So Ben, tell me about your vision.
We are a travel insurance brokerage, which sounds very unexciting.
And you may say, well, what is that?
You know, travel insurance, who is even interested in travel insurance?
Why does that ever even matter?
So I used to be a luxury tour operator for almost 20 years.
I ran very high end luxury tours and COVID came and really destroyed us for like three
years.
I didn't make any money for my family.
It was crazy.
We were very successful up till that time.
And I knew coming out of COVID, no one was going to book these tours without travel insurance.
Everyone was way too nervous.
And so I wasn't the type of operator to just say like, really everyone else in the world,
I'll be honest with you, every tour operator in America were in the same boat as me.
They were all destroyed.
They were all coming back.
They knew that no one was going to book without travel insurance.
What all of them did, except for me, I'm not saying this to be boastful, just like a fact,
is they said, yeah, go to Allianz, which is the biggest travel insurance company in America,
go to AIG, you know, I don't know, buy a policy and then come, give me your money and come
to my tour.
I wasn't happy with that approach because everything I did was to the top level.
And it was like you say, to help people.
I wanted to make sure people are giving me money, they're getting value for their money.
And so I became obsessed with travel insurance just for my own business.
I said, it's not going to work unless people feel comfortable to book.
No one will feel comfortable to book without travel insurance.
But I wasn't comfortable just saying go buy whatever.
So I started studying every policy that exists in America.
I started going to all industry events.
I started meeting the CEOs of these companies, started meeting the head of the claims department.
I said, how does this really work?
Who's actually paying these bills?
How does this whole structure operate?
And I started to realize over time that my mind worked very well.
I understood it very well for whatever reason, it just clicked for me when a lot of people
find it very complicated and confusing.
It wasn't like that for me.
And I went to eventually start selling them to my own clients.
And I knew which policy was good for them now.
I knew which company would easily pay them.
I understood all the clauses.
And I made commission off it too, which was great.
And I went to all the other tour operators in my niche.
And there were quite a few.
And I said, look, I know these guys.
I've been doing this 20 years.
I know everyone in the industry.
I said, look, you guys are in the same boat as me, right?
You need help.
You guys know nothing about travel insurance.
You need help for your clients.
Send them to us.
I started a secondary company called Travel Defend.
Send them to us.
We're going to help them.
We're going to be a concierge service.
We're going to help your people.
We're going to do the paperwork for them.
We're going to make sure, most importantly in real life, they actually get paid if they
have a problem.
And we'll kick you guys back commission.
And they said, cool.
And they started sending us boatloads of people.
We're talking thousands of people.
And I really realized very quickly that this is a tremendous need in the market.
Because I'm not talking about probably yourself.
You look like a young guy going on a cheap trip, maybe medical, whatever.
It's $100.
That's not really my target, right?
I'll help people like you.
We do.
I have a whole team of almost 20 employees now.
But we'll help whoever comes to us.
However, where is the money in travel insurance?
Older people, very expensive trips.
I'll give you an example.
We did a policy the other day.
Two couples, they're almost 80 years old, these couples, going to Africa.
$90,000 per couple trip to Africa.
Their travel insurance was almost $20,000.
Because they may say on the phone, well, that's expensive.
It's not expensive.
It's a function of your trip cost and your age.
It's just a percentage of your trip cost.
So you look at it, every policy is a little different.
But how much is that?
11%, 12% of trip cost.
That's not abnormal.
It's just your trip is 180 grand.
So you're going to pay 18 to 20 grand in travel insurance.
Makes sense once they understand it.
And then we figure out what's good for them.
But the point is, how do people buy travel insurance now without us?
And by the way, this is a billion.
When I say billion, I mean, I'm talking Allianz themselves did $1.3 billion in sales last
year.
I mean, the industry does $10, $12, $13 billion, whatever it is in America.
How do people right now buy travel insurance?
They go to a website like Allianz or AIG, which again, offers you one or two options,
which do you know what you're buying?
No, you have no clue what you're buying.
No, nobody does.
Even the richest, most well-versed traveler, they don't know anything about travel insurance.
They just buy whatever they see there or you can go to like an Expedia type website that
has a thousand options.
And again, do you know anything?
No.
More importantly, what do any of these people do in real life when they have a problem?
They're faceless.
They're nothing to these companies.
No matter how wealthy they are, they're in irrelevance.
They're one of billion other people.
With us, we figure out what's good for you.
We're experts at everything.
I don't have one or two options.
I have every option that exists.
We're experts.
I have a whole team that are experts in all of them.
We'll figure out what's good for you.
We'll do the paperwork for you.
And then most importantly, the most important part, we now bring millions of dollars to
these companies.
We have tremendous power in these companies.
I have my own dedicated claims analysts who are dedicated at the company.
I don't pay their salary.
The company pays their salary, but they're dedicated just to my clients.
My clients get priority treatment.
We get them paid in oftentimes seven to 14 days, sometimes even quicker, which in the
world of travel insurance, unheard of.
It's four to six months to get paid.
And we add zero cost.
We don't add a penny to the cost.
So you say, well, once you understand it, why would anyone not use you?
There's no reason not to use us because we're the same price.
