How Insurious CEO Matt Sweetwood grew to $16.8K revenue and 100 customers in 2021.

hello everyone my guest today is matt sweetwood he's a serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in tech startups as a tech startup founder he's an international internationally known professional speaker author coach influencer however his greatest achievement is having raised five successful kiddos to adulthood as a single dad he's a frequent national tv and publication contributor matt sweet what are you ready to take to the top i am let's go let's go fast fast fast i'll just say five kids and now insurance so your company's called insurance.us what's the business do um we provide equipment insurance it's simple as that think of your most valuable equipment like camera equipment audio visual equipment um you know anything that really is insurable and you take out of the home and what got you into this did you go on a trip to like miami and broke your expensive camera and said there should be insurance for this no actually i came from the photography business ran a camera store for many years and literally every single day someone would walk into the store and say the stuff got stolen i dropped it in the water it got broken camera equipment is the most stolen item that there is because it's an item that you can't like put in your pocket like your cell phone think about it you go out with your camera you're on vacation it gets put down it's a bigger object it's in a bag it's just an and it's very easily sellable on the street so camera equipment for example i mean we cover camera equipment audio equipment your laptop computer all sorts of things like that it's very easily stolen it's damaged and our we offer a very very fast access you basically can get insured in between five six minutes on our site no don't need to speak to anybody just go up there and it's very relatively inexpensive so what do people pay you on average to get insurance uh they pay about a hundred and fifty dollars hundred and sixty dollars a year for insurance and it'll cover up to let's say five six thousand dollars it's a little bit more if you cover more we also have photographers that come on that have fifty sixty thousand dollars worth of equipment or more interesting okay so when did you launch um we launched about five weeks ago we actually launched the website took a couple of months obviously in uh in development but uh we're all we're ready to go we just began our marketing do you have your first couple customers we do we do um typical digital uh marketing you know i also have a lot of connections inside the uh photo industry so i start asking around you know going to photographers strong arming them a little bit we're actually looking for influencers you know we want to have some really good photographers out there that talk it and and do that thing we have an affiliate program so you know that'll really help we believe that'll be at the heart of how uh the program gets promoted so how many customers as of today uh today we have about a hundred a hundred okay that's great so five weeks in 100 customers 14 but what is that 1400 bucks a month an mri yeah something like that exactly and so how do you model this out so someone let's say someone who paid you three months ago comes back in and says my 800 camera got stolen do you have to pay that off directly um no actually we're we're connected directly with uh insurance company the insurance company actually will process the claim for them but it's paid directly from the insurance company we're basically a facilitator we're facilitating the purchase of the insurance we facilitate the customer service and the outreach and we sort of put the product together so that it fits the market you know you think about um you know college students going off to school with their very fancy imacs you know their laptops you know it's a very easy thing to ensure and people want that kind of protection no it makes complete sense so if i'm a if i run a camera shop today you come knocking on my door down there in miami and say hey i got insurance i'd love for you to sell it and i'm saying matt what affiliate credit are you going to pay me what's your response um so they're going to make it's a growing affiliate program so they'll make depending on the cost of the policy they'll make a certain percentage of that and then of course um you know there'll be programs built in because stores typically have um sales people so we'll be able to sort of create this uh funnel effect the funnel effect down but once again it depends on you know the volume and it depends on the amount of policy sold in the dollar volume and so on if i'm just getting started with you what am i going to earn on the first policy i bring you it's like 30 percent i'm like ten dollars as a matter of fact i think if you come on if you just sign up for the program you get uh five or ten dollars if i remember correctly just all you have to do is sign up go to you insurance us sign up they'll be we we will put 10 bucks right in your account so you're paying a flat fee per account i sign up that's correct but it grows the more accounts you sign that five fee goes up and you can collect up to i think fifteen dollars or twenty dollars a policy you know if you really start to promote the uh promote the item so we believe that'll be a really big way to get this out there the amazing thing about this insurance is that it's most people think that their homeowners