← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
Profit with Purpose: Redefining Capitalism with Joshua Motta
01:06:18
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- [00:00]
Joshua Mata
This is an iHeart podcast. Limu Keymoo and Doug.
- [00:07]
John Hope Bryant
Here we have the limu emu in.
- [00:10]
Joshua Mata
Its natural habitat, helping people customize their.
- [00:13]
John Hope Bryant
Car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating.
- [00:19]
Joshua Mata
It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us.
- [00:25]
John Hope Bryant
Cut the camera.
- [00:26]
Joshua Mata
They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates, excludes Massachusetts.
- [00:35]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
What do you think makes the perfect snack?
- [00:37]
John Hope Bryant
Hmm, it's gotta be when I'm really craving it and it's convenient.
- [00:40]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
Could you be more specific?
- [00:41]
John Hope Bryant
When it's cravenient. Okay, like a freshly baked cookie made with real butter, available right down the street at am, pm Or a savory breakfast sandwich I can grab in just a second at am, pm. I'm seeing a pattern here. Well, yeah, we're talking about what I.
- [00:54]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
Crave, which is anything from am, pm.
- [00:56]
John Hope Bryant
What more could you want? Stop by AMPM where the snacks and drinks are perfectly craveable and convenient. That's cravenience. AM P M. Too much good stuff.
- [01:05]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next two combined. Learn how podcasting can help your business. Call 844-844-IHeart.
- [01:20]
Johnny Knoxville
Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist from Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
- [01:42]
Ed Helms
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for.
- [01:44]
John Hope Bryant
The part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
- [01:50]
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
- [01:59]
Joshua Mata
They stole $17 million and had not.
- [02:01]
John Hope Bryant
Bought a ticket to help him escape.
- [02:03]
Joshua Mata
So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do?
- [02:05]
John Hope Bryant
What do we do? That was dumb. People, do not follow my example.
- [02:11]
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [02:20]
John Hope Bryant
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio.
- [02:29]
Joshua Mata
Foreign.
- [02:35]
John Hope Bryant
Hey, hey. This is J O Bryant and this is the Money and Wealth podcast series, season two. You all know that. And by the way, thank you, audience, for continuing to make this podcast one of the top 100 in entrepreneurship in the country for Apple and top 150 for business in the biggest economy in the world. I appreciate that. I don't often bring on guests, as you know. Normally it's just me breaking down a topic over 45 minutes to an hour. If I bring on a guest, they're special. And this guy is special. Sometimes you meet somebody and there's an old saying, a friend you meet with a friend from the very first time and an acquaintance you meet remains an acquaintance for a lifetime. You're never quite comfortable with an acquaintance and it has something to do with authenticity. And I met Joshua and we're new friends, which is why I may occasionally screw up his last name. Still. I want to say mota, but it's Mata, right? Joshua Mata. M O T T A look him up. He's not a household name, but he is all around you. His insurance company that he co founded is undergirding society as we know it. It's one of the biggest in the world, I believe. The biggest in North America. He will correct me if I'm wrong about that. It's Coalition Inc. Which is a cool name in and of itself. But the coolest thing I can tell you about Joshua, which I can't say about anybody else I know, I can't tell you where we met because the meeting's off the grid. They don't even have a website. And I can't tell you about his prior job. Maybe he will tell you, but I can't tell you about his prior job. In fact, when I talked about his background, it's the one thing he conveniently left out. But I think it's pretty cool for the audience to know that part of his intelligence experience was literally working for the CIA. I don't think I've invited. I mean, I've got people I know associated with intelligence agencies. But I think it's pretty cool that you work with the CIA. That may be. That may be the reason why your wife married you. She, like, that's just cool, you know, He's a good, he's a very, very good guy. He runs this company which does cyber insurance and, and basically all things tech related insurance. I didn't know that he insures me when we met. He just knew that if you were a big growing company and you're looking for best in class insurance against cyber attacks, etc. There was a 9 out of 10 chance, 9 out of 10 chance that you would be using his company. And I checked with my people thinking that I'd be doing him a solid by giving him some business because I liked him as a human only to find out he's already insuring us at Operation Hope. So Josh, welcome to the podcast. Before we get into this, I'm going to take a little bit about your background to my audience, get this out of the way before founding Coalition his resume is impressive. He includes roles at Cloudflare, he was ahead of special projects and and other roles there, and stints in technology, finance and intelligence including as I mentioned, the CIA, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs. He has really narrated a life that frames out technology, security, data analytics, mindset, analytical mindset which I love. In risk management, one could say he's doing what he loves. He had early entrepreneurial success when he was 15 years old. We were late together on that. He built tech tools and gained attention from Microsoft. Hello. Which led to an early hire when he was 1919 let this sink in Audience fresh out of high school basically he joined the CIA in the cyber intelligence program, of course after passing a polygraph test which gave him early exposure to security and critical systems and national level risk, including credit, finance, but also business and society. Coalition was founded in 2017 and it's pitched as an insuretech plus cybersecurity hybrid. Not just writing policies, but embedding prevention, detection and response into insurance offerings. The firm, oddly enough, interestingly enough, not oddly enough, markets itself as an active insurance company. We're going to talk about what that means, but essentially the insurance is not just reactive, which is paying claims. We're going to get into different types of insurance, but proactive, continuing continuously monitoring, detecting and helping mitigate threats before they become losses. Which is by the way, one of the ways that insurance company becomes successful is not by having to pay a claim because you've mitigated that risk so much that the claim gets neutralized, the claim threat gets neutralized. The company really is a bit of a unicorn now, valued in the billions. One article describes the Coalition's customers that thanks to Prevention, their prevention approach, they filed 70% fewer claims than industry average. Okay. Did I get that right, my brother?
- [08:25]
Joshua Mata
I think you got it mostly right. You know, the customer is always right and you're my customer.
- [08:30]
John Hope Bryant
See? Smart man. He's also a capitalist with a heart. By the way. Joshua, let's break you down for a minute. Tell me, tell the audience a little bit about I asked you a question at lunch, like how did you become so decent. Like when we were at lunch at this place that we cannot mention, there was a lot of noise around us, it was out in the open at a picnic. But you and I sat down unplanned that we sit down with each other and we locked into a conversation. And normally I have to pull leaders into a discussion about morals and money. I've got to reconnecting them, keep reconnecting them to good capitalism or the good of capitalism. A lot of leaders are uncomfortable talking about the responsibility of leadership. And you just kept this conversation going. It was organic. I didn't lead it. You were leading it and it was something clearly embedded in you. So I didn't ask you at lunch. But why did you keep that conversation going on that topic when it, when most people would like to talk about the mountains or the fishing or what the kids are doing, you focused on purpose driven items when we talked that were, I think, important for the health of society. Yeah, yeah. And then. And the question I asked you at lunch, what made you, in my opinion, a decent human, like just normal. You got this power, you got this company run, but you're very approachable. Nobody's perfect, but you're very approachable. There's a reason for that. We talked about it.
- [10:06]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I mean, look, I, I think I also told you that I didn't quite know the answer. I could maybe guess at it, but.
- [10:15]
John Hope Bryant
Means you're not arrogant, by the way.
