Common Mistakes to Avoid with Your Insurance Coverage
EPISODE 1
In our brand new podcast (un)covered, we’re kicking off the show with a conversation about the common mistakes we see people make with their insurance. Dan Vander Kooi and Sean Fields discuss the importance of not overlooking good insurance to begin with and making sure you're not underinsured.
In This Episode:
How & Why Manna Insurance Got Started
Top Things To Be Aware of in Insurance in The Next 3-5 Years
The Importance of Finding a Good Insurance Broker
Manna’s Back Story
About The (un)covered Podcast and What To Expect
Podcast Episode Transcription
Sean Fields:
Hey guys, I'm Sean Fields and I'm here with the CEO and founder of Manna Insurance, Dan Vander Kooi. We're excited to start a new series for you guys and let's get this thing rolling.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Hey, Sean.
Sean Fields:
Hey, welcome.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Thank you.
Sean Fields:
To your show.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Thanks for being here. I'm excited to launch this and see where things go.
Sean Fields:
Yeah, how you doing?
Dan Vander Kooi:
I'm good. It is a busy time rolling into fall, getting ready for fourth quarter, and it's a busy time for our company and just to try to serve people well, but it's a lot of fun.
Sean Fields:
How was your summer? Tell us some things, some highlights.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, I had a lot of fun running around from one kid to another kid, coached my 11-year-old son's baseball team, won the Cal Ripken state tournament, which was a ton of fun. Got to go down to Eugene and compete against five other states and made it to the semi-finals there, that was a lot of fun. Daughter going into high school, so high school sports was going on all summer, chasing that around. And Taya was just playing volleyball here this fall for school. And then my little guy was playing baseball all summer too and threw in some camping trips and family vacation stuff. And it was a very full summer, but highlight, we got a sponsor, five nights of entertainment at the Northwest Washington Fair, which was awesome. Three concerts, a couple nights of demo derby, and the Northwest Raspberry Festival with a big Curt Maberry three-on-three tournament, 200 plus teams, second largest in the state to hoop fest. And it's just cool to be part of community and that's important to us.
Sean Fields:
So you're into baseball?
Dan Vander Kooi:
I'm into baseball. Mariners are playing right now and it's hard for me not to have my phone to be checking as they're in the race for the AL West so.
Sean Fields:
Take a big breath.
Dan Vander Kooi:
See how things go.
Sean Fields:
So let's just dig into a little bit about you and your history. Share a little bit about where you're from.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, I grew up in Lynden, Washington. Went to school at Lynden Christian and went to college for about a year, mainly to chase playing baseball. Met my wife right before I moved down to Oregon to do that and we did the long distance thing. I was like, "I throw 88 to 90 miles an hour. Every 6, 5, 16 year old in the Dominican throws 95 plus. The chances of me making it aren't very good." So I moved back here, started working at First Reformed Church where my wife grew up and our family goes to church there now. Was a youth pastor there from 2002, 2003 through 2010. Still really involved there, I help take teams down to Guatemala every January. Yeah, so that's just local here. We were looking to transition out of youth ministry for multiple reasons, but we started having kids and it was just time to really start focusing on taking care of my own family and raising my kids. And we still love ministry, just wasn't called as a profession anymore.
And so we were looking at different jobs. We had an opportunity to possibly go coach collegiately, and then that door slammed close and got into insurance. And right before the year before, I learned about insurance firsthand. I was coming back, I was coaching baseball at Nooksack High School at the time. I was coming back from Cash and Carry in Bellingham, truck full of sodas and burgers and hot dogs for our end of the year team barbecue and had a notepad on my center console on my pickup and it slid off and I just naturally went to grab it. And when I did that, the lady in front of me stopped and I hit her. And through that whole process, I was actually down in Guatemala a couple months later and my wife got served papers. We were being sued from that car accident.
