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Why D2D Sales Reps are Moving to Remote Insurance Sales (Ep. 260)
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Michael joins us to unpack why he left a decade in door-to-door sales and went all-in on life insurance sales and insurance agency building. We talk recruiting, advanced commissions, and the part most people miss: ownership. When carriers pay you directly and renewals stack, you are not just “selling policies” you are building residual income and real agency value that can be measured like any other business. We also compare the economics to real estate investing, including what it costs to buy monthly cash flow versus earning it by developing strong producers.
We keep it real about the hard parts too. The first 90 days can feel like Jurassic Park: licensing delays, lead spend, chargebacks, and the discipline shift from a structured door-to-door culture to running your own calendar. Michael shares what’s working now with Facebook leads, inbound calls, aged leads for fill-ins, and follow-up tactics like video messages that boost contact and conversion.
If you’re coming from door-to-door, solar, telecom, or any high-grind sales role and you want a smarter five-year plan, this conversation is for you.
Hello everybody. Andrew Taylor here. Today we have Michael Lay with us. Thanks for coming in, dude. Appreciate you having me, man. Yeah, dude. All right. So to start, how long have you been in life insurance? What did you do before?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so starting life insurance uh a little over a year ago, almost a year and a half now. Um, before I was running a door-to-door team. So I had a team of guys, we were doing fiber, um, Verizon ATT, some of our contracts. So did door-to-door for about a decade. Um, built a big team in door-to-door, had a bunch of agents, you know, working with me. And um, yeah, so about a year and a half.
SPEAKER_00Love it. And how'd you get into like why'd you choose life insurance?
SPEAKER_01So, dude, it's actually kind of funny because uh it was a lock-in in Vegas 2024. I didn't, I mean it was the Ignite conference back in Vegas, 2024. I meet Kate Gardner. It's June 3rd, 2024. That's exactly yeah. So I'm I'm meeting her in June of 2024, and um, I knew she was gonna try to recruit me because I had a guy who was shooting content for me at the time. I was actually, so this is actually perfect time. I was gonna bring this up. You uh you were at, we both went to this conference, Ryan Pineda's WealthCon.
SPEAKER_00Okay.
SPEAKER_01I think you were there. I was there. Okay. So you were at WealthCon. It was that weekend, I think. Or maybe I'm getting my dates mixed up or something.
SPEAKER_00It was really close by. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was a close by time, and I'm in Vegas, and I get an opportunity to go get on a podcast with uh his his his guy, Brian.
SPEAKER_00Some yeah, Brian, his like right-hand man.
From Door To Door To Insurance
SPEAKER_01His right-hand guy. So I'm on there, and then that that night after the podcast on with with uh Jamar, who's my content guy, and also Kate's. So he goes, yo, this girl wants to meet you, she's gonna try to recruit you. And I'm and I'm not gonna lie to you, like I thought of insurance was kind of like I had a buddy that was doing it, it was like sign up your friends and family, generate your own leads, recruit all your friends. I didn't think much of it. And then three hours later, after a dinner, I called my wife up. I'm like, we're doing this, like, this is totally a play. How much money she was making, what you know, which how less of a size of a team she had, but with the income she was making, I'm like, damn, if I could just take these guys, bring them over here. Little did I know it was a little bit harder than that, but that's how we kind of got started.
SPEAKER_00So funny you bring up that conference. So I went to I've always liked real estate, and I went to that event, and I saw a lot of similarities in wholesaling to life insurance, and the similarities were lead-driven, right? People are running Facebook ads to find people that have distressed properties or calling lists of people that are in foreclosure. So I'm like, that's similar. Um, and then you c you gotta close somebody, so you get your little calculator out, and you have you done this before?
SPEAKER_01I I mean, I just I that was the play I was thinking of running before I was trying to get out of door to door. That was what I thought I was gonna do.
The Vegas Recruitment Story
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you get your calculator out, you factor in what it's gonna cost to rehab the property, what you can get it for, and then you also can use which this is the thing I learned the most from there, is you can just assume somebody's mortgage, and then you don't have to get a loan, and you can make their mortgage payment. Uh it they're protected because if you don't pay it, they get the house back, and usually you give them something in order to like they get money in order to take over that loan. Um, and then you can go flip this house. The reason I want to talk about this is because I'm like, I'm gonna see how this works. So I ran a Facebook ad for distressed properties. The first lead that came in, I call in Vegas, I go to his house, I do everything that I heard at that conference, like it right away. I go to his house, uh I offer him half this place was destroyed. I have a video of it. I actually should find it and show it because it's insane. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm like, okay, I'll offer you it was like 200,000 for the house. He had a mortgage on it uh for 160, so I gave him 40, and then I assumed his mortgage, which is at a 3% interest rate, so it was really, really low. And then I'm gonna I'm like, I'm gonna go fix this and I'm gonna resell it, right? I don't know Vegas like I do California. I've been here seven years. Okay. So this ends up being the craziest neighborhood at night. In the day, it's a normal neighborhood. At night, it's like Gotham. It's insane. Dude, so escrow closes. Uh I go there and I have a friend that is helping me manage this because I don't have time because I'm running an insurance agency. But I went there and closed it myself, met with them myself, did the contract myself, did everything. Like I just printed the contract that they said to do there, um and followed the escrow company, all that stuff. Dude, there's a guy getting arrested. First of all, he was sleeping in the house after it closed. He had a a baby stroller with a dog in it, okay. And he got arrested for being there, as we call the cops, and he had two guns on him, of course, and a whole bunch of pills. I'm like, okay, that's a bad sign. We get in, there's like AR-15 clips loaded with bullets in the house. Uh the cops roll by and they're like, Why would you buy this place? This is like the this is the house that deals all the drugs to everybody in the neighborhood. They're like, why would you buy this? You bought the trap house in the neighborhood. I bought the trap house, not the first time. Um so I buy this house, I freaking dude. More things keep popping up that you could never even make up. I have another video. If I was prepared, I would have showed it. Somebody just walked off with the air conditioner on a dolly, and I have it on the ring camera. From the plate from the plate from the like three minutes, he walked in, walks off with a air conditioner on the dolly. Just gone. Gone. So why am I telling you this story? Because it made me realize how amazing life insurance is. And if you're totally if you're wholesaling, you should stop and you should call us because you get paid in two to three days, you don't have all these crazy things happen, and it's just it's so much like I did the whole exercise myself, bro. It took a year to get paid. Yeah. You flip it, you list it, you do all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01To maybe make what 20, 30 grand or something.
SPEAKER_00To maybe make dude, I probably made 20 grand.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then I did it, I did a couple of them. One of them finally sold after a year to make 20 grand. And yeah, I just think for many reasons, life insurance is better.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have a I have a theory, uh, like a thing where we always talk to our guys about like you can only flip so many things. Like, what's your flip? You gotta have a flip and then you have to have like a hold. I like real estate as like a hold strategy, like a long-term deal. But as far as flipping, you know, if you flip in solar or flipping door-to-door, you flipping houses, there's no better flip, or you know, if you're gonna call it that, than life insurance.
SPEAKER_00It's like the thing is, dude, the wholesalers are doing what we do. You're getting leads, you're calling them, you're closing them, but we're getting paid one to three thousand dollars in two to three days and collecting eighty to a hundred and fifty bucks per customer. Correct. And I'm over here trying to buy a house that's not as easy of a transaction.
SPEAKER_01It was perfect timing when Kate reached out to me because I was looking for the exit. That's why I was went to WealthCon to meet Ryan and them guys. I got into his coaching program or whatever, trying to I was looking at anything to try to get out. So when Kate, it was like a life raft basically. She showed me how the numbers work, she should introduce me to some of her guys, what they were writing in terms of business. I'm like, that guy's been here for two months. He's making what? I'm like, done.
SPEAKER_00So you saw me at the FFL event. And then you saw me at that event.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. And I was just there to learn and you were just I don't know what I mean. I didn't know who you were because uh Jamar had to introduce the guy who just was doing content for him in my other business. He was like, yo, that's Andrew Taylor. That guy's like that guy's a big deal in FFL. Like, oh that's pretty sick, you know, cool. You know. I'm just mine, I don't I don't know anybody from anybody, but that was how it started. And we went to putt, we went to that putt place, uh putt stroke or whatever, you know.
SPEAKER_00Pop stroke.
SPEAKER_01Pop stroke.
SPEAKER_00How was it?
