(upbeat music) - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to Side by Side.

My guest today is a visionary entrepreneur who turned a simple idea into a nationwide network of independent insurance agents.

He's devoting his life to giving back and to leading charitable boards.

Today we'll visit with Doug Witcher.

- Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.

(upbeat music) - Doug, it's so good to see you.

Your life story is an extraordinary life story.

It's really inspiring.

I mean, you were a kid who was dyslexic in school.

People made fun of you, and you weren't sure what's gonna happen in your life, but in spite of it, you went from adversity to abundance, and you became this great American story.

And now you've been inducted in the Horatio Alger Association for Distinguished Americans, indicating great success.

What is it that gave you that oomph to overcome challenges in your life and become a truly a successful American business story?

- Well, it was definitely the people that I surrounded myself with.

And at first, you don't get to pick the people.

The people are there for you.

And I was blessed to grow up with a great family, great relatives that supported me all along the way, even though I had some challenges in school.

You know, they stuck by my side the whole time.

And so, you know, with their encouragement, and then with some uncles that were successful in business, and I had no idea what they were laughing about at the dining room table after all the other kids left at my grandmother's house, but they would talk about the deal, or they'd talk about this, and they would laugh, and they would have a great time.

And I said, "Well, maybe that's what I wanna do one day."

So that kinda got me on the path of looking, you know, just never giving up, just having determination, and no matter what the challenges were gonna be, just to work through 'em and move forward.

- And then you went on with what seemed like a simple idea, but very complex to execute on.

And you built this enormous company that has $5 billion in annual collective premium with all these independent insurance agents.

Tell me, where did you get the idea, and what did you do, and how did you grow now to 11,000-plus independent insurance agencies under your umbrella?

- Well, when I started off, it was difficult for me to get insurance companies to wanna represent a one-person shop, and that I was able to go ahead and get production on the books and have other companies look at me.

But I'd go to association meetings, and I'd see other people there that were not having similar success.

And unfortunately, at that time, it was really by race or gender, and the companies were just, you know, very white male industry at that time.

It was the '80s, and I said, you know, if I could do something to help them, and in turn help myself, you know, I'd love to put together a program.

So I kinda shelved it in 1984, and then brought it back out in 1988 with the help of a lady named Judy Billman out of Gap International out of Pennsylvania.

And she gathered 12 entrepreneurs in North Carolina.

- All insurance agents?

- No, they were all different fields.

- I see.

- And the cost was like $10,000, which I didn't have.

And she said, well, we'll phantom scholarship you, 'cause I like you, we're gonna phantom scholarship you.

- Well, she brought people and she charged them money to teach them.

- Yes, right.

And to help them with their idea, to take their business model to the next level.

- And she charged $10,000.

- Yeah.

- I couldn't afford it, but she let you in.

- Well, she let me in, and she said, now, if you can make your payments, make your payments.

- I see.

- And I did.

I made all my payments, and at the end, it was only six of us left.

And she said, Doug, you really do have the best idea.

And that was a model of being an intermediary between insurance companies and the agents that the companies probably didn't wanna represent on their own at that time.

Today, we work with agents that may not choose to represent the company on their own, but would rather go through us.

So that's how we kinda got the idea started.

And then she said, it's a great idea, but you can't execute it.

- You can or cannot?

- Cannot.

- You cannot, she told you you cannot execute it.

- You cannot execute it being the person you are today.

And I said, well, what do you mean?

She said, well, I'm gonna be back in a week, and I wanna meet, at that time, I had three staff people.

And she said, I wanted to meet with you and the three staff people.

And we're gonna have a little 360 evaluation.

For two hours, you're to say nothing, and you're to sign this form that you will not retaliate to anyone.

I said, they love me.

There's no way there's gonna be any retaliation.

Well, after two hours, I felt like I was in a fetal position in the corner, and they were just stabbing me to death.

And she-- - Your level of awareness was not where it needed to be.

- Right, right.

And she leaves and goes back to Philadelphia.

And as she said, she went and talked to me for two weeks.

I called her every day, leaving her messages.

You've destroyed my business.

You've destroyed my business.

And so after two weeks, she called and said, and then I just let her have it.

And then she said, that's okay.

You're exactly where you need to be.

- You were upset that the group that was on your staff was saying things about you that-- - Well, some of it was probably true, but to put an explanation point, they may have added a little bit to it.

So anyway, so Judy and I were on the phone, and she said, okay, just calm down.

And she said, who do you trust more than yourself?

And it was just deathly silence.

She said, who would you go to for advice?

If it's any point in time in history, who would you pick?

Who would the person be other than yourself?

Because I just didn't have a lot of trust for people.

