Meeting Title: Brainforge Content Collaboration Planning Date: 2025-09-02 Meeting participants: Jake Nathan, iberrigan
WEBVTT
1 00:08:19.450 ⇒ 00:08:20.440 Jake Nathan: Hey, Ian.
2 00:08:27.080 ⇒ 00:08:28.230 iberrigan: Hey, can you hear me?
3 00:08:28.970 ⇒ 00:08:31.899 Jake Nathan: M’ ” Can you hear me?
4 00:08:31.900 ⇒ 00:08:34.159 iberrigan: Yeah, I can hear you.
5 00:08:34.730 ⇒ 00:08:38.939 iberrigan: Let me make sure… is the audio coming through this little headset? I can’t tell.
6 00:08:39.549 ⇒ 00:08:40.740 Jake Nathan: Yes, it is.
7 00:08:40.740 ⇒ 00:08:44.990 iberrigan: Okay, okay, cool, just making sure. I know it’s… I’m in a coffee shop, and it’s probably pretty loud.
8 00:08:45.290 ⇒ 00:08:48.000 Jake Nathan: Gotcha. What, what coffee shop are you at?
9 00:08:48.440 ⇒ 00:08:52.760 iberrigan: I’m at Capital One Cafe on 6th and Congress, yeah.
10 00:08:53.000 ⇒ 00:08:59.560 Jake Nathan: Is that a good one? I haven’t… I’ve… I remember I went to UT, so in college, I remember I had, like, a recruiting event there, but I haven’t been in a while.
11 00:08:59.680 ⇒ 00:09:17.059 iberrigan: Yeah, man, I mean, it’s kind of just one of those foolproof spots, you know, plenty of outlets and seating, so… can’t go wrong. I know most coffee shops, I struggle finding, you know, a seat with an outlet and, you know, quiet enough space to work, but this place always hits, so…
12 00:09:17.060 ⇒ 00:09:17.700 Jake Nathan: Awesome.
13 00:09:17.880 ⇒ 00:09:28.169 Jake Nathan: Sweet. Well, yeah, thank you for making time to do this, and did you have a chance… I can walk through it real quick. Did you have a chance to watch the loom that I sent, or just kind of going over what…
14 00:09:28.370 ⇒ 00:09:29.250 Jake Nathan: Okay, cool.
15 00:09:29.250 ⇒ 00:09:35.639 iberrigan: I didn’t, I’m sorry, I was handling some stuff for some clients that came up last second. Yeah, my bad.
16 00:09:35.640 ⇒ 00:09:43.789 Jake Nathan: Yeah. Oh, no worries, I can just, walk, walk it through with you real quick. And yeah, it’s almost saying, y’all are good buddies?
17 00:09:43.980 ⇒ 00:09:46.320 iberrigan: Yeah, yeah, we are.
18 00:09:46.680 ⇒ 00:09:56.729 iberrigan: Technically, he’s a client of mine, but yeah, we were buddies well before that, so yeah, I mean, we’ve known each other for probably 3 years, coming on 3 years now.
19 00:09:57.200 ⇒ 00:10:02.759 Jake Nathan: Nice. And did y’all meet just from being ambitious business people, or how did y’all meet?
20 00:10:02.980 ⇒ 00:10:21.889 iberrigan: basically at a pool party, at the Avenir. Yeah, that’s kind of where I met a handful of my long-lasting friends when I first moved here. I knew Tom was one that stuck, so… yeah. Since then, we’ve kind of dabbled in some potential business stuff, you know, some ideas on the InsurTech.
21 00:10:22.160 ⇒ 00:10:28.350 iberrigan: you know, stuff that he’s really good at, and that was before Brainforge started, so…
22 00:10:28.430 ⇒ 00:10:47.599 iberrigan: Yeah, it’s been great to see how far he’s come, and I’m still… I’m still on the edge about… I tried calling him this morning, actually, because I think I’m… I think I’m gonna start building my own agency and set everything up so I can transition out from working for a large firm and just kind of start my own thing.
23 00:10:47.670 ⇒ 00:11:03.140 iberrigan: I can’t… I can’t do it any longer, man. Like, I’m just like… I can do everything that I do now by myself, for sure. I have little to no support, so it’s like, what… why would I hand away 70-80% of my commission revenue when I could just keep it all for myself? Makes no sense.
