KBD Insurance, when I started, we were two employees. We’re 30 employees today. I’m trying to grow. I’d like to eventually become a national. I like to think I work hard, and I take it seriously. I want to grow a big business. It’s awesome.
[00:03:40.940] – Mickey Serebnitski
That’s what we’re all striving for, right?
[00:03:42.660] – Curtis Killen
Yeah. What about you? How did you get started in podcasting?
[00:03:45.020] – Mickey Serebnitski
So podcasting, I thought it was going to be a great way to meet like-minded individuals, entrepreneurs, and really from a sales perspective as well. I’ll be completely honest with you. My biggest goal was to understand what it is that you do to build rapport with you and try to understand if there are ways that we can help each other. So oftentimes in my industry, what it is that I do is we do web development, web design, and search engine optimization, primarily. Drive leads to make sure that they convert on your website. Everyone and their dog does this. You probably get 10 emails a day being like, Hey, you want SEO for $500 from India? The idea was, Okay, why don’t we try to leverage connections, build rapport with our potential client base, and see what we can do? Because if I show you my book of business, I show you that I’m good, you’re more likely to work with me than me just showing you a cold email or sending you a cold email.
[00:04:39.360] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, I would agree. That’s the same thing why I started my podcast. It was more on the marketing side of things because people buy from people that they know and trust. To cut through the noise of, I don’t have the budget to compete against a big Intact Insurance or Economical, Wauwanesa. I don’t have their budget. It’s always the same message. Call us and save 20% on insurance or whatever. A guy goes, 15 minutes could save you 15% on car insurance. But it’s always the same -50 % or more. Yeah, it’s always the same message. I knew I couldn’t go head to head with them, so we took the approach of, Okay, let’s try a podcast that’s a little bit more unique. It’s been working. Kudos to you. It’s a good tactic. It’s also enjoyable at the same time because you get to speak to people that are like-minded individuals.
[00:05:27.640] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, 100%. For, my background, I was in the restaurant and bartending business as well as growing up through university. Same as not caring about school. It pays great. Went to school. I went to school because it was the right thing to do when I graduated high school. I hated every moment of it. I like chasing girls and having a good time. That was fun.
[00:05:46.820] – Curtis Killen
That was the best part.
[00:05:48.770] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah. That was honestly the best part. It was like Wednesday nights was like $2 beer nights. It was like, Awesome. Sign me up.
[00:05:54.320] – Curtis Killen
For us, it was Thursday. And for the Concordia people out there, there was a bar. I don’t know if it’s still around, called Reggie’s. And we would go there with the boys every Thursday. Same thing, $2 or $1.50 beer or something. And my dad was always down in Florida, so we would always bring the party back to my place. We have a whole house. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of fun.
[00:06:17.850] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah. I have to keep this PG, though. But yeah, so from my perspective, it’s people who do business with people. If you build a relationship, and that’s what it is for me. I don’t want to do cold calling. I don’t want to sit there and cold call all day. I don’t want my team to be cold-calling, right? I’d rather go network, and meet people like my individuals. And if we like each other and we like each other’s business offerings, awesome. Let’s work together. If not, it doesn’t matter. It’s all good. So expertise is crucial in the field, and we all have leadership qualities, and there’s a human side to it. What do you need personal qualities and experiences that you have propelled you for?
[00:06:53.140] – Curtis Killen
I would say I’m very direct. Even if I don’t want to say something right away, Sometimes whenever you’re in a management role or a leadership role because you’re not used to it, Sometimes people are like, I want to tell this person something, but you’ll think it over in your head going, and you’ll convince, Because it’s most likely or there’s a good chance it might lead to conflict, and a lot of people will shy away from that. But what ends up happening is you’re eventually going to have to address that conflict anyway. It’s much better, or that’s my logic, at least, it’s much better to confront it immediately. Even if they think you’re being a little bit unreasonable, it’s still a better scenario than if, for example, you’re just going to let it brew that passive-aggressive type of stuff, and then a month or two months later, and then I explode or someone else explodes. I would say my traits are, I’m very direct. I like to think I have leadership qualities. My work ethic is good and people can see that. Sometimes businesses with a boss that’s just never there, the employees, I don’t think you’ll ever get top-end employees because the respect won’t be there.
[00:08:00.750] – Curtis Killen
They’re going to go, Why the hell would I work my ass off to make you all this money and you’re not even in the trenches with me? That’s a big thing that I try and do. For example, I won’t get into details, but I’m eating a bit of a shit sandwich right now. We had to make some changes internally in the business. I’m back doing day-to-day stuff, all the same stuff that the other brokers do. Employees see that. I think just being a real boss. I’m real with people. I’m People, I’ll say it like it is. People don’t have to walk on eggshells in our office. I like to think we have a pretty good culture. Sometimes they might think I’m a little bit on the strict side, but it’s better than thinking I’m a pushover to run a business, at least.
[00:08:43.950] – Mickey Serebnitski
No, 100%. I think that saying it comes from the top down, just being authentic in what it is that you’re doing. I remember I had a boss once.
[00:08:52.690] – Curtis Killen
Go ahead.