And I was a youth pastor at the time, you're definitely not in youth ministry for the money. And so we went through the whole process of your assets are on the line and someone's coming after you. And granted, I think insurance is there to make a person whole again, right? Because there are injuries that happen and they are accidents. They're called accidents for a reason, they're not intentional. And so it's an interesting industry because nobody likes to pay their premiums. Nobody likes insurance until they go through it and they have someone to go to bat for them and they can be restored and made whole again. And there's that provision for them in it. So I learned about insurance firsthand and when one of the guys that helped me get into it was one of my assistant coaches and great guy, Leonard Smit, and he helped me get into it, got going with him, we merged with another local company.
I was there about a year, realized I have a way different way of doing business than I want to do it. And kudos to them, hopefully they can be successful doing what they're doing. I just had a different idea of what I wanted to do and I wanted to build a team and I wanted to focus on serving people well. And I think if you serve people well, the money will come, the business will come. Your handshake and your word got to mean something. And so that's how the roundabout way, how Manna started back in 2015 and got into it and so I've been into this with my 14th year now.
Sean Fields:
Let's go back to that story. If you could share and be open, what were the things that you felt like hearing that you got served and that process, the emotional process of, oh my gosh, what? Tell me what that was like.
Dan Vander Kooi:
It was a long time ago. I think within your auto insurance policy, you have these things called liability limits. It's basically the max that they're willing to pay out. And everyone says, "Oh, I want the cheapest thing." Well, the cheapest thing in the short term might end up costing you your entire financial future if you don't protect it right in the first place. And I think if you go on a website like a Geico or a Progressive online or anyone and you just go and you just click through, most of the time they have the cheapest minimum state liability option available. If I would've had that, there would've been only $25,000 to pay out for those person's injuries that I hit doing 40, right? At the time, I think I had 100,000 for the person in the accident, a cap of 300 grand for the accident. And that went, 100,000 14 years ago, went a lot longer than it does now, right?
And so I think you go to bed at night and sometimes you're like, "Man, are they going to come after my house? Are they going to come after? Are they going to garnish my wages? How's this going to affect my family?" And that lawsuit went on for probably six, seven years before it closed because of there was a minor in the car. And so finally it closed, it settled for policy limits and we were able to move on, but it was always there. And I think it gives me a very different perspective. We have people that walk in our office say, "Well, we want this." And we're like, "Yeah, sorry, we're not for you." Because our job is, we're not just writing policies. We truly want to advise and our job is to protect the assets that you've built up and that you're in the process of building up.
And most people just burn and turn. They just want to sell a policy, take their 10 to 15% commission and call it good. And we just don't operate that way. And if you want someone like that and you want the cheapest thing, then we're probably not the right fit for you. And when I say cheapest thing, I don't mean most competitive rate, but I mean buying the absolute minimum dirt liability coverage that if you're an accident, you can't tell me that once you check into the ER, it's not going to be at least 20 grand for that one night and your policy is now maxed out. So we want to make sure that they're protected, that if they own a home and there's equity in that home, that they can't come after the home and take that.
I had a guy that would served papers from an accident and a realtor served the papers and handed him a business card. I mean, that's how aggressive and bad it can get. And so that's why really making sure that you have the right coverage in place is important. We had another guy come to us, it was with another agency and had a house fire and he was shorted 100 and some grand. I think you know that story, that's why you ended up here with us. And then we've built a friendship through that. So those are things where is your agent being an advocate and they're actually asking the right questions to make sure you're protected properly. I always tell people, I don't need to know what's in your bank account, but I got to have an idea of your net worth so that I can really focus on protecting what you've built up.
Sean Fields:
That's awesome, dude.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, I didn't mean to go so deep so fast, but it is just the difference between what we do and I think what a lot of other people do.
Sean Fields:
And I think that that's something that I've experienced is you, I mean you say you don't want to go so deep, so fast, but you cut to the chase really well so that you're like, "Hey, this is why we're doing this." Instead of here's your thing, sign it, get out the door, let me educate you on why we're doing this and the gravity that actually these policies hold.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Well, that and too, we just had, inflation's hit the insurance market really hard and I don't think people are really understanding what's going to happen in the next two to three years. I think you're going to see insurance rates double or triple across the board with carriers. Reinsurance companies are pulling out. That's the people who basically insure the insurance companies. I mean, you look at California right now, there's people just fleeing the state completely. State Farm pulled out, Nationwide pulled out, they're not writing business. We have people here in the state of Washington that say if we're going to write a home or an auto or business policy with them, we have to have eight or nine different documentations things. And they do that because legally, they're not allowed to pull out of the state because there's all these regulations.
