Personal Lines with Scott Goodreau

In this podcast, Scott Goodreau shares childhood stories of waking up at 3 a.m. to help his dad's canteen truck business, and how that informed his entrepreneurial nature.

Goodreau also dives into why higher education changed his life and how he started his company.

Read the Transcript  

Disclaimer: Podcast transcriptions are computer generated, please excuse errors. For the most accurate version of the conversation, please refer to audio.   

Scott Goodreau: It’s amazing when somebody doesn’t come from a certain background but is able to love you enough and support you enough to say you can do bigger things, better things, more interesting things. And by the way, if you want to be a canteen truck driver, and that’s what you love to do, have at it. But there’s a world of possibilities out there.  

 
Zach Ewell: Welcome to the Leader’s Edge podcast.  

I’m Zach Ewell, content producer here at Leaders Edge. In this episode of our Personal Lines podcast series, Associate editor Chris Hann interviews Scott Goodreau, CEO of Brightstone Specialty Group. Scott shares how he learned the lesson of hard work from his father, the role higher education played into his life, and how helped start his company.  

 
Chris Hann: Scott, thanks for being here. I really appreciate it.  

 
Scott Goodreau: Thanks for having me, Chris. It’s great to be on with you.  

 
Chris Hann: Thank you. You sent me a little bio, talking about a lot about your dad. You said your dad was a canteen truck driver, would get up at 3 o’ clock in the morning and thus you learned the lesson and the value of hard work. Tell me about that experience because I know a lot of dads who are hard workers, but I don’t know a lot who were up at 3 o’ clock every morning to do their work.  

 
Scott Goodreau: Yeah, he’s now passed. He was quite a guy and worked very hard. That industry involves getting up very early, loading food and drink and ice and other perishables onto a canteen truck and then going out and driving a route. He would be out of the house by 3 in the morning and usually back around 4:30, 5 o’ clock in the afternoon.  

 
Chris Hann: Oh my gosh.  

 
Scott Goodreau: It was very busy job that certainly taught me the value of working hard and as I took later jobs, realized that, you know, they almost pale in comparison to the hours that he put in.  

 
Chris Hann 
Yes. So forgive my ignorance. A canteen truck is a food truck, essentially? 

 
Scott Goodreau: It’s a food truck. Yes, it’s essentially a food truck used to be called more roach coaches and now they’re just trendy. My father would be turning in his grave to see how trendy these trucks have become.  

 
Chris Hann: He was there when they’re in glossy magazines these days.  

 
Scott Goodreau: Exactly. He was delivering sandwiches to construction workers.  

 
Chris Hann: Yes, exactly. I knew this because network my dad worked for a construction company and his job was to go from site to site and usually one day a summer I would join him and I, this is where. And then, and a couple summers I worked for him and this is where we often got Our lunch from these trucks.  

 
Scott Goodreau: I can’t believe you brought that up because that was some special days. I have three brothers and really special days would be when my dad would take us on his truck and from the time of loading up until the end of the day and going to construction stops and ringing the horn and meeting the people and it was very special times.  

 
Chris Hann: Wow. Let me ask you, you mentioned you were the first one in your family to go to college, Boston College? 

 
Scott Goodreau: Yes.  

 
Chris Hann: Was that a particular aim of your father’s? Did, did he ever articulate that he was working really hard so that you could go to college and not work so hard?  

 
Scott Goodreau: Yeah, that was my dad and my mom neither went to college, but both highly supported us doing anything that we wanted to do. And for me, I always worked hard and sought after going to college. I have an older brother who didn’t go to college and then I have one younger brother who did and one who didn’t. All following different paths. But our parents were very supportive of just follow your passion, be happy, dream big. And for me it was to get into a good college and to have that be a path to a great professional life.  

 
Chris Hann: Those are strong lessons, right?  

 
Scott Goodreau: They are they strong lessons. That’s for sure. That’s for sure. And it’s amazing when somebody doesn’t come from a certain background but is able to love you enough and support you enough to say you, you can do bigger things, better things, more interesting things. And by the way, if you want to be a canteen truck driver, and that’s what you love to do, have at it. But, but there’s a world of possibilities out there and we’re here to support you. So it was, it was definitely a lesson I learned.  

