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How to Build an Agency Bigger Than Yourself (Ep. 290)
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If you have ever watched door-to-door grinders in the heat and wondered how anyone turns that hustle into something scalable, this conversation answers it with real numbers, real mistakes, and real systems. We sit down with Oussama Mastouri and Elliott Tomlinson to talk about leaving solar and pest control behind, stepping into life insurance sales, and building a team-first agency culture that does not depend on posting a “rich life” online.
We get specific about what actually moves the needle: how they define a “logo” month as $100,000 in team production without relying on personal sales, why they value honest mentorship over flashy contract percentages, and what their first-week training looks like when they coach agents live on Discord. We also dig into carrier strategy, including why they lean hard on Americo for final expense simplicity, client pricing, and smoother application flow, plus how that ties directly to persistency and what really hits the bank account.
Then we go deeper on lead generation and retention. We debate inbound leads versus outbound dialing, explain the simple follow-up text that keeps clients from getting replaced, and talk about why “do more” is not motivational fluff, it is a persistency strategy. We also look ahead at the insurance tech stack: AI appointment setting, fewer raw dials, and what it means for agents who want more presentations without burning out.
If you are building an insurance agency, training new agents, or trying to escape door-to-door sales, you will leave with practical habits you can use this week and a clearer view of the risks like roll-up debt and fraud. Subscribe for more conversations like this, share the episode with a builder in your circle, and leave a review with the one tactic you are going to implement first.
*****DISCLAIMER******
Results mentioned in this content are not typical and are not a guarantee of future performance. Individual results will vary based on a number of factors, including but not limited to experience, market conditions, product availability, and individual effort. Any examples, case studies, testimonials, or income figures shown are for illustrative purposes only and may not be representative of the experience of other individuals. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Insurance and annuity product guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability and financial strength of the issuing company. FFL USA does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice. Consult your own tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.
Hello everybody, Andrew Taylor here. Thank you for joining us. Today we have another two studs in life insurance, Osama Mistori. That's right. Osama does not have Instagram.
SPEAKER_00Well, I do. You do. He does. I just private. You know. Oh, it's private. You can't follow me, you know, or remove you as a follower. Nobody can follow you? Only my friends. Close circle, you know? Close circle of people. People I know personally. How many people? Like 450? Like 450.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so I but I can't follow you. No, you can't. You're more than welcome.
SPEAKER_00If you did not just follow them, damn, bro. You don't like that? That would be tough.
SPEAKER_01No, no, no, no. You can definitely follow me, but yeah. What what is your why why do you do that?
SPEAKER_00Um I think social media is great. Like a lot of people have a lot of success using social media. Uh a lot of my guys have a lot of success using social media. I'm a private person, you know? Um I don't wanna be actually I just learned this word uh lump. What is it? Lumper. LARP. LARP. I don't wanna be the LARP type of guy, and if I am gonna LARP, it's gonna be to my friends. You know, that is if I'm trying to recruit a new agent, I don't want to recruit them just because of the way my Instagram looks or anything like that. My Instagram is my personal lifestyle and everything, you know, my job is outside of my personal life.
SPEAKER_01Love it. And your biggest month is 38 policies? Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Now you got some guys that work with you that love you, so you must be doing something right because they respect you and they say you kind of showed them the way out of door-to-door sales.
SPEAKER_00Uh yeah. Uh I'll say I I met a few people throughout the doors. August um was one of those people. Um a lot of them were in pest control whenever I made the switch from solar to uh life insurance. I think I I don't know. I I think I might get that just because it's them over me, if that makes sense. I've been in the industry now for two years. I've made the money in the industry. Um, I've made money outside of the industry. I'm not struggling by any means financially. So if somebody makes a switch from door to door to life insurance, that person just changed their life. And somebody just went from making consistently 300k, 400k in a year to giving me a shot, who am I not to put in every second of every day into all of them rather than into me, to be honest.