SPEAKER_01It's pretty sweet. We liked it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because I haven't gone. Every time I go, you can't even get it. Every time I go by, it's just swamped with people.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's I always just remember it as the place I got recruited by Kate, you know, to get into life insurance. So that was but yeah, I mean it's the lines were crazy. I got there late, but it's pretty sweet. That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00All right. So you are doing well, did you completely stop doing what you were doing and just start this fresh?
SPEAKER_01So I tried to do both. And uh the business I was in before, those guys were very it's like uh uh once they know you're gone, you know, you're leaving, it's like leaving the mafia almost. It's like you you you had to be quiet about it because they're not like, oh yeah, you can do some stuff on the side. Very controlling type of group. So I tried to do both and um they weren't exactly feeling that. So I was but yeah, ultimately once they found out I was doing life insurance and trying to recruit a bunch of guys, they kind of terminated my deal, and that was that. And that would you know, ten years in, I thought I had some partnerships, some equities, different things that you know had built up, done. Gone, nothing.
SPEAKER_00So you want to move on, so you just started over.
SPEAKER_01Started over.
SPEAKER_00You got family kids?
SPEAKER_01I got two kids. Yep, five-year-old, three-year-old married for eight years now.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I have a five-year-old and three-year-old married for I think eight, seven, eight years.
SPEAKER_01We're October 19th, 2017, 2018.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, I'm 2019.
SPEAKER_012019. So same kind of thing. But yeah, start basically start to start over. Scary. I mean, I basically was like, all right, I don't mind taking a little bit less of a yeah, I was making good money doing doing what I was doing, managing a team, but I was like, all right, if I can take a little pay cut, I always tell my guys that like the five-year plan wasn't making sense in door-to-door anymore. So if I can make a little bit less for the first year or two, whatever it takes, if if Kate can do it, some of these other guys are doing it, she'd make it two million a year. We'll we'll we'll figure we'll get there. We'll figure it out. That was kind of the play.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing, dude. So yeah. Did you have a bunch of money saved to just restart like that?
SPEAKER_01So I was kind of cash poor, to be honest. I had like I've had assets, you know. I was like trying to funnel everything into because I always knew I was that that exit was never with what I was doing, the door-to-door thing. I had a big team, made good money, you know, six, seven hundred thousand a year type stuff, which is good, but I was like equity, you know, how you like you got your house rich, but cash poor. It's like the cash flow wasn't really great.
SPEAKER_00So I just met a dude, he's got 30 million in real estate. He's just started with us because he said it he needs more cash flow, because a lot of times you're not getting as much cash flow as you think on things. And easy facts for me. He's like, dude, I'm gonna sell 30 grand a month, get that cash flow, build a team, get that cash flow, and I don't have to put up uh millions of dollars to do it. And that really opened my mind because now people that run big companies want to sell life insurance and build agencies because they know that with insurance, dude, how crazy is it? You could build it, you could sell it. Yeah, like the whole thing's insane. Yeah, you could get paid quick within a few days.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I told I, you know, that's that's like my start, my, you know, when I bring new agents on, that's like my spiel or whatever. I get them started. It's like we get paid quick, you get paid advanced commissions, so as long as you treat it the right way and respect the opportunity and not, you know, like disappear, do what do you guys call it Disneyland disease or whatever. Um so you come in, but yeah, the long-term play of owning the business, equity. I just think all these guys that run these door-to-door businesses, and um, and I just feel I'm like their their long-term play is just not there. So and a lot of them are are it's almost like captive door-to-door models as well. So I don't know if you're familiar with like door-to-door businesses.
SPEAKER_00I'm getting more because there's a lot of people looking at this from door to door. Yeah. So I'm getting more familiar with it. But what are the differences?
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, with door-to-door, like the the group I was with was like, we'd have to put out our own money. Like we were putting 30, 20, 30, 40 grand a month, and you would promote these like outside deals, right? And you would make a 3% or 6% spread on the total revenue of whatever office you'd promote. So if I opened you up in Vegas, I would promote you, I'd put, you know, I'd put you up in a building, I'd pay for the full expenses, first and last month's rent on a building, I'd put all the furniture set up, right? And then I'd finance you a little bit, and I might spend 20, 30 grand on that. And then kind of hope you do well. But it's kind of, and the mind you, the person we're putting in business, right? They might have been a six months into door-to-door. So now they have to learn how to build a market up. So you're putting all this money into this thing, but meanwhile, you don't own the equity of the business. Exactly. So normally, if you're gonna finance something, it's like, okay, I'm financing it, but I also own the equity. So I'm financing all this stuff, but I don't own the business. I don't own the rights anymore. You're building their business. I'm building their business. That was the that's the part I just I wish at 22 I had asked the right questions because I wasn't. I guess that you just do something long enough, you get good at it, and that's it.
SPEAKER_00That was it. Just you know. So let's talk about ownership and life insurance because this is there's a lot of confusion around it. That'd be great. But basically, for one, when you're working with us, there's renewals, there's back-end money that comes out. You get paid directly from the life insurance carrier, not from us. If we were collecting the money and then paying you, then you could probably argue you don't own your own business because all the commissions are coming to us. The way we set it up is it goes directly to you. Um, but what happens is companies are interested in buying agencies, even if they're sub-agencies, because they're interested in the revenue or the EBITDA that that company has. And every person, regardless of where they are in a hierarchy, they still have their own EBITDA.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00So you could make two million dollars a year and Kate, uh Caitlin Blackburn or uh Gardner, right? Because you got married can make two million dollars a year. So obviously, those are two completely separate businesses getting paid from the insurance carriers. So that has a value. And my argument used to be life insurance or uh real estate buying real estate would be better because it can go up in equity, right? But then I realized insurance is better because your agency can go up and it can go up in value, it goes up in equity. That's great.
SPEAKER_01That's a crazy that's a crazy concept. I didn't we that was foreign a year and a half ago.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and if you buy a property and it pays you with$2,000 a month, how much is that property gonna cost you?
SPEAKER_01For two grand a month and equity. I mean you're gonna have to spend$400? Easy.$400K? I was gonna say five, but yeah, depending on what market.
SPEAKER_00Or I can help one person that wants to make money in the best industry on the planet, right, but with the best company proven by numbers and results. It's free. And I would make I could easily get that in overrides if they do 10 policies a month. How many policies a month do you do?
SPEAKER_01I'm writing probably, I mean, I did submitted 15k in business last week. So what is that? Probably 10 policies a week or so? Yeah. 10 policies a week, maybe, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Dude, and people just don't know yet. They think insurance is well, it is getting out now. It is, but they it's still not like it should. Right.
SPEAKER_01And this is why I love the the fact that I'm even on here is gonna be a huge play of getting there's there's a whole wave of people that are, you know, I'm believing are gonna see this and see like, dude, I'm I'm not making this stuff up. Like you see the numbers. You had Edmund in here ripping cigars like a boss. Yeah. That was great, right? I know. It's just so just seeing these guys that have had a lot of success, like realizing that this is a great opportunity, like that's really cool for that's gotta be amazing for the business. I mean, it's just seeing people that are have had success. It's not like you know, you're just getting anybody.
SPEAKER_00No, dude, it used to be if you're broke and you have no other options, you sell life insurance. Now it's if you are a complete animal in your industry and you want a better opportunity, you get into insurance.
SPEAKER_01100%. And I just see that. And I just I was sent texting a guy the other day. I'm like, dude, this guy literally ran a massive door-to-door business. Like he made he's probably making two, three million, you know, a year. But now granted, solar's got its own challenges. I'm sure he probably saw the writing on the wall. He's not stupid. But uh, then they just see you see this opportunity, you see these guys that are making this kind of money. You see the Stan Smith, Jay, Ronnie's agency. You I mean, obviously, what you you guys have built. I mean, it's not a comparison. People just need to, there just needs to get out more.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's it. The other thing about ownership that I like is your um the carriers give you a beneficiary. So, like the only way you lose what you work for is if you do if you get terminated for cause by them for doing something shady, um, or you leave debt with them. Right. But the beneficiary is if something happens to you for your back end money to go to your family. Right. So pretty good deal.
Why Life Insurance Pays Faster
SPEAKER_01It's a crazy concept. I mean, I still am kind of learning that aspect of the business, you know. I just I'm like, just keep selling, keep building, it'll work out, kind of thing. Um, but so is that is that so that's the idea is that you build enough egg equity. Would you say that somebody, you know, if I'm talking to door to door a a guy who's like a big dog and he's like considering this as a long-term play, knowing he might have to take a haircut for like not that much time, maybe six months to a year, but knowing that five years from now he's gonna be way better.
SPEAKER_00And if he has his own potential exit, or maybe not, because dude, why why even get rid of the cash flow if you have that much cash flow coming in?