[00:08:53.760] – Mickey Serebnitski
No, I remember I had a boss once, and I was working door-to-door sales, and I came back to the office, but he was not there. Where is he? Golfing. Where is he? Golfing. What’s my motivation to keep working hard here? And there was no mentorship either. It’s obviously as a young adult and a young guy going into the sales world, when you do a good job, you want to be told you’re doing a good job, too. And there was nothing like that.
[00:09:15.140] – Curtis Killen
It’s all of it. It’s the mentorship, knowing that they’re in the trenches with.There was a clip on Elon Musk. Some people hate him, some people love him. I’m one of the people that loves him. I think he’s great. He works his ass off. He’s done a lot of good for humanity. One of the things, and other employees can attest to this when Tesla was really in the dumps, he was legit sleeping in the factory, and he was there with everyone else trying to get this to work. It rubbed me the wrong way, so I’m sure you’ve heard about this. I think the talks are done now, but the unions with Ford and all that stuff, the negotiations that we’re going through, slap the employees in the face. The CEO of Ford Motor Company for the negotiations was down in his villa in Mexico, negotiating over teams, his big multimillion-dollar mansion, negotiating with all the blue-collar workers. Dude, what are you doing? It’s so disrespectful. That guy there and he collects a big fat salary, dividends. It’s not right, You can work hard and all that stuff, but your employees are the people who run the company.
[00:10:15.800] – Curtis Killen
You need to treat them like that. Without your employees, you don’t have a company, and you should treat them like gold. Stand up for yourself when you need to stand up for yourself. The respect has to go both ways. You should respect them, and then, in turn, they’ll most likely respect you back. 100%, well said.
[00:10:29.320] – Mickey Serebnitski
I’m also an Elon fan, so I’m with you.
[00:10:31.150] – Curtis Killen
Oh, cool. Most business people are.
[00:10:33.390] – Mickey Serebnitski
When he bought X on Twitter and changed his name over, a lot of people were like, Oh, we’re against it, so to speak. But I thought it was a good idea.
[00:10:42.610] – Curtis Killen
But, dude, not only what he did, I understood what he’s doing on the free-speech side of things. But then also, too, if we’re going to focus, and I’ll forget the politics aside, let’s focus on the actual business side of it. He leaned out of the company. Say what you want, but the media attacked him. The rest of Silicon Valley said, Oh, shit. Twitter can, or X can operate for cutting 80% of its staff, and everything seems to be fine. What are we doing? Yeah. And all the other companies were like, Huh? And they all did it. They all followed. And everyone shits on Elon, but he was just the guy with the balls to do it first. And then Mark Zuckerberg did it, Google did it. You have all the Amazons doing it. And these are just the big companies. And you have all the tech companies. Right now, the name of the game is profitability. It’s not growth. You need that profitability. You need to have the margins. That’s just the way it is. Right on.
[00:11:27.390] – Mickey Serebnitski
That swings it into my next question, ensuring clients are on boards and what’s your retention model and making sure that you’re growing. Just give me a little bit of the ins and outs of your side.
[00:11:37.570] – Curtis Killen
We’re an offensive-minded insurance broker. We’re aggressive in terms of, I spend a lot of money on marketing, so we do get a lot of inbound leads, but we are aggressive in treating these inbound leads. We get a lot of inbound web leads. We’re aggressive with those as well. I taught myself SEO five years ago. I know it’s constantly changing and stuff, so you’re It’s never, Oh, here’s the recipe because it changes every month or every day. I put a lot of money and a lot of time into the website. I can’t code, but I quarterback the whole thing. I have a very good understanding of how the website works. In terms of just being offensive, we put a lot of money into marketing. Building a brand, making sure the website is tip top, and trying to hire people who are incentivized and competitive and who want to grow a business together. Because there are a lot of other insurance brokers, and there’s nothing wrong with this. It’s just if you want to be like this, that’s fine. They get to a certain point and enough, and that’s fine. But I’m not like that. I think that if you’re sitting on your laurels if you’re not growing, you’re dying as the saying goes.
[00:12:45.710] – Curtis Killen
Especially now in our space for insurance, there’s a lot of consolidation. Private equity has come in. They’re buying up a lot of insurance brokers. Insurance companies are behaving like private equity. They’re coming in buying insurance brokers. It’s getting more and more difficult to compete if you want to stay at that small size. You’re forced to grow if you want to have a future in the business.
[00:13:04.420] – Mickey Serebnitski
Is there a collaboration between the insurance broker side and the legal advisors and risk consultants? Do you work together?
[00:13:10.520] – Curtis Killen
Me, us personally, no. But we have we have a golf similar in the office. After this meeting-Are you hiring? We are hiring. I have a meeting, not so much as a consultant, but he’s an owner. He has 100 brokers that work underneath them, a real estate brokerage company. We’re having the meeting to get a brand, what would it be called? Join the brands together, sponsor each other, the official insurance company, or the official insurance broker of this. They’re right in our neck of the woods. A lot of our clients are based around Montreal. We have quite a few in Ottawa, too, but they have a lot of business in our area as well. It could be a nice synergy. I don’t know if that answers your question.
[00:13:51.090] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, it does. I’ve always wondered about the market in Montreal. I’m from Winnipeg, and primarily our company is built with English speaking in mind. Do you or your team speak French, and do your sales reps speak both French and English?
