Follow the Advice ep2 - Danny Flowers

Danny Flowers, the self-proclaimed insurance CEO, discusses the need for change in the insurance industry. He believes that the industry needs to attract more young people and move away from the traditional image of a white middle-aged man in a suit. He emphasizes the importance of authenticity and building trust with clients. Flowers suggests introducing insurance as a subject in schools and colleges to engage young people and ensure the industry's future. He also advocates for a more transparent and understandable approach to selling insurance, rather than using complex jargon. Flowers believes that being different and true to oneself adds value to the business and benefits clients. Some may resist this approach, but Flowers argues that what matters is the service and the promise of understanding and protecting clients' needs. He urges the industry to let go of outdated expectations and embrace change and evolution. Hello and welcome to the Follow the Advice podcast. I'm David Brown. In this episode, I'm delighted to welcome Danny Flowers, the self-proclaimed insurance CEO. From client's apprentice to business owner, Danny is 100% unapologetic for his authentic approach to business, insurance and sales. With an approach focused on building trust through honesty about who he is and what his business brings to its clients. Service and value over cost. He's definitely one to watch in the future. I hope you enjoy listening. So Danny, welcome. It's fantastic to have you on board. I'm really looking forward to chatting over the next 20 to 30 minutes. I'm going to start with a subject really close to your heart, which is, I guess, the image and the perception of the insurance industry and your views on that and how you think it needs to change and adapt. So let's open the box. Tell me more about that. Yeah, it's a bit of a Pandora's box. So some people will view me as a bit of a lunatic, a little bit too outspoken. Some people, what I think it will resonate with them. If we look at the insurance industry, one of the biggest challenges we're facing is that the demographics are aging. And we certainly have this stigma of the white middle-aged man in a grey suit. That's what an insurance broker is and what it looks like. And I think parts of the industry are trying to move that forward. There was a recent publication from Aviva that Amanda Blunk will be vetting more senior positions in order to ensure there's a little bit more equality and equity. But one of the areas that I focus on is how do we bring more young people into the industry? I think that's really important that we have this challenge that insurance brokers are getting older, underwriters are getting older. We also have the challenge of people leaving the industry as well. And how do we attract those young people and how do we get them into this industry? And for me, it's removing all of this ideology that sits around insurance. Is it necessary to wear a suit in order to be an insurance broker? No, I literally never wear a suit. I spend most of my time in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and a pair of trainers. I'm certainly guilty of spending far too much money on a pair of Jordans and rocking them to a meeting because, for me, authenticity is far more important. And I think if we cut through the image expectations and we cut through the way you talk and all of these expectations and we just say, you know what, let's be authentic. We should be experts in our own field, but let's be authentic and true to who we are. And if we cut through insurance as a subject in its own right, that insurance is quite boring, or I go to networking events and say to people, don't bother talking to me, I'm an insurance broker. I literally sell insurance. There is nothing more boring to talk about. That, for me, is a little bit of reverse psychology and works very well at networking events because if you inherently tell someone that they don't want something, that they don't want to talk to you, that makes us want that little bit more. So, from a sales perspective, it works really well. But in terms of attracting more people into the industry, if we cut through and say, well, it's not necessarily about insurance. As insurance brokers, whether we like it or not, we're salesmen, we're salesmen and salespeople. And therefore, it's about, do you want a career where you get to speak to lots of different people? You get to understand different industries. You get to understand different businesses. You get to understand the aspirations of people. And you can be part of that journey in terms of how you protect and support them and manage their risk. That's far more exciting. And explaining to a 16-year-old fresh out of school that you could go on this journey, that even at 40 years old, if you spend 30 years in the industry, you're still going to learn something new. It's evolving. It's changing. Every day is different. And every business that you speak to will be different. Every person that you speak to will be different. And you'll have to adapt and draw on all of your knowledge and draw on all of your colleagues' knowledge in order to find a solution for that person. That's far more interesting and far more sexy than saying, do you want to sell insurance? I personally have some ideas around how we can change that. If you look in America, for example, you can major in insurance at the universities. Why are we as an industry not doing more with school leavers and with colleges to actually turn that into a subject? One of my kids, my oldest, is going to college and studying cyber security. So you can go to college and you can study cyber, you can study cooking, hairdressing, animal care. Why can't you study insurance? And don't get me wrong, I'm not intelligent enough to work out what that course would look like. And I'm never going to claim to be. But why are we not doing that? Why are we not engaging more with young people so that we don't face this challenge in 15, 20 years time, where all of that knowledge and skill has left the industry and it's not been passed on? We have to do more, we