SPEAKER_01So do you and so that now you just that's another question I you know we'll talk about. I'm sure we'll get into it, but it's like, would you say for that, so to even be in a position, because the focus, like you said, isn't necessarily to sell you, maybe I'm answering my own question.
SPEAKER_00Well then a lot of people get excited about it, but I think on the flip side, if you have that much cash flow coming in, you should also re-evaluate that.
SPEAKER_01Well, I was talking to Kate about that, and she's like, Yeah, you know, I guess with you know, integrity of different companies that we're talking to, or whatever, I could potentially do XYZ as far as exit, but she's like, I'm making why I'm making this much money and I'm just managing a team, and all I gotta do is get on a few calls. It's not like it's not like door to I mean a door to door was like that's where I got gray hair and like bald spots in my freaking hair. I mean, it's take something out of you. Insurance doesn't have that same stress to it, it just doesn't. So I'm like, why wouldn't you just keep making the money on it?
SPEAKER_00But yeah, you think a year, two years time, you think somebody could be in an equity position or or I think if they build yeah, with these guys that build these companies, you build a solid company, I think that would make sense to me.
SPEAKER_01Do companies look at it like they want to so because I I mean if I was buying a company, I'd want to make sure it's like structured properly, make sure it's like gonna pay me. They probably want you to stay on right. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that.
SPEAKER_00But still, the fact that dude I thought I was just selling life insurance and I own nothing. When you first started? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So they had you at like not because I know you worked at the grocery store or whatever.
SPEAKER_00I worked at the grocery store. I came in at 50 55%, my first company I worked with.
SPEAKER_01So they had you at just getting out of the grocery store, basically.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dude. If I made one sale a month, I made my grocery store. Uh that's all I needed to do. And then everybody there told me that I'll be back. They're like, he'll be back. And then I was like, I can't go back. I can't go back. I can't go back. So I have to figure this out. You just had no choice. Because they said that. All right. Um, you're doing 350k a month as an agency. Well, we just hit uh we did we did 450 last month. We'll probably do like over five. We're pacing to do about it. What does that mean to someone who doesn't know this industry?
SPEAKER_01Um, so that would mean that our agency generated um, let's just so last month was 440,000 of issue paid business, which if I'm running, if I'm an eight, that means 440,000 of commissions got paid out to our agents. So we got them that number, which is okay. I mean, I think we can do better and we will. But um and then to the agency owner, you figure I always tell tell guys you, and depending on your spread and how you're like what's the override spread and what you have on your you know, your comp with your team, 10% or so you're probably keeping of that. 10 10% of that is overrides, would you say, more or less, depending on how you're structured. Is that fair? That's pretty safe. Is that like industry kind of standard 10%? I would say it's can pretty conservative. Conservative. Yeah. Because I always say like conservative of 10, maybe if you're really structured, you got a good spread, 15, 20% of that. Yeah is is profit for the for the owner for the insurance agency. Yeah. Yeah. So it's pretty I mean, it's I'll tell you this. So I I you know what are you depositing? Well, that's what I was gonna say. So for me, I'm di last month was like 80k, something like that.
SPEAKER_00You deposited 80 G's last month. What'd you like 77? Hold on. We got to make sure everyone knows this. That doesn't mean you keep ADGs because you got lead costs, you have other business expenses, but what were they? Do you have an idea?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so lead spend. I mean, obviously, I'm investing in guys helping out leads and stuff. We're doing recruiting campaigns and stuff. So I probably profited like. Like 30k, 40k after expenses and everything. I have a building that building expense, so we have that.
SPEAKER_00So all your business expense.
SPEAKER_01All business expense. Cleared about 40.
SPEAKER_00What were you clearing before?
SPEAKER_01Not much more right around the same. So it took me about a year and a half to make what it took me 10 years to do in door to door. And then what's the future hold now? Dude, there's no way we're not hitting a million a month by by summertime. And um, and then even at the end of the year, I'd like to be at two million a month minimum going into 2026. I mean, my goal is a hundred million dollar agency in five years, and that was a year and a half ago, so three and a half years.
SPEAKER_00The crazy thing is like if you look at our team numbers, we were doing it took us so long to do 10 million a year. It took like eight years. And then the industry changed, and it just kept getting better, like virtual sales and more leads, and inbound leads, and internet leads, and uh more awareness, so you're getting more quality people.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Which is crazy.
SPEAKER_01That's what I want. I mean, this year, 10 million minimum agency total.
SPEAKER_00Love it. Okay. So if you recruit someone from door to door, yeah, what's your pitch? And tell me what were you selling door to door?
Equity Renewals And Agency Value
SPEAKER_01Uh so we sold Verizon ATT, that's right. Yeah, telecom stuff. We never got into solar, um, but we did that. We did energy for a little bit, you know, the energy stuff, try to lower your kilowatt usage with a little bit of that. Um, and then I started off in home remodeling. Like we used to do lead generation for roof windows, siding company, but then it transitioned into Verizon ATT. So a lot of telecom stuff. But my pitch is pretty simple. I basically, when I'm talking to door-to-door guys, recruiting them, um, first off, I always do a thing where I always edify Kate. I always edify, like I share that story every time. I'm like, look, guys, a year and a half ago wasn't trying to do life insurance. Life insurance kind of found me. I wasn't looking for it. Should have been, now what I know and what I know now. But this girl brought me in, or we we we're at putt's putt stroke, whatever it's called. Pop I don't know why I can't get that right, but we're at this, she recruits me. She basically, I had no interest in doing life insurance because I thought it was kind of weird. I always kind of downplay with like the story. So I always tell the story like wasn't looking for life insurance, didn't really understand it because I always thought insurance was like primarica stuff. I thought it was like That's what everybody thinks. I that's what I thought. So I'm like And it's like uh I was just like, I mean, what I was doing was like to me better than that. So I'm like, it's not the best thing ever with door to door, but it was better than the Primarica. I had a buddy that was doing the Primarica thing, so I'm like, didn't see that as a long-term play. When she broke down the lead concept, and I share it just like this. I go, I got recruited a year and a half ago. I had a team doing door to door, I saw what Kate was making. I'm I am I'm overseeing a team of almost 500 guys, and I'm making 750 a year. She's overseeing a team of 150 people, been in the industry for four and a half years at the time I met her, and she made that year two million. So I'm over here making four let four times less the money, three times less the money, doing four times more of the work, no equity and upside. She's got residuals coming. It was just a no-brainer. It just made sense. So I should skeptical though.
SPEAKER_00Um Did you go read on the internet and go, I shouldn't do this because someone said it was a scam?
SPEAKER_01No, because like our business, we we we've I should probably have done that, but I was just looking for a way out, and it just I asked all the questions. What I really asked was like, all right, what's the long-term play of this? Like five years from now. Like, that's cool. First, it was like, how much do you make? Are you legit? Kate was really chill. She was really humble about it. You can kind of tell when somebody's kind of full of it, you know what I mean? They're overselling something. She wasn't overselling it, she was legit. And I basically, my whole thing is like, all right, this girl's doing less, you know, she's doing more with less in less time and making more money. I'm like, this is a total no-brainer. But um, when she first when she broke it down, I saw her lead, she showed me her guys. This is what really clicked. She's like, You see all them half half this table here. We're all eating dinner with her team or whatever. This is right after the conference. She goes, All these guys used to do door to door. I'm like, damn, she's got these door to door. She's like, most of my team is these door-to-door guys. She probably just said that because I was door-to-door guy, so she probably wanted to make me transition to it. Sounds like she's an excellent recruiter. She's a good recruiter, she was good. And she was really true. What I like about her was she she was really, she wasn't trying to oversell the business. She was like, look, I did this with no experience. This is how big we built. You have experience. Imagine how big you could build. And I use that to today. And that's how I explain it. But um, but yeah, so that's what we got into. But I that was it. She showed me door-to-door guys making more money than my guys were making. Well, I'm like, all right, well, if I care about my guys, then I then if then this is the best play for them.
SPEAKER_00Now you had 500 door-to-door guys. Yeah. How many converted over?
SPEAKER_01So we brought in like a hundred guys right off the rip. How many failed? That's what I'm talking about. A lot of them. Yeah, that's that was the play. I will, I didn't, so we didn't really know what the hell we were doing. I just kind of threw guys in and I kind of babysitted guys because I'm real the old business, I would we'd buy every you'd you'd like pay for their stuff, you help them out. So I was buying guys leads, I'm, you know, getting them set up. Contracting was a mess. We have a whole system now where it's like a website, a system, whole process. We plug guys into so they have success right off the jump. Because that's the thing, you got to get agents paid quick, right? Like it's it is a long licensing process. But we I blew through probably like a hundred guys in the beginning that you know I some of them are starting to see now that we got our shit together and they're starting to want to come back. But yeah, we were getting smoked in the beginning. I probably brought in like 150 guys brought up the rip, lost a bunch.