But they do that because they know no one's going to want to jump through those hoops. So it's their way of not writing business to try to get everything under control because the cost of vehicles has gone through the roof as far as the technology in them and what it takes to fix them. Home insurance, the inflation with just labor and materials and all that that goes into it has increased. And so you just start seeing that. And then just the legal climate in the state that we live in is what's being awarded in lawsuits. If you're a general contractor or someone like that, you just don't win. So their payouts are increased, which means the insurance carriers are losing money and the market's not great from an investment standpoint, so they can't take their premiums, invest in the market, and make 10, 20% maybe like they did before or even more. They got to really rely on those premiums and those reserves.
And so it gets a lot more cumbersome and more difficult for the actuaries to figure out how do we properly rate these policies? And nobody wants to hear that. I don't want to hear it. My home insurance went through the roof. But it is, but that's the advantage we're with broker, at least we can go out to market instead of if you're the captive agent, a State Farm or Farmers, whoever, the only thing they can do is cut your coverages where at least we can get companies competing against each other, other, but it's going to happen and it's coming and it's important to have someone in your corner.
Sean Fields:
So what would you say are top five things that people should be aware of and prepare for over the next five years regarding insurance?
Dan Vander Kooi:
I think one of the things, make sure you're properly covered. You don't want any surprises. There are multiple cases right now that you're saying that people don't have enough home insurance coverage. It hasn't been reviewed. And you got to remember, people a lot of times will come in and they'll think, well, the value of my house is X. Well, when the real estate market was booming and interest rates were 3% or 2.5%, well, the value of a house was here because there was demand for it, but people could afford more because of the interest rate, right? Well, now that the interest rates are high, people aren't necessarily not wanting to leave their house. They don't want to leave their mortgage. So now, but that home price has started to settle a little bit or drop a little bit. It's not the market value of your home that we insure.
It's what it takes to rebuild it. You got to remember, there's a couple of things. So it's not the market value and you don't have to pay for the land again. So it's the actual structure. So then it becomes what are labor costs? I mean, you look at the cost for a plumber nowadays versus a while ago, even three, four years ago. I mean, I know some that are charging a 150, 175 bucks an hour so your cost is very different. It's not 50 bucks an hour for a vocation. And that even comes supply and demand and the trades. That's a whole nother conversation of how we've pushed four year education so hard that we don't have an emphasis on the trades anymore and now it's going to flip. You got these guys working trades now that they can be making six figures because they're really good at what they do and it's supply and demand.
And so the cost for everything to build has gone up. So a lot of times, way back in the day when I started, you could build a builder's grade spec house type deal for 80 to 90 bucks a square foot 14 years ago. We're reviewing policies. People walk in our door, we say, "We're not going to insure you for under $250 a square foot." And one of the things that we do is we look at those coverages each year and email goes out about two months prior to the renewal and just say, "Hey, have there been any major changes? Have you added on? Have you done that?" Because people forget to tell their insurance person about it.
So that's the biggest thing is make sure that your dwelling value is where it needs to be because your finishes might be way more to replace now than they were when you built it, your labor materials, all that kind of stuff. I think the other thing too is it's not always the case, but over time as people grow in their careers or their jobs or they hit different phases of life or maybe they inherit money from parents passing away or different things like that, your financial situation changes.
So all of a sudden where a certain liability limit was okay at this point because your net worth was just basically your house, the equity you had in your house maybe, and now it's worth significantly more because of inheritance, or maybe you bought a business or different things like that, numerous different scenarios that could happen. It's really making sure that you're constantly up-to-date on protecting what you've built up. And I always just tell people, "It's not our job to build up your assets or your wealth. It's our job to protect it." And so those are a couple big things.
