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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_01: Today we're going to meet Gregory Lose Deba of Dundas' life.
[00:12] SPEAKER_01: It claims to provide the easiest way to buy life insurance online in Canada.
[00:18] SPEAKER_01: And the insurance business we're going to be the few people are certainly changing.
[00:22] SPEAKER_01: So I'll really be interested to find out how Greg is helping kind of facilitate change.
[00:33] SPEAKER_01: Greg, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:36] SPEAKER_01: It's kind of interesting you're sitting in Texas and I'm sitting in good old Stone, E.C.A. and GTHA.
[00:45] SPEAKER_01: But why don't you do what I always ask people to do?
[00:49] SPEAKER_01: Tell them a little bit about yourself, what you do, just a quick two to four minute.
[00:57] SPEAKER_01: I'm Greg Lose Deba basically.
[01:00] SPEAKER_00: Sure. It's funny. We spoke for a minute or two before we started recording.
[01:07] SPEAKER_00: A good chunk of my life was tied to originally in Oshawa.
[01:10] SPEAKER_00: So I was born and raised there.
[01:12] SPEAKER_00: My parents were both immigrants.
[01:14] SPEAKER_00: Both worked at GM at one point or another.
[01:17] SPEAKER_00: And I guess that's such a hard time leaving that I ended up going to university there as well.
[01:22] SPEAKER_01: So I thought they did you back home, yeah.
[01:24] SPEAKER_00: It was a bit different. I didn't really expect to go to a university that was 10 years old.
[01:29] SPEAKER_00: I mean, at the time it struck me as a bit fresh.
[01:33] SPEAKER_00: But it turned out to be a very good experience.
[01:36] SPEAKER_00: So I did finance and accountancy degree there.
[01:38] SPEAKER_00: And that was before, I guess I began a foreign technology sales.
[01:44] SPEAKER_00: So I went over to heal a packer for a bit, moved into Toronto, got intimately acquainted with the public transit system.
[01:51] SPEAKER_00: And after that, somehow ended up in the insurance world.
[01:55] SPEAKER_00: One thing led to another and we ended up kicking off Dumbass life here.
[01:59] SPEAKER_00: But the transition has been very interesting.
[02:02] SPEAKER_00: I think as the GTA goes, you know, I was born in Oshawa in, you know,
[02:08] SPEAKER_00: now I've been in Toronto for a good few years.
[02:11] SPEAKER_00: I used to travel to Kitchener to go visit the girlfriend rather often.
[02:14] SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I've been here there and everywhere in the GTA for, for, I guess, for the last decade or so.
[02:20] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what made you become an entrepreneur?
[02:26] SPEAKER_01: I mean, did finance accounting, wanting to go on BCPA or something like that?
[02:31] SPEAKER_01: Because that's that's sort of what you think of the next step for that kind of thing.
[02:37] SPEAKER_00: Well, it's interesting because when I was looking at that road initially, high finance was the trajectory.
[02:43] SPEAKER_00: But then I realized I'm really not cut out to sit in front of, you know, spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations for 12 or 14 hours a day.
[02:50] SPEAKER_00: So I ended up taking a step back from that and I thought, you know, where can I kind of apply, you know, the financial savvy, but apply it within a sales context.
[02:59] SPEAKER_00: So I ended up moving away from the financial space and going into tech, I guess one, one variety of tech I went into, when, in going to HP.
[03:09] SPEAKER_00: Now there's the hardware, there's a software component. So it was a very good introduction into that world that I don't think I could have gotten anywhere else because it wasn't just the matter of, hey, here's a course, learn about this stuff.
[03:21] SPEAKER_00: Hey, here's a course, sell this next week. So it was really easy to get intimately familiar with, you know, how technology works at all these different firms and, you know, what I really needed to learn in the process.
[03:35] SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I preferred working with people and I think you still do that within the, within the financial space, like whether you go to the accounting or the high finance route.
[03:43] SPEAKER_00: But the work itself, I thought, could I do it probably would I be great at it? Probably not, which was a very humbling moment of self awareness.
[03:54] SPEAKER_00: And that's how I ended up more in the sales world than I guess now in the insure tech space.
[03:58] SPEAKER_01: Okay. Why insure tech, you know, why, why there, you know, I mean, you know, one at state of technology, you know, I mean, it's a pretty exciting space.
