Frederick Fisher, Sam Naficy, Adiel Gorel | Office Hours #788

Welcome to office hours episode 788 or so and I'm blessed to have two of the greatest co-hosts and partners and friends in the world. They both are white middle-aged men as myself but nonetheless still valuable to society depending on who you talk to. More importantly my mentor Blaine Bartlett has helped me take all of my possibilities into an incredible reality. In fact my reality sometimes surpasses people imagination so if you would like your reality to surpass other people's imagination I suggest you work with the incredible Blaine Bartlett Blaine Bartlett.com Blaine my friend welcome back to office hours. That's a pleasure to be here always I love this show. Soul of Business Thursday. Soul of Business Thursday and speaking of the soul of business one of the guys at the soul of my business is Rhett Power and he had a great day as you suggest congratulations Rhett Power unpacking his book having a quick run through a pilot session we are super excited for everything that you're doing and all the help that you're giving ourselves and our community. Welcome back my brother how are you brother thank you so much I wouldn't want to be anywhere else but online here with Blaine Bartlett and David Meltzer I mean come on what that what better what better than can that be. Yeah you took the place you're I'm usually mobile you're taking the place with the seatbelt across so be safe as a passenger there we know you but we have been really fun first guest Fred Fisher is here and you know a lot of what we're learning today is to have the appropriate advocacy you know we know what lawyers do being a recovering lawyer myself understanding advocacy one of the things I've learned as I got wealthier to make sure I have a health advocate to be able to look and see with situational knowledge and experience the most important thing in my life my health but this gentleman Fred Fisher who's joining us on office hours welcome first Fred to the middle-aged white man's society welcome. Well good afternoon gentlemen. Very nice well you wrote this book and all I could think about is I never thought about really the advocacy that I would love to have the situational knowledge I'd love to have about claims made in insurance and lo and behold I found someone who wrote the book claims made insurance and allowing us to understand and explain the claim made policies and as an advocate we can really assist ourselves in protecting ourselves as well as making sure that we're compensated correctly and you truly are the foremost advocate that I know for claims made insurance what got you into this advocacy position to write this book. Well I believe in coverage I mean I believe in the insurance industry I believe that the insurance industry should be reasonably paying for those types of claims that they they market that they're going to cover and we're not even talking gray areas but the problem is that more and more insurance companies like every other business in the world wants to try and limit their exposures and limit their liabilities and limit their payouts for any number of reasons and when you have you know accountants running insurance companies they don't even know what insurance is anymore they're treating it like it's a product like toothpaste and it's not toothpaste and everything about the insurance industry and the way the insurance companies operate is totally opposite to what any other business how any other business works totally opposite including the fact that unfortunately they now think that the claim department actually probably always thought this way but it's just gotten worse they look at the claim department as a cost center that's where the money is being spent this is where they're you know we got to make sure we control those expenses and it's exact opposite and a good a good example of that is the fact that you know I used to own a claim and just in company and all we did was professional liability it's all we did architects and engineers accountants real estate agents and brokers insurance brokers lawyers accounts architects you know anybody providing a professional service for a fee and we could have that entire claim as factually investigated as you could do as get especially if you didn't have cooperation from the plaintiff we could have it fully developed in 90 days you can't get a discovery order in 90 days so as a result we had the case developed we knew whether or not this look good or look bad or if he we could recommend reserves more accurately and earlier which is very important for actuaries and if they if they wait for defense lawyers to go through discovery they're not gonna have accurate numbers and for three years we had it in 90 days and we proved it I right I actually put up an article on LinkedIn a few about a week or so ago about you know I just gotten totally frustrated with the way insurance companies are acting these days and I basically said look guys yes it's a cost but it saves money it actually saves money and to do this and we proved it with the Southern California Rapid Transit District we recommended they spend a million dollars a year to double their claim staff because they were self-insured and I I projected I had to go in front of the board of directors and one of the largest Rapid Transit Districts in the country here in LA this is before the Metro and I recommended to them that they spend a million dollars to double the staff to drop the caseloads because the cases were out of control and you could only handle fires you know that was it and they wanted to know what the result would be and I said I think you'll be able to you know cut your cost down by 50 you know by $5 million I was wrong $10 million a year they got a 10 for one return on that a million dollars they spent to double the staff the caseload dropped from 8,000 down to under 4,000 the lawyers they were they were referring cases to started