Greg Botson (Higginbotham) on Cutting Insurance Costs and Raising Enterprise Value

Rob Murray (00:30)
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast. today we have a really cool and I would say even different type of guest. We have Greg Botson, from Botson Insurance now with Higgin Botham. Greg, thanks so much for doing this, man. Really appreciate it.

Greg Botson (00:44)
You’re welcome. Great to be here.

Rob Murray (00:45)
I think it’s really cool. insurance maybe unsexy on the surface, but it’s it’s a thing that a lot of people have issues with. And the fact that you’ve got specialization in the landscape industry and snow is pretty amazing. So I’m pumped for the podcast. I’ve never, never, never once in my life did I think I was gonna say I was pumped to host an insurance podcast. But for this one, I think I really am, and I and I mean it. So

Greg Botson (01:07)
I don’t think anybody has. Rob, we make it sexy though. We make it sexy.

Rob Murray (01:12)
Yeah, we put it on like a in an escalade. It’s got like, you know, some ribbons and

Greg Botson (01:16)
Ha ha.

Rob Murray (01:17)
bows around the policy. it’s a sexy insurance. Anyway, no but I mean in all seriousness though, it’s a big issue. A lot of people are seeing like crazy increases in their insurance premiums and rates, and even a lot of insurance companies aren’t even like letting them continue their their policies. So we’ll dig into it before we get into it though, if you could just give the audience a little bit of background in terms of experience working in the landscape industry and helping folks with insurance, what you’ve been working on, how you kinda got into it and now what what you’re up to today.

Greg Botson (01:44)
Okay, appreciate it. Well yeah, Rob, I you I am probably the first true insurance nerd that you’ve ever met. I actually went to college for insurance through the business school at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. and I started my business from scratch in nineteen ninety one. So it’s been about thirty five years in the industry.

And grew grew the agency to about 20 employees and about 50 business clients. Of those, 160 of them were landscapers. So we build a nice little program with landscapers. We did partner with Higginsbotham in 2023, which is an employee-owned agency out of Fort Worth, Texas. And we got about 4,500 employees in 140 offices around the country. But we really focus on safety and loss control.

Contract review, education, and we’re real our focus is to help elevate clients’ safety, lower their cost of risk, reduce accidents, reduce downtime, reduce chaos, reduce stress, but really also resulting from that increased productivity and peace of mind in their profits and really their enterprise value if down the road they wanna you know, sell or, you know, continue. So that’s kind of what we’re up to.

Rob Murray (02:59)
Yeah, okay, awesome. And you know, we had we had the opportunity to speak, whatever, the better part of a month ago. And it really does look like you guys have taken a pretty scrutinous look at how landscapers and you know, snow companies are handling insurance. So what do you see as the biggest either mistake people are making or just like ignoring when it comes to how they’re insuring their companies?

Greg Botson (03:25)
Yeah, I think by far right now the biggest thing that’s overlooked or mistake is regarding tracking your payroll for snowplowing and ice removal in your accounting system. Unfortunately, the insurance market for snowplow contractors has gotten really tight the last couple years, three, four years. but especially right now, a lot of companies

Insurance companies in New York, New Jersey don’t even want to write snow contractors and they’re they’re just basically non-renewing them. So heard a lot about that at the SIMA show last month. But but even in Ohio where the risk is a lot lower than New Jersey and New York, the rates have gone up. I I can recall about five, ten, fifteen years ago, the rates for a snowplow contractor for liability was about five dollars per thousand of payroll.

So if you had $100,000 of payroll for snow and ice removal, you’d pay about five, six hundred dollars a year. Well, some comp most companies now have really jacked those rates up due to the increased slips and falls. And we’ve seen rates as as low as $20 and as high as $150 per thousand dollars of payroll. So that’s a big deal. That’s a lot of money. Come audit time. Most

Clients or potential clients don’t know about this and they’re shocked when they get their audit. so what we’re really recommending

Rob Murray (04:44)
Yeah.

Greg Botson (04:45)
to all of our clients is that they track their snow and ice removal payroll separately from their landscaping or their shop work. So if a if a if a worker makes fifty thousand dollars a year, for instance, and half of the time is landscaping or fertilizing or whatever.

