IAM1504 – Former Mayor Helps People by Offering Multi-Peril Disaster Insurance Coverage

Steve Gaer is the president of Recoop Disaster Insurance and joined the insurance startup company in April of this year. Before joining Recoop, Gaer spent 10 years in various insurance industry leadership roles at Marsh McLennan, where he was responsible for a property and casualty program insurance division that spanned more than 200 employees across 16 U.S. offices. Gaer spent 22 years in civil service as a city council member and then four terms as West Des Moines mayor.

• CEO Story: Steve has recognized the importance of insurance to each individual as well as the business. How it can impact the lives of each family is a great place to serve. Having been in the civil service for 22 years as a city council member and a mayor, Steve witnessed the devastating impact of natural disasters on the community and how the government has helped to keep their lives and families together. Joining an insurance company is a great way for him to help and serve.
• Business Service: Insurance covering – hurricanes, storm surges, wildfires tornadoes, earthquakes, gas explosions, winter storms, dust storms, and still expanding.
• Secret Sauce: The only one in the marketplace and very economical. Paying claims within 48 hours after sending pictures.
• CEO Hack: Treat people the way you want to be treated. We should do the right things for the right reasons.
• CEO Nugget: When you are in a leadership position, always be an active listener. People feel good about it and you can make better decisions because you’ve heard everybody out.
• CEO Defined: The chance to set the culture in the organization. Setting the right culture that allows you to attract and retain the very best people and allows your customers impacted by your business to feel as good as they can about doing business with you

Website: www.recoopinsurance.com

LinkedIn: recoop-disaster-insurance

Facebook: recoopinsurance

Instagram: recoopinsurance

Check out one of our favorite CEO Hack’s Audible. Get your free audiobook and check out more of our favorite CEO Hacks HERE

Transcription

The full transcription is only available to CBNation Library Members. Sign up today! 

Please Note: Our team is using the AI CEO Hacks: Exemplary AI and Otter.ai to support our podcast transcription. While we know it's improving there may be some inaccuracies, we are updating and improving them. Please contact us if you notice any issues, you can also test out Exemplary AI here.

00:18 – Intro

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkness values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I Am CEO podcast.

00:46 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Steve Gare of Recoup Disaster Insurance. Steve, super excited to have you on the show. Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited to tell you about our product. Yes, excited to have you on and talk about all your products, and all the awesome things that you've been working on and doing and accomplishing.

But before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Steve so you can hear about some of those awesome things. Steve is the president of Recoup Disaster Insurance and joined the insurance startup company in April of this year. Before joining Riku, Steve spent 10 years in various insurance leadership roles at Marsh McClennan, where he was responsible for property and casualty insurance programs, divisions that span more than 200 employees across 16 U.S. Offices.

Steve spent 22 years in civil service as a city council member, and then 4 terms as West Des Moines mayor as well. Steve, again, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

[restrict paid=”true”]

Absolutely, I am, thank you. Let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I know I touched a little bit on your bio, your background, and all the awesome things you're working on, but I wanted to hop into the time machine and hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story.

01:58 – Steve Gaer

Sure, no, thank you very much. I've been in various businesses over the last 36 years. As you mentioned, I had 10 years in the insurance program business, which looking back at my career, I would say was probably the most enjoyable business that I was in. I just love the companies and the people involved in insurance. I recognize how important insurance is not only to individuals but also to businesses. There are a lot of risks out there that we can't manage ourselves and if something were to happen the economic impacts could be you know just devastating not only to your life personally but also to your business.

So I recognize really how important insurance was just to the entire operation of people's lives and people's business lives. And then during my 22 years in civil service here in West Des Moines, I've seen the devastating impacts of natural disasters in your community. We've had 2 significant flooding events in West Des Moines.

I've never heard of the word derecho in the last 5 years. We've had 3 derechoes in West Des Moines and tornadoes or whatever it might be. I've just seen the devastation to individuals in particular when it comes to natural disasters and how not only local government but state and federal government tries to help allow these people to keep their lives and their families together.

03:20 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes so much sense. And I appreciate you, obviously, for the work that you do in many different aspects. But I love that you use the word risk. And I think especially around business, but frankly around life in general, we sometimes forget that the goal is really to kind of minimize the risks that are out there. And we sometimes, you know, forget about taking those steps so that we can, you know, when, you know, when and if those, you know, situations happen that you don't have the risks that you could not, you could have potentially had if you had not taken those steps.

