Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm Gary Michels, your host, founder of Southwestern Legacy Insurance Group, and today we have Tom Kaiser, the guest on the show. Tom Kaiser is the managing partner of Masterful Coaching, a
renowned expert in the field of collaboration. He also has a deep background in the insurance industry, both domestic and worldwide, with experience running large, complex, global businesses, including serving as a top executive in Arch Right Insurance, Zurich Financial Solutions, he either built the business from the ground up, which is very interesting to me and our listeners, or transform them into a dynamic industry leader. Thank you for joining our show.
Glad to do it.
So you started off in the Air Force, but that experience sort of unexpectedly opened up some doors for you later in the insurance field. Talk about that a little bit.
It did as a matter of fact, I spent five years as a KC 135 navigator in the US Air Force, and I thought that, gee, I must have missed out on business for those five years, so I probably should find a job. And that took me to our great Mutual Insurance where the guy was running it was a B, 29 pilot, and the number two guy was an F, 106 pilot. We talked to airplanes and they hired me. That's how I got in the
insurance business. They had served during World War Two, I came into the Vietnam so they were already well established in business, but their background was in aviation.
When you were growing up, what were your aspirations?
It was wide open. I went to university. When I came out of university, I happened to be one of the first people who got a low lottery number in the crazy draft. And so six months after graduating from college, I was in the Air Force. I decided
that if I could fly, that was what I was going to do. So I passed the flight physicals, and that led me to the five years that I spent in the Air Force. From that perspective, I knew I wanted to go into business, but I really didn't know exactly what what led me to insurance was, again, the feeling that I had that five years of being an aviator somehow put me behind my peers who had been in business for five years, and I had to
find a way to catch up. And that was not true, but I just believed that, and so I looked for jobs that really were based on merit, 100% on merit, and ended up in a sales position where I was selling large property insurance packages for factory mutual.
So when you first approached them about insurance, were you fascinated with business more, or were you fascinated more with insurance?
I was a know nothing on insurance at that point, I was, I was fascinated by the fact that arc right at the time or factory mutual tailored insurance products to specific solutions or problems that companies had, and so it was a very good for anybody who was selling those products.
Got it. One of the more interesting and unique items we saw on your resume is from your time serving as the executive VP and president of marine and energy for our insurance group where you were responsible for global marine energy and aviation and terrorism, which really intrigued me. Terrorism insurance, is that a thing?
After 9/11 the insurance industry backed out of including terrorism insurance or any anything associated with terrorism, and the government came out with definitions of what terrorism is. And so an event like 9/11 is defined as
terrorism. It's not insured. So the insurance industry responded with the government to come up with solutions to fill that void, and a new product was developed because the other one was gone, and it supported, basically and complemented what the government was offering in the well realm of terrorism insurance, but it was basically a property insurance that would pay if your property was destroyed by a declared terrorist event.
Was there a big demand for that after 9/11? I imagine there was.
In certain industries, yes. I mean, in the aviation business, big demand depends on what the industry was, because most people were not buying the product. But those that really felt that they were in a situation where they could have a terrorist attack and lose large assets, they were attracted to it.
So you helped transform that company into a billion dollar company.
Well, it was a new company, arch. Arch was born out of 9/11, and several people raised the capital. And I was fortunate enough that I was working with Ben and dinosaurdano at Zurich, and he went over to become the CEO, and he brought me over in the number two role. It went from a very small company into a very large company, rapidly, very clear.
Success story today, arch is about a $35 billion company really relied on individuals that had skin in the game and were very entrepreneurial to build individual businesses that, when you added them all up, became quite a significant business under the name or the brand that was promoting it, recruiting was the key, key to building arch, or building any of the companies that I worked with, to find the right people that are focused in the right way, they have the right
attitude, and they want to make it happen. And you can move the world. Those who have a lot of self confidence. Want to win, and they want others to win, and they're very keen on relationship and relationship management. You had to build relationships with brokers, you had to build relationships with customers, and all this had to come together in a positive way.
As a manager, you become a coach when you want your employee or your report to win, instead of just managing them, you pick up on it, I think, very quickly, if they have the same desire, because you're working closely with them, you're not some guy in the back room. Look at how many calls somebody made, whether they made their calls or not. You're out there talking about the actual business and how it works.
Can you give some examples and talk about the importance of that for a leader to actually be there by their side, doing it with them?
Well, I think people need the touch. It's not something that can be done in a vacuum. It's something there, where you're there, you're part of the whole process. I can't emphasize enough that you're driven because you want them to win, to be successful, and that's where you're coming from.
People pick up on that. And when you do that enough and you have enough people involved, and it becomes a cultural thing, people just get it, and they want to be part of it, and they help you ferret out those that don't belong is a remarkable thing, because once you have that alignment, and that alignment working for you, it's a self correcting environment that they don't want to let anybody in that doesn't buy into what we're doing here and why we're doing it.
