Episode 8 with Nash Subotic, Founder and CEO of WestPac Wealth Partners

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Beyond the Challenge is a podcast where executives in the insurance and financial services industry share their insights and experiences. Hosts Kevin and Sandy Dougherty talk with today’s top business leaders about what keeps them up at night and the biggest opportunity organizations can capitalize on today. We encourage you to listen, share, and subscribe to our program.

Kevin and Sandy Dougherty each have over 20 years of experience in insurance and financial services, corporate leadership, and executive search. They’re the owners of Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders. Global Corporate Solutions partners with organizations to gain efficiencies and contain costs. Global Corporate Leaders partners with organizations to enhance and evaluate talent.

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Welcome to Beyond the Challenge. Here are your hosts, Kevin and Sandy.

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Kevin: Today, we’re talking with Nash Subotic about the challenges faced by producers in agency management. Nash, you have an amazing background, having come to the United States on a basketball scholarship with $100 in your pocket, speaking little English, and now running one of the largest, fastest growing, and most recognized agencies in the country. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the business and your journey so far?

Nash: Yes, thank you, Kevin, and I’m excited to be on your podcast. I’ve gotten a lot from the industry and a lot to give back. So, I always like to start with that. I got into the business very early in my life. It was my first career job out of college and, obviously, I started as an advisor, as an agent, and then moving to the management and then started the firm in 2007. As you have helped me a lot, right? You made that introduction, when I was starting the company and that really worked out well in my favor and 13 and a half years later, we are one of the largest, I think, firms with 30,000 clients with a big in-force block, I think we have about $137 million of in-force premium and about close to between $1.5 to $2 billion of assets under management and administration. 160, 170 advisors and we are, I think, in seven or eight states already. So, we have really grown quickly and it was all based on me really recruiting quality individuals into the firm. Everything starts — nothing happens before you recruit somebody. And also with the vision for us to be the firm of the future, for us to be more futuristic looking, for us to start being a firm that’s gonna really do holistic planning with the focus on doing really the planning for the business owners, that’s my, and our firm’s, WestPac firm’s, bread and butter and just helping them make smart financial decisions. And that’s kind of in short how I got into the business, how I moved up, and where we are today.

Kevin: Nash, all sectors face challenges, but in insurance and financial services, the list seems extremely long, between regulatory changes, economic uncertainty, rising consumer expectations, and a virtual selling environment. How has COVID-19 changed the way you reach new clients and service existing clients?

Nash: It’s a great question and I’m gonna a little bit answer from continuation of my prior question. We’ve been always looking ahead. So, when people are talking about virtual selling, we’ve been doing virtual selling for years, right? So when the COVID happened, us already being adapted to that model, because we have a lot of millennials, a lot of younger folks and a lot of clients, quite frankly, they wanna do business and us having the system that is online. On March 13th, we had the meeting and I told the guys, “This is gonna be our best year,” and it was our best year. And the reason why I said this to them is because we are ready, we have the pipeline. We had about 285,000 prospects in our CRM. We’ve been prospecting and building the pipeline and then all we really did is we turned up the notch and we started calling on people that are already part of our business and people needed us more than ever. When you really think about it, people needed planning in 2020 more than ever, and I knew when there is a challenge, there is an opportunity. I also knew that a lot of people will use this as an excuse to go out there and do what needs to be done, which is help people, reach out to people, and use this pandemic to show people why working with the right firm and the right planning is the right thing. I’m talking about protection. We’re a protection first company, always been and always will be, because that’s what we believe in, protect first, invest second, but it came with, “Hey, are you organized? Did you save enough? Does your business have any business interruption being put in place?” So we know what we were gonna do and then we reached out to our people virtually. We had a whole process already done for the virtual selling. And I gotta tell you, I know it sounds a little bit crazy, but we had the best year ever. Our revenue grew and we recruited one of the best people that we ever did because everybody was just wandering in the pandemic, they had a lot of time to think about it whether this is the time for them to stay in their career or look for something else.

Kevin: How do you differentiate yourself in a virtual environment?