24 00:11:04.020 ⇒ 00:11:09.980 Jake Nathan: Yeah, well, that’s cool that you have that much clarity on it, that you feel like you can just, like, you have the roadmap to start doing it yourself.
25 00:11:09.980 ⇒ 00:11:15.630 iberrigan: Yeah, 7 years in the industry, it’s definitely, definitely, revealing some things to me.
26 00:11:16.490 ⇒ 00:11:27.749 Jake Nathan: Well, cool. Well, this might be even more interesting, just because, yeah, I was talking with Utom, I, yeah, a little background on me, so I, have, like, a content background, so before this, I actually had a…
27 00:11:27.750 ⇒ 00:11:31.590 iberrigan: TikTok that I grew to a million followers, and oh, sick.
28 00:11:31.590 ⇒ 00:11:50.850 Jake Nathan: I started a high-protein pizza company, and I’ve always been, like, very content-focused, and so now I’m kind of… before that, I worked at Deloitte doing consulting, and worked at a tech company, so I kind of have this B2B background, and then content background, and so now I’m kind of blending the two, and so I connected with Utam, and so I’m helping him just kind of create
29 00:11:50.850 ⇒ 00:11:59.900 Jake Nathan: more content for Brainforge, and so he, had mentioned you and just said that, y’all have always kind of talked about doing something together, and so…
30 00:12:00.180 ⇒ 00:12:11.159 Jake Nathan: let me share my screen real quick, just to kind of give you a rundown of what I was thinking. And I definitely want it to be a collaboration, but basically, I wanted to…
31 00:12:11.730 ⇒ 00:12:18.819 Jake Nathan: make kind of a co-branded asset playbook, white paper, whatever you want to call it. And…
32 00:12:18.870 ⇒ 00:12:35.919 Jake Nathan: a title that I have, we can… we can change it, but I was just thinking, you know, 3 common problems that are… that’s holding commercial insurance back, and specifically going over, you know, from your perspective, how are companies solving it right now? How do you think they should actually solve it?
33 00:12:35.920 ⇒ 00:12:39.940 Jake Nathan: And then any sort of data or personal narrative around it is super…
34 00:12:40.060 ⇒ 00:12:51.370 Jake Nathan: valuable, and then, like, where Brainforge comes in is, like, what is the data and AI part of that, and how does that play a role in, like, helping companies solve the problem? And so,
35 00:12:51.550 ⇒ 00:12:53.270 Jake Nathan: Yeah, that was,
36 00:12:53.420 ⇒ 00:13:02.899 Jake Nathan: you know, kind of going through each one, and going through each problem, and then just going over that, then I’ll kind of transcribe this, start
37 00:13:03.080 ⇒ 00:13:13.279 Jake Nathan: kind of taking my lessons learned and, making it into a playbook, and then we can, refine it as needed. So that’s kind of what I was thinking. Does that sound like…
38 00:13:13.840 ⇒ 00:13:23.670 iberrigan: I think that’s cool. Yeah, I can see this being super valuable for… I mean, obviously Brainforge getting introduced into the…
39 00:13:23.760 ⇒ 00:13:29.210 iberrigan: you know, the whole, commercial insurance scene, I think there’s a lot of opportunity. It’s…
40 00:13:29.250 ⇒ 00:13:34.860 iberrigan: Pretty much… it’s a pretty antiquated industry, so there’s a lot of old methods and
41 00:13:34.860 ⇒ 00:13:50.149 iberrigan: And just kind of, like, baked in, I guess you could say, like, processes that are really hard to unravel and, like, start fresh. So, a lot of agencies are just dated and kind of just operate the same way they have for 20 years, 30 years.
42 00:13:51.630 ⇒ 00:14:01.479 iberrigan: And it’s just like, from what I’ve seen, they just go so… they’re just… they’ve gone so long doing things a certain way, and it’s such a relationship-type business on the commercial side that
43 00:14:01.480 ⇒ 00:14:14.559 iberrigan: they don’t see the value in introducing new technologies, adopting new methods of, you know, outreach, or marketing, or whatever it might be. Internally, it could be, like, you know.
