How to Grow Your Agency From 18 to 150 Employees Overnight

Joey Giangola: Mr. Josh Morey, how you doing today, sir?

Josh Morey: Good, how are you?

Joey Giangola: Josh, I'm doing all right. I'm doing all right. I want to know this before we get anything too serious. What's something that you are both intrigued and maybe a little scared by at the same time?

Josh Morey: It's a great question. Well, so one of my mottos is to do something that scares me every day, and so it just really pushes me out of my comfort zone. I think my worst fear is of heights, and so I haven't quite conquered that fear of going skydiving or anything like that yet. But what I do try to do is anything that's a little uncomfortable I try to tackle every day. Historically, I've had this fear of just walking up to people, introducing myself, so I try to get out of my comfort zone in doing that every day.

Joey Giangola: Well, some fears keep you alive in some cases, so I don't know that you need to jump out of a plane. But I mean, if you want to work your way up there, I mean, I guess it's something. For me, Joshua, I got to go with a driveway that I can't see the end to, just a driveway that leads off into nowhere. I'm a little intrigued. I would like to know what's back there. It seems like it might be extravagant, but it also could be very terrifying. I'm not entirely sure. I don't know if you ever find that driveway that leads off into the woods.

Joey Giangola: Josh, I want to move this over into the world of, we'll say, insurance. Where do you think the people in insurance and the people calling the shots and putting agencies together and really making the calls, in your experience, what have you witnessed that people are maybe also a little intrigued by, but also scared at the same time? What's something that maybe is holding people back? What's something that they maybe shouldn't be as afraid of as they should, I guess, maybe?

Josh Morey: I think the fear of the unknown is huge. In our industry, insurance is all about protecting risk, so if you get into insurance, you'll probably have that mindset. But I think with the next generation of, whether it's an agency owner or insurance companies, I think being able to look forward and be comfortable with some uncertainty and going against what our industry was created for to be able to take extra risk. You can't really ensure some of these. If you want to grow your agency by two times in the next five years, what does that take? You can't buy an insurance product to do that. It's going to be calculated business risk to get there. Yeah, that's what I would say.

Joey Giangola: Has there been anything that stood out to you as, really, sort of highlighting that, people that you're excited about, areas of the industry that maybe have caught your attention more so than others?

Josh Morey: I think, too, on the agency side, because that's where I come from. My father started our agency in 1980, so this is our 43rd year. I have so much respect for everything my dad and uncles did for us. Part of that fear is I don't want to mess it up. They've created a generation of success and now I come in and be like, "Oh, okay. Do I just keep it status quo or do I not just carry it on, but do I amplify all that they've done for 43 years and really, exponentially have a bigger impact?"

Joey Giangola: That's very interesting, the idea of messing it up, but at the same time, putting your own stamp on things. How do you settle with that idea? Is there certain lines, is there certain things that you've been saying, like, "This is maybe off limits" or, "It's been this way"? Maybe a logo or something? Is there anything that's off limits, or how do you settle with what you're willing to change and alter and put your own stamp on?

Josh Morey: Yeah, our logo, I'm Japanese American, and our logo is our family crest that's been for generations, and it's the three trees. In Japanese, it means force. It's funny because my name doesn't look Japanese. It's spelled M-O-R-E-Y, but when my great-grandfather immigrated from Japan in the late 1800s, it was M-O-R-I. Couldn't speak English and that's how immigration spelled it.

Josh Morey: So to get back to your question, something that is off limits is our name because that speaks to our legacy and our story and our history, and being in our Japanese American community for over 125 years, people know our family, people recognize the name, and so what is off limits is our name because it speaks to the generations that have gone before me. For our platform, the evolution of our brand is that, The J. Morey Company and the Morey family being in our community for 125 years, and my dad and uncle starting our insurance agency post-World War II.

