April 14, 2026 • 47 mins
In this episode of Torch Talk, Lindsey Chupp sits down with Seth Buckwalter, President of Whitaker Meyers, for a practical and eye-opening conversation about risk management, insurance strategy, and protecting what matters most in business.
Seth unpacks real-world scenarios that many business owners overlook, from special event coverage and cyber threats to employment practices liability, directors and officers insurance, and hired and non-owned auto exposure. Throughout the discussion, he explains how even businesses that “haven’t done anything wrong” can face significant legal and financial risk, and why proactive education is more powerful than reactive damage control.
The conversation also explores how independent agents evaluate risk, what business owners should be reviewing regularly, and why policy language and changing operations matter more than most leaders realize. Seth shares candid examples from real claims situations, emphasizing that smart risk management isn’t about fear. It’s about clarity, preparation, and informed decision-making.
In this episode, you’ll hear about:
- Why special event policies and host liquor liability matter
- The evolving reality of cyber threats and social engineering fraud
- How employment practices liability protects against costly allegations
- What directors and officers coverage actually does
- Why regular insurance reviews are critical as your business grows
This episode offers a grounded, practical look at the hidden exposures businesses face and how thoughtful planning can help leaders sleep better at night.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_03 (00:00):
Take heart.
There is hope.
It's a big scary world outthere.
But you can be assured that biginsurance companies like a
Traveler's Hartford, a Chubb, ora Westfield, they're not going
to put their money on the lineif they don't believe that there
is a very low likelihood ofsomething happening.
SPEAKER_00 (00:23):
Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we
spotlight bold local leadersgrowing their businesses and
communities with grit andpurpose.
Today's guest is SethBuckwalder, president of
Whitaker Myers.
In this Torch Talk episode,we'll explore his Blaze Business
Expo presentations and hisinsights on risk management,
leadership, andcommunity-focused business, and
take a deeper dive into how hisapproach helps individuals and
(00:46):
organizations protect whatmatters most.
Welcome, Seth.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
So nice to meet you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like we've run around a littlebit, but we need to get to talk.
So this will be our first kindof deeper dive discussion.
So I'm looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_03 (01:01):
Likewise.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
Okay, so you're going to be a part of the Blaze
Business Expo at the time offilming.
It is prior, but this willactually air after as a means to
expand upon what you are anexpert in, which is tell us
actually.
Why don't you tell us whatyou're an expert in?
SPEAKER_03 (01:19):
What are you an expert in?
That's dangerous, isn't it?
I like to think of myself as ateacher.
And the area that I happen toteach in would be that area of
risk management and insurance.
And so it's really important tome to help educate my friends,
my clients, in terms of whatareas they may not even be
considering when it comes torisk.
(01:40):
What things they're doing thatmaybe they should be insuring,
what things they're doing theyshould not be doing at all, and
to truly help them ensure theycan sleep well at night, knowing
that what's important to themhas been protected.
SPEAKER_00 (01:52):
Okay.
That's that's can you give me agive us a few examples?
Because that's kind of like highlevel, right?
So I always go to what are yousaid, what are the things that
they should be doing thatthey're not doing immediately.
Then my brewery is like, whatshould I not be doing?
What?
SPEAKER_03 (02:08):
Yeah, what is well I have uh uh I have many
different, I think, examplesthat uh can further demonstrate
that.
Um let's pick just one.
And we haven't talked about thisbeforehand, so let's see how
this goes.
Um I would assume that you havea general liability policy here
for Fierce Creative, yes?
SPEAKER_02 (02:27):
Correct.
SPEAKER_03 (02:28):
Yes, wonderful.
Um we're getting ready to put onthe Blaze Expo as we sit here
and talk, and when people listento this, we'll be after the
expo.
I assume now you need to askyour own independent agent, so
the caveat there is always that,but I would assume that your
general liability policy has anexclusion in there for special
events.
SPEAKER_02 (02:48):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (02:48):
And so as you get ready for this Blaze Expo,
thinking about however manypeople are going to be there,
being off-site, so we don't havepremises liability for the site
like we would here, you wouldneed a special event policy to
be written specifically for thatevent.
And the unlikely chance that anattendee would slip and fall,
somebody would get their feettangled up in cables, something
(03:10):
would happen where even if we'vedone nothing wrong, we as Fierce
Creative have to defendourselves against a lawsuit.
So that's the question.
SPEAKER_00 (03:19):
So you need a special event policy.
SPEAKER_03 (03:21):
You do need a special event policy, most
likely.
SPEAKER_00 (03:24):
I have a little bit of experience with that, like
even with going to home showswith contractors and things like
that, sometimes they have to buya special policy for attending
those types of events.
Yep.
Are those expensive?
Easy to get.
Yeah, but it depends.
SPEAKER_03 (03:36):
What's the uh as with anything in life, it simply
depends.
So if we plan to have 10,000people there, a rock show that
goes on until 2 o'clock in themorning, and it's bring your own
beer, we've got a problem.
SPEAKER_01 (03:48):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (03:48):
Something like this, this probably will not be
terribly expensive.
It's a common exposure.
The industry knows exactly howto handle it.
I don't foresee it being asignificant issue.
It'll be rated on a number ofthings.
How long is it going to go on?
How many people do we anticipatebeing there?
And the underwriters at thecompany will put a number to it,
I doubt more than a couplehundred dollars at most.
SPEAKER_00 (04:06):
What are some other examples where businesses might
need a special extra policybesides, I mean, most businesses
are not putting on conferences,but are there other situations
where they might need somethinglike that?
SPEAKER_03 (04:17):
Yeah, sure.
Lots of examples of that.
Um, one might be, let's justsay, for example, you're a power
washer, you're a contractor, andwhat you do is power washing and
cleaning.
And this was a real life examplethat we had come up for us.
Um you have, you think of apolicy, there's really two sides
to it.
There's property coverage andthere's casualty or the
liability side of things.
(04:38):
And the liability is what goesto pay other people.
And so if you're a power washerand you're power washing, say, a
bank, and you're cleaning aroundan ATM and you happen to
overspray a bit, and you get anATM, and this is real, this has
happened.
Well, there's actually aspecific coverage called care
custody and control that wouldbe needed on the policy in order
(05:00):
for the policy to respond andcover the damage to the ATM.
And the logic there from aninsurance perspective is that
ATM, that property was in yourcare, your custody, or your
control at the time the losshappened.
Therefore, you had a duty totake care of it and you did not.
And so if you don't have care,custody, and control in your
policy, you're gonna be left asthe insured holding the bag on
(05:23):
that one, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00 (05:24):
Yeah, I have actually experienced some of
that.
I didn't turn in a claim, butour we've got our house power
washed, and it literallystripped the coating off our
door.
Like we had to replace ourschlage, you know, door codes
handles.
So they get a little out ofcontrol sometimes.
SPEAKER_01 (05:38):
Yeah.
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Is there an industry from your experience that is
like the most expensive tocover?
Like we work with a lot ofconstruction companies.
I have a lot of like roofingliability.
Is there specific, you know,different types of risks within
the city?
SPEAKER_03 (05:52):
Those tend yes, those are difficult.
Um, I'll give just some broadcategories.
If you are, for example, a gunmanufacturer, well, think of the
world we live in.
Yeah.
And think of the litigioussociety that we live in.
And so if you're making a gun,or even if you're making a
subcomponent to a gun, well,you're gonna have some trouble
out there in the industryfinding coverage.
And if you can't, it's going tobe very, very expensive.
(06:15):
Because, and I love all of myattorney friends, but there are
some some bad actors out therethat love nothing more than to
dig their teeth into the bigdeep pockets, which ultimately
ends up being the insurancecompany.
Okay.
That you make dynamite, goodluck finding coverage for a
building.
Um, maybe a more real-life, morepractical example for kind of
the the Wayne County area that Iprimarily work in, um, foster
(06:38):
care adoption, okay, um, youthservices.
So you think of the possibilityof some sort of a claim arising
from you know just the the worstof the worst, a child being in a
foster care home and some sortof abuse happening.
And then you also have a longtail on that because a child may
be eight, nine, ten years oldwhen the incident happens, the
(06:59):
statute of limitations doesn'tstart till they turn 18.
So if you're an insurancecompany thinking, do we want to
cover an organization that isinvolved in this?
There's a very long, long leadtime till a claim might actually
appear.
SPEAKER_00 (07:11):
So that is something yeah, I would not have thought
of.
Are there, okay, so I was goingto ask, um, is cybersecurity
something that you recommend aslike an add-on as on a regular
basis?
And are there other types ofthings like that where you're
like you really should revisitthose types of policies?
SPEAKER_03 (07:28):
Cyber is a really interesting one.
Um, generally speaking, yes, youshould have it.
However, I don't know that youcan say that a blanket statement
across everything.
So let's go back to our theexample of our power washer.
Um, if it's one guy, he'srunning a truck, he's got very
little customer information, hemay not have a significant cyber
exposure.
However, it may not be unwise tobuy just a small amount of cyber
(07:51):
coverage on his package policy.
If you have any sort of customerdata, um, especially in the
healthcare industry, medicalrecords tend to be so valuable
out there on the black market.
And so that's what you'relooking at.
What's my exposure to a threatactor getting into the system,
extracting data, locking it up,essentially calling me back and
(08:13):
saying, hey, do you want yourdata back?
Here's the ransom demand for it.
So there's the demand to unlockyour data, um, to maybe
unencrypt or get you back intoyour systems.
There's reality that, um, and weprobably all get these letters
regularly, Marriott got hackedand your data has been exposed.
So now we the insured and theinsurance company will back that
(08:34):
have a responsibility to notifyall clients that their data has
been exposed, to provide maybecredit monitoring.
And if a client can or one ofthe customers can demonstrate
that there actually are damagesas a result, there could be a
significant liability exposureto it as well.
Now, that sounds like a bigcompany thing, right?
It's a big company issue.
(08:54):
Um it's it's not limited to bigcompanies when it comes to
cyber.
Um I have a number of clients,even small manufacturers that
would be well known in the area,that if a threat actor gets in
and lock down your computersystem, think how crippling that
would be to businesses.
SPEAKER_00 (09:11):
I mean, it actually happened to a very large
business in our area last year.
SPEAKER_03 (09:14):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (09:15):
So that was and it shut down their business for I
don't know how many days, but itwas pretty big deal.
SPEAKER_03 (09:21):
So cyber policies can be very small, maybe a fifty
thousand dollar limit, not veryrobust, or um they can
absolutely expand beyond that tohave very high limits, to have
lots of little extra coverageson there.
Um ransomware demand uh can evenhelp with equipment.
Um if it's been quote unquotebricked or locked up, the laptop
is gone.
(09:42):
Um think of yourself being a oneor two person uh law office, a
small firm.
Um all of your data, and for methis is true in the insurance
agency side, all of my data isonline, it's all in the cloud.
If that gets locked up, and thesmall uh loyal uh law firm
example is a great one of that.
(10:03):
If all that data is locked upand the threat actor says, I
need two million dollars tounlock it, well, you're dead in
the water.
SPEAKER_01 (10:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (10:09):
Unless you have a policy that's ready to stand
behind you uh to back it up.
Now, here's an interesting thingtoo.
And the industry, the insuranceindustry has really wrestled
with cyber.
How do we best handle this?
Where are the bad guys comingfrom?
How do we keep them out?
So it's gotten harder and harderto get a cyber policy.
You have to demonstrate muchmore.
I've closed this port, and therethis is a world that I don't
fully understand, right?
(10:29):
Close this.
We've done that, all theseloopholes, multi-factor
authentication and everything.
SPEAKER_00 (10:34):
So we actually went through the steps to try to get
a cyber policy and can't becauseof the way that our like our
rent with our internet and ourlandlord, I don't have control
over the server in thisbuilding.
And because of that, I can'treally get a cyber policy with
that.
And so then we are looking athow do we protect.
I'm not looking at Garrett inthe face right now because he's
like, please protect our assets.
Our risk is all of our content,like our photos, videos.
(10:57):
Sure.
Like I can probably memorize allof our client information, it's
the rest of it that we would,you know, lose if something
would happen.
SPEAKER_03 (11:04):
But yeah.
Well, think from an insurancecompany perspective, right?
So you're a fairly smallorganization, you're not going
to spend$20,000,$50,000,$100,000a year on a cyber policy.
For you to be able to buy it, itprobably needs to be in the
$5,000 or less range.
Here's a another real lifeexample.
This really has happened.
Um, imagine the threat actorgets into your email system and
(11:26):
is watching emails going backand forth and just so happens to
see a cyber policy going backand forth with, say, two million
dollar limits.