[00:14:04.470] – Curtis Killen
If you want to be in Quebec, you have to speak French. You have to speak French. To answer the question, the short answer is yes. Some people are fluent, some people are perfectly bilingual. When I say fluent, for example, for me, I’m fluent, I can speak, but a mother tongue French person is going to notice my accent when I speak to them. They’re going to know that my first language is English right away. But I can get by, I can understand, I can speak, I can go to French meetings. I’m not as good as I used to be because I don’t speak, and I don’t practice it as much. But the majority of our brokers here are perfectly bilingual. They can speak in English and they can speak in French. Because they’re cutting off, yes, we’re Anglo, so we can go after. There are 8 million people in Quebec. There are only 800,000 mother tongue English, so 10% 10% of the population is mother tongue English.There are a lot of insurance brokers you can call in Quebec, you’ll call it English. You cannot go outside of Montreal.
[00:14:54.470] – Curtis Killen
They don’t speak English, man. But there’s a market opportunity for us, so I can do all the branding and stuff. We do have a lot of English-speaking people here. But again, it’d be stupid to just not speak French because we’re cutting off a big part of the market.
[00:15:07.760] – Mickey Serebnitski
From the marketing perspective, you keep both in mind. You keep the French side in mind, too, in marketing. Yeah.
[00:15:12.340] – Curtis Killen
We market primarily to the Anglo-speaking community just because it’s easier. Trust me, when you’re doing advertising, it’s already difficult enough. Then if you want to do the French translation, number one, it’s a lot of work. Number two, it’s really difficult to translate properly. You can get 10 different translators, and they’re going to translate it 10 different ways. There are always little mistakes and stuff like that. I would say probably 80% of the marketing we do, which is mostly online, we do a bit of traditional. It’s mostly in English. Don’t tell the government that I said that, though.
[00:15:45.540] – Mickey Serebnitski
The provincial government. In my business, it’s all about relationships maintaining them, and building them. You have, I assume, a sales team with you as well. What are some core principles that you instill in the company for building and maintaining those relationships? What are some key things that you can share today that you do?
[00:16:00.600] – Curtis Killen
Be on the offense. Make sure you’re following up. Don’t be afraid to knock on doors. When you make a mistake, tell them right away. Don’t wait. We’ve had some brokers here that, I don’t know. I never understand why people do this. It’s like you’re going to have to give the bad news. Why wait a week? You’re going to be thinking about it in the back of your head, just get it over with. It’s like a bandaid. I had that this morning. I made a mistake. I made a big mistake. The premium was almost double what I said it was. They still ended up taking it. But I called them. I didn’t I don’t want to call them. But I owned it. I said, Look, I’m sorry. I don’t have an excuse. I made a mistake. I think people think that clients or prospects are going to behave in a certain way, but you’d be surprised When you tell them, Hey, dude, I made a mistake, and you’re upfront, as opposed to some greasy sales guys, they’ll be like, Oh, no, I never said that. Dude, just own it. The person on the other end of the line, unless they’re a complete asshole, they’ll be like, All right, cool.
[00:17:00.350] – Curtis Killen
They might not buy it, but at least you have to have integrity in sales, in anything. You need to have integrity. Back to the core principles, I’ll just say, be on the offense, have integrity, work hard, do your follow-ups, and have a good attitude. You could say that about any type of job position. We try and hire people that are… You know when you’re hiring a service person or a salesperson, so we try and find the personality traits, generally speaking, a little bit more extroverted. They’re not as afraid of rejection, all that stuff. But That’s the profile we’re looking for when building a sales team. What about you?
[00:17:34.240] – Mickey Serebnitski
What about me when building a sales team?
[00:17:36.880] – Curtis Killen
What are the personalities of your sales?
[00:17:38.710] – Mickey Serebnitski
It’s hard because we have products that range in such a different variety of cost. I have solutions that start at $500 a month and range to $50,000 a month. Those relationships that are paying $50,000 a month are expecting a lot more, and the outputs are a lot higher. But, honesty, the integrity side of it is huge for us. We are not perfect. There are mistakes when we edit websites, when we put together proposals, whether it’s pitching to a client like yourself, for example, and I forget that you speak French. That could be a huge issue, and you’re probably not going to go and work with me because of it.
[00:18:12.980] – Curtis Killen
A huge issue in Quebec. Not to me, but to a French-speaking person. What the hell is this?
[00:18:16.380] – Mickey Serebnitski
For me, scaling our sales team has been difficult because what we do is very technical sales. It’s not a car. You need to understand how websites work, and how Google algorithms work.
[00:18:32.220] – Curtis Killen
Are you selling, is it mostly SEO services or paid ads or the whole thing?
[00:18:36.680] – Mickey Serebnitski
Both. I shy away from social completely. I don’t do social.
[00:18:41.400] – Curtis Killen
Social is tough.
[00:18:42.780] – Mickey Serebnitski
But we’re experts on the technical and on-page and off-page side of the business on SEO. I have my writers, my developers, my link-building team, and everything in-house.
[00:18:51.190] – Curtis Killen
Do you do the link outreach? Yeah. You guys do it? Okay, cool.
