Morse Insurance and Be Au Sm Vlog

Vlog Series – Episode #1

Interviewer: Dan Morse, President, Morse Insurance Agency

Guest: Joshua “Josh” Peach, Founder, Be Au Sm (pronounced “be awesome”)

Dan: Hey, everyone. Welcome. This is Morse Insurance’s first vlog series. I’m Dan Morse, president of Morse Insurance Agency and we are going to give perspective into our clients and their journeys. Today, I have a friend of ours and a long-, long-time client, Josh Peach, who started Be Au Sm. Now, Be Au Sm is a fascinating story that I could not give justification to, so I’m going to have Josh give a little explanation, but the amount of people that Josh and Be Au Sm touch and help, it is just incredible. So, Josh, welcome.

Josh: Thank you, Dan, for having me. I’m excited and honored and it’s been a long time in the making, you guys are awesome and I love talking about you as much as I can. Yeah, Be Au Sm I created unintentionally, it was supposed to be the title of a book. The original title of the book—it was going to be a sales book—was If You don’t Care, You don’t Count. And I insulted basically every reader that would have read it. I got about sixty pages in, I was like, “this is terrible, this isn’t the way I want to be.”

At that time, it was 2017 or thereabouts, and people were starting to get angry. There was a lot of people that just weren’t happy, just walking around life, looking for something to be mad at. So, I started just saying “be awesome.” You know, “wake up, be awesome.” I just had all these things I was kind of saying. I was doing talks and one day, one of my business advisors who is an ultra-marathon runner called me from running thirty miles, I said, “oh, my God, you’ve got to be asleep or in a coma,” he’s like, “I’ve got it! You wear it every day, ‘Be Awesome’! The essential elements to kicking ass, that’s the name of your company—that’s going to be the name of your book.”

So I created an LLC that day. I went out and told the world that this is what I was going to do. I created a podcast because at the time, that was a good way to get your name out—all for branding for this book—and then all of a sudden, people wanted to start to hear my stories in person. And so, since 2018, we’ve done—well, probably because of COVID—between 500 and 600 key notes. Hundreds of thousands of people that we’ve gotten to talk to, and we talk one-on-one, in groups. Anywhere from a small session of 40 people to 2,500 people in Atlantic City or in California. It’s a lot of fun—a lot of travel. I think we’ve covered about 20,000 miles in the last two and a half weeks. I’ve been to Alaska, Texas twice, New Mexico, Chicago, Minneapolis, Seattle, then home. So, I get my frequent flyer miles, but that’s what you have to do as an in-person speaker.

Dan: Well, having the privilege of listening to you during one of your speaking engagements—it’s always motivational. So, can you tell me some of the highlights of your journey in the history of Be Au Sm?

Josh: The first was probably when I started the podcast, I did the first two episodes on a TV dinner tray in my yard under my peach tree. And I went in a I told my fiancée, Amy, I was like, “this is awful, I’m so boring.” I just, I can’t see myself doing these podcasts. And she was like, “Well, you need a guest.” And I was going to Alaska anyway in a couple weeks and I remembered reading about a guy named Santa Claus—legally named Santa Claus in North Pole, Alaska—and I forced him to do a podcast with me. He was a city counselor at the time, and we did it in City Hall chambers in North Pole, Alaska, and that was really the birth of the podcast, which is now in the top 2.5 to 3 percent of all podcasts. One hundred and nineteen, one hundred and twenty done and a lot of fun.

But, most of my highlights are—when you get into the business, you try to change the world and you don’t realize that you really just need to change one person at a time, and if everybody makes one person’s day, then everybody’s day is made. And so, the reality for me is that anytime someone says “Hey, you made my day, you made a difference, you made me think differently,” that’s a highlight that I just have and like I said, I’ve got a million of them. I got probably twenty of them in Albuquerque last week, which just fills your cup. That’s why I do it.

Dan: That’s awesome. So, tell me, you have an incredible gift to be able to make your content and message really resonate with different groups of people. You could be at a business function; you could be at—you name it. How do you sit there and kind of figure out your group that you’re speaking with and then in turn, really connect with that group?

Josh: Yeah, so, it is a gift and I don’t know where it comes from, but I do a lot of research, I do a lot of homework on the group, on the people. I’ll spend a day in that organization or in that company, with their team or do pictures, but sometimes—like, you were at the chamber of commerce meeting with Thorny Lea (golf club?)—and I drove and saw that the gentleman that I brought a flag to in 2020 had passed away after being in business for over fifty years and had all of these stories that connected the importance of the chamber and “rising tide floats all ships.” It’s just luck—just being at the right place at the right time and really wanting to learn. I’m a continuous learner and wanting to understand the business that you’re in or what makes you happier—finding your “why.” Then once you do that, the rest of it just kind of falls into place and it’s just words at that point, right? You’re just putting the words to the emotion and to the feeling and you make sure that people understand that they’re awesome.

Dan: Tell us a little bit about your relationship with Morse Insurance and how it got started—we appreciate this.

Josh: Yeah, 1991—I believe it was 1991 or 1992—I had a 1987 Subaru station wagon, 5-speed, manual roll-up windows, 4-cylinder, zero to sixty in about thirteen minutes. And I don’t remember if my dad and your dad were friends—I believe they were—I don’t know if they were at the time, but my dad was like, “You need to go down and see Mr. Morse.” I just insured the car, I was so excited, it was my first day driving and he was like, “He’s got to photograph the car.” I was like, “For what?” He was like, “He’s got to take pictures of the car, I don’t know, go down there.” And, you guys had Polaroids that you used to take pictures of the vehicles. And I went down there, and your dad talked to me, and he talked to me like a human, he talked to me like a young adult. But he also gave me guidance, he’s like, “driving is a huge responsibility, and you really don’t want to get any violations.” I’m like, “I don’t think this car does the speed limit, even in a school zone so I don’t think we have to worry about that.”