covers it or even their business and policies cover it in most cases it does not and also our policy is a all peril policy so for example uh if you lose it if it's stolen if it gets water it falls in water if you have a hurricane a tornado an earthquake terrorism nuclear war basically covers almost essentially every power almost everything this this idea is not obviously a new one you have a unique advantage in that you were in the trenches running a camera shop so that's an advantage but how are you who are the big players in the space and how do you beat them um well you see the the way you beat them in this space is you provide the easiest access at the right price so we have what we believe is the lowest cost policy and we have the easiest access there's essentially no place you can go sign up and have a policy in about seven eight minutes right you don't have to speak to anybody you just sign up basic information and you actually get the policy so you can bind that policy really fast so it's easy access and a very low cost and a very very wide level of coverage those are our selling advantages talking about his cox insurance they're obviously a big player in the space they're spending a crap ton on facebook ads how do you compare head-to-head against them um in our case we're offering a more specialized insurance once again they're offering all sorts of different products and it gets very confusing and a lot of those will overlap with what you have this is a very specific product and as a result the premium is going to be extremely low and extremely targeted and once again if you dig into their policies you'll find that they don't cover some of the things that we cover interesting now have you bootstrapped this company are you raised um we're just bootstrapping it for now we're able to the beauty of this product is that we're able to run it with a very very small staff and you know we have many we have tech expertise we're actually running with five people right now that's incredible how many engineers um we actually have one we have one engineer and one outside so really five and a half i have an outside there's one outside tech person there's an inside tech person i'm a tech person um and we have these three three co-founders and basically two other people working in the company and we why did you need why did you need three co-founders why couldn't you do it yourself you know i love that question um so my expertise is in tech marketing and you know in the electronics and equipment industry the other partner is an insurance person he has 20 plus years in the insurance business and the third partner actually runs a master broker agency so that's providing the sort of the customer service background we're going to get very very good customer service very quick response and so on on this i'm a very customer service oriented person so it was a very natural mix of co-founders yeah interesting um and did you guys decide to split it right down the middle 30 30 30. yeah yeah we're all we're all equal partners but i have the loudest mouth so i get my way more often i like let's let's put it this way i like to think so and are you all full time on this or is it still too early um it's still i mean we yeah and essentially we are i mean i'm not full time on anything i do 10 different things no matter what it's not going to matter yeah i'm full time whatever i put in enough whatever time it takes to make this work we're very excited about this because it's a very simple concept it's a very excellent product and really nobody else has it out there so yeah you should do really well we're going to hand on other insurance too by the way this is only sort of the first entry we'll eventually expand the offerings and we're actually working on that right now to you know ahead of the offering um i think the next offering will be some sort of larger policies maybe on property or something like that we're experimenting around we're seeing what's going to fit in if you think about it right for example maybe to be able to offer renters insurance or be able to offer something related to that probably not like auto that's not our you know that's not going to be our uh our thing maybe maybe liability insurance in there and so on you can only strong-arm your old photography friends that run shops for so long how do you get customers moving forward and how many are you adding per month um so i can't really tell yet right because we're just really really a month in um it's just i believe that once travel picks up right because travel puts your equipment at risk even business travel we're going to reach out to the general population remember think about the traveling executive think of yourself you're flying around you're carrying your laptop projector whatever it is you carry around with your my lumx gh5 it's always a lumix gx5 oh i just put away my lumix i was going to take it out and show it right there i mean your lumix gh5 right i mean you can ensure that and it's all under one policy you can ensure that you can enjoy your laptop your projector and stuff like that but you're not really at risk now you're not traveling covet is going to drop obviously very quickly over the next couple of months people will start traveling internet i just read uh yesterday that there's like they're expanding the list of countries you can't travel to but international travel and travel will take the general population and make that available to us because like i said