Josh Morey: So when I bought my dad and uncles out three years ago, I said, "Well, The J. Morey Company and the J. Morey family is one story in our community." There are other amazing stories, and if you just think about insurance agents and brokers, there's the Aihara family, the Funakoshi family. There's families throughout Hawaii, New York, Chicago, San Francisco. We're based in L.A. But the whole platform of Ori-gen now is remember where you come from, create a new future. That's where my risk-taking went in is I want to continue on these stories, like our family's story, with other agencies that if they sold to another company, their name would be off the door and their legacy and their community would be gone. So that's part of our business model, too, is we want to keep the names of these legacy companies, these legacy insurance agencies, yet powered by on the backend Ori-gen which, as I mentioned, the concept is remember where you come from to create a new future.

Joey Giangola: My guess is, I'm just going to take a guess, Josh, is where did they start? Has the agency gone through any evolutions in terms of the businesses, the types of insurance you've sold? Have you gravitated towards different interests? Has there been any sort of conversations as to the direction? What has that experience been like, again, with your dad and your uncle to where you see maybe the business going and creating that new future?

Josh Morey: Totally. My dad and uncles started about the second generation into insurance agency ownership, so post-World War II a lot of Japanese Americans came back from the interment camps and started their own insurance agencies, and at that time, the Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor, so public enemy number one was the Japanese American community.

Josh Morey: Like I mentioned, we were sent internment camps for two years, came back, and no insurance company would appoint a Japanese agent. We had mostly homeowners. I mean, we still had to have car insurance, we still had to have home insurance, umbrella insurance, so the agents at that time banded together and created their own insurance company called Western Pioneer. Since no insurance company in America would insure our community, we had to create our own.

Josh Morey: So it was based, really, around personal lines because that was the need at the time. When my dad and uncles started our company, J. Morey Company, it was very much so a personal lines-driven agency. It's evolved definitely since then, where our commercial lines business is 70% of the business compared to 30% is personal. We've invested in resources to be able to take us up market, and so now, yes, we will serve the personal lines, but our target clients are middle market, manufacturing, import, export, hospitality. We've done some work in public agencies now, too, so we're really kind of trying to move upstream.

Joey Giangola: And what were those conversations like? When did that start to happen? Is that something that you felt passionate about? Is it something your dad and your uncles sort of started to dabble with? But how did you go from that personal line shop to now be predominantly commercial lines-focused?

Josh Morey: So capacity-building is huge in my mind because how are you going work for or how are you going to win a bid for a public contract if your experience has been in personal lines? And so it's taken generations to really build capacity from personal lines to small business and, "Okay, you've done this small business. We're going to refer you to a 100-employee company and whatnot," so it has taken generations to kind of build that type of capacity to even win an RFP at a larger level. I think strategically, though, we never had targeted revenue or premium sizes for our salesforce. When I came in three years ago, really kind of structuring, in terms of incentive-wise, the type of business we're going to go after, and so although it's taken a long time to build capacity, I think strategically, when my dad and uncles retired, I wanted us to be the most efficient, and I want to grow exponentially, so we had to set up the right structure to be able to go after that business.

Joey Giangola: All right, Josh. You said the word. You said "efficient," so I got to know. There's probably something that was top of your list when you came in and said, "I get to call the shots now." What's that first thing you went after to get the biggest return on that efficiency?

Josh Morey: It was technology. It is as simple as we were still scanning documents. I mean, literally scanning from the insurance carrier, sending it to the client, having them sign it, loading it to our system, and then sending it back to the insurance carrier. It was as easy as, at that time, it was Insuresign, we've now moved over to fully Adobe products. It feels like an easy fix, but it's as easy as having a DocuSign or Adobe-type technology, so that's the first thing I did, and many other things since then.

Joey Giangola: Yeah, there is no easy technology shift in insurance, Josh. I'm sure you've probably figured that out. Everything comes with a bit of a struggle. Has there been anything else that has maybe surprised you along the way that maybe gives you a little bit more respect for, again, the generations that have come before you? At some point, we think, "Oh, man. These guys are onto something." Was there something that stood out to you that you didn't quite see until you were in the driver's seat?