Well, when that threat actordecides to strike, locks
everything up, and gets to youby email and says, Hey, by the
way, we've locked up all yourdata and we need$2 million to
unlock it because they've seen acyber policy go back and forth.
(11:46):
Well, how do you price that asan insurance company?
How in the world can you protectyourself there?
And I think um having goodbackups, and again, the
companies have become so muchmore sophisticated in terms of
knowing how the bad actors getinto the systems.
Um, but having a plan, havingbackups, um, testing it
regularly.
Um, another real life example uha cyber incident happens, and um
(12:13):
the company executives gettogether on a team's call to try
to discuss their response.
Here's what we're gonna do,here's our response, here's how
we're going to handle this,here's what we're going to do
over here.
We made this, be carefulengaging with that.
Got a follow-up email from thebad guy saying, That's great.
I was actually on your team'scall and heard all of that and
watched it go around.
So, like, right, the things youdo, can you even imagine that
happening?
So, having a plan in place thatsays if this, then that, and the
(12:38):
insurance companies are heavilyinvested, financially invested,
in you not having a claim, andthey really want to help along
the way.
SPEAKER_00 (12:46):
One of the things that, because we um are really
good friends with a local ITcompany, one of the things they
talk about all the time is umsomebody coming in and
monitoring emails, interceptingaccount numbers, and really like
hitting companies hard from anACH perspective, which I don't
know who's doing wires and ACHis over email anymore, but so is
(13:08):
that something the cybersecuritypolicy actually covers, or is
that something different?
SPEAKER_03 (13:12):
Yeah.
So what you're talking aboutthere, there could be some cyber
components to it, but thisprobably falls more under the
crime coverage, actually.
So um a couple and and an easyone to talk about, another one
I've seen a lot of activity inin the industry, social
engineering fraud.
So somebody pretends to besomebody they're not and tricks
you into doing something, let'scall it legitimate.
(13:35):
Um you are uh this will be areal life example, so I'll I'll
protect the innocent here, butum, you're a large organization
engaged in a multi-milliondollar building project.
And you're working with acontractor and you get an
invoice from the contractor formore than$900,000, and it looks
legitimate.
And you wire the funds off tothis contractor, kind of as you
(13:57):
always do.
But what you didn't realize isthat the bad guy got in, was
watching invoices going back andforth, grabbed one, modified it
ever so slightly to include hisbank account information instead
of your contractor's bankaccount information, and you
just sent$900,000 to the wrongbank account.
SPEAKER_00 (14:14):
Wow.
SPEAKER_03 (14:14):
You talk about having a bad day at the office,
yeah, and that's it.
SPEAKER_00 (14:17):
I mean, even at a smaller amount, like to me, like
$10,000 is a big deal.
Like I lose some sleep over likelosing that amount of money.
SPEAKER_03 (14:25):
So and especially for small business, and that's
what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (14:28):
$100,000 is it's actually really scary how email
phishing has evolved.
I've had employee, I've receivedemployee emails saying they need
to update their direct depositinformation.
I know that that's not real.
So we've had it's gotten to thepoint where I actually don't
even trust all the emails I'mgetting from.
I'm gonna call them and I say,hey, is this real Instagram
reset codes?
SPEAKER_03 (14:47):
Do you want a job?
Uh man, do I Because that's it.
I know.
SPEAKER_00 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (14:52):
So uh positively verifying all of those requests
is really key.
Yes.
And the industry has said, ifyou're not doing that, you have
to be doing that.
And if you have a claim and youcan't verify that you've done
that, then we may not pay out.
So when you receive that email,and I get those two, hey, can
you update my payrollinformation?
Um, I I know I gotta walk aroundthe corner and talk to so-and-so
(15:15):
because this is not, they don'tcommunicate from a Gmail
account.
SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
Most of the time, I'm like, yep, delete.
I know that that one's notlegit.
Rachel, uh, our COO received aninvoice once with a whole email
thread that they produced thatmade it look like I was
authorizing something back andforth.
And she said, literally the onlyway I knew it wasn't you is
because you were too nice.
They made me sound way too nicein the email thread.
Well, thanks for the backing.
SPEAKER_01 (15:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:38):
So okay, well, tell us we talked a lot about like
security and some what othercore challenges do you see
facing businesses right now?
Is there something you wish youcould just tell everybody?
You're like, I just wish ifpeople could get this.
SPEAKER_03 (15:50):
Yeah.
I think, and I don't want thisto sound like a cop-out, but go
talk to an independent insuranceagent.
Because I've talked about, youknow, you're a small contractor,
hang a drywall, or powerwashing, or you're a large
social services nonprofitdealing in foster care and
adoption.
Every single business is unique.
(16:11):
Their risks are all unique.
And that's where you needsomebody that's willing to ask
the questions and try tounderstand what do you do?
It's transportation.
Who's responsible for the goodswhen they're in transit?
Um you are installing cabinets,do you bring them in on a truck
and they go in right away, orthey may be left on site
overnight?
Because then we need aninstallation floater to make
(16:32):
sure we're covering that thematerial that's there before it
gets installed, at which pointit becomes property of the
homeowner.
There are so many differentthings.
It's almost impossible.
SPEAKER_00 (16:41):
Well, what so what does your process look like at
Litaker Myers to uncover thosethings?
So kind of I I'm actuallygenuinely curious.
So tell me.
SPEAKER_03 (16:48):
Yeah.
I it starts by asking a lot ofquestions because it's just so
broad.
And that's one of the thingsthat I love doing the most, is
just simply getting to knowpeople, understanding who they
are and what they do, and askinga bunch of questions.
And so just very simply put, um,if you came to me and said, I
need help, we're gonna have ameeting like this.
Maybe not the cameras on, butwe're gonna have a meeting where
I'm gonna ask questions aboutwhat you do, um, what your
(17:11):
day-to-day business looks like,what sort of extra this and
that, um, how many autos do wehave?
They're going, there's a lot ofinformation gathering.
And then that kind of goestogether for me into an
application that's ultimatelygoing to go out to the insurance
marketplace.
And I recommend working with anindependent agent.
That's what I am.
Um I've got lots of uh, youknow, friendly competitors
(17:31):
around in the area that do thesame thing.
Talk to an independent agentthat represents a lot of
different insurance companies.
That essentially, you know, mygoal would be in a perfect world
to make you such an amazing riskwhen it comes to the insurance
marketplace that I've gotcompanies salivating to work
with you.
And that's ultimately where Iwant to be.
And then we're gonna haveconversations about okay, we
(17:52):
carry uh a policy with liabilitylimits of let's say a million
dollars.
So if I slip and fall on thesidewalk when I'm coming in
here, you've got a milliondollars to put me back together,
so to speak.
Is that enough?
Well, we don't have a big foottraffic exposure here.
It's mostly employees.
It's probably enough.
If you're a grocery store, um, arestaurant, a barber shop,
(18:15):
something that has a lot of foottraffic, we're gonna have a
different conversation of do weneed higher liability limits?
Are there other things thatwe're doing or could be doing to
try to mitigate some of thatrisk?
It's hard, those are difficultconversations.
What's the right number?
I don't know.
Up until this point, hopefullyit's been zero, but the unknown
of what happens tomorrow, that'sthe part that keeps me up.
(18:36):
I imagine it's what keeps somebusiness owners up at night,
too.
And so that's where we aim tosay at least educate, inform.
I'm never a hard sell.
I'm never never going to tellyou you have to buy this policy
with these limits.
With the I want you to know andunderstand what you are taking
on and what maybe you'rechoosing not to take on.
(18:57):
In in the insurance world, um,there are a few ways that you
can essentially handle a risk.
Um, we can avoid doing it, wemight stop manufacturing our
dynamite.
Um, we might transfer all of therisk to insurance.
We might buy an insurance policythat if the the building goes
boom because of a dynamite youknow being lit, um, it's it's
(19:18):
going to entirely be transferredoff to insurance.
Um we might retain a part of it.
Think of that as being like adeductible.
So if we um have a small claim,we're gonna handle the first
$2,000,$5,000,$10,000 of it.
Or we might choose to simplyretain all of it ourselves.
You might roll the dice and sayfor the Blaze Expo, I don't need
a policy, I don't thinkanything's going to happen.
(19:40):
And I'm and and as an youragent, as long as you've made an
educated decision, I'm okay withthat.
I may not do it myself, right?
But I'm okay with it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:48):
Okay.
So what is support from you fromyour end look like after
somebody is working with you?
Like do you do you do regularcheck-in?
I don't I'm yeah, I never hearfrom my insurance agent, by the
way.
SPEAKER_03 (19:59):
So well, I never want to be a nuisance.
Okay, but I think every at leastevery couple of years, there
should absolutely be a sit-downor a phone meeting to say what's
changed, because one of thedangerous things in my business
is I can write a policy oneyear, and if we're not all over
that every single year or everycouple of years, asking the
insured what's going on, what'schanged.
SPEAKER_00 (20:20):
I mean, they might have grown 50% and you don't
know, and then they're covering.
SPEAKER_03 (20:24):
Something different.
Right.
A new service.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
Yeah, then decided to do sideing, not just roofing,
and you're like, Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03 (20:30):
Yeah, and then we're doing commercial roofing for
10-story buildings, and that'svastly different than a flat
roof on a one-story building.
My uh own business is a greatexample.
We started 157 years ago inWorcester as an insurance
agency.
And over the years we've addedto our practice.
So we added a benefits groupthat does health insurance.
Um, in I think 2010, we added awealth management group that's
(20:52):
grown by leaps and bounds.
And well, we have your home andauto, we have your health
insurance, we have your money,can you do my taxes as well?
And so we added a tax practice acouple years ago.
So I'm a completely differentcompany than I was even five
years ago.
Um, now we have the advantage ofuh you know carefully keeping an
eye on that ourselves, butsometimes we get caught too.
(21:13):
It's the old, what is it, thecobbler's children have no
shoes.
Like we we have to verycarefully watch to make sure
we're insuring even our ownbuildings appropriately and our
own exposures appropriately.
SPEAKER_00 (21:24):
Well, and the world changes so fast.
I mean, I feel like marketing ischanging like it's really wild
right now with the introductionof AI and all of the things.
Like, there's a lot ofimplications to some of these
things.
We don't even know what thatlooks like 100% yet.
SPEAKER_03 (21:35):
So Yeah.
And that's true of my industry,and it's also not true because
insurance in some ways, like itthere it goes back way, way far,
yet also even over the lastcouple hundred years.
And a significant piece of thatis there's a boat floating
across an ocean with stuff init, and I want it to get to the
other side.
And if it doesn't make it, Idon't want all of that risk
myself.
(21:56):
I have a building, we light bycandle, and if Burns down, I'm
not able to replace it myself.
And so those things are stillreal to my industry today.
Lots of new things have comealong.
Cyber is one, but at the end ofthe day, protecting the things
that you hold that you own,balance sheet protection.
If we have a large loss overthere, I want to be able to keep
(22:17):
going as a business.
But yes, ever changing.
SPEAKER_00 (22:19):
Is um key like stakeholder insurance and
looking at those types ofthings, life insurance policies,
is that something that yourecommend as well on a regular
basis?
SPEAKER_03 (22:29):
Yeah, I same thing.
Talk to an agent that knows whatthey're doing.
I wouldn't say that's an area ofexpertise for me.
We have people in my group thatdo that, but absolutely a part
of the personal commercial.
SPEAKER_00 (22:40):
I think about it as commercial, but I guess it's
not.
It's more life insurance, right?
SPEAKER_03 (22:43):
It they are life insurance products, yes.
So you need to carry a differentuh license for that.
Um but it it's criticallyimportant because what happens
if you have a key employeedepart, you're a small group and
you have somebody that's a majorcontributor depart.
You may not want amillion-dollar policy for that,
but you may want$100,000 becauseyou recognize I may lose a
client, it's going to have to gothrough an extensive search,
(23:05):
we're going to struggle becauseof it.
Um key man policies from a lifeperspective.
So my business partner and Ihave life insurance policies on
one another.
Because if I were tounfortunately pass away, the
reality is he's probably goingto want to buy out my wife, who
would be the owner of it.
Yeah, and nor does she want tobe wanna run an insurance
(23:26):
agency, but there's significantdebt obligations, having bought
the business, that need to besatisfied.
And so absolutely, that's animportant part of it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:33):
What about if you're a soul owner?
Is there like what what doesthat look like?
SPEAKER_02 (23:38):
Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00 (23:39):
I it's more for me like I need to make sure
everybody here has a job if Idie.
And I talk about dying way toomuch around here.
So I'm always like, what I don'tknow what your job is if you
die.