Nash: I don’t think we really differentiate ourselves with the other firms because of the virtual sales, I think we differentiate the way we’re doing the planning. We are a planning-driven organization, we are a process-driven organization, not a product-driven organization, and when you are doing the planning and when you focus on the process, that’s really what makes us different. I also think what makes us different is the fact that we — when people say they do holistic planning but we are really doing everything, starting from the let’s cover all of your protection, your risk management, your asset protection, business interruption, let’s work with your CPA, let us be the center of your universe and let’s really put it all together, I think we’re doing just a fine job there and the clients recognize that because there is really two types of companies in America today in financial services. One that focuses on personal insurance and investment planning, or the second one that focuses on the benefits for these business owners. Very few understand how these clients of ours, these business owners, can take advantage of the fact that you’re a business owner for personal gain or vice versa. How do they take advantage of that and how do they really exit that business? That’s their biggest asset. So we really specialize in doing it all for them and really taking them to the path where there’s gonna be protection, growth, and exit.

Kevin: How do you help your advisors evaluate and grow their current books of business?

Nash: This industry has been around for a long time and there’s nothing different except that we really focus on two things. We focus on values and we focus on experience. A lot of firms and a lot of advisors provide value, but I’m not so sure that a lot of firms provide the experience. And when we are working with them is to make sure when these clients walk into their office, that they know everything about them. It’s not just about, “Let me do the planning for you,” but I wanna make sure that they know brothers, sisters, co-workers, hobbies, where did you went to school, just basically everything about the client and we want to provide a different level of experience. So we work a lot on their book of business, we work a lot on multiplication of those clients, and we work a lot about don’t leave anything unattended.

Kevin: Many carriers have been investing heavily in customer experience initiatives in recent years. Have you seen these initiatives help you bring on new business or service existing clients?

Nash: Certainly it helped me service the existing client, especially when it came to technology. Everybody wants to be online, everybody wants to do things quickly, and me doing a lot of business, obviously, with Guardian has helped me because they have an unbelievable e-suite system for the clients when it comes to insurance and, obviously, we have some robust investment platforms as well for our clients. So, definitely technology was a big piece. As far as the rest of the customer experience, a lot of is really training the field force, training the advisors how to utilize the resources and how to make sure that the clients get the best experience. But the technology was the biggest help to us.

Kevin: What are the top three things that insurance carriers can do to help support their business partners better?

Nash: It’s a great question and I would say number one is technology. Technology. Number two is ease of doing business. How easy is it for me to transact with you? How easy is it for me to work with my clients? How easy is it for me to service their book? And those two are connected, right? The technology and ease of doing business, but I will separate them because technology is not all about ease of doing business. It has a lot to do with it. And number three, I think it’s about being able to really listen to the field and listen to the people that they’re working with. We are all in different markets, we are all working with different people, and I would say, like I said, at WestPac, we focus on business owners and professionals and professional athletes but that’s who we really wanna work with and my business is income and management so whenever I can really help those folks in my market, I think that’s important. For some people that work with the different markets, maybe with retirees and pre-retirees and these groups of advisors are focused on different things so it’s really listening to the field about what they really want for the market. So technology, ease of doing business, and just listening to the field.

Kevin: What is the single best opportunity the insurance industry can capitalize on today?

Nash: You know, insurance to me equals protection. And if 2020 taught us anything, it taught us that if you’re not prepared and if you’re not protected, there’s a lot of problems you can run into. I think insurance industry has to use what has happened in our country in the last 12 months and really create and craft a story, a narrative, and educate their field force a little bit better, and not to be hiding behind, “Hey, I’m a financial advisor,” that’s great but what we really do in our industry, we protect people and we help them make smart financial decisions and that’s what I think we should do more than ever before because our country is in a very unique position and we have an opportunity to go out there and have these conversations with our clients in all facets of life and I think that’s what we need to do more than ever before.

Kevin: What do you see changing in the insurance marketplace over the next three to five years?

Nash: I think, to me, recruiting is an opportunity but I think there will be less and less people who are gonna be able to really work in this space so you’re gonna have to really start looking more towards CPAs, other professionals to recruit into the business because a lot of folks are not gonna be able to really operate just because getting into the business selling to friends and family is not gonna really happen that fast anymore because a lot of their friends and family are struggling. So, I think we’re gonna have to go out and recruit different kind of people going forward. I think that’s gonna be a big thing.

Kevin: What advice or suggestions would you give to a person entering the insurance and financial services industry?

Nash: Focus on delivery of financial planning and financial process rather than delivery of financial product. If you lead with the products, you’re not gonna make it. You’re not gonna make it long term, you’re never gonna build a big business, because products these days can be bought anywhere. You can buy it online. And there is talk of fees that are getting squeezed and these are getting squeezed. I don’t see my fees are getting squeezed because I’m doing the planning. And I have no problem telling people why am I charging the fees. I’m not charging for an investment product only. Yes, it is for the investment planning primarily, but we’re doing so much more for clients. So focus on the process, not the product.