have to change more. And I think as an industry, we have to let go of this very archaic view on what we should look like, how we should talk. I find customers, I have customers that work with me and businesses that work with me, and they say, we work with you because you're different, because you don't use all this overly complex insurance jargon that we don't understand to sell us a policy. I look at that and say, if you confuse someone into buying an insurance policy and they don't really know whether they're insured properly, you've probably missold them. So let's cut through that, let's explain it to people in a way that is plain English and that they understand. Customers work with me because I don't look like the same insurance broker that just walked through the door. It shouldn't be taboo to not wear a suit, it shouldn't be taboo to have your hands tied, it shouldn't be taboo to have facial piercings. Who cares about whether you're any good at the job, isn't it? And allowing people to express who they are as an individual, that adds value to your business, adds value to your brokerage, because that encourages personalities, it encourages a different mindset and a different way to move forward. Sitting and saying, we've always done it this way and we've always looked that way and we've always spoken that way and we've always studied that way, just because you've always done it doesn't mean it's the right way and it doesn't mean that's the way it's going to move forward. So like I said, some people think I'm a bit of a lunatic when I talk about it because it's scary and it's a little bit taboo and you could argue that I'm calling out a lot of the industry on the expectations and the ideologies, but if it works, why not? Do we really want to be sat here in 20 years time saying, yeah, we're still doing it that way? I'd like to think not. I'd like to think we'll change and we'll evolve and become a little bit more modern, I think. And you're right, we've had enough problems with mis-selling in our industry in the past and decades gone by, so the point about the customer being confused I think is really well made. There's so much in there, Danny, in what you've said. I'm interested quickly though in, so you talked about rocking up in jeans and a t-shirt, and so I get that there are people out there who, because you're different, that appeals to them and they're drawn to that. What about those who may be more resistant to that? What experiences have you had with customers like that? Yeah, so naturally I've had people that have said, you don't look like an insurance broker. Good, I don't want to. What I want to look like is Danny Flowers. That's the person. I ask a really simplistic question of my clients. You buy insurance for when it goes wrong. Do you want an insurance broker that might be wearing the £1,000 suit and the very shiny shoes and looks very nice and will come in and give you a very good sales pitch, or do you want a dealer that spends more time going to war for their client to make sure that they're indemnified correctly, to make sure they're covered correctly, and doesn't really worry about the £1,000 suit? I also, you could argue it's a little bit arrogant. If you don't want to deal with me, but by the way, I look great, I don't care. Because I want to work with people and have clients that, one, don't present a risk to themselves, but two, understand the value. And I think as insurance brokers, we all have access to the same markets, let's be realistic. So we have to focus on what value we're bringing, and the value that we bring is the service and the authenticity and the promise that we're never going to explain something to you in a way that you're not going to understand. We're always going to use plain English. We're always going to be authentic and true to who we are as individuals. I think that's far more important. And when we think about, not so much in the insurance industry, but that sleazy sales person, let's remove that. And I can't help but think there is an attachment between this view that, wrongly or rightly, that most people have outside the industry, that insurers are looking at ways to avoid paying for something, they just want to take all your money. That means we naturally look a little bit like sleazy sales people, that are just trying to take your money and don't really care whether you get paid out or not. That's not our problem, we've got your money. We have to change that. And I think when people say, you don't look like, you don't sound like, great, fantastic, that's brilliant. Because that also tells you I'm not like the rest of this industry. And that actually, I do care about how you're protected. I do care that you get paid out when it goes wrong. I do care that someone is there to support you when it all goes wrong. And I'll put all my energy into that. I don't really put my energy into making sure I've got a nicely fitted, tailored suit. I always think about being comfortable, to be fair, and when you're comfortable, you're more effective and more productive. But yeah, if people don't want to deal with me based on the way I look and sound, it's fantastic, not a problem. Yeah, it's a choice, exactly. Equally, I've had clients that want to deal with me that I don't want to deal with because I think they present too much of a risk to themselves. And it's the age old, only deal with X amount of brokers when you're going to market. Anyone that says to me they're dealing with three, four, five different brokers, fantastic, good luck with that, I'm not going to be one of them. That presents too much of a risk. Presentations are always slightly different. That naturally occurs. We all ask questions in slightly different ways, which causes a slightly different answer. It's the right thing to do to say to a client, you know what, you've got all these people involved, we're not going to be one of them. And as much as they want to deal with us because of the authenticity, because of being different, that's not my bag. I'm not going to get involved with someone creating a problem for themselves. Yeah, and your point about the advice that