You specifically put it in a a category on your P L for that, where the other twenty-five thousand dollars would be while they’re actually plowing and salting. Put in shop payroll, put them in office, you know, do something other than snow because you don’t want to pay that higher rate come audit time if they’re not actually doing the event.

Rob Murray (05:24)
Yeah, so this is a really interesting piece because I think a lot of people don’t get it. What you’re saying is that like when an insurance company audits or charges based on a thousand dollars of payroll, it’s a thousand dollars of snow removal work that they’re

Greg Botson (05:40)
Yes.

Rob Murray (05:40)
actually looking for. And so if I lump it all together, it’s gonna

Greg Botson (05:42)
Well they’re gonna look they’re gonna look at everything that employee does throughout the year. So half the if if you know most if two-thirds of their payroll is during landscaping season and you know you need to break out that landscaping payroll versus the one third for snow plowing because it’s only four months out of the year. So separating that fifty thousand appropriately to what they’re doing, so you’re you’re you’re paying the right rate for their payroll and not being overcharged.

Rob Murray (06:09)
And are you seeing a lot of people getting overcharged and then when they get their audits, they’re just like, Holy shit,

Greg Botson (06:12)
Absolutely.

Rob Murray (06:13)
what the

Greg Botson (06:13)
Every week we’re dealing with an audit that was done that was done and the payroll’s not separated, or even worse, companies aren’t complying with audits. They’re just not responding to the audit request. And the insurance companies do charge like fifty percent more rate or a hundred percent more rate because they didn’t comply. So we’re we’re dealing with at least once a month

a client that you know didn’t respond and they’re getting charged thousands of dollars because they didn’t respond. So that’s another thing. You do need to do the audits. It’s part of the policy and you can’t get away from them.

Rob Murray (06:46)
Right. So it just ignoring it, sweeping under the rug doesn’t really work.

Greg Botson (06:48)
And unfortunately it’s part of the industry right now.

Every company’s doing So I haven’t found a company that does an audit.

Rob Murray (06:55)
Okay, so then you you mentioned in the beginning that you’re really helping folks, you know, reduce risk and chaos, but then you kind of led to this idea of like increasing and helping with enterprise value. Can you draw the line for me for like insurance to enterprise value and how that comes to life?

Greg Botson (07:10)
Well, I think if an a landscaping company is well run with processes, with looking at risk and safety, what measures they’re taking before a snowplow season to look at customers job sites and they’re they’re looking at their trucks and equipment, they’re looking at their employees, they’re doing the correct processes before the season for snow plowing.

During the season for snow plowing, after the season of snow plowing, if they can really run a tight ship and do all the necessary safety and loss control things to reduce risk, reduce claims. Obviously, reduce claims means less insurance premiums. And the more you can save on insurance premiums, the more you gonna are gonna be profitable. And when you’re you know, you know, considering you know merging with somebody or selling, if if you’re more profitable and you got processes.

you’re gonna you’re gonna increase your enterprise value over the long haul because of the safety and the processes and more turnkey operation.

Rob Murray (08:11)
Yeah, which I mean i in itself is gonna probably lead to a happier workforce, longer you know, tenure for staff. So, you

Greg Botson (08:18)
Yep.

Rob Murray (08:18)
know, I I’ve had many a breakfast, lunch, and dinner with landscape entrepreneurs all across the continent in Canada and the US. Never once has the conversation of snow season prep come up at the dinner table over a glass of wine. What does a company do when it comes to, you know, job sites or client sites, truck and equipment people in preparation for the snow season?

Greg Botson (08:42)
Well some some things on a high level would just be looking at all your trucks and your equipment, you know, looking at brakes and tires and lights and guards, making sure everything’s in good working order, making sure your employees are trained on all the equipment so that they can operate it properly, especially, you know, at two o’clock in the morning during a blizzard, you know, making all making sure all things are working properly. you know, and just training them at at different about different jobs job sites and making sure the routes

Are efficient and you know, making sure they’re taking breaks. you know, the and then another big thing in the industry right now is GPS and cameras. I think it’s a great idea, even

Rob Murray (09:20)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Botson (09:21)
though a lot of some insurance companies give discounts for having GPS and cameras inside and outside the vehicles. I think to be a safe company, you need those cameras available to to help with safety and to

sometimes get you out of a situation where you might be someone’s telling you you’re liable and the camera comes around and you know you didn’t cause that accident or you didn’t you know you weren’t speeding and it it helps it helps in a lot of cases to reduce liability. And if if the if the employee knows that there’s cameras inside the vehicles, that’s gonna help with distracted driving and causing less accidents because they’re no they know they’re being watched and

monitored and if they if they have a lot of incidences where they’re being distracted, they’re gonna have increased liability and more accidents and hopefully there’s a a program to you know to work on that behavior or correct that behavior.