44 00:14:14.800 ⇒ 00:14:25.250 iberrigan: client management, it could be policy management stuff, like, they just don’t… they don’t see the need to go out and spend the money or, you know, unravel what’s already been working for…
45 00:14:25.630 ⇒ 00:14:42.360 iberrigan: God knows how many years. But I think that’s where there’s gonna be a lot of pain felt, in the coming years because of, you know, agency owners’ lack of understanding the value in this stuff, and looking forward into the future, they’re gonna… they’re gonna realize they’re gonna be…
46 00:14:42.480 ⇒ 00:14:46.679 iberrigan: They’re gonna get, they’re just gonna get drowned in… in…
47 00:14:46.880 ⇒ 00:15:02.270 iberrigan: I guess, management tasks, and then in addition to that, they’ll probably just get beat out by a bunch of, like, more lean, you know, higher… higher margined agencies that started later, because they’ve implemented these technologies.
48 00:15:02.780 ⇒ 00:15:05.220 iberrigan: That’s kind of where my brain’s at, and…
49 00:15:05.890 ⇒ 00:15:11.740 iberrigan: for myself, that’s… that’s where I’m seeing a huge opportunity, is just the ability
50 00:15:12.180 ⇒ 00:15:18.950 iberrigan: like, yes, I don’t have a multi-million dollar book of business that’s been running for 10 years, but I have the…
51 00:15:19.080 ⇒ 00:15:28.849 iberrigan: The ability to go out and, like, build something from the ground up, knowing that the tech stack is gonna be the driving force of the success.
52 00:15:30.130 ⇒ 00:15:36.959 iberrigan: And I see that in the agency I’m a part of now. It’s not very traditional, but it’s just the fact that they just lack the…
53 00:15:37.220 ⇒ 00:15:52.140 iberrigan: the… they lack the experience and the understanding of how important the technology piece is to the growth of the firm, and they’re just gonna get run over and probably just do away with the retail side of the business at some point, because it’s…
54 00:15:52.290 ⇒ 00:16:01.620 iberrigan: It’s not profitable, and they’re gonna have a really hard time growing, I mean… That’s what I’m saying.
55 00:16:02.330 ⇒ 00:16:08.910 Jake Nathan: Yeah, that’s… that’s very interesting to hear, from an outsider’s perspective. I feel like, like you’re saying, there’s…
56 00:16:09.180 ⇒ 00:16:14.069 Jake Nathan: there might be, like, a lot of pain felt in the next 10 years if people are at Trejury, so that’s…
57 00:16:14.190 ⇒ 00:16:18.950 Jake Nathan: I, I think, that… I feel like that gives me even more conviction that this could be a cool…
58 00:16:18.980 ⇒ 00:16:36.959 Jake Nathan: Cool asset. So do you, like, we could just start, and, like, you kind of… if you, if you are kind of ready to rock, like, we can just start with, like, you kind of mentioned a few problems, we could do that, or if you want to, like, take some time, think about it, and, you know, schedule a call, like, tomorrow or later this week, I’m also down for that. What works best for you?
59 00:16:38.450 ⇒ 00:16:56.320 iberrigan: I mean, I think… I think to give you guys the absolute best information, I should probably take it and, like, think on it and write a bunch of stuff down. I think that would benefit you guys a lot more. I mean, I could just rip in if we could chat about it, but I think that would probably be better for y’all.
60 00:16:56.410 ⇒ 00:17:11.800 iberrigan: And it would also help me, because, you know, seeing as I’m trying to make this step… I mean, I’m building the runway now, while I still can collect a W-2 income. Yeah. I think it’ll help me kind of formulate my, you know, takeoff as well, so…
61 00:17:11.800 ⇒ 00:17:31.620 iberrigan: hopefully I can be the first use case, or one of the first use cases for this product, or this go-to-market thing you’re developing for Brainforge. Like, that’s my goal, is to partner with UTAM in some way, shape, or form. One, because I know there’s value there, and two, I just… I believe in him and his, you know, y’all’s team and everything y’all are doing, like.