And so I had my tapes, I had you, I had other people that I was listening to, and those are the people I trusted.

But I didn't have a direct connection with them.

- Connection with them, yes.

- And she said, okay, well, you're gonna be in a play, but you're gonna have to tell me who your character is gonna be.

Who do you most admire in your life?

And long story short is it was my two grandfathers.

She said, okay, you're gonna live your life at work, community, home, church, as if you were your two grandfathers.

And after six months of doing that, it was a dismal failure.

And she had been charging me for an hour on the phone each week.

And she said, okay, Doug, we're gonna do six more months for free 'cause I think you're gonna get there.

And sure enough, at the end of the six months, she said, who are you?

I said, I'm my grandfather's.

She said, no, this is who you are, but you were just afraid to be this way.

And from that point, my life changed dramatically.

It's a huge inflection point in my life at that time.

- But you walk me into how you went from a single agency to 11,000, independent, 11,000 of them.

And I assume these are all over the country.

- Yes, all over the United States.

- How did you talk him into joining you?

How did they trust you?

How did you, not to mention, then you went to all these big insurance companies and said, look, I bundled up these applications and will you insure us at the lower fee?

- It was such a challenge because the industry wasn't ready for that.

The industry wasn't ready for me to go out and start making appointments on their behalf.

And technology was not in place to be able to track all this.

But we started anyway.

And we started by going out and getting that 13 agents, all minority agents, race or gender.

And we got her matched up with a couple of companies that would give us the chance to do it.

And they so outperformed everybody else in the state that had those particular carriers.

- And these were all in North Carolina?

- All in North Carolina.

So you started in North Carolina.

- Yes, sir.

- And now you are?

- In every state.

- Yeah.

- So, well, we're not in every state.

We're not in Hawaii and Alaska.

But yeah, so it was going out there and connecting with the insurance companies and having the success that we had.

We also was building our retail operation at that time 'cause that was the other thing that Judy and I agreed we had to do.

We had to be the largest agency in the triad.

- Your personal agency.

- Uh-huh, and we were able to accomplish that.

So we became the largest agency in the triad.

And everybody was going, "Well, who is Doug Witcher?"

'Cause my grandfather and my father was not in the business and most of these were second and third generation.

- Yes, yes.

- And so anyway, they asked me after I'd put the 13 in for two years, they said, "Is there any more in North Carolina "that you think would want to join?"

Well, that next year I put 147.

The next year I put 152 more agencies.

And they said, "Well, wait a minute.

"Do you think you can go to South Carolina, "Tennessee and Virginia and clone yourself?"

And I said, "I can't."

- Yes, what is it that these agents saw in what you bring that attract them to you and made them trust you?

- Because I was just like them.

I'd started off with just a one-man operation and I had all the struggles that they had.

- But you made a promise to them, right?

- Yes, I made a promise that we would not just hand them a market, but we would do the training for them, help them place business, show them where to find the type of business in their community that they should be writing.

- And then what is it you do now with these 11,000 insurance agencies?

- Well, we have people who are responsible for every single agency.

We have field forces of hundreds of people out there.

They're going in and out of these agencies weekly or Zooming them or however they want to communicate with us.

And the ones that are doing well, we just kind of keep a slow tab on them, but the ones that are either doing something extraordinary, they're really growing quickly, we'll pay attention to see what's going on there.

And the ones that are having a little struggle- - So you're starting them.

- We are coaching them all along the way.

- But then they're bringing all these applications for insurance, correct?

- That's right.

So they're producing all this business.

And now we got it set up with a series of sub codes that now their names can appear on the policies.

The old days, we had 176 mailboxes.

We got the mail in every day.

We took it out.

We read what was on there, what needed to be done, consulted with the agents, stuck it back in there, mailed it out that afternoon.

We did that.

And my former business partner at that time, he said, "Doug, you are never gonna make any money from this thing."

I said, "Well, we will 'cause technology will catch up."

- It'll help you, yes.

And so if I wanna buy an insurance from an insurance agent who's in your, what do you call it?

- Network.

- You call it network.

Okay, so I go to this insurance agent and I say, "I wanna insure what my house or business, whatever, he or she will take my application and do what with it in terms of this network?"

- Well, fortunately for the network, they may have 10 additional insurance companies that they can sit there and compare it with.

And they're not price shopping it as much as they're shopping for coverage 'cause some insurance companies will want to allow them, will allow them to have certain levels of coverage.

Some of them may not want to have that much coverage.

- But the advantage you bring is the bulkness.

- Oh, yes.

- So if I'm running a large insurance company in the country, you're bringing me hundreds of thousands of policies.

- We're the largest producer of new business for almost every major insurance company in America that sells home, automobile, or small commercial business.