Rob Murray (10:17)
Yeah, okay, that’s cool. It’s it’s interesting you say that too, ’cause I I heard one guy who I think was at an NALP event. Anyway, he was saying that how if you do use monitoring equipment, GPS and cameras, and there’s evidence that somebody is maybe speeding or maybe not the best behavior, but you don’t do anything to correct it, and then they get into an accident, you can still be even like more liable. Is there any

Married to that sentiment?

Greg Botson (10:42)
I’ve heard that as well, Rob, and I think that does hold true that you know y it doesn’t help a company to have the cameras and pay for the cameras if they’re not gonna enforce the rules set up around speeding and and distracted driving. So I think in a situation where they had the cameras and they didn’t enforce it, if there was an accident that that resulted in somebody got injured, the other attorneys

probably will subpoena those records and that that could be used against you. But you know, hopefully in a perfect world you are you do set up guidelines, you do set up processes where if somebody breaks those guidelines they’re they’re disciplined properly and if it continues they’re terminated. but it it’s got good points too where

Like we said or like I said earlier, if an accident someone’s alleging an accident went this way and the cameras come out and it’s you know, they’re there you didn’t cause the accident, that more times than not it the cameras are gonna help you than hurt you. But if if something is if something

Rob Murray (11:40)
Yeah, I know that’s cool. I was just it was just a reminder.

Greg Botson (11:43)
I was gonna say I was gonna say if the cameras do show some incriminating evidence, it’s better to get it out up you know, get it involved up front, you know, let the insurance company know and admit liability and then, you know, get it get the claim settled so it doesn’t come back later and cost a lot more because you didn’t share that evidence.

Rob Murray (12:01)
It’s gonna come up at any at any rate anyway.

Greg Botson (12:03)
Right. It’s gonna come up eventually, so get it done sooner and it’ll probably cost you less in the long

Rob Murray (12:08)
Yeah, that’s cool. And I think the moral too was just like cameras aren’t enough. Like the feedback is really like it’s it’s critical. And so just just because you have cameras doesn’t mean they’re gonna function the way that insurance and legal might need them to. So it’s just like if you are using it, make sure you’re giving the feedback when it goes off. So you you kept saying

Greg Botson (12:25)
Absolutely.

Rob Murray (12:26)
distracted driving or speeding being like two maybe most common infractions we see with people on the road when it comes to insurance. Which one’s more prevalent?

Greg Botson (12:36)
the distracted driving causes over an o an overwhelming amount of accidents every year. I I I probably say seventy-five percent of the accidents that you know our clients report are due to some type of distracted driving, whether it was intentional or not intentional. a classic example is one of my clients,

was looking at his G at a GPS and you know, just trying to get to where he wanted to go. He was out on a country road and the GPS said go straight where he should have turned and he ended up hitting another car broadsided and very serious accident. And you know, had he been watching the road he would have known the road went to the right instead of going straight. So he was distracted by the G looking at the GPS. So

You know, that’s a million dollar claim that was paid because of, you know, obviously not intentional, but it it was a claim.

Rob Murray (13:26)
No

Greg Botson (13:28)
So but just something as simple as changing

Rob Murray (13:30)
And so

Greg Botson (13:31)
the radio station, you know, you know,

Rob Murray (13:33)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Botson (13:34)
playing with your phone, obviously, being on the phone, you know, we’re all probably guilty of it in some form or fashion, but it does wreak havoc on the insurance industry with with claims being paid.

Rob Murray (13:44)
Yeah, no doubt. And I was just curio

Greg Botson (13:45)
A lot of people speed but they don’t necessarily cause accidents when they’re speeding. So it is it is distracted overwhelmingly over speeding for sure.