complaining that they weren't getting enough case referrals well that's because they were getting settled and and when you add to it now that them they have the Metro exposure you know the trolley trains back I have no idea what it what it is but this is the result of a qualitative claim on it was I don't think my insurance companies are doing anymore I don't want to spend the money on a qualitative claim on it and then add to that short-term investment and private equity companies coming in to the insurance industry without one of the many return they don't want to spend the money they don't want to know how bad the claims are they don't want to know that they're out of control they just want to make it look like they're profitable and then they dump it on somebody else and that's what's happening but let's go back to claims made policies claims made policies were originally written to solve a problem and that was if you were an architect or you were an engineer or you were an attorney and you committed a professional error the damages might not be immediate and further nobody may even know you made an error until you know the pedestrian bridge collapses in 10 years or 20 or the will that the attorney drafted blew it out of the generation skip tax and nobody's gonna know until you're dead or which could be today or God forbid or 20 years from now so that meant number one you had to keep all your records and you had to keep all your policy forms forever how do you do that so 1964 Joe Montalion who was a young underwriter at St. Paul and ultimately became senior vice president of one of this one of this big three at AIG came up with this idea of why not make the trigger of the policy not when the professional committed the error but when the client makes a claim for the first time against the client that they insured and it made perfect sense it eliminated the long tail it eliminated the need to store documents and you know materials it would and therefore you could be cheaper as well because the theory was once the policy expired you can close the books on it because no new claims could be first made once the policy has been expired and the policy only exists for one year so that was the theory and in a way it works but it got more complicated number one what's the claim the first policies of my earliest policy goes back to 1972 and I got involved in the industry in 1975 so I've been doing this for 50 years and the theory you know the theory was you know when the policy expires no more claims well that wasn't always true because people weren't reporting their claims during the policy term in fact then they go oh god if I report this you know my rates will go up I think I can handle it myself which of course never works you know and so by the time the reported it to the company it was like what wait why are you reporting this now you know two years later and then the rules were you had approved that you were prejudiced insurance company say well how do you prove prejudice which is defined as being a different result when likely to occur that's not easy to prove so the first there were a lot of evolution that has taken place in 1975 and now it's not just that a claim must be first made against you during the policy term it has to be reported to the company during the policy term it has to arrive the wrongful actor error has to be subsequent to a prior act date if the claim is prior to or the lawsuit is pen prior to or pending another specific date that may not be covered and oh by the way it better not be related to a prior claim you submitted to another insurance company like you know one era could give rise to multiple claims so to speak and so if you reported the so that so it's anchored by the first one made and then the two years later another person claims oh I was injured by that same mistake you got to report it to the prior period after the current so now there's five triggers five but let's talk about what policies are written hold on a second but unfortunately we we have limited time we were gonna have to have you come back because I the details are incredible to be freeze Fred sorry sorry for interrupting you Fred we we scheduled ten minutes of time we stimulate the interest but this is well this is why I wrote the book yeah we got we got to have you back on for sure but let's get to because I know people now are because everybody's dealing with this in some way or another where where can people today the book came out last June where's Amazon Amazon very good policy to change the industry I also would like to invite you to so if I have my offices in the studio studio not too far from you at so if I stay them so we love to have you back for a longer conversation we do masterminds and my podcast as well out of there I really want to get deeper into it I apologize about the time constraints but we we love to leave people wanting more and sorry guys you don't get to ask a question I'm a special comeback Fred thank you I'm a fisher cg calm thank you gentlemen thank you go to Amazon you will not well worth claims made insurance oh my god you know what a great so much oh I love it yeah Sam's in the green room going all I may not get on the show today but nope you save the day Sam's here we're gonna bring him on Sam NFC is here CEO at proto score welcome Sam to office hours thank you David thanks for having me I'm back I met Blaine and Rhett while you were out I think you had an emergency exit you had something happened six months ago or so I think you had some issues or something so yeah I'll leave you plenty of room for questions well I know one thing that when I miss the show the ratings are much higher so it's a double benefit and I don't mind it at all but you have some really interesting data for us on your newly released Q2 productivity post report I was hoping you know the six months have gone by if you could give us a little bit of update on what that report has for all the employees and