[00:18:55.430] – Mickey Serebnitski
It’s almost like traditional PR where we find out where your competitors are linking, we reach out to them on your behalf, be like, Hey, this is Mickey from XYZ Company. I’m not from that company. There’s a little bit of spam that goes on in SEO for sure.
[00:19:07.430] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, for sure. But I just have to start to cut you off here. It was a little bit of a tangent. You probably have an SEO audience because you’re an SEO guy. What’s the deal right now with the TikTok SEO holiday? Okay, link building. I know right now, so they’re saying, I’m going to say they, it’s like the internet and Google, I think. It’s still important, but not as important as, It’s my understanding, not as important as what it was, say, two years ago. I’ve worked with link-building companies in the past. We don’t anymore because it’s funny, we could become clients after this. I was looking for a Canadian. Do you charge in CAD or USD? Okay, beautiful. Number one, the USD exchange was just absolutely hammering me. So it was just that got real. I’m paying for it. All the links that we kept getting, they were just shit. They were the domain authority on the other websites. I guess what I’m getting at is, number one, are links as important as they used to be for signals for Google in terms of ranking? Number two, do you just reach out to mostly Canadian websites?
[00:20:05.190] – Curtis Killen
How do you do it?
[00:20:06.030] – Mickey Serebnitski
To answer your first question, are links important? Short answer, yes. Google still to this day bases authority on really two main areas, and its age of domain. How long have you been around? I can’t do anything about it.
[00:20:19.550] – Curtis Killen
You’re alive for as long as you’re alive. Yeah, what’s it called? The Sandbox thing.
[00:20:23.430] – Mickey Serebnitski
And links. There’s something to be said that once websites start ranking and have a high enough authority, it’s a little bit and Google likes it. If you rank well for insurance terms in and around your location, Google’s already, and you have for, let’s say, three, four years, five years. It’s going to be a lot harder to take you down. You don’t have to focus on link-building as aggressively as somebody who’s trying to come up to the bottom of the page. They have to. You can now more focus on just providing high-quality content, making sure your website’s interlinked, and that Google understands it from a technical perspective so that when algorithm updates do come out, you benefit from it because they come out. But the core algorithm It’s happened before.
[00:21:00.510] – Curtis Killen
We got dinged on the last one. I still don’t know why. We went up. The last three, we went up. The search console went up a lot. The last one went down. I don’t know. No idea why.
[00:21:13.260] – Mickey Serebnitski
Sorry, what was your second question? Is link building important?
[00:21:16.020] – Curtis Killen
How do you get the links? I know it’s outreach, but the reason I have asked this question, in my experience, it’s essentially cold calling. It’s one out of 100 or two out of 100 and stuff like that. Then I’ll get the link guest post or link exchanges sometimes, which I’ve read is not probably shouldn’t be doing that, like an area. But it was so difficult. Then on top of that, I asked some of the big insurance companies. I asked them for links. They do not give links. They don’t give links. It’s not common in my industry. You have all the big companies like Intac, Desjardin, and Wabanesa. Number one, they have so much brand authority that they rank anyway. But number two, their link profile isn’t that impressive, but it’s not one person. They will not. It’s hard to penetrate.
[00:22:03.130] – Mickey Serebnitski
There’s a lot of different ways. There’s the white hat of SEO, there’s the black hat of SEO, and there’s the gray hat. I think it’s somewhere in the middle. For us, it’s a lot of the links that we build are a lot of traditional PR, and it requires a lot of labor. There’s some automation that we use to write the emails. Our goal is to get niche-relevant links and areas. If it’s somewhere in Montreal, like other Montreal business is mentioning you, things like that, right?
[00:22:28.830] – Curtis Killen
Yeah.
[00:22:30.980] – Mickey Serebnitski
There are so many tools out there to scrape your competitors to see where they are and see what is a default.
[00:22:38.110] – Curtis Killen
Do you guys use, the Ahrefs? Yeah.
[00:22:40.590] – Mickey Serebnitski
It’s Ahrefs that you’re screaming from for content, surf for SEO. There are tons of tools out there. When we first started the company, this was probably about 10 years ago, Jacob. It’s funny because he hired SEO agencies to sell fire pits. That’s how it all started. It’s good. He started selling fire pits and doing that. Then he was like, Oh, I can do this better. Then start an SEO agency. A lot of it was overseas work. Or you can buy links. You can go to Google right now and type in buy high authority links, and you can buy them. You got to be very careful because if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can screw up your website royally, right?
[00:23:17.710] – Curtis Killen
Yeah. They get a manual action from Google. That would be bad. Yeah, exactly.
[00:23:21.080] – Mickey Serebnitski
I don’t want to give away too many of the secrets of how we do it, but a lot of it is internal. We’ve been around in the industry, so we know a lot of people in the SEO world that if we do need a high authority link, we can get one. You can go and you can get a link from Forbes if you want. You’re paying out the ask for it, right? You can get mentioned in Forbes.