Rob Murray (13:54)
Yeah, interesting. And so when you when you look at okay, you got processes in place and whether it’s the sites you’re working on and prepping before them, your equipment, getting your people trained, whether it’s before, during, or after the season, the ongoing but the idea is having it documented and being run and actually applied.

Greg Botson (14:11)
Yes.

Rob Murray (14:11)
when you when you s when you start to look at some folks that are running into problems, like you mentioned before, like they’re not getting renewed. Like they’re their insurance provider essentially saying, sorry, but we can’t help you anymore. Or they get this crazy rake height or rate hike. What if pe what should people do? Like the people are experiencing this left, right, and center. So like

What what should be something how do they address it?

Greg Botson (14:30)
Call me. you know, it it if if one company

Rob Murray (14:31)
That that works.

Greg Botson (14:33)
if one company is having a problem with snowplow contractors or a a client specific loss ratio or potential client specific, you know, claims or what they’re doing, it’s best to be with an independent agency that has, you know, access to ten, twenty or hundreds of insurance carriers that, you know, will will provide a quote in this space. So

if you’re just with a company that has one, you know, w access to only one company or a select few, it’s gonna be a lot harder. But I think the key to that situation is just having options with other carriers. And obviously if there is a problem because of claims, if they just get out of the industry, if they just cancel the insurance because they don’t like snowplow contractors anymore as a book of business and there’s not much you can do, even if you have a good, you know, loss ratio or claims experience.

we’d we’d find another company for you. But if you’re you’re getting non-renewed because you have too many claims and your loss ratio is high, then I think the best thing to do is work with that company and address the problem, see where the claims are coming from and work with the work with the customer and the underwriter on a corrective action plan saying, Hey, yeah, they had these 10 claims, they’re all backing claims, and we’re working on a distracted driving program. We’ve installed cameras.

We’re doing this, this, and this to correct the problem. And a reasonable underwriter, you know, will, you know, at least consider it and hopefully, you know, give them another chance to improve it over the next couple of years because they are taking corrective action and spending some money and working with their team to make themselves a better risk. You know, r lowering your cost of risk is all about just being a better risk. So if you can have processes and procedures to lower your risk.

You become a much better risk to an underwriter to get more favorable pricing or to get insurance at all sometimes.

Rob Murray (16:22)
Yeah, I know that’s cool. And so if I’m a landscaper, you know, maybe I’m doing, you know, four seasons, so I got snow and landscape in my business. And I go to a you know, apply or or get quotes from different insurance companies and I submit my safety procedure documentation. Is that gonna help my rate?

Greg Botson (16:41)
It’s gonna help your rate if you have a safety program and you have a a a favorable loss a claims history. I mean if you have a favorable safety if you have a safety program and you have you know, they’ve paid out more claims than what you’ve paid in premium in three years, they’re gonna say, Well, you got a safety program but you’re not, you know, you’re not implementing it. But if you got a safety program, you got a driver hiring program, and you you’re you’re you have a very favorable loss ratio, which is usually like

35, 40% of what you pay in over three, five years. If you’re like in the 10% range or 20% range, Rob, the the underwriter will in most cases give the max credit in order to earn the account or win the account because you are a above average risk from a claims and safety standpoint. Even sub every every underwriter

Rob Murray (17:30)
Okay.

Greg Botson (17:30)
right now is asking for subcontractor agreements. So it’s very important to have a subcontractor.

agreement you know for any anybody that you’re subbing snow or landscaping or po you know pool work to they they need to show proof of insurance and have have have a good have good coverage.

Rob Murray (17:48)
Yeah, okay. and so you kind of mentioned this idea of above average or maybe a below average claim ratio because they’re not, getting into issues. what is the average you were saying? Was it like forty five, fifty percent of premium in claims, something like that?

Greg Botson (18:03)
It’s usually around forty percent of what you they want to pay out forty percent or less of what you pay in over three to five years. So if you pay a hundred thousand dollars a year, you’ve paid three hundred thousand dollars over three years, you know, they would want let’s say forty percent of that or one hundred and twenty thousand or less in claims is considered still profitable. If you’ve only if you’ve only they’ve only paid out ten percent or thirty thousand dollars over

over three years then you’re very profitable and they’re gonna do what they can to earn your business with different discounts.