- [10:18]
Joshua Mata
Not to be. But look, I think probably some aspect is just the nurture. I had great parents, grandparents, family, maybe it's. I grew up in the Midwest where there's just sort of a midwestern sensibility to things. But I think a big part of that upbringing was like underscoring the importance of purpose. Like my parents had a very clear purpose in life. My grandparents, I think the meaning of life for them to some degree was just helping other people. And so that's kind of always stuck with me. I think my purpose, insofar as I can find meaning in life, is to help other people. And look, at the end of the day, building a company, being an entrepreneur like purpose is such a powerful tool. Right. I mean, it's hard to build a business. You want to make it as easy as possible. With purpose, it's much easier. Right. Not only is it easier for me to get up and get excited even when things are difficult, there's a clear mission. In our case, it's to protect the unprotected, to protect organizations. Not for profits, for profits. Organizations from growing sort of cyber Threats. It's also easy street in terms of attracting the right employees. You know, we can very clearly appeal to people who believe in that mission and who want to follow it. You know, as you might imagine, like many software engineers believe in you.
- [11:35]
John Hope Bryant
Yeah, yeah. Because they're comfortable with you as a leader.
- [11:38]
Joshua Mata
That's right. I mean, I think they have to be comfortable with you. I think also if they share that same purpose, you know, they're willing to move mountains for the company. Right. Versus just someone who's working there because it's the best paycheck. And so I think what I can proudly say about a lot of the people that work at Coalition is they believe in the mission as much as I do. They're there every day to help these organizations deal with these new cyber threats. Look, most business owners, they're not worrying about how to protect the land, sea and air around them. They've got the military or local law enforcement. But there's now this new fourth domain that we all face, which is the cyber one. And the government's basically said, you're on your own. That's the message. You know, you can call the police, but they're not going to be terribly helpful. And so that's really the role that we, we, that we fill. And I think people get excited about that. So, you know, purpose has always been such a big part of my life and maybe it's one of the reasons why I, you know, I'm a decent person.
- [12:34]
John Hope Bryant
So purpose is not just profit.
- [12:36]
Joshua Mata
I, I don't think that they're at conflict with one another. You know, like, for example, our purpose very much to, as you mentioned, a statistic like you are far less likely to have a cyber insurance claim if you purchase insurance from us. That's both, because we're better at determining who to give insurance to, but also helping our clients manage it. You know, we're not doing that because we're Mother Teresa. Right. We have a direct financial motivation to help our customers to reduce their losses. And if we do that, you know, we, we are more profitable. And so again, and your customers stay.
- [13:07]
John Hope Bryant
With you, which allows you to have sustainable, sustainable, renewable, repeatable income.
- [13:13]
Joshua Mata
That's right. I mean, in this, there's an area where if you can align your incentives with your customers, they don't want to have a claim and we don't want to have a claim. You know, then, then I think capitalism can be an incredible model for that outcome.
- [13:25]
John Hope Bryant
I call that good capitalism. It's, it's profit with a purpose. So what I didn't. I have not asked you this question. Why didn't we click at lunch? Why did you continue that conversation with all that noise around us?
- [13:39]
Joshua Mata
We're on purpose.
- [13:40]
John Hope Bryant
Why was that so important to you?
- [13:42]
Joshua Mata
Look, I think you mentioned it. It was just the authenticity of the conversation. Like, very rarely can you have an authentic conversation with someone in that setting, right? Where there's lots of power, there's, you know, there's lots of money, et cetera. People have their own agendas and motives. Like, it was very clear that you and I were in that. You yourself are a very authentic individual. And look, those are the conversations I love that I thrive on. Right. You know, and I enjoy meeting other people who have that sense of purpose, who have that authenticity. Just makes you want to learn more about them, right? It makes you want to be friends with them. So I think everything you said, it was. It was. It was a mutual feeling.
- [14:18]
John Hope Bryant
Yeah. And we clicked immediately. And one of the fascinating things I found about Joshua is he's essentially homeless. He runs a multi billion dollar company. He's got thousands of employees. Thousands, right. Is that a call?
- [14:37]
Joshua Mata
We have about 700.
- [14:38]
John Hope Bryant
700 employees. Okay. Yeah, but it will be thousands, actually. You probably try to keep your head. Your head count low, actually, in this particular situation, but that, you know, he's in a very Elite Group with 750 employees even, and I have 400. I know that I'm one of the. I think I'm top. Less than 1% of all businesses in black America. But you're homeless. You. You lost. As I recall, you lost a house that. Right in the fires.
- [15:08]
Joshua Mata
Well, I. I was very fortunate that I didn't fully lose the house, but it was damaged.
- [15:14]
John Hope Bryant
And so my man moves around the country. I'm not gonna tell you where, what, how, but he, He. He's. He's very. He's reasonably comfortable in his own skin. Must have a very cool wife. All of my wife Shakespeare would actually love. Would love that nomadic involvement. She loves experiences. But it's just everything I learned about the guy, I thought was interesting. He didn't need a place to define him. He didn't need a space to send a message about an address to send a message about how important he was. And I just think that was very cool that I think there was a friend of ours, a mutual friend of ours that you helped out who also had lost their house. We won't mention his name, but he lost his house and you helped him out, even though you were dealing with stuff yourself. You Even let him, I think, stay with you. If I recall the CIA thing, 19 years of age, that means you have very high intelligence and they targeted you in high school. Am I incorrect?
- [16:14]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I was, I was part of the college program. Yeah. So I was targeted very early and obviously helped with help with the financial cost of going to school.
- [16:23]
John Hope Bryant
Right. And so I'm gonna assume we can't talk about anything about, about that, but if you decide you want to offer something, feel free. Let's go. Let's go. Now to now the audience knows a little bit more about you and why I think you're very cool. Can you unpack now? We're 14 minute mark. So anybody is sharing this podcast with others and you just, you have limited time, but you really have been curious about insurance. Like, you don't understand it. You don't understand different types of insurance. Why do we have insurance? What's the purpose of it? What? Define what's good insurance versus not good insurance. Can you first of all explain traditional, I'm going to say consumer facing insurance.
- [17:01]
Joshua Mata
Right.
- [17:01]
John Hope Bryant
And then we can talk about commercial insurance. Then you can layer in bad actors in insurance, like how do you know a good company from a bad. Somebody's going to pay the claim when it's legitimate and then reinsurance after that.
- [17:17]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, look, in the insurance industry is all about helping people transfer risks that they have in their life. Those could be health risks with medical insurance, they could be, you know, the life risks. With life insurance, of course, they could be the risks to your automobile or to your home. You know, with homeowners and auto, you know, when you think about a risk in your life, like, you know, you don't have to overcomplicate it. There's kind of three things you can do. You can accept the risk, but that means that if something bad happens to you, you're of course responsible yourself. It's on your balance sheet, so to speak. You can mitigate risk, which means you can take actions and steps to try and reduce the likelihood that something happens. Right? Whether that's buckling your seatbelt when you get in the car, whether that's locking your doors of your home. But of course, mitigation is rarely, if ever, you know, sort of a linear line that hits zero where you've just eliminated it entirely. Right. You can reduce it, but at some point it just sort of flattens out. And that's kind of a fancy way of saying, you know, you can't eliminate most risk in your life. You can't Eliminate the risk that you'll get in a car accident, you know, that your home will set fire. You know, this is all too prescient for me. You can eliminate the cost of that risk, and that's by transferring it, the third component. So you can accept, you can mitigate or you can transfer. Of course, insurance is one of the ways in which you can transfer your risk. You can transfer to an insurance company. It's highly regulated. These insurance companies all have financial ratings.
