Risky Business: Essential Insurance Strategies Every Business Needs to Know

Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: [00:00:00] I go in my truck every day and instead of seeing the song title on XM radio, it tells me call 1 8 8. John, personal injury, right? The lawsuits nowadays the ambulance chasers the billboards, the marketing for litigation. It's blown up everything. So your old settlements that were seven to 12 grand for when your, employee bumped into Mr. And Mrs. Williams, that eight grand now is 80. It's literally 80. Speaker 2: Welcome to the Roots of Success, the Premier Landscapers podcast that brings you the latest tips and strategies for successful landscape business. I'm Jim Calli, one of the principles and coaches of McFarlin Stanford. Jason New and I started McFarlin Stanford to coach landscape businesses after years in the industry ourselves, now more than 10 years since we began, McFarlin has a deep bench of coaches and subject matter experts who work with our clients on very specific issues of business. Whether you're struggling with people. Profits or just day-to-day challenges Our coaches and guests have the real world experience and [00:01:00] practical advice to help you build a thriving and profitable landscape business. Chris Psencik: Hey, good afternoon. This is Chris Psencik with McFarlin Stanford. I am very excited that you're gonna join us today for another Roots of Success podcast. This afternoon we have Chase and Cal from Sage Insurance and Risk Advisors with us today. Chase. Cal, welcome. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Thank you. Happy to be with you. Chris Psencik: Excited to have you guys here with us today. So as everybody knows, and for those who don't know, that aren't not part of our peer groups chase and Cow are some of our Ace Advantage partners. So we are very excited to get to visit with them every year, throughout the year. I know they do a lot of work with our ACE Peer Group network, and so we're excited to share some insights today with our ACE Peer Group members and our listening audience at large. I know we've got a lot of great stuff we're gonna cover today, and we're gonna hit a variety of different fun topics and things as we move along. And I think my main goal as we go through this conversation is. Really to get some tips and tricks, some things that our listing audience can be thinking [00:02:00] about be considering good questions that they can be asking themselves to make sure that they're set up for success. You guys do a great deal of consulting with our partners and our ACE members on how they can make sure that they're really looking at the numbers and making sure they're successful as teams and organizations. And I I'd love to just start with kind of the state of the insurance market and how we wrapped up 2025. By first saying what originally drew you to the green industry? When we met I know you were working with one of our ACE members and we developed a relationship through them. But what was it you found about the green industry and the service industry that really turned your eyes onto what you could do to help these business owners be successful? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, great question. At a, young age in this industry, I told you my mentor was in the green space, and so I quickly adapted to, okay, landscape tree work, arborists, you name it. And, I. That's what I started [00:03:00] prospecting at a young age. And what I realized was landscape business owners, companies, they were the most fun compared to other trades just because the outside work, the just the whole mantra of the these are real blue collared workers. It's not your white collars that's just boring stuff. And so quickly, I also, when I got into this field, I understood. 80% of 'em are misadvised when it comes to insurance. I was like, gosh, these guys need the most help. So my passion quickly went towards landscape and man, it took off. As soon as I adapted to everything that goes into landscape operations and all the ins and outs of what makes a good insurance advisor for this field. And I just fell in love. Chris Psencik: Yeah, I know. I, it's one of the things it's always what I've been attracted to in landscaping is we're solving real world problems with a customer that wants to see solutions. And we have the opportunity [00:04:00] to move that needle very quickly. And I know when we first met I, know I had expressed to you the challenge we saw with all of our ACE peer group members was like, man, when you look at a p and o, the amount of money that is spent on insurance, it's gonna be one of the top 10 to 15 line items. On your p and l every single year. And so I know as we're coaching landscape professionals, we're always looking at how you manage a business by the line item. And it was, it didn't take long to figure out like, Hey, this is one we've gotta solve for our ACE members and this is one we've gotta solve for the landscape, green industry as whole. And I know through working with you guys, we have done a tremendous job of addressing these questions and concern. And so I'd love if you just share a little bit. From your perspective, what were some of the biggest or insurance risk and some of the biggest trends you saw that landscape companies were having to deal with in 2025? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, so I'll, we're both gonna answer the same exact thing. And, any of you that are in the ACE [00:05:00] peer groups have heard me. I mean I've, this probably gets annoying. Auto, your fleet Auto, literally auto, I could say it 10 times. You guys, on average in the landscape industry, pay about. 2.5% of revenue on insurance premiums annually of that 2.5%, I would tell you 70% is auto-driven. So if you're a $10 million company, you're spending upwards of 200,000 a year on auto the, it keeps getting worse. Some states are unaffected, a lot of them are affected. We've got guys paying 5,000 a truck for full insurance, and then in some states it's 1500 but quickly escalating. Auto, all you can do to protect your fleet is, what's mattering right? What matters right now in insurance? Chris Psencik: if I'm a business owner and I'm seeing my auto per vehicle is 2,500 to five grand, I need to be red flagging this thing and asking some questions.[00:06:00] Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: yeah it, depends. And this is why we always tell you guys we tell of our east peer groups. And members to come to us individually because it really depends on what's your footprint, what's your size where are you, is probably the biggest factor. And then second to that is what's your claims history like? You'll quickly find out after talking to us that we're not, your agent. We are beyond that. We are niche just for this industry, just for Ace peer group members, which makes it so awesome. It really varies by case Chris. But I would tell you that the one common factor is your price per vehicle's gonna continue to go up and you have to safeguard it. How That's where we come in. Chris Psencik: Yeah, Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, so. just to reiterate an answer, Chris, I mean I think that to going back to your original point, insurance is a line item cost, and as Chase said, it's a percentage line item cost, which means it's not like your office space. You buy 10,000 square feet of [00:07:00] office space and you can grow from 5 million rev to 10 million, rev to 20 million rev. Maybe with that saving same 10,000 square feet of office space, your insurance cost is gonna increase with your revenue. And your exposure, and as you take on more people and run more trucks, things are gonna happen, right? So insurance is. Directly correlated with your growth. And then to just reiterate on what Chase is saying, that the trend right now has been seeing the auto insurance become the problem. I remember 20 years ago the 70% expense was workers' comp and, that line item has gone down significantly while the auto has gone up. Insurance is never stagnant. And so the environment, the legal environment is always changing. Right now. We need to be aware and. Protect for the what we know is on the uptick and what we know is a big exposure legally. But we also don't want to completely ignore the other elements of the program [00:08:00] because at some point that cycle will shift and legal controls will come into place and auto premiums will go down and workers' comp will shoot back up. Chris Psencik: Yeah, so. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: approach. Chris Psencik: So what I hear from that is, as a business owner in the landscape industry, I'm looking, I've gotta protect my assets, I've gotta protect my organization, I've gotta protect my people. I need to make sure I have insurance coverage that does that. But I also have to understand as a percentage of revenue. What I can do to help manage these numbers needs to be looked at on a regular basis to drive profitability in my organization. And so I know that's something you guys focus on. What are some of the common mistakes that you see landscape companies, landscape business owners in the service side of things? What are you seeing as you guys are evaluating some of these portfolios that people are making on a regular basis that they're not seeing or they're not thinking about? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah the, biggest mistake is I'll be honest, it's a stale [00:09:00] relationship with your current agency where the agent looks at you guys as an annual renewal, and their service team may answer questions when they come up. But as all of you know this, we're all growing operations change. The climate changes. Your every part of your business is changing. So if you don't have an agent that knows the industry that's actually adapting and helping you with, you know what to look out for as you go from 3 million to 5 million to 10 million. I can tell you right now, more than half of our ACE peer groups, their current agents can't say what size company these ace peer groups are. You ask me, I can quickly tell you how many vehicles and employees you have, I'm gonna tell you within a, about one to $2 million reference point of what you are and what you need. So it, it gets very specific. And, with that too, if you look at Chris, I give this example all the time. This is, how when we got into this, I knew it would be [00:10:00] takeoff because we were, the Guinea pigs we're in Georgia, right? We're based outta Georgia. Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and Texas are your four worst states in the country for insurance. Georgia started this whole mishap about 20 18, 20 19, so we saw it. Just get awful. All right. And, I watched F two fifties and zuzu NPRs and all of our landscape trucks go from 800 bucks a unit to 2,500 bucks a unit to five grand a unit. I watched guys with fleets of 50 go from paying 40 grand for that fleet to all of a sudden do the math. You're at four grand a truck, what do we at 200,000? Yeah, usually. And, literally. Chris Psencik: amount of work that you have to sell on the top line to get the profit to pay for that difference. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah. And so most of our ACE peer group members are, business owners. They don't, I, the common question to me in Kyle is what's causing this? And if, we didn't take an hour to break it down [00:11:00] into fully what's happening, I could tell you in a brief answer, you've got basically I go in my truck every day and instead of seeing the song title on XM radio, it tells me call 1 8 8. John, personal injury, right? The lawsuits nowadays the ambulance chasers the billboards, the marketing for litigation. It's blown up everything. So your old settlements that were seven to 12 grand for when your, employee bumped into Mr. And Mrs. Williams, that eight grand now is 80. It's literally 80. You've got we used to see one, $1 million claim a year. Now you're likely to see five to 10. So it's just, it's gotten outta control per state. So that's, most people don't understand that and that's where the insurance market has to react. And, obviously you guys keep getting these bumps and you're wondering what's going on. So us bringing the consulting side plus the program, and by program, [00:12:00] it's all these carriers again, that see you. As the top 1%, you're actually beyond the top 1%. So to most insurance companies, they see you now as this unaffiliated company that does not belong to anything. They don't know if you're just John and a trailer, or if you're part of an Ace peer group that's bettering themselves, that's a best in class account. So when you fit into the program, all of a sudden you get rates that reflect that, and that's where we're making a difference. Chris Psencik: So hearing that as you think through 26, 27, what's coming down the pipe? What do I need to be on the lookout for? What are the risks that like, man if I had to go look at my portfolio today where I've got questions that I want to get answered like what would you say are those top things that I'm like, man, Chris these, are where you need to look first and these are the questions you need to be asking to make sure you're set up for success in 26 and 27. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: It probably depends a lot on the state you're in, right? [00:13:00] In particular. But and some of those flags are gonna be the, normal thing. What's, what is the experience mod on your workers' comp? Is it over one or is it under one? Is it credit or debit? What is your fleet safety program look like? Can if somebody. Either the owner or whoever's in charge of fleet safety. If, you were to go to them and you were to ask, alright, what what do you allow a driver to have as far as convictions? What kind of telematics system do you have? How often are you having safety meetings with these, trucks that if, you can't readily answer that question, those are the questions an attorney is going to be asking you. In a deposition. So you need to stand in front of that and get, ahead of it so that you're not being reactive to those, things. If you're in one of the states that has yet to be majorly affected. If you're in a state that's affected and you don't have that, then you need to get on it immediately. So there, there's a few obvious red flags that you can [00:14:00] just walk around and ask the people that are supposed to be in charge and, get a feel for do we have a plan for this or not? And Chris, to piggyback off that, I would tell anybody and everybody if I'm a business owner, especially that you have to be cognizant that what's today's date? 16th. Yeah, 16th. If you have a claim today on your auto, on your fleet, it will stick with you until January 16th, 2031. It is literally stamped us as agents when we go to market you and analyze your account and try to fit you into our program. That sticks for five years. So it's literally that harsh. Chris Psencik: Yeah, and I know I, over the course of my career, I've had to submit a lot of proposals where they ask about my EMR rating. They ask about my moderating, they ask about the sureties want to know my bond ability and my capabilities produce. Bonding capacities for these projects and all of these little things, while they seem little and insignificant [00:15:00] become large factors, when you're looking at large scale commercial sales or you're looking for large scale development projects where they want to know are you truly running a safe operation? I can give you all the presentations in the world. At the end of the day, there's metrics that back up these details. There's things that they're gonna look at and they're gonna ask questions about that you have to be able to produce. And I know we have a lot of stories of people who've had incidences or accidents and things along the way, and it's how do you document, what do you do and how do I train my team members? I'd love if you could maybe share a couple stories or of maybe, without naming names. Walk us through a, story of where somebody has maybe run into this situation in the past and, how do I handle this as an owner or as a director of maintenance or director of installation in those scenarios. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Great question. So of our, group that's very different per account, I would say 30 to 40% are heavily invested in the commercial sector where they're required to have certain metrics to get [00:16:00] into contracts. So specifically. One account in mind, their mod had gotten up to about a 1.5. Most of your commercial contracts you get into will ask you to have a 1.35. If it's not a 1.35, you better have a good agency that can explain what created the mod, what the trend is like, good explanations, and you can actually work around stuff like that. So how do you combat a high mod where you're not getting commercial contracts? First, and I think Kyle would agree with this, is a return to work program, AKA, a light duty return to work offering for injured employees in the landscape field. I know most of you business owners are like, that's difficult when John injures an ankle and he's out for six months and he milks the carrier for 30 grand, including PT, and then potential settlement, if you bring him back and you show that, hey, we've got a climate here at X, Y, Z landscape. [00:17:00] You're gonna do office detail, you're gonna shadow Justin while he's driving and leading the, this crew, whatever that return to work program is what keeps these claims down and gets your mod in turn to make a, big reverse on what it's doing. And there's actually a lot more that goes into the mod that impacts what, you do. But return to work program is my number one. That, that everyone should have that. I would say probably a third of you have currently. Chris Psencik: Yeah. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, I think understanding Ahad is, something that most people most people don't take the time to truly understand it. It's a complicated program that goes into a rather simple math formula, and it, varies by state and it changes every year. And so if you're not on top of that process, understanding how the math formula is changing, you don't know how it's gonna impact you. You can have a year with the same exposures, the same losses, the formula changes, and your mod goes from a 0.98 to [00:18:00] 1.05 through nothing you did. So being aware of it and being able to have conversations with your insurance broker, your agent, about what it's doing and why. Very important. Chris Psencik: Yeah, so, Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: mod makes up a pretty big difference, Chris. If you've got, let's say, 2 million in payroll, having a credit mod of a 0.8 versus a debit mod of a 1.2 is the difference in typically 10 to 15 grand Chris Psencik: yeah. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: good controls. So It, is a big. Chris Psencik: to make this easy 'cause. Like I said I'm a green industry professional. I have a bachelor's of science in horticulture. I'm not a math guy, and I know this is important to me, and these numbers mean a great deal to me. Running an organization and being successful, getting to the next level. How can you at Sage help me manage these moderating, how can you help me be better at these? How can you make me track these in a better way? What is it you guys can help with on your side that help us be more successful as [00:19:00] landscape professionals? To make sure that we can do these things. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: if you're, specifically looking at the mod, the first thing you need to do is run an analysis and we'll, run a complete analysis on it and. We'll tell you I tell people a 1.0 and a mod is average. That's getting a C on the test. And so if you think you've got a 1.0 and you're doing well or a 0.98 and you're doing well, you're, you are the absolute average. And so the first question is, what is an a plus? We don't even know what target we're shooting for. And so until you do a mod analysis, you don't know what your minimum possible mod is. So we start by identifying, all right, what is that minimum possible mod? Where are you today? Let's look at every single claim and what's driving each of those mod points. And then from there, if this claim was handled differently and we could use the current rules in our favor, what would your mod today be? If we'd handled those claims differently and we can project how we're going to handle them in the [00:20:00] future. Unfortunately it's very hard to change the past. We've, had some instances where we've found mismanagement on the claims side and we've been able to change things retroactively, but that's very difficult. Usually it's gonna take three years to change a mod and where it currently is. So it's a long process. It's gotta be intentional on your side. And really you just need advice from somebody who understands it. If you. If you call your broker and they can't tell you what your minimum possible mod is, which is probably one of the simplest math formulas to run ever then you're, already that should be a red flag that you don't have somebody truly advise you. Chris I'll say that again. It, just highlights what goes into what we come across. Probably in 90% of our cases, even for 10 to $20 million companies that are spending upwards of 300,000 year on insurance, it's that stale of an industry we're in. Chris Psencik: Yeah. I, know you, guys do a lot of this evaluation [00:21:00] stuff and, you guys, and we see this all the time with our, ACE peers where you guys take the data, you're looking at these people's portfolios, you're looking at their exposure, you're identifying challenges that we see and often cases you're not always taking that portfolio on for those clients and often cases. You're going back to 'em and saying, Hey, you look good, man. All I see is one to two things and you, make these quick adjustments and I think you're in a good position and place to be successful. I'd love if you've share like what's a couple examples you've seen where you guys have been able to like, Hey man, red flag. This is something I see we've gotta get this covered. And, I can think of one person in particular in South Texas where we had it was like a 48 hour turnaround, which we don't advise anyone. But walk me through that story. What happened there? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah. That particular story was an, it was an agency fault. It was your typical conglomerate agency [00:22:00] that they're not gonna pay attention to you unless you're probably 20 million plus bad issue. One of our ACEs was actually uninsured for about. A little over two months. Very dangerous situation. Had to put coverage in place. It was like a 36 hour turnaround. It was one of the fastest we've done with savings of 30 grand. So that was exciting for him. But again, it just points towards who's your agency? Are they really helping you? Do you look at this as it's insurance? I don't wanna mess with it. Or do you look at it as, Hey, I've got a group right here ready to, help us out. Let's, evaluate what we're doing. And then my other thing, Chris, that I would tell you that you brought up, and I'm glad you brought it up, is what's the trend right now? Legacy rates. A lot of you have heard me talk about this. Legacy rates. All right? Where you're at currently, I don't care if you're two and a half million, 5 million, 20 million. Most of you have been with the same [00:23:00] carrier for your auto for three to five years. Follow me on this. If you went to that same carrier today. With your account and they hadn't met you before, your rates would go up by 40 to 60%. Insurance carriers when they're writing new business, the rates are actually trending very high. Renewal rates are staying low. And so my point is you protect your renewal rates, which we term as legacy rates because you got them back in 20 22, 20 23, and I'm over here preaching to put auto controls in place and keep claims off so that your 10% increases are actually very good. And that's where I constantly tell you guys. Hey, I can't help you at the moment, but you do need to go to your agent and address these three items. But I can't, help you from a savings standpoint just yet. Legacy rates is the one thing I would tell you all to keep in mind. Over the next three to five years, you will see your carriers quickly shift towards [00:24:00] either, Hey, you're not in our appetite anymore, or We wanna, we want to give you 20 to 30% increases, where I would tell you please come to see us and talk to us. Chris Psencik: Yeah. I, love that you brought that up. And I another story that kind of comes to mind and Kyle Chase, I'd love if you share a, about this. A lot of our listeners today work with subcontractors, right? Like they've got subcontractors doing concrete or masonry or pools or anything like that doesn't fall under a W2 employee. But to do that, like there's insurance that has to factor in on this. Hey, they're on your job sites, they're working with your clients there's exposure there still for me as the providing company of record. And I'd love if you could share like, what are some things I need to be thinking about if I'm running subcontractors in some capacity to get my work completed that are super valuable to me, to make sure that I'm still protected as an organization and that, subcontractor's protected. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: I would say the, most important thing to [00:25:00] realize is that when, you have a project that you bring a subcontractor in on Yeah. You the, contract is with you. Chris, you go to sell that project and you have to hire a concrete sub. The project owner knows that they contracted you directly, not with the subcontractor. And then the next thing we usually run into is, oh, we've been using the same concrete guy for the last 10 years, we're friends. Nothing would ever go wrong, and the problem is when something does go wrong, first of all, at a million bucks, nobody's friends. Secondly, the insurance company doesn't care what your relationship is with those subcontractors. You are distinct entities as seen under the po, the policy and legally. And so unless there's some sort of agreement governing that relationship, the insurance companies are gonna act in the way they, would in a normal tort situation. So what you want to do is make sure that you've got proper. [00:26:00] Contracts in place with those subcontractors so that it di it clearly dictates. This is how we expect you to respond when something goes wrong. This is the insurance that we expect you to have to make good on the promise you've made to us. And here's our review process for letting you on the job site. And that all has to be done before you set foot on the job site. 'cause once you set foot on the job site and something happens. Nobody's gonna sign documents and problems are gonna get real ugly after that, and you're protecting your insurability if it was something that the subcontractor did that you had no control over. Yeah. And Chris that's a hot topic. Currently right now it's noon on Friday, and I had two meetings this morning specifically talking about subcontracted work. A lot of our ACE groups are actually shifting towards. Stabilizing their payroll and actually adding in more subcontracted work. 