Thinking Inside A New Box

Company Logo's

2010-08-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

The way we see it a company logo has two purposes:

1. It must be memorable. (Does the company come to mind at a glance?)
2. It must somehow reflect the values of the company.

Our Logo is simple. "It looks like a little kid drew it" is what we often hear. That is because it was in fact designed by an 10 year old.

Here is the original:

We tested it against some of the "cool" designs that the graphic artists came up with. The one the kid did beat the heck out of the high dollar one in "I'll remember that one" department.

As for representing our company values? Take that you $390 an hour corporate image consultants! You have been beaten by a child. (Not just beaten, but trounced, shamed, pwned, owned and just flat humiliated). Our kids are central to our values at Lime Tree. We think we should show it.

Good People.

2010-07-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

There are two things that make a great company.

1. Great people.

2. An environment where those great people can be themselves.

As a startup company it's critical that no one ever says the words “it's not my job”.

Fortunately, with some direction from the folks@hirebetter.com we have come up with a method that really works. Our single most important hire is in place, and amongst the chaos of trying to put together a new venture, without asking, the employee came to me and said: “what can I do to help?”

So now I have good people. It's up to me to foster an environment where they can be fulfilled.

The 20% percent rule

2010-07-01T11:57:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine reminded me recently about his 20% rule.

It's pretty simple. No matter how good a vendor or supplier or in our case an underwriter is, it is bad business to allow them to have more than 20% of our destiny in their hands.

Yes, there are people and companies that are fully aligned with me ––– for the moment. The problem is that as humans are priorities change. People die. People fall on their swords. People get thrown on the bus. People simply retire. When that happens, there is a shift in priority, sometimes subtle sometimes radical. Sometimes you can't even see it when it happens.

So, to all of our good carriers, we must tell you we will meet our volume commitments to you; however we do have a 20% rule here. We do need to spread our risks. And we need to publicly state this.

One Phone

2010-06-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

E-mail addresses, phones, chat, US mail, my kid screaming from his bedroom.

The whole blackberry thing where people have to be immediately available. I'm drowning. I have three voice mail boxes that manage. My e-mail inbox fills up faster than I can read.

Enough!

I have been thinking about it for a long time.

Now I only have one phone number. One phone. One voicemail.

I have ended all the other phone numbers.

Yes you can still call and reach me from switchboard, where an actual human will pick up the phone. But since technology is supposed to make our lives easier rather than more complex, we are using the technology to allow the receptionist to put you through to my one phone.

This does require different thinking. It is not wise of me to answer a phone call while I'm driving down the road if that phone call requires that I stare at the computer screen. It's a bit of a conundrum to me. Should I answer it and apologize? Or should I ignore the phone call? But in the end I think it's just about returning your voicemails.

As an entrepreneur, I am my company so I do not have any reason to not answer phone calls. I will tell you that during family time and when I tuck in my little girl in bed I don't care if Mr Obama is calling I'm not going to answer the phone.

Somehow along the way I had a crazy idea in my head that when the phone rings I have to drop everything. That's simply not true.

Now, I know that I do have to be available and responsive to people who leave me messages, but that's what voicemail is all about. I can get back to you in a reasonable amount of time.

So if you want to reach me, 512-590-1977. If you want to talk to the nice girl at the reception desk 800-561-7206.

Good News at Lime Tree (the best kind)

2010-05-05T13:46:00.000-07:00

We got this photo by email from Misbah one of our lead technical guys....

In true absent minded new father status, we don't have the name, weight or any other details.

We assume this much: 10 fingers, 10 toes and a healthy mom and happy father and grandparents.

Setting ourselves appart

2010-04-29T10:35:00.000-07:00

The insurance business is basically simple.

To the agent there is only three things that a managing general agent can deliver:

1. A good policy (a strong form and secure paper)

2. A good price.

3. Ease of doing business with the managing general agent.

When you consider these three factors, there is only one that any managing and general agent can do to be unique.

You may have a good policy, but you will never be the only one who has a good policy for a sustained period of time. If you are making money in a line of business, there are 100 other underwriters who will jump in behind you. We all know that this is a business of copycats. Nothing is secret because all of your actuarial information is passed around among the reinsurance community and the regulators.

You may have a good price. But this industry is littered with the remains of the irrational player who has come in and undercut prices, gotten themselves in trouble and disappeared.

So this is what's so odd.

When I went to the various associations to find out what the average time was for a quotation and for policy delivery, no one is even keeping the industry best practice metric. When you ask these guys how fast do you turn around a quote, you usually get the same answer: "We can turn it around really quickly if we have to."