[00:23:39.410] – Curtis Killen
But it’s just the last point. And I was reading, that it was the link profile and the DA, it’s not a perfect metric of the quality of a website, right? It has to be relevant to blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. But so the links, because most of the link builders that we worked with in the past, they don’t know that I have Hrefs and I’m looking at to see because they’re, Oh, yeah, you got all these links. And I’m looking at the link profiles. And I’m just like when you go visit the website, I’m like, It’s like a spammy website with a DA of 50. So it’s like I was reading somewhere that they’ll have, Is it link farms? It’s basically like they’ll just make a bunch of websites, blog stuff, and then send links to that. It’s like lighting money on fire. It does nothing for my website.
[00:24:18.420] – Mickey Serebnitski
It’s very common. For local businesses, honestly, my biggest suggestion is to focus on citations, do a quarterly press release, and get syndicated press releases out. Curtis is 10 plus years in the business, father retired, whatever. It can be whatever it is that you want to talk about. Just getting that link back to your homepage. The thing that people don’t realize is that when building links, what are the anchors? What pages are they going to? Where’s the link which is being passed down to? Because people think, let’s just build links with an anchor text to our brand name. That’s not it. That’s not helping.
[00:25:27.440] – Curtis Killen
Okay. Let’s say, for example, there’s a newspaper website, a traditional newspaper company. It’s called the Gazet Montreal. That’s the big one. I reach out to the Gazette. Hey, cool. Can you guys write an article about us? It’s a press release. They’re going to send a link to our website. They did that. But they specifically say on the article and included in the URL, Hey, this is paid. Like, Curtis paid to have this. Does that help? It still does.
[00:25:53.710] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yes. In short, yes. I think it does. Cool. It’s still a link. It’s still a link. But you do follow the link, it helps. Okay, cool. Thanks for your attention. Yeah, it’s all good. That’s part of it. I had a question here about where do you see the future of demand or pay-as-you-go insurance models.
[00:26:11.740] – Curtis Killen
It’s not going to work. No, because How insurance companies make money is on the renewals. It’s basically, I can’t remember the word. What the hell is the word? Recurring revenue. It’s like annual recurring revenue, all that stuff. It’s very difficult to build an ARR model on pay-as-you-go insurance. Typically speaking, the clients are not of the same caliber. It’s not a high caliber of clients. It’s usually just a nuisance. If they built a full tech platform that could do that, maybe. But then the platform could be really good. It could be really easy to get insurance. How the hell are you going to handle the claims? The claims, the logistics for dealing with the actual claims are way more complex than buying an insurance policy or servicing an insurance policy. The claims are where it starts to explode. Companies like Amazon have tried to get insurance. Companies like Tesla have tried to get insurance. They have all this data. They keep coming in and they just leave because they’re like, Yes, getting the clients, they have all this data, they can get all the clients.
[00:27:09.860] – Curtis Killen
Dealing with the claims after, they haven’t figured it out. My assumption is the fact, that let’s just let them do that. Let’s pull out. That’s my honest assumption. Now, what I will say, though, is AI for home and car insurance, especially for the simple 21-year-old kid who just wants the bare minimum to drive. I don’t see why AI can’t do that. Here’s the thing. A lot of insurance brokers, there’s a lot of red tape in the industry, and it doesn’t benefit the consumer. They’ll tell you it benefits the consumer. It does not benefit the consumer. It just results in higher premiums, and we make more money off your backs. When AI comes in, you’ll see the broker network will be up in arms, but it will eventually happen. Why do you have to speak to someone like me to buy car insurance It’s your policy. You shouldn’t have to.
[00:28:02.430] – Mickey Serebnitski
Wasting my time and your time.
[00:28:03.300] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, I don’t want to have to send you five things to sign and you have to do this and that. A broker is going to go, Oh, you don’t know if you’re properly covered. Dude, it’s a car. They’re all the same, literally. For business insurance, a little different. Especially if you have 50 employees, revenue, and US sales, are completely different. You need to have a commercial insurance broker with the expertise. That’s different. But I’m talking about the basic transactions, the basic policies that fit into that little box. I don’t see why AI won’t do it. There will be a company to come out and do it. It’ll take a while, take longer than it should just because of the red tape, but it will.
[00:28:38.070] – Mickey Serebnitski
Is there anything that you’re doing internally to speed up the process for those smaller claims or those smaller insurance?
[00:28:44.410] – Curtis Killen
Sorry. No, because we’re at the mercy of the insurance companies. I’m a broker. I take a cut of whatever the policy is, and there’s no point in me trying to build anything because if they could snap their fingers and change something, I’m at the mercy of whatever they do. The integration with the insurance companies, I’m at the mercy. Brokers have very, It’s a high-margin business. I run brokers, you’ll run at anywhere from a 30 to a 50% EBITDA margin. It profitably is a 50% EBITDA margin. That’s insane. It shows that you would only get that in a highly regulated market. It’s almost like regulatory capture, almost. I don’t like it. I’m a broker, and I’m saying this, but it is what it is. There’s so much red tape in Canada for home and car insurance.
[00:29:31.130] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, it’s interesting. In Winnipeg, we have the public side, MPI, and Manitoba Public Insurance. How is it in Ontario and Quebec?