We give tremendous benefit.
We're only here to help you.
We have a WhatsApp that's monitored 24 hours a day.
Let's say you're in Spain, break your leg, whatever it is, God forbid, obviously, and
you need help.
Our team is available to you over WhatsApp 24 hours a day.
We have the personal cell phone number of the emergency assist company, CEO, et cetera.
So what we do, we're the only ones that do what we do in America.
There's nobody else doing this.
I don't really need tremendous business help.
And I'll tell you why, because most businesses do struggle very badly.
And the reason for that is that they haven't found the proper niche and the proper differentiator.
They're kind of fighting up against a world of competition, which is hard.
We've somehow found a situation.
This is why I stopped doing tours, because I realized this over time.
I'm like, holy crap, this is crazy.
What we do doesn't exist.
The market is billions.
If all billion of the people that went to Allianz, for example, or AIG, or Travel Insurance
International, any of these companies knew about us, they would all use us.
Of course they would.
Why wouldn't they?
So all we're doing is creating new partners in terms of tour operators, travel agents
who send us their clients.
And we're going after end users with marketing, Facebook ads, things like that, which, again,
I haven't even started that yet, but it's going to probably start literally next week.
And I haven't started it only because I haven't had to.
We're literally doing millions of dollars without a penny of marketing ever spent.
So that's the basic gist of what's going on here.
That was a lot.
You said a lot of things in there.
I know.
Sorry.
No, you're good.
The more, the better.
It goes to the next question I have for you, Ben.
What is your why of what you do?
To help people.
To help people, just like you said.
I always have been passionate about helping people.
In my tour business, it was very expensive and I always felt terrible, even the feeling
that someone would pay money to us and not get their value, not feel as if they didn't
get their money's worth.
That always ate at me.
And sometimes we did do that.
Things are out of my hands.
When you have a tour company, we had an event with about a thousand people, and they're
there for 10 days.
And we have chefs and we have waiters and we have entertainers and we have day camp
for kids and we have nightly entertainers.
There's a world of hundreds of staff and I can't control everyone.
Let's say you go to your table and you're waiting to be served and the waiter went outside
for a cigarette or you went to smoke up or something and he's not focused.
Maybe our team is pulled in different directions and no one noticed that your waiter didn't
show up.
I can't control everything that happens, but it still would eat at me when it wasn't perfect,
when someone wasn't happy, when everyone says, well, you can't make everyone happy.
Okay, maybe that's true, but I was very sensitive in that way.
It really did bother me if anyone would come and pay money and not feel that they got their
money's worth.
And I've kind of taken that over to this business where it's a lot easier to find success and
it's a lot easier to make people happy because A, the bar is very low.
Typically they've been doing this on their own.
We certainly can't make it worse.
All we can do is make it better.
And now as the business grows and the power we have grows, the ability to help people
is almost a guarantee in every case.
And I just love it.
I just love that.
So that's really what is making me passionate.
Yes.
Another thing is to not have a business that you're stuck, right?
Because it's a daily grind to always have to fight.
And everyone's like, I fight in my business.
I'm an entrepreneur.
I go on a lot of business podcasts and this is a big message.
You got to keep fighting.
Are you in the right vehicle?
Are you?
Maybe not, right?
You got to be honest with yourself because it doesn't, does, if you have the right vehicle,
it doesn't always have to be a struggle.
It doesn't always have to be such a hard fight.
Thanks for sharing that.
And you were right.
With the statistics we have, 96% of new businesses in America fail every year.
That's saying a lot about.
Is it really that high?
Wow.
I didn't know that.
I thought it was like 80% or something.
96, that's crazy.
Yeah.
And these are the business that just have failed.
But let's talk about 4% that are actually just getting by.
Well, you'd assume some are doing very well.
It's not a hundred percent are either failing or just getting by.
Some do well, obviously.
Yeah.
So out of the 4%, we don't know how much.
How many are actually doing great like yourself and some not.
So that number is.
Yeah.
It's a big concern for us.
Why do you think that is?
I have a theory why.
But let me ask you.
And then, and that means that goes to the next question as well.
If I can get that right now.
What's that?
I'm going to create a question for you right now.
Why do most businesses fail today?
Why don't you want me to answer now?
Why do most businesses fail today?
Again, I'm only speculating because I haven't done research into this.
I actually know.
My speculation is that they're focused on themselves and they're not focused on the
consumer.
Everyone's very selfish, right?
Which is natural.
And you say, why do you want to start a business?
Because I want to make money.
Because I need to support my family.
And you know who cares about you making money?
Are you supporting your family?
Nobody.
Nobody cares about you.
And no one cares about making money for family.
Who do people care about?
Themself.
All they care about is themselves morning, noon, and night.
If you want to tap in to being focused on helping people, which is why I love capitalism,
anyone who's against capitalism, I don't think they understand it.
It's simply the concept of helping people in the best way.
And if you can do that, you will be successful.
And that's how I look at it.
I find it hard to believe that you've got to think also, but you isolate a real need
in society or you find a hole or a gap in something that you can help people with in
a great way.
Why would they not use you?
I don't understand that.
So I would assume that that's probably the reason why.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.