Josh Morey: Definitely. So when I first started in the industry, I started off as a commissioned-only salesperson in the agency, so I literally started by selling Personal Alliance Auto. I had all my family and friends that I was hitting up, "Who is your auto insurance with?" And when I bought out my dad and uncles, becoming an agency owner, there's so many things that I don't know, and so I will tip my hat to, we have a consultant called MarshBerry that I have just learned so much from in terms of revenue per employee. What is targeted EBITDA? How do you structure it in a way that every employee in the organization feels like they have a pathway in their future? Yeah, my viewpoint from starting of just trying to sell to now running an agency. But I would say having been through the whole process and wearing every hat within our company, I feel like I try to make decisions in light of being in that seat where these decisions are going to affect.

Joey Giangola: Yeah, and in making that transition, we've talked a little bit about it, but I guess getting right to it, do you have any sort of advice for somebody that might be at on the cusp of that sort of perpetuation? You said you guys brought in a consultant. I don't know if they were in the middle of that process as well. What advice would you give to somebody going through that process? It sounds like you guys had everything, at least somewhat. It sounds like it was a pretty smooth transition. Would there be any tips that you have for another agent that's, like I said, on the cusp of taking over and how they can easily change of the guard?

Josh Morey: Yeah, and it takes time, so I think our process took about four years to figure out, so there's the economic piece of the founding generation. You've built such a great company, right, and then there's the next piece of, okay, so how you want to retire? How do you get paid out? Is there one person or is there now an ownership group who has to be able to, I mean, do you take a second mortgage on your house or do you take a line of credit? It takes time to figure out all the aspects and the one piece of the economic side of it, you can't just do it overnight. There has to be a preparation for the new ownership group coming in. So I'd say if you're thinking about it, you have to start the process because it's not going to happen overnight.

Josh Morey: The second piece, operationally, you have a generation that founded a company and that in their mind it's hard to turn over because they've done it this way for a certain amount of time. Having that next generation of starting to have the power to lead, and not saying that they have to... And that's a process as well, right, and so there's empowerment, so there's got to be a willingness on both sides to be able to make perpetuation work.

Joey Giangola: You said "empowerment." Did you have a moment? Was there when your dad came to your uncle and they sort of gave you a responsibility that you weren't sure you were ready for? You're like, "Oh, you're going to let me do this?" Did you have, I feel like it's a movie trailer moment, your eyes light up, you're like, "Oh, really? I can?"

Josh Morey: I think it was the other way around. I think it was, "You have to let me lead here. I have these great ideas. How can I convince you to be able to give me the authority and to be empowered to make these decisions?" I think that does really come from a founding generation of they've done it so long a certain way and had success for this amount of time.

Joey Giangola: What was the one moment of convincing that you feel was the most successful where you felt like, "All right, I think I got them now"?

Josh Morey: It was tough. I don't know if there was just a single moment. I think it was being proactive to show the ownership group and the ownership group being my family, so my dad and uncles and probably their microscope was even a lot more magnified than if it wasn't family and so I had to be incredibly proactive like, "What do you think about this idea?" And almost even executing the idea before I even propose we should do this, it's like, "I'm just going to do it. I'm going to show the worth," and so it doesn't take a year to be able to say, "Can I get approval to implement this process?" I just kind of did it. They're like, "Wait, how? Well, what did you ...? That's really cool."

Joey Giangola: Well, they say it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, Josh, and I guess that's true for you as well.

Josh Morey: You sound like my dad.

Joey Giangola: That's the first time anybody said that to me. I'll have to think about how I feel about that one. Maybe I'm getting old. Josh, I mean, as you look back at everything and sort of where you started in the agency to where you are now, is there anything that has maybe surprised you along the way? Did you maybe expect to be here? Is this something that you kind of feel like where you should be? Is there something that you know found to be wildly different than maybe your expectations were set out on?

Josh Morey: Yeah, so where we're at right now today is when I bought my dad and uncles out, we were an 18-person insurance broker. We spent a year just thinking and dreaming about this Ori-gen concept and once we launched Ori-gen and where we're at today, we've gone from 18 employees to over 150 in a year and a half. Is that what I planned? No, that wasn't the plan at all.