I think the other thing we're in the month of September, September is Life Insurance Awareness Month. I can tell you numerous stories of people who've gone through without having it. My dad passed away in April and what it costs to have a funeral and a burial and stuff is not cheap. And I'll say this in the nicest way, GoFundMe is not a plan, and I would rather have my family taken care of. I read a book called Die Neatly by a guy written out of Spokane. It was powerful. And he used the phrase, he goes, the legacy that you leave through, whether it's life insurance or just making sure your estate stuff is lined up. Nicole Terpstra next door to our office here is our attorney, and my wife and I on Valentine's Day went and updated our will and all this stuff. It's like, "Honey, let's go to Avenue Bread for lunch and then let's go visit the estate planning attorney." It's so romantic, right?
Sean Fields:
Romantic.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Romantic. But it was-
Sean Fields:
This is not a marriage advice show.
Dan Vander Kooi:
But it was one of those things because things constantly change. Laws constantly change, and I don't want the government taking a bunch of money that I leave for my family and my kids or my wife. I want to make sure that it gets maximized them and estate tax and all that other kind of stuff. So I want to plan for that and I want to clear cut for them. I don't need them figuring out what goes to who or what's for what. So we have a very dialed in plan on what happens, what happens to our business, what happens to our assets, what happens to our kids if something happens to both of Erin and I. So having that lined up, and I just love the phrase that he had in that book, your will and your estate plan and how you set this up. And a lot of times you can fund it through really inexpensive life insurance, is your last love letter to your family.
So those are the big things that I would say. I mean, I could go off, there's so many spinoffs in the insurance industry on different products and things that can be used for things and everyone has an opinion and that's fine. You guys would be able to afford it too. There's a balance between wanting all these things to make sure you can can be extremely over-insured too. I'm the first one to say that. There's certain things that I'm like, "Eh, whatever." But I'm the insurance agent that's got the trampoline, that has the four-wheeler, the dirt bike. I believe you have insurance for a reason. You still got to live life, you got to enjoy life.
Sean Fields:
Yeah, I was going to say living life is super important, but making sure that you have the protection you need just in case, right? For people that aren't local to the Northwest, how would you recommend them finding good brokers?
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, I think you start off by an independent broker. You want to go with someone who is actually going to sit down and meet with you and actually advise you. So many times I sit down with people and one of the first questions I ask because we're sitting here having a conversation, they obviously came to us for a reason, and I just say, "Hey, so what do you want out of your agent?" And sometimes they don't even know what to say because they've never thought about it. A lot of people don't think of insurance brokerage as an advisor. They don't think of someone that's helping them plan. It's a very different conversation when you start to build trust. I mean, I've sat with different people and they've asked me to be the, oh, shoot, I can't think of the word.
Sean Fields:
Executor team?
Dan Vander Kooi:
The executor on their will, yeah. And because I'm so involved in it with the long-term care, with the life insurance, with that sort of thing, and it's like we don't want to have to have our kids worry about that. And so there's some I've done it on, some I've said no. But again, when you're choosing a broker, it really depends. Someone, honestly, can you trust them? Are they going to pick up the phone? That's half the battle right now. There's been so much movement in the marketplace where we're one of the last few family owned agencies around. And with that, things change.
You get put to a phone tree, you get stuff overseas that are handling your things, different things like that. And that's fine, everyone has a right to run their business the way they want. I just like to do it different. I want the money staying here. I want to invest into our community. I want to invest. I do a ton of stuff in Guatemala with Eagle's Nest International, and we want to serve people really, really well, and we feel like the money will take care of itself.
Sean Fields:
Yeah, it's hard when you're put in a crisis mode of losing a family member or losing your house or being in a car wreck, having to get through a call line when you're in crisis mode is the worst experience.
Dan Vander Kooi:
And I would even say to that, what I'm about to tell you, I don't do regularly. I think I've done it twice, but we've had it too where people have been stranded on the side of the road and because they have my cell number or they know me, or they get it through someone and they're not getting anywhere or something, they text or call me and I've gone and grabbed a tilt bed trailer and picked up their car on the side of the road. We push it up and because it's just like if that was my teenage daughter, gosh, she's going to start driving in about a year. She starts driver's ed soon.