SPEAKER_00You think if knowing what you know now?
SPEAKER_01Oh man. I probably wish I would have like eased into a little bit. I was all in from the rip. I I think from the time I made my my that call from from talking to Kate, talking to my wife, I said, Hey, we're doing this. Does your wife work with you? She does, she does our contracting and onboarding and stuff.
SPEAKER_00Awesome.
SPEAKER_01But I brought her on. That was another thing that helped. I had no team, no structure, just was fired up. Like, guys, this is the business. Still believe it's the business, even though the first hundred guys didn't quite pan out. We still have like 10 of them that came from the initial wave. But there's still a bunch of big dogs that haven't come over yet. So I'm hoping that they see this and start to realize like this is the play. If they don't, their guys will. Their guys will. That's a good point. And it's just like they need to understand it's like, dude, I'm this before. And and the big dogs at the old company are like trying to tell people to unfollow me and don't follow Mike and all the social. That's the best marketing for you ever. I know.
SPEAKER_00Uh back in the day when we first started, everybody hated us, dude, because we were making noise. And a lot of companies would make a fatal mistake. Okay. And this is it. If you're running a company, do not make this mistake. They would put in their group chats, uh, go unfollow these people and block them. Or go block them on social media. Right. Well, these people didn't even know who we were. Right. And then they go to look at who we were, and they would call us and go, Yo, my manager told me to block you, so I looked you up, and I want to work with you. Think about how crazy that is. And they had no idea. Yep. Nothing.
SPEAKER_01Damn.
SPEAKER_00So that's and it happened over and over and over again, and we kept laughing, dude. We were cracking up laughing all the time because the movie's straight out of Compton. Right. When they got all the record sales because they were getting negative publicity. Yep. It's like the more shit people talked, yeah, the more people called us. And the funny thing is it's happening again because we're going from the the company is growing rapidly because people are winning. Right. Okay. And people are making money. That's it. And then what are people doing that well, they think they're competitors, but they're not really. They're going, they're bad because of these reasons. Don't talk to them, and they're driving more people to us. It's kind of like the thing on YouTube or whatever, when people actually talk crap in the comments, it actually blows up your message. Algorithm. It's the same thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, makes sense. It's hilarious. And they're still, I'm seeing that a lot. And um, and of course, you know, the guys would tap guys that would would didn't work out. Well, they they tried to do that, only Mike's making money. But what are they gonna say in 2026 at the end of it when everybody's making money on the team? First, they were like, it's it's insurance is stupid, Mike's gonna be back in no time. Then it was well, now only Mike's making money. There's always an excuse, they always keep having to make the goalposts, and then it's gonna be like, when all these guys are making all this money that they've seen before, now what are you gonna say?
SPEAKER_00This is like blockbuster and Netflix and say, but it's like sales, right? And sometimes I'll also see like someone tries to get involved a little bit. Like if if if if there's a sales organization and their guys are going into insurance, they'll get involved a little bit to try to discredit it and be like, Well, I I checked it out and this is why you shouldn't do it. And I actually got contracted and maybe pick up some overheads, but they won't jump all the way in. Dude, the thing is is jump in.
SPEAKER_01Jump in. The industry makes sense. The long haul is better. I mean, I have guys that make I mean they make good money. I have some guys that were on my team that are making a million bucks, you know, half a million. There, some of the guys are making more money than I ever made in door to door, but it's just a matter of time because like once you see the long-term exit, what's your exit strategy? You don't own the business. Most of these companies you don't own it, so what's your exit play? What's your long-term play? You don't have a play, yeah. You know?
SPEAKER_00Okay, so a couple things you put down here. Starting over is just starting smarter. Um admin was in here, who if you guys don't know him, he's hilarious. I didn't think I'd like him on his Instagram, but in real life, he's cool. He's a great dude. Um but he built something and lost it. Right. Right? And I told him I have the most respect for somebody that builds something, loses it, and builds something else that they're not they're not familiar with. And he did that really fast. Right. Because he was telling me his he's been here five months, he had a one-week deposit of forty-nine thousand. And he doesn't sell insurance. He doesn't even sell it, does he? He's just dude, he's just telling the world about it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's a great marketer and recruiter. That's the biggest thing I've learned from him that I gotta get better with for sure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, but you're saying it's okay to start over, yep, and you just have more information.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean you want me to like go on in on that one? Yeah, I mean, like, that's so true. I mean, I because I I just can imagine how many people would be like afraid, like, Mike, I hear what you're saying. I know it seems like a great industry, but it's like, you know, I got kids or whatever, or I got this other stuff. And I'm like, well, if you're somebody who was like thinking about jumping in, I mean, the thing is, is like luckily for me, I had some other reasons why it was easy for me to like exit. You know what I mean? I was like getting told certain things that I couldn't, couldn't do. And I'm like, once you start telling me what I can't do, that's when we got a problem. Like, I just you're not gonna tell me what I can't do because I'm gonna just not only am I gonna do it, I'm gonna rub your face in it too after I'm done. So once I started getting talked, guys were starting to talk some smack about me in the old business. The best. I'm like, bro, okay, all right. So you keep saying I'm you don't think I could be successful somewhere else. I need you. I'm like, once you start doing this whole cornering me type of play, like you, like I need this, I'm like, that's the that's it. I don't now you're giving me ultimatums. That's weird. That's like control tactics. I don't like that stuff. So, anyways, that was another reason why it was easy for me to get out. But so maybe if you're doing really well, but starting over is just starting smarter. I mean, look at these guys that start these business, I mean you read all the success stories. How many guys failed on their first couple businesses that they start, whatever. The thing is, you have to know if it makes sense, then it's just fear at that point. So to me, the insurance base made more sense. So it's like, okay, it had it checks the box of do my agents get paid fast. So if I care about my guys, if I truly care about my guys, then if what cater, you get what everybody's saying in life insurance, if their guys are making more and I am a leader and I'm managing people, and this is a better situation for my team, do you really care about your agents if you wouldn't put them in a better spot? And I always tell my team from the four, you show me a better opportunity, I'll I will, I will be the first one to go. I you ask anybody that's ever known me in the past business, you find me something better. Because to me, I thought door to door, the thing we had going was like scalable, making good money, whatever. I was like, you show me something better, I'll do it. And that was that was I took my own advice. Like you I found something better, that was it. But if you're afraid to start over, you're just afraid to lose what you really don't have. I mean, you're gonna lose it at some point, like it's gonna you don't have a five-year, 10-year plan. So if you don't have that vision of five years from now, well, I met Kate, I'm like, this girl's a nurse before this business, she doesn't have sales experience, she didn't build a huge team before. I'm like, that's gotta count for something. So why wouldn't I be able to scale this up? So especially if you have experience and you're starting over, you're not starting over, you still have the skills, you got the network, you got the credibility. If you care about people and you're you're real with people, that's gonna translate, you know. And we're seeing that with Edmund, any of these guys that come over. They believe in him, they're coming over and it's gonna work. So don't worry about the cash flow. It's not just all about the money. The money will come if you're in a vehicle that makes more sense long term.
SPEAKER_00What's good? Um, the bad parts of life insurance. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_01What are they? The bad parts of life insurance is like that initial 30 days. I tell my guys now the first 90 days of life insurance is like Jurassic Park. But that's because we gotta, it's a lot of new stuff. You're gonna learn a lot of product knowledge, you're gonna have chargebacks for the first time. You're gonna have to buy leads. You've never maybe my guys before they never bought leads. You just got knock on doors. Yeah, for free. So like there's stuff like that. So I say, but if it's Jurassic Park in the first 90 days and you follow the plan, it'll be Disneyland. A lot of guys, a lot of guys sell the bit insurance as Disneyland and then it's Jurassic Park when they get in. I'd rather you that's what we did poorly. And I wasn't trying to sell them on that's good. It's Jurassic Park in the beginning. Exaggerate Disneyland. I think it's a good idea.
