Tom Kaiser, the Managing Partner at Masterful Coaching, renowned expert in the field of collaboration, and a top insurance executive, explains how his time in the Air Force led him to the insurance field, pioneering the idea of terrorism insurance, why insurance, and a full insurance PLAN is critical, and shares his legacy within the industry, as well as something free for listeners.

Welcome to Let's Talk Legacy. I'm Gary Michels,

your host, founder of Southwestern Legacy Insurance

Group, and today we have Tom Kaiser, the guest on the show.

Tom Kaiser is the managing partner of Masterful Coaching, a

renowned expert in the field of collaboration. He also has a

deep background in the insurance industry, both domestic and

worldwide, with experience running large, complex, global

businesses, including serving as a top executive in Arch Right

Insurance, Zurich Financial Solutions, he either built the

business from the ground up, which is very interesting to me

and our listeners, or transform them into a dynamic industry

leader. Thank you for joining our show.

Glad to do it.

So you started off in the Air Force, but that

experience sort of unexpectedly opened up some doors for you

later in the insurance field. Talk about that a little bit.

It did as a matter of fact, I spent five years as a

KC 135 navigator in the US Air Force, and I thought that, gee,

I must have missed out on business for those five years,

so I probably should find a job. And that took me to our great

Mutual Insurance where the guy was running it was a B, 29

pilot, and the number two guy was an F, 106 pilot. We talked

to airplanes and they hired me. That's how I got in the

insurance business. They had served during World War Two, I

came into the Vietnam so they were already well established in

business, but their background was in aviation.

When you were growing up, what were your

aspirations?

It was wide open. I went to university. When I came

out of university, I happened to be one of the first people who

got a low lottery number in the crazy draft. And so six months

after graduating from college, I was in the Air Force. I decided

that if I could fly, that was what I was going to do. So I

passed the flight physicals, and that led me to the five years

that I spent in the Air Force. From that perspective, I knew I

wanted to go into business, but I really didn't know exactly

what what led me to insurance was, again, the feeling that I

had that five years of being an aviator somehow put me behind my

peers who had been in business for five years, and I had to

find a way to catch up. And that was not true, but I just

believed that, and so I looked for jobs that really were based

on merit, 100% on merit, and ended up in a sales position

where I was selling large property insurance packages for

factory mutual.

So when you first approached them about insurance,

were you fascinated with business more, or were you

fascinated more with insurance?

I was a know nothing on insurance at that point, I

was, I was fascinated by the fact that arc right at the time

or factory mutual tailored insurance products to specific

solutions or problems that companies had, and so it was a

very good for anybody who was selling those products.

Got it. One of the more interesting and unique

items we saw on your resume is from your time serving as the

executive VP and president of marine and energy for our

insurance group where you were responsible for global marine

energy and aviation and terrorism, which really

intrigued me. Terrorism insurance, is that a thing?

After 9/11 the insurance industry backed out of

including terrorism insurance or any anything associated with

terrorism, and the government came out with definitions of

what terrorism is. And so an event like 9/11 is defined as

terrorism. It's not insured. So the insurance industry responded

with the government to come up with solutions to fill that

void, and a new product was developed because the other one

was gone, and it supported, basically and complemented what

the government was offering in the well realm of terrorism

insurance, but it was basically a property insurance that would

pay if your property was destroyed by a declared

terrorist event.

Was there a big demand for that after 9/11? I

imagine there was.

In certain industries, yes. I mean, in the

aviation business, big demand depends on what the industry

was, because most people were not buying the product. But

those that really felt that they were in a situation where they

could have a terrorist attack and lose large assets, they were

attracted to it.

So you helped transform that company into a

billion dollar company.

Well, it was a new company, arch. Arch was born out

of 9/11, and several people raised the capital. And I was

fortunate enough that I was working with Ben and

dinosaurdano at Zurich, and he went over to become the CEO, and

he brought me over in the number two role. It went from a very

small company into a very large company, rapidly, very clear.

Success story today, arch is about a $35 billion company

really relied on individuals that had skin in the game and

were very entrepreneurial to build individual businesses

that, when you added them all up, became quite a significant

business under the name or the brand that was promoting it,

recruiting was the key, key to building arch, or building any

of the companies that I worked with, to find the right people

that are focused in the right way, they have the right

attitude, and they want to make it happen. And you can move the

world. Those who have a lot of self confidence. Want to win,

and they want others to win, and they're very keen on

relationship and relationship management. You had to build

relationships with brokers, you had to build relationships with

customers, and all this had to come together in a positive way.

As a manager, you become a coach when you want your employee or

your report to win, instead of just managing them, you pick up

on it, I think, very quickly, if they have the same desire,

because you're working closely with them, you're not some guy

in the back room. Look at how many calls somebody made,

whether they made their calls or not. You're out there talking

about the actual business and how it works.

Can you give some examples and talk about the

importance of that for a leader to actually be there by their

side, doing it with them?

Well, I think people need the touch. It's not

something that can be done in a vacuum. It's something there,

where you're there, you're part of the whole process. I can't

emphasize enough that you're driven because you want them to

win, to be successful, and that's where you're coming from.