[04:13] SPEAKER_00: It's, I mean, there, I guess there's just the problem that needed to be solved and insurance happened to be the area that, you know, had the biggest problem initially when I, when I got into the space, a good friend of mine, Jonathan Beggie, he ended up explaining what's going on in insurance.
[04:30] SPEAKER_00: I didn't believe him at the time. He was telling me that, you know, most of the businesses still done on paper, whatever software there is, it's oftentimes fragmented.
[04:39] SPEAKER_00: And if you're a financial advisor, there's so many different tools and, you know, different forms you need to be familiar with.
[04:45] SPEAKER_00: And it's completely disjointed. And he was asking me, you know, have you bought a life insurance policy before and I told him, no, I mean, I wasn't really at that time in my life where I needed one.
[04:55] SPEAKER_00: I said, you know, I get one. I told them, well, yeah, just go online, go to one of those websites, you know, I give my birthday, tell them I don't smoke and tell them I'm generally healthy and they'll give me a price. I'll fill out a form. Thanks for coming out.
[05:07] SPEAKER_00: I think, no, not even close. You oftentimes meet with a broker. You have to get familiar with what the right product might be with the right company. You have to go through the underwriting process. And there could be additional forms that you need to fill out. And I thought, this seems to be a data flow problem.
[05:24] SPEAKER_00: So, you know, worked in that space to really figure out how to really simplify that. But it's interesting to see in this industry, like how much disjointment there is and who's responsible for why it because I feel like in Canada in particular, a lot does fall in the broker, the financial advisor of the agent, whichever one you are.
[05:44] SPEAKER_00: And, you know, everyone's trying to, you know, do their bit, but not take on too much. And I feel like that's created some some process issues in the industry that I think need resolving.
[05:56] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, I was saying earlier, I've interviewed a few fintech people, a few insurance fintech people. I mean, you know, for the outside it, what's happening there exactly.
[06:09] SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's the big deal, you know, I think that in insurance in particular, because it's a highly regulated industry, it's somewhat insulated from external threats.
[06:24] SPEAKER_00: You don't really see American insurance firms coming here, you know, kicking something off, starting off with a good software and just making everything work very easily.
[06:31] SPEAKER_00: I'd sound very common, but the industry itself, I mean, Canadians need insurance within one capacity or another, how they get it is a different story.
[06:40] SPEAKER_00: So historically, I mean, if you have, if you're a financial advisor, even like a small town financial advisor, you could be doing very well for yourself, as well as their administrator, the managing general agency and the insurance companies.
[06:53] SPEAKER_00: I mean, financially across the board, everyone in the last 10, 20 years has been doing, they've been doing pretty well all things considered.
[07:00] SPEAKER_00: So there hasn't really been a push to modernize. I mean, even during the pandemic, we're seeing insurance companies that were just releasing e-signature to independent brokers.
[07:10] SPEAKER_00: This is a technology that's been around for 25 years. So I think because, you know, the industry has been working, I mean, financially it works. I think it's a good industry in that sense.
[07:21] SPEAKER_00: But there hasn't been a lot of external threat. I think it's been slow to modernize compared to other industries, even banking.
[07:30] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, what you see is the future of your business time. I mean, you know, is it, is it, I'm going to see names change, companies change, you know, the some lives, the manual lives, the things like that, or are they, are they rooted forever kind of thing?
[07:53] SPEAKER_00: They'll love to hear this. I think they're rooted forever. And I think the reason is it takes so much capital to start. And I think the problems aren't, I don't think they're so deep that they can't be fixed.
[08:06] SPEAKER_00: I think it's just some technology issues that would need to be resolved. So it doesn't strike me as anything that would require the operating of an entire firm.
[08:14] SPEAKER_00: I think gradually a lot of these improvements will take place. But gradually, although I think looking at the industry, I think fundamentally it's not going to change. I think a lot of the transactions are still going to take place through a broker.
[08:26] SPEAKER_00: And the, excuse me, the back office system. I think will be pretty efficient going forward or we'll get more efficient. Who does that? I don't know. Could it be the insurance companies? Maybe could it be the managing general agencies that could be should be, could it be some external insure tech for sure?