[00:29:38.520] – Curtis Killen
Okay, so Quebec is actually, we’re quite a socialist province. Actually, for home and car insurance, we are a free market in comparison to the rest of Canada. And surprise, we have the least expensive car insurance and home insurance in all of Canada. Surprise. Just because there’s less regulation and we don’t have to go through all these hoops and valleys. Ontario, it’s quite nice. It’s very It’s very simple to issue policies, make changes. Very simple. Not a lot of manual data entry. In Ontario, man, it’s the amount of work, and manual data entry you have to do to issue a policy is ridiculous. It makes no sense. They’re stuck in like 1990.
[00:30:20.240] – Mickey Serebnitski
Interesting.
[00:30:21.460] – Curtis Killen
Yeah. It’s frustrating. I digress.
[00:30:24.130] – Mickey Serebnitski
You mentioned that if AI and tech come to how I want to word this. Is there insurance tech that you’re using or that is benefiting you and expediting your management side of business?
[00:30:38.380] – Curtis Killen
Yes, but that’s another monopoly. I can explain that if you all make it quick.
[00:30:42.630] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, no, please.
[00:30:44.110] – Curtis Killen
You have the insurance companies, the insurance brokers, and in the middle, there’s this company called Applied. Google has a big stake in Applied. Applied is basically, it’s the integration between the insurance carriers and the broker. Because I input the data it has to talk to of the insurance companies to spit out a price. That’ll talk to them. But it’s only one company that dominates the whole market. They fleece everybody, go check out their margins. To answer the question, what are they doing to advance technology? Is it moving as fast as it should? No, not even close. But for example, if you go on our website, you can get online quotes. We built out the front end. The back-end, though, again, is owned by that software and is provided by Applied. Because the insurance companies and I get their point, too, don’t want, especially now with data, four or five big insurance companies that suffered cyber attacks. They were shut down for two weeks. They’re very careful about who they work with. For a company to come in and say, Hey, I want to integrate with your servers, they’re going to be like, Whoa, buddy, I don’t even know who you are.
[00:31:51.350] – Curtis Killen
It’s just they’re comfortable with the application. The integration is already built. They know it’s secure. They work with them. I do understand that point. But for brokers, it’s very expensive to purchase the CRM. There are ways where you could do online quotes and stuff like that. But in terms of other fancy stuff, honestly, the only way to build something in insurance in Canada, and the US is pretty regulated, too, surprisingly, there’s a lot of red tape as well. The only way to, if you want to get a full tech, you’d have to start an insurance company yourself, and you would need millions and millions of dollars to start that. It would take years to hop through all the regulatory burden. That’s why the margins are so high because it’s next to impossible to come in. It’s common in Canada. There’s a lot of our banking system, groceries, telecom, and life insurance are like this. Our country has gotten to a point where we penalize entrepreneurship, and they say it’s for the protection of the consumer. I’m not saying there shouldn’t be any regulation. That’s not what I’m saying. However, there is a possibility of overregulation.
[00:32:59.130] – Curtis Killen
I think many sectors in Canada are like that to the detriment of the consumer.
[00:33:04.070] – Mickey Serebnitski
Then when you look into the States, on the insurance side, I’m sure you’ve studied it a little bit. Is it very different and a lot more advanced, or is it still red paper?
[00:33:15.800] – Curtis Killen
No, it’s very similar to here. It’s the same thing. It’s very archaic, and it’s the same as Canada. It’s a state-by-state legislation on the rules for the insurance. You have to get the permits per state. It’s the same thing in Canada. I can’t just go tomorrow pick up and go sell insurance in BC, for example. I have to pass the exams. I have to get the permits. The people that work at these offices, their governments, it takes you a long time to get that stuff done. Anytime there’s permitting, it was Canada, it was always a pain in the ass, but since COVID, I find it’s never been this tough. And this is consistent across Canada. It’s ridiculous to try and get a permit. And most of these people, they work from home, and there’s just no accountability, and no one’s doing anything about it. And we just keep falling further and further behind in the standard of living versus the US.
[00:34:07.010] – Mickey Serebnitski
Is there a country that you can think of it, does it better? Britain.
[00:34:10.890] – Curtis Killen
Britain? Yeah. In England. So in England, what I’m rambling on about this stuff. No, this is interesting to me and to our listeners.
[00:34:18.980] – Mickey Serebnitski
I’m sure they’re interested.
[00:34:19.990] – Curtis Killen
In England, so let’s take car insurance. Do you know the aggregators here? Do you know the lowest rates? Have you heard of the lowest rates? Or rates. Ca. It’s an SEO company. They’re an SEO company. Then you come in, you put your data, you get a quote, and they sell the quotes to brokers. They’re called aggregators. The same thing, and I’ve worked with them, they’re a great, sharp company, I regard them very highly. For in the UK, If you go to one of these aggregators you go in, it’s not a broker, it’s not an insurance company. You just put in all your information, and they give you the best price for the market. Now, in the UK, because they don’t have as much red tape, every single year, for car insurance, Number one, they store your data. If your car hasn’t changed, your license hasn’t changed, you don’t have any tickets, you don’t have any claims, same situation, they’ll say, Hey, you want a quote? All you do is, Yeah, sure. You click yes. Hey, here’s your quote. Do you want to buy it?