SPEAKER_01Now what all follows under the what all falls under the door-to-door umbrella? Solar, pest control, what else?
SPEAKER_00Vivant. Vivant, you know. You got I want to say cut co is door-to-door, but I did that as well.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you did cut co?
SPEAKER_00That was my first sale job.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. Are you married? No. Kids, girlfriend, girlfriend, dog? Girlfriend, dog, dogs, two dogs. A dog you own with your girlfriend? No, not at all. My dog. On your own. Yep, my dog. Because that's a big if you get a dog with a girlfriend, then you're pretty committed.
SPEAKER_00Well, we got ducks, then we had to get rid of them. They were pooping in the backyard. Don't get ducks.
SPEAKER_01Oh, you you guys were both owned ducks together?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it was a weird situation. Uh, she calls me. I was working, and she goes, hey, we need a new pet. I'm like, sure. Uh just okay. I didn't take it too serious. Uh I get out of my office, I go look in the backyard, I just see two ducks just running around. So we do have ducks. But you got rid of them. Yes, we had to put them in a pond because we thought they were a female and a male. Turns out it was both males, and they just fought? Yeah, they just started fighting. So we put them in a pond with uh, you know, a bunch of females? Female ducks, yeah.
SPEAKER_01That's awesome.
SPEAKER_00Where do you live? Houston, Houston, Texas.
SPEAKER_01How do you like Houston?
SPEAKER_00Good. It's okay. It does the job. Uh got an office down there. Got a few a few of my guys are still in Houston, so you know.
SPEAKER_01Love it. Alright, so your edge, putting other success first. If you help enough people get what they want, everything else will take care of itself. You put on here that your goal in a year is to get five people to earn a logo. And you're in three years, your goal is to help twenty people hit logo. Which I love that that's your goal, because it's not about you, it's about other people. Um can you tell everybody what that means?
SPEAKER_00A logo, like what does a logo mean? Yeah. Um, that's hitting a hundred thousand in a month um without your personal production. That's how I look at it. I know it's a little weird. It's 20% of your personal, 25% of your personal. Uh, but yeah, getting your guys to have a team that does 100k.
SPEAKER_01Love it. Yeah, yeah. Cool, man. All right, and then we have
Door To Door To Insurance
SPEAKER_01Elliot. How'd you meet Elliot?
SPEAKER_00Oh, Elliot, um, I was looking into life insurance. I was in solar. I was at the point where I was the middleman between like installers and teams. And I got I got bored. Like, I was sitting at home, making good money. It was cool. But it was like, that's it. There was nothing else I could do. I could become like an installer and risk hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe work, maybe not. Then I started looking into life insurance. Everybody I was talking to was giving me the runaround. I'm just asking simple questions. They're like, yeah, you just gotta join the business, you know? Clawbacks are not real, blah, blah, blah. I can make you 200k this year, no questions asked about it. I'm like, cool, but like, what about this, this, this, and that? And then you can hear it in their voice, they just, they just like didn't want to say nothing to me. Like, they didn't want to tell me the bad things about the business. And I was like, I'm trying to join the business. I just want to know ahead of time. Yeah, the bad. Like, every business got bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I texted, no, he reached out to me on Instagram at first, um, and I responded, and I think he left me alright. I was like, I was like, what the hell? What just happened?
SPEAKER_02Almost made a big mistake.
SPEAKER_00So I doubled down, I was like, hey bro, like, what's your number? Like, when is a good time for a call? Left me alright again. I was like, okay. Yo, when's a good time? And he was like, tomorrow, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, okay, good. He'd never sent me his number. I was like, bro, do you need my number? Like, do I need your number? Like, are you gonna call me through Instagram? Like, what's going on? And he was like, he was like, oh, what's your number? Called me. And I was like, hey, so I just want to know the bad about the business. And he just went on a rampage. This is terrible. This is terrible, this is terrible, this is really good, but this is really terrible. I was like, oh. Like you did not hesitate to tell me anything that was bad. And he was like, Yeah, dude, I'm not big. At the time, I think 100K, maybe.