Rob Murray (18:36)
Yeah, okay, that’s cool. And so then what reverse engineering from the premium, you mentioned the a hundred thousand dollars a year. what kind of company would be paying a hundred thousand dollars a year? Like what size business?

Greg Botson (18:45)
Well in Ohio who doesn’t have workers’ compensation, you know, that’s a company probably about I’m gonna guess ten million dollars in revenue, because we don’t have workers’ comp, so you know that’s thirty, forty, fifty trucks.

Rob Murray (18:58)
Right.

Greg Botson (18:59)
you know, so that probably that size company.

Yeah, workers compensation i is you know, can a big nut to crack. So, you know, that might you know, that might be a five million dollar company that’s paying that amount because of the workers comp especially if they’re doing tree work and some other more costly costly tasks.

Rob Murray (19:18)
Yeah, okay. So then I guess yeah, I guess that kind of leads into the next piece of like what’s the ratio of my budget that should be dedicated to insurance? But you’re saying it’s kind of a dependence upon like the complexity of the work. So if somebody’s up in trees and scraping ice off of bridges in Alaska, maybe they’re doing some more high risk stuff, they’d be paying more. But if you look at the average across the board and just bell curve it, what what should my premiums?

What should they be?

Greg Botson (19:44)
Yeah, I’m gonna say one to three percent of your revenue is typically a good range, I believe, but I could be wrong.

Rob Murray (19:52)
And but what do you what do you typically see though in terms of clients that are you know, there’s obviously some really good clients that are maybe one percent or a little bit less. There’s some clients that are having a tough time, so maybe they’re three percent or a bit more. But what what do you see with your clientele?

Greg Botson (20:02)
I’m gonna probably say two per s I’m gonna probably say two percent of revenue is is probably a good depending

Rob Murray (20:07)
On the complexity and the type of work that they’re doing.

Greg Botson (20:09)
Yeah. Yep.

Rob Murray (20:10)
so when you get your hands on a company and they’re looking to get a bit more strategic with insurance, like what do you what do you work on with them? Where do you start?

Greg Botson (20:17)
Well, first thing we do is we look at the claims. You know, we wanna see what if there’s any claims issues. That’s very important. the next thing is, you know, we go through we go through what we call a get to know your company form, which basically helps us understand what they’re doing. So if they’re doing tree work, we have some questions about are they using cranes, you know, how high off the ground do they go, you know, do they go off the ground, if they’re doing pool work.

you know, are they doing diving boards and slides? Are they if they’re snow plowing, are they doing big are they snow plowing big box stores and hospitals and shopping malls? do they have a solid contract and do all their subs obviously have insurance? So you know, getting to know the company so we can put together a solid insurance program is very important to start off with. we also want to know like what

You know, what’s their current insurance program like and get to know that? And we we have what we call the in insurance success test, which we ask ten questions and we rate it based on one through ten for each question. So it’s a score of a hundred. You know, does your agent know your business? Does your agent know the insurance or does the agent know the landscaping business? have they made any errors when making changes to your equipment? How do they handle claims?

Stuff like that, do they review contracts that you know you’re signing before you sign them for work that you’re gonna perform for other people is a huge, a huge issue right now. And we actually have a whole department with that with attorneys that three attorneys that will help review contracts before you sign them to make sure you’re not going outside of your insurance, your insurance coverage.

so we we we we get to know the the landscaper inside and out so we can so we can set up a good program. you know another big thing, Rob, is drivers. We want we get a list of drivers’

Rob Murray (22:06)
Yeah, I was just about to ask that.

Greg Botson (22:08)
names and driver’s license numbers ahead of time so we know what we’re dealing with, and if we have any drivers with issues, we kind of address that up front as much as we can.

Driver guidelines for each company, insurance company have changed a lot over the years. Everybody’s got their own driver guidelines from you can hire anybody you want with some with a few companies to, you know, you know, they gotta be 25 years old with, you know, one ticket, one minor ticket, no major violations in five years. So we I feel we do have carriers that have the most flexible guidelines in the industry.