And they're like, they look atme like this.
I'm like, listen, I know you're25, but you might die.
So unfortunately, we had toprepare for every situation.
SPEAKER_03 (23:58):
I think there probably there are insurance
things that you probably coulddo with that.
And and you might, and anattorney is going to be able to
help work through too.
What does that successionplanning look like?
Um, is it immediately it passesto a spouse who then is probably
going to liquidate?
Um, do you have a good businesscontinuity plan in place?
Do you have a strong second,third identified that are ready
(24:19):
to step in and and take yourplace?
And I know we've got some otherphenomenal speakers that the
Blaze Expo that might even bebetter positioned to answer that
question than I am.
SPEAKER_00 (24:26):
That's good.
But so it it ties in a littlebit, but it's kind of like an
outlier.
SPEAKER_03 (24:30):
A little bit.
Got it.
Yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_00 (24:32):
Okay.
Any um like any other storiesyou want to share, case studies,
things like that?
I know that you have broughtsome ideas.
SPEAKER_03 (24:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, almost where do youstart?
There's all kinds of differentphones.
SPEAKER_00 (24:45):
I mean, I think I could sit here and listen to
them all day.
And then you'd be like, oh mygoodness.
SPEAKER_03 (24:48):
And you'd leave terrified and yes, wanting to do
what?
All your insurance agents.
SPEAKER_00 (24:52):
So I'm good with it.
SPEAKER_03 (24:53):
Well, so um here's another area that I think we've
seen a lot of activity inrecently: employment practices.
SPEAKER_00 (25:00):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (25:00):
Okay, well, what is that, Seth?
Um, broadly speaking, employmentpractices liability insurance or
EPL, EPLI, would protect you,the business, in the event
there's some sort of anallegation of wrongful
termination, harassment, um,failure to hire, wage an hour.
So um, we've got an employeethat's been harassed here at
(25:22):
work, and they resign and file alawsuit.
These happen all the time.
Um we did not hire somebodybecause of protected classes,
age, race, things like that.
Um even, and this is reallyimportant in in my world too.
Even if we're not wrong, even ifwe haven't done anything wrong,
the allegation of wrongdoingleads to just as damaging.
(25:46):
Yeah.
Um and it can be financially uhdevastating if you don't have
policies in place standingbehind you.
Um this is a part of it.
So third-party liability fallingunderneath that employment
practices part.
Imagine the same delivery guyshows up and your ladies are out
back there making comments andharassing the delivery guy.
(26:09):
That actually falls in this aswell.
And those things happen, right?
And you laugh about it becauseit seems crazy, but that's just
the world that we live in.
So employment practices is areally important one.
And uh, these claims happen,they actually happen regularly.
And again, I have so manywonderful attorney friends, I'm
not throwing them under the bus.
But let's let's take our TimMisney, right?
(26:29):
You've seen the billboards.
If you drive to Cleveland, ifyou go south, like South
Carolina and Florida arehorrendous for this.
The uh injury and accidentattorneys that will grab hold of
anything and everything.
From an employment practicesstandpoint, I've had numerous
clients have this even over thelast couple years.
Something happened at work.
Um, an employee feels like maybethey weren't trained
appropriately, somethinghappened, they weren't
(26:50):
protected, whatever it might be.
Frequently these issues lead toabsolutely nothing in a court of
law.
And we, as the the insured, mayfeel like we've done nothing
wrong.
I'm gonna, we're gonna fight tothe death.
We're gonna win this in court.
And the insurance company cancome alongside you, kind of put
their arm around you, and say,listen, here's the deal.
We believe you, but if we go tocourt, we're gonna spend$250,000
(27:12):
defending this.
The demand is$50,000, we'regonna offer them$25,000, and
we're just gonna make it goaway.
And that's what happens.
And yet we've done nothingwrong.
But you don't want to be on yourown in that.
You don't want to be with theother.
SPEAKER_00 (27:27):
So that's a special writer or addition to an
existing policy that okay.
I'm curious, have you had any umthis relates to our world, ADA
compliance lawsuits?
Yeah, with our websites.
SPEAKER_03 (27:40):
Yes, that actually is an interesting one because
that tends to fall under thecyber uh realm of things.
So yeah.
Yeah, it usually will fall intothere.
Now, again, look at um policylanguage, ask your agent.
There are going to be someexclusions for that sometimes
too.
Um you're a web designer, and soyes, you absolutely have an
(28:01):
exposure there.
SPEAKER_00 (28:02):
So, well, we we actually uh allow people to opt
in or opt out.
The opt-out says we hold you notresponsible.
SPEAKER_01 (28:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:08):
Like so we offer ADA compliance as a service, but we
did uh have a local company whowas being sued.
SPEAKER_01 (28:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:15):
Even though they were not I mean, it's not
illegal yet.
However, I was not sure.
I think that it fell under theirgeneral liability policy.
They ended up settling that.
But we had to rebuild theirwebsite, so it was actually ADA
compliance.
SPEAKER_03 (28:27):
Yeah, I that's surprising to me.
Normally I would expect to findthat in cyber, and these always
come out of the People'sRepublic of California.
Um, it's just where they comefrom.
And I think their attorneys thatmake a living, my poor my
attorney friends.
Listen, I am not anti-attorney.
We have so many wonderful ones.
Uh my friends at Critchfield,but it tends to be even the
allegation of wrongdoing is whatleads to we gotta respond, we
(28:49):
gotta defend, we've got to jump,and yes, especially if there are
damages sorts of trouble.
Um another really big area uhwould be broadly called
management liability.
There's going to be a number ofcoverages that are going to go
into that.
We've talked a little bit aboutemployment practices, that's
going to fall under managementliability.
Cyber frequently can fall undermanagement liability.
Um fiduciary, if we manageemployee plans, think most
(29:12):
commonly we manage an employee401k plan, and there's an
allegation of misappropriationof funds, um, we didn't invest
in the right funds, we shouldhave done this, done that, and
can demonstrate a financialloss.
Our employees can come after usin that situation.
And maybe one of the biggestones in there to talk about
would be directors and officers.
(29:32):
And I think this impacts manypeople, maybe even without
realizing it.
So you think directors andofficers, okay, I'm a big
Fortune 500 publicly tradedcompany.
Um, I've got a number ofdirectors of the company, I've
got a board of directors, I'vegot officers of the company.
There is a significant, let'scall it, decision-making
exposure there.
Property insurance, a buildingburns down, that's one thing.
(29:54):
Liability insurance, we got topay somebody else because
there's bodily injury orproperty damage.
You get to DO insurance,directors and officers, you're
talking more.
I can't necessarily demonstratethat you've injured me, bodily
injury.
There's no property damage, butthere's still some sort of an
injury.
Um, imagine a shareholder suingum a CEO of a company because
(30:15):
the shareholder had invested inthe company.
The CEO made a decision that theshareholder deemed was uh wrong,
led to a some sort of financialloss, bring suit against the
company.
Okay.
D and O can help cover that.
That's also a I don't know howmuch of that we have going on in
Wayne and Holmes County.
SPEAKER_00 (30:32):
Yeah, I have not really bring it down a little
bit, right?
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (30:35):
Um for nonprofits, this is really, really
important.
Um, one of the things that Ithink is really important about
my role, I imagine you do aswell, giving back to the
community.
And frequently that looks like,well, we're gonna serve on a
board of directors or board oftrustees for a nonprofit.
You should want to ensure, assomebody sitting on a board, and
um any director or officer ofthat uh nonprofit should want to
(30:56):
ensure that there's a directorsand officers policy in place in
the event somebody comes backagainst the organization for an
allegation, accusation ofmismanagement, wrongdoing,
something's not not going righthere.
Now, you don't own a nonprofit,run a nonprofit, nor do I.
These are for-profit entities.
(31:16):
Another interesting um area thatdirectors and officers will pick
up, usually um the policyusually responds when you come
down to things like breach ofnon-competes, non-piracy.
So we've even had this happenfor us.
We've hired employees away fromour competitors, and they've
come back against us alleging,well, you're taking our clients
(31:39):
or some sort of allegation ofthis.
And were we not to have had adirectors and officers policy,
we're on the hook for thatourselves.
And I know that's one that mostpeople, I'm a small company, I
why do I need a directors andofficers policy?
You might want to consider iteven if just for that very
reason alone.
SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
Aaron Powell How do they prove that?
I guess it's different if you ifyou're an agent and you're
moving agencies, you're likelyto take a book of clients with
you.
That's interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (32:06):
And they're all going to be unique, but think uh
a financial advisor who workedwith clients at one firm comes
over to another firm.
SPEAKER_00 (32:14):
They're very likely to follow the person.
SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
Yep.
And there's a real number,there's a real dollar amount
tied to that person um workingfor one organization versus the
other.
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (32:25):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (32:26):
Yep.
From the old, because you'recompetitors, so it it doesn't
take a whole lot for you to getfrustrated with a competitor
across town.
SPEAKER_00 (32:31):
They can have a big book of business be leaving with
them.
SPEAKER_03 (32:34):
So and you may even find that same situation should
you hire somebody away from acompetitor here.
Um if accounts start tricklingover, um, just be careful.
And there may not have been anon-compete for that employee
that you've hired away, but ifthere is a non-compete, a
non-piracy, some sort ofemployment.
SPEAKER_00 (32:48):
Non-competes are not legal in the state of Ohio
anymore, are they?
SPEAKER_03 (32:51):
Um there's legislation around that.
I you'd this is where youdefinitely want to ask your
attorney friends.
We need their help.
Um, I think some of that wasmaybe on hold.
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (33:03):
So it's still worth considering.
I think it's still out there.
Got it.
SPEAKER_03 (33:06):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a very real one.
Another interesting one.
Let's go to our manufacturer'sexample.
Um, we've probably all seen thathorrendous infomercial for the
ladder back in the day, and Idon't know, like 30 years ago,
where this guy's got this ladderthat folds up and he's going
across it, and he look, it's sosturdy, and the thing just
collapses on him right in themiddle of it, and he gets like
(33:27):
folded up backwards under it.
Um, products and completedoperations falls under the
general liability form andactually picks up the exposure.
Should our product not functionas it should, our ladder
collapses, or our completedoperation not function as it
should as well.
Um, think I'm a carpenter, acontractor, and I install a deck
(33:47):
on a home and it's elevated,people are on it, a support
collapses, and now I've gotsignificant bodily injury, maybe
death, have to put it all backtogether.
Um, those are things thatabsolutely have to be considered
and contemplated when you'rewhen you're looking at a
commercial general liabilitypolicy.
Let's talk about maybe even autojust for a second.
Do you own, does Spears Creativeown any automobiles?
SPEAKER_00 (34:10):
Only my vehicle.
SPEAKER_03 (34:11):
Is owned by the business?
Yes.
Yep.
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (34:13):
But employees will drive for work sometimes in
their own vehicles.
SPEAKER_03 (34:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:17):
Right.
So let's not talk about it,Seth.
SPEAKER_03 (34:20):
No, let's talk about it.
Okay.
Because the industry knows howto handle that.
That's what I do.
I drive my personal vehicle.
I drove it down toFredericksburg from Worcester.
Um, let's play out a scenariowhere I'm driving down here and
I cause an accident andsomebody's injured.
It's unlikely that WhitakerMyers is going to get pulled
into some sort of, you know,lawsuit surrounding that, but it
(34:40):
absolutely could happen.
Here's maybe a more relevantexample.
Um, you're a small contractor,and your truck that you use is
owned personally.
It's not owned by your business.
Um, you've got tools, you've gotsupplies in the back of the
truck, and same thing.
You're driving to a job site andyou cause an accident.
You've got big old magneticstickers on the side of it that
(35:01):
say, you know, Joe's contractingservice LLC.
You can bet the injured party,their attorney, is going to
bring Joe's contracting LLC intothe lawsuit.
The way that the industryprotects against that is a
coverage called hired andnon-owned auto.
They typically go together.
Hired auto would just be arented auto.
Um, so you fly to a conferencein Orlando, you rent a vehicle
(35:23):
down there, you cause anaccident.
If you have hired and non-ownedauto coverage, you actually have
liability coverage for thebusiness for that hired or
rented auto that you're using.
It's the same thing withnon-owned.
So any personal vehicles wouldbe an example of a non-owned
vehicle.
Um, an interesting question foryou.
Um, there's a coverage calleddrive other car coverage.
(35:47):
Now, you're an executive hereand you have a vehicle that is
insured by the business.
So I'm sure you have businessauto.
Um, if you drive your businessauto, there's liability coverage
for it.