'cause it's a nice little add-on, right? Deal with less people in-house and actually grow in other sectors. It's very cool. [00:27:00] There are certain things that you guys have to do that I would say probably half of you are already on board with, and that's usually 10 million and up companies. And the big ones are just like Cal said, risk transfer. So that's a combination of. Who at your office is, the person in charge of collecting certificates and getting a sub agreement signed. A lot of you now are utilizing ai, you're probably redoing your sub agreements. We've got one that's probably top three in the country. If you wanted a a, sample of ours, we're happy to give it. But yeah, those two things and, they can be broken down into much further detail. COIs and sub agreements and having a good plan in place. Hey, W nine COI, sub agreement, that is a typical best practice when it comes to subcontractors. Chris Psencik: I would love, since we're down that path, I'd love if you guys would address this question as well. 'cause I get this a lot. I've got a subcontractor. He doesn't own a skid steer. I do. He's using it. [00:28:00] What Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Okay. Chris Psencik: when that happens? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, so you, let somebody borrow it. Of course there, there's risk in a lot of different ways, right? If he causes damage to the property you're working on with a skid steer, or he hurts somebody that's a third party on the job site for some reason his liability, assuming that it's in place and assuming you have a good downstream risk transfer contract would trigger. If he damages the equipment now you've got a problem, right? Because you didn't damage the equipment you leased it to someone else or lent it to someone else, and does your insurance cover that? If the equipment hurts him you didn't properly maintain the hydraulics in it or something overheats and it catches on fire and now he gets hurt, he's gonna sue you because of the maintenance of the equipment. So there's lots of different ways. That can play out and without a [00:29:00] proper contract in place that essentially holds you harmless many of those things could, blow back on you as the person who lent the piece of equipment. Chris Psencik: Yep. Nope. I love that. All right, so I know we're, trying to hit a lot of just hot button topics, things I hear a lot. If I'm a landscape business owner right now, I've got a 2026 renewal coming up. Chase, I know you've educated me a lot on this 'cause like Ty, typical, I know what we see is people just wait until it's time to renew and then what happens? Just like renewing our maintenance contracts, right? We do it right when the customer expects it. And, that sometimes isn't the best solution, right? So if I wanna be strategic and make sure that I am asking the right questions. the best opportunity for me to be successful in my renewal and do what I need to get better coverage and watch my costs what are those things I need to be thinking Chasing Cal to make sure that I'm set up for renewal and that I'm being proactive in how I'm doing it to make sure that I'm in the best position to be successful. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, great [00:30:00] question. My answer would be if I'm a, if I'm an, if I'm an ACE peer group member and I'm a business owner. Where once before I, I did not belong to this group and my only way to get a second opinion was go to another agent that's obviously gonna try to sell me. Now you've literally got a resource where we are here to help you. So my, first recommendation is when you're out of renewal season, if your renewal's in it just passed in December, man, it is a good time now to have us review everything. 'cause again, we're not here to try to sell you and tell you, hey. You need to make these changes and switch to us. It's gonna be this with your agency, change this, let's meet down the road. But right now you need to fix X, Y, and Z. So you guys literally having a resource at your fingertips. Us man, it's never a bad time to visit your insurance, whether you just renewed in December or if it is coming up in March. And it is the good time right now [00:31:00] to allow us to come in and, obviously compete against your current agency. Chris Psencik: Yeah, and so just for the novice in me, I'm not an insurance expert. I don't pretend to be I've learned to just come to you guys when I have questions, ask questions, I get better responses. No different than me trying to sell a landscape to a customer. I'm here to educate my customer. In ways to show them why my value means something getting good questions from you guys allows me to educate myself so that I can go back with more educated questions. Of my current provider and find out like, am I currently in the best situation to be successful? Are there opportunities that I can do something different? Am I fully covered? Am I not fully covered? What are my risks that I need to be considering? All these things are good conversations to be having in that relationship that you have with your providers. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, see that, that's what's so cool about this industry for us, with you guys, is that every landscape company's different. Some of you have 10 different classification codes on your workers' [00:32:00] comp and your general liability that drive premiums. And we can see audits and what's going on and what, history looks like. Others of you are just lawn care, landscape and irrigation. I mean it, there's complex, there's simple, but downstream. You are probably with an agent that does not understand landscape. And so when we look at it, we're putting different eyes on it. Again, for you to make a good business decision to see what's going on with your insurance policies, use someone that's in the field that knows what they're doing. Chris Psencik: Yeah, Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: that'd be my advice. Yeah I'd love to know what am I not asking? What are those things that maybe they didn't come up in our topics they weren't questions that I was thinking of or maybe that, that we had covered today. Is there anything that, that we need to make sure that I wanna make sure that, man, this is something we, I do wanna make sure that you guys here as, a landscape green industry professional, so you're set up for 2026. Yeah. Kyle, I'm gonna give two things [00:33:00] and if you'll give a couple. Sure. My, my two would be, and I preach this constantly if you don't already have GPS and telematics, of which I think 80% of our group does because we are best in class companies. If you don't have 'em, man, you gotta get 'em. Secondly, if you don't have cameras adapted with your GPS and telematics systems, I highly, recommend cameras. And the question comes up what if my guy's at fault and we got it on camera. It's a quicker open and shut door case for your attorney when you got cameras regardless of fault. And then the big number two I would tell you guys is this isn't a lot of us, but. Several of you are having your agencies shop you out every year and some of you every, other year, and you're like, Hey, this is my system. And, I think Cal would agree with me, that we would both tell you it's, not a good practice because these carriers see your account name every year. Carriers look for [00:34:00] loyalty, right? So they either wanna place you in a program. Or find someone that hasn't been shopped out to them three times in the last five years. So those of you that do think it's a good idea to shop out every year, every other year, come talk to us. We'll help you be more tactful. If you love your agent, we'll give you the tactful way to go about telling 'em how to shop you out. Chris Psencik: That's Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah, those are my two. Yeah. Chris Psencik: that you wanna add? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: I would just say the, big picture response and some of the things we're talking about on the insurance side is really what's your due diligence process and how are you selecting the vendor that you're using for this? And a lot of us that aren't in this industry, because it's a very esoteric industry, right? It's complicated. People don't really know what they're buying. And so like I, I tell people a lot of times insurance is like a parachute and. You look at it from the outside, it looks great and hey, I bought the [00:35:00] cheapest parachute. But when you jump out of the plane and you pull the handles, when you find out whether that parachute's properly packed or any good, right? And that's not the greatest time to find out. So going, back to having us take a look at things, it's just, or help coach you through that renewal process of we can help you with the due diligence process. We can tell you the things you need to ask that you don't know about this, industry. If I'm. If I'm buying landscaping and somebody runs ruts through my yard, cutting my grass one time, I can see it immediately. I see the problems, I see the, failures and I can correct for them. But this, industry is hard 'cause claims don't happen every day. Yeah. And like an example of that, Chris would be, we'll see on some of our ACEs policies, they've got what we call a CG twenty two ninety four, twenty two, ninety two ninety four. Where you've got an exclusion for subcontracted work and people don't know it and their agents probably don't know it, and we're like, holy smokes, get this removed right away. [00:36:00] So there's little things specific to our industry that we'll find in policies and quickly bring up to you and we get awesome feedback. By the way, there, there was a company and Ace out of New York this past summer that I saw them coded incorrectly, told them take it to their agent. Could not beat their legacy rates, but they saved about 24 grand just by having a code changed. And they were like, chase, come up for lunch please. I'm like, I can't make it to New York, but I'll try next year. There, there's just little things that we're able to put our eyes on. That that, again, your current agents no dis to him, but he is probably not seeing it. Chris Psencik: Yeah. And that's not the stuff that, that I'm ever gonna catch looking at those things, so this is why you, this is why you enlist the help of industry professionals I'd love to quickly you guys summarized so much of what we covered there just a couple more things, just quick summary. We talked about the moderat ratings and, the value that comes behind the moderating and what it goes into managing those. Kyle, you mentioned. [00:37:00] 1.0 is an average