- And therefore you get advantage.

- And here's the advantage for the agents.

They can be a boutique agency now.

They don't have to grow.

I mean, they can go and coach a little league.

They can be involved in their church, community, or whatever.

- Why is that?

- Because now they've got all the companies they need.

- Oh, they're no longer shopping for coverage.

- No, they're not shopping.

- Wasting time.

- And they want a certain amount of revenue.

Not everybody wants to make a million dollars a year.

Some people are happy if they can make $100,000 or whatever and be able to live a good lifestyle.

And so we afford that.

And that's the first time, and that's what the large agencies, we're always putting pressure on the companies to say, "This isn't right.

"You can't let him go out there "and appoint all these smaller agencies."

But what happened, what we found out was a lot of those large agencies were welcoming these agents through their back door, not telling the insurance companies and producing business through them.

But we took them from the back door and the insurance companies started working with through their front door, acknowledged them for them, give them awards, recognitions, and everything.

- I see.

So Doug, what did you come up with the name Smart Choice, which is the name of your company?

- That's a great name.

- It's a great question.

It reminds me of Dave Liniger with RE/MAX and how he came up with his name for his company.

And as I was reading the book, I was thinking, well, they hired this huge marketing firm.

- Yeah, you've ever felt that.

- Well, he got two bottles of tequila, went in a hotel room with his senior management and said, "We're gonna drink this tequila until we come up with a name."

Now, I didn't do that, but I did write a letter and having dyslexia, I have to have everything proofed.

Now the computer can help me do it.

But back then I had a lady named Beverly Sledge and Beverly would read all my letters, make all my corrections.

And at the end I said, "I hope you make the Smart Choice."

So here she's sitting at her desk and she said, "Well, Doug, I think we found a name for our company."

I said, "What?"

She said, "Smart Choice."

I said, "Well, let me call our attorney."

So we called the attorney and they called their patent division and trademark division, trademark division.

And there was not a Smart Choice in anything.

- Isn't that interesting?

- And there's over 300,000 Smart Choices been trademarked today.

So he said, "You can do anything you want to as long as you're doing it.

We can trademark it, but it has to be for insurance."

And the only, I think we got into a little tiff with Blue Cross Blue Shield in South Carolina, but we got that worked out and we're the only ones that can have that space.

- So how many people work at Smart Choice today?

The corporate company?

- Probably about 130 in the corporate office and probably 300 and some in the field.

- Yeah, so 400, 500 people.

- Yeah, yeah, it's technology runs it.

I mean, it was, if we were gonna have to throw people at it 'cause we're getting revenues, it's almost like a technology company.

We're working with a much scale down for the amount of revenue that we're bringing into the company.

- And AI may even create new avenues.

- Well, it is.

I mean, we use groups out of the Philippines and places like that to handle calls after hours and things like that.

So AI will definitely be a big part of us going forward.

- So let me get this thing straight.

You were a little kid in elementary school.

- Right.

- You had dyslexia and you struggled with that.

Did you fail in a class in a certain year?

Did you have to repeat a class?

- Yes, I failed the 10th grade.

- The fifth grade?

- 10th.

- 10th grade?

- I made it up to the 10th before I failed.

- Really?

You failed the 10th grade, but then you're a teenager.

- But in the third grade, I couldn't read in a reading circle.

I was the first one to sit down at a spelling bee.

So in retrospect, I look at it as a blessing because I learned to overcome challenges at a very young age.

So I became very social, very athletic, and that kind of helped me through.

Plus I had a brother that was very smart and I had a mother that says, "I'm gonna come in and be secretary of the elementary school "and at least get you through high school."

So there was some real, some serious questions about that.

But in the 10th grade, I failed algebra.

And so I went to summer school.

And so it was really amazing the way that the teacher was teaching it and then I'd be tested on it.

Well, I came out with the highest grade of the whole summer school class.

And he said, "Well, you're really smart."

I said, "Well, you know, in the fourth grade, "they did test my IQ when I didn't have to read.

"I just looked at images."

And they said, "You have the same IQ as Jan Disk."

Well, Jan Disk went on to Duke University and got a graduate degree there, played some professional golf, and God knows what she's doing today.

I'm sure it's something significant.

So they say you're smart, but you had to be lazy.

And, but the reality was I wasn't lazy.

I was really applying myself.

I just had to learn to learn differently.

- And then in the 10th grade, did you have to repeat the 10th grade?

- Nope, nope.

- Well, you didn't, you just use a flunk.

You flunk one course.

- Right.

- But then in the 11th grade, I was failing geometry.

And Mr.

Keenan, the geometry teacher, said, "Doug, you're gonna go back to summer school."

I said, "Mr.