companies jobs and industries that you deal with yeah well thanks for having me David good good to be back with you guys just as background is 30 seconds overview proto scores basically a data analytics company and we focus on employee productivity retention collaboration engagement agnostic of office remote or hybrid that's basically kind of provide high-level visibility to the C-suite to the CHRO VP of sales what the employees are doing how productive are they in the world of RTO return to office remote hybrid that's kind of at a nutshell what we do currently we have about a hundred thousand hundred ten thousand employees on the platform utilizing it daily and we see a lot of trends we see a lot of trends for example fun stuff to just share with you guys is we see productivity significantly higher for hybrid employees than those solely in office you see a significance and we measure that so we measure productivity based on if an employee is in an office or the remote and gauge that and provide that value to the kind of stakeholders above in management and beyond you know we feel like the future of work is evolving into this merger of HR and human resources with technology under the IT CIO CTO world we think that's coming together we think the CHRO is going to be much more of a stakeholder going forward as this evolution happens and we're fortunate to be kind of in the middle there as this confluence happens to visualize a lot of data and that's how we do it so what I'm fascinated by is what the the the staff that you just mentioned about the productivity Delta between in office and hybrid outside of just the data itself is there a way that you're beginning to suss out what is the kind of a catalyst for that difference yeah there's no question Blaine so one of our largest customers is the Metropolitan Transit Authority of the state of New York so they have seven thousand employees on the platform and it was a it was a post COVID my mandates that if you're gonna work hybrid we want some accountability from you if we're gonna give you the flexibility it's a quid pro quo they loved it they opted in the employees love it what we've seen is roughly an hour and 15 minute productivity for remote employees over in office and we directly correlated to the commute if you think average commute in the US is around an hour round trip at minimum so if you avoid that think about the quality of work quality of life you benefit from how much more time you can go to a soccer game for your kid be it just the improvements and still go to the office we believe 3 2 2 3 split is the ideal our data shows is the ideal split so bring back people into the office but the idea of five days back 8 to 5 in the office we think it's unlikely broadly defined some categories maybe a little bit more but broadly defined it tends to be this hybrid you know ecosystem that's good and that is the fascinating and I would like to piggyback off Blaine's question a little bit too is it why do you think companies I mean since this data is out there and I mean we you're showing in real life how productivity for remote workers it works why do we think there's such a push to sort of bring people back full-time what do you think that comes from when the data sort of suggests that's maybe not the right move great question and this is our whole thesis is make these decisions with data a lot of CEOs are making it out of their gut intuition I feel like if they're back in the office to Murdoch all we say is like a sense of control I won't control because I want to see I want to see you right and by the way I'm a middle-aged white man myself I've been in this CEO role for 30 years and and the old Sam the 30 year old Sam would say get him back to the office I want him here the 53 year old Sam says I look at data and if I can get the flexibility to my staff to be with their wives husbands children a little bit more what kind of quality of life am I giving them which makes them better employees for me and ultimately my customers that's the outcome we all want so all I tell CEOs is get some data tools like ours and make your assessment on data versus intuition and when you have data you still utilize your intuition Sam which I think a lot as we get older we're using our intuition we don't just look at numbers we make it applicable as you say that the industry's careers and jobs and see that we may or may not have the right data or have the right activities but I do believe that a lot of the reason is apathy and responsibility as a leader I know within the context of my own business it's my job to make sure people perform and I have found that if I take accountability to empower people with a culture not a company that they want to perform that you know just at the basic common sense with most jobs not every job because there's some you and I both know that we need to be there but with most jobs if if you want to do well then you're better off being about have the flexibility of hybrid working so that you can do well when you want to do well and take care of the non-negotiables like your sleep and your health and your family and I you know prioritize that as these gentlemen know with my organization and probably the greatest compliment my greatest achievement is the people that work with me and who they are and who they're becoming is you know for me my greatest joy in pride and business so thank you for giving me the data to reaffirm what I believe to be true and other people take a look at that data and make it your own use your intuition your intelligence and your inspiration to figure out how we can provide the most productivity accessibility and gratitude within our culture I mean our company Sam thanks for joining us what we'll have you back I think we lost both Sam and Rhett in one minute but playing let's bring our last friend on Sam's coming back that was really good we got three Californians today so we're in the early afternoon out here I'm here