SPEAKER_00The only problem is I just went to Disneyland and it was awful. Like you didn't have uh the speed pass or whatever. Dude, I had the speed pass lines are full now. Oh, really? And that does kind of suck. Dude, you couldn't even move in this place, it was yeah, miserable. Well, then that I'm gonna have to throw that analogy out because that was the one I've been with. We went two days, we went two days and we didn't even go back the second day. Right. That's it was that bad. It was that bad. And you know how much it cost, which I still think is kind of crazy. I think it was$2,500 for like the little fast passes. Fast fast. It's not a lot. I mean, that's kind of a lot if you think about someone spending that much money and you can get on two or three or four rides. I don't know. I thought it was I probably will never go back. What is that?
SPEAKER_01How much time does that save you though?
SPEAKER_00Like if you're like what speed pass as opposed to Dude, it it takes it to like a 30 to 40 minute wait opposed to like a two-hour wait.
SPEAKER_01Got it. So that's not that great. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I thought it was I'm uh next because we were doing this for my daughter's birthday every year, but next year we're just gonna go to Hawaii or do something else that is not full of people. And I don't know. You have a better experience. In other words, Disneyland sucks. Disneyland sucks. I'm officially going on record to say that. It's been said.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's official. So you got to change your tailor reporting live. You gotta change your analogy. Right. But that's I mean, that's but that's so there you go. Maybe it's like it's Disneyland in the first 90 days. You're gonna pay a lot of money, you're gonna pay 2500 bucks, you're gonna wait in line, it's gonna suck. You're not gonna have the best experience, it's gonna be hot. But you get what I'm saying. It's like it just the beginning, we just you don't want to soft-sell the opportunity where you make it sound so good, and then it becomes like because they're gonna experience the negatives anyway. So, like either you're gonna tell them what it is up front and just say, look, dude, the first 90 days is like Jurassic Park, and then after that it's you know, whatever is a good, you know, whatever's good. But that's it, dude. You said it, and that that's really helped retain a lot more of our guys. Like, we really started to hit stride once we started to like promote it, present it that way.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's changed the game. Okay. Um, what percentage of new agents are still here after six to twelve months?
SPEAKER_01Okay, so taking out if I mean the first initial wave because I was just bringing guys, yeah. That was like that was pretty wild. We brought in a lot of guys, retention rate was not great, but again, didn't know what the hell we were doing. Throwing stuff up against the wall, see what sticks. No structure, no system, nothing, just kind of throwing them in, whatever. Um but uh now, first yeah, six to twelve months, I mean I'd say the retention's at least sixty percent, probably sixty percent of agents.
Recruiting Door To Door Teams
SPEAKER_00That's high. I think ten to twenty percent is is what I would guess. I don't have the actual number.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I feel like it's I mean, if you can get them paid, the key is like getting them paid quick. If you can get guys paid and then ease them into the idea, the negatives of insurance is really just chargebacks. We always talk about this on the calls when I run these calls. It's like there's four negatives of life insurance, and one of them is like not really a negative chargebacks, the licensing process, you know what I mean, getting them going. That can take some time, especially if guys are broke, they need to take a little bit of time to get the test. Those are two big ones. The third thing is um is um we already talked about lead spend. So lead spend, chargebacks, licensing. Those are like the three the major three. Outside of that, the other things are like time management. You nobody's gonna like manage you, so you have to like manage yourself. Whereas like door to door, we would structure everything. It was like high school, you know, it's like we do this at this time, we we practice pitch at this time, we send guys out to the field. This is like college. It's like you show up to class, nobody's gonna take attendance. If if you don't show up, nobody's gonna take attendance. We don't care if you decide to go all in on this or you don't. Like it's up to you. You're gonna get what you put into it. So we now use that as kind of like a you gotta learn how to kind of become your own boss because you are self-employed now. Now, granted, there should be standards and expectations, but I don't know. What do you think about that? That's kind of the negative.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, 100%. And then you also have roll-up debt. That's a new that's the big, big negative. Right. Or if you hire somebody and they're not good at what they do, or maybe a scumbag.
SPEAKER_01I need to add that to our our onboarding.
SPEAKER_00Usually a scumbag. Um and they sell a policy and they get a charge back and they don't clear it for a certain amount of time, then it moves up to the next person in line.
SPEAKER_01I haven't really had to deal with that yet.
SPEAKER_00That's why I'm probably Well, it's getting harder for people to do because the carriers are using all kinds of tools to validate these scenarios, and it's not easy to just go put information in and get paid.
SPEAKER_01Got it. What what is that was that that was the I don't even I don't even understand what that means before.
SPEAKER_00Back in the day, you would get paid before the customer paid. Right. Like you could future draft data policy, 30 days, okay, still get your commission. So someone could who's desperate for money could go do that, get paid, and then disappear. Disappear. And then it would roll up. Damn. Now the carriers have to draft the account, they verify the customer's information better, they do all kinds of things. Yeah, you're not getting away with it. And there's red flags that pop up taking for people to get caught, then they lose their license, they get kicked out of the industry, they get reparted to the Department of Insurance. Maybe when the Department of Insurance gets around to it, they'll go to jail because I mean it is a cr it is a crime and stealing. Um but I would say that would be those are some of the negatives. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Major ones.
SPEAKER_00I want to make a website, deadbeat insuranceagents.com. And then everyone in insurance can report anyone who does anything stupid like that.
SPEAKER_01It's kind of like a Yelp for insurance agents. What do you think? I like that. I actually thought about that for other in an old business, like interviews that would come in, people that would just have leave with bad experience. Yeah they could be rated. There was a black you ever watched Black Mirror?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It was like there was do you remember that episode in Black Mirror where like people were rating themselves? Remember everybody would walk around and like rating? Might have been one of the first couple seasons because I didn't watch it that much longer, but there was a season where it was like that. It was like everybody was in the future, everybody was rating each other. So you'd go and you bump into somebody, right away they'd rate you. Something like that. So anyway. Like Facebook, but like just like real time. Like everybody's got their glasses on, their goggles. Like, like if you had a somebody bumps into you, cusses you. So everybody was really positive, nice, and fake because nobody wanted a bad review. That was like how the thing went.
SPEAKER_00Which is what yeah, your social credit score.
SPEAKER_01Social credit score, basically. So you're walking out, but in real time, you're getting like like Uber driver relationship, you know, like rider and user, rider and driver both get rated. So it'd be the same thing as your thing. Oh, that's coming. Yeah. So like it's like interact personal interactions are graded now.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So this way people can't just do anything crazy because then it's like, well, you're gonna get rated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you get what I'm saying? All right. How long did it take you to become profitable? Uh probably um I was profitable. Um, I mean, it depends on what you mean by profitable, not to overcomplicate this, but like I was taking the profit and putting it right back into the business. I still am doing that, so I don't really like profit a crazy amount, I just put it right back into like flow in the business and like expenses or whatever else. I had some bad tax issues from you know prior years in business that I had to catch up with too. So it was like a lot all at once kind of deal. So it depends on what you mean, like normal profitability. If I didn't have like all this drama with some real bad real estate deals and IRS stuff that I was dealing with, and then cash flow and all this. I was profitable without those situations. First 90 days, maybe 120 days, first three, four months. Got it. But then everything just gets funneled right back into the business, if that makes sense. Okay. I don't know if that's too much to share. No, that's good. Where do where do you buy your leads and how much do they cost? Yeah. Um you asked me this on stage too, and I might have blown it when we were I On the lead panel with you in the last con, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But um, so I we have a Facebook vendor, so we just we buy leads on Facebook, you know, Facebook campaign or whatever. So it's just easy stuff. There's a middleman, they go out, they market the it's like goat leads, but just a different type of goat lead guy. He's just a different version of goat leads, but it's all Facebook, Meta, Instagram, YouTube, whatever. I think it's all the same. But and that's it. So we just run those leads, we run uh final expense leads, we run some uh we we're running trucker leads, but I mean gen life seems to be like the most consistent, it's just general life insurance. We like Ethos leads.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's a bunch of these companies out there.
SPEAKER_01Tons. You can't, I mean, anybody can generate a Facebook campaign for you. I mean, you just go, they're probably gonna call you before you call them anyways, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're everywhere. Literally, we got texts and calls from all these different guys.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's but basically you're using Facebook leads. Facebook leads.
SPEAKER_01That's it. Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um What do you think the conversion rate should be of a new agent?