- [18:51]
John Hope Bryant
You have Joshua. So let's back up. So for the audience he mentioned, accepted.
- [18:58]
Joshua Mata
Yeah.
- [18:58]
John Hope Bryant
Is it mitigated? Is that one mitigated?
- [19:00]
Joshua Mata
Yep.
- [19:02]
John Hope Bryant
So, and, and, and, and then the third one is to offset the risk.
- [19:07]
Joshua Mata
Transfer.
- [19:08]
John Hope Bryant
Transfer it for the very wealthy, the uber wealthy. The first two things are sort of combined except and mitigate. They're doing some uber wealthy people are doing or bonding themselves or you might be in a prop. In an area where insurance companies say that's just too risky at all. We're not going to insure that at all. In order to do that, you got to accept that all yourself and you literally bond around your own assets. But that's not this conversation, but I want to at least raise that so that the audience knew the whole picture. So now you're at, now you're at defining the insurance itself.
- [19:45]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I mean, look, the math you hit, it was very simple. Like whatever you haven't transferred or mitigated, you have accepted. Right. And you got to kind of do some introspection.
- [19:56]
John Hope Bryant
That's a wrap there.
- [19:59]
Joshua Mata
Turn that into a wrap. Yeah, I mean, you have some introspection, you got to look at yourself and say, look, what have I not transferred? What have I not mitigated? That's what I've accepted. And in my world, like the case of cyber risk for commercial organizations, they adopt all this technology and they ignore the risks. So most of them, they're accepting that risk today, sometimes without realizing it. And so I think the important thing is to understand what you want to accept and then you can figure out the math and what you want to mitigate, how to mitigate it and how to transfer it. But that's what insurance does. It lets you transfer some of those risks, and particularly the catastrophic ones. Right. Insurance isn't built for the things that are just happening every day and for small things, it's really built for catastrophic things that, you know, if it happened, it's just, it would bankrupt you or it would, you know, severely impact your life. And so that's what it's, that's what it's intended for. That's why people buy it. That's the value of it, you know, and at the end of the day, yeah, sometimes the insurance companies may say we're not willing to insure something. You got to listen to them occasionally, right? Like, you know, they don't want to insure the house in that area. It's for a good reason. It's for a good reason, you know, and of course, as you mentioned, for the uber wealthy, sometimes they decide to live in those areas anyway, but that's a decision that they have to make.
- [21:19]
John Hope Bryant
Joshua, I have a friend that I don't know. He doesn't come to that meeting, so I'm not sure you know him, but I can't say too much about him otherwise people will guess. But he has a major real estate company in America and he has a house in the Hamptons and this house is next to a cliff. He loves this house, but the erosion keeps coming closer and closer to him. And this guy decided to pick the house up and move the house 100 yards in, which shows you how much property owns at the coast. Move 100 yards in and his and his accountant told him that'll give him the after accountant talk to the appraiser and the assessor and all those people. Well, this will give you 10 more years of use of the house before the erosion catches up with you. The erosion for the body is not clear. It means that the ocean is taking away land because the waves and I think because of global environmental issues, but the waves are continuing to push away or chop away at the land and it was going to chop away at his house and so he decided to move the house and. And my guess is he's self insured. My guess is he's got to bond himself.
- [22:40]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I tend to agree with you.
- [22:48]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
Hey, this is Sarah. Look, I'm standing out front of a.m. p.m. Right now and, well, you're sweet and all, but I found something more fulfilling, even kind of cheesy. But I like it. Sure, you met some of my dietary needs, but they've just. You just got it all.
- [23:02]
Joshua Mata
So.
- [23:03]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
Farewell, oatmeal. So long, you strange soggy.
- [23:07]
John Hope Bryant
Break up with bland breakfast and taste AM PM's bacon, egg and cheese biscuit made with K tree eggs, smoked bacon and melty cheese on a buttery biscuit. AM PM Too much. Good stuff.
- [23:18]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
Run a business and not thinking about podcasting. Think again. More Americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one Podcaster. Iheart's twice as large as the next two combined, so whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your business? Think iHeart streaming radio and podcasting. Call 844-844-IHeart to get started. That's 844-844, iHeart.
- [23:49]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to SNAFU, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu. Every single episode.
- [23:59]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop.
- [24:03]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
What?
- [24:03]
John Hope Bryant
Yeah. Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s.
- [24:07]
Ed Helms
Basketball player who still wore knee pads.
- [24:09]
John Hope Bryant
Yes.
- [24:10]
Ed Helms
It's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.
- [24:23]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?
- [24:26]
Ed Helms
Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today.
- [24:30]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
I forgot whose podcast we were doing.
- [24:33]
Ed Helms
Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's, let's, let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [24:52]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success.
- [24:55]
John Hope Bryant
It seemed so damn simple for him.
- [24:58]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Also, it turned out a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road.
- [25:13]
John Hope Bryant
I often ask myself now, did I know the true Jan at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
- [25:37]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Listen to hot agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [25:53]
John Hope Bryant
All right, so you have car insurance.
- [25:55]
Joshua Mata
Yep.
- [25:56]
John Hope Bryant
You have home insurance.
- [25:59]
Joshua Mata
Yep.
- [26:00]
John Hope Bryant
There's renters insurance. I'm trying to go through the obvious ones.
- [26:03]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, renters, medical, life, you know, health insurance. Of course. There's quite a few forms you can buy. Insurance for jewelry, your engagement ring, you can buy.
- [26:17]
John Hope Bryant
I have different policies that layer in on my home policy. One is a jewelry policy. There's a Rider policy that goes on top of the overall policy, like a bonus policy. And then I have a key man insurance policy. Well, the organizations I work for talk about capitalism being the gladiator sport. My organization has got a policy in case something happens to me. They were like, john, really sorry for you. What you're, you know, this happened to you, your family, so sorry. John's loss. And then Cha Ching, the company gets a check. If I'm immobilized, I'm no longer on the spot. That's called key man insurance. And I'm the key man in that example. Then you got board of directors, insurance directors and officers. Insurance directors and officers, yeah. So let's deal with the insurance that most people would be dealing with here. Let's just make this easiest. Car insurance and I guess the easiest one for you. Home insurance. You just dealt with this issue?
- [27:22]
Joshua Mata
Yep.
- [27:23]
John Hope Bryant
So is there such thing as a bad insurance company?
- [27:27]
Joshua Mata
I mean, of course there's such a thing as a bad insurance company. I think there's a lot of regulations in each state that try to weed those out. But at the end of the day, the best insurance company, they do pay claims. That's what we're in the business to do. If there were no claims or if we didn't pay them, we'd be very quickly out of business. While I think maybe there's certain companies that don't have as much of a focus on that, or maybe the claim servicing isn't good, that's. I think that's one of the key determinants of why consumers select one insurance company versus another. Like when it comes to highly regulated spaces of insurance like homeowners or auto, you're actually buying the exact same policy. Like if you were to look at the policy from State Farm or from Progressive or geico, you know, here in California, where I am, the wording is identical. It covers the exact same things.