Um if, for example, you weren'tmarried, didn't have a personal
auto, it was all you used wasthe company provided vehicle, we
would want to add a coveragecalled drive other car, which
(36:09):
literally is just what it soundslike.
If you would happen to driveanother car, your business
policy is not going to respondif you cause an accident.
So we just want to add thiscoverage called drive other car
in the event that, well, youwould drive another car and
cause an accident, have somesort of a liability exposure.
Yeah, weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00 (36:27):
Yeah, well, we need to look at that a little bit.
I I okay, I have anotherquestion.
This is actually relevant forI'm curious to see.
We have a policy inside ouremployee handbook around um
drinking at social events.
So beautiful.
We go to the chamber networkingevent, there's some drinks
there, everybody drives theirown car home.
(36:49):
How do we protect ourselves?
I also don't want any employeesacting crazy, acting a fool in
public.
But my biggest concern is theymight have had too many drinks,
drove home, and I don't want tobe responsible for that.
How do you how do companiesmanage that from a risk
perspective?
SPEAKER_03 (37:02):
Yeah.
Yeah, I think policies andprocedures are going to be
really important there.
I think it's it's highly likely,let's just say an employee goes
to a work function and causessome sort of an incident.
There is a chance that yourcommercial auto insurer is going
to say, that is not ourresponsibility, and they will
not defend.
A personal auto policy shouldrespond in that situation.
(37:24):
Um one of the things you can dois ask all of your employees to
carry, let's just call themsufficiently high limits.
What's the right number?
Impossible to tell.
I would suggest your employeesshould probably all carry at
least a half a million dollarsin combined single limit.
That means a half a milliondollars per accident that we
caused for bodily injury forproperty damage, right?
(37:45):
We've injured somebody, we'vedestroyed their car, we've you
know run into their house withour car, things like that.
Um and that would be one uh atleast one good practice that I
think you should shouldimplement.
Um, if it was an example of youdriving on behalf of work, um
the hired and unowned policy mayrespond there.
And absolutely, if you'redriving that business auto, the
(38:05):
auto policy should respond inthat situation.
But scary world and dangerous,and actually let's talk about
drinking.
SPEAKER_00 (38:11):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (38:11):
Okay.
That's not where I thought wewere going here.
But um at our agency, everycouple of weeks on a Friday
afternoon, we're right aroundthe corner from Vuellers in
Worcester on the north end.
About 4 15, I'll drive aroundthe corner, I'll grab some
margaritas for the ladies, beerfor the guys, something to snack
on, I'll bring it back aroundthe corner.
And we just we wind down at theend of the week with happy hour.
(38:31):
Now, let's just imagine one ofmy uh colleagues there at the
agency has a couple too manymargaritas and causes an
accident on the drive home.
We have coverage in our policy,and most I think most commercial
general liability forms wouldinclude it, or at least could
include it if needed, calledhost liquor liability.
Where I'm not I'm not a bar orrestaurant.
(38:53):
That's not my business.
That's going to be liquorliability, and that will be
covered separately.
But I just every once in a whileI host a happy hour and we have
a little bit of liquor there,and if something would happen,
that host liquor liabilitypolicy is going to step in and
respond.
SPEAKER_00 (39:06):
That's what we need.
SPEAKER_03 (39:07):
Yeah.
And I've got it.
Christmas party.
SPEAKER_00 (39:09):
Like I'm thinking like Christmas party
Thanksgiving.
Like we don't do it often, but acouple times a year we might
have an event.
SPEAKER_03 (39:16):
Well, you know, and and on events, uh, I know we
talked about this before, butthis is important for my
nonprofit clients.
You like to hold a 5Kfundraiser, a golf outing, some
sort of big dinner at Greystoneor whatever.
Each one of those most likelyneeds their own special event
policy.
Some companies will still allowyou to put special events on the
general liability, you know,business owners policy.
(39:39):
But for the most part, I'mseeing companies pushing away
from that and saying, we need toknow exactly what's going on
there.
We need to know how many peopleare going to be there.
You've got a 5K, no big deal.
You've got a 5K with drinksafterward.
Are you controlling access?
Are you serving?
Are your servers tips trained?
Lots of questions that'll comeout of that.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
So I understand.
SPEAKER_03 (39:58):
That's part of that regular check-in with your
agent.
What are you doing?
What are you forgetting to tellme about what exposures do you
have out there that we reallyneed to be considering?
SPEAKER_00 (40:06):
Let's talk about the foreign travel.
So we're a part of um we partnerwith branches worldwide.
So they're a nonprofit I'mheavily involved in.
I've been to Uganda and toMongolia with them.
So tell me like what I should beconsidering when it comes to
foreign travel.
We actually are considering takesending employees on trips with
them in the future.
So what do we need to thinkabout?
SPEAKER_03 (40:26):
Yeah, so what you're gonna be looking for would be
like a travel accident policy.
Big things essentially.
Something happens overseas.
What do you even do?
Um, Chubb would be an example ofa phenomenal multinational
company that has a wonderfulpolicy they put together, and
they'll give you a card thatgoes with you to say, I'm in
Africa and something has gonehorribly wrong.
(40:47):
What do I do?
Um, there'll be coverage foraccident.
I mean, you know, it'sunfortunate.
SPEAKER_00 (40:52):
I'm not driving in Africa, FYI.
I I was on the road.
Have you ever been?
SPEAKER_03 (40:56):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (40:57):
It's a little scary.
It is scary.
I'm never driving there.
SPEAKER_03 (40:59):
So that's a I drove in the Dominican Republic one
time, and that was terrifyingbecause noable español, I don't
know where I'm going, I don'tknow what I'm doing.
What's the speed limit?
It's a hundred kilometers anhour.
Okay, I'll drive 62 miles anhour, and a Corvette goes by
doing a hundred miles an hour.
Yeah, no rules.
Uh so yes, you're wise not todrive when you go to those
(41:20):
foreign countries.
Um, but if you're there, havingcoverage for an unfortunate
accident has happened, um, evenin the event of death, like
repatriation of remains gets totends to get included in that.
And then um, depending whereyou're going and what you're
doing, even adding a kidnap andransom policy on there.
SPEAKER_00 (41:36):
Yeah, that's you know, is America.
I just went to Mongolia bymyself, got stranded in um
Turkey for I don't know, likeover 12 hours in the airport by
myself.
I was too scared to leave theairport.
Yeah, so I stayed up all nightbecause I'm like, listen, I'm a
middle-aged blonde Americanwoman in the middle of the
Middle East by myself.
You're worth a lot of money.
Yeah, it was weird.
SPEAKER_01 (41:57):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (41:57):
And I felt really exposed in that moment.
And I was like, yeah.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (42:02):
Again, one of those just to talk about there are
policies available out there forit that can be really, really
helpful.
And part of it is it's peace ofmind.
SPEAKER_00 (42:09):
Do you just get those policies on a trip-by-trip
basis, or is that somethingthat's like always out there?
SPEAKER_03 (42:14):
Um, I more commonly I see it as an annual policy.
So think a large manufacturerthat has plants or suppliers in
lots of different countries or asales territory that extends
beyond just, you know, the U.S.
Um, I tend to see those policieson an annual basis, and they
really are not very expensive.
They'll be rated on the numberof trips and the number of
employees that are going onthese trips, but they can be
(42:34):
really helpful.
Again, just even having thatcard to know if I'm in that
foreign country and somethinghappens, this is where I call.
SPEAKER_00 (42:41):
Is that something like even my daughter's going on
a mission trips trip in June,they go every year.
Is that something people go onto mission trips should also be
considering from a personalstandpoint?
SPEAKER_03 (42:50):
Yeah, I I think it can be a good idea.
SPEAKER_00 (42:52):
Um I never would have thought about it until you
said that.
Like, ooh.
SPEAKER_03 (42:56):
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you out of the
point.
Um you can absolutely buy thoseon a trip-by-trip basis.
Okay.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:02):
Last year, my daughter went to Puerto Rico and
Live 360 called us because theythought she was in an accident.
So note Live 360 works acrossthe world.
Really, just the driver hadslammed on his brakes and her
phone went forward really hard,so it wasn't really an accident,
but helpful to know that thepolice were on their way because
nobody answered their phones.
SPEAKER_03 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, that technology is helpful.
It's amazing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00 (43:25):
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
I'm thankful I didn't have itwhenever I was a child, though.
SPEAKER_03 (43:30):
When we were kids, it was different.
SPEAKER_00 (43:31):
It was different, different, not dumb.
SPEAKER_03 (43:33):
Yeah, right.
All your dumb things didn't getrecorded forever.
So probably could take just amoment to talk about work comp,
um workers' compensation.
So in the state of Ohio, that'scontrolled by the state.
So your independent agent is islikely not helping out or
handling that for you.
That's another important one.
The state takes care of it.
If you've got employees thattravel to other states
(43:54):
regularly, you actually may needto carry a separate work comp
policy to be able to handlethat, particularly.
If they're doing any sort ofwork, doing an installation on a
project.
But Ohio's kind of unique.
There are a few other stateswhere it comp is handled
exclusively by the state.
Contractors, I think that's animportant one.
So let's just imagine you'vehired somebody to work for you
(44:16):
on a 1099 basis, and you come tome and say, I don't need to, I
don't need to take on thatexposure because they're a 1099
and they're going to be paidlike that and they're separate.
Well, if they can't demonstratethat they have insurance, you
actually are unfortunately goingto need to take on that risk.
And so that'll be some of thequestions that are asked in the
insurance application process.
(44:37):
What are the contractors youwork with?
Do you collect certificates ofinsurance from them regularly to
ensure, yep, they actually havea policy?
And am I named on that policy sothat if they cause an accident,
think a subcontractor on for abuilder?
SPEAKER_00 (44:51):
This is our world that we live in because of
working with most contractors,yes, 100%.
SPEAKER_03 (44:56):
Yeah.
So you're a GC and you hire anelectrician and they burn the
building down.
Well, we want to know that theyhave a policy that we're named
on it so that we don't getpulled into that because that
wasn't our work.
That was them that did that.
SPEAKER_00 (45:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (45:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:08):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (45:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:10):
Um, anything else you want to wrap this up for us?
Let us know.
Like if a business owner issitting here listening to this
and they say, I don't know whatto do with all of this
information.
SPEAKER_03 (45:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:19):
Any encouragement?
unknown (45:20):
Oh.
SPEAKER_00 (45:21):
Next steps?
SPEAKER_03 (45:22):
Take heart.
There is hope.
It's a big scary world outthere, but you can be assured
that big insurance companieslike a Traveler's Hartford, a
Chubb, or a Westfield, they'renot going to put their their
money on the line if they don'tbelieve that there is a very low
likelihood of somethinghappening.
So reach out to me, reach out tosomebody on my team, reach out
(45:45):
to your own agent.
Start to ask the questions.
If you're not hearing frompeople your agent every couple
of years, um, yeah.
Suggest a meeting to review allof your coverages.
Suggest a meeting to discusswhat you've got coming up,
what's changed, what's umdifferent.
You're gonna uncover some thingsand be ready to make hard
decisions.
Am I going to spend my moneythere to insure against that?
(46:06):
Am I going to save my money androll the dice?
Are we maybe going to stop doingthat just because it doesn't
make sense?
That happens regularly.
I had a client that stopped umtransporting uh their patients
in their own vehicles because,well, it didn't make sense.
It's just too expensive.
It's too risky.
And the insurance marketplacesays uh instead of a thousand
(46:27):
dollars per vehicle for that,that's gonna be six thousand
dollars a vehicle.
Well, if you have a hundred,that's a real number.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (46:34):
Okay.
I really appreciate your thoughtand perspective.
You shared us a uh with us avery comprehensive list of the
things to consider from abusiness perspective.
You shared a little bit of yourinsights and experiences, so we
really appreciate that.
Um tell everybody where theyshould find you if they wanted
to reach out to you because theyhave questions.
SPEAKER_03 (46:53):
Yeah, sure.
If you Google Whitaker Myers andSeth, I'm sure you'll absolutely
find me.
Um I try to be around at manychamber events and other
networking events around town.
Um, my contact information isall out there.
I'd love to just begin theconversation.
It may not go anywhere, buttruly I want to be a help uh and
a and a resource for people.
Whitaker Whitaker-myers.com.
(47:15):
W-h-i t-a-k-e-r-m-y-r-s.com.
SPEAKER_00 (47:19):
Thank you very much.
Of course.
SPEAKER_03 (47:20):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (47:20):
It was great chatting with you today.
SPEAKER_03 (47:22):
Enjoyed it.
Likewise.
Great to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (47:23):
Thanks for tuning into Torch Talk.