Josh Morey: I think what I'm learning about myself, too, is if you stick to your values and if you stick to a truly missional concept that drives you, good things will happen. I was happy with just to continue on our family's legacy, and then when I started thinking a little bit bigger of what's meaningful to me at the end, it had nothing to do with how much money, it had nothing to do with how big we got. It had everything to do with can I play a role in the community that I came from to carry to the next generation?

Josh Morey: And then thinking beyond just my story to the other stories within diverse communities, that's what we're really targeting throughout America. I'm surprised every day. I don't think I still realize that our company's over 150 employees and that happened overnight, so it is, it's surprising, but I think it does just give me confidence speaking to, what are we about? Yes, we do insurance, but is there something else missionally that is driving us forward? I think that's where we're getting a lot of our growth from.

Joey Giangola: So why don't you explain that a little bit more. Take me inside that, like you said, I mean, almost overnight sort of transition, that's got to be a lot to get your hands around.

Josh Morey: Oh, yeah.

Joey Giangola: I'm sure a lot of agency owners are saying, "What's going on there?" So what is going on there and what do you really attribute to? How did you take that and see that sort of exponential growth?

Josh Morey: I think it starts internal for what's meaningful to me and that's what I had just mentioned, what was meaningful to me was my part in our community. How do you translate that from a mom-and-pop shop to as we're growing and maybe we'll be 500 employees in the next three years? Who knows? There's so much to learn. We had never been through an audit before. We're going through one right now. Access to capital is huge. How do we continue to either buy or partner with agencies with leveraging our own personal capital? I mean, that has been such a learning experience to me. How do you maintain a culture that within a company that it's easy to do or easier to do when it's 18 employees? But now having it be 150, your culture has to be solid, has to be felt from the top down. So all these things, I mean, I don't have a playbook or anything like that, I kind of have looked at what others have done, but it has to be very unique to us and genuine. But I honestly, I don't know what I'm doing, but it feels right.

Joey Giangola: It might be one of the bigger understatements I've maybe heard on this podcast, but we'll leave it there. Well, so acquisition, I mean, take me a little bit deeper. So was it a little acquisition, a little bit more expansion in terms of product offering? What did you really find to be one of the more drivers to success for you?

Josh Morey: Yeah, so it has been mainly through acquisition, but the culture of the company, if you just have an M&A strategy, that's not really a strategy to me. Say we're rolling up or aggregating, that's not a strategy. It has to speak to the culture of the company, so we've developed this sales culture where organic growth is definitely key, and that just speaks to the culture of the sales team, and so if we continue to acquire, then you build in this 15% growth margin over five years, you double in size, anyways. Through M&A, through a sales culture. We continue this engine or this flywheel that just keeps on spinning.

Josh Morey: The other parts of that we've dive diversified some of our product offering. We do benefits now, just launched our 401(k) retirement plan platform, was focusing in on specific verticals of business, so having a Japanese practice, having a Korean practice, a Chinese practice soon, a public entity practice.

Joey Giangola: Wow.

Josh Morey: So focusing in on different strategies between M&A, organic growth, culture, and then vertical specialization.

Joey Giangola: Yeah, so you're saying it's you can't just acquire without, like you said, that mindset of making sure the business is growing because it will just become stagnant.

Josh Morey: Right.

Joey Giangola: But then I'm also interested if you could take me inside that decision to even break down, like you said, the specific to go Japanese, Chinese. I mean, somebody might just, I mean, overlook that and say, "Have you found that makes a meaningful difference of splitting the business even further down into segments?"

Josh Morey: Yeah, it definitely does. I think as we've grown, being able to create teams where people feel like they're giving leadership, so the more that people feel they're involved in the decision-making and what I'm doing here in the leadership I'm giving is benefiting this company, so rather than having it just being top-down-driven, we can create verticals of business or even geographic areas of leadership so that people feel empowered to lead and then they attract good talent and good people, too.