SPEAKER_01Um, so conversion rate of a new agent should be I mean, you should I I think every we to we we tell our guys like it should be a a even if it's terrible, you it should be at a two to three X return on whatever lead on the money you spend on your leads. So if you spend a thousand bucks, the key is just getting up to it's just having the confidence to be able to, like in the skill set, to be like, I'm gonna drop this money on the thousand bucks. Because once you drop that first G, you're stressed out in a good way. So if you spend a thousand, even if you suck, you should be able to get a two to three X return. If you're average, it should be a three to five X return. And if you're really good, I don't know, six to ten X return. If you're really good.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think the a better way to put it is if you resolve them all. Because if you get leads and you call through them one time, nothing's gonna happen. If you resolve, if you contact them, then you're gonna get your return. A lot of people buy leads, they they call them and then they they don't get a response, and it takes 32 minutes and they they're done. That's a good point.
SPEAKER_01So you just don't think guys like will FaceTime audio them, send them a message, blast through this way and that way, maybe even FaceTime, send them a void, you know. Well, I know you do. Yeah, we got to do it for FaceTime audio, whatever you gotta, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, whatever.
SPEAKER_01I really like what somebody like we we're we're teaching guys now to do like these video messages. So if like it's a high intent lead, you're paying good money for this. So you just do a quick video message. So good. Video message. Hey, just uh this is Mike, just it's all you reached out, make it so.
SPEAKER_00Uh people have been video messaging me a lot. You seen those recently? No, like I'm receiving them from people, and it is a good relationship building, like it's kind of weird. It is kind of weird, especially if you're like, and we haven't trained on it, so it's probably why it hasn't worked so much. But like it'll be sometimes it's agents, they'll send me videos of them talking, but it does make me remember who they are, and it is a better way to connect if you've tried to call them multiple times.
SPEAKER_01I wouldn't start with that, it'd be like yeah, uh yeah, just a video message from them.
SPEAKER_00Edmund is a video machine video sending machine.
SPEAKER_01He's where I got that idea where we started copying that. That's interesting. So I copied uh Edmund sent me a video message when I reached out to Ned to ask him for advice, and uh he sent me smart though.
SPEAKER_00There's something there's something to that. Okay. Uh, do you do phone sales in-home? What do you do?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I don't uh the in-home life, the door-to-door life for me is over. So it's all virtual. Um, buying leads, calling them as many times as we can to contact them. Do you miss the door-to-door? Um, I sometimes miss this like I mean, I wasn't really doing door-to-door when I like left. I was managing. So I w I hadn't knocked doors in probably 10 years, like full time, you know, because I had built a big team or whatever. So I was doing the more overseeing of the offices and game plan and all that. But I do sometimes miss the door to industry from like a culture stand. They did like culture, you can build some good culture with that business, but I don't miss the the work. I don't miss the fact that like we're not making as much money as we do now. So no, I don't miss it. Um learned a lot from it though. That built the character and what we're doing.
SPEAKER_00It gives you a little more lifestyle over the phone. Cause dude, I did I went to 10,000 houses. Right. And dude, I was eating terrible, I never had any time. I was driving too all day long. My back was hurting because I'm like in the car all day. I'm like, bro. And then now you can do virtual sales, you can go to the gym, you could take your kids to karate, you could the freedom is way better.
SPEAKER_01From that's obviously from that standpoint, yeah. I don't miss like I don't miss door to door. I mean, I just try to try to take the positive from what I got from the last thing, but I saw one of your guys' last, I don't know if you guys put this together. It might be your your flyer, but you guys had a thing um where it was like a race to Hall of Fame. It's like a blue graphic.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Do you know what I'm talking about? And it's got like the well you would the different things and how you guys would fli you would fly out to different places. I'm like, damn, that was kind of like that's like old, that's like how we like you guys kind of were doing what we were doing.
SPEAKER_00We were getting on planes, dude, because there was no leads. And internet leads were not as big of a thing. And this wasn't that long ago. That's crazy. And even if it was an internet lead, we would still just go to the house and close them.
SPEAKER_01And so you would just so that you had to bake those costs into your expenses, right? Yes. So these so virtual life insurance.
SPEAKER_00Bikes, hotels, cars, gas, all that stuff.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00And that that expense is gone.
SPEAKER_01So then you put guys up in an Airbnb or whatever, hotel or something, or they would pay for their own deal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we just we were nomads, dude. Like, damn. I just go to Seattle or Reno or wherever there was leads that week, book 40 appointments myself, and then go and run them. And everybody that knows showed you, you wouldn't door knock all the uh leads that didn't answer.
SPEAKER_01Damn. What's crazy then to think is like we're literally only we're like, and I you say it at the conference, but it's like it's almost like four to five years into this. This is still like a brand new industry.
SPEAKER_00K. This is this industry started over. Yeah. Industry's 300 and something years old. Right. Or probably older, right freaking knows. Right. But I horse and buggy, at least, yeah. Yeah, according to the internet, the first claim was paid out like 300 and something years ago. And it's definitely older than that, dude. You're telling me that uh that back in the day the Roman Empire didn't have some type of insurance, they definitely did, they had to, because it just makes sense, yeah. Yeah, it just makes sense. Um but uh up until Roman Empire up until 2020, okay. Right, it was not popular to do this over the phone, and it was not easy to do. We would I would FedEx you an app to sign. Right. And even DocuSign wasn't getting approved as like a way you could sign for an app, a wet signature.
SPEAKER_01Dang. So you guys have these flyers or something?
SPEAKER_00No, we'd had a paper application, we'd FedEx them to you, and then you'd have to send them back, and we wouldn't get them back. So we're like, bro, I'm just gonna go to their house. Right. So the last six years, all this has changed since COVID. Wow. Which makes it a new industry, and then technology's making it where you can get paid so fast, they can approve people for more coverage, the pricing gets better, they can do the medical checks in seconds, they get a policy emailed to them right away. It's insane.
SPEAKER_01That's wild. So we're still this is still like like Amazon before. I think it is. I mean, we're still on like the end, this is still early. I mean, this is still early. And that got a lot of guys hit me up too. They're like, I mean, I just yeah, I mean, if I got started, I had a guy hit me up the other day about that. He's like, I mean, yeah, but like it's cool now, but like, you know how every industry, he's like kind of trying to neg me out about it, but he's like, Well, you know how every industry they get hot and then it kind of slows down.
SPEAKER_00This is a little bit.
SPEAKER_01I'm like, dude, I don't I was like, dude, this is not gonna slow down. It's like there's an unlimited market.
SPEAKER_00Well, we integrity's uh lead center has ringba leads, inbound leads in there now, right? They pinged the system a hundred thousand times in one day to take that means a hundred thousand calls checked if there was an agent available.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy. So that's really unders underserved. There's a lot more agents that need to be on that. A lot more I need to get our guys on that. We're not we haven't we're not doing a good job of that.
SPEAKER_00Dude, I mean I that's crazy. Let's break it down, okay? If you get a bunch of Facebook leads, how much do they cost per lead?
SPEAKER_0120. Let's just call it 20 bucks or high in the city.
SPEAKER_00Okay, let's say you get 20 of them, so you're 400 bucks. Right. How many answer?
SPEAKER_01You might contact, I mean, if it's five to ten, something like that, half the list, maybe. 10 answer, that's high. If you keep I mean, we we just beat, you just keep calling until they finally you all right, answer right away or like over a couple weeks, period.
SPEAKER_00I'm just saying, how many do you end up contacting, do you think?
SPEAKER_01We I mean if you do 20 leads, you should be able to close three to four if you get 20 leads, high in 10 leads.
SPEAKER_00Dude, so if you if you get inbounds, you have 90 seconds to talk to them, and if you hang up, you don't get charged.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's good.
SPEAKER_00So let's say you're paying 50 bucks a lead, but you're on the phone with them, and if they say they're not interested or there was some misleading part of the ad, you don't even pay.
SPEAKER_01So, in other words, we definitely need help. That's fire. Another thing that I thought I wanted to bring this up too is that like I've noticed, and for any of the guys that are gonna watch this later, I know they will, but is the crazy thing about this business too is that like from the leadership standpoint, that's the thing like people don't understand. Like, Sean Mike is like a different animal. Not that you should do this because Sean Mike, but like you, Sean Mike. What I mean by that is that you guys have this ability to build this really big thing, and you and you're and you're relentless too. Because like a lot of people that are that successful, they're chilling. You guys are still pushing the needle, and he and doesn't they're not you're not slowing down. Like you guys got more gas in the tank for sure. What's crazy though is this other business I'm in, right? These guys are like the mafia. They so like these guys that are switching from door to door, this old business, they're like, wait, you're switching with my so they're trying to throw money at the guys trying to leave so they don't leave. They're doing anything to try to control these guys. But meanwhile, if one of your agents or agency owners was like, hey, I'm doing some real estate stuff on the side, or I'm doing this other business on the side, you you would be like, I mean, good for you. Like, great. Dude, I'm doing all kinds of real estate stuff. They find out you're doing something on the side or doing anything else, they gotta know everything about it. That's the kind of culture we were in, dude. You mean culture?