- [28:18]
John Hope Bryant
Wow.
- [28:19]
Joshua Mata
It's actually regulated by the state. You, you know, what you're choosing is of course the pricing, which they have different views of how risky you are and they'll offer you different prices and then you're paying for the servicing. You know, who's gonna give you the best service, who's gonna take care of you, who's most likely to pay the claim, and those are reputations that are hard fought for and of course easily lost if that's broken. So big part of the business is on trust. I think the insurance companies you wanna avoid are those that don't have that long term view, you know, that don't want to build that long term relationship with you. But at the end of the day with companies like ours, we're here to partner with our customers. Like we're in this together. We're taking the same shared risk with them and we want to help them.
- [29:02]
John Hope Bryant
Well, you're honorable. When I was growing up, that's why I have you on this podcast and why I'm one of the features. I think you're a role model for good capitalism and responsible business. When I was growing up in Compton, California. No, this was south Central LA to be specific. I did not have a lot of money. I bought what was my first car or my second car and all I could afford, I thought I could afford was liability insurance. You had. It was in order to drive the car you had to at least have liability insurance and you need to have cop and collision if you have, I guess a bank loan or something like that. So I had liability insurance and I went and got cheap copper Collision because I had a bank loan. Bank will force the insurance on you if you don't get it yourself. If they force it, it's going to be very expensive anyway. I had this policy, but I got the sketchiest, just a full transparency. I end up with the sketchiest insurance company you can imagine because I was looking for the cheapest deal and audience. It looks too good to be true. It probably is. And I got this, this policy that really wasn't all that great and I just prayed to God I never had to use it. I was fearful. I was definitely afraid that I'd call this company and either the phone number would work or they just wouldn't honor the claim. Sure enough, I had a claim and they ran me through the ringer and they send people out to the repair company and they took photos. They took weeks and weeks and weeks and then they paid the smallest portion of it. And, and it taught me like you really need to do your research. You need to get a company has a good balance sheet, has good reviews. You got to research these companies. All these companies are not made identical. Even though as you just educated the audience and me, the policies themselves are actually the wording is identical. That's why I asked you about are there sketchy firms? So what does the audience need to know about whether it's an auto policy or a homeownership policy? Are there some quick, easy recommendations you have for them before we go on?
- [31:17]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, sure. I mean, like you said, you know, with auto you can buy liability only coverage, which means it doesn't cover your loss, just someone else's if you get into an accident and that means, you know, you're, you're kind of up the creek without the paddle if that happens. That's where I think you, you want to buy those first party coverages, the collision, the comprehensive, you know, to make sure you're covered. But at a minimum that's like you said, you only need the liability I think you know, in the homeowners. Again, it's all fairly standardized. There are some differences in policies like whether they cover, you know, your sewage line as an example. If your sewage line backs up, you have to buy that coverage specifically you need to ask your insurance company for it. Many homeowners policies don't cover it and people are surprised, you know, when that happens that hey, they've got to pay for it all. Which can be thousands of dollars, you know, in an unexpected expense. Some homeowners policies now cover cyber for, for people like, you know, for data privacy if you know, for, for things like that, you know, if your home network is hacked, you know, they'll help you recover it. You know that, that might be an add on that people want to think about. It's typically very inexpensive. So yeah, but otherwise, you know, it's, they're fairly standardized.
- [32:30]
John Hope Bryant
Just fire, fire coverage, flood coverage.
- [32:34]
Joshua Mata
Many homeowners policies don't cover flood. And so you, if you're in a flood prone area, you need to think about purchasing dedicated flood insurance.
- [32:41]
John Hope Bryant
Sometimes the state offers it, sometimes the state offers it.
- [32:44]
Joshua Mata
That's right. Depending on the state you're in. Same thing for other large natural disasters. Earthquake insurance, not covered under a standard policy, but you can purchase it from the California Earthquake Authority, for example, where we are. So flood and earthquake tend to be excluded. So you need to think about purchasing those coverages. Specifically if you can't get insurance from a standard commercial insurance company. Many states also have last resort insurance offerings like in the state of Florida or the state of California with the Fair Plan. A lot of the folks who are affected in the LA fires, that's the only insurance they could buy given you know, how difficult it was for the insurance companies to get the rates they needed or just the extreme risk of where people were building.
- [33:30]
John Hope Bryant
So let's deal with that for a minute. You educated me at lunch about the rate environment and where some insurance, we won't name names, but some insurance companies have said I don't want to do business in California or Florida, whatever, I'm out. And some people may demonize that, but the Reality is that the honorable companies, the good ones, we're not talking about the shysters that I talked about earlier. The good companies have to make. Listen to me, audience. A profit. They've got to be able to make a profit. And that means managing risk. So if you have an area with higher risk, they need a rate environment that mitigates the risk. So there's more coming in that's going out. If all they do is paying claims all the time because it's high risk. And the premiums, what you pay monthly or annually or semi annually, you don't cover that, plus a return to the company and reasonable return to the shareholders, that company does not have a future. And in some states, the insurance commissioner. So there is no national insurance commissioner. There's national banking commissioners, but there's insurance is state by state regulated. And some states have elected officials, officials in this role versus somebody appointed by the governor who serves as the chief executive of the state. When you're elected, there's more pressure on you to be responsive. To be blunt, the voters. What do voters want? Cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. So what do people who are running with that role, they promise the moon and then their job is in the beat up, sort of the big guy versus the little guy message. Beat up on the big guy, representing the little guy, supposedly. And that's the narrative. I happen to be speaking to a person who's running for insurance commissioner. After we had lunch and I mentioned this to him and he agreed with you, by the way. He's running for insurance commissioner and part of his platform, I wish I could remember his name actually. But part of his platform is once he's elected, he wants to lobby for, advocate for moving this from. He wants to be the last elected insurance commissioner. Actually it's in California. He's actually a black man and raised in neighborhoods I grew up in. He thinks it's a better system, which you recommended. Now, in the places like California where I grew up, you might have a fire that triggers a flood. And maybe you were covered by the fire, but the real damage was done by the flood. And if you don't have flood insurance, you may not get your claim paid. Am I right about that or am I wrong about that?
- [36:24]
Joshua Mata
I mean, it's always really complex. It really depends on all the circumstances. But yeah, it's entirely possible. I mean, I mean, you can also have circumstances. An earthquake causes a gas leak which leads to a fire of your home that actually probably would be covered because in this case it is covered for fire Damage. Even though the fire was caused by the earthquake, had it just been damaged from an earthquake, it wouldn't have been covered. Unless of course, you purchased earthquake insurance specifically. So it really depends on what's the most proximate cause that's causing the loss.
- [36:59]
John Hope Bryant
I also want to encourage the audience to think about. There's a lot of renters these days, and I have been and will be soon again a landlord. I encourage renters to go to get renters insurance because if something happens to your unit, one, you might be liable if it happens in your unit. But also somebody unfortunately breaks in your unit, you can get your money back for that. There's even utilities insurance. I've had insurance for very expensive utility appliances actually inside the house. I mean, appliance insurance, your refrigerator, all that stuff, when it breaks down, there are insurance for that. That's so I just want the audience to understand this is an entire ecosystem and you have to be smart about it. The last thing I'll mention is I had a employee that passed away and the family was Busy doing a GoFundMe, organizing a GoFundMe campaign for his funeral expenses, not realizing that in his health insurance policy was in the small print, a death benefit of $25,000. So anybody listening to this? If you're employed by a reasonably large employer and you have health insurance from a responsible, respectable firm, there's a reasonably good chance that buried in there. Nope, didn't use the word buried. But embedded in the health insurance policy is a death benefit. God forbid something happens that's covered. So please read your part.