Joey Giangola: Yeah, and you think that's, again, I was going to say that's something that could apply beyond just again, the language or whatever classification, you could really just set that upon any sort of parameters that you want is... Do you guys have eyes on anything else? You said geographic. Is there anything else that you're sort of noodling on?

Josh Morey: Yeah, definitely. Geographically, we're launching our New York office this summer. We're looking for expansion in Florida, Texas, and in the Northwest. Right now we're heavily centered in California and Hawaii. Just being frank, our mission is for diverse communities. What we've done in the past year and a half has been really focused around the Asian American community or Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander community. But now it's we're looking forward, we're looking, what can we do in the African American community? What can we do in the Latin American community, woman-owned businesses, and other diverse agencies?

Joey Giangola: All right, Joshua, if you had to give me one tip, if you had to give one tip to an agency, whether it's the owner or whether it's somebody maybe coming up in the ranks that's next in line, what's maybe the most meaningful thing that you could say to them that would give them the best shot of maybe that exponential growth they might be achieving?

Josh Morey: I don't think people realize how amazing our industry is and I'm talking about the insurance industry from the agent and broker perspective. I feel with 92% retention on average, we are a very stable business. And then you have rates rising, so that offsets, so if you do nothing, you're going to be fine. I believe we believe we live in the greatest country in the world, in the greatest economy in the world, and now in the greatest industry in the world, so I think coming from that mindset is like, this is an amazing business.

Josh Morey: So if you're in the best place at any business in the world, how are you not thinking about the perpetuation of your agency? And so you have to start somewhere, right, and so if you really view your business as being the best, you have to start planning as if you are the best, and that takes a period of time. So whether it's identifying young talent that you don't have in your agency at the time, or if you do have the young talent, being able to empower them to make decisions and identifying them, communicating with them that you are the next generation of this company, I think is key. So if you can understand that, identify that, and then start a process of, "This is what it's going to look like." It might take five years to really implement and execute, but you got to start somewhere. I mentioned MarshBerry, they were great. I mean, they've been an incredible vital part of our success. But there's other consultants out there, too, like the Reagans and regional advisors that can assist with this.

Joey Giangola: All right, Josh, I got three more questions for you, sir. And the first one is, what is one thing you hope you never forget?

Josh Morey: I hope I never forget where I come from. Going back to that story of if I have a hard decision at any point in this day today or in the years to come, I have this reference point of right after World War II, my grandparents were given weeks to pack up two bags and were sent to internment camps for two years. I can't forget where I've come from because that's what I'm dealing with today is nothing compared to what they had to deal with. So with that frame of reference, I have a duty to honor what they've done and so I personally will say, I'll never forget that, but the question you ask, I hope I do never forget it.

Joey Giangola: Now, on the other side of that, Josh, what's one thing you still have yet to learn?

Josh Morey: I still have yet to learn a lot. I think in particular, there's a lot on the business end of things that I don't know that I'm realizing that as our company's growing, so having a mindset of doing something that scares me every day because it pushes me out of my comfort zone. But secondarily, it's if I want to continue to grow and make the impact that we're going to have, I personally have to get better. I need to know more about finance. I need to know more about acquisition strategies. I need to know about organic growth, sales strategies, how to build the right culture. So I need to personally evolve into the chairman, the CEO, the president, the leader that I need to be.

Joey Giangola: All right, Josh, last question to you, sir. If I were to hand you a magic wand of sorts to reshape, change, alter, speed up, really, any part of insurance, what's that thing? Where is it going and what's it doing?

Josh Morey: I love that we're ending on this question because I think that there's certain barriers that have kept communities like ours or diverse communities from not participating or being able to compete on an equal playing field and so I truly do, and I live diversity, equity, and inclusion, and I just, not feel, but I believe that it's better business. The more competition you have in the marketplace, the less barriers to entry, or the less barriers to success, the end product is going to be a better product, and at the end of the day, we serve our clients, and if our clients have a better product and there's more access to competition, I think it's a better marketplace.

Joey Giangola: Josh, this has been fantastic. I'ma leave it right there, sir.

Josh Morey: Thank you. Thank you for having me.