And you know, my, my dad, my mom as well, just always, in addition to supporting us, always worked hard, but also were just very relatable, very down to earth people, individuals that certainly I learned a lot of lessons from, in terms of how to relate to people. 

 
Chris Hann: After Boston College you went to law school, at Harvard.  

 
Scott Goodreau: I did. 

 
Chris Hann: And I would think that most folks would think there’s really not much to do beyond going law school, going to law school at Harvard. But then you went to business school, so let me take those one at a time.  

Why Harvard Law school? Why law school? And you can talk about Harvard.  

 
Scott Goodreau 
So growing up in the Boston area, when I was younger, I always wanted to go to law school. I always thought I wanted to be a lawyer when I was younger. That or a firefighter, but always thought I wanted to be a lawyer. Certainly that evolved as I went into law school, but for me it was, I just wanted to go to one of the best law schools. Certainly. It’s, it’s a special place that for me, you know, was a goal that I could shoot for. And I just remember growing up and people saying: shoot for that. Wherever you end up will be great. And I just kept my head down and said that’s really what I want to do. And, and just worked hard at it.  

 
And it was just an amazing experience for me. I thought Boston College was great. Harvard Law School, both just tremendous places of learning. And I just thought law school gave me the ability to think more analytically. It’s amazing how much you don’t really learn about the law there necessarily, but you learn how to think critically. And I just absolutely love the experience. It was everything that I thought it would be. I ended up, I think I applied to because I’m just this type, I think I applied to 20 different law schools.  

Got into all of them, but always knew I would go to Harvard if I could get into it. And I did.  

 
Chris Hann 
You mentioned entrepreneurial. I’m going to back up here because you mentioned in your bio a business that you had was providing ice to the canteen trucks and getting up at 3 o’ clock in the morning to do so. And this is when you were like a teenager, it sounds like? 

 
Scott Goodreau: Right, I was a teenager. It was actually before I was even in high school.  

I, I did it and it really it was early signs of my entrepreneurial nature.My dad is part of the canteen truck and loading up with food and drink would need to, at the end of that chop ice and load it onto his trucks. And there were, you know, hundred or so trucks that would load up in the morning and do this. And my dad usually had a smile on his face. But there were many cold days that he didn’t have as much of a smile when he got a bit wet and cold and then needed to go out for the job during the day. So I had an idea of could I make a little bit of money with my father and with a few of his friends to load some ice onto their trucks. 

 
It entailed getting up in the morning at 2-3 in the morning before I could drive. So it was, I had a reliable moped at the time, and I would take it from Malden to Chelsea. And the commissary was next to the dump, the city dump, where there would be some fairly large rodents pre dawn hours. And I start, and what I would do is just go there was an ice pick, I mean a large pick and chop up ice, load it into milk crates and then put them on a dolly and deliver them to the trucks. And what started with a few trucks and I would get five bucks a truck. It started with a few trucks and just kept growing and before I knew it, I had like 100 trucks – a day.  

And I was employing my brother, one of my brothers and a couple my friends at times. And it was fantastic opportunity that was quite busy. It was, it was quite the day to start that off and then might be hockey practice before school, if not out to school and then certainly hockey at some point in time. And then it made for a very busy day during the school session. But it was an awesome job that gave me a lot of opportunity, especially then at the school time. It was certainly busy in the summertime. What was great is yes, you had to get up early, yes you had to get there. But I was done at work at, you know, nine in the morning.  

 
I’d go back in the afternoon for an hour or two, but pretty much had the rest of my time free and certainly was making a lot more than I would have been making at the grocery store stocking shelves at that point in time.  

So it was fantastic and it was quite the experience. I think it, at some point they should have a sitcom based upon what the, what goes on at those commissaries at three in the morning. It’s an interesting place.  

 
Chris Hann: That might be part of your memoir.  

 
Scott Goodreau: But it ended up I could save up money and certainly help to reduce my college debt.  