People pick up on that. And when you do that enough and you have

enough people involved, and it becomes a cultural thing, people

just get it, and they want to be part of it, and they help you

ferret out those that don't belong is a remarkable thing,

because once you have that alignment, and that alignment

working for you, it's a self correcting environment that they

don't want to let anybody in that doesn't buy into what we're

doing here and why we're doing it.

I think that is such a huge point you're

bringing up. How does that stay going when they have their first

hiccups?

Well, I think, I think if you've established your

relationship with that employee as a coach, you're going to have

that opportunity to coach them, and in that process, the walls

are going to be a lot easier to climb, the the obstacles are

going to be things you can talk about, and there's other people

within your team that you can bring in, if you're a good

coach, to say, well, here's how Joe dealt with that. You need to

talk to him right. Recognizing we're all going to have

challenges, but by talking about them and working with them, we

can make ourselves better and more successful.

What are some key things besides, you said that

we're looking for people that want to win. They want other

people to win. Anything else that you think is important when

you're looking for an employee, a person that you're going to

build a business with?

I always look for high energy people. And I think,

I think the I like people who took care of themselves, that

were physically fit, that had other things going in their

life, and, you know, had a very broad background of how things

worked and what they believed in. Because I think, you know,

as the whole person that always served me well too. I like

people who tried to close me, who wanted the job and asked for

it. I gotta tell you a story. It's funny. When we first

started arch, I spent 90% of my time recruiting people. People

were very reluctant to leave a big company safe position and

come with a startup. A year later, we had to fight these

people off, because once it showed it was successful and it

was a moving thing that was really doing well, they all

wanted to join your success is also what drives bringing in

good people. If you got a great company and they see you as a

great leader, they're going to want to work for you. So you

have to use that to your advantage also.

What does a good agent do to get them to go, I

think I'm gonna go with these guys?

The fact about insurance is its the thing that

everybody needs, but they don't necessarily want it, right? So

the need is created by the fact that if you have a home or a car

or you have a business, no matter what you have, there's

going to be certain requirements of things that you have to buy

to protect that business, or to protect the home or the auto or

what have you, life insurance is another question is more

complicated, because there's more reasons why. They people

buy or don't buy, then the simple thing that the government

says, You have to have auto insurance. But I think, I think

the struggle is that people really don't know who they want

to buy from. And there's lots of places you can go to to buy your

insurance, and there's lots of different products that are

offered and the general marketplace, I always found that

the best thing to work for me was to open up and help somewhat

with the entire package, from A to Z. What are you trying to do

with your financial planning? What are you trying to do with

all of the insurance products? How do you look at it. I used to

start a conversation with people saying that you do not build an

insurance program from the bottom up. You build it from the

top down. And what people make, the biggest mistake they make,

is they start from the bottom up, and they self insure the

biggest exposures they have, which is the top end of it,

where, if the worst thing happened, you're in bad shape.

That was a good way to start a conversation with people didn't

know a lot about insurance.

What would you say, you've been in this space

for so long? There was a legacy you were to leave. Of Gosh, Tom

absolutely believed insurance was a necessary thing people

need in their lives, and this is why. What would you want people

to leave with?

Well, I think I think my legacy is out there.

There's probably 30 guys that work for me that are running

significant portions of insurance companies, that have

big jobs in those companies, and they're all part of the team

that I assembled at these various companies. I'm really

proud of these guys, and they really have been successful and

have been the new leaders as I've drifted out of the

business, but my legacy is really those people who are out

there that are still working, that I influenced, that I

brought into the business, and now have significant roles

within various companies.

Deep in your core, because obviously that meant a

lot to you to do that, and you're so proud of that. What

does legacy mean to you?

Well, I think it's something lasting that is beyond

you and the contribution you were making at the time. So so

the way I define it is I left the business physically in oh

eight, and haven't worked for an insurance company since oh

eight, but I've got a whole cadre of people who are in

senior positions that I hired and I trained that continue to

support a lot of the things that we've been talking about. You'll

hear them talk about alignment and the importance of making

sure everybody's pulling in the same direction. I used to say

that, you know, if you got four powerful horses and you hook

them to a wagon, and you decide to pull the wagon in different

directions. You pull the wagon apart, but if you get them going

into a straight line, you can go anywhere. A lot of this isn't

rocket science, just stuff that you got to repeat over and over

and over again and tell stories about and celebrate successes

around, because that alignment is so important.

Absolutely. Why should someone buy insurance?

For protection and risk management. In other words,

you're trying, you're transferring risk at a price,

and that's to be part of your risk management orientation,

that you don't have to bear that risk. If the worst case scenario

happened, your house burns down, your there's an explosion, you

die, you name it. So it's all. Everybody should have an

orientation towards risk management. Insurance is one of

the tools that goes with risk management.

Right on. And lastly, if someone did want to

collaborate with you to learn more about Collab Lab, your

company, a little bit more about what you do. How would they get

in touch with you?

But they should go on to masterfulcoaching.com. And

I'll make an offer to the we have a book called a revenue

engine, an e book, and they can go in there and download that

for free. Masterfulcoaching.com.

Awesome. You've been listening to Tom Kaiser.

Just appreciate your time today.

Super.