If today's story sparkedsomething for you, share it with
a colleague, community leader,or future change maker.
Until next time, stay inspired,stay intentional, and keep your
fire burning.
Take heart.
There is hope.
It's a big scary world outthere.
But you can be assured that biginsurance companies like a
Traveler's Hartford, a Chubb, ora Westfield, they're not going
to put their money on the lineif they don't believe that there
is a very low likelihood ofsomething happening.
SPEAKER_00 (00:23):
Welcome back to Torch Talk, the show where we
spotlight bold local leadersgrowing their businesses and
communities with grit andpurpose.
Today's guest is SethBuckwalder, president of
Whitaker Myers.
In this Torch Talk episode,we'll explore his Blaze Business
Expo presentations and hisinsights on risk management,
leadership, andcommunity-focused business, and
take a deeper dive into how hisapproach helps individuals and
(00:46):
organizations protect whatmatters most.
Welcome, Seth.
Thank you.
Great to be here.
So nice to meet you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Like we've run around a littlebit, but we need to get to talk.
So this will be our first kindof deeper dive discussion.
So I'm looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_03 (01:01):
Likewise.
SPEAKER_00 (01:02):
Okay, so you're going to be a part of the Blaze
Business Expo at the time offilming.
It is prior, but this willactually air after as a means to
expand upon what you are anexpert in, which is tell us
actually.
Why don't you tell us whatyou're an expert in?
SPEAKER_03 (01:19):
What are you an expert in?
That's dangerous, isn't it?
I like to think of myself as ateacher.
And the area that I happen toteach in would be that area of
risk management and insurance.
And so it's really important tome to help educate my friends,
my clients, in terms of whatareas they may not even be
considering when it comes torisk.
(01:40):
What things they're doing thatmaybe they should be insuring,
what things they're doing theyshould not be doing at all, and
to truly help them ensure theycan sleep well at night, knowing
that what's important to themhas been protected.
SPEAKER_00 (01:52):
Okay.
That's that's can you give me agive us a few examples?
Because that's kind of like highlevel, right?
So I always go to what are yousaid, what are the things that
they should be doing thatthey're not doing immediately.
Then my brewery is like, whatshould I not be doing?
What?
SPEAKER_03 (02:08):
Yeah, what is well I have uh uh I have many
different, I think, examplesthat uh can further demonstrate
that.
Um let's pick just one.
And we haven't talked about thisbeforehand, so let's see how
this goes.
Um I would assume that you havea general liability policy here
for Fierce Creative, yes?
SPEAKER_02 (02:27):
Correct.
SPEAKER_03 (02:28):
Yes, wonderful.
Um we're getting ready to put onthe Blaze Expo as we sit here
and talk, and when people listento this, we'll be after the
expo.
I assume now you need to askyour own independent agent, so
the caveat there is always that,but I would assume that your
general liability policy has anexclusion in there for special
events.
SPEAKER_02 (02:48):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (02:48):
And so as you get ready for this Blaze Expo,
thinking about however manypeople are going to be there,
being off-site, so we don't havepremises liability for the site
like we would here, you wouldneed a special event policy to
be written specifically for thatevent.
And the unlikely chance that anattendee would slip and fall,
somebody would get their feettangled up in cables, something
(03:10):
would happen where even if we'vedone nothing wrong, we as Fierce
Creative have to defendourselves against a lawsuit.
So that's the question.
SPEAKER_00 (03:19):
So you need a special event policy.
SPEAKER_03 (03:21):
You do need a special event policy, most
likely.
SPEAKER_00 (03:24):
I have a little bit of experience with that, like
even with going to home showswith contractors and things like
that, sometimes they have to buya special policy for attending
those types of events.
Yep.
Are those expensive?
Easy to get.
Yeah, but it depends.
SPEAKER_03 (03:36):
What's the uh as with anything in life, it simply
depends.
So if we plan to have 10,000people there, a rock show that
goes on until 2 o'clock in themorning, and it's bring your own
beer, we've got a problem.
SPEAKER_01 (03:48):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (03:48):
Something like this, this probably will not be
terribly expensive.
It's a common exposure.
The industry knows exactly howto handle it.
I don't foresee it being asignificant issue.
It'll be rated on a number ofthings.
How long is it going to go on?
How many people do we anticipatebeing there?
And the underwriters at thecompany will put a number to it,
I doubt more than a couplehundred dollars at most.
SPEAKER_00 (04:06):
What are some other examples where businesses might
need a special extra policybesides, I mean, most businesses
are not putting on conferences,but are there other situations
where they might need somethinglike that?
SPEAKER_03 (04:17):
Yeah, sure.
Lots of examples of that.
Um, one might be, let's justsay, for example, you're a power
washer, you're a contractor, andwhat you do is power washing and
cleaning.
And this was a real life examplethat we had come up for us.
Um you have, you think of apolicy, there's really two sides
to it.
There's property coverage andthere's casualty or the
liability side of things.
(04:38):
And the liability is what goesto pay other people.
And so if you're a power washerand you're power washing, say, a
bank, and you're cleaning aroundan ATM and you happen to
overspray a bit, and you get anATM, and this is real, this has
happened.
Well, there's actually aspecific coverage called care
custody and control that wouldbe needed on the policy in order
(05:00):
for the policy to respond andcover the damage to the ATM.
And the logic there from aninsurance perspective is that
ATM, that property was in yourcare, your custody, or your
control at the time the losshappened.
Therefore, you had a duty totake care of it and you did not.
And so if you don't have care,custody, and control in your
policy, you're gonna be left asthe insured holding the bag on
(05:23):
that one, so to speak.
SPEAKER_00 (05:24):
Yeah, I have actually experienced some of
that.
I didn't turn in a claim, butour we've got our house power
washed, and it literallystripped the coating off our
door.
Like we had to replace ourschlage, you know, door codes
handles.
So they get a little out ofcontrol sometimes.
SPEAKER_01 (05:38):
Yeah.
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (05:39):
Is there an industry from your experience that is
like the most expensive tocover?
Like we work with a lot ofconstruction companies.
I have a lot of like roofingliability.
Is there specific, you know,different types of risks within
the city?
SPEAKER_03 (05:52):
Those tend yes, those are difficult.
Um, I'll give just some broadcategories.
If you are, for example, a gunmanufacturer, well, think of the
world we live in.
Yeah.
And think of the litigioussociety that we live in.
And so if you're making a gun,or even if you're making a
subcomponent to a gun, well,you're gonna have some trouble
out there in the industryfinding coverage.
And if you can't, it's going tobe very, very expensive.
(06:15):
Because, and I love all of myattorney friends, but there are
some some bad actors out therethat love nothing more than to
dig their teeth into the bigdeep pockets, which ultimately
ends up being the insurancecompany.
Okay.
That you make dynamite, goodluck finding coverage for a
building.
Um, maybe a more real-life, morepractical example for kind of
the the Wayne County area that Iprimarily work in, um, foster
(06:38):
care adoption, okay, um, youthservices.
So you think of the possibilityof some sort of a claim arising
from you know just the the worstof the worst, a child being in a
foster care home and some sortof abuse happening.
And then you also have a longtail on that because a child may
be eight, nine, ten years oldwhen the incident happens, the
(06:59):
statute of limitations doesn'tstart till they turn 18.
So if you're an insurancecompany thinking, do we want to
cover an organization that isinvolved in this?
There's a very long, long leadtime till a claim might actually
appear.
SPEAKER_00 (07:11):
So that is something yeah, I would not have thought
of.
Are there, okay, so I was goingto ask, um, is cybersecurity
something that you recommend aslike an add-on as on a regular
basis?
And are there other types ofthings like that where you're
like you really should revisitthose types of policies?
SPEAKER_03 (07:28):
Cyber is a really interesting one.
Um, generally speaking, yes, youshould have it.
However, I don't know that youcan say that a blanket statement
across everything.
So let's go back to our theexample of our power washer.
Um, if it's one guy, he'srunning a truck, he's got very
little customer information, hemay not have a significant cyber
exposure.
However, it may not be unwise tobuy just a small amount of cyber
(07:51):
coverage on his package policy.
If you have any sort of customerdata, um, especially in the
healthcare industry, medicalrecords tend to be so valuable
out there on the black market.
And so that's what you'relooking at.
What's my exposure to a threatactor getting into the system,
extracting data, locking it up,essentially calling me back and
(08:13):
saying, hey, do you want yourdata back?
Here's the ransom demand for it.
So there's the demand to unlockyour data, um, to maybe
unencrypt or get you back intoyour systems.
There's reality that, um, and weprobably all get these letters
regularly, Marriott got hackedand your data has been exposed.
So now we the insured and theinsurance company will back that
(08:34):
have a responsibility to notifyall clients that their data has
been exposed, to provide maybecredit monitoring.
And if a client can or one ofthe customers can demonstrate
that there actually are damagesas a result, there could be a
significant liability exposureto it as well.
Now, that sounds like a bigcompany thing, right?
It's a big company issue.
(08:54):
Um it's it's not limited to bigcompanies when it comes to
cyber.
Um I have a number of clients,even small manufacturers that
would be well known in the area,that if a threat actor gets in
and lock down your computersystem, think how crippling that
would be to businesses.
SPEAKER_00 (09:11):
I mean, it actually happened to a very large
business in our area last year.
SPEAKER_03 (09:14):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (09:15):
So that was and it shut down their business for I
don't know how many days, but itwas pretty big deal.
SPEAKER_03 (09:21):
So cyber policies can be very small, maybe a fifty
thousand dollar limit, not veryrobust, or um they can
absolutely expand beyond that tohave very high limits, to have
lots of little extra coverageson there.
Um ransomware demand uh can evenhelp with equipment.
Um if it's been quote unquotebricked or locked up, the laptop
is gone.
(09:42):
Um think of yourself being a oneor two person uh law office, a
small firm.
Um all of your data, and for methis is true in the insurance
agency side, all of my data isonline, it's all in the cloud.
If that gets locked up, and thesmall uh loyal uh law firm
example is a great one of that.
(10:03):
If all that data is locked upand the threat actor says, I
need two million dollars tounlock it, well, you're dead in
the water.
SPEAKER_01 (10:09):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (10:09):
Unless you have a policy that's ready to stand
behind you uh to back it up.
Now, here's an interesting thingtoo.
And the industry, the insuranceindustry has really wrestled
with cyber.
How do we best handle this?
Where are the bad guys comingfrom?
How do we keep them out?
So it's gotten harder and harderto get a cyber policy.
You have to demonstrate muchmore.
I've closed this port, and therethis is a world that I don't
fully understand, right?
(10:29):
Close this.
We've done that, all theseloopholes, multi-factor
authentication and everything.
SPEAKER_00 (10:34):
So we actually went through the steps to try to get
a cyber policy and can't becauseof the way that our like our
rent with our internet and ourlandlord, I don't have control
over the server in thisbuilding.
And because of that, I can'treally get a cyber policy with
that.
And so then we are looking athow do we protect.
I'm not looking at Garrett inthe face right now because he's
like, please protect our assets.
Our risk is all of our content,like our photos, videos.
(10:57):
Sure.
Like I can probably memorize allof our client information, it's
the rest of it that we would,you know, lose if something
would happen.
SPEAKER_03 (11:04):
But yeah.
Well, think from an insurancecompany perspective, right?
So you're a fairly smallorganization, you're not going
to spend$20,000,$50,000,$100,000a year on a cyber policy.
For you to be able to buy it, itprobably needs to be in the
$5,000 or less range.
Here's a another real lifeexample.
This really has happened.
Um, imagine the threat actorgets into your email system and
(11:26):
is watching emails going backand forth and just so happens to
see a cyber policy going backand forth with, say, two million
dollar limits.
Well, when that threat actordecides to strike, locks
everything up, and gets to youby email and says, Hey, by the
way, we've locked up all yourdata and we need$2 million to
unlock it because they've seen acyber policy go back and forth.
(11:46):
Well, how do you price that asan insurance company?
How in the world can you protectyourself there?
And I think um having goodbackups, and again, the
companies have become so muchmore sophisticated in terms of
knowing how the bad actors getinto the systems.
Um, but having a plan, havingbackups, um, testing it
regularly.
Um, another real life example uha cyber incident happens, and um
(12:13):
the company executives gettogether on a team's call to try
to discuss their response.
Here's what we're gonna do,here's our response, here's how
we're going to handle this,here's what we're going to do
over here.
We made this, be carefulengaging with that.
Got a follow-up email from thebad guy saying, That's great.
I was actually on your team'scall and heard all of that and
watched it go around.
So, like, right, the things youdo, can you even imagine that
happening?