Where you can hire 18 years old somebody 18 years old or 19 years old, where a lot of companies won’t allow that. And we they usually allow, depending on the age, two minor violations, like two minor speeds, you know, no major violations for three years. and it’s interesting. we come across this a lot every year. major speed versus minor speed.

A minor speed is usually twenty miles an hour or under the speed limit, and that’s like a minor violation. So you can have two of those in three years. But a major speed over 25 mil over 20 miles an hour over is just like getting a DUI. So we’ve had people that are forty years

Rob Murray (23:24)
Jesus.

Greg Botson (23:24)
old that have, you know, a a a a hiccup where they went 30 miles an hour over the speed limit one time in five years.

And they’re getting excluded because it’s like a DUI and we gotta do our best to try to you know get to make an exception on that driver. But yeah, people are shocked when we want to ex when the insurance company wants to exclude somebody because of one ticket, because it is considered a major violation. That’s really that’s really you know, important right now.

Rob Murray (23:51)
Yeah, well it’s just getting more scrutinous and more scrutinous cause insurance companies, who would have thought, want to make a profit. so then when

Greg Botson (23:57)
Yeah, and it’s they they they usually make they usually make their money on their investments. So a lot of insurance companies don’t make money on insurance, they make it on their millions or billions of dollars that they’re investing. So it’s not like they’re making money hand over fist like a lot of people think.

Rob Murray (24:13)
Right, right, right. I mean they still gotta do their best to obviously mitigate their risk. That’s the name of the game. So then if you look at if you look at you know, an average landscape business, you know, call it Ohio and they’ve got insurance now, but you know, they really haven’t done any scrutinist look at it. So they’ve just like, Yeah, whatever, my insurance company and maybe rates are going up, but like nah.

What like they’re like, you what, maybe I should. I listen to this guy, Greg, on this podcast. Maybe I should see what they can do. Like, what would you see as the the opportunity for the most part that when you see a current company move over to you guys, where do you guys like see the gaps in their current insurance and that you guys help with?

Greg Botson (24:47)
Good question. we see we see a big gap with airs and emissions coverage. which is you got a design build firm, they’re doing patios and retaining walls maybe and outdoor kitchens and the whole kitten caboodle with you know with with outside design build projects.

Airs and emissions would cover you if you have a faulty workmanship claim against you. So situation happens where an employee or a company’s employee doesn’t pour a footer deep enough on a patio and it cracks, and the client kicks you off the job, or even after the thing’s already done, says, Hey, I’m not I’m not paying you, or I’m kicking you off the job and having somebody rip out your work and redo it, or I’m not paying you because

This is faulty, this is faulty, and this is faulty, which we we usually get one or two a year of those. the faulty workman, the errors and omissions, you know, depending on the situation, we’ll cover something like that and fix, you know, fix the work and get you out of that type of lawsuit. So that’s that’s really important. the other the other really important thing these days.

Rob Murray (25:51)
So a lot of people don’t a lot of people don’t have it though.

Greg Botson (25:53)
It’s becoming more popular. A lot of companies didn’t offer it five years ago. I I’d say probably twenty five to forty percent of the time they have it, the other times they don’t. So it’s it’s not in every policy like you’d think. It’s it’s

Rob Murray (26:05)
Yeah, that’s significant.

Greg Botson (26:06)
yeah. Yep.

Rob Murray (26:08)
All right, cool. And what was the next one?

Greg Botson (26:09)
The other thing is cyber insurance. you know, they say it’s not if you’re gonna have a claim, it’s when you have a claim. So, you know, we’re trying to make sure all our clients and prospective clients have some form of a separate cyber policy because the cyber insurance that’s included in the standard policy is worthless in a lot of cases, depending on you know what they provide. So just having a robust

cyber policy is is really something that we’re focusing on and you’re you’re probably gonna spend, you know, a company million to two million dollars and you’re probably looking at twelve to fifteen hundred dollars a year. so it’s it’s a reasonable cost considering but one of my longtime clients had a cyber claim two years ago and

I think we paid over two hundred and thirty thousand dollars and she said, Greg, that was the best two thousand dollars I ever spent and I appreciate you pushing cyber insurance on our company. So it was a was a great investment. So so cyber is really important.