Sean Fields:
Stay off the roads.
Dan Vander Kooi:
If that was Tay on the side of the road, and we didn't have those resources or we didn't have access to that and tow trucks not coming, I would want someone to help me. We live in a society today that we say we have all these friends on social media and yet we don't have anyone that we feel comfortable coming to ask us to help move the couch. And we take that mentality of, we want you to come to us, we want you to call us. We want to file the claim for you and not give you an 800 number to call yourself. So many agencies are told to do by the insurance carriers now because they think it'll be cleaner.
Well, that's not serving well, I know that I have payroll hours going into someone filing this, I know it overwhelms my staff sometimes with that, and I'm really protective of my team. But if we're walking someone through a situation where they've never been through it, they're scared or they're hurt or they're overwhelmed by the situation because they don't deal with it every day, we want to take that burden. So again, having someone that's service focused that is not about just selling the policy, but the service side is there and we screw up, we're not perfect, but it's one of those deals where you just really, are you getting someone that you can actually call and talk to and get some advice from?
Sean Fields:
I know that that's something that, the byproduct of that, walking people through because you're having conversations with couples and you're like, "We're going to deal with life insurance." And I know for us, that was a hard conversation for my wife because she's having to think about me not being here. But your guys' approach to walking through that situation is so kind and gentle and empathetic that it really makes a difference. And the human side of the reality of thinking about, well, what happens? And to say, we don't want you to have to think about anything except for that, here's the right coverage for you. And it's important. So I know that that's something that, it's a hard conversation to have, but that's part of a side of insurance that you probably don't get to see or you don't even see if you go online. It's just, here's numbers, here you go, here's your policy.
Dan Vander Kooi:
And even with that, we're trying to figure out how do we meet in the middle? So we're one of, I don't even know how many brokers in the country, but we use a brokerage group for our life insurance called Millennium Brokerage Group. A buddy of mine named Justin Sykes, he was with Nationwide Financial for a long time. He moved over to them when they had some, they changed their territory managers and stuff. It was funny, we got connected with him. He was our territory manager in the state of Washington, he lives in Charlotte. But he and I have become really close friends over the last seven, eight years of doing business together. And he's our rep, he's our internal rep through him, we've been approved as a preferred broker for the American Medical Association. That's a big deal, people don't just get that. And so we've been vetted from them. They send us leads so we work with a lot of doctors and surgeons and things like that on long-term care, disability insurance, life insurance, buy-sell agreements with partnership groups.
But we've also partnered with them through a company called Life Insurance Made Easy. So a lot of people want to go shop, they want to do their research online and stuff. And so we have a whole platform when we launch a new website in the next week or two, it'll be on there that you can go on, you can get a quote for all these life insurance companies right on there. You can actually click and start the application process online, fill it out, and then we get pinged.
And Blake in our office or me or depending on what type of policy and that sort of thing, we'll just follow up and be like, "Hey, how'd you come up with this number? Do you have any questions? How can we serve your answer? Any questions on this?" And sometimes people'll be like, "Nope, we're good." We're like, "Great." Click, we submit it, boom, it goes to the carrier. Sometimes it gets approved within 24 hours. Other times, they got to do a whole paramed exam and everything like that. But you get the whole shopping online experience and doing some research on your own in your pajama pants at home or your sweatpants, but you still get the advice of an advisor if you want it.
Sean Fields:
Right.
Dan Vander Kooi:
So we're trying to meet that what's in the middle. I think there's some cool tools and technology that we're going to be putting into play over the next six to 18 months that people are going to see and be like, "Oh, wow, my agent just doesn't do that. Geico doesn't do that." Even this podcast, we're not doing it for any other reason just to educate people on the process. The next one that we're going to host is with a guy that's become really good friends of mine that does a lot of restoration stuff that comes in when there's a fire or a pipe broke because we want to educate people on the process. Brent Meyer from Charlie's Auto Body in Grand Central Collision on because he understands how to work with the carriers, what they're looking for, my suburban's in his shop right now because my wife got rear-ended, right? And so it's a process. And so again, working with trusted vendors that their handshake and their word means something.