So, having a plan in place thatsays if this, then that, and the
(12:38):
insurance companies are heavilyinvested, financially invested,
in you not having a claim, andthey really want to help along
the way.
SPEAKER_00 (12:46):
One of the things that, because we um are really
good friends with a local ITcompany, one of the things they
talk about all the time is umsomebody coming in and
monitoring emails, interceptingaccount numbers, and really like
hitting companies hard from anACH perspective, which I don't
know who's doing wires and ACHis over email anymore, but so is
(13:08):
that something the cybersecuritypolicy actually covers, or is
that something different?
SPEAKER_03 (13:12):
Yeah.
So what you're talking aboutthere, there could be some cyber
components to it, but thisprobably falls more under the
crime coverage, actually.
So um a couple and and an easyone to talk about, another one
I've seen a lot of activity inin the industry, social
engineering fraud.
So somebody pretends to besomebody they're not and tricks
you into doing something, let'scall it legitimate.
(13:35):
Um you are uh this will be areal life example, so I'll I'll
protect the innocent here, butum, you're a large organization
engaged in a multi-milliondollar building project.
And you're working with acontractor and you get an
invoice from the contractor formore than$900,000, and it looks
legitimate.
And you wire the funds off tothis contractor, kind of as you
(13:57):
always do.
But what you didn't realize isthat the bad guy got in, was
watching invoices going back andforth, grabbed one, modified it
ever so slightly to include hisbank account information instead
of your contractor's bankaccount information, and you
just sent$900,000 to the wrongbank account.
SPEAKER_00 (14:14):
Wow.
SPEAKER_03 (14:14):
You talk about having a bad day at the office,
yeah, and that's it.
SPEAKER_00 (14:17):
I mean, even at a smaller amount, like to me, like
$10,000 is a big deal.
Like I lose some sleep over likelosing that amount of money.
SPEAKER_03 (14:25):
So and especially for small business, and that's
what you're talking about.
SPEAKER_00 (14:28):
$100,000 is it's actually really scary how email
phishing has evolved.
I've had employee, I've receivedemployee emails saying they need
to update their direct depositinformation.
I know that that's not real.
So we've had it's gotten to thepoint where I actually don't
even trust all the emails I'mgetting from.
I'm gonna call them and I say,hey, is this real Instagram
reset codes?
SPEAKER_03 (14:47):
Do you want a job?
Uh man, do I Because that's it.
I know.
SPEAKER_00 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (14:52):
So uh positively verifying all of those requests
is really key.
Yes.
And the industry has said, ifyou're not doing that, you have
to be doing that.
And if you have a claim and youcan't verify that you've done
that, then we may not pay out.
So when you receive that email,and I get those two, hey, can
you update my payrollinformation?
Um, I I know I gotta walk aroundthe corner and talk to so-and-so
(15:15):
because this is not, they don'tcommunicate from a Gmail
account.
SPEAKER_00 (15:18):
Most of the time, I'm like, yep, delete.
I know that that one's notlegit.
Rachel, uh, our COO received aninvoice once with a whole email
thread that they produced thatmade it look like I was
authorizing something back andforth.
And she said, literally the onlyway I knew it wasn't you is
because you were too nice.
They made me sound way too nicein the email thread.
Well, thanks for the backing.
SPEAKER_01 (15:37):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (15:38):
So okay, well, tell us we talked a lot about like
security and some what othercore challenges do you see
facing businesses right now?
Is there something you wish youcould just tell everybody?
You're like, I just wish ifpeople could get this.
SPEAKER_03 (15:50):
Yeah.
I think, and I don't want thisto sound like a cop-out, but go
talk to an independent insuranceagent.
Because I've talked about, youknow, you're a small contractor,
hang a drywall, or powerwashing, or you're a large
social services nonprofitdealing in foster care and
adoption.
Every single business is unique.
(16:11):
Their risks are all unique.
And that's where you needsomebody that's willing to ask
the questions and try tounderstand what do you do?
It's transportation.
Who's responsible for the goodswhen they're in transit?
Um you are installing cabinets,do you bring them in on a truck
and they go in right away, orthey may be left on site
overnight?
Because then we need aninstallation floater to make
(16:32):
sure we're covering that thematerial that's there before it
gets installed, at which pointit becomes property of the
homeowner.
There are so many differentthings.
It's almost impossible.
SPEAKER_00 (16:41):
Well, what so what does your process look like at
Litaker Myers to uncover thosethings?
So kind of I I'm actuallygenuinely curious.
So tell me.
SPEAKER_03 (16:48):
Yeah.
I it starts by asking a lot ofquestions because it's just so
broad.
And that's one of the thingsthat I love doing the most, is
just simply getting to knowpeople, understanding who they
are and what they do, and askinga bunch of questions.
And so just very simply put, um,if you came to me and said, I
need help, we're gonna have ameeting like this.
Maybe not the cameras on, butwe're gonna have a meeting where
I'm gonna ask questions aboutwhat you do, um, what your
(17:11):
day-to-day business looks like,what sort of extra this and
that, um, how many autos do wehave?
They're going, there's a lot ofinformation gathering.
And then that kind of goestogether for me into an
application that's ultimatelygoing to go out to the insurance
marketplace.
And I recommend working with anindependent agent.
That's what I am.
Um I've got lots of uh, youknow, friendly competitors
(17:31):
around in the area that do thesame thing.
Talk to an independent agentthat represents a lot of
different insurance companies.
That essentially, you know, mygoal would be in a perfect world
to make you such an amazing riskwhen it comes to the insurance
marketplace that I've gotcompanies salivating to work
with you.
And that's ultimately where Iwant to be.
And then we're gonna haveconversations about okay, we
(17:52):
carry uh a policy with liabilitylimits of let's say a million
dollars.
So if I slip and fall on thesidewalk when I'm coming in
here, you've got a milliondollars to put me back together,
so to speak.
Is that enough?
Well, we don't have a big foottraffic exposure here.
It's mostly employees.
It's probably enough.
If you're a grocery store, um, arestaurant, a barber shop,
(18:15):
something that has a lot of foottraffic, we're gonna have a
different conversation of do weneed higher liability limits?
Are there other things thatwe're doing or could be doing to
try to mitigate some of thatrisk?
It's hard, those are difficultconversations.
What's the right number?
I don't know.
Up until this point, hopefullyit's been zero, but the unknown
of what happens tomorrow, that'sthe part that keeps me up.
(18:36):
I imagine it's what keeps somebusiness owners up at night,
too.
And so that's where we aim tosay at least educate, inform.
I'm never a hard sell.
I'm never never going to tellyou you have to buy this policy
with these limits.
With the I want you to know andunderstand what you are taking
on and what maybe you'rechoosing not to take on.
(18:57):
In in the insurance world, um,there are a few ways that you
can essentially handle a risk.
Um, we can avoid doing it, wemight stop manufacturing our
dynamite.
Um, we might transfer all of therisk to insurance.
We might buy an insurance policythat if the the building goes
boom because of a dynamite youknow being lit, um, it's it's
(19:18):
going to entirely be transferredoff to insurance.
Um we might retain a part of it.
Think of that as being like adeductible.
So if we um have a small claim,we're gonna handle the first
$2,000,$5,000,$10,000 of it.
Or we might choose to simplyretain all of it ourselves.
You might roll the dice and sayfor the Blaze Expo, I don't need
a policy, I don't thinkanything's going to happen.
(19:40):
And I'm and and as an youragent, as long as you've made an
educated decision, I'm okay withthat.
I may not do it myself, right?
But I'm okay with it.
SPEAKER_00 (19:48):
Okay.
So what is support from you fromyour end look like after
somebody is working with you?
Like do you do you do regularcheck-in?
I don't I'm yeah, I never hearfrom my insurance agent, by the
way.
SPEAKER_03 (19:59):
So well, I never want to be a nuisance.
Okay, but I think every at leastevery couple of years, there
should absolutely be a sit-downor a phone meeting to say what's
changed, because one of thedangerous things in my business
is I can write a policy oneyear, and if we're not all over
that every single year or everycouple of years, asking the
insured what's going on, what'schanged.
SPEAKER_00 (20:20):
I mean, they might have grown 50% and you don't
know, and then they're covering.
SPEAKER_03 (20:24):
Something different.
Right.
A new service.
SPEAKER_00 (20:26):
Yeah, then decided to do sideing, not just roofing,
and you're like, Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03 (20:30):
Yeah, and then we're doing commercial roofing for
10-story buildings, and that'svastly different than a flat
roof on a one-story building.
My uh own business is a greatexample.
We started 157 years ago inWorcester as an insurance
agency.
And over the years we've addedto our practice.
So we added a benefits groupthat does health insurance.
Um, in I think 2010, we added awealth management group that's
(20:52):
grown by leaps and bounds.
And well, we have your home andauto, we have your health
insurance, we have your money,can you do my taxes as well?
And so we added a tax practice acouple years ago.
So I'm a completely differentcompany than I was even five
years ago.
Um, now we have the advantage ofuh you know carefully keeping an
eye on that ourselves, butsometimes we get caught too.
(21:13):
It's the old, what is it, thecobbler's children have no
shoes.
Like we we have to verycarefully watch to make sure
we're insuring even our ownbuildings appropriately and our
own exposures appropriately.
SPEAKER_00 (21:24):
Well, and the world changes so fast.
I mean, I feel like marketing ischanging like it's really wild
right now with the introductionof AI and all of the things.
Like, there's a lot ofimplications to some of these
things.
We don't even know what thatlooks like 100% yet.
SPEAKER_03 (21:35):
So Yeah.
And that's true of my industry,and it's also not true because
insurance in some ways, like itthere it goes back way, way far,
yet also even over the lastcouple hundred years.
And a significant piece of thatis there's a boat floating
across an ocean with stuff init, and I want it to get to the
other side.
And if it doesn't make it, Idon't want all of that risk
myself.
(21:56):
I have a building, we light bycandle, and if Burns down, I'm
not able to replace it myself.
And so those things are stillreal to my industry today.
Lots of new things have comealong.
Cyber is one, but at the end ofthe day, protecting the things
that you hold that you own,balance sheet protection.
If we have a large loss overthere, I want to be able to keep
(22:17):
going as a business.
But yes, ever changing.
SPEAKER_00 (22:19):
Is um key like stakeholder insurance and
looking at those types ofthings, life insurance policies,
is that something that yourecommend as well on a regular
basis?
SPEAKER_03 (22:29):
Yeah, I same thing.
Talk to an agent that knows whatthey're doing.
I wouldn't say that's an area ofexpertise for me.
We have people in my group thatdo that, but absolutely a part
of the personal commercial.
SPEAKER_00 (22:40):
I think about it as commercial, but I guess it's
not.
It's more life insurance, right?
SPEAKER_03 (22:43):
It they are life insurance products, yes.
So you need to carry a differentuh license for that.
Um but it it's criticallyimportant because what happens
if you have a key employeedepart, you're a small group and
you have somebody that's a majorcontributor depart.
You may not want amillion-dollar policy for that,
but you may want$100,000 becauseyou recognize I may lose a
client, it's going to have to gothrough an extensive search,
(23:05):
we're going to struggle becauseof it.
Um key man policies from a lifeperspective.
So my business partner and Ihave life insurance policies on
one another.
Because if I were tounfortunately pass away, the
reality is he's probably goingto want to buy out my wife, who
would be the owner of it.
Yeah, and nor does she want tobe wanna run an insurance
(23:26):
agency, but there's significantdebt obligations, having bought
the business, that need to besatisfied.
And so absolutely, that's animportant part of it.
SPEAKER_00 (23:33):
What about if you're a soul owner?
Is there like what what doesthat look like?
SPEAKER_02 (23:38):
Yeah, sure.
SPEAKER_00 (23:39):
I it's more for me like I need to make sure
everybody here has a job if Idie.
And I talk about dying way toomuch around here.
So I'm always like, what I don'tknow what your job is if you
die.
And they're like, they look atme like this.
I'm like, listen, I know you're25, but you might die.
So unfortunately, we had toprepare for every situation.
SPEAKER_03 (23:58):
I think there probably there are insurance
things that you probably coulddo with that.
And and you might, and anattorney is going to be able to
help work through too.
What does that successionplanning look like?
Um, is it immediately it passesto a spouse who then is probably
going to liquidate?
Um, do you have a good businesscontinuity plan in place?
Do you have a strong second,third identified that are ready
(24:19):
to step in and and take yourplace?
And I know we've got some otherphenomenal speakers that the
Blaze Expo that might even bebetter positioned to answer that
question than I am.
SPEAKER_00 (24:26):
That's good.