Rob Murray (27:04)
Well, and I think it’s a really cool topic too, because a lot Well and a lot and a lot of people

Greg Botson (27:08)
Pardon?

Rob Murray (27:09)
don’t necessarily I was just saying a lot people don’t understand necessarily what cyber insurance covers. And a lot of business owners I talk to are like, well, no one’s gonna hack my business. Like I’m ignor like I’m just this small little business that no one cares about. But then we hear these stories of somebody on the team buying twenty thousand dollars in gift cards

Because they were, you know, fished or something like that. or like their meta account gets hacked and there’s a bunch of ad spend that gets, you know, crushed through, like $15,000, $30,000 of ad spend goes through their account really, really fast. Like, what are some of the common cyber insurance claims that you’ve seen that people just might not quite understand are happening all over the place?

Greg Botson (27:51)
Yeah. The the one I just mentioned was where they broke into their bank account, their email and their and one other one other account for them and they just went crazy on on that and they they they were forging accounts and they were going across the country and making withdrawals from ATMs for like they’re forging checks and making withdrawals from bank from ATMs where you can get like

thousand dollar you can deposit a a check for five thousand dollars even though it was fake and get like a thousand dollars back so they went across the country and did that I I don’t know exactly how many times let’s say a hundred times so they got a hundred thousand dollars just from forging a check what you know after they broke into their system and created their own checks for for my client so the I I’ve seen that I’ve seen a total

you know, the ransomware where they hold your your data for ransom and you know, you gotta they want two three hundred thousand dollars for that, which a lot of companies will not pay the ransom because they know they’re gonna do it again. So they’ll just shut it down and they’ll try to retrieve all the information from your from your from the web or from your server to you know to get you back up and running. Another client about three years ago, not a landscaper but

Another client, he had his own IT department and he still got hacked, and that was over $200,000 that he spent as well, because he didn’t he didn’t think he needed cyber insurance when I offered it to him six

Rob Murray (29:22)
Right.

Greg Botson (29:22)
months before. but we’ve seen ACHs get hacked or get rerouted to a hacker. we’ve seen

A lot of fake checks, like I just mentioned. They pulled checks out of the mail and they whitewash them and they cash most of the banks when that happened were refunding businesses, but I heard from some banks recently that they’re no longer reimbursing for those unless you have like a a check service that you pay for where that you have to like approve every check or approve checks over a certain amount.

They want you to buy their service in order for them to you know, back up these checks. So that’s those are the kinds of things that we’ve seen on the cyber side.

Rob Murray (30:03)
I bet you of the landscapers listening to this right now, less than half have cyber insurance. And you know, there was somebody that said to me a long time ago, they’re like, you know, you really want to pay for the insurance that is gonna help you when you’re totally fucked. And I think cyber insurance is a really good example of like thirteen hundred bucks, fifteen hundred bucks, whatever.

And it can help you so much when you’re completely hooped that it’s like, why wouldn’t you? And I think errors and omissions is another great example. and so if we get away from like the commercial stuff and you look at like key man insurance and you know, insurance on the owner, is there anything that you can share that help people understand that a bit a bit better?

Greg Botson (30:42)
Yeah. I do wanna make one comment on your original statement there, Rob. you we when we meet with our clients and potential clients, we’re always trying to offer higher deductibles on vehicle and general liability and property and the and tools. In exchange, take that savings and put it in a higher umbrella or put it in a cyber policy, you know, or put it in something where if it happens, it’s gonna be devastating, you know.

versus, you know, going from a two thousand dollar deductible to a three thousand dollar deductible. That thousand dollars isn’t gonna hurt you, but that million dollar cyber claim or that, you know, that errors and omissions claims for three hundred thousand could put you out of business.

Rob Murray (31:21)
Absolutely.

Greg Botson (31:22)
but to answer your question about Key Man, we do we do offer Key Man, which is just basic life insurance. It funds a key man agreement where you got you know you got a high valued team member. If they if something, God forbid, happened to them sudden suddenly, this would provide funds to go out and hire a new person or replace revenue that was lost because that person’s no longer there. And it’s basically simple life insurance.