in Minnesota to Spire so I have no clue where I am CEO at International Capital Group ICG welcome a deal hi it's a joy to be here thanks for having me it's a joy to have you and we really want to talk about your one-day online live expo which is coming up in December from 10 to 2 in Pacific time this event is going to help give us some insight into real estate investment and opportunity what are some of the key takeaways that we're looking at with ICG at this great event on December 8th well just as a comment we've been holding those events for a little more than 40 years that's it that's like red that's how old red is that's amazing yeah there you go a little more than 40 years 41 this is our 41st year once a quarter they used to be live we used to do it in San Francisco we would bring all the markets we work with they would come live it was a whole day on a Saturday with COVID we brought it on to Zoom and shortened it you know to four hours which makes it easier for people from other countries and other parts of this country to join but really the heart and soul of this whole thing that we do has to do with the reason why I'm not retired after doing this for 41 years why am I not retired and there's a reason for that and the reason is is you probably hear if you strain very hard that I speak with an accent so when you come from another country you can notice things in a country that you're in that maybe the locals don't notice as much because they were born into it they think it's normal so you know as it happens there is a financial gift given in the United States and to the best of my knowledge only in the United States I could be wrong but that's what I know which is a complete life-changer not in one day but in the long run and absolutely no one that I ever talked to in the United States over 41 years even though it's right there in plain sight has given any thought to how powerful and special it is except for one guy whether I was in touch with in 2012 his name is Warren Buffett and he got it before I explained everybody else only after I explained so I this thing is so life-changing I could have retired 30 years ago but the message is too precious so that's really the foundation of why we have those events why we do what we do so I think probably I should share about that before I talk about the event if it's hard though with yourself Texas accent exactly yeah I've been working on moving into you know the Kentucky flare give us some insight right so the name of that great and special and life-changing gift is known to everyone it's a name that everybody recognizes the name is the 30 year fixed rate mortgage so everybody would say what everybody knows about come on there's nothing special go away so maybe the best way to you know illustrate why this is special is what happens when I speak in Europe so here I am I'm in Europe and I tell the Europeans you know my American investors have a loan that they can take called 30 year fixed rate and they say what do you mean by that and I said well you know kind of like what the name implies the monthly payment principle and interest will never ever change it will not track inflation cost of living that you'll be fixed like the name says and then the loan balance how much you owe even though it goes down all the time with your little monthly payment of principle still doesn't track inflation the Europeans react very harshly I hear things like I'm sorry sir but you clearly don't know what you're talking about I can't believe I drove a hundred kilometers to hear you speak and I prove to you that you are talking nonsense using logic let's begin they say you have inflation in the US right right always right yes sometimes it's high sometimes it's low but it's always there correct yes yes 40 years ago you bought a postage stamp for 4 cents now it's 72 cents 40 years ago you went to the movies in New York City for 2 bucks now it's 16 15 whatever it is bucks if you go to Whole Foods today and you buy a beautiful organic avocado it's gonna be $3 you know we know everybody knows in 10 years probably gonna be $6 for the same avocado you have inflation now you want to tell us that in the middle of all of this meaning the cost of tomatoes of avocados of shoes of glasses of t-shirts of houses of rents of everything constantly going up with inflation because inflation weakens the dollar and you need more dollars to buy the same goods somebody is gonna be insane enough to actually lend you money for 30 years that you'd be the only thing in the US economy never to change with inflation while everything else does if this were true inflation would become your best friend your BFF because it will constantly you wrote the real value of your loan making it tinier and tinier it's horrible for the lender but it's unbelievable for the borrower not possible you're an idiot we rest our case but very powerful stuff so then I say how about you kind of check on your little phones and what you really have this thing in the US the next question is always the same if the American can get this unbelievable gift why don't they all drop everything and run to get as many of those as possible my answer is always the same I don't know but I sure did so this is such a strong message and the local American people who were born here think it's normal they were born into it so I don't have any mood to retire when this and I can give you an example of what it looks like this is one example when you do it for decades you have thousands of examples so here is one example I talked to a doctor just this week he's now in his 70s he said look I bought 24 homes rental homes with you guys I started small I wanted to buy one home to see that the local property management teams that you set all of the country really will take care of handling the house because I didn't have any time to deal with homes so when I saw it yeah they do take care of it I bought another one another one ended up buying 24 by the