[08:42] SPEAKER_00: I don't know who's going to implement it. I think everyone kind of understands what the problems are from an administrative standpoint. It's just going to come down to, you know, who's going to fix it first, who's going to fix it best and who's going to get it in the hands of brokers and insurance companies?
[08:57] SPEAKER_01: So, you know, let's move on to some challenges that you've been building on that slide.
[09:05] SPEAKER_01: What's the biggest challenge you've faced in the business today?
[09:10] SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's fun. I think we decided to bootstrap the entire effort. And it came at a very interesting time because, you know, on the day-to-day things are usually busy, you know, even when you're working, you know, you want to go visit family as often as you can.
[09:26] SPEAKER_00: You want to go hang out with your friends as often as you can. The workload just keeps piling up regardless of where you are.
[09:30] SPEAKER_00: But I think when it came to that sort of pace, the pandemic really changed things. It did for me. Everything slowed down in a sense. You know, there's no social life. You know, there's no sales calls that to go on in person.
[09:44] SPEAKER_00: So all that travel time got cut out. And I was sitting at home in a 500 square foot apartment with, you know, at least on weekends, evenings and weekends, like a lot of time freed up that I didn't otherwise have previously.
[09:55] SPEAKER_00: And you know, when you have a little bit of time, you start thinking about things and start, you know, doing things. And, you know, that's kind of how we kicked off that for a year.
[10:06] SPEAKER_00: But the pandemic, I think, turned out to be a good thing in that sense because I didn't really anticipate going this road initially.
[10:15] SPEAKER_00: But because the opportunity kind of presented itself and the right people were available, we decided to kick it off by early days, especially with bootstrapping it.
[10:25] SPEAKER_00: The focus was always, you know, how do we provide the right service at the right price as many people as possible? Like how do we get this thing to a point where it's profitable.
[10:35] SPEAKER_00: And oh boy, that can be stressful few months. Luckily, we got to that point here. But the first few months was like, you're almost you're looking at the next month and you're thinking, I need like we need to position this much product or client.
[10:49] SPEAKER_00: Or a prospective clients as they roll in in order to survive. And that kind of pressure is pretty immense.
[10:57] SPEAKER_01: What would you say you're talking about bootstrapping? Is that the best way? I mean, what would you say to, you know, people thinking about starting out in business? I mean, what advice would you give them?
[11:12] SPEAKER_00: Just sell something. I mean, it's it doesn't have to be that complicated. And I think I would even see things on Twitter or Reddit where people would talk about just setting up a power washing business on weekends.
[11:25] SPEAKER_00: You know, springtime rolls around people need things power washed. I mean, all you have to do is really get like a hundred two hundred dollar power washer and start knocking on doors for a lot of like people have problems.
[11:35] SPEAKER_00: You can ask them what their problems are. They'll tell you who's going to mow the lawn, who's going to do yard work, who's going to do their taxes. You know, how do they fix the change their oil on timely manner? Like everyone has some sort of problem.
[11:46] SPEAKER_00: If you can fix that problem and sell them the solution, I mean, ultimately that's all businesses. Even if it's a small like I mean, even your neighborhood newspaper person, I mean, if they're you know, some 10 year old, running around delivering papers.
[11:59] SPEAKER_00: A lot of these newspaper companies make them collect payment as well. And you learn a lot of skills that way you deliver a service. You learn how to collect your accounts receivable. You learn how to track those accounts receivable. And oftentimes this is all done on pen and paper.
[12:14] SPEAKER_00: I think, you know, looking at it from like what you know, once you get a few years under your belt and you hit adulthood. I mean, you can still do a lot of these things. It's it's not easy.
[12:24] SPEAKER_00: But these things are all out there. And I think in kicking something like this off ultimately, like in any business, making the first sale is probably the most important bit and then figuring out everything after is, I guess, the logical next step.
[12:38] SPEAKER_01: You know, on that front, I mean, in terms of mentoring, I mean, what's the best piece of advice you've received on your journey to date?
[12:49] SPEAKER_00: I was chatting with it was a university professor back at UIT or I guess on tech you now.
[12:56] SPEAKER_00: She was a sales professor, which I thought was very bizarre. It's like, he can really teach the stuff. But, you know, she had a really interesting career in like network sales back in like the 80s and 90s, like the boom, boom days there.