I mentioned before is really important to me. I think as an industry we've not done anywhere near enough to make it simple for members of the public to understand what we do. And most importantly, like you said, that we will fulfil our promises. That should just be a given for me. You come across as a guy who's confident and comfortable in his own skin, which has got to be worth something as well. Your observations, Danny, about bringing young people in and what you can do in the States as part of education and stuff, that's really interesting. Of course, we've dabbled in the UK with apprenticeships and that kind of thing, but I suspect that hasn't gone far enough. So tell me, how did you get into insurance broking in the first place and what was it about it that attracted you? Well, interestingly, nothing. I, like most people, accidentally came into the industry. So my background, I come from a broken home, single mum, benefits. We didn't have a lot. So as I turned 16, it was very much get a job or you're going to have to get out of the house. So I got an apprenticeship as a claims handler initially, worked my way up through that business, studied engineering and such like. I was chief engineer. And then I met with a guy that is now my business partner. He was from a broking and an underwriting background and I was from a claims background. And the thing that I've always said is that there's a real disconnect between underwriting and claims. It's almost like the two don't communicate effectively with each other. And I think they should because actually a lot of these things and challenges that the industry has can be overcome if these two departments just talk to each other. And my business partner had the same view on that. I was like, yeah, I completely agree. There's this real disconnect that underwriting and brokers don't understand what happens in a claim and claims don't understand what brokers and underwriters do. So we came up with the idea of initially launching a claims management company and using all of our knowledge together. So that started in my living room and we built that up. And then we got to a point of saying, well, do we want to – we've got all of this knowledge. Do we want to continue down this route in which actually you can't – the insurance industry is a bit like a very long train. It takes too long to shift it. And to say, you old geezers, no one's really paying attention to us. And at the time we were in our sort of late 20s. So then we launched the insurance brokerage and decided actually to no longer do the claim side. And we, as an insurance broker, have our own 24-hour claim solution that we offer. It's always us monitoring and our staff that answer those calls 24 hours a day. But I came into the industry purely because I had to get a job. And I think once you're in it, you realize how interesting it can be, how exciting it can be. You also realize there's a lot of – I certainly felt some of the judgment being a young guy coming up through the industry. Particularly if you go into engineering. 26-year-old engineer at the age of – shut up. What are you talking about? You've just come out of nappies. I've had all those sort of comments. But I just – there was something about it. Interestingly, I contemplated leaving the industry before we set up this business and got dragged back into it essentially. So it's one of them. Would I – I don't think anyone really leaves the industry. I think we all end up coming back in some sort of guise. And I think that will always be the case, to be fair. I don't think I'll ever leave the industry. I don't think now I'll do anything else. But who knows? I sort of like to take each day and every opportunity as it comes. Hence the reason from 16 to 26, 27, I studied as much as I could. I took every opportunity that was thrown at me. And that gave me the opportunity to develop a wealth of experience within planes, within broking, within engineering. And just to bring all of those sort of transferable skills across into actually developing an offering, I guess, that would be appealing to that commercial market. We don't get involved in personal lines at all. I don't see that I can add any value to those people. A lot of that personal line is about cheapest price. That won't race to the bottom. Go and compare the market, get a really cheap price, fantastic. But you get what you pay for essentially. We only focus on the commercial market because we can add value, whether that's from a risk management perspective or whether that's from a pure broking perspective. Quality of advantage, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I have relationships with some of my clients that are purely, yes, I'm their insurance broker, but we both own our businesses. Therefore, as a business owner, a business owner having those sort of conversations as well, we all face our challenges as owners of the businesses. Whether that's personal or professionally. So having those conversations, I think, it is quite nice to develop that sort of trust. You have to have a lot of trust in your insurance broker anyway because you give them a lot of information. Let's be honest, we're certainly guilty of probing and getting more and more information. So the trust has to be there. So then take that a step further, I think, where you get to know the people, the values, what they represent. I think that's so powerful and such an opportunity because you can spot these challenges before they occur. I've got a client that has been on an acquisition trail and each time it's done, what do you think? What do you know about this? What can you see? Is there anything that we should be aware of before we move forward with this acquisition? And that's where you can really use an insurance broker effectively to not just give you insurance advice but to give that holistic view and guidance to maybe your board or if you're that SME that's owner-managed businesses. I think that's quite a powerful thing to do. And I think the evolution of being in this industry and why I think I'll probably always be in it, to be fair. Yeah, well, in a minute I want to come back