But that is not the question I asked. The question I asked can be answered with a number of hours. When I asked how long does it take you to produce a quote I would hope that someone could say we return a quote in 21.4 working hours.

But nobody actually tracks it.

Effective May 1, 2010 Lime Tree Underwriters will track the number of business hours every single one of our quotes takes. We will note how long we take. We will note how long our underwriting partners take. Our goal is to always make that number smaller.

Not only that, we will put the time it took us on the cover letter of every single quote we send to our agents.

Yes, part of what we're doing is screaming to the market "were faster than everybody else"

But what we're really doing is causing ourselves to focus on that number. And by focusing on that number we truly will be faster.

It is just one of the ways we think we can distinguish ourselves as the easiest people to do business with. We believe we can sustain that advantage over time.

The best places to work....

2010-03-21T17:53:00.000-07:00

I have always liked companies that hold themselves out to be the best places to work. You see it plastered on the side of Southwest Airlines planes and at other quality companies. I've always noticed that the quality of the product that I purchased from them is always very very good when they are one of the best places to work.

I have known a number of people here in Austin who have made the Austin business Journal's best places to work list. I found these people engaging intelligent and they really have the loyalty of their people. On top of all that they turned out great work.

I recently discovered that Business Insurance magazine sponsors a list of the best places to work in the insurance industry. They have a category divided up into small medium and large institutions. Being me of course I want to have nothing to do with in becoming a large institution. Small is great with the definition of up to 250 people.

As soon as I found out about the list, I read it. I saw the top 10 small companies to work for in the 2009. And low and behold, a guy know who runs an agency in Las Vegas Nevada Capstone Brokerage was on the list. In all my dealings with them may have been selfless and just downright charitable with her time: Way to go Jade! While it doesn't surprise me, congratulations!

Having said all this, while I do not like to add to our company goals, less we chase too many of them: I really would like to make this list within three years. So I'm putting it out there publicly so that all of you may hold me accountable to this goal. It's the one goal I cannot have my employees hold me accountable for.

Making it Better

2010-03-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

As you all well know, Lime Tree Underwriters uses a very advanced online platform.

In the brief time we have been in business, we are proud to say that we have done exceptionally well in the number of new agents we have appointed and the amount of new business we have quoted and bound.

What is fundamentally different at Lime Tree is that we are open about what we do. We know we are not perfect. We believe that discussing our weaknesses with our partners, rather than trying to hide them, is simply better business.

It seems we have one of those "good problems". Our online platform has generated so much business that the backroom has not been able to keep up. And, while our online platform is one of the best, the binding & issuing steps simply were not perfect.

A number of changes have been made to our platform that have gone live this morning:

Single click preparation of property policies and an invoice for a mortgage company. They should make closings and mortgage billed much easier.
The eSignature option has become far more simple.
The process for getting a paper signature and binding things without the online eSignature has been improved. (It's a night and day difference!)

For those of you who have shown a commitment to doing business with Lime Tree Underwriters, we will soon be rolling out an account current monthly bill program to make your lives easier.

eSignatures are live today..

2010-03-17T22:57:00.000-07:00

The paper chase in the insurance industry is just silly. Today we implemented the 2.0 version of our eSignature platform. Here is a quick YouTube video to describe it. We hope it makes everyones life easier. You people who still print out your email probably won't like it...

Silliness among regulators.

2010-03-12T12:09:00.000-08:00

I am beginning to get a bit concerned with the amount for the amount of outright stupidity committed by people who work for government agencies. Now, we all see this as a regular joke. We all have come to expect that the TSA guy at the airport or the courts that processes your parking ticket is going to do something wrong. The problem is this. These regulators are getting dumber and dumber however they have absolute power over our lives. A regulator can, make a career out of making your life miserable if you rub them the wrong way.

Recently Lime Tree Underwriters moved to a new address. We filed a form LHL389 (November 2005 edition) Licensee Name/Address Change Request with the department of insurance.

Believe it or not they rejected the application!

It seems that they cannot read my signature. Can it be I am a freak and my signature is not legible? Perhaps it's too many years dealing in with doctors in medical malpractice insurance... imagine if the Texas state Board of medical examiners rejected every doctor signature. How many bills that the president has signed into law would have been rejected?

So I got on the phone with the Texas Department of Insurance. They told me I need to write my signature more legibly. (I suspect I had a small minded bureaucrat who simply thinks he needs to defend the inane decision of one of his coworkers -- thus providing a new inane answer himself).