SPEAKER_02Maybe uh we we had his logo, so I was probably yeah, around at 100k.
SPEAKER_00At 100k when I met him, and I was like, alright. Um people were offering me 135%, 125%, like every day, and I and he was like, hey, you can start with me at 80%. I was like, okay. Um, why is this so low? And he was like, he was like, I'm small, dude. And all I can say is every day is gonna be dedicated to you. And at that point, I was like, sign me up. Like, sign me up. So you started at 80. Yeah, I started at 85.
SPEAKER_0185. I love it. All right, so Elliot Tomlinson, you have done 69,000 in a month. What's your whole team done?
SPEAKER_02Uh, our biggest month is 725 right now. So getting up there. Are you Caitlin's biggest team? Um, getting close. Um, Jake better run faster, is all I could say. Well, they're together, right? Nah, nah, nah, nah, nah. We're not letting that go. That's been my target since day one. I'm gonna catch him one day. If it takes me 10 years, I'll get there. It's probably not gonna take you 10 years. Nah, nah, nah, nah. He's he's enjoying his new pool. Let him stay calm. Don't let this release just yet.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, awesome. So your team's cranking all door to door. Why is FFL you put on here a hundred thousand times better than door-to-door? Why?
SPEAKER_02Uh, it's just like where to actually start at is like so from the top, I went out to sell pest control. So thank goodness to someone in the pest control industry, like being a good recruiter, to convince me to leave engineering. So I will I went to school for four years, got my engineering degree, did all the stuff you're supposed to do as like a good student to go make a hundred grand. And I got into that, and then I was going into work and I realized everybody around me was like gray matter. Like their worlds weren't moving, their lives were staying the same, and they were showing up to work, complaining about the exact same thing, or just slightly different every single week, waiting on Saturday to come. So I'm like, this kind of sucks. So I got into real estate, bought my first rental, um, and was looking for tips for that, really. Um, and then they kind of conned me into a phone call and said I needed more capital. I was like, well, you're right, I do need more money. And get on the phone call, didn't know it was a recruiting call, never been recruited before. Get on there and they're super nice. They're telling me about how I need to make more money to have more real estate and how I can get it is through sales. And then they convince me, you know, pest control is the right answer. So, long story short, speed up. I quit my nine to five job that I went to school for four years, doing pretty good at it, and go out to leave my wife at home to keep her nine to five so we don't lose the house. And I moved to Texas to go out there for six months and do this door-to-door thing. Get out there, it's extremely hard. It is not easy by any means. It's 110 degree in Dallas. That person did not ask you to be there at all. And also, like, you had to learn a new skill. And to me, I was really good at what I did and moved into nothing, like not knowing anything. And there's this 18-year-old running circles around me. And I'm like, how is he beating me? I have to be smarter, I have to be faster. Something so long story short, I learned that you have to devote yourself to something for a long period of time and also put in a ton of hours to learn something. So Sundays, Saturdays, I was learning, learning, learning. I was not surrounded by those guys. If I would have been, I would have been way better. But also, then I realized it really stuck. Came home after six months. My wife seen me twice the whole six months. Um, get back, and it's like, I don't know if we can do this again, like move away. And I was like, man, if just something could hit me. I started running a guiding business for duck hunting. So I basically take people duck hunting and they pay me. Okay. Okay. And I started trying to make money doing that. Did not work. Um, well, it kind of did, but kind of didn't. Um, and I get a DM from Kate. Thank goodness I got that DM. I was like, I'll sell anything that you've got. She's like, Cool, let's jump on a call. Explanation of insurance, great. I can sell it from home. I don't care what it is, put me in, coach. No plan for this big business, no plan for what it could do. Got in here. I sold like, I think I IP'd right at 22K my first month, deposited uh over 15,000 my first month. It was crazy. Um, and that was back when we still had uh, do you remember the old app on Americo that was like um it you couldn't even do the term app on it, you could
What "Logo" Means In Practice
SPEAKER_02only do the like Americo whole life on it. That's when I started on that. And I would just go in home. I couldn't sell anything else. I'd go to the homes and sit down with the people, only sell Eagles uh premiere, and that's all I knew. If they asked me about a term, like those expire on you, we don't need those. And then I'd sell an Eagle premiere. But long story short, uh door to door sucks because it's hot outside and it's really hard. Insurance is inside, and they asked to be called, which is great.
