Verity Group Research Project Scope & Emergency Vehicle Recovery

Crystallize as a priority of theirs. So back in November, just as quick context, back in November, I was present for a very strange meeting that I felt like I should not have been, but I was requested that I come sit there for it, which Brent effectively jockeyed for this hybridized COO/CFO type role for himself. Yes. And basically through the lens of like, I can double the size of your monthly distribution, I just need to be let off the leash, more or less. That has led him to effectively a bunch of different little power struggles. But one of them leading up to Matt. And ultimately, my question to him was basically like, who is the audience here? Is the audience Brent? Or is the audience Matt? Or is the audience Larry as well? Like, who are we writing for here? Because it's going to change the way that we write. Right. Like, the audience is me. Larry will probably read it. Matt might. Matt, it seemed, was actually on that call because he wanted to understand like the approach and the methodology. Because I guess he had some other friend group that was also offering to like throw their hat in the ring to do research work for them.

Okay.

But doesn't actually seem like he's vested in the business piece of it. That's what I took it as. But anyway, Brent came from his meeting today, duly authorized to go drive whatever outcomes in the Verity Group.

Okay. Okay.

He agrees.

Is the potential outcome just shutting it down? I don't know.

Well, ultimately, ultimately, we agreed that, like, it's for us to have conclusions that we speak to him about. So like, the document itself will have— be light on conclusions. Our conclusions will be spoken to him, or maybe exist for our purposes depending on how we want to play it, in some kind of like side document of conclusions that we can give him or just keep in reserve or whatever. Um, and he really liked the like idea of He really responded to the, like, let's pay a single shingle life care planner and just interrogate them about the industry.

Right.

And I was like, what it's not going to have is it's not going to have, like, opinions or marketing. Like, and I talked to him, I was like, For instance, the competitors that we have, like the closest thing you'll have to like a verity positioning thing is I'd like to do like a 3-segment record table with the 3 competitors that we've identified, the one they sent to us and the 2 that we've already found and then theirs and just kind of like do the compare and contrast of those. But again, detailing it out, but not really having a conclusion there. So he's like, okay, that makes sense. But I actually think he wants conclude— he wants us to have— he doesn't want them to be in the document, which kind of makes sense if you're jockeying for to kill other people, right? But Okay, so I told him that we're gonna send him basically scope, method, cost, and a dollar amount.

Okay.

Um, so this thing that you sent— and then here's the other thing, um, I don't want to be the gating element of progress on this, as I often am in a lot of things. So I want you to drive.

Okay.

I want to still have some semblance of pride of authorship and shaping the things and tone of things and just trying to tie it directly to that. But at the end of the day, Like, I don't think you'll be more effective at it.

Um, yeah, I'm happy to do the bulk of the, like, legwork, get the calls.

I do think, though, leveraging as much AI as we can in this so that, so that the legwork you're talking.

About is— trust me, it will be AI. It will be AI-assisted. Like, there will be— I, I'm not going to just, like, give you a— give him AI slop, but it will be like heavily focused on making sure that I'm maximizing like dollar per output or dollar per like time investment.

Yeah, and I guess my point here is more like framing more like once we have this piece agreed to, then you just kind of like are able to go talk to and tailor to him and I think we scheduled what I, what this document doesn't have is like timelines, 4 to 6 weeks. It's like, let's, let's schedule a check-in call.

It actually did have a timeline and I didn't send it. Um, just because I didn't want it to seem too like that, it felt kind of AI-y, but I'll add it in there. I mean, it's, uh, let me grab it.

Well, don't even like use the AI, let's just build it ourselves. But it's like the point being like we're gonna have like a 2-week check-in call.

Yeah, basically it's the data gathering, the database, like procurement, all of that, and the competitive research. And then you do the— and we're setting up interviews in that time. So that's like 1 to 2, uh, 3 to 4, you're probably getting initial interviews and feedback from those, um, and then positioning that with the information that we got and potentially revamping some of our interviews down the line. And then, I don't know, in the last couple weeks we're just synthesizing the information we got. But I think getting all the, like, uh, fundamentals of the industry, all the background information, is important to do first. And then we do the interviews, um, and the, like, the point of contact with the individual people that we want to interview.

We should have by the end of all of this, and it won't be in the document, but we should have our hook of what the next phase of this is.

Like.

Because it basically have a 6-week head start on him of just like, here's where everything is, right? And I'm just thinking about this in terms of like, how do we keep the money going?