[13:09] SPEAKER_00: And what she told me was, you know, if if a good process is in place from like especially from a sales standpoint, everything else will come together.
[13:18] SPEAKER_00: If you're very quick at identifying and solving a problem and you turn that into a process and you do it well and you stick to it, everything will be okay.
[13:26] SPEAKER_00: And I think initially when people look at any sort of sales career or if they look at going into entrepreneurship.
[13:32] SPEAKER_00: At first, it's a bit of a wild stramble. What should I do next? What do I need to get in front of right away? You know, what are my priorities?
[13:39] SPEAKER_00: Then I think it can be overwhelming at times. But if there's a decent process in place, I think to an extent you have to trust it and just put the work in.
[13:48] SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, you know, a lot of people have a similar problem. A lot of people need life insurance. A lot of people need a newspaper deliver.
[13:55] SPEAKER_00: A lot of people need to have their driveways or their siding power washed. It's just the matter of figuring out what's the easiest way of getting there and servicing these clients.
[14:04] SPEAKER_01: I like to have some fun questions a little bit. Sure.
[14:08] SPEAKER_01: Are you a morning or a night person?
[14:10] SPEAKER_00: I want to be a morning person. I'm failing miserably.
[14:19] SPEAKER_01: So you're a night person, you think?
[14:21] SPEAKER_00: It's hard to say, you know, like this morning was a tough one. I was up at I was up at 630, which isn't a normal time for me.
[14:29] SPEAKER_00: I mean, I feel like those extra two or extra hour or two hours of sleep depending on the day, they really go a long way.
[14:35] SPEAKER_00: I don't mind saying up, but I feel like as I get older, those first few hours in the day are super important.
[14:43] SPEAKER_00: We have a little bit of calm. You can go do whatever you want. No one's messaging you or bothering you, but I aspire to be a morning person. I'm just not there today.
[14:52] SPEAKER_01: Well, bookie reading that I mean books listening to. I mean, you know, it's all the books.
[14:58] SPEAKER_00: You know, we don't all read all the time. Yeah, that's that's a good question. So there is there's a couple of books I usually have on the go.
[15:08] SPEAKER_00: So one's a little less, you know, business oriented ones a little more business oriented. It's it's it's all relative. It just depends on the mood. I'm in.
[15:19] SPEAKER_00: So I've I told myself I do something monumental. So I've been reading the complete essays of Montagne. So I'm about 10% in.
[15:26] SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah. Okay.
[15:28] Speaker UNKNOWN: It's.
[15:30] SPEAKER_00: It's in the last four months, the amount of hours I've sunk into that book is incredible. And I'm only like a tenth done.
[15:37] SPEAKER_00: It's it's been good. It flows very well, which which I'm very thankful for because it's bit if it wasn't I think this would be more of a struggle.
[15:46] SPEAKER_00: But I'm also rereading it's a Toronto author actually on the business side of things. So his name is Dave primer.
[15:52] SPEAKER_00: Sell the way you buy. It's a really good book and I hate sales books. I think a lot of them are just nonsense.
[15:59] SPEAKER_00: But there is a couple that are quite good. I think this one in particular is very good because it really humanizes the interaction between people.
[16:06] SPEAKER_00: And I think I mean the title alone I think is a good it's a good guidance for anyone looking to get started in sales.
[16:13] SPEAKER_00: If you want to sell something think of yourself as the customer. What are you looking for? What do you want? What problem are you looking to get solved?
[16:19] SPEAKER_00: So I kind of vacillate between the two. If I'm all sales book down I'll jump into Montagne, but I can't wait to finish one of them so I can jump into something you know a little bit lighter.
[16:29] SPEAKER_00: This has been this has been a very heavy month and a half.
[16:32] SPEAKER_01: We've had to pick one word to describe yourself. What would it be? What and why?
[16:39] SPEAKER_00: Oh geez that is a heavy question. One word to describe myself.
[16:44] SPEAKER_00: I think it took a while but I think I'm getting balanced. I think I finally figured it out a little bit.
[16:49] SPEAKER_00: You know spending an hour or two in the evening, relaxing, doing nothing, you know taking one day one entire day off.