[00:35:14.860] – Curtis Killen
Yes. You got a new policy. Like that. You don’t have to get all your information, call the insurance companies, tell them all your tickets, tell them this. They store it. For whatever reason, all this goddamn regulation here, now you can’t start the data. Consumer protection. All that shit. They pay. They do not pay high for the car insurance. This is to the benefit of the consumer. Consumers are winning. Whenever they say here, No, we’re protecting the consumer. It’s like the CRTC telling us, We’re here to protect you. Why do we pay the highest cell phone bills in the world? You know what I mean?
[00:35:50.090] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, no kidding. That’s every corner in Canada. That’s my rent. Any resources podcasts or books that you listen to personally that have helped you? Insurance and outside of insurance, just in personal growth, too.
[00:36:01.560] – Curtis Killen
I don’t listen to insurance. Insurance is boring, so I don’t listen. But there are a couple of podcasts. I’m a big podcast guy. I love podcasts, guys. I love podcasts. The All In podcast. Do you listen to that?
[00:36:11.320] – Mickey Serebnitski
I don’t listen to All In, no.
[00:36:12.400] – Curtis Killen
Dude, it’s like a top. It’s the number one podcast in tech and business. Dude, it’s politics. It’s a great podcast. It’s four dudes, Chamath Palhaputia, David Sacks, David Friedberg, and Jason, I forget his last name. But there are four VC guys from Palo Alto, the Bay Area. Great. I highly suggest you and the listeners to check out that podcast. There’s another one which is Canadian macroeconomic based called The Looney Hour. That’s a cool one. They talk about the economy. I would say it’s more real estate Focus, Patrick Bet David, PPD podcast, and then the occasional Joe Rogan. I’ll listen to a couple of Tucker Carlson here and there and all that stuff. I was discussing this the other day. It’s cool to see independent media, the rise of independent media, and all the legacy media. They’re freaking out because they don’t know what to do. I think that’s why they’re coming in to try and regulate it and stop the other stuff. People are like, No, we like our independent media sources now. They shot themselves in the foot. I don’t know anyone our age, my friends, that listen to CBC.
[00:37:13.660] – Curtis Killen
Do you? No. We don’t listen to CBC.
[00:37:17.020] – Mickey Serebnitski
No.
[00:37:17.730] – Curtis Killen
They’re going to be gone.
[00:37:18.620] – Mickey Serebnitski
I don’t pay for cable.
[00:37:19.930] – Curtis Killen
Same. All the people, they’re dying of the baby boom. They’re getting older. They’re going to die in the next 20 years. They’re not going to be around. CBC does not have any viewership at our age, and they know that. I think they’re freaking out, and that’s why they’re trying to lobby and push legislators to be, Hey, they’re trying to stop it. But I don’t think this is a war that they can win.
[00:37:36.920] – Mickey Serebnitski
I think it’s too far gone. It’s like stopping social media. We’re past it.
[00:37:40.990] – Curtis Killen
Yes. It’s far gone. You’re not going to thank God that build-in passed there. But imagine going on YouTube and the CRTC is regulating what’s on YouTube. I’ll just buy a VPN. Yeah. Like, legit. I haven’t got a VPN yet. This pissed me off the other day. On Spotify, I pay for a Spotify subscription. They started putting in ads now. They’re in French, so I know it’s the provincial ads. I’m like, What the hell is this? They’re supposed to be advertisement-free unless the ads come straight from the actual podcaster themselves. No, there are Canadian, Quebec-specific ads now on my Spotify, so I might get a VPN just on my Spotify. Just out of principle. Hey, get out of here, man.
[00:38:22.100] – Mickey Serebnitski
I’m paying for a premium version. Yes.
[00:38:27.670] – Mickey Serebnitski
The crazy world that we live in. I could go down a tangent with social media and government regulations and all that. I’m not going to dive down that rabbit hole here for two hours.
[00:38:36.270] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, it’s an interesting topic, but just back to the first point. I love following the story. I think it’s interesting to see. I think when you allow the market to take its course and the market is clearly saying, Hey, people want to listen to independent media sources, independent minds, outside of the legacy media narrative, it’s happening. They take us for foolish. We’re sick and tired of being told that, Oh, that podcast or this or that is that’s misinformation. We’re not that dumb. I think a lot of people are waking up. This isn’t just in Canada, but it’s worse in Canada than in other places. But this is happening in Europe. The market is showing, is giving signals that, No, the people are trusting independent media sources over legacy media. That’s what’s happening. It’s nice to see.
[00:39:26.690] – Mickey Serebnitski
It is, but it’s also dangerous because where is the truth among. That’s another very difficult thing to do.
[00:39:32.230] – Curtis Killen
You’re right.
[00:39:32.660] – Mickey Serebnitski
I find even with current events that are going on in the world, what is the truth? You’re right.
[00:39:39.210] – Curtis Killen
Yeah, you’re right. Number one, I think you have to be an independent thinker because if you just go to one source every time, it will always be through a specific lens. A conservative person will give the news through a conservative lens, or a liberal person will give the news through a liberal lens. That’s normal. It’s fine. But you’re right. You have to draw your conclusions, to a couple of sources, and go, Okay. Because if you listen to the same news event on CNN and then Fox, am I watching this? Is this the same event?