SPEAKER_01So I love that. Now I asked these guys, were you shredded when you were doing door-to-door because you're working out so much? I would stretch shredded is a stretch.
SPEAKER_02Skinny, yes. I definitely have a computer body right now, but then I had, you know, the old 10,000 steps today. I was I was doing a bunch, but then I upgraded to a Segway. Oh what? So mid-summer, I finally had made enough from this stupid job that I had decided to take on as a good idea and got a Segway. So we all ride Segways out there. It's like a very common thing, the little white thing. You see them roll up to your door on. That reduced the steps, but it didn't reduce the activity by any means. Um, it still was 112 on Segway or off Segway, so it didn't matter.
SPEAKER_01What happened to Segways, bro? They just like aren't cool anymore. I still have four of them in my garage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we don't have the ones with the handlebars. We have the ones with no handlebars. Yeah. They're like cool to a select group of people that are still thinking door to door is cool. But they were everywhere when they came out.
SPEAKER_01Everyone was on a Segway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, everyone was getting one of the things.
SPEAKER_01You know what took them took over? Electric bikes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, those are gangster, the the Siuran things.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but dude, they're dangerous because they're like you're going 30, 40 miles an hour, people are running people over. But it's cool. But it is cool.
SPEAKER_00Like those scooters. Have y'all seen like the and the scooters? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Scooters are fast, like 70 miles an hour on a scooter. No. Bro. Yeah. We need like a the Ovan.
SPEAKER_01Pull it up. 70 miles an hour on a scooter. I swear that was a scooter.
SPEAKER_00One of my friends owns like a I think you call them a scooter. They're one of those, like, I don't know, I don't speak English that well. It's like the little scooter things, whatever. And he used to come over to my apartment. And he'd be like, yeah, bro, I was just heading 60 in a highway in this little thing. I'm like, are you not terrified for your life, dude?
SPEAKER_01I wonder what the future holds, dude. Like, we're gonna be traveling on like scooters, hoverboards, I'm excited for the floating like skateboard.
SPEAKER_02I'm hoping I get to live for the floating skateboard. Oh, you will? Oh, I will be. I'm buying one.
SPEAKER_01I don't care how much it is. It's like the ones on the beach where they're like they float in the air. Yeah, the water. Okay, so how long has it been since you guys have done this and do you regret anything about it? Done the switch?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Two years for me. What about you?
SPEAKER_02Three little over three years and regret absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. What about all the people dogging? It's funny, our our most popular posts on Instagram have the most hate in the comments.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, if if I saw people making 50k, 60k in a month in my biggest month and door to door has been like, not me, but like other people I know, like 15k, 20k, you're mad. You're just mad. You're just like, yo, like there's no way you're putting in less work from inside the house and you're getting paid double what I'm getting paid. So I need to hate on something. Or the people that join the business and they're like, yeah, I spent $200 on leads and yeah, I didn't sell anything my first week. It's a scam. You know? Of course. Like you Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I also think the hate comes from a place of like disbelief that it's real, like he's saying, as well as uh so think about it. From you're sitting on the sideline, like look at me coming from door to door, I was doing $150K in revenue, and I was gonna take home 30 grand. So I was looking at these numbers as revenue numbers from a pest control view. And I get in there and they're like, no, this isn't revenue, big dog. Like this is really close to what we're actually depositing. Like it's their actual company revenue, which is like their bank accounts, versus me. I
Honest Mentorship And Starting Low
SPEAKER_02was a salesman down the line, versus here, you're the business owner. So you're actually getting the revenue, which is very different overall of like seeing funds go on your account, which is very new for most people when they start this business. But I think the hate comes from like your typical guy that's done W-2 and and never got into sales is looking from the sidelines. There's no way that's real because I make two grand a month. And it's like, bro, just because you're making two grand doesn't mean there's somebody not out there making a million a month at twenty-two years old, which is what FFL offers.