- [38:27]
Joshua Mata
This is financial life insurance policy too. Yeah. You know, you could have a great landlord like John here who you have insurance for the building, but that insurance doesn't cover the personal property of the renter. That's why renters insurance is so important. Right. You know, it, it won't cover, you know, they need that coverage for their own personal property, their own furniture, their own, you know, valuables.
- [38:50]
John Hope Bryant
Right. So now let's, let's. In the time that you have left, it's Amazing how fast 30 minutes went. 35 minutes. Let's jump up now to reinsurance. Sorry. Unless you have something else to say about traditional insurance, I'll get to your side type of insurance as sort of the drop the mic. But I want to deal with reinsurance people don't know about.
- [39:07]
Joshua Mata
No, I mean, look, I'd say you're. I would go back and emphasize a point which is like, you know, the insurance companies are not the bad guys here. Right. You know, no insurance company wants to leave any state. Like we want to do business in every state, especially big ones. It's just that sometimes they have to. If they can't get the right pricing, if the regulators won't approve it. And look, no one wants to pay more for their insurance. But we also have to look in the mirror and realize that as risk in our society increases, the cost of insurance will as well. And if we don't allow it to, we won't be able to get it. Like, that's the simple matter. But no, let's talk about reinsurance, which is really just the insurance of other insurance companies. It's that simple.
- [39:45]
John Hope Bryant
Fascinating. You guys, listen to this. This is great stuff here. Lloyd's of London is that a reinsurer.
- [39:52]
Joshua Mata
Lloyd's of London is an insurance marketplace, and they do both. Insurance. You can get a policy directly from Lloyd's. You know, I think David Beckham got it for his, you know, his calves.
- [40:02]
John Hope Bryant
And Martin Luther King got it for his life. No insurance company would give. Doc. Would give Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. A life insurance policy.
- [40:09]
Joshua Mata
That's right.
- [40:09]
John Hope Bryant
That's absolutely a risk. So he got.
- [40:12]
Joshua Mata
That's insurance. And then they also insure other insurance companies. So they also do. They do both. And look, the simple principle with reinsurance, like in our lives and managing our wealth, it's about diversification, right? Like, you know, you need to diversify your assets. You don't want all your eggs in one basket, as they say. Well, the same is true for insurance companies. Right. You can imagine that if there was one, you know, with the California wildfires, you know, that exposure for any individual insurance company could be catastrophic if they're insuring all the homes in that area. Well, by using reinsurance, they can actually buy their own insurance policy and they can diversify that risk. They can pass on some of the risk that they're taking from their clients, and they can give it to other companies, whether that's Lloyds of London or whether that's other big reinsurance companies like Munich Re or Swiss Re or the Renaissancery Archery. There's many. And so it's all about diversification. How do insurance companies diversify their risks so they can continue operating even if there is a catastrophe that happens?
- [41:15]
John Hope Bryant
So somebody might write a policy for $50 million. Let's pick a number. And they want to mitigate that. They can sell off that in $10 million blocks to a partner in that insurance policy. Is that right?
- [41:35]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, there's many ways they can structure it. So one way is, hey, I write 50 million, I'm going to give you 40 million because I can only afford to take on 10. So that's one way they do it. Another way they might do it is say, look, I can take a loss on an event up to 40 million, but I want to buy reinsurance for anything above that. So if the loss of a single event, like a wildfire or a hurricane, goes above that level, then I can purchase reinsurance and the reinsurer will take on all the risk above it. That way I know exactly what my worst case scenario is and I can make sure that my business, my balance sheet is set up to where I can withstand that. So that's just one mechanism that insurance companies use to try and just like we do, as people manage the risks to themselves.
- [42:25]
John Hope Bryant
Right. I had a, a situation last week where I love cars and one of my automobiles, which is one of my favorites, there was a crack in the windshield.
- [42:40]
Joshua Mata
And.
- [42:43]
John Hope Bryant
You know, I grew up not with much. And so I'm thinking, okay, we'll just go have the people say, you know, safe light where it is, you know, just fix the crack. You're like, no, that's not this kind, that's not this kind of a windshield. So they call, my people call me like, this windshield is $15,000. I almost passed out. I said, no, no, you mean the car? No, no, the windshield. And they said, but John, not to worry, you've got a policy for windshields. Which I was like, oh my God, maybe I am smart as I, as smart as I think I am. So that cost me zero, actually. No premium. No window. No, not. No. What's that part where you. Copay. There was no copay. No deductible. Yeah, no deductible. Right. So there are, by the way, for those listening, there are, there's insurance for if you scratch your rims, if you. I'm joking, but I'm serious. Like, there are insurance policies that will cover almost anything you imagine. It was such an entrepreneurial environment. Anything that has a risk, somebody is trying to mitigate it. And in this example, he just. That Josh just gave. Insurers are mitigating their own risk with reinsurers and partners in insurance. You don't see that as the, as a client, but it's happening in the background. Let's now talk about the biggest area, the, the 900 pound gorilla in the room. We've not talked about. We're 40 minutes in. Let's dedicate the last eight to 10 minutes or so talking about this Great business. You, you really pioneered in many ways. And what it is you do and why it's so important to businesses. Does it, does it relate to folks who find themselves held hostage? You've got somebody saying, basically, shut you out of your own mainframe computer, shut you out of your email, shut you out. They've gotten into your system and they said, we won't release it unless you pay a ransom to us in cryptocurrency or whatever. Is. Is that this.
- [44:54]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, that's certainly one of the things that we cover. Absolutely. And I think most people who are listening have probably experienced some sort of inconvenience from a cyber attack. Right. Like they couldn't board their plane or it was delayed or, you know, I mean, they've had their data compromised. You know, this is just. It's a growing risk. Like over about six or seven out of every company that purchases cyber insurance, which is what we do, they'll have a claim in any given year. Like, it's one of the highest frequency claims that you might have as a business owner. And yet a lot of companies still don't purchase it. Right. So that's another one of those things. Where. Do you really want to accept this risk? And do you know how much you.
- [45:33]
John Hope Bryant
Are accepting and in the AI environment is going to be even more critical?
- [45:40]
Joshua Mata
Absolutely.
- [45:41]
John Hope Bryant
And my guess is as people as computers start masquerading as humans, as things like passcodes that used to be hard to crack become easier to crack. I mean, I used to be really irritated at double, basically double crunched passwords where the social media account would require me to confirm twice that it's me. Now I love it. But when I first started, I thought it was completely nonsense, and now I can see where even that's not enough. So as the risks change and as society becomes more technology becomes more sophisticated, my guess is you've got a bunch of engineers every day trying to crunch and analyze the newest areas of risk and how to mitigate it. Is that right?
- [46:32]
Joshua Mata
That's absolutely right, yeah. I mean, we're in a place where I tell people, you know, they ask me, do I need cyber insurance? Do you use a computer? Do you use the Internet? You need cyber insurance?