We had a good conversation. At the time—1991—insurance was expensive for kids. It is today, but it was expensive back then, it was probably $600–$700. I wasn’t your number one customer, but I remember leaving feeling like I was. From 1991 to today, it doesn’t matter the policy—how big how small, whatever it is—I always feel like I’m cared for, like your number one customer. I call your phone number—the local phone number—a live voice answers, I ask for someone that’s handling a policy and I either talk to them or get a voicemail, and they call me back same day. I’ve never had to wait twenty-four hours on a question—and I have a lot of questions—so, but that’s just been, for me, insurance—like any other business—is competitive. There are people in the business who will compete to earn your business and drop their price or do other things.

I would never even consider looking at someone else, only because it’s the service. I’ll talk to Timmy, and we’ll talk about a policy and he’ll be like, “Oh, I just talked to you about something the other day,” and he gives me the whole number and it’s like the price of a small coffee at Starbucks. I’ll just have one less coffee and I’ll have better insurance, so that’s a good tradeoff. You guys just do great service. I was just thinking about my youngest son, he’s ten years from having his license and his first car and hopefully he’s going to come down and have pictures taken with Dad, and you guys will give him the same talk because kids tend to listen to others more than they listen to their parents.

Dan: Well, unfortunately, we don’t have to do pictures anymore, but maybe I could use my phone if you want.

Josh: Yeah, there you go.

Dan: We definitely appreciate the relationship that we have with you and how it’s grown, but it’s also important to realize that it’s our responsibility to earn your business every day. It’s nothing that should be given to anyone. We need to earn it every single day. Let’s move on—what can we expect from Be Au Sm in the future?

Josh: More of the same, we’re just grinding it out, changing as the environment changes. My talks now, a lot of them are on balance and learning about it and what it is because everybody talks about it, but nobody knows about it. If the mattress companies keep telling us to stay in bed for eight hours a day, then there’s really no way to have a healthy balance of twenty-four hours, when you’re working on sixteen. Most people don’t know there’s 168 hours in a week, so we’re working on some things to help people with: How do we really manage our time?

Dan: Josh, does any experience with the Morse Insurance team really stick out to you?

Josh: Typically, my experience—when I need you, is on my worst days ever, right? So, something bad has happened that requires your help. There’s a couple of instances—I’ll give the “never would I expect this to happen,” I will give the “this typically happens,” and then I’ll give a funny one. A “never should this happen” is February of 2015, the Polar Vortex hit, I proposed to my fiancée and twenty-four hours later, we were going out to dinner, and our house started leaking. Ice dams had flooded our home. In essence, our whole bottom floor was destroyed. I talked to your team daily, it seemed like, for about six months. It was the worst day, it’s the worst feeling you could ever have. And one of the things—there were lots of people who were feeling that same problem, but one of the things that I never felt was like I was alone. Whether it was making sure that I was taking pictures, doing everything I was supposed to do, you guys just gave me a to-do checklist to work through and you were also providing the remediation people. They were there within twenty-four hours. I was working with the adjusters and everything else, you guys were just phenomenal.

You don’t go to bed at night at go, “Hey, my house might get destroyed tomorrow.” But today, that’s a reality, weather events are really, they really kind of stick. The typical day as a Morse, of Course client is Donna Walsh. She’s my commercial—I don’t know what you’d call it—yeah, account manager. And so, Donna’s been with me for two years—since I started another one of my companies. She’s phenomenal; I just found out she’s been working in the insurance business since 1972. With Donna, it’s like—since my first policy—you guys would give me these big packets of stuff and I tell Donna all the time, like, “I don’t want to read all this. Give me what I need, tell me what I need to do and who I need to pay and let’s get this thing done.” And that business requires almost a constant re-up of paperwork with contracts, because I work with contracts. And she’s always there, like, every time I call, if I don’t get her on the phone, I leave a voicemail with exactly what I need because I’m on the road a lot and I don’t email as much as others. She’ll turn that around and get me all the paperwork I need—done—all squared away. So, having that in my corner, and knowing it, is worth every penny.

And then the last, which is funny, is I was on the runway in Philadelphia in 2017 and Amy was almost eight months pregnant, and she got rear-ended by a delivery driver. So, I’m like, “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know who to call.” So, I called Tim. I’m like, “Hey, Amy just got into a car accident, she’s eight months pregnant, I don’t know what to do. I can’t stop this plane from taking off.” He’s like, “Have her call me.” And so, I texted Amy, like, “Call Tim.” So now, Timmy’s taking care of my accident issues with my fiancée and my unborn son while I’m at 36,000 feet, counting down the minutes, so that was a little nerve wracking.

Dan: Before we end it, I’m going to do a little fun fact. Josh, he has on his social media, if anybody submits a picture wearing a Be Au Sm T-shirt—no matter where they may be—he sits there and he gets it up on his social media. Now, I’ve had the privilege of being on once in Disney and once in Jamaica.

Josh: The caverns. No, you were always in the caverns of Missouri.

Dan: Oh, yeah, we had one out there too, I forgot about that one.

Josh: Every time I put a post of Dan Morse wearing a shirt on my social media, sales go through the roof, and most of them are your wife’s friends. And I hand-deliver them, so, that’s a good one.

Dan: That’s because I look so good in a “sch-medium”.

Josh: Yeah, absolutely.

Dan: All right, well, that’s all the time we have for today. I really want to thank Josh Peach from Be Au Sm for joining us and giving us some insight into his journey and his career. We hope to have a few more of these vlogs up and running in the coming months, so thank you very much for tuning in.