Sean Fields:
Yeah, it does. I mean just that. You just said a ton there.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Sorry. I just go because it's one of those things where it's insurance, nobody wants to talk about it. It can be boring, but when things really hit the fan, it's extremely important. And if it's already happened, you can't go back and put stuff in place after the fact. You got to plan ahead and if you don't, you're going to regret it.
Sean Fields:
Yeah, I just got rear-ended on the 10th and nobody was hurt, it was a slow speed hit. But one big thing that really stood out is we went through our insurance and they were great and everything's covered, but the other insurance called me up and just said, "Hey, we just want to make sure that you're okay, and if there's not anything covered by your policy, just give us a call." It was a real person saying that, that makes a difference with insurance. And it changes your perspective of a real person saying, "Hey, we're here for you. I know that this is hard." Let's go back in time for a little bit and tell me more about when you started Manna. I mean you shared a little bit about why you did it, but why the name Manna and why? What was your perspective on becoming a leader and building your staff, and what was the culture going to be like?
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, I've always been a dreamer. I've never played well in the lines or just doing things the way, doing it that way because they've been done before. And so as I started to wrestle through what I wanted out of the next 25, 30 years, I just thought I have a very different idea of doing it. And so as we're wrestling with that, we talked to a few people that had been in partnerships before that had been in partnerships and they worked out great, others that didn't. I was like, "You know what? I want to do my own thing. I think it's going to be best for everybody." And it was really hard in the moment to do that and you go back and forth and all that, but once you get out there and you start to develop what your plan and your vision is, it gets exciting.
And I was doing my quiet time one morning, I was reading through scripture and I was in the Old Testament reading about the Israelites walking through the desert and manna coming from heaven as their provision to eat. And I didn't want to have anything that was Insurance Northwest or something like a regional, right? Because it's like, well, what if we blow it up and what if we go national or what if we go West Coast or don't want that? Didn't want Vander Kooi on it. I love my last name, I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the legacy that is our family, Whatcom County roots, dairy farm, all that kind of stuff, I'm proud of that. But what if my kids don't want to be involved? What if at some point we decide when I'm ready to retire, we sell it to team members that we have here?
So I was like, man, what a good reminder every day that first of all, the Lord's going to provide for us as a family as we take this jump and start over again because that was hard the first time, but at least I knew what I was doing now. And then two, that our job as an insurance brokerage in partnership with the insurance carrier is to provide in a time of need when someone's house burns down, when someone's in a car accident. I haven't had a ton of house fires in my career, I've probably had three or four. I've had one or two total burn to the ground. And when you can go and show up and the fire department's still there and it's four in the morning and you're standing next to them and you say, "We got this. It sucks. I'm sorry, can I pray for you right now?"
And then walk them through that and say, "Okay, here's some money. Go get a hotel." Close around here, most people have a lot of family, so they can, but being there and saying, "Hey, we're going to help make sure we provide in a time of need for you." That's that provision. It's like, man, what a great name. I honestly had a couple reps from insurance carriers say, "Don't use that name. Don't use that name, you're going to alienate people." You're like, I don't know. I like it. I feel like, but honestly, I tell my kids this every day, not every day, but all the time.
Number one, drop them off at school, get out of the truck. I said, be kind to somebody today. It doesn't cost anything to be kind to someone. When someone calls in and they're upset because of something going on, because of a billing issue or something like that, you never know what they're going through on the other side of the phone. That doesn't give them the right to disrespect or be rude to our team either, but show them grace, show them kindness, love them where they're at.
Number two is you live your life with your hands open. If you constantly hold onto things like this and you don't give back to your community and you don't give back to people in need and things like that, it also prevents God from putting blessings back into your own hand. And so when you do that and you focus on, I want to be that middle ground, I want to be that advocate for my client who doesn't know how to deal with this big multi-billion, trillion dollar insurance carrier. I want to be that go-between because I got to represent both.