- [46:42]
John Hope Bryant
My. My God, Joshua, everything's in the cloud.
- [46:45]
Joshua Mata
Everything. Right. And even, even if you're using technology, chances are someone else's is. And if that fails, it can impact you. I mean, take right now.
- [46:55]
John Hope Bryant
Yeah, go ahead.
- [46:57]
Joshua Mata
This is, you know, take Jaguar Land Rover, you know, they're making cars, they experience this devastating cyber attack. But the impact goes way beyond them. All their suppliers, you know, who are making parts, who are stitching that, you know, the seats, like, whatever, they. They can't do business. They're losing business.
- [47:14]
John Hope Bryant
They got shut down.
- [47:16]
Joshua Mata
They got shut down. I mean, that's the thing. Even if someone else gets shut down, it can have a profound impact on your own business. And so that's what cyber insurance is there to cover. Not just your own losses, but also losses you might experience because someone else in your supply chain, you know, has a. As a security failure.
- [47:39]
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- [48:10]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms. And welcome back to Snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu. Every single episode.
- [48:21]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
32 lost nuclear weapons. You're like, wait, stop. What?
- [48:25]
Joshua Mata
Yeah.
- [48:25]
John Hope Bryant
Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s.
- [48:28]
Ed Helms
Basketball player who still wore knee pads.
- [48:31]
John Hope Bryant
Yes.
- [48:32]
Ed Helms
It's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer made me feel good. I'm like, oh, wow, Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here.
- [48:44]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
What was that like for you to soft launch into the show?
- [48:48]
Ed Helms
Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today.
- [48:52]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
I forgot whose podcast we were doing.
- [48:55]
Ed Helms
Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [49:13]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Jan Marsalek was a model of German corporate success.
- [49:17]
John Hope Bryant
It seemed so damn simple for him.
- [49:20]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Also, it turned out a fraudster. Where does the money come from? That was something that I always was questioning myself. But what if I told you that was the least interesting thing about him? His secret office was less than 500 meters down the road.
- [49:35]
John Hope Bryant
I often ask myself, now, did I know the true Rian at all? Certain things in my life since then have gone terribly wrong. I don't know if they followed me to my home. It looks like the ingredients of a really grand spy story because this ties together the Cold War with the new one.
- [49:58]
Hot Agent of Chaos Narrator
Listen to Hot agent of chaos on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [50:10]
Hunter
I'm Hunter, host of Hunting for Answers on the Black Effect Podcast Network. Join me every weekday as I share bite sized stories of Ms. Missing and murdered black women and girls in America. There are several ways we can all do better at protecting black women. My contribution is shining a light on our missing sisters and amplifying their disregarded stories. Stories like Tamika Anderson. As she drove toward Galvez, she was in contact with several people talking on the phone as she made her way to what should have been a routine transaction. But Tameka never bought the car and she never returned home that day. One podcast, one mission. Save our girls. Join the search as we explore the chilling cases of missing and murdered black women and girls. Listen to Hunting for Answers every weekday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [51:18]
John Hope Bryant
This is not directly related to your business, but one thing that I found fascinating is 20 years ago there were landline phones everybody's house, right? And now there's almost no landline phones in anybody's house. I have a landlord. Landline phone is my. My reinsuring risk.
- [51:38]
Joshua Mata
You're nostalgic.
- [51:40]
John Hope Bryant
I'm not just being nostalgic. If something happens to the sailor network, if there is a. If there's a. If there's a bad guy and a bad actor country out there that wants to mess with us, they cut the cables on the ocean floor, that is, that transfers a lot of our data and they find a way to disrupt the cell phone system and first responders can't communicate, you can't find your loved ones, your phone, your house goes dark. So I have a hard old school landline phone just in case. People are so reliable, right? Yes. I'm mitigating myself. So give us. Take us into your mind. Not. Not your mind. Take us into the world of your company coalition. What kind of things are you insuring? What kind of things are you dealing with? And what are some examples of how you've mitigated that you can share?
- [52:35]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, I'll go backward from what are the claims that are. That our customers are filing? Like where are they losing money? A lot of it is with social engineering. Right. It's not even hacking. It's just they're being criminals are using technology, whether it's email or fake invoices or now deep fakes where they're using AI to mimic people's voices or whatnot, to basically trick you into, into typically wiring them money. Right. Or it could be to give them a bunch of gift cards. Because if you go out and run and get gift cards and give them the numbers, that's as good as money. And so there's just a lot of social engineering where they're trying to trick people into wiring funds. I mean, this morning my CFO asked me if an invoice was legitimate and it absolutely was not. And he thought about paying it. That's how convincing some of these things can be.
- [53:27]
John Hope Bryant
That happened to us at Operation Hope. And so how do you mitigate that as an insurer?
- [53:33]
Joshua Mata
Well, so you know, we try and advise our clients to have sort of an authentication mechanism before they wire money. Right. Like make sure that, you know, in particular businesses they tend to be wiring to the same folks. If you're getting some sort of instruction that it's like, hey, we need to change our wiring instructions. You need to pick up the phone or some other out of band means to communicate and verify that that's in fact true. Because you can't rely on email. If those instructions come in via email, it could be that their email was hacked. And so you want a separate means of communication to validate that whatever change is coming through is them. Or if it's a first time wire, we encourage our clients to do the same thing. Make sure you reach out through a different communications method to confirm the wire instructions. So that's a big, big way you can mitigate it just through a simple process change. And people should do that in their own lives. When you're buying homes, criminals know that that is a place where they can potentially get a big windfall. And so they'll try and hack the emails of realtors, of the title companies. And if they can find a way in, they can try and convince you to wire your down payment or your the proceeds to buy a house to them. I mean it's, and it can be devastating. And so that's why it's just so important to make sure that you're verifying, you know, instructions, not just taking for granted whatever is being sent to you via email.
- [55:00]
John Hope Bryant
So be paranoid.
- [55:02]
Joshua Mata
Only the paranoid survive as they as has been said. Yes.
- [55:08]
John Hope Bryant
So if it looks sketchy, stop and pause.
- [55:13]
Joshua Mata
And even if it doesn't look sketchy, that's the thing, sometimes these things don't look sketchy.
- [55:18]
John Hope Bryant
Sometimes it looks legitimate, but still stop and pause. In other words, better safe than sorry. Even if. If you're. If you're. If you're transferring what you consider important sums of money, whatever important is to you, just take a moment to just confirm, Pick the phone or do something, as you said on the system, to confirm that the person that is asking for it is actually asking for it. And they say, yes, we are requesting that you do X. And you confirm this email. Confirm it all before you hit that send button. When I want to send a wire to someone, I can have my chief of staff or me to send a note to the bank. The bank must call me and get a verbal confirmation from me, voice to voice on my. On the phone before they send that wire every time, which I again used to irritate me. Now I'm very thankful. I have a friend of mine that lost a half a million dollars to the scam that you just mentioned. He has an automotive company, and his CFO would watch. Send an email to the bank. And this particular time, it was. The process was different. It was a different email address. Somebody hacked the system. And the way it was done, the bank, he was able to hold the bank accountable. The bank was actually able to claw back the money. Oddly enough, they got lucky. But the bank would have been on the hook in the case. But had he not gotten lucky in that situation, he'd have been out of a half a million dollars because they were just moving too fast. So be paranoid. Confirm out of system. Which means if you're going by email or by text, call someone or confirm in some other way. Don't just respond to the email because the email is Joshua said might be hacked itself.