SPEAKER_00That's a cult, right? So the first company I worked at, I didn't know I was in a cult. Right. And then somebody sent me uh 16 things a cult does that that they found on the internet. Right. And then all 16 things they did, and I was like, oh shit, I'm in a cult.
SPEAKER_01That makes sense. And it's just like if you if these guys, if you if you trust your business so much, why do you care what somebody else is doing? Like I never understood. Why are you clocking this guy's pockets? You know what I mean? Who cares? Like, it's if I find a better opportunity, wouldn't you just let me go do it, knowing that your opportunity is good. Somebody calls me like, hey, I'm doing something on the side, I'm good, all right, cool. Yeah, I don't see I don't have a fear that they're gonna lead me. And I that's what I respect a lot about the industry, too. I don't know if that's in industry-wide insurance, I'm sure it's not, but FFL. I haven't seen, I mean, that I love that aspect of it. Like, it's like Well, dude, we want people to make money, we don't want to control their life, which makes people want to stay here and make more money. Yeah, when you tell people to do, they don't want to. When you talk to and you tell you you give people the freedom to do what they want, they usually make the right decision. But that's the thing, you guys believe in people, you empower people.
SPEAKER_00Dude, this is kind of like backwards, like you wouldn't think this would be the case. But when Sean opened the company, we came from a place where like you had to do everything with them, like forced team nights, yeah. Team nights night owls, you had to hang out and talk till two in the morning, listen to people, brain get brainwashed. But when he opened the company, he was like, dude, we all have friends, we need to make money, like we don't we don't need to be friends, right? And I was like, dude, that's kind of that's kind of awesome. I love that. But then if you become friends, that's even better. Like we're happy.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's that's that should be the attitude, but it's like, yeah, exactly. And we usually called them that team nights. Some called them night owls.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, or like if you don't make any money, but they take you to a nice dinner.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's like this is how we retain our guys. It's like, yeah, I mean, we're just want to show you, we just want to love bomb you, which is funny. That's actually kind of that's cult, that's cult behavior. It makes you look good. But take your take your money, take your money, love bomb you, tell you how great you're gonna be. So you feel good, you feel like you're part of a good group. And then, you know, it's like don't make it about don't I don't want to retain people to like me. That was always how I felt like in the last business. It was like get people locked. We always used to say in the old business, lock people into you. Lock people into the money, is what I've learned in insurance. Get people locked into the opportunity and the money, they'll they'll do you don't have to worry about retaining people. That was a word that was thrown around a lot in the last business is how do you retain your guys? I've nobody talks about retaining people in life insurance. Just get them to make money. For anybody while like there's no retention of people, you don't have to worry about retaining your guys. Well, some people will leave and go work somewhere else. Okay. Well, I mean, is that but you don't like you don't worry about that.
SPEAKER_00You just focus on if I teach you at home and because they're gonna they're gonna take a pay cut usually. So it it's not that common, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean that makes sense. But you don't worry about guys going this place the next because if you know that they're in the best industry, they have the best opportunity to make money and they make money, yeah, you're not they're not going anywhere. Where the hell is people gonna go? For sure.
SPEAKER_00100% all right that's fire. How do you uh how do you manage selling and recruiting?
SPEAKER_01Um for me, um, I mean, last year I really focused, and this is a mistake, I will say, the short to long answers when I had that time where I brought in a lot of guys, I'm not gonna lie, I got a little bit like trigger shy of bringing guys in because I don't want guys to come in feel I didn't want guys to feel like the old business again. You know, they're com okay, yep, they just want to string us along, not make money. So I almost like probably overcorrected a little bit. And I was like, let me just focus on producing, which last year I did produce, got the Hall of Fame, which is great and all that. But I just wanted to prove that I could and just lead from the front, show the guys how to do it. So I didn't focus heavily on recruiting as much, but once I did start focusing on it producing and recruiting, it's just time management. You break it into your schedule. It's like I'm I recruit from so I I get in, we dial it, you start dialing 8:30, 9 o'clock, whatever. Get in, socialize, whatever, hang out, game plan for the day, 9 o'clock, we're hitting the phones, 9.30 at the absolute latest, right? One what between 1 and 2 or 1 and 2 30, I would have a break and I would do recruiting calls. And then later at night at after 8, I would have recruiting calls. So you just have to really like balance that. So recruiting calls happen and it's a five-minute call. There's nothing really much to talk about, unless it's a big person. Like if somebody's really big leg, you're trying to recruit. I would be like, hey, let's talk tonight. And it's like a 30 minute to an hour long, but I would I would schedule it at night this way. Prioritizing dials, that's that's number one, making money, especially if you need the money. Prioritize making money. Then sprinkle in recruiting, but it's just having good time management with your schedule. My calendarly is all set up like that. I got my recruiting time blocks and sprinkle throughout the day, all the stuff that's important to me. I just put it in the calendar. Boom.
SPEAKER_00How many hours per week does someone that wants to do 40k what could they expect to put in?
SPEAKER_0140k issue pay?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you're gonna put it probably, I mean, like if you're if you're a good builder or just producer? Both. Both, yeah. So I I I tell people in our our agency now, it's like it's good, it's a it's a 50, it's a 50 hour a week job minimum to do to sell 40k. The other 10K, if you're working, if you want to build a big agency, 10K is gonna be recruit sorry, 10 hours is a week is gonna be recruiting. 10 hours a week is gonna be maybe training or sell or whatever, orientate something type of stuff like that. So it's 70 hours, 80 hours a week if you want to build an agency. It's 40 to 50 hours if you want to sell 40k. Because your lead spend, if you buy leads, you don't need to work like 80 hours a week. I mean, just to write 40k, you just have to buy enough high-intent leads and then um, and that's it. Like buy leads and then work them, schedule your time to balance. You could fail and lose your money. You could fail and lose your money. So I would say, like, you know, minimum 40 hours. The top guys are hitting 50, 60, 50, 60 hours a week.
SPEAKER_00One of our guys used to say you pay your bills during the day, you save money when you're working at night, and you get rich on the weekends. I like that.
SPEAKER_01I've been Grady, is that Grady said that? I think he stole it from me. Oh, okay. Because I hear Grady saying that a lot. So he must have he's he's not giving you any credit, too, by the way. I know. What's up, Grady? But that makes sense. Yeah, get paid the week, the weekdays pay your bills. Or yeah, nine to five dial in, pays your bills kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then the nights get you ahead, and then weekends.
SPEAKER_00Dude, and weekends are easy because like so easy. There's a lot of time wasted on the weekends, and my whole thing was I would be done on Saturday by two, and then I would I would call from four to eight on Sunday. Right. And then I would have a head start during the week, and I wouldn't be desperate. I'd be communicating from like a stronger position than trying to just catch up Monday morning and get everything figured out. Right. Go into the week with one or two sales, and then you're like confident and you're not desperate, and you're like a little funnier on the phone because you're not worried of about making a sale because you already made a sale and made sales, you made money.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, Saturdays. I mean, I still Saturdays, I plan on working, you know, six days a week for probably ever at least. Well, and you like you said, you get some balance and stuff and stuff like that. I'm still on door-to-door schedule a little bit too. I'm like just grinding, doing what we gotta do to build the agency up and selling.
SPEAKER_00So that's yeah, but you can manipulate your schedule. That's what people don't get. Like um this weekend, my this last weekend, I had my little brother's bachelor party, uh, who is Nick Taylor at Ethos. I don't know if you know him. I know. Uh, but that is actually my brother. Is that right? So he we had his bachelor party. My daughter turned four on Saturday, and we had a huge my wife threw a party that was like for like uh quincinetta, basically, for a four-year-old. And then Sunday, my little brother got married, Nick got married, right? But I could still fit in work, which I did have recruiting calls and everything throughout this whole thing, yeah. And I could manipulate my schedule, and you could do the same thing with sales.
SPEAKER_01It's cool that you say that. I don't know if I can chime in on this one because I was like just talking to my wife about this, is like, and this is this is real talk, and she'll co-sign it when she sees it. But it's like we when I left the last business, um, we had, you know, we'd been together for 10 years, you know, including being married for eight. But when we got, when we when I first left that business, like she had some resentment, like we had some built-up resentment.
SPEAKER_00I was gonna ask you about that.