03:50 – Steve Gaer

Correct. And, you know, it's surprising to note that, but since 1980, 70% of the disaster damage hasn't been covered by insurance. And a substantial majority of families and individuals in the United States just don't have the financial wherewithal to deal with those uninsured risks. And that was one of the reasons that the disaster insurance product is being brought to the market to try to help with that.

04:19 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that we sometimes get our products and services are there to solve problems. So I love to hear what led that problem to be solved and how you guys are definitely doing that. So I would love to drill down a little bit more here, a little bit more about that product, how you guys are serving and supporting the clients that you work with.

04:41 – Steve Gaer

Sure, this disaster, Recoup Disaster Insurance is the only multi-parallel product in the marketplace right now. We currently cover hurricanes with storm surges, wildfires, tornadoes, earthquakes, gas explosions, winter storms, and dust storms. And we're looking at maybe expanding those disasters, but you can buy up to $25, 000 of insurance coverage. So it's not something that's designed to replace your home or to cover all your losses.

\But the idea behind the product is one will cover a number of disasters which you can't buy a product like this other than through us. Second of all, it's very economical. We're estimating that for an average of $10, 000 of insurance coverage, the premium will be $440 a year, which is about $17 per pay period. And as I mentioned, you can buy up to $25, 000 of coverage. The goal for us is if there's been a state or a federally declared disaster that's covered by this product and you've had $1, 000 of damage to your home, send us your pictures.

And our goal is to pay 97% of these claims within 48 hours after the damage. So we get your claim and we'll wire you and you're free to use these proceeds for whatever you believe is in the best interest of you and your family to try to, you know, to try to continue to get along personally and business-wise until you can sort through your other traditional insurance coverages, such as your homeowners or disaster coverages that may be provided through FEMA or the federal government.

So, you know, the goal here is to, I mean, this is so stressful for people to go to. The last thing they need is not knowing where they're going to live how they can buy more clothes or if they need another car. That's the goal of this product is to get you your money right away, and allow you to keep your family and yourself together through the disaster. The other interesting thing that's come up is through all the pandemic and the remote work, we have a number of employers now saying, you know, Steve, I got a lot of my employees now that work remotely, so their home is their office.

And if something happens to their home, then they can't work for me either. So we have a number of companies now looking and making decisions on whether or not they should purchase some of this coverage for each of their employee who works remotely because they need the employee to get back to living conditions in order to continue to work for them. So we've seen a new angle through the remote work that really we didn't anticipate when we first started working on the product.

07:17 – Gresham Harkless

Interesting, that's fascinating considering like, there's been so much disruption and definitely work the way we live lives and how that kind of has manifested itself in you've seen and I love that you kind of talked about you know that frustration that people are going through. I often say that people forget about the human aspect of business and frankly the human aspect of life sometimes and when those you know those disasters happen or those things happen like understanding the I guess the stories the disruption just all those things from a humanistic standpoint. I love that you guys have kind of had that in mind, it sounds like being able to kind of present this product.

08:00 – Steve Gaer

Yeah, we have And as we've worked on it, we started working on this in 2013. I saw some statistics recently that since 2010, 97% of the United States population has been impacted by one of these disasters. And so when you think about it, 97%, that's almost everybody that's living in the United States. So, you know, I think we continue to see more disasters, more frequency of disasters, and quite frankly, broader disasters. And so as we've been working on this product, I think the need for it continues to grow.

08:35 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely, I would definitely echo that as well. So appreciate you for breaking that down. And so I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique? Well, I think that you know, again, the product's the only one in the marketplace.

08:50 – Steve Gaer

I think it's very economical. We're willing to pay claims within 48 hours after you send us pictures of your damages. And so it's a product where we're actually looking forward to actually issuing these proceeds because we know people need them and they've met the criteria. We think we've done a really good job with our insurance carrier partner and our experts in coming up with a pricing model here and an allocation of the risk so that we can continue to provide this product on a cost-effective basis, knowing that these events are gonna occur.

09:28 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You wanna definitely kind of be ahead of the curve. And you actually presented me with a word I had never heard before as well, duration. Could you tell us a little bit more about what that is? And that's definitely now my word of the day.

09:40 – Steve Gaer

So I appreciate you for teaching me to learn something new. Yeah, sure. So duration is a windstorm of sustained winds, more than 100 miles an hour for a certain period of time. As I said, I've lived here in Iowa for 61 years, and for 55 years, I never heard the term 5 years ago, we had our first derecho that had just massive amounts of damage in a number of our cities. We have one large city with a loss of over 50% of its tree canopy. And we had a second one recently and then we had 1 over the winter time.