- [57:18]
Joshua Mata
That's right.
- [57:19]
John Hope Bryant
Once a week, I get a scam on my phone call on my phone, Somebody says, and by the way, don't hit buttons when they say, please press this. You know, you're. Your phone's been. I get this all the time. Your phone's been hacked. Hit this button. Do not hit that button.
- [57:33]
Joshua Mata
Yes. Do not send that gift card. You know, for sure. Now there's lots of these scams. And. And look, your friend's lucky. I mean, most banks will. Won't cover it, right? They'll say, hey, you made the decision. You were the one tricked. There wasn't any failure in our process. The other thing that can be very helpful is if you have an insurance company like us, you call us. And we have remarkable success in clawing back funds. In fact, I think in the past 12 months, we've clawed back over $100 million for our clients.
- [58:03]
John Hope Bryant
Wow. Can you explain what clawback means, Joshua?
- [58:06]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, absolutely. So look, when these criminals are tricking you to wiring money, they're typically having you send it into an account that they've taken over. They've hijacked someone's real bank account. They know they're going to get caught at some point and the bank account will be frozen and then they just find another one. But if you can. And so some of those funds are still there. They're still in the US Financial system. They're in that bank. And so if you can get there quickly, you can claw back that money, you can pull it out of the bank account that you sent it to and get it back. But of course, it's important to do it quickly. And that's something that again, as your insurance company, we help you do. Right. Because we have an incentive to get it back for you. If we don't, we of course pay out your loss because typically, again, in our experience, a bank is not often willing to do that. So, yeah, that's a really common one. I mean, the other thing is, as you pointed out, this whole multi factor authentication, making sure that it's not just a password that you have your account tied to, maybe a text message, a code that you get. Because the other most common claim we see is people taking over people's emails accounts, you know, and once they're in your email, they can literally send an email like you, John. And it's like someone receiving it wouldn't know the difference. Right. It's coming from you, it's legitimate. You know, maybe you're asking them to send money or something. It's very difficult to detect. And so making sure you have that additional protection on your most key accounts is, is really important.
- [59:38]
John Hope Bryant
Are you guys doing social media insurance yet? Have you delved into that? I think it's a big market for you.
- [59:44]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I mean, we do account takeover kind of insurance for companies. So if someone takes over social media profile.
- [59:53]
John Hope Bryant
Really?
- [59:54]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, we call it service fraud. If they take over any service you have and they use it in a way that causes you a loss, there can be coverage for it. So for example, they could take over your cloud accounts and install sort of a crypto miner. They want to like mine cryptocurrency, it drives up your bill sky high. Or maybe they take over your telephone system and drive your bill up. All those types of things would be covered.
- [60:20]
John Hope Bryant
But also your people can advise if you are insuring somebody. In that regard, you can advise the claimant on ways to fight back, to mitigate. So the reason I'm saying this is a celebrity friend of mine called me last year. His Facebook account had been taken over the fan account, and there were a million people that he wasn't talking to anymore. The bad people were talking to him and they were asking for money from the fans. But it felt like it said, well, the impression was the celebrity was asking for the money. It was driving him crazy. For obvious reasons. Joshua. This went on for months. He couldn't. He couldn't get. He didn't know how to. I actually helped him. Cause I know the people at Meta Facebook. I put him in touch with. And we give Zuckerberg some credit here. Put him in touch with Mark Zuckerberg's chief of staff. And she did a fabulous job of Dre is her name of resolving this. I want to thank her publicly. Yeah, but. And it saved my guy, my friend, from pulling his hair out. And. And I. There's probably right now 20 fake accounts in my name on Instagram, TikTok for sure. People just. I don't know why they're wasting their time trying to be like somebody else, but people will put my name plus A one misspell my name if, by the way, if somebody's following me, it doesn't have a check mark next to it. It's not me. It doesn't have a blue check mark on every place other than X. It's not me. It's always just my name. John O'. Brien. But people have told me they have lost $25,000. One friend told me, somebody that he knows, that John Bryant asked them to send them $25,000. And this person somehow. Reason, please, audience. I'm never going to ask you for money, right? No. No legitimate public figure is going to be asking you for money. It's a scam. But Joshua has a program that ensures companies and public figures like mine against these risks. So you might want to look his company up for that. That's a nice little bonus cherry on top of that. I wasn't thinking about Joshua. As we wrap this thing up, it's been fantastic. Is there. Can you tell people, like, the different services that you offer at Coalition? How do people reach you? And is there, like, some takeaway wisdom that you have for people who are dreamers with a shovel in their hand? They want to be part of the American dream. They want to be part of capitalism and free enterprise. They want to be successful they want.
- [62:56]
Joshua Mata
To own a home.
- [62:57]
John Hope Bryant
You know, what. What are some things that you would just recommend to people?
- [63:02]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, look, maybe. Maybe I'll start there. I mean, I think, look, pick a problem that you're passionate about. You know, what's something that you see that's happening in our society or in your life or in your community that, you know, if you could fix it, it'd be better for everyone. Right? Like, now you're finding something like a problem to be solved that's actually valuable. You know, if you can find a way to turn that into a business similar to what we did, I think that's powerful and it makes it easier to really be resilient and push through the difficulties of starting a business. In our case, it was like, hey, we could see all these businesses adopting technology and it's wonderful, right? All the stuff that's coming out, all the new technologies. But of course, there's all these risks that come along with it. And we really felt that with insurance combined with some security products, we could build an entirely different way to approach this problem. We could make it a lot more affordable. We could make it easy for people. And that's the key. Everyone wants easy. So I think for anyone who wants to pick up the shovel and build, find the thing that inspires you, that's the problem that people have, that if you solve it, you think it'll be valuable. Nine out of ten times, you can find a way to create a business around it.
- [64:17]
John Hope Bryant
And he just told you the essence of capitalism. Capitalism is solving problems. And entrepreneurship in the free enterprise system is how you do that. Well, small business or business, which is different from corporate business entrepreneurship, these are three different routes. I'm an entrepreneur crazy. Creating something out of nothing. Josh is an entrepreneur crazy. Creating something out of nothing didn't exist before. A business owner might take what we're doing and try to replicate it using our business plan. That's not entrepreneurship, that is business. But find something where you're solving a problem. A hairbrush is solving a nappy hair problem or kinky hair problem. I'm willing to pay for that. Hairbrush or skin care is solving a problem of beautification or rash. All this is capitalism. And I think his advice is really dropped the mic. It is quite brilliant. And it's coming from somebody who came up with an idea in 2017, which was a nothing when he started. And he's taken it from zero in 2017 to what's the revenue and or the valuation today, Josh?
- [65:24]
Joshua Mata
Over 5 billion valuation. Yeah.
- [65:27]
John Hope Bryant
5 billion in valuation from 2017, that is 8 years. Pretty impressive. And he's created jobs with 750 people giving them a living wage. They're paying their car notes, they're paying their insurance, they're sending their kids to college, they're, they're paying their taxes into the government which then plays for police service and fire service and public services and schools. So he's doing his part. And then the vendors that he's paying out of this company that is worth $5 billion, all the vendors and contractors, that's all helping them to live a good life and for them hopefully to gain wealth as well. That's a great takeaway suggestion. What are the things that your company does?