Kevin: What is the best decision you made professionally that had a positive impact on your career?

Nash: Thinking back, obviously, I was lucky to get into this great industry very early in my life. I was 23 years old. But that was — I think it’s like how early do you start, it really pays dividends later. I’ve been doing — this is my 18 years in the business already, I think I’m entering my 19th year, and I’m still fairly young, I would say, I’m in my low 40s, late 30s, so I think it’s a great opportunity for people to get in as young as they can be really. And I think I was lucky to do that. Number two, I’ve really focused, early in my career, I focused on building the pipeline. And in our firm, we talk a lot about cap, hiring capable people, holding them accountable, and help them build the pipeline and building the pipeline early in my career was huge. And one of the things that I’ve done great for WestPac is I helped people around me build a pipeline and I taught them how to do that because we are in a people’s business, in the end. We are using insurance investment companies to give us the products and things that we have out there but we really are business development people. We have to develop relationships. And I think I’ve done a great job doing that and I think I’ve taught my advisors to do the same and we were able, together, to build a big firm because the advisors are my clients and the clients are really clients of the advisors and our firm is an advisor-centric firm and I’ll do anything I can to help them and to listen to them to what they wanna get out of us to help them build the business.

Kevin: How have you built a winning sales culture in your firm?

Nash: Great question. I think hiring — I’m not hiring, I’m selecting, and I’m really selecting the best people I can get and I have some amazing individuals in the firm, amazing. Entrance to our firm is you have to have a college degree. You have to have big dreams and goals and I would say I’ve formed the environment, a greenhouse where you foster those people and we grew them, but I’ve really selected amazing people. And I think the people have created a culture, like we are — I’m big on culture. I have an amazing culture and I’m very proud of the fact that everybody that works here contributed to that culture because culture is more important than anything for building a sales organization or a successful organization. Hiring capable people, building the culture of teamwork, culture of working together, culture of integrity, culture of life-work integration, I talk a lot about that, right? When people and friends are working together and they are bringing other folks into the culture because they’re gonna feel excited about it and just culture also of accountability and culture of transparency, because most firms out there and most companies, sometimes you don’t know what’s happening, sometimes you know. Here, you know everything. And there’s no question that you cannot ask me. I will tell you everything you need to know. And then also a culture of growth. I always talk about 22 percent. We have doubled WestPac in the last eight years. We doubled the revenue, because I want every individual to grow their business by 22 percent and if you do that, you’re gonna double your business in 42 months and I’m all about the growth and growth is infinite. I never talk to people about numbers because if you talk to people about numbers rather than the growth, there is always gonna be a limit. Always. And with me, it’s about growth. It’s about growing 20 plus, 22 percent each and every year and focus on that. And if you do that, the sky’s the limit and where I wanna go, we did about $30 million in revenue last year and I’m building a firm, Kevin, I’m building a firm that’s gonna do $100 million in one year. And the only way we’re gonna do that is to get the people to focus on the right thing, if we develop them, and if we always talk about the growth.

Kevin: Nash, thank you for your time today. It’s great to learn more about how your advisors and producers can turn economic uncertainty, rising customer expectations, and a virtual environment into a better consumer solution and at higher profits.

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Thank you for listening. Please make sure to subscribe and share so we can stay in touch. If you would like to learn more about how Global Corporate Solutions and Global Corporate Leaders can help your organization recruit the best talent, increase your diversity, and save money, please visit our website at www.thegclgroup.com.

This podcast is for informational purposes only. Global Corporate Solutions is not affiliated with or endorsed by PAS, Guardian, or WestPac Wealth Partners and opinions stated are their own. Nash Subotic is a registered representative and financial advisor of Park Avenue Securities LLC (PAS). OSJ: 4275 Executives Square #800 La Jolla, CA 92037 619-684-6400. Securities products and advisory services offered through PAS, member FINRA, SIPC General Agent of The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America (Guardian), New York, NY. PAS is a wholly owned subsidiary of Guardian. WestPac Wealth Partners, LLC is not an affiliate or subsidiary of PAS or Guardian. Insurance products offered through WestPac Wealth Partners and Insurance Services, LLC, a DBA of WestPac Wealth Partners, LLC. | California Insurance License #0E57168 | 2021-116825 | Exp 02/23.