And so that's an example of another disaster that we're looking at that may be limited to certain states in the United States because we really don't get hurricanes here but yet it's in the nature of a hurricane so our team we're getting up and running with the disasters that we got covered but we're earnestly looking at these additional ones that we know will occur and that should be covered. So, we're looking for opportunities to expand the natural disasters as they become more frequent in the marketplace.

10:44 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, well, I definitely appreciate you for drilling down on that. And I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient? You know,

10:58 – Steve Gaer

I think the 2 things I've always tried to govern myself by is, you know, I treat people the way that you want to be treated. And I've always said, you know, we should do the right things for the right reasons. And, you know, what I really found out, not only in business, but was being mayor is a lot of times the demand is, or the request, or that, is let's do what immediately needs to be done, even though in the long term, that's probably not the right decision.

And I've shied away from that because, once the short term's over, now you've got an issue again to address. And so I've been a big proponent of, let's look over the long term and what is the right thing to do for the right reasons over the long term for our business or for our community. And I think those are the 2 things that I've tried to help guide my leadership and participation in business and in local government. Nice.

11:47 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. So I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So it's a little bit more word of wisdom or a piece of advice. I want you to hop back in that time machine potentially and tell us something you might tell your younger business self, or it might be something you would tell your favorite client.

12:02 – Steve Gaer

Yeah, always. I think the thing I learned the most is to be a really good active listener. When you're in a leadership position, and ultimately at the end of the day, you impact the direction and the culture, you need to be a really good active listener. Sometimes that's hard for people to do, but I always remind myself, that I need to let them have their say and not interrupt them, not try to direct them.

We want their input unfiltered, But before you start giving direction in your thoughts, make sure you've heard everyone and you've listened and you've considered. So to me, a good active listener is the one thing that I've really tried to be. And sometimes that's not as easy to do as people think, but to me it really, one, people feel good about it, and 2, actually I think I can make better decisions because I've heard everybody out.

12:58 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of reminds me of the quote, people don't care how much you know, so they know how much you care. And I imagine too, very similar as we've been talking about that experience, that civil service experience that you've had. I imagine that you also have had to have that listening ear and that has translated very much so. And I imagine other aspects, including the business world.

13:18 – Steve Gaer

It has, and in local government and in business too, you get some frustrated people. So you've had to, you've got to make sure that you take a deep breath and say, okay, they're frustrated, and they're gonna be a little ornery with you when they're gonna share their thoughts, but just accept it, acknowledge why they're frustrated and let them say their piece in the way they want to. And that's not always easy to do, but quite frankly, at the end of the day, I felt better about it at the end, even when they were frustrated with me personally, because you could have the conversation and you let them air it out.

13:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I think people feel a lot more comfortable. And of course, a lot more open to being able to kind of engage, they feel valued and appreciated. So definitely appreciate that. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Steve, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:13 – Steve Gaer

You know, I think the big thing is you have a chance to set the culture of the organization. And to me, that's going to prove out either being the success of the company or not, not only your culture for your customers but also the culture for the employees that you're going to attract to your company. So from my standpoint, the most important thing for me in a leadership position is to make sure you set the right culture that allows you to attract and retain the very best people and allows your customers and those people impacted by your business to feel as good as they can about doing business with you.

14:49 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. You're doing phenomenal work. So Steve, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best people can get hold of you. Find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

15:07 – Steve Gaer

Yeah, clearly they can. They can head to our recoup website. It's up and running. We've gone live with our new provider today and we've got all the contact information. Would love to hear from them. Good, bad, or indifferent. We want them to know that we're out there trying to make this. So this is gonna be available financially and affordable for them.

And I guess my only other one is I wanna let our business partners know too that we view this as a way to structure our business with them so that we either succeed or fail together. And that can be unusual in this environment. But from our business standpoint, that's the way we want to do business. And those are the kind of business partners that we want that look for that win-win and success together.

15:53 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I definitely appreciate that. And to make it even easier, we'll have the links and information that show notes too so that everybody can follow up with you. But I love that you said that when that's exactly what I was thinking of. I think when you ever have really strategic partnerships and solutions, you're not thinking when lose, you're not thinking lose when you're thinking win-win. And I love that you created that culture and love that you share that with us today. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of that.

16:16 – Steve Gaer

Great. Thank you very much.

16:17 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

[/restrict]