But ultimately as a broker, your loyalty lies with your client and you go to bat for them. And that doesn't mean we're going to win every time, but most of the time we can get to a common ground that's fair and people are put back to whole where they were at before. And that's that provision that we like to, so that's just a reminder. Nate in our office, who's our operations and HR guy, when we were onboarding three new people in this past between the last couple of weeks. He walks them through that, what our values are, what we're about.
And that's a big part of it, is providing joy while we do that to our clients so it's not such a negative, bad experience that you hear sometimes from people in their claims experience because if we handle that really well and we go to bat for them and they do have a good experience, we also earn a client for life. And I tell those insurance carriers that sometimes I go, you're going back and forth and worried about 1500 bucks here or two grand there on this claim, you don't think this car is worth this, or you don't think whatever it might be, this specific equipment for contractors. I go, you realize you have an opportunity to earn a client for life if you just step up and do the right thing.
There's a carrier, they're a regional carrier. I'm going to try not to pigeonhole like carriers here, but there are regional carrier, and when I very first started working with them, I was at one of their events and they were talking about how they've given their people and their claims hotline and their billing department the freedom. If they see that something's wrong, they have the freedom to make it right. That's a powerful statement because most people don't get that. They rated in the top 10 of insurance carriers and customer service experience and claims experience in the entire country, and they operate in five or six states.
Sean Fields:
Wow.
Dan Vander Kooi:
That's a big deal. And that's what we try to do here. We try to be that advocate and that go-between so we can make things right for our clients.
Sean Fields:
Well, insurance is complicated, right?
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah, there's a lot of gray.
Sean Fields:
There's a lot of numbers, there's a lot of words that you have to have a thesaurus to understand. And for you guys to be able to educate and advocate for people is a big deal. So I know you're a big purpose guy, and so you shared a little bit about your purpose. We went through a big purpose thing here with Manna, share with the listeners about what is going to be the purpose, what is the purpose of the Uncovered podcast?
Dan Vander Kooi:
The purpose of it is honestly to pull back the curtain on the insurance industry. It's not simple. There's a lot to it, and our goal for this is to make the process simple for people out there to understand and where to go. So one of the things that we're going to do on this podcast is we're going to start to really dive into who are preferred providers, what are things that you can do ahead of time? What are some tips and tricks and things like that? And we're going to talk about things that are important for you to think about and have a conversation with your spouse about.
It's really important that you do things ahead of time and not after the fact, because after the fact, you can't get coverage for stuff. So that's our sole purpose. It's just educational, what to look for, what's trending in the market, why are insurance rates going up? A lot of people are frustrated until they understand the why behind things. And once they understand the why behind things, they start to be like, "Oh, well, I guess that makes sense." And we live it every day. So that's our goal with this.
Sean Fields:
And people who are like, "I want to start a business," and educating, you're going to have business owners on here that are going to share their story and the importance of insurance and being covered properly because a lot of people that have that desire.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Yeah.
Sean Fields:
But they don't understand what it takes to actually start a business and do it well to have all the things that you need.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Well, and to be honest, right now, one of the biggest things with insurance or with business owners is retaining employees. And we use the word team members here, but that's one of the biggest things. So how do you do that well? I mean, we work with close to 200 different businesses on employee benefits alone. And so we see a lot of different things, and those range from five employees to 300 plus employees. And so we're working with them a lot on how to get creative, and we have solutions that sometimes don't even cost the employer money. They just got to be willing to, "Hey, here's a new idea. Let us show you how this works." And so there's lots of options out there.
Sean Fields:
Yeah. Well, Dan, thanks for allowing me to be the host today. I'm excited to see where the Uncovered podcast goes. So for you guys out there, make sure you like and subscribe and do all the things. Find us on your favorite podcast. And yeah, thanks again, dude. Appreciate it.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Absolutely. I got big shoes to fill now, now that I got to start hosting.
Sean Fields:
You got it.
Dan Vander Kooi:
Thanks, Sean.