Keenan, I don't wanna go back.

"What do I have to make on the exam?"

- An isosceles triangle.

- Yeah, yeah, "What do I have to do?"

He says, "Well, you have to make an A.

"If you can make an A on that exam, "you'll make a D in the class and you'll pass."

So I went home, and this is one of the most eye-opening and awakening for me, that let me know that I was a smart person, that I had the ability to learn, but I was gonna have to do it different.

- And raise your self-esteem.

- Right, so I sat down in my chair, my little vinyl-covered rocking chair in my bedroom, opened up the book, and started copying every single thing.

Now, I didn't have a low F. I had a high F, so I-- - So you knew it was between the F and the D.

- Yes, so I was paying-- - I never heard it put that way, a low F, a high F.

- So I was paying attention, and so I went through there and started writing it all down.

And that's the first time I started writing something.

I know you know the story about me coming here and scribing into some books, but I started writing everything down, and then all of a sudden, it clicked.

At about two o'clock that morning, I put it down, I said a little prayer, maybe a long prayer, and got up that next morning, went in, took that exam.

Well, two days later, I came up and looked on the list, and I had a D.

- A D?

- I passed.

- I see.

- I made an A on the exam.

- You made an A on the exam.

Was it a high A or a low A?

- Well, it was a good enough A to get me a D.

- To get from an F to a D.

- Right, right.

- Yeah, I understand what you're saying, so they averaged it out, and they added all the numbers.

- So I knew at that point in time.

- I can do it.

- Yeah.

- And then, of course, coming to High Point College, you know, changed my life forever.

- You know, Doug, as I hear you speak, I think the strength of your personhood is that you had struggles on the one hand, but you were smart enough to listen to these uncles and so on after a start by the art of the deal.

You had that lady, effectively an executive coach, telling you, you know, who would you be and who would be the characters in your play.

She forced you to put yourself in a sort of a level of awareness that says, you know, to think more deeply about who I am as a person.

And then you had the courage to find those 13 people and start this whole idea.

And now you've grown it to this national company which generates significant revenues.

And then what most people may not know is that then you've decided that you've been so blessed and you wanna bless others.

And you went on to give large segments of your personal wealth to nonprofits.

As far as I know, in every category, in education, in social services, in United Way, in healthcare, I don't think you've left any sector that you have not invested, invested generously, willingly, and so many people have benefited because of that.

So your story is an inspiring story about what can happen when you just stick to it, you know, and when you have a sense of resilience.

What is it now, I know you're sort of not retired, but you're sort of semi-retired, you're not running the dealiness of life in the business.

What about the next chapter of your life?

What is it that you've accomplished so much?

What is it you wanna still do?

- Well, the next chapter is really focusing on my foundation and us getting raised-- - Philanthropians do it.

- Absolutely.

And, you know, also being charitable at the same time.

Some people take that jump up and they say, "Okay, I'm only gonna make contributions "of a million dollars or more."

And for me, I like to make some 5,000 and $10,000.

- Or sometimes you bless individuals with that.

- Sometimes I'm paying the rent for somebody.

- Yeah, sometimes I'm helping with this.

I had a family that was sent to me because nobody could help them right away.

They had an electrical storm and it hit the girl's computer.

She had diabetes, she was blind in one eye, she could only see out of the other eye.

It knocked her cell phone out, television, everything.

And I just drove to the house they gave me.

I said, "Get in the car, we're gonna go to Best Buy."

So we went to Best Buy and then I just noticed, I said, "I think it'd be nice for us tomorrow, "let's go to Belk's and let's get her some clothes, "those you can wear to school as well."

- This may sound like a small thing in the context of life, but the impact and influence on that person and their family is enormous.

Maybe in a special kind of way, maybe you're giving that person some belief that they too can, just like you were given.

- Absolutely.

- That in your life.

- I'm so glad to have you on the show.

I thank you for all the good that you do everywhere that you do it.

And I wish you the very, very best for the many more years that lie ahead of you.

Thank you, sir, for being here.

- Well, thank you.

- Thank you very much.

(upbeat music) - Funding for Side by Side with Nido Qubein is made possible by: - Coca-Cola Consolidated makes and serves over 300 of the world's best brands and flavors to over 65 million consumers across 14 states and the District of Columbia.

With 17,000 purpose-driven teammates, we are Coca-Cola Consolidated.

- The Budd Group has been serving the Southeast for over 60 years.

Specializing in janitorial, landscape, and facility solutions, our trusted staff delivers exceptional customer satisfaction, comprehensive facility support with The Budd Group.

- Truist.

We're here to help people, communities, and businesses thrive in North Carolina and beyond.

The commitment of our teammates makes the difference every day.