[00:40:07.650] – Mickey Serebnitski
I think people, as our generation, come about our attention span. It’s like this, right? To George, whatever. So we don’t want to sit down and read an article. We don’t want to listen to the history of something. We have some Hawk girl or some dude telling me what is going on. I’m like, Oh, yeah, okay. Just like a robot. Yeah, okay. That’s what’s happening. I’m going to go and preach it on my Instagram. Then all of a sudden, I’m some woke, whatever.
[00:40:32.230] – Curtis Killen
Wild world. All of a sudden, you’re part of the woke brigade.
[00:40:35.070] – Mickey Serebnitski
Yeah, exactly. With that being said, what advice would you give young professionals who are interested in pursuing a career in the insurance industry?
[00:40:41.580] – Curtis Killen
I would say this about insurance. The nice thing is, and No offense to the old guard, they’re retiring. Just like many other industries, baby boomers, they’re older, and they’re getting out of the insurance industry. There is a lot of opportunity in insurance right now. If you’re sharp, you’re sales-minded, and you to make a lot of money, it’s an industry to get into. If you can develop expertise in commercial insurance, there is an expertise shortage. I wouldn’t say labor shortage, but there is an expertise shortage in commercial insurance right now. It will take you probably five years to get it set. But because there’s such a low supply of these people, you’ll make a lot of money. The industry needs people who are experienced, and it’s a great time to be getting into insurance. This is across Canada. I’m sure it’s the same thing in the US, but there’s a big expertise shortage right now.
[00:41:34.710] – Mickey Serebnitski
Awesome. If you’re a motivated young individual, give Curtis a call. You’ll hire, you’re high.
[00:41:39.200] – Curtis Killen
You should shoot me your CV. I’ve gotten CVs off many LinkedIn posts and stuff, so hopefully- That’s awesome. We’ll get another one. That’s awesome.
[00:41:45.080] – Mickey Serebnitski
Lastly, just to wrap things up, what legacy do you hope to leave with KBD insurance and just the insurance industry as a whole?
[00:41:52.430] – Curtis Killen
I was thinking about this the other day. That’s a great question. It’s not, yes, I want to have a big company, but It’s not to just be as I’ve gotten older. Not that I’m old. I’m only 35. The money is nice, but it’s not everything. I would want to get back to the community. For example, there’s this Parks program. It’s like I grew up in a day camp in Montreal. Last time I checked, I don’t think it’s doing too well. But it had a really big impact all my life in a good way. Just get back to the community, and help kids out. If I have some money, it’s very nice to be giving to society and stuff like that. It would be to give back to the community. I’m not just saying that to be tacky, and give back to the community, At what point is money, it’s not going to make you happy? Whether you have 30 million or a billion, your life is going to be the same. It’s going to be the same. What type of legacy do you leave? It’s not just going to be by making the most money and having the most amount of employees.
the [00:42:51.830] – Curtis Killen
It’s about giving back to society. I want to get to a point in the company where I can give back to society and feel good about it. It’s awesome.
[00:43:00.050] – Mickey Serebnitski
It’s awesome. I love that. My dad always said this to me, They’re not going to bury you with all of it. He’s talking about the money, right? Yeah. It’s live your life and give generously. Yeah.
[00:43:10.650] – Curtis Killen
It’s just if you can afford to give it, do it, you’ll feel good about it, and you’ll just help out society. I think right now, I think I feel like this a little bit more just because there’s a dark cloud over Canada right now. I think a lot of people feel that way. Not to get too political at all. You want to help people. The cost of living is very expensive. Everything’s going up. People are frustrated and upset. We’re going to get out of it. I’m confident we’ll get out of it. I hope we’ll get out of it sooner rather than later. I think we’re a resilient population, resilient people. Sometimes, I think, just pack up and leave and go to Florida. But then the other side of me is, No, man, you grew up here. You’re Canadian. Let’s fight. That’s good. We’re going to get through this.
[00:43:54.830] – Mickey Serebnitski
Man, I know so many people that have been running away to Mexico. Really? Mexico? A lot of people, especially during COVID, with the regulations and everything. So people that didn’t want to get the vaccines and everything like that. But Mexico as a whole is just booming. The tourism-I guess the cost of living is probably a lot less, too. Cost of living, yeah. And especially nowadays working remotely. I need to delete the keyboard.
[00:44:17.760] – Curtis Killen
It’s not real. My brother’s a YouTuber. I keep telling them. I’m like, Dude, You pay tax through the ass. You can do this job from anywhere. No one would know. Why do you live here? 100%. Everyone is. It’s just so freaking expensive to live in this place. I’m so frustrated with the country right now. But like I said, we’re going to get through it.
[00:44:39.810] – Mickey Serebnitski
We’re going to persevere.
[00:44:41.030] – Curtis Killen
We’re going to persevere. We’re going to get through it. We have a lot of work to do, but I think we’re going to get through this. Yeah.
[00:44:46.850] – Mickey Serebnitski
Leadership needs to come. Leadership needs to change, and things will be better. That’s where I’ll leave it at that. Oh, yeah. Curtis, awesome. Thanks for coming on today. I’ll be tagging you on all this in our socials as well. Sounds good, man. For our listeners and viewers, subscribe, and we’ll be coming up with another podcast next week.