But How does money go up?

Yeah, but it's like, if we, if we have 6 weeks on them, like, I think I can confidently say to him, like, we've left a lot of— we left the conclusions out, as we said we were going to. But if you asked us how you grow this business, here's how we would do it. And speak to that with the idea of being like trying to get another hook into kind of that next phase. Right. So with the idea of being like, take your time with this, let us know if there's anything else, like we'll check back in in a couple of weeks. But I don't know, I'm just trying to think about it in terms of like, what is the next move after this? Because.

Well, I mean, we will be more knowledgeable, I would argue, than anyone in the Shakelee ecosystem about this.

That's not outside the Verity Group.

Yeah, directly— direct employees of the Verity Group, which I don't consider like Brent or Matt necessarily a part of. So like, there might be some employees there who know this industry well, but.

He was receptive to us Talking to Simon and Simon.

Okay, great. Okay. Yeah, I, I like the, I like the methodology. I hope that it leads to more engagement on this because I do think we will know a lot just by virtue of doing this research. It'd be a shame for it to just be like, all right, we'll take it from here.

Well, I think effectively what we're doing here, and it's not guaranteed, but we're making a bet and we're betting that Brent is going to be successful in vacuuming up more autonomy, like authority and autonomy, right? Like Brent is bringing in some guy he brought in from whatever, Touchstone, to basically just be his like biz ops spy, and he's just gonna run around.

Let me take this from Julie. I'm curious what it is. I'll leave you on.

Hey Julie.

Hey Julie. How are you?

It's not great. Remember that Camry that got taken and held hostage? You know, about 2 years ago, a year ago?

Yeah.

Well, it happened again with a cube truck out of Hollywood. Somebody, some guy from Santa Rosa, a guy named Basile, took a brand new 92615 Tahoe, which didn't have tracker on it.

Doesn't matter.

And we get a call from the dealer or a body shop today that it's there and the guy damaged it and he wants $8,600.

The body shop wants $8,600? Yeah.

It's like the person with the Camry where the girl took the vehicle straight there.

Right.

They damaged it on the site. Well, we think this is the same situation. However, I can't track it to prove it because there's no tracker in this vehicle.

Why is there no tracker in the vehicle?

Because according to— I asked Alex when this one— we start— when we— this person was overdue, so we tried calling and we couldn't. Michelle said, can you track the vehicle? She called me up Monday and I couldn't. And Alex said that they ran it— when these came in, they ran out of trackers. So at that point I told him, I said, look, you grabbed— he grounded all of those vehicles and he will put trackers on them when they come in. I said, you can't have these new vehicles out there without trackers. Yeah. Anyways, regardless, regardless. Vehicle is now— Faustino and Alex went down there. The guy's like a jackass saying that he wants to— he wants $8,600 for us to get our vehicle back. And it's going to— it's going to be cumulative. It's going to go up day after day. Can I have Jeff or call him? Maybe if we have an attorney call him because the police won't help us. But Jeff is a scrapper.

Yeah. Does Richard know about this?

Not yet, because he just walked into my office. Derek's standing right here too.

Yeah, you sure?

I gotta find speakers.

Hey Derek, to the guys over there at that, um, Wrecking Yard, this kind of like reminds us the whole scenario with that camera.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So just, just be mindful that within those charges he's already put a lien You know what I'm saying? He's charging us for a lien, uh, for a lien sale on that as well. So they already, uh, filed a lien on this vehicle.

Okay, let's get, uh, I don't know.

How they can file a lien on that within a day.

Jeff, call him, at least scare him a little bit. And the good news is, JD, this guy didn't buy a lick of insurance from us. So if worst case scenario, if he is actually legitimate, he's responsible for this, right?

License looks familiar with one of the guys on the yacht.

Looks like he could be related, but it doesn't matter since he lives in Santa Rosa. I Googled the address, is legit. His address on his license matches the address on his supposed insurance binder that he gave us, which is through AAA. J— uh, Vladimir is trying to confirm coverage. We haven't been able to yet, although it's AAA. I don't know if he has coverage on a cube. We'll see. The phone number was working, um, it was a legitimate number, but he's not answering from it now. Worst case scenario, we can go to the DMV and revoke his license if we have to. Um, there's things we can do because he did not buy our insurance, right? However, I think we need to get— I think we need to have.

Um.

Attorney on this place.

JD, just be mindful, they're going to, you know, this $325— what is it a day? $325.

A day? Yeah.