- [66:10]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, so our company, we ensure other companies are not for profits, startups, I mean sports teams, all sorts of people, we're ensuring them from their digital risks like the risk that the data they collect gets lost. So privacy related things. We cover when their technology fails and interrupts their business. We cover all forms of cybercrime, social engineering. So think of it as, you know, as you digitize your business, we want to cover all the risks that come along with that digitization and you know, whether it's the regulatory risk, whether it's the liability you have to third parties, it's pretty broad coverage for those sorts of things. And then on top of the insurance, we give our customers tools in a team of people that can help them both reduce the likelihood that they ever have a claim or they ever have a loss because no one wants to have to have an insurance claim. And, and then importantly if they do have a claim, we're 911, we are the emergency services. We're there to go and fight the fire, to help restore our customers operations that they can keep doing business, right? They can't call the police, they can't call the fire department, they can't be helpful, we can't. It's a team of instant responders that sort of go in and help clean things up. And then of course on the back end of it, just like a normal insurance company, we, we cover you financially for whatever it is that you've lost. So it's both that operational recovery and the financial recovery together.
- [67:35]
John Hope Bryant
Your digital crimes 911, that's right. Before we wrap up and I know that I'm opening up Pandora's box here, but we will just keep it short and we can do another maybe podcast in the future. My guess is that this AI revolution, I've said this, I'm co chairing The AI Ethics Council with our friend Sam Altman, who I believe is the Steve Jobs of this generation, by the way. Very good guy. I trust him. He Both thinks that AI will help to solve cancer within 10 years. He also thinks that some very bad things are going to happen in the next 10 years. He doesn't know what they are. And I respect his honesty for being blunt about that. But what I am convinced of is that by 2030, the world that we live in will be radically different, possibly unrecognizable, with the introduction of AI. This is not like the Internet or, you know, CDs coming from cassette tapes. This is a fundamental transformation, a groundswell groundwater effect in society. Is that going to radically change, expand your business? And are you focused on that yet?
- [68:51]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, of course. I mean, and look, Sam Altman is one of my first investors in the company, so.
- [68:55]
John Hope Bryant
Oh, wow, I didn't know that.
- [68:57]
Joshua Mata
That's right. Yeah, one of the first five. I mean, I think we both saw where things were going and how much risk that this could create. And so I absolutely see it as just another type of risk that we can help our clients manage. We can help manage their cyber risk, we can help manage their AI risk. And that's both giving them the tools and the knowledge and the know how to, you know, to use it responsibly. And it's also about providing insurance and financial coverage for when it creates losses. And so, absolutely, we're planning to. We've already expanded our products to cover AI affirmatively and we plan on rolling out more covers both for Main street businesses that are using AI all the way up to companies like OpenAI or XAI or others Anthropic that are building their own models, so specialist insurance coverages for those technology businesses.
- [69:46]
John Hope Bryant
Yeah, I like the founder of Anthropic too. He seems to be very conscious as a technologist. A lot of my technology friends are geniuses, but they have a blind spot called people. I like the founder of Anthropic and founder of OpenAI in particular. Thank you very much. I like you as a founder also. You're really cool people and I'm glad we met and I'm glad we're new friends and you're stuck with me. And thanks for empowering this audience with.
- [70:16]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, no, thank you for having me on. It's been a joy to be your friend and we'll carry it forward.
- [70:21]
John Hope Bryant
Let's go try to do good in the world and promote a new form of capitalism, which is good capitalism, dare we say capitalism. For all, this has been a fascinating and wonderful trip through the unique nature in space of insurance. And by the way, before you wrap, how big is the insurance industry? I didn't ask this question either here in the US or worldwide. How does it compare? Is it a big part of the global economic market? Finance?
- [70:57]
Joshua Mata
It's enormous. I think it's the second largest industry by assets. It's probably about $2 trillion a year, sort of the property and casualty insurance, about a trillion of which is just in the United States. So it's a very, very big industry.
- [71:14]
John Hope Bryant
And you've heard from one of the innovators in this space, the only person I know in proactive insurance. So thank you, Joshua, for Mota Mata Mata. Oh, this is going to be a joke that we're going to play for the rest of our lives. Yeah, my brain is stuck on Mota Mata. All right, God bless you. Appreciate you. And for the audience, tell all your friends to go play back this episode for certainly starting at minute 14, where my friend unpacks and repacks insurance for the average everyday person to understand it all the way up to the most sophisticated leader in the world to comprehend and use it. And you might want to call his service and use it because social media is something that affects all of us. I assume they can get to your website coalition.
- [72:15]
Joshua Mata
Yep, coalitioninc.com.
- [72:18]
John Hope Bryant
By the way, why Coalition? What a cool name.
- [72:22]
Joshua Mata
Yeah, I mean, look, the idea was like anytime you have a company that has the same risk, or every company is in the case of cyber risk, it just doesn't make sense to fight that problem individually. Let's create literally a coalition of organizations that all face this risk. They can each chip in a little bit of money. We collect it and we pool it and we use it to pay out the claims that happen. And then we use part of it to also invest and build capabilities to hire people that any individual company could never do themselves. So that was the idea. Let's build truly a coalition of people to go fight this problem collectively.
- [73:00]
John Hope Bryant
Even the name has social justice in it.
- [73:03]
Joshua Mata
There's meaning for sure.
- [73:05]
John Hope Bryant
All right. God bless you, friend. Thanks so much. Thank you, Brian Is money and wealth. There's been another episode in season two. Enjoy.
- [73:24]
Joshua Mata
Foreign.
- [73:28]
John Hope Bryant
Wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [75:13]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
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- [75:42]
Johnny Knoxville
Hello, America's sweetheart. Johnny Knoxville here. I want to tell you about my new true crime podcast, Crimeless Hillbilly Heist. From Smartless Media, Campside Media and big money players. It's a wild tale about a gang of high functioning new who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist.
- [76:04]
Ed Helms
Kind of like Robin Hood, except for.
- [76:06]
John Hope Bryant
The part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous.
- [76:12]
Johnny Knoxville
It's a damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing.
- [76:21]
John Hope Bryant
They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape.
- [76:25]
Joshua Mata
So we're sitting like, oh God, what do we do? What do we do?
- [76:28]
John Hope Bryant
That was dumb. People, do not follow my example.
- [76:33]
Johnny Knoxville
Listen to Crimeless Hillbilly Heist on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [76:42]
Ed Helms
Hey, it's Ed Helms, host of snafu, my podcast about history's greatest screw ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new snafu.
- [76:51]
AMPM Advertiser / Sarah
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- [76:56]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
What?
- [76:56]
Ed Helms
Yeah, it's gonna be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of fabulous guests. Paul Scheer, Angela and Jenna, Nick Kroll, Jordan Klepper. Listen to season four of SNAFU with Ed Helms on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [77:13]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over. But one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it.
- [77:29]
John Hope Bryant
They actually lose it.
- [77:30]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
They sort of went nuts until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [77:45]
John Hope Bryant
Podcast.
- [77:48]
iHeart Podcast Advertiser
This is an iHeart podcast.