to what pulled you back, Craig, because you said you almost moved on. So I'm going to come back to that because that intrigues me. But before I get to that, you mentioned some challenges that you face as a business owner. So tell me what keeps you awake at night? Honestly, very little, if I'm honest. So I think the nature of, you know, I'm very transparent about where I come from. You know, I was a council estate kid. We didn't have a lot. We didn't have a lot of money. But we had each other and that was always very, you know, me and I, I've got an older brother and we was always really close. And, you know, we was naughty little sods growing up. But we were, you know, we were kids, but we had each other. And you go, I think you go through this phase where you generate a lot of money, you know, more money than you've ever sort of had before. And that becomes important to you and you start to think more about, you know, turnover, profit, all of these sort of things. And probably COVID was quite an important moment for me on a personal level in that I was 29 years old, relatively, you know, still relatively young, still relatively inexperienced as a chief exec. Let's be realistic. And you're suddenly faced with this huge challenge. And at the time we had, you know, circa 60 employees died across multiple different offices, all these people suddenly looking to you for the answers. And you've got all your personal challenges, all your professional challenges going on, all sort of magnified by the fact that you can no longer just pop to the office, you can no longer just arrange a meeting, you can't go and do these things. And for me, that was equally a turning point in which I said, you know what, what is actually important to me? And for me, it's really simple. It's my wife and it's my children and that's about it. So my view is that we don't focus on the profit, don't focus on the turnover, focus on providing the service, focus on winning business naturally, focus on all of those things because the profit and the turnover look after themselves. For me, that's further supported in the level of growth that we've achieved. You know, we essentially sold our first policy around June 22. So as an insurance broker, we're still relatively young, we might have even been 21 now, I think we're about two years, give or take. And to achieve what we've achieved in that period, some insurance brokers are achieving a sort of 10-year period. And I talk about our forecast for this year and I'm like, look, if we don't get to five, six million GWP, I'm going to be really disappointed. That's where I expect us to be as a business. Profits, you know, naturally are important, otherwise we're not going to be here, we're not a charity after all. But I find profitability looks after itself. It's, you know, I focus on lean businesses and removing some of the unnecessary costs and expenditure and all that sort of stuff. But I don't really allow things to bother me. I'm quite relaxed and quite laid back about things. And, you know, things will have a way of working themselves out. I think you only make decisions and choices based on the information that you have at that given moment. So if that's the wrong decision and you find that out in the future, it's okay, it's not, you know, we make bad decisions, we're all human beings. I think when you cut through all of that and you just say, you know what, forget about job titles, forget about all of this nonsense that sits around it and just accept that we're a human being and we make mistakes and we get things wrong sometimes, it's okay. There is no one that will judge me more than I judge myself, to be fair, and the expectations that I set on myself, I think that's why I've managed to take businesses from living rooms to, you know, reasonably successful businesses because of that expectation I put on myself. And I think that comes from, you know, childhood, not having a lot, not wanting that to be the same for your own children. But that, again, it comes full circle to why my wife and children are my priority, not necessarily chasing this idea of success. What is success in the grand scheme of things? It's different for all of us. But if we're constantly chasing it, we're never going to be satisfied. Yeah, and I get a strong sense of that drive coming through, Danny, from everything you've said today. So tell me, why didn't you step away then? What was it that drew you back? See, I was providing consultancy for a few different businesses, not even from this industry, to be fair, but somewhere in terms of vehicle repair centres and such like, domiciliary care industry, a lot of it was about operational restructures, reducing costs and expenditure. And then a guy that I knew from the industry linked out to me and he said, Danny, look, I've got two companies. One's established, one's not. One's just an idea that needs someone like you that will come in and just hit the ground running, go and secure some business for them. So one I can't mention because I signed an NDA, so I can't mention them. And the other one was the business that I now a majority shareholder of. So I sat down with my business partner, a guy called Mike at the time, and he's outlining the vision to me and where we're going to get to. And I was like, do you know what? Yeah, why not? Let's do it. My issue was more that I had reached a point within my career, within a company, and I was still young, so you could argue at 26 years old there was a little bit of ego involved. But I think I'd reached a point within that business that I couldn't move any further forward. And therefore I just took the view of, do you know what? I'm just going to leave the industry. And that's when I fell into consultancy, and then the consultancy dragged me back into the industry. So I don't think, you know, there is certainly a question mark of would I have continued down the consultancy route? Maybe. I was doing all right at it. I had helped a couple of businesses to exit for, you know, considerable sums of money. I'd restructured a number of businesses that were struggling and made them profitable within quite a short