Breaking the Status Quo
From Dreams of Baseball to Leaving the Insurance Industry Better Than He Found It
Shawn Woedl’s journey to becoming the President and CEO of National Real Estate Insurance Group (NREIG) has been guided by one saying by Rear Admiral Grace Hopper:
“The most dangerous phrase in the language is, ‘We’ve always done it this way.’”
Woedl took this same approach when entering the insurance industry many years ago.
NREIG provides insurance solutions for nearly every type of investment property. The company had humble beginnings in an Ohio basement office in 2008. Woedl and Tim Norris, the founder of NREIG, had initially built the business by speaking at different Real Estate Investment Association (REIA) groups across Ohio. The company has grown to over 140,000 locations across all 50 states, with over 20,000 investors enrolled in their programs.
Woedl’s “all or nothing” approach has helped him achieve great success in the insurance industry. Although, when he was young, he had his sights set elsewhere.
Woedl spent his youth dedicated to baseball; it was all he ever thought he would do. He had huge dreams of making it to “the show,” but it wasn’t in the cards for him. As he put it, “I did things the hard way, but I’m better off for it.”
While driving one night in high school, he was struck by a drunk driver who ran a red light. He sustained significant damage to his right shoulder, requiring surgery and extensive rehabilitation. Although he experienced constant pain in his shoulder, Woedl was committed to rebuilding his swing. He signed to play baseball at DePauw University, a Division III school in Greencastle, Indiana.
“But like many other times in my life where I chose the hard way,” he joked, “I decided that having all of my college paid for was too easy, and I left DePauw.”
After fumbling around for a few months, he enrolled at a junior college in an attempt to save his dream of making it to the major leagues. Unfortunately, he had missed too much time during rehab to catch up. It was time he came up with a plan B.
Finding a new dream
A few years later, after finishing a shift at JCPenney (one of three jobs at the time), he ran into an acquaintance at Best Buy loading several high-ticket electronics into his $100,000 SUV.
“So, of course, I asked him what he was doing,” said Woedl. “We met up a couple of days later, and he explained that he owned a few insurance agencies and offered me a job.”
The agencies were mainly comprised of home and auto accounts, an area Woedl had very little interest in, but commercial real estate immediately stuck out to him. The two started an independent agency focused primarily on large apartment complexes. With a $10,000 investment and a list of apartment owners and property management companies across the country, “I started smiling and dialing, and that was the beginning of my career,” said Woedl.
“I’ll admit that in the beginning I was in it for the money,” said Woedl. “But that didn’t last long.”
He recalled one of his first encounters with an investor who is still a client to this day: “He nearly got destroyed on a property claim because his insurance agent at the time did not explain to him the limitations of his coverage and how it would affect him following a loss. I watched as he only recovered about $28,000 from what should have been $250,000 because of all the things he got dinged for. He was under-insured, he had coinsurance, and his deductibles were too high. I thought to myself, ‘What the hell is going on?’ “
Woedl began having every new client send over their existing policy so he could do a line-by-line comparison. If the client’s needs were not being adequately addressed, Woedl would point out where he could set them up with better coverage.
Though he spent three to four hours on each policy, reading these contracts is how Woedl taught himself about insurance policies and how to identify trap doors that could harm his clients. He strongly believed that the industry had to change.
“The more I read into some of these insurance policies, the more disgusted I was at the state of affairs in the industry. I developed a passion for insurance that I never expected, and it set the stage for me to move into the insurance program space.”
As time passed, Woedl gained traction in the insurance industry. Instead of just brokering one-off deals, he began building programs. “This was where the revelation really started to hit me, and I realized how impactful my profession could be. I learned how to build programs for the benefit of investor clients, and a whole world opened.”
By this time, Woedl had joined up with Tim Norris, the founder of NREIG, who had also discovered this real estate investor niche in the market. The two realized that many insurance carriers were hesitant to work with investor clients for two main reasons.
“Insurance is a transfer of risk. Insurance companies are trying to minimize risk. And as for investors, there is plenty of risk to account for,” Woedl explained. For example, a tenant is more likely to burn down a rental property than the owner. A vacant building is more likely to be vandalized than one that is occupied. And a property under construction is more likely to have accidents.
The second major factor — a lot of time for little money. “Here’s how it works. Investors will buy a property that is occupied. Two months later, the tenant will move out, and the investor needs to renovate it. And that means a policy will have to be canceled and replaced by a whole new policy, which brings a slew of paperwork for little money,” explained Woedl. He recognized that an investor’s insurance needs are just as unique and challenging as the properties they hold. It is not an investor’s fault that carriers don’t have the correct system in place to serve those needs.
A Visionary Program for Investors
So, Woedl and Norris decided to build a program that would allow for changes on a monthly reporting form according to their clients’ ever-changing needs. To make it work as close to real-time as possible, they invented a pay-as-you-go plan that could accommodate locations through all phases of occupancy.
This streamlined approach gave investors the power to assess their needs and notify NREIG when there is a change in occupancy.
“It became just the flip of a switch for us,” Woedl stated. “Still to this day, you cannot find anyone else who works like we do on a national level. That’s the secret sauce that has made us who we are.”
Woedl hopes to leave the industry better than he found it. Part of that is strengthening the consumers he serves. He is currently working on a book that will help residential real estate investors learn how to insure their investment properties the right way. It is filled with best practices and helpful tips on what to consider when they are building their insurance coverage package with their agent.
“I’m not naïve enough to think I can change the world or even this industry,” said Woedl. “But I can control what the people who work for me offer to our clients, partners, and the industry. I can control the quality of our products and who I partner with. I can clean up the space where I sit. I want to bring along the next generation of agents, teach them what I’ve learned, and when I am gone, I hope they will approach the industry the same way I do.