I think that is such a huge point you're bringing up. How does that stay going when they have their first hiccups?
Well, I think, I think if you've established your relationship with that employee as a coach, you're going to have that opportunity to coach them, and in that process, the walls are going to be a lot easier to climb, the the obstacles are going to be things you can talk about, and there's other people within your team that you can bring in, if you're a good coach, to say, well, here's how Joe dealt with that. You need to
talk to him right. Recognizing we're all going to have challenges, but by talking about them and working with them, we can make ourselves better and more successful.
What are some key things besides, you said that we're looking for people that want to win. They want other people to win. Anything else that you think is important when you're looking for an employee, a person that you're going to build a business with?
I always look for high energy people. And I think, I think the I like people who took care of themselves, that were physically fit, that had other things going in their life, and, you know, had a very broad background of how things worked and what they believed in. Because I think, you know, as the whole person that always served me well too. I like people who tried to close me, who wanted the job and asked for it. I gotta tell you a story. It's funny. When we first
started arch, I spent 90% of my time recruiting people. People were very reluctant to leave a big company safe position and come with a startup. A year later, we had to fight these people off, because once it showed it was successful and it was a moving thing that was really doing well, they all wanted to join your success is also what drives bringing in good people. If you got a great company and they see you as a
great leader, they're going to want to work for you. So you have to use that to your advantage also.
What does a good agent do to get them to go, I think I'm gonna go with these guys?
The fact about insurance is its the thing that everybody needs, but they don't necessarily want it, right? So the need is created by the fact that if you have a home or a car or you have a business, no matter what you have, there's going to be certain requirements of things that you have to buy to protect that business, or to protect the home or the auto or what have you, life insurance is another question is more
complicated, because there's more reasons why. They people buy or don't buy, then the simple thing that the government says, You have to have auto insurance. But I think, I think the struggle is that people really don't know who they want
to buy from. And there's lots of places you can go to to buy your insurance, and there's lots of different products that are offered and the general marketplace, I always found that the best thing to work for me was to open up and help somewhat with the entire package, from A to Z. What are you trying to do with your financial planning? What are you trying to do with all of the insurance products? How do you look at it. I used to start a conversation with people saying that you do not build an
insurance program from the bottom up. You build it from the top down. And what people make, the biggest mistake they make, is they start from the bottom up, and they self insure the biggest exposures they have, which is the top end of it, where, if the worst thing happened, you're in bad shape. That was a good way to start a conversation with people didn't know a lot about insurance.
What would you say, you've been in this space for so long? There was a legacy you were to leave. Of Gosh, Tom absolutely believed insurance was a necessary thing people need in their lives, and this is why. What would you want people to leave with?
Well, I think I think my legacy is out there. There's probably 30 guys that work for me that are running significant portions of insurance companies, that have big jobs in those companies, and they're all part of the team
that I assembled at these various companies. I'm really proud of these guys, and they really have been successful and have been the new leaders as I've drifted out of the business, but my legacy is really those people who are out there that are still working, that I influenced, that I brought into the business, and now have significant roles within various companies.
Deep in your core, because obviously that meant a lot to you to do that, and you're so proud of that. What does legacy mean to you?
Well, I think it's something lasting that is beyond you and the contribution you were making at the time. So so the way I define it is I left the business physically in oh eight, and haven't worked for an insurance company since oh eight, but I've got a whole cadre of people who are in senior positions that I hired and I trained that continue to support a lot of the things that we've been talking about. You'll hear them talk about alignment and the importance of making
sure everybody's pulling in the same direction. I used to say that, you know, if you got four powerful horses and you hook them to a wagon, and you decide to pull the wagon in different directions. You pull the wagon apart, but if you get them going into a straight line, you can go anywhere. A lot of this isn't rocket science, just stuff that you got to repeat over and over and over again and tell stories about and celebrate successes around, because that alignment is so important.
Absolutely. Why should someone buy insurance?
For protection and risk management. In other words, you're trying, you're transferring risk at a price, and that's to be part of your risk management orientation, that you don't have to bear that risk. If the worst case scenario happened, your house burns down, your there's an explosion, you die, you name it. So it's all. Everybody should have an orientation towards risk management. Insurance is one of the tools that goes with risk management.
Right on. And lastly, if someone did want to collaborate with you to learn more about Collab Lab, your company, a little bit more about what you do. How would they get in touch with you?
But they should go on to masterfulcoaching.com. And I'll make an offer to the we have a book called a revenue engine, an e book, and they can go in there and download that for free. Masterfulcoaching.com.
Awesome. You've been listening to Tom Kaiser. Just appreciate your time today.
Super.