 
Chris Hann: You were practicing law for how long before going back to business school? Going to business school? 

 
Scott Goodreau: So actually I went to business school later on. I practiced law for a few years and did a lot of travel during that time. And it just so happened, I knew it at some point in time I’d make the leap over to business. And so it just happened that there was an opportunity to go in house With a company that happened to be in the insurance space. It was for a large technology provider that was again with entrepreneurialism playing into this. Starting up an insurance exchange early on before there was a whole lot of technology at the time. I took it as an opportunity to get my foot in the door and moved on from legal positions to other operational positions and ended up in the insurance space.  

I ended up getting my MBA from Kellogg where I was already on in the insurance space and actually working with an underwriting company and got my executive MBA at Kellogg while I was in Chicago at the time. But I’ve been in the insurance. I’ve been on the technology, the claims underwriting, but mostly on the distribution side. And I was on the executive team at one of the largest brokers and fantastic experience and just love insurance and love the space.  

 
Chris Hann 
I have to back up again. You said you knew you wanted to be a lawyer. Well, when you were eight years old you knew you wanted to be either a lawyer or a firefighter. Now, I can understand the firefighter part, but how many 8-year-olds know they want to be a lawyer? What was it about being a lawyer that attract was so appealing to you at the age of eight?  

 
Scott Goodreau: You know, honestly, I always had this side to me that would question things and part of it. Maybe it came from others telling me you should be a lawyer someday. But I just thought it would be a career that I like the idea of the critical thinking. And at that point in time it seemed a lot more dramatic to me than it was when I was in law school.  

 
Chris Hann: Did you have a favorite class in school?  

 
Scott Goodreau: That’s a great question. I had some amazing classes. Dershowitz was my criminal law professor.  

 
Former Supreme Court justice was my admin law teacher. And it’s just, I would say my favorite class of all though was interestingly enough, corporate law. So even though, so at law school we had you had to take criminal law, you had to take constitutional law, you had to take civil law, etc. Etc. And then, and then as part of your career you could certainly take classes that are more geared toward corporate law and those are the ones that really attracted me. Believe it or not, it was corporate law and it was tax that both attracted me. 

I remember in my constitutional law class that we had somebody who had argued more times in front of the Supreme Court than anybody else.  

 
And like one day Barbra Streisand. Just showed up at class. It was dramatic, it was interesting. But I also, I liked the idea and I think it’s because I knew I was going to end up in business that I really like the classes that lent more toward a company and working at a company and frankly similar to insurance, found that these areas that some people might think that sounds boring, but when you’re really in it and living it and finding out what’s going on a day to day basis, it’s incredibly challenging.  

 
Chris Hann 
You helped start Brightstone Specialty Group and I want to ask you about that. So tell me about how the genesis of all that and how that all came to be.  

 
Scott Goodreau 
Yeah, sure. So Brightstone Specialty Group is a company comprised of MGAs and those who provide specialty services for the insurance industry. It would be providing back the right products, unique products to insureds and bringing together more of those companies that bring the underwriting expertise and partner with carriers on that, with that expertise. So in a lot of the communities, we are in, if you think of products and you think of all the volatility that’s going on in the world today, it was, hey, let’s with, with these types of companies it’s bringing to them insurance products as opposed to being the retail broker on the street. So for me it’s, it’s where I’m most passionate because I do believe that in this world today there’s a lot of unique volatile risks that are out there and unique products that can be offered.  

 
Scott Goodreau 
The MGA’s provide the ability to be flexible in that space and to be agile and provide product that aren’t as regulated as those that are in the admitted space. And I just love the entrepreneurial side of what we can do at Brightstone Specialty Group. So, we partner with MGAs and we also develop products that we believe are best for clients in these communities.  

 
Chris Hann 
Scott, I’m going to thank you greatly and I’m going to let you get back to work.  

 
Scott Goodreau 
Thanks a lot, Chris.  

 
Zach Ewell 
That was Associate editor Chris Hann interviewing Scott Goodreau. I hope you enjoyed it.  

For more episodes of our Personal Lines podcast series, go to leadersedge.com.