way not as impressive as it sounds at the time he was buying those homes we like to buy brand new home that he was buying them brand new for about 150,000 back in the day putting a small down payment because he wanted to get a big loan big gift 30 year fixed rate loan and he said after about 13 years even though I put a small down payment and my loans were very big after about 13 years all my loans were roughly one quarter of the value of the homes that's what inflation does to a loan that never changes with inflation so he said I was ecstatic because over my 24 homes there were millions of dollars in equity obviously I sold I sold five of the homes and didn't do anything fancy I didn't do any 1031 exchange is nothing just sold and paid my tax and I used the proceeds of the five homes that I sold to pay off the little loans remaining on the 19 homes and with 19 free and clear homes I didn't have to be a doctor anymore thank you thank you thank you and he adds the one sentence everyone always says in the future even I and I own hundreds of those I should have bought more so it's life-changing and so yeah and then the asset-based lending side provides tax free income it and why you rent it as well so I am a hundred percent in agreement with you that Americans don't take advantage and when you're looking at the first time home buyer the multi unit if you're not buying or having your kids in their 20s buying a multi unit managing it living in one for free with the FHA three percent down loan or there's so many advantages we want to have you back a deal I don't know why people laugh you scoff at you or make fun of you because I just applaud you more people know this strategy and need to know it my other friends here I know have taken advantage of it over the years I see G will teach you what to do how to do it they have the proof you definitely don't need to laugh scoff and make fun of them Saturday December 6th if you want to learn more just jump online at the online live Expo 10 to 2 it'll be the best four hours that you spend it'll change your financial wealth you'll be able to do what you want when you want with who you want you might even want to join us as a co-host here on the Soul of Business thanks so much we'll see you soon it was a pleasure thank you so much thank you a deal awesome my gentlemen what's your takeaways of the day well this was an easy show to do today yeah we didn't get much action did we I'm gonna I just finished another show we were doing a little riff on the nature of creative constraints and the idea of constraint kind of comes into play inflation and I'll just you know kind of take a deals conversation here yeah people see inflation as a constraint you know it's kind of like oh my god inflation how do we leverage the constraint how do we actually make it our friend and that actually be able to utilize it yeah fast-forward yeah create possibilities yeah as a wealth creation and most people don't think about you know inflation as a wealth creation opportunity and it is truly that if you know what you're doing with it so my takeaway has to do with just the the creative use of that particular constraint Rhett it's off to you perfect Rhett he's frozen yeah Jordan I'm in the back room here on office hours just finishing up I'll just take the take away of the day give me one minute I'll be right back to you guys thanks Jordan sorry I got three things going on here at Aspire my takeaway is the simple things to do are simple not to do when it comes to investment you know it's we make things so complex and if we look at the basics of how this country was formed in the laws of this country was to protect the landowner and the advantages you know what we're here doing tax architecture whether it's real estate investment you know the rich people formulate their laws so they can get richer and the poor people don't do what the rich people do and they wonder why they're not rich and so there is legal simple ways to take advantage with very little money and you can always go get people's money to partner with you so I always say the simple things to do are simple not to do an investment and I encourage everyone to reach out to all of our guests today they know what they're talking about whether it's insurance claims the simple way to protect yourself as an advocate or real estate it doesn't matter this is a great way to use data to use the laws of our land to benefit anyway I want to think Rhett I want to thank you Blaine everybody reach out to blame Bartlett he has an incredible mastermind you can join reach out to him he taught me the soul of business he will take your possibilities the probability and make it reality and so we are blessed to be a part thanks for joining me Blaine you bet you can yet can reach out to me directly you know Gigi put that back up real quick I know you got a run Dave but I'd love to have a conversation with you about the mastermind that's the place to set that appointment up not gonna sell you anything but I will fill you in on what's possible possibility into Cal dot com for his team to SSO BM it's a great mastermind the soul of business mastermind with my mentor people ask me all the time where did you get all this great information who's your mentor while he's sitting right next to me Blaine Bartlett check him out we appreciate your brother I'll talk to you soon thanks buddy enjoy aspire I am all right here we go we will be in Colorado tomorrow with Dion Sanders and Marshall Faulk warren sat maybe even and then off to Los Alamedros to film go fund yourself Idaho New York City Guatemala Washington DC LA Miami that's how you get the 200 cities a year blessed to be there remember most importantly if you want to find us just get into our invite system 949 298 2905 if you're offended obligated by invitations do not text me at 949 298 2905 most importantly be more interested than interesting be kind to your future self and do good Have a great night. Hit a GG.