That funds a key man agreement, which a lot of insurance companies will give sample key person agreements, you know, during the quoting process. So, you know, that’s very important to have, as well as buy-sell insurance, where if you have a partner, you know, have a couple partners in a landscaping company or two partners in a landscaping company, and one partner unfortunately dies, that those his shares would automatically go to his spouse if he was married.

Or she was married. You don’t want if you don’t want to be in business with your partner spouse, you should consider buy-sell insurance to provide the money to buy that spouse out of the shares so that you would own 100% of the company instead of just 50% with the the surviving spouse.

Rob Murray (32:33)
Yeah, that’s huge. And I think it’s one of those exact examples of it’s not a crazy amount of money and it’s probably not gonna happen. But man, you’re gonna want it if it does. Yeah. All right, sweet. So

Greg Botson (32:41)
But it does. Yeah. E even life insurance in general, even life insurance in general, Rob, is important. Like if you have a growing company and you you grow from two million to five million and your insurance is still at a hundred thousand or even a million, you know, you should consider higher amounts like two, three, four million, because you know, if something, God forbid, happened to you, you want

your spouse to maintain that same lifestyle, pay off all your business debt so they’re not strapped with, you know, selling a company at a reduced rate because the owner’s gone and you know, being strapped with a lot of bills that they weren’t anticipating. So so yeah. It’s important.

Rob Murray (33:19)
Well, I I just ran my insurance policy through Chat GPT, whatever, eight months ago and was like, where do you see the biggest exposure? And it, you know, outlined a bunch of stuff, but it became very clear that we were insured as if we were a company from twelve years ago. And our insurance company never like updated our files, the nature of our business, the size of our business. And I was just like, Holy shit.

Greg Botson (33:43)
yeah. Unfortunately a lot of times agents don’t review policies as often as they should. I actually one of my clients ran his policy through Chat GPT recently and provided me the report and luckily we passed in all areas, but you know all the coverages they recommended he did have to some extent. But yeah, it’s amazing what

chat GPT or other AI can do from evaluating your even your insurance and a whole lot of other things. So it’s definitely something that we wanna make sure we’re you know we’re on track with.

Rob Murray (34:17)
Well, I mean the last time I read my insurance policy, I fell asleep. So this one was a bit

Greg Botson (34:20)
Yeah.

Rob Murray (34:21)
easier as a a practice. okay, long story short, you obviously got landscapers.

Greg Botson (34:22)
Yeah. Like you said, it’s not sexy, that’s for sure.

Rob Murray (34:28)
We did our best, Greg. I I think you did a

Greg Botson (34:30)
Right.

Rob Murray (34:30)
really good job. So if someone they listen to, they’re like, All I gotta talk to Greg, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Greg Botson (34:36)
best way to reach me is just probably give me a call on my cell phone. I can give that to you. It’s 440 537 2292-440 537 2292 That’s Greg Botson. Not to be confused with Boston, but that happens all the time. my email is GBotson@

That’s [email protected] Or shoot me a text. You know, I’m like you as a business owner working all the time. So weekdays, weekends, well you know, just get a hold of me, you know, whenever you can. But

The first thing we would do is do the get to know your company and then do the insurance success test so we we know we can help you and make sure you’re a good fit and we want to make sure it’s a a positive experience and we can help you grow and be more profitable and be better protected.

Rob Murray (35:24)
Buddy, well, I appreciate you. thanks for doing this.

Greg Botson (35:27)
Yeah you

Rob Murray (35:27)
we’ll put the contact information for your phone and your email into the notes of this podcast. So if you’re listening to this and you missed it, it’s all good. Just check out the description and reach out to Greg when you get a chance. I highly recommend it. There’s so many people that don’t understand this stuff or care to serve the way you do. and as much as insurance may not be the sexiest thing, it’s really, really nice to have when you have it, when you need it.

Greg Botson (35:50)
Yeah, we wanna be like your attorney or your doctor, your CPA, like in an emergency. We wanna be we wanna help you out, but we wanna make sure that everything’s good when you have that emergency. So don’t take it for granted that you’re gonna be covered for everything ’cause you’re probably not. So we wanna help you with that.

Rob Murray (36:06)
Cool buddy. Thanks for doing this and everybody else for listening to another episode of the IM Landscape Growth Podcast.

Greg Botson (36:11)
Thanks, Rob, appreciate you.