camera equipment computer equipment audio visual equipment video equipment all at very very high risk and we're basically saying you know 12 and a half bucks a month and you have it essentially covered so we believe once travel gets up we'll go to the general public you're right i can only we can only get certain amount of dealers there's only three amount of camera stores and electronic stores left and but we'll go out to the general population that's really the goal anytime someone is selling me on insurance on hardware whether it's an apple store exactly one by my mac or the the camera shop that i bought this lumix gh5 the thought that always goes through my head is i get why it's important it is so cheap you're right but i know that if i lose my camera i'm not going to spend the hours to go figure out how to like take a picture or prove that i owned it or proved that there was damage to actually and remember this that i bought insurance room to actually go collect and that's why i never purchased at all how do you help buyers get over that hurdle you know that's an interesting that's an interesting problem because i thought of that myself um i think we're going to work hard on education up front so i think that that's really solved the front and we actually talked about storing that kind of information or helping the customers do that right at the point that they writ that they register right because the point you go fill out the application we're balancing trying to get you insurance really fast and making you work right because we make you work too hard you just won't get the insurance so i think that that's a problem that really needs to be solved i think it's a really good point and i think maybe we're going to do something at the point of sale on the other hand come on man right to quote a famous philosopher you got to keep your receipts right you know here's what there is no way in hell you sound like my mom now i don't keep any receipts i i it's all digital do i have to talk to your mom apparently i need to talk to your mom there's people listening right now going i'm the same as nathan i would never keep receiving most people have a receipt because you get an online at least in today's world most of the time you get an email receipt people do save those yeah if you're going to buy a retail place a little more complicated i'm anal retentive so when i buy something expensive you know here's what i would say to you it's probably because you're a rich guy and you don't really care that much about the value of the camera and you can afford to replace it but let me tell you i know a lot of photographers who make a living off of this who or or weekend warriors or whatever or have thousand dollars worth of equipment and if that equipment is lost they are out of luck they used to walk into my store all the time literally in tears right because they didn't do it so if you can't afford it you'll find the incentive to do it maybe for a guy like you if you lose your gh5 you'll say okay i want the new model anyway i'll go buy i'll go buy the new model so it's a little bit of um part of this of the demand of the product your demand for your need for it is not quite as high as someone who can't afford to replace it or is it a fear of losing you're just not enough fear that's really what it comes down to oh i'm giving you my psychological analysis you're just not here you you call me rich you say i have no fear i say you're right uh and so you're i mean it's exactly accurate right now dude um you know do i wish there was a way where if i did lose something i could quickly like push a button and get reimbursed for it yes i'm just not convinced anything is that easy no and you wouldn't want it to be that easy obviously that wouldn't be a very good business model how do you prevent people like okay i have a receipt i go into your flow i bought it two years ago and i say hey my camera was just stolen here's my receipt how do you get people to prove that it was actually lost or stolen i mean it depends on the nature of the loss or the theft but there's usually some sort of proof required in many cases i'll give you a little insight right so insurance companies keep very very accurate records of people who make lots of claims and if you're doing that typically it's not the first time you've ever done that and um so in general claims get paid i mean you know if you're making a fifty thousand dollar claim you know you say you lost fifty thousand dollars worth of equipment i mean there's going to be a more investigation than if you know i lost my 800 camera i mean that's really just the nature of things and if you've lost your 800 dollar camera three times and you've made eight claims on your auto insurance and your tree keeps falling on your house and all of this stuff i mean they know who you are right and we're we're we're doing that in general i mean obviously insurance fraud is an issue it is an issue but we actually make claims very easy part of it is a numbers game right how many people if you sell enough policies how insurance companies work right yeah there's a certain amount of fraud there's a certain amount of whatever happens happens but you sell enough policies and premium is right and so on so it works what makes our thing so great is that the premium's so low right because of the volume nature of the amount of policies we're able to sell we keep premium really low you think about 150 a year to protect you know 5 000 worth