I suggested to the Department of Insurance that signing my signature differently then the hundreds of thousands of prior signatures probably would not make my signature legally binding. They didn't want to hear it.

So I'm signing a special signature that is completely legible and sending it back to the Department of Insurance.

The funny thing is that all of this was done by US mail. All of the rejection letters they sent me are being sent to the new address. This despite the fact that they rejected the address change...

It never ends.

All things being the same.

2010-02-22T15:29:00.000-08:00

We went and visited a retail insurance agency today. The person we met there, the vice president of a large agency, was really kind. She took the time to tell us all about their agency in their operations. She was even kind enough to tell us who inside the organization would be useful to us. Who would read receptive to our product offerings. And she even mentioned some people outside of her organization that she thought would be a good fit for us.

But one thing she said, left me struggling.

She said that "Suzy X. may have all of the markets that she needs."

The problem I have with this statement is a fundamental problem I see in the insurance business. It seems that everyone does things essentially the same way. The only thing that differentiate one managing general agent from another is: 1. Do they have a market that will take the risk? And 2. Are they as good as the next one. Susie X. may have a market for everything, but is each market really the same?

You see, insurance brokerage firms are all essentially the same. They call it a people business because that's the only differentiation in one competent broker to another. Nobody does anything special. In fact there are so many twists and turns in the regulation and in the fundamental structure of the distribution systems, that is unbelievably difficult to be different.

What we're trying to do here at Lime Tree Underwriters is to do something essentially different. We want to focus on becoming the fastest, easiest, brain-dead simple way to get business on the books. We will use our narrow box underwriting approach and our extremely automated five minutes to bind platform to stand out. That's our value proposition to the agent. If you do business with us it will be easier than any other place.

My sales team is now armed with the message: "Yes, we know you already have markets, but can they do this?"

Shaking things up is an awful lot of fun.

2010-02-19T15:54:00.000-08:00

Things are starting to go very well. We are putting lots of business on the books. Inbound phone calls tell us that our marketing campaign is working right. Our attention to a value proposition and brand image seem to be paying off. Heck, we had a competitor call us downright angry. We've had a phone call from a another 50-year-old competitor basically asking for us to throw him a lifeline. And we are brand-new.

But under it all, and most importantly, we're having a heck of a lot of fun!

We are in insurance. It's probably one of the most unchanged, old-school, old boy businesses on the planet. In a business where "that's the way we've always done it" is the opening prayer for a day's business, it's amazing how people are responding to the way we are doing things. And it feels good.

So, our challenge is to stick to our plan, and grow like crazy, and be sure that every day is as much fun as the last few.

Clean Sheets.

2010-02-15T14:18:00.000-08:00

We moved to new offices today. Out with the old and in with the new.

Despite the fact that a lot of stuff is "Somewhere in that box over there". We get the chance to start over and not live with the little things we did not like about the old place. We got to throw out a lot of junk that was just taking up space. (And St Francis school got some AV equipment we no longer needed.. that our junk is highly valued in education, is something for another post)

Its good to apply that, not only, to the new office, but to every facet of the business. In order to make sure the paperless initiate works, we are not bringing in file cabinet. Instead we have spiffy new scanners and hard drives (Backup up to a computer someplace in the desert outside Las Vegas).

Now if we can just get the phones working properly....

We've got a website...

2010-02-05T15:14:00.000-08:00

When I talk to other managing general agents, often, the subject of our website comes up. It's a funny thing, their comment is always the same.

"Oh, we have a website too."

So I usually drill into the question.

Does your website let your agents quote risks? " Yes"

Does it let them pay for and buying coverage? "Well, no."

Does it send them a copy of the proposal they have done online automatically? "No"

Does it notify you when a new agent rates their first quote? "No"

Does it tell you when an agent quote something of significant premium? "No"

Does it resend the quote out 72 hours before the renewal date? "No"

Does it automatically pull the Google maps and Google Street view photo of the property? "No"

Does it keep track of your various carriers underwriting response times? "No"

Does it allow your retail agents to have it your program linked in their website? "No"

Not to beat a dead horse. But many years ago I was an exchange student to Ghana West Africa. And I recall one and gentlemen saying to me: "America's not so strong, we have an air force too!"

We are looking for a CSR.

2010-02-02T15:11:00.001-08:00

It would seem to me that there is a vast untapped workforce in America.

There are literally thousands of moms who have stepped out of careers in order to have children. Most of the moms are brain dead numb from talking about nothing but playgroups and preschool teachers. I can't tell you the number of times I talked to mothers when my children were young who are looking for nothing more than adult conversation on a daily basis.