But so it it ties in a littlebit, but it's kind of like an
outlier.
SPEAKER_03 (24:30):
A little bit.
Got it.
Yeah, a little bit.
SPEAKER_00 (24:32):
Okay.
Any um like any other storiesyou want to share, case studies,
things like that?
I know that you have broughtsome ideas.
SPEAKER_03 (24:41):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, almost where do youstart?
There's all kinds of differentphones.
SPEAKER_00 (24:45):
I mean, I think I could sit here and listen to
them all day.
And then you'd be like, oh mygoodness.
SPEAKER_03 (24:48):
And you'd leave terrified and yes, wanting to do
what?
All your insurance agents.
SPEAKER_00 (24:52):
So I'm good with it.
SPEAKER_03 (24:53):
Well, so um here's another area that I think we've
seen a lot of activity inrecently: employment practices.
SPEAKER_00 (25:00):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (25:00):
Okay, well, what is that, Seth?
Um, broadly speaking, employmentpractices liability insurance or
EPL, EPLI, would protect you,the business, in the event
there's some sort of anallegation of wrongful
termination, harassment, um,failure to hire, wage an hour.
So um, we've got an employeethat's been harassed here at
(25:22):
work, and they resign and file alawsuit.
These happen all the time.
Um we did not hire somebodybecause of protected classes,
age, race, things like that.
Um even, and this is reallyimportant in in my world too.
Even if we're not wrong, even ifwe haven't done anything wrong,
the allegation of wrongdoingleads to just as damaging.
(25:46):
Yeah.
Um and it can be financially uhdevastating if you don't have
policies in place standingbehind you.
Um this is a part of it.
So third-party liability fallingunderneath that employment
practices part.
Imagine the same delivery guyshows up and your ladies are out
back there making comments andharassing the delivery guy.
(26:09):
That actually falls in this aswell.
And those things happen, right?
And you laugh about it becauseit seems crazy, but that's just
the world that we live in.
So employment practices is areally important one.
And uh, these claims happen,they actually happen regularly.
And again, I have so manywonderful attorney friends, I'm
not throwing them under the bus.
But let's let's take our TimMisney, right?
(26:29):
You've seen the billboards.
If you drive to Cleveland, ifyou go south, like South
Carolina and Florida arehorrendous for this.
The uh injury and accidentattorneys that will grab hold of
anything and everything.
From an employment practicesstandpoint, I've had numerous
clients have this even over thelast couple years.
Something happened at work.
Um, an employee feels like maybethey weren't trained
appropriately, somethinghappened, they weren't
(26:50):
protected, whatever it might be.
Frequently these issues lead toabsolutely nothing in a court of
law.
And we, as the the insured, mayfeel like we've done nothing
wrong.
I'm gonna, we're gonna fight tothe death.
We're gonna win this in court.
And the insurance company cancome alongside you, kind of put
their arm around you, and say,listen, here's the deal.
We believe you, but if we go tocourt, we're gonna spend$250,000
(27:12):
defending this.
The demand is$50,000, we'regonna offer them$25,000, and
we're just gonna make it goaway.
And that's what happens.
And yet we've done nothingwrong.
But you don't want to be on yourown in that.
You don't want to be with theother.
SPEAKER_00 (27:27):
So that's a special writer or addition to an
existing policy that okay.
I'm curious, have you had any umthis relates to our world, ADA
compliance lawsuits?
Yeah, with our websites.
SPEAKER_03 (27:40):
Yes, that actually is an interesting one because
that tends to fall under thecyber uh realm of things.
So yeah.
Yeah, it usually will fall intothere.
Now, again, look at um policylanguage, ask your agent.
There are going to be someexclusions for that sometimes
too.
Um you're a web designer, and soyes, you absolutely have an
(28:01):
exposure there.
SPEAKER_00 (28:02):
So, well, we we actually uh allow people to opt
in or opt out.
The opt-out says we hold you notresponsible.
SPEAKER_01 (28:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:08):
Like so we offer ADA compliance as a service, but we
did uh have a local company whowas being sued.
SPEAKER_01 (28:15):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (28:15):
Even though they were not I mean, it's not
illegal yet.
However, I was not sure.
I think that it fell under theirgeneral liability policy.
They ended up settling that.
But we had to rebuild theirwebsite, so it was actually ADA
compliance.
SPEAKER_03 (28:27):
Yeah, I that's surprising to me.
Normally I would expect to findthat in cyber, and these always
come out of the People'sRepublic of California.
Um, it's just where they comefrom.
And I think their attorneys thatmake a living, my poor my
attorney friends.
Listen, I am not anti-attorney.
We have so many wonderful ones.
Uh my friends at Critchfield,but it tends to be even the
allegation of wrongdoing is whatleads to we gotta respond, we
(28:49):
gotta defend, we've got to jump,and yes, especially if there are
damages sorts of trouble.
Um another really big area uhwould be broadly called
management liability.
There's going to be a number ofcoverages that are going to go
into that.
We've talked a little bit aboutemployment practices, that's
going to fall under managementliability.
Cyber frequently can fall undermanagement liability.
Um fiduciary, if we manageemployee plans, think most
(29:12):
commonly we manage an employee401k plan, and there's an
allegation of misappropriationof funds, um, we didn't invest
in the right funds, we shouldhave done this, done that, and
can demonstrate a financialloss.
Our employees can come after usin that situation.
And maybe one of the biggestones in there to talk about
would be directors and officers.
(29:32):
And I think this impacts manypeople, maybe even without
realizing it.
So you think directors andofficers, okay, I'm a big
Fortune 500 publicly tradedcompany.
Um, I've got a number ofdirectors of the company, I've
got a board of directors, I'vegot officers of the company.
There is a significant, let'scall it, decision-making
exposure there.
Property insurance, a buildingburns down, that's one thing.
(29:54):
Liability insurance, we got topay somebody else because
there's bodily injury orproperty damage.
You get to DO insurance,directors and officers, you're
talking more.
I can't necessarily demonstratethat you've injured me, bodily
injury.
There's no property damage, butthere's still some sort of an
injury.
Um, imagine a shareholder suingum a CEO of a company because
(30:15):
the shareholder had invested inthe company.
The CEO made a decision that theshareholder deemed was uh wrong,
led to a some sort of financialloss, bring suit against the
company.
Okay.
D and O can help cover that.
That's also a I don't know howmuch of that we have going on in
Wayne and Holmes County.
SPEAKER_00 (30:32):
Yeah, I have not really bring it down a little
bit, right?
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (30:35):
Um for nonprofits, this is really, really
important.
Um, one of the things that Ithink is really important about
my role, I imagine you do aswell, giving back to the
community.
And frequently that looks like,well, we're gonna serve on a
board of directors or board oftrustees for a nonprofit.
You should want to ensure, assomebody sitting on a board, and
um any director or officer ofthat uh nonprofit should want to
(30:56):
ensure that there's a directorsand officers policy in place in
the event somebody comes backagainst the organization for an
allegation, accusation ofmismanagement, wrongdoing,
something's not not going righthere.
Now, you don't own a nonprofit,run a nonprofit, nor do I.
These are for-profit entities.
(31:16):
Another interesting um area thatdirectors and officers will pick
up, usually um the policyusually responds when you come
down to things like breach ofnon-competes, non-piracy.
So we've even had this happenfor us.
We've hired employees away fromour competitors, and they've
come back against us alleging,well, you're taking our clients
(31:39):
or some sort of allegation ofthis.
And were we not to have had adirectors and officers policy,
we're on the hook for thatourselves.
And I know that's one that mostpeople, I'm a small company, I
why do I need a directors andofficers policy?
You might want to consider iteven if just for that very
reason alone.
SPEAKER_00 (31:55):
Aaron Powell How do they prove that?
I guess it's different if you ifyou're an agent and you're
moving agencies, you're likelyto take a book of clients with
you.
That's interesting.
SPEAKER_03 (32:06):
And they're all going to be unique, but think uh
a financial advisor who workedwith clients at one firm comes
over to another firm.
SPEAKER_00 (32:14):
They're very likely to follow the person.
SPEAKER_03 (32:16):
Yep.
And there's a real number,there's a real dollar amount
tied to that person um workingfor one organization versus the
other.
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (32:25):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (32:26):
Yep.
From the old, because you'recompetitors, so it it doesn't
take a whole lot for you to getfrustrated with a competitor
across town.
SPEAKER_00 (32:31):
They can have a big book of business be leaving with
them.
SPEAKER_03 (32:34):
So and you may even find that same situation should
you hire somebody away from acompetitor here.
Um if accounts start tricklingover, um, just be careful.
And there may not have been anon-compete for that employee
that you've hired away, but ifthere is a non-compete, a
non-piracy, some sort ofemployment.
SPEAKER_00 (32:48):
Non-competes are not legal in the state of Ohio
anymore, are they?
SPEAKER_03 (32:51):
Um there's legislation around that.
I you'd this is where youdefinitely want to ask your
attorney friends.
We need their help.
Um, I think some of that wasmaybe on hold.
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (33:03):
So it's still worth considering.
I think it's still out there.
Got it.
SPEAKER_03 (33:06):
Yeah.
Okay.
That's a very real one.
Another interesting one.
Let's go to our manufacturer'sexample.
Um, we've probably all seen thathorrendous infomercial for the
ladder back in the day, and Idon't know, like 30 years ago,
where this guy's got this ladderthat folds up and he's going
across it, and he look, it's sosturdy, and the thing just
collapses on him right in themiddle of it, and he gets like
(33:27):
folded up backwards under it.
Um, products and completedoperations falls under the
general liability form andactually picks up the exposure.
Should our product not functionas it should, our ladder
collapses, or our completedoperation not function as it
should as well.
Um, think I'm a carpenter, acontractor, and I install a deck
(33:47):
on a home and it's elevated,people are on it, a support
collapses, and now I've gotsignificant bodily injury, maybe
death, have to put it all backtogether.
Um, those are things thatabsolutely have to be considered
and contemplated when you'rewhen you're looking at a
commercial general liabilitypolicy.
Let's talk about maybe even autojust for a second.
Do you own, does Spears Creativeown any automobiles?
SPEAKER_00 (34:10):
Only my vehicle.
SPEAKER_03 (34:11):
Is owned by the business?
Yes.
Yep.
Okay.
SPEAKER_00 (34:13):
But employees will drive for work sometimes in
their own vehicles.
SPEAKER_03 (34:17):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (34:17):
Right.
So let's not talk about it,Seth.
SPEAKER_03 (34:20):
No, let's talk about it.
Okay.
Because the industry knows howto handle that.
That's what I do.
I drive my personal vehicle.
I drove it down toFredericksburg from Worcester.
Um, let's play out a scenariowhere I'm driving down here and
I cause an accident andsomebody's injured.
It's unlikely that WhitakerMyers is going to get pulled
into some sort of, you know,lawsuit surrounding that, but it
(34:40):
absolutely could happen.
Here's maybe a more relevantexample.
Um, you're a small contractor,and your truck that you use is
owned personally.
It's not owned by your business.
Um, you've got tools, you've gotsupplies in the back of the
truck, and same thing.
You're driving to a job site andyou cause an accident.
You've got big old magneticstickers on the side of it that
(35:01):
say, you know, Joe's contractingservice LLC.
You can bet the injured party,their attorney, is going to
bring Joe's contracting LLC intothe lawsuit.
The way that the industryprotects against that is a
coverage called hired andnon-owned auto.
They typically go together.
Hired auto would just be arented auto.
Um, so you fly to a conferencein Orlando, you rent a vehicle
(35:23):
down there, you cause anaccident.
If you have hired and non-ownedauto coverage, you actually have
liability coverage for thebusiness for that hired or
rented auto that you're using.
It's the same thing withnon-owned.
So any personal vehicles wouldbe an example of a non-owned
vehicle.
Um, an interesting question foryou.
Um, there's a coverage calleddrive other car coverage.
(35:47):
Now, you're an executive hereand you have a vehicle that is
insured by the business.
So I'm sure you have businessauto.
Um, if you drive your businessauto, there's liability coverage
for it.
Um if, for example, you weren'tmarried, didn't have a personal
auto, it was all you used wasthe company provided vehicle, we
would want to add a coveragecalled drive other car, which
(36:09):
literally is just what it soundslike.
If you would happen to driveanother car, your business
policy is not going to respondif you cause an accident.
So we just want to add thiscoverage called drive other car
in the event that, well, youwould drive another car and
cause an accident, have somesort of a liability exposure.
Yeah, weird, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00 (36:27):
Yeah, well, we need to look at that a little bit.
I I okay, I have anotherquestion.