SPEAKER_01And well, I wouldn't say anybody Oh yeah, there's people making grossing, but we have to we have to clarify. They're grossing, they have business expenses, they do they have expenses, they have lead expenses. But their company revenue per month could be a million dollars. Total revenue could be a million dollars.
SPEAKER_02Like deposit in their account, and then they they choose what that goes to. I don't know if anyone's hit a million a month. You don't think so? I don't think so. Oh, Stan Stan stands on uh he probably included gambling in there too, but yeah, I don't know what he I don't know what he does with gambling.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to see it if he did, but I don't believe I don't think so. I think he would be including other things. Well even if we cut it in half. Let's say half. Cut it by ten. I mean, what is that?
SPEAKER_02Cut it by ten times hundred grand a month? Like if you're like some people can't even fathom making that a year. Like their whole life goal is to make that a year. And here, I mean, honestly, depending on what team meeting you get on, there's gonna be ten of them on there that have accomplished that at some point of a hundred grand a month. I mean, we got personal producers that are getting close, if not have hit that mark in revenue. Now, total profit over that, you could ask them to see their finances, I guess. But yeah. Yeah, for sure. I I think it's a a hatred place that's like they've just never experienced it. First time you get that first deposit from America, things change real quick. Like your eyes open up. Um, I'll never forget I I came home for my first day of appointments ever. And I had 12 scheduled for my first day, went out and sold seven of them. And the first day I was in insurance, and came home, and I told my wife, I said, Hey, if these people pay me half of what I did today, I will promise you we will be rich. And she's like, Oh, it's a scam, it's a scam, like there's no way. Like, I'd done 9,900 in like 30 hours. So a little bit the night before, and then that day, and then two days later, she's at work. I'm texting her, like, hey, check the bank. Prosperity, just put money in there. If you remember, you remember. But she checks it, she's like, Oh my gosh, that's like a whole week's paycheck for her. And I said, check it again. Americo's just hit two. And she's like, Oh my gosh. Like, do I need to get license? I was like, Yes. Like, she quits her job two months, three months later, and now we run this thing full time together. Like, it's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Oh, she helps you.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. Like, if if it wasn't for Brooke, this thing would not have a quarterback.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm not gonna lie. I'll I'll probably call Brooke more than he calls her. So it's like she's she's he runs quarterback.
SPEAKER_02If if I had to step away, she could run the whole company. Let's go, Brooke. Yeah. Shout out, Brooke. Shout out, Brooke. Do you guys ever fight working together? Um, I wouldn't call it a fight. She definitely gets like, you know, a little bit too much testosterone flying in the air where I'm like in agent, like making the shots called mode, and I come home and I'm still in that mode. She punks you. Uh she's like, bro, you better chill. Like, dinner's on the table and shut up. I'm like And do you have kids? No kids yet. Do you want kids? Oh yeah. Dogs? Uh, we do have a dog. What kind? Australian Shepherd Mini.
SPEAKER_01Love it. I always tell people if the customers if you talk about their dogs, they're gonna buy from you.
SPEAKER_02That was the way I used to get people to show up to their appointments in homes. I'd say, What's your dog's name? And they'd say, Lucy. I'll say perfect. Can't wait to meet Lucy. And they would always show up to their appointments, and the first thing I say is, Where's Lucy or where's John? And I have it in my notes.
SPEAKER_01What about cats though? I don't like cats. Bro, get them out of my house. Oh, I like cats. You do? I do. I'm allergic to them, so I might as well be. If I needed to make a sale though, I'd still pet them. Hey, I'm sitting on that couch no matter what.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Thank goodness it's virtual.