SPEAKER_01Because, dude, the old business was very much like it was always like the business first. We always called it the biz, you know, the biz is first, maybe another culty kind of thing. But the biz was always first. And so I made her second. Whereas this business, dude, like the ability to be able to like be there for kids, you know. That's why I say when I work six days, I'm not factoring in the you know, an hour here. I live seven minutes from the office. She needs to go knock something out. I'm I'm home, I'm I'm hanging out with the kids for an hour, I'm popping back to the office. Like, there's free time like that, and just the the ability to know. Yes, we're working my butt off. She's bought into the vision of me building this. She's the one that's telling me you should go on a 90-day blitz and just set the tone for your guys. There's my wife telling me this. She used to be like, you're not home enough. Now she's like, you need to go work harder because she believes in this opportunity so much. But there was resentment like towards me that we didn't even know I didn't even know it was there, but it was there. And then coming to this, just the free time and flexible. I don't have to choose one or the other. The other business made me choose, like, it was not they didn't go out and say it this this or that, but the amount of time they expected you to be available and on calls and doing this. You go on a trip, you didn't want to post it in the last business, because then now they'll use that against you if you have a bad sales week. Oh, it must have been nice going. Maybe if you weren't as you if you're in your office as much, maybe you wouldn't have had that drop off. Just crazy, dude. And then so you got freedom, is what you got. I got freedom, dude. I got freedom. That's probably the biggest thing, dude, is freedom. And I I can be myself. Like I'm I'm in my I'm comfortable being me. I'm not worried about saying things the right way. I'm still working on that because I'm so used to just like being programmed to say the right thing. Because you just kind of got good at playing the game, so to speak, in the last business. With this, it's like, I'm I'm this is me, this is how I operate, this is what I'm gonna do. If I'm not gonna be there, I'm not gonna be there. I don't need to explain to you or anybody else why I'm not there. You run your own business. Truly run your own business. And I think a lot of other agencies and things, they don't run their own business. They think they do. I had an escort before, I had an LLC, all that stuff. I was a business owner. But if somebody's telling you where to be and how to be there, and you don't own anything other than the furniture and the LLC that's in your plate, you don't own a business. I like how much shit you're talking about, the door to door industry. I mean, hey, I'm just keeping it real. I was like, if I get the opportunity to come on here, man, I'm letting it. I I mean this is what this is what it is.
Freedom Culture And How To Reach Mike
SPEAKER_00Well, I can't this is the rogue. I mean, this is what I thought. I can relate because that's why I'm here. It isn't about comp or anything. And a lot of insurance is similar to that. It's we control you. And you have to do these meetings, or you're not accepted socially. You're you're kind of an outcast if you don't do all these things. And that pressure makes you fall in line to give up things. Like, and dude, if it's your I don't know, to me that having kids is the best thing ever. So if if you're giving I didn't have kids then. Right. But if you're giving that up, that's a lot to ask.
SPEAKER_01It's not worth it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01That's why I was one of the things where I was like, I I'm not doing that anymore. I'm not sacrificing my family. Either my family goes with me or we're not doing it. Period.
SPEAKER_00Dude, I want to get to the point to where I can take my family with me to every meeting. Which I already take them a lot.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say, I don't I don't know if that's okay, but I'm kind of already doing that right now because I don't, I mean, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00That's great.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, just take them with they go like the a night conference, they'll be there. Are they here? They're not here, they didn't go to this one because it was a one-day trip. That'd have been a you know, they're not taking a five and two-year-old to a yeah in and out Las Vegas trip, but but yeah, dude, we take them to events, conferences, everything.
SPEAKER_00And I like my kids being around the people in the industry, right? Even we just had Christo in, and he's like asking if he could buy my kid a monkey. And he's not kidding. He's like gonna find a monkey for sale because uh he knows how much he loves animals. That's awesome. I wonder if he'll actually do it. We need to take like a bad thing.
SPEAKER_01I told him I'm not gonna ask my wife if she's cool with it. If I like random well, you guys know Chris, right? I mean, Christo, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he's not like a stranger or anything.
SPEAKER_00No, even if I was that doing your kid of all right. If someone wanted to work with you and maybe they want to get out of a cult, they need some help, how can they reach you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so you can obviously reach me by uh so Instagram, Michael J Lay on uh my Instagram there. DM me, send me a message, and uh this may not be the right fit for you. I always tell people like this isn't like reverse psychology, like this may not be the right fit for you.
SPEAKER_00What kind of person doesn't usually succeed or do you not want? What are some things?
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, I mean like I would say like if you're if you're not like a uh mindset, I mean you have to have the mentality. Most of my guys used to work with me in door to door. I know you got the right mindset. I know you can work because you did door to door, so you're good. But if you didn't have that, you want to reach out, it's mindset, it's work ethic. Work ethic, I never heard anybody say this. Sean Mike said this. He said work ethic is a is a res is a result of your of how you see yourself. It's a belief thing. I never looked at work ethic as like a belief thing. I'm like, damn, that's actually kind of true. People that work hard usually believe in themselves. People that don't work that hard don't believe in themselves. I never attributed to the work like belief, which is why. But work ethic, you gotta be able to be willing to grind. And you just gotta realize coming in the first 90 days, you might make no money because you're gonna learn the skill, you're gonna spend money on leads, you might have a chargeback or two, but the next nine months, you can you can't not make money. It's um you you will make more money than you've ever known how to make in the first nine months. But that first 90 days, you gotta come in with the right mentality.
SPEAKER_00You might make more money if you I should say that. You might make more money. Yeah, because some people will get in and they will not.
SPEAKER_01That's true.
SPEAKER_00And we don't know we don't know that exact formula.
SPEAKER_01But that but the reason, but I'll I'll actually challenge you on that. But the people that come in and don't make money, it's because they didn't do the first two things. They didn't have the right attitude and they didn't have the right work ethic. So it's like if you have those two things, you will make the money. It's I've never nobody comes in right work ethic, right attitude, doesn't make it, and or and not willing to invest in leads. So it's like if that person's yeah, but they might make it in the first, if if they don't have that attitude, work ethic and leads thing. You have those three things, it's the the industry, it's gonna work.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I used to be not very confident if someone was gonna do well. Right. But I can pretty confidently say, like, if you spend two days here dialing, you're gonna make a sale.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have a guy here. He's I just told him I'm gonna have him plug in with you guys if that's cool. I was like, of course you'd be good, but yeah, he's from Door Door Guy, he's coming in, he just was hanging out, meeting some of these guys.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But I I have my cousins here, um they're like 20 and 21 or something. They just get got here today. Right. And I told them you you're going to make your first sale in the next two days. And they don't know anything about life insurance. So I'll let you guys know if that if that happens. Yeah, we need to we need to like check on it. But I think it will because it it just makes sense. If you have the leads you and you're calling them, it's going someone's gonna need help.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and then if you have like I mean, obviously, if you have money to play with to start in this, obviously you could scale it a little bit faster. I always tell my guys that too.
SPEAKER_00Sometimes that's a curse though, dude. They just get new leads, they they don't even get good at it, they don't get any older leads to practice.
SPEAKER_01You prefer you think it's better to have guys like historically, you always think it's better with age leads first. Both at least. Like what first 30 days, 60 days.
SPEAKER_00I always used age leads. Every single yeah, because they're fill-ins. If you don't get the amount of appointments, they're fill-in. You can go through them for fill-ins.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, true. So you like the idea of like buy the high intent, whatever, but like have the aged on the side. That's what we do. Oh, that's good. Yeah, yeah. You need to have some supplemental, you need just volume, you need volume opportunity. You need at bats.
SPEAKER_00At bats. All right. So hit hit up Michael if if you're interested in getting into insurance. You could be anywhere in the country. You relate well to door-to-door people, clearly, but you don't have to be from door-to-door. Correct.
SPEAKER_01Um, any sales, restaurant, athlete, yeah, you know, mentality. I mean, anybody, even if you know my brother never did sales in his life. He's working with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, dude.
SPEAKER_01That's a sister-in-law. I get my fits like a family business.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you know it's good if you're trusting your family to be there.
SPEAKER_01He would never have done the door-to-or business. He said before, I'm like, my guy, that never made sense to me. This insurance thing, not to cut you off. Yeah. This insurance thing, he's like, this makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. All right, bro. We'll get you back in here when you hit uh you said a hundred million, a thousand agents. Let's do it. Well, how about when we hit how about Hall of Fame agency? We're back in. Okay, 10 million, back in. We'll get an update. Let's go. Thanks for what you're doing, bro. Helping people. Appreciate you guys. Good attitude. And uh, thank you guys for joining us. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it, man. It's good stuff.