The dilemma of these people have is that there are a number of transition years, from first grade to say sixth or seventh grade. where the kids don't need the kind of attention they did when they were tiny. But mom still wants to be home when the kids get there.

So, what if you structured a job, where you could meet both of these needs for your employee. Give a mom, or a stay-at-home dad, the ability to work in an adult environment but still be home with the kids.

I would be willing to bet that we can attract some really great talent, at a price we simply can't afford, by offering these people something no one else does.

In the 1960s the people that worked at NASA were the very best. For every one position that was filled, there were at least two dozen of the very best, literally "rocket scientists" lined up and begging for the job. Now I'm not suggesting that what we do is anything as grandiose as putting man on the moon. But I would be willing to bet that the salaries of the people at NASA were typical government grade pay scales. Those people were there because they were being fulfilled by something other than money. I think we can tap into that fulfillment.

So here's the ad we posted on craigslist:

We are an MGA. We are looking for a fun person to work with. No grumps. No crybabies. No wallflowers. No 'fraidy cats.

We are looking for someone who has some experience working as either an underwriter, CSR or producer in the property and casualty business. Don't misunderstand, just because we're a fun place to work doesn't mean we are not serious about what we do. If you are the kind of person who can come to work in flip-flops and still outperform Joe Corporation in his thousand dollar suit, then you will be at home with us.

We are looking for:

Experienced insurance industry people only.
Knowledge of E&S insurance is a plus.
A P&C or CSR licence is required.
A college education is a darn good thing.

What we have to offer.

Working school hours only (9 AM to 3 PM)
Your children's school holidays off.
The company of fun adults, who will not talk about Barney, Dora the Explorer or SpongeBob... ever.

Telling it like it is

2010-01-29T07:21:00.000-08:00

It's ironic. When we approach new agencies, one of the first questions they always have is "How long have you been in business?".

My sales team seems to have a bit of a hiccup with this question. Were brand-new. And for some reason their gut reaction is that that is some sort of a sin. It is almost like being a new is a problem. Like every great company didn't have a first today.

It would seem that the question is a way for the agents to quickly assess whether we are competent or not. I find it odd because so many of the people in my particular industry, insurance, really are not competent and somehow have managed to stay in business for 30 years.

Further, I have been in negotiations with the company that has been around more than 75 years on a joint venture project. The ironic thing is that the forward thinking people in that organization have come to the conclusion that "we have all the advantages and disadvantages of being a 75-year-old company. Lime Tree needs to slow down a bit so are people, who are set in their ways, can keep up"

So I started taking some of the calls myself. When the question came up I simply said "we are brand-new". And it seemed to satisfy the person asking the question. I can tell you that I get just as many requests for proposal from these agents as my sales team gets from one's when they dance around the question.

I think it comes down to this: Agents want to quickly assess whether we are competent or not. If we dance around the question, they will sense that we believe something is wrong. We don't believe anything is wrong. If we answer the question directly they will soon realize that we are in fact very competent because they see the way we do our job.

The other advantage of simply telling it like it is, is that, Americans like an underdog and people like to help people. If I take honest feedback from my agents to heart, they will give me the latitude that they would never give an established company. I also get them as a champion who has helped me and has "buy in" for my success.

It's so funny how the basic premises of business come down to what your mother taught you when you were four years old.

Activity creates miracles.

2010-01-28T06:58:00.000-08:00

My very best friend on the planet once told me:

Activity creates miracles!

When it comes to sales and new business it's exactly that. Remember, sales is simply saying the right thing to the right person at the right time. I know that a lot of people spend a great deal of time refining the details of the sale, but it ultimately comes down to saying the right thing to the right person at the right time.

So, as a relatively new company, Lime Tree Underwriters went through the usual neophyte period of refining its message and defining its target audience. Now that we have "the right thing" and we know who the "right person" is: it's just a matter of saying it at the right time.

Now were on top of our proverbial soapbox, shouting our message to people that we think want to hear it. Then a funny thing happened: Sales have begun to take off.

We really didn't do anything new. We just did it. It was just a matter of activity.

Company culture and fruitcakes.

2010-01-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

In order to get the very best people, and to get the most out of the best people it's necessary to create a corporate culture of extreme fun. This does not mean samba dancing in the cubicles. But, rather it means creating an organization of high-performance people where anyone from the outside looking in would say: "Man I would love to work there!"