[16:55] SPEAKER_00: Sometimes one and a half just to relax and do nothing. I think this is this is a very big conversation in the business world now specifically where everyone's like you know how do you find a balance and then other people are like there is no balance your balance is whatever the customer wants.
[17:11] SPEAKER_00: But it hasn't been that bad. I think I went from you know working all the time to you know I'm going to hang out a little bit.
[17:18] SPEAKER_00: I'm going to see you know it's like if you need to take a Tuesday evening off you take a Tuesday evening off you hang out and I think at first I think it was again there was a lot of work but now I think there's still a lot of work but I think I'm enjoying it a little bit more than I did before.
[17:31] SPEAKER_00: And I think again that kind of goes with kicking off a firm and you know you're dealing with these existential crises almost within the firm to keep the thing going.
[17:39] SPEAKER_00: But now that we're on more solid footing I think things have really balanced themselves out.
[17:43] SPEAKER_01: Good. I mean you know what was it was all you know what would you say is the greatest change in the business in the last two years I mean I'm interested you're in the insurance side I'm interested you know to know what's what's the monumental change that's happened because there's so many businesses like that you know in the last 24 months.
[18:11] SPEAKER_00: Well I think like having been in the insurance industry for what's it been now almost seven years.
[18:17] SPEAKER_00: The big change with COVID in particular is it really brought to light you know the importance of tools like life insurance when you're hearing about people dying worldwide from a disease that.
[18:28] SPEAKER_00: Very few people understand at the time.
[18:32] SPEAKER_00: Life insurance become such such an important tool because then people start thinking you know what happens if this happened you know what happens if I die and my family's left with financial burden and that was like especially at the beginning of the pandemic when no one really knew what was going on and I include governments and you know health departments across the planet when people really getting their footing that uncertainty it really brought to light.
[18:55] SPEAKER_00: Well not like I think people knew from a financial standpoint it's like okay you know that I might be at a work for a while this is not good but I think it also brought into light you know how do I how do I save my family from potential catastrophe and in any financial plan insurance fills that I think that was the big push I think the other big pushes technology because before the pandemic again everything was done on paper and then you I think when the pandemic hit we saw a lot of good will efforts on behalf of the world.
[19:25] SPEAKER_00: The insurance companies reaching out to brokers saying you know what can we do better how can we make the simpler because again like the industry has been operating pretty well off paper for the last however many years if not hundreds of years.
[19:38] SPEAKER_00: But I think the pandemic was unique in the sense that you know you can't show up to someone's head so you can't talk to them in their family have a coffee at the table you need to do it digitally there really was no reasonable alternative at the time to the extent that in the early days I was chatting with a broker friend and they're telling me.
[19:55] SPEAKER_00: That one of their clients really needed. I think it was a mutual fund it was one specific mutual fund that they needed to get into but it was it was important and they are telling me that they needed a physical signature from their client to get everything moving so again in the middle of the pandemic showed up with the face mask and again this before anyone really knew what was going on and you know had the gloves on and everything and then literally put the you know held up the paper work the client signed off on it and he took it back to the office and I think that was a good thing.
[20:25] SPEAKER_00: I thought this is ridiculous. I mean for one it was March so it's freezing out but for two you know he's standing out there in a mask and gloves holding out physical paperwork for for his client to sign and I thought this is like this is not good like this specific example is not good on many fronts and you know something should be done to fix it and to the credit of a lot of insurance companies if making big strides in the last two or three years to you know to help mitigate some of that kind of damage I kind of process.
[20:55] Speaker UNKNOWN: I think that's a good thing to do with the last damage.
[20:57] SPEAKER_01: Greg and we'll come to the end and look at my little thing there and I think we fit our time limit.
[21:05] SPEAKER_01: It's been really good actually we enjoyed it.
[21:08] SPEAKER_01: Is there some questions how can people get a hold of you?
[21:11] SPEAKER_00: I'm sure the easiest way is usually on LinkedIn so if they'll look me up out of Gregory, Roz Diba on LinkedIn they can find me there.
[21:18] SPEAKER_00: Or if they prefer I'm available at Dundaslife.com so if someone's looking for a life insurance quote if someone has any general questions if if you ask specifically for me it'll find its way to me and I'll personally respond for sure.
[21:35] SPEAKER_01: Greg great meeting thanks for going on canvas podcast.
[21:39] SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me Philip this has been great.