This is actually relevant forI'm curious to see.
We have a policy inside ouremployee handbook around um
drinking at social events.
So beautiful.
We go to the chamber networkingevent, there's some drinks
there, everybody drives theirown car home.
(36:49):
How do we protect ourselves?
I also don't want any employeesacting crazy, acting a fool in
public.
But my biggest concern is theymight have had too many drinks,
drove home, and I don't want tobe responsible for that.
How do you how do companiesmanage that from a risk
perspective?
SPEAKER_03 (37:02):
Yeah.
Yeah, I think policies andprocedures are going to be
really important there.
I think it's it's highly likely,let's just say an employee goes
to a work function and causessome sort of an incident.
There is a chance that yourcommercial auto insurer is going
to say, that is not ourresponsibility, and they will
not defend.
A personal auto policy shouldrespond in that situation.
(37:24):
Um one of the things you can dois ask all of your employees to
carry, let's just call themsufficiently high limits.
What's the right number?
Impossible to tell.
I would suggest your employeesshould probably all carry at
least a half a million dollarsin combined single limit.
That means a half a milliondollars per accident that we
caused for bodily injury forproperty damage, right?
(37:45):
We've injured somebody, we'vedestroyed their car, we've you
know run into their house withour car, things like that.
Um and that would be one uh atleast one good practice that I
think you should shouldimplement.
Um, if it was an example of youdriving on behalf of work, um
the hired and unowned policy mayrespond there.
And absolutely, if you'redriving that business auto, the
(38:05):
auto policy should respond inthat situation.
But scary world and dangerous,and actually let's talk about
drinking.
SPEAKER_00 (38:11):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (38:11):
Okay.
That's not where I thought wewere going here.
But um at our agency, everycouple of weeks on a Friday
afternoon, we're right aroundthe corner from Vuellers in
Worcester on the north end.
About 4 15, I'll drive aroundthe corner, I'll grab some
margaritas for the ladies, beerfor the guys, something to snack
on, I'll bring it back aroundthe corner.
And we just we wind down at theend of the week with happy hour.
(38:31):
Now, let's just imagine one ofmy uh colleagues there at the
agency has a couple too manymargaritas and causes an
accident on the drive home.
We have coverage in our policy,and most I think most commercial
general liability forms wouldinclude it, or at least could
include it if needed, calledhost liquor liability.
Where I'm not I'm not a bar orrestaurant.
(38:53):
That's not my business.
That's going to be liquorliability, and that will be
covered separately.
But I just every once in a whileI host a happy hour and we have
a little bit of liquor there,and if something would happen,
that host liquor liabilitypolicy is going to step in and
respond.
SPEAKER_00 (39:06):
That's what we need.
SPEAKER_03 (39:07):
Yeah.
And I've got it.
Christmas party.
SPEAKER_00 (39:09):
Like I'm thinking like Christmas party
Thanksgiving.
Like we don't do it often, but acouple times a year we might
have an event.
SPEAKER_03 (39:16):
Well, you know, and and on events, uh, I know we
talked about this before, butthis is important for my
nonprofit clients.
You like to hold a 5Kfundraiser, a golf outing, some
sort of big dinner at Greystoneor whatever.
Each one of those most likelyneeds their own special event
policy.
Some companies will still allowyou to put special events on the
general liability, you know,business owners policy.
(39:39):
But for the most part, I'mseeing companies pushing away
from that and saying, we need toknow exactly what's going on
there.
We need to know how many peopleare going to be there.
You've got a 5K, no big deal.
You've got a 5K with drinksafterward.
Are you controlling access?
Are you serving?
Are your servers tips trained?
Lots of questions that'll comeout of that.
SPEAKER_00 (39:57):
So I understand.
SPEAKER_03 (39:58):
That's part of that regular check-in with your
agent.
What are you doing?
What are you forgetting to tellme about what exposures do you
have out there that we reallyneed to be considering?
SPEAKER_00 (40:06):
Let's talk about the foreign travel.
So we're a part of um we partnerwith branches worldwide.
So they're a nonprofit I'mheavily involved in.
I've been to Uganda and toMongolia with them.
So tell me like what I should beconsidering when it comes to
foreign travel.
We actually are considering takesending employees on trips with
them in the future.
So what do we need to thinkabout?
SPEAKER_03 (40:26):
Yeah, so what you're gonna be looking for would be
like a travel accident policy.
Big things essentially.
Something happens overseas.
What do you even do?
Um, Chubb would be an example ofa phenomenal multinational
company that has a wonderfulpolicy they put together, and
they'll give you a card thatgoes with you to say, I'm in
Africa and something has gonehorribly wrong.
(40:47):
What do I do?
Um, there'll be coverage foraccident.
I mean, you know, it'sunfortunate.
SPEAKER_00 (40:52):
I'm not driving in Africa, FYI.
I I was on the road.
Have you ever been?
SPEAKER_03 (40:56):
Yes.
SPEAKER_00 (40:57):
It's a little scary.
It is scary.
I'm never driving there.
SPEAKER_03 (40:59):
So that's a I drove in the Dominican Republic one
time, and that was terrifyingbecause noable español, I don't
know where I'm going, I don'tknow what I'm doing.
What's the speed limit?
It's a hundred kilometers anhour.
Okay, I'll drive 62 miles anhour, and a Corvette goes by
doing a hundred miles an hour.
Yeah, no rules.
Uh so yes, you're wise not todrive when you go to those
(41:20):
foreign countries.
Um, but if you're there, havingcoverage for an unfortunate
accident has happened, um, evenin the event of death, like
repatriation of remains gets totends to get included in that.
And then um, depending whereyou're going and what you're
doing, even adding a kidnap andransom policy on there.
SPEAKER_00 (41:36):
Yeah, that's you know, is America.
I just went to Mongolia bymyself, got stranded in um
Turkey for I don't know, likeover 12 hours in the airport by
myself.
I was too scared to leave theairport.
Yeah, so I stayed up all nightbecause I'm like, listen, I'm a
middle-aged blonde Americanwoman in the middle of the
Middle East by myself.
You're worth a lot of money.
Yeah, it was weird.
SPEAKER_01 (41:57):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (41:57):
And I felt really exposed in that moment.
And I was like, yeah.
So yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (42:02):
Again, one of those just to talk about there are
policies available out there forit that can be really, really
helpful.
And part of it is it's peace ofmind.
SPEAKER_00 (42:09):
Do you just get those policies on a trip-by-trip
basis, or is that somethingthat's like always out there?
SPEAKER_03 (42:14):
Um, I more commonly I see it as an annual policy.
So think a large manufacturerthat has plants or suppliers in
lots of different countries or asales territory that extends
beyond just, you know, the U.S.
Um, I tend to see those policieson an annual basis, and they
really are not very expensive.
They'll be rated on the numberof trips and the number of
employees that are going onthese trips, but they can be
(42:34):
really helpful.
Again, just even having thatcard to know if I'm in that
foreign country and somethinghappens, this is where I call.
SPEAKER_00 (42:41):
Is that something like even my daughter's going on
a mission trips trip in June,they go every year.
Is that something people go onto mission trips should also be
considering from a personalstandpoint?
SPEAKER_03 (42:50):
Yeah, I I think it can be a good idea.
SPEAKER_00 (42:52):
Um I never would have thought about it until you
said that.
Like, ooh.
SPEAKER_03 (42:56):
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you out of the
point.
Um you can absolutely buy thoseon a trip-by-trip basis.
Okay.
Yeah, no doubt about it.
SPEAKER_00 (43:02):
Last year, my daughter went to Puerto Rico and
Live 360 called us because theythought she was in an accident.
So note Live 360 works acrossthe world.
Really, just the driver hadslammed on his brakes and her
phone went forward really hard,so it wasn't really an accident,
but helpful to know that thepolice were on their way because
nobody answered their phones.
SPEAKER_03 (43:22):
Yeah, yeah, that technology is helpful.
It's amazing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00 (43:25):
Yeah, it's pretty wild.
I'm thankful I didn't have itwhenever I was a child, though.
SPEAKER_03 (43:30):
When we were kids, it was different.
SPEAKER_00 (43:31):
It was different, different, not dumb.
SPEAKER_03 (43:33):
Yeah, right.
All your dumb things didn't getrecorded forever.
So probably could take just amoment to talk about work comp,
um workers' compensation.
So in the state of Ohio, that'scontrolled by the state.
So your independent agent is islikely not helping out or
handling that for you.
That's another important one.
The state takes care of it.
If you've got employees thattravel to other states
(43:54):
regularly, you actually may needto carry a separate work comp
policy to be able to handlethat, particularly.
If they're doing any sort ofwork, doing an installation on a
project.
But Ohio's kind of unique.
There are a few other stateswhere it comp is handled
exclusively by the state.
Contractors, I think that's animportant one.
So let's just imagine you'vehired somebody to work for you
(44:16):
on a 1099 basis, and you come tome and say, I don't need to, I
don't need to take on thatexposure because they're a 1099
and they're going to be paidlike that and they're separate.
Well, if they can't demonstratethat they have insurance, you
actually are unfortunately goingto need to take on that risk.
And so that'll be some of thequestions that are asked in the
insurance application process.
(44:37):
What are the contractors youwork with?
Do you collect certificates ofinsurance from them regularly to
ensure, yep, they actually havea policy?
And am I named on that policy sothat if they cause an accident,
think a subcontractor on for abuilder?
SPEAKER_00 (44:51):
This is our world that we live in because of
working with most contractors,yes, 100%.
SPEAKER_03 (44:56):
Yeah.
So you're a GC and you hire anelectrician and they burn the
building down.
Well, we want to know that theyhave a policy that we're named
on it so that we don't getpulled into that because that
wasn't our work.
That was them that did that.
SPEAKER_00 (45:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_03 (45:07):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:08):
Okay.
SPEAKER_03 (45:08):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:10):
Um, anything else you want to wrap this up for us?
Let us know.
Like if a business owner issitting here listening to this
and they say, I don't know whatto do with all of this
information.
SPEAKER_03 (45:19):
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (45:19):
Any encouragement?
unknown (45:20):
Oh.
SPEAKER_00 (45:21):
Next steps?
SPEAKER_03 (45:22):
Take heart.
There is hope.
It's a big scary world outthere, but you can be assured
that big insurance companieslike a Traveler's Hartford, a
Chubb, or a Westfield, they'renot going to put their their
money on the line if they don'tbelieve that there is a very low
likelihood of somethinghappening.
So reach out to me, reach out tosomebody on my team, reach out
(45:45):
to your own agent.
Start to ask the questions.
If you're not hearing frompeople your agent every couple
of years, um, yeah.
Suggest a meeting to review allof your coverages.
Suggest a meeting to discusswhat you've got coming up,
what's changed, what's umdifferent.
You're gonna uncover some thingsand be ready to make hard
decisions.
Am I going to spend my moneythere to insure against that?
(46:06):
Am I going to save my money androll the dice?
Are we maybe going to stop doingthat just because it doesn't
make sense?
That happens regularly.
I had a client that stopped umtransporting uh their patients
in their own vehicles because,well, it didn't make sense.
It's just too expensive.
It's too risky.
And the insurance marketplacesays uh instead of a thousand
(46:27):
dollars per vehicle for that,that's gonna be six thousand
dollars a vehicle.
Well, if you have a hundred,that's a real number.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00 (46:34):
Okay.
I really appreciate your thoughtand perspective.
You shared us a uh with us avery comprehensive list of the
things to consider from abusiness perspective.
You shared a little bit of yourinsights and experiences, so we
really appreciate that.
Um tell everybody where theyshould find you if they wanted
to reach out to you because theyhave questions.
SPEAKER_03 (46:53):
Yeah, sure.
If you Google Whitaker Myers andSeth, I'm sure you'll absolutely
find me.
Um I try to be around at manychamber events and other
networking events around town.
Um, my contact information isall out there.
I'd love to just begin theconversation.
It may not go anywhere, buttruly I want to be a help uh and
a and a resource for people.
Whitaker Whitaker-myers.com.
(47:15):
W-h-i t-a-k-e-r-m-y-r-s.com.
SPEAKER_00 (47:19):
Thank you very much.
Of course.
SPEAKER_03 (47:20):
Yep.
SPEAKER_00 (47:20):
It was great chatting with you today.
SPEAKER_03 (47:22):
Enjoyed it.
Likewise.
Great to be here.
SPEAKER_00 (47:23):
Thanks for tuning into Torch Talk.
If today's story sparkedsomething for you, share it with
a colleague, community leader,or future change maker.
Until next time, stay inspired,stay intentional, and keep your
fire burning.
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