I have always believed that after you earn a basic income, after that it is all about the game. It has to be a heck of a lot of fun.

So when recruiting, we look for exactly that. People that want to come with their a game on: take no prisoners. We advertise a message of high-performance, run with the big dogs: fun.

The problem is this. When we say to the outside world that this is the best place to work we get the best people.

But, we also get every fruitcake, weirdo, and loony who can read a classified ad. They want in on the fun too!

I truly want to get this company to position where we can do exactly what Jonathan Davis at Hire Better ( jd@hirebetter.com ) calls the virtual bench. This would mean that we wouldn't have to cull through the nut cases. This also means we would not be limiting ourselves to hiring talent that is simply available at the time.

After all, the very best people are probably not looking for a job.

Your rates are too high... no they're not... yes... no...

2010-01-22T08:49:00.000-08:00

As long as I can remember, the conversation is the same. The carrier comes and asks what they can do for us.

We suggest that their rates for XXXX are too high in XXX County.

Their response: No they aren't.

Yes they are.

No they aren't.

Just like two schoolkids in the playground.

At Lime Tree Underwriters, we think we have come up with a way to avoid this silly and frivolous conversation. Each time you close an application that we did not write, our system will ask you why you lost the business. And if it's because of pricing, we will assemble your feedback along with the feedback of all our other agents. That way when "the carrier guy" comes to see us, he doesn't stand a chance!

Hiring these days.

2010-01-20T08:29:00.000-08:00

Perhaps I'm just getting old. But recently I started a search for a new marketing representative. In the back of my mind, I had a fantasy about a hard-working guy or girl who I could send out into the world to represent us.

I put an ad on craigslist and I was swamped with resumes.

First of all, let me say there were some good people. I'm sure I'm going to find a good employee amongst them. What bothers me is the absolute lack of "getting it" on the part of so many job seekers.

So here is a short list of things, I would advise them to consider:

• Don't just take any job. Make sure that this is what you really want to do. If you don't like it from the beginning you are going to be unhappy. You are going to quit. Or, worse, you are going to underperform and be fired.

• Don't just blindly send your resume. I can't tell you the number of word documents that were sent with no explanation or even a subject line on e-mail. If your training is in pediatric emergency medicine, kindly tell me why you think you would be good at sales. (Because the way it is, you have ipso facto told me that you don't care what I'm trying to accomplish, you just want any job.)

• Don't try to pretend that you're something you're not. Eventually you will be unhappy or we will be unhappy.

• Remember you are on Facebook/MySpace/trendy social media site of the year. Special note to the guy with all the tattoos, piercings, implants and other body modifications: while we understand your generation goes in for this sort of thing, I'm not going to hire you. But thank you for posting all the pictures on and MySpace, except for the one of your right butt cheek, it made my decision easy.

Oh, I was just getting to that!

2010-01-16T20:18:00.000-08:00

I can't count the number of times that, in my former life as an agent, I would submit a risk to an underwriter and wait. I would patiently wait. After three or four days I might not hear anything. ( Don't these underwriters know that the close ratio goes down with every ticking minute?)

The situation was the same every time. I would pick up the phone and I would call the underwriter:

"Oh yes, funny you should call. I was just looking at that right now!"

I must have ESP. It seems awfully strange that every time I called on a late application, it was the precise moment when the underwriter was reviewing it.

What does an underwriter do?

2010-01-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

We took a good hard look at underwriting. We watched underwriters going about their daily work. If you can imagine the scene where there are guys in white lab coats, with stopwatches and clipboards in their hands, looking at our underwriters like they were "a bug in a bottle", you would not be too far from the truth.

Not surprisingly we found out, that underwriters only spend about 15% to 20% of their time working on the business that we actually want to write! You see, if you have a good agency force, the agents are sending you things that are already prequalified and they have a good idea that your pricing is good. This kind of risk, takes only seconds for the underwriter to say yes to.

But it is human nature to make the work fill the time available. This is where the danger comes in. While the underwriter is spending a lot of time trying to help the agent makes the risk fit, there is too much slack time. It turns out that the underwriters spends the bulk of their day, trying to find a way to fit marginal risks into the program. This is despite the fact, that we have to hold our regulators, reinsurers, actuaries, and everyone else in the transaction just what our underwriting appetite is.

What I would desperately like to know, is what the underwriting results are for that business that underwriters have squeezed in to the margins compared to the good clean stuff. I don't have any hard data to support this, but I suspect that the losses are much better for the in the box risks that the underwriter has spent little time on then the out of box risks where the underwriters spends all their time.