Okay, so give this to Richard and Katie. They're gonna go get it to Jeff, and Jeff can do the full Jeff Bohr process and go nuclear with him.

Did you guys talk to her about it?

She's— she.

Knows some details.

I'll call Richard right now.

Yeah, call Richard and then get Jeff Bohr involved and let Jeff Bohr do what he does best. Okay, thank you for letting me know.

Thank you, JD. Sorry for the bad news.

We're out of trackers is one of.

The craziest— just so it's not— it's not even the, the idea that you could say that and think that that is justifiable is insane to me with the amount of vehicles we've been selling. Like just something's not happening. Either we're not taking them out of the vehicles or they're sitting in a pile and we're too lazy to put them in. Okay. All right. Well, sorry for the derailment. Let's get back to it. So you are— are you confident that what we're putting together is actually what Fred wants? Like, it sounds like yes.

I, I called him specifically to ask these questions that I put under this, like, what we heard section.

Yeah.

Um, by the way, quickly, I want to do like $25,000 overall, $5,000 down for initial expenses.

I was going to suggest, yeah, some way to make sure that we're not coming out of pocket for those, those fees to just get all that set up. Also, I don't know if you noticed, but on that call there was Julie, Derek, Faustino, and Michelle had all gotten in the room to make the call. So that's the, uh, the wisdom of the crowds right there. Um, all right, timeline. Um, when you call this[No speech] Contract. Okay. All right. So I put the timeline at the bottom there of kind of roughly what we'd be working on.

Um, what is this supposed to be? Define the boundaries of market— of services that firms in this space.

Um, I think it's around the idea that the life care planning is just one segment of the overall services in this market. So where does life care planning What are the adjacent industries to life care planning that— did you write this or is this AI? This is AI.

This is a confusing way to say it. And the boundaries of the market.

Is it more like define the breadth of services related that similar to the life care planning industry? So. Identify.

I don't think it's identifying the additional, like, it's just What do the cert— like, what does the industry do? Who's in the industry? What does it do? Like, who's in the industry tells you sizing. Industry overview, what does it do?

Define the industry size and scope. Like this, define the industry size and scope of services provided.

Yeah, I'm going to take this stuff out because that is effectively what we're telling them.

Define the industry size and scope of services provided.

I want to avoid using the word scope. Brett, what about just define the industry size and services provided? How about.

Total addressable market rather than size?

We say that down here.

Okay.

Oh yeah, I think size. Yeah, this is where it's like, I think define the entry size and the services provided. Okay.

All right, so this would be I.

Actually think that this just like take the wheel, but just have it say build, like build a detailed picture of who operates in the space and what they look like.

Boom. Okay, yeah.

I'm going to take out a lot of this volume because this is basically.

The stuff that we're Yep, doing, yeah, or delivering. All right, how do you like that for number 4? Macro insights with potential effects in the near term.

Do you have something for this? Is this something that you know about, or is that just slop.

For the AI?

The regulatory landscape relative to credentialing and testifying standards?

No, I don't have anything for that.

Okay, so then what do we say? Industry risk and trends. And then we got demand drivers here. What are we thinking here?

Well, I think the demand drivers we were speaking to earlier is like what's actually going to cause more people to— is it, is it the amount of potential claims that are generated, or is it more aggressive legal, like, representation going after these type of claims? Like, it's not about whether the accidents themselves are growing, it's about how many of these potential claims are being brought in front of a, a judge every year, or being brought to a point of a potential big payday, or quality of claims.

Like, I would almost describe that as count or quality claims. Lemonade, the insurance company, has started offering a 50% discount to drivers when full self-driving supervised is on because the data is showing that there's so, there's so much less risk of accidents, right, if full self-driving is on. Which is crazy.

I'm surprised it's only 50%. You would think it'd be more. They're probably making a better margin on that.

Yeah, they probably do.

Yeah.

So Okay.