SPEAKER_01My eyes would be bright red. I'm like, they're like, are you allergic to cats?
SPEAKER_02I'm like, no, I'm okay. I'm fine. Cigarette smoke and cats were like, I had a flannel that I wore in home so I could take it off when I got in the truck and I'd put it in the bed of the truck. Because some of those houses, man, you know better than anybody is like.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah. I've been in a lot of them. Alright, so training agents to make the switch to life insurance. What does your guys' training look like for someone who's switching over?
SPEAKER_00Like their first week? Yeah. Um, I think when somebody first starts, they have to understand what they're selling. So I think in the first 48 hours, we have to understand the process. We have to understand the final goal and what you're trying to communicate with the client. And then after that, to be honest, you just get in the field and just you as the Upline just sitting there and listening. Cause and I think a lot of people do this, they they'll hire like a new guy, they'll train him for like three, four days, and they're like, okay, go go make some dials and then send me a recording. Right? That works, like that would definitely work, but if you're completely hands-on after that first 48 hours and you're just watching them dial, you can fix things on the spot. And door-to-door, I was shadowing guys, but the issue with that was I can't
Why Insurance Beats Knocking Doors
SPEAKER_00train them right in front of the client unless, unless, like, hey, this is just a training session that usually results in no sale. We're doing things virtual. We're all on Discord every day. He's on Discord every day, I'm on Discord every day. So if I'm talking to a new agent, and after the first 48 hours and they're on a call with somebody, I'm like, okay, they did that wrong. I'm gonna do this, and they're gonna know that means mute the client, then mute him and be like, hey, um moving forward, do this, this, and that, because you kind of twisted the conversation right here. So I think the first week of a new agent joining from a new industry, just understanding the goal and fixing things on the spot, especially if they have sales experience, like they understand what you're fixing. Like they understand what you're trying to communicate to them. So communicating that in the middle of the call and tell them, hey, you kind of messed up right there, so just be careful. Like an objection is probably coming. Prepare for that. I think that's one of the many things that's kind of important for an agent when they first start.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I I mean, honestly, for me, I'm a system guy. Like, I gotta have like I know what I'm gonna do specifically for each person when they come in. I do the same thing for everybody. Um, so you start basically your contracts are being submitted, or we've received your NPN. So you're getting onboard, you're getting your contracts in your email. Um, then from there, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna bring you into our Discord environment. So you're gonna get overwhelmed immediately by all the rooms and all the stuff going on. And I'll put you in one called training of resources basically. It's like a glorified school, right? And I say, watch these videos before we do our first role play. So they'll watch those videos, also sees if they respect when I tell them to do something, if they're gonna do it, and what type of response I get back from them. So it tells me who I'm training when I get in the door, and then once I bring them on to their first role play, it is all the way down because they don't have a contract yet, down to like quotes, right? It doesn't take long, it takes me like 20 minutes, 15 minutes, and I just say yes to everything. Gets them super nervous, they want to ask questions, and I tell them, no, no, no, no, no. Just read the script, go through it. They get confident reading out loud. That's the whole first day. Now I send them with homework. Okay, so by tomorrow, I need you to know all our main objections. I need you to know um replacements and all that good stuff that you see in this document. I hand them a document with the stuff that they need to know and come back tomorrow. If you don't know it, it's 24 hours from now. Like I can tell you're not working on the stuff off the court. And this is gonna be really important to building your business. And then they show up the next day, we go through it with intro objections. Um, if they have a contract, it'll take me a little longer, maybe 45 minutes, and I'll go through a full sale with saying yes to everything where they fill out a demo app with AmeriCo. So we only train on Americo. Um, sorry, other carriers, but you're not there yet. But now people hate on Americo. Who? Are they do they hate money? The internet. Uh well, I don't know who they are. They don't run a business.