62 00:17:31.620 ⇒ 00:17:39.329 iberrigan: it’s a no-brainer, like, I don’t have those capabilities, so I know it’s gonna… you know, it’s gonna… it’s gonna really, really,
63 00:17:39.330 ⇒ 00:17:51.809 iberrigan: drive revenue, for sure. And brand awareness, and on the marketing side, that’s… that’s also a very stale thing that I’ll go into detail when I answer this stuff on the next call. I just feel like there’s just such a lack of,
64 00:17:51.910 ⇒ 00:18:00.009 iberrigan: brand, like, the strength of the brand, how people, you know, position themselves in the market, it’s just very…
65 00:18:00.200 ⇒ 00:18:13.070 iberrigan: boring, bland, and, like, there’s no differentiators when it comes to the client-facing side of this type of business, like… and that’s kind of what I’m trying to figure out. How can I stand out from
66 00:18:13.260 ⇒ 00:18:14.150 iberrigan: you know
67 00:18:15.090 ⇒ 00:18:29.009 iberrigan: ABC Insurance Brokerage, or whatever, who cares who it is? Like, they all sell the same products, they all have similar market access, and can do what you need to get done, and be safe, and it’s like, there’s nothing… it’s not revolutionary, like…
68 00:18:29.120 ⇒ 00:18:31.400 iberrigan: So, it’s all positioning.
69 00:18:32.110 ⇒ 00:18:51.679 Jake Nathan: Yeah, that’s, if you ever want to spitball on that, too, like, I… that’s my world, is I love, content and marketing, and so that’s what I’ve been living and breathing, so if you ever… like, even though I don’t have a ton of experience specifically, like, in your industry, it’s… I’d still, like… I’ve… I’ve done so many niches at this point that I kind of geek out about, like, I can.
70 00:18:51.680 ⇒ 00:18:52.410 iberrigan: new stuff.
71 00:18:52.410 ⇒ 00:18:55.029 Jake Nathan: Cybersecurity, I could geek out about commercial.
72 00:18:55.030 ⇒ 00:18:55.570 iberrigan: Yeah.
73 00:18:55.570 ⇒ 00:19:13.259 Jake Nathan: geek out about someone manufacturing pipes, like, it’s all interesting to me. So, yeah, well, that’s cool. Well, I’ll, yeah, I’ll let you kind of take some time. I mean, do you have… do you want to check your calendar and just get back to me, or, like, do you have a time that you think would work for you?
74 00:19:13.510 ⇒ 00:19:20.130 iberrigan: Let me just look right now. This is a good week for me, I don’t have a whole lot going on.
75 00:19:21.710 ⇒ 00:19:27.409 iberrigan: Let’s see… yeah, I mean, I’m pretty much open tomorrow and Thursday.
76 00:19:27.960 ⇒ 00:19:28.970 iberrigan: Cool.
77 00:19:29.080 ⇒ 00:19:33.759 iberrigan: Yeah, so whatever time works best for you, man. That’s… you can make it work.
78 00:19:34.230 ⇒ 00:19:43.989 Jake Nathan: Awesome. How about… I’m pretty open… yeah, I’m open tomorrow. Like, I could do before lunchtime, like, could you do…
79 00:19:44.190 ⇒ 00:19:49.360 Jake Nathan: 11 a.m, is that doable? Yeah. Okay, cool. Let’s do that. I’ll,
80 00:19:49.510 ⇒ 00:19:53.839 Jake Nathan: send you a calendar invite, and then, yeah, I’ll send you that doc, and
81 00:19:53.930 ⇒ 00:20:12.329 Jake Nathan: I… I mean, I pretty much went over in the loom, but yeah, the goal of this is really to try to be, I guess, I just want to hammer home that it’s like, we want it to be as, like, tactical as possible, I guess, like, just trying to provide as many unique insights as possible, because, you know, like, some… you’ll read, like, a piece of content, you can just, like, your brain…
82 00:20:12.330 ⇒ 00:20:27.900 Jake Nathan: can tell, like, almost immediately, like, oh, is this, like, a fluff sales piece, or is this, like, actually giving me… and so we kind of want to do the second one. So, yeah, it seems like… seems like this could be really cool, and yeah, thanks for… for making time, and excited to…
83 00:20:27.910 ⇒ 00:20:29.380 Jake Nathan: Dive into it tomorrow.
84 00:20:29.380 ⇒ 00:20:36.650 iberrigan: Totally, me too, man. I think it’ll be beneficial for, not only myself, but yeah, Brainforged, obviously. So, cool, man.
85 00:20:37.910 ⇒ 00:20:39.210 iberrigan: Sweet. Good to meet you.
86 00:20:39.210 ⇒ 00:20:41.240 Jake Nathan: Yeah, good to meet you too. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
87 00:20:41.240 ⇒ 00:20:42.440 iberrigan: Alright, brother, see you soon.