moderating so very quickly you as a business owner can go look at your moderating today and figure out am I close to average? Am I above average? Am I below average? Okay, great. Now I know if I've got questions I need to ask. We talked about protections, we talked about ways to go about making sure that your subs are protected and your resources are protected, and what goes into making sure that you have those coverages. Chase, you talked about that one line item just a second ago in New York where that one line item of. Subs being excluded actually saved them $25,000 of just being able to ask the right question and look at that, we talked about the importance of doing evaluations and looking at these things on a regular basis, and making sure that as your needs change, that your policies change with it. And taking that into account every single year as we're growing and scaling our operations. You guys gave a million different great examples of how we manage by the line item no different than why we saw the value [00:38:00] in Sage risk advisors. When we first decided to enlist your help and support to support our ACE network but managing by the line item, asking good questions this is one of those top 10 line items of business expenses that we see on p and ls across the industry in every aspect of what we do. And that's why you have to identify the challenge and figure out like, man, little percentage changes in this line item can make a massive, difference. We covered subcontractor agreements and the importance of your certificate of insurance, asking those questions, getting those things in writing, having those policies on record so that, not when things happen, but if things happen you don't have to be afraid that did I have coverage for this, that I have coverage for that? No, we know we do because we have a partner that allows us to do that. Anything I missed today? Anything that I covered that we did not through? Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Yeah the, one thing I'd like to end with is, okay, where's all the fun [00:39:00] in this, right? It's insurance. Like where is it fun? So those of you that aren't legacy rated. Yeah, we have a lot of fun. We come in, there was a recent account out of, I won't pick exactly where it is, but in Texas, they were about to spend about 350,000 on their renewal. They needed quite a few things. We came in at 130, 130. We use a plus rated carriers. It's literally all program established. They're fun things that we can do with a lot of your accounts. Now, those of you that are like I went and saw Sage and, took advantage of this and we did, we couldn't get savings right away, and that's where I would tell you, Hey, take the benefit of getting the the review that we do for you. Those two or three things are usually vital for at least setting you up for the next two years, and I promise you, down the road will be effective. Yeah, there, there's a lot of fun, Chris, in savings and I constantly can hear [00:40:00] you in the background. just saved 28 months ace dues and man, we literally are doing that left and right, which is where we have a lot of fun. And so I would just tell you guys that, that we didn't get to help out right away. Eventually we will. It is just insurance right now is a crazy, industry and a lot of you're legacy rated in, and we're just asking you to protect your current situation so that you can stay in those legacy rates as long as possible. Chris Psencik: Yeah. I just wanna thank you guys again for coming on and spending the time with us. I, like I said, I never thought I would know this much about insurance, but you guys have been such a tremendous asset and such a great partner with just helping to elevate the game of what and how we can improve the green industry. From a risk advising standpoint. And so thank you both for your opportunity. Thank you for investing in the green industry and what you're doing to elevate the bar of what we're delivering. And certainly if we can help you guys, we're gonna do everything we can to help support what you're [00:41:00] doing and your cause, your need. If we wanna get in touch with you obviously with our ACE Network, our Ace Advantage partners. We know how to connect with you there. You can connect with me, you can connect with Chase. If I'm just listening to this podcast and I don't know anything about insurance and I wanna connect with you certainly we ask that you reach out to us today. We'd love to make that network happen and those connections happen so we can change the way you're doing business and your operation. So thank you both for joining us today and I appreciate your time and spending some time walking us through all this. Cal Fallaize & Chase Campbell: Thanks, Chris. Thanks Chris. Enjoyed it. Chris Psencik: Thank you for listening to this episode of Roots of Success, brought to you by the subject matter Experts at McFarlin Stanford have a question you want our coaches to tackle in a future episode. You could submit that@McFarlinstanford.com slash podcast. And to find more helpful content from McFarlin Stanford, follow us on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook. Speaker: If this or any of our episodes have piqued your interest in ACE Peer Group. We encourage you to join [00:42:00] us at Ace Discovery. Just check out the events tab@McFarlinstanford.com This is Jason New co-founder and principal at McFarlin Stanford. We'll see you next time.