of equipment against essentially everything is pretty good let's go let's let's expand this this this some color on here for a second you wrote a book a leader or leading the pack when did you write leader of the pack leader leader leader of the pack when did you release it um it was released about a year and a half ago okay and how's it doing how many copies sold um i've sold probably 10 000 copies total is that good or bad are you happy with that yeah i'm very happy with that it's a very harsh book it's a book about how i was a humongous schmuck most of my life and how i overcame that and found success even being a big schmuck it's a very painful story about raising children on their own after their mom left and a business which was in constant turmoil and basically it's about me suffering making more stupid decisions and then suffering some more and making more stupid decisions and then finally god waking me up and you know making the right decisions and pivoting my life so what i'm most proud of is i literally once a week or sometimes more than once a week get someone writing me say i read your book and it changed my life thank you i get i get it's an amazing calling card by the way because when i speak and i give out that book people want me to coach them they want me to consult them so and the book really helps people in terms of making money i probably would have been better off working at starbucks nothing against starbucks but you get free healthcare it's like you know fifteen dollars an hour publisher um i have a great publisher story i had a publisher had everything all lined up it wasn't but uh it was um oh i can't remember the name was a couple of years ago and i don't want to name them because it's not a good it's not a good story okay it's not not a good story uh we were about a year in getting ready to release the book and they said we're cancelling your contract and i said why and they said because the people in your book are that you're mentioning the real people are going to sue you so i went and had a legal review of the book we changed a few things in the book to make it legally okay went back to the publisher and they're like we're too scared was this your ex-wife yeah i mean it talks about it talks about a bunch of people in the book the book is like and i said to him i said first of all it went through legal review and second of all the best defense against libel is the truth and i've told 100 the truth in that book they're like no we're going to pass but i will tell you that self-publishing was very very good for me because i'm a marketer so for me i'm marketing the book and i keep all the profit well i keep going amazon keeps all the profits but um you know it's been really good for me as a matter of fact i just updated the book i just came out with my third edition and a hardcover did it all myself right because you said am i full time at edge areas well yeah i'm full time but you know at night i'd fix my book and yeah so i really like the book for me is a really excellent vehicle to help other people and i'm most proud of that like i said read the reviews i have 145 star reviews people saying change my life improve this i can't believe it this whole you'll see if you go look at that we're out of time let's wrap up here with the famous five number one besides your own what's your favorite business book is a relentless by tim grover that's my favorite book number two is there a ceo you're following or studying i always follow elon musk for humor and for inspiration number three what's your favorite online tool for building insurance um favorite online tool actually is wordpress love wordpress very flexible easy to build the platform and work at work at working number four how many hours of sleep you get every night hours of sleep my fitbit tells me that i sleep five hours and 45 minutes on average every night pretty good now situation uh it sounds like not married today with five kids no i i am i am married i am remembered yes remarried five kids and how old are you i am 57 years old last question what's something you wish you knew when you were 20 um i wish i actually wish i didn't get married to my friend now um i wish i actually didn't have kids so young this is a stupid wish because i'm now 50 and free um but i wish i traveled more i i didn't i went i graduated school early went to graduate school did all that stuff i didn't do any traveling when i was young and didn't party and stuff like that so got to do it now insurgents.us is really just asking play here right they're just they're not on top or they're selling an insurance plan for photographers to cover their cameras a hundred folks signed up so far at about fourteen dollars an hour per month fourteen hundred dollars per month and revenue three co-founders thirty-three percent split down the middle five people total work on the business matt leading the way matt thanks for taking us to the top thanks for having me one more thing before you go we have a brand new show every thursday at 1 pm central it's called shark tank for sas we call it deal or bust one founder comes on three hungry buyers they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards their expenses their revenue arpu cac ltv you name it they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live it is fun to watch every thursday 1 p.m central additionally remember these recorded founder interviews go live we release 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