period of time. I helped another business to secure some local authority contracts, become CQT registered, all of those things. So possibly I might have considered staying on that path. But I just knew that being happy and being more present was more important to me than getting involved in some sort of rat race where, you know, if I stayed in the industry, I could have maybe gone and applied for jobs in the city and all that sort of stuff. But how long do you go not watching your children grow up before you say, that's not right? So I took the real early decision while my daughter was still in nursery to say I'm not happy doing what I'm doing. I've reached my potential within this business and actually I want to be more present. And that led to the business being formed and that's what the business culture is about now. And we've maintained that culture. So I think it works. But that's essentially why I got dragged back in. It felt like an opportunity not to pass up. Clearly I was right, I must have got somewhat right, otherwise we wouldn't still be here. Yeah, absolutely. There are lyrics of a song that strike me and it goes something like, you can check out but you can never leave. And I think the insurance industry might be a little bit like that. So I get where you're coming from. So great stuff, Danny. And just before we wrap up, give me a quick view on what the future holds for you. So we have a strategy to continue our growth. Like I said, we launched in, I'm sure it was April 21, we sold our first policy. Naturally the insurance industry works on calendar years, so the first sort of nine months was calendaring naturally, getting agencies set up and all that sort of stuff. Last year we managed to hit 3 million GWP, which is slightly ahead of what we forecasted. When we launched Motem and I said to the industry, within 18 months we'll be at 3 million GWP, everyone looked at me like I had two heads and I was a bit of a dreamer. Absolutely right, root for the stars and you'll land somewhere on the moon. So we hit 3 million GWP last year, this year my expectation is to be at 5.5 million GWP and by 2027 we want to be at 20 million GWP. That will be a combination of organic growth and growth through acquisition. Naturally we can't compete with the big consolidators, but I don't want to. I'm looking at those smaller insurance brokerages that are perhaps looking for an exit where I can go in and implement some of our sales strategies and our philosophies as a business and then scale those businesses really quickly. Ideally 2027 we are at 20-25 million GWP. My ego a little bit, I want to do that earlier. I always say that Mike works on our forecast and I always find it exciting that we have to constantly keep re-forecasting because I keep pushing the business to outperform every forecast. So we then have to re-forecast again, which I love it. Mike, I'm not so sure whether he loves having to keep re-forecasting, but I'm sure he enjoys the growth that we're benefiting from. Ideally, for me, if we could get there to 2026, fantastic. Our current forecast dictates we will achieve it earlier than 2027, but there will become a point that we will have to slow down that growth a little bit. If we can hit half a million pounds GWP a month, great, fantastic. Will we have less a month? Of course we will. Do you have those seasonal dips? Will we have better months? Absolutely. But for an insurance broker, it's only been going two and a bit years, talking about doing half a million pounds gross rate and premium within a month. When we don't have a huge team, we're up to 10 staff, including me and my business partners. So we're not a huge business whatsoever, but I think to achieve what we've achieved is already very positive, and it's just a case of continue that growth. At some point, would I like to exit? Absolutely. Do I want to be sat on a beach sipping a cocktail? Of course I do. I set an objective of retiring by the time I'm 40. If we achieve everything we set out to achieve and everything we forecast, I will be retired by the time I'm 40. I don't think it's in my nature to retire and not do anything. So probably at 45, you'll see me suddenly appear all over again. I don't know. Yeah, there'll always be someone coming along next. Exactly. But yeah, I think it's, you know, take each day as it comes. Enjoy it whilst we can. Face each challenge the same way we faced every challenge. We have a positive mindset and stay true to who we are. Let's not change our culture, our ethos, our philosophies because that's part of our strength. That's part of who we are and our identity. But just continue on that growth and continue in it and enjoy it, really. See what happens. And you'll enjoy that cocktail even more. Hopefully. Hopefully. That seems like a good place to start to wrap up. Danny, thank you so much. You've brought a really refreshing outlook to the podcast today. I'm ever so grateful for your time. I guess, you know, you come across as unapologetically you. Authentic, dedicated to your profession. And I think these are all fantastic qualities. I hope it goes without saying, but I'm going to say anyway, I wish you all the very best of luck with the growth of this business and whatever business might come along in the future. But yeah, in the meantime, thanks a million. I've enjoyed chatting today. Yeah, no, wicked. Yeah, me too. You're absolutely right. I'm 100% unapologetically myself. And I don't care one little bit if that's not what people want. I can only be me. That's it. Spot on. Yeah, wicked. Thanks for your time, David. Take care, Danny. Cheers. Take care. What a fantastic conversation. I really hope you enjoyed that. You've been listening to follow the advice. If you'd like to get in touch with me, you'll find me on LinkedIn. Just search for David Brown Problem Solver. You can listen to other episodes of the podcast on audio.com. And if you'd like to check out my video content, you'll find me on YouTube at Scoosh Consulting. That's S-K-O-O-S-H. If you want to know what that means, visit my website at www.etsascoosh.com. Thanks again for listening, and I hope to see you all soon.