SPEAKER_00I think oh go ahead. Like, I think a lot of people will go to me and August. Funny enough, we're talking about this on the Uber drive back uh from the airport, and he's like, hey, like, like I put it into Chat GPT, my book of business, the new Claude, you know, I don't know if you use that yet, it's crack. Um, like he put his whole book of business in there and he's like, hey, which company is like paying me the most, which company has the best persistency, which company does the whole nine yards. And Claude came back and it was like, America, America, America, America. And people don't understand, it's like this company makes it so simple for me to finish an application. If I do something wrong, I have to fix it in the middle of the application. Other companies, I'm not gonna say names, but you need reconfirm the social even though it's right. I need you to send a bank statement, I need you to send their ID, I need you to send their social picture of their social security card, and now a hundred dollar a month policy just cost you a lot more than a hundred bucks because you just wasted three days working on it. Um I think Americo, in my opinion, by far, best paying persistency all of our agents. 80, 85 and above, 80 and above.
SPEAKER_01The other funny thing is now these are really just internet trolls that don't have Americo and hate us because we're killing it. That's really what it is. But the interesting thing is it's also the cheapest final expense product for the for the consumer.
SPEAKER_00Right? Yeah, it's it's by far, and it's the easiest to qualify for for those prices. Like other companies, you need to have no history of this, no history of this, no history of this, no history of this, no history of this. Like Americo, okay, cancer, five, you just need to five years or more, four years or more, you're good. You know, diabetes, they don't even and they don't even ask an insulin question. So it's like, why are you going to this other carrier that's gonna charge the client ten doll to fifteen dollars more when you can just keep them in America, they get a good price. You get a good commission. And I I never like talking about commission, but yeah, you do get the best commission out of anybody. And usually the client is content. I I know the client is gonna get my packet, for example. A lot of companies slack on the packets, America's quick. All my clients will have their packet within the first week or two of them signing up. So, yeah, I think America no brainer. No brainer. Like, if you if you never had America and you talk bad about America.
SPEAKER_01Only people talking bad about America is people that don't use it and don't run a business. There's no way because I'll read comments sometimes on our posts and they'll be like, we replace all of Americo's business, and Americo's the worst company ever. I'm like, you how are you replacing the cheapest product?
SPEAKER_02Fraudulently? They're sending like some old comments, like some some people that are still stuck in the eagle premiere stages, like we're in Eagle Select now where we got select one. You're you're not touching my policy. Like you can try, like, what are you gonna do? Convince them to pay two dollars more? Are you morally okay with doing that? Like, pay two dollars more 12 months out of the year for another 20 years? Are you sure you want to do that? Because you're talking about all these morals and all this stuff negative about them, but I mean, you make that decision on the call, I guess. Do you guys do inbounds yet? Yeah, we we've we've played with them. Um we're struggling with like it's like true final expense for us, um, versus our normal is general life kind of final expense. So we have a higher AP. Now, um the boys over at Policy Tech, I know they're good friends over here. So that Sam's a G. Um, he definitely knows what he's talking about, he knows his numbers. They do have a twelve hundred dollar average AP, um, and it is true final expense. So if for a fast-paced sale all day long, you're in between appointments, boom, throw them in there. But as far as relying on them totally, we haven't committed to that yet. Um I don't think you ever want to rely on them totally.
SPEAKER_00Um me personally, inbounds are not my thing. Like they're like he said, something you put in the middle of appointments. But the m I think the most important thing in the business is not AP, it's not IP, it's not Hall of Fame, it's none of that. It's what gets paid into your bank account and your persistency. I think inbound leads from everything I've seen across the whole industry talking to other teams, the whole nine yards, they just seem lower, like lower persistency in total for some reason.
SPEAKER_01I'd like to talk about that though. So Eric Schmidt has a no, so Eric Schmidt uses policy tech. He's always in the top, too. And he also uses the same person that tracks his business and his persistency. And he has like a 96% persistency on policy tech. And then you have other people who are getting