And then potential regulatory headwinds, like something that I know the Trump administration has been vocal about, insurance costs being regulated and not allowing so much, like what the potential impact of reduction in the premium that can be increased per year, like does that result in fewer insured people? Does that result in people getting dropped from policies? Like those kind of items, maybe like a first and second order effects. Like that's kind of what I'm thinking of in terms of potential regulatory headwinds. I don't know if there's been anything spoken to about like these huge payoffs or anything or limiting the potential payment on those because if anything did come, it's like, well, you have to limit payments like for gross negligence to X. That would take away the like lottery ticket system that we were talking about that kind of drives the potential growth in this industry right now. If you can't all of a sudden get a McDonald's payment to give you— McDonald's spilling hot coffee on you doesn't result in $400 million for whatever reason, like you want to stay on top of that and make sure there's nothing in the pipeline to prevent those kind of results from happening. Although, yeah, no, I would say that because you're willing to spend $10K on a life care plan if the potential payoff is $400 million. But if the potential payoff is $4 million, that calculus isn't as clear anymore. Then again, that is not— this is kind of drifting into phase 2 again where we're talking about like not necessarily the strategy of it, but the regulatory headwinds is just like an observation, not necessarily like a recommendation of action.

I think if there's— I think that everything up to that point, you just kind of started like getting into the— I don't know, it's like, it's a lot of this is, I think, should be meant to be oriented almost around like begging the question. Like, right. We've given you all of this, like, Trump data, like everything you just talked about. Like, we're begging the question, what does it mean?

Right.

Because we're staking out up above, we are not providing you conclusions, opinions, subjectives about the broader industry or Verity's capabilities, go-to-market plan, marketing presence, client acquisition channels, methods, and general positioning within it.

Right.

Um, yeah. Single comprehensive report distilling the above points and including all.

Industry. missionary competitor.

Research. Okay, this is good.

Um.

Throw costs, like put another like section like timeline and make it cost. Just throw $25,000 on it with $5,000 on like engagement, like on whatever, on confirmation. Do we need $5,000 or $2,500?

Um, I don't think we need $5,000. I mean, they're— what I was seeing was anywhere from like $2,500 to $6,000 for all the costs, depending on how deep we wanted to go. So I don't think we're buying Ibis World Reports. Like, I think $2,500 gets it done and we have to dip into our own cash, that'll be towards the end anyway. So it's not a big deal. Okay, I'll put $25,000.

How are we splitting this?

I assumed 50/50.

I was thinking like 60/60 this time.

60/60.

Again, they don't tell you you can go above 100%.

Well, it's pretty customary to tip your research team, right?

So gratuity not included, but always appreciated.

Yeah, I'll, I'll put that in the invoice. Also, yeah, where does this even— where does this money even go? Like, do we have a bank account?

I was thinking Carbon Beach Holdings, but then it hits Katie.

Right.

Not necessarily, actually, because there's a— there is a— what you would call it— preferred share class there.

All right, so I'm saying 25,000, 2,500 do agreement, or is there— there's not a signed agreement, so it's like.

Yeah, we don't really have an engagement letter here.

Confirmation of scope and engagement.

Okay.

So I said $25,000, $2,500 due upon confirmation of scope and engagement kickoff.

Okay, ship it.

Okay, you're sending it?

No.

Yeah, I'm sending this on the email chain back to them.

Um, start a new thread.

Okay. Okay, got it. All right, I'll send it now.

Um, and then tomorrow let's block time to do a similar document and deep dive on DOT.

Okay.

Oh, and the bathroom stuff. Let's just block like a couple of hours tomorrow.

Yeah, let me see what my schedule is. I've got a RentalWorks training that I'm going to sit in on from 10 to 11 and the AR meeting, but I can move that around. So what works best? Just outside of 10 or 11. Any time works for me.

Do you want to do like a session from like— are you— when are you sitting down in the chair in the morning?

Uh, it depends. Um, just— I— it can be 10.

O'Clock, I don't care. I'm just asking.

No, well, my point is like sometimes I'll go on a walk with Sam and Penny in the morning, but I'll come down here like 7:30 and get some stuff done. Or I will just go— I'll start after our walk and I'll start at 9. So it just depends on what my day looks like. It's— I make it flexible.

All right, why don't we block an hour? Why don't we block 45 before your 10 o'clock? Okay, let's just break it up into a couple different chunks.

Yeah, let's just say 9. I'll just say 9 to whenever the— I'll say 9 to 10, and then.

Okay, and then we can block the next one from there.

Yeah. All right, so this is going to be, um, just working session. So let me add in what we want to discuss. So Kiyoti, deep dive bathroom trailer project.

Well, maybe what we should do is just do the bathroom one because it's the— I feel like we could probably cover that ground in an hour.

Yeah.

And so we knock that out in that hour and then.

Um, I'll say QOD deep dive with time permitting.

Yeah, and we can just block another window from there.

Okay, I'll send this now.

All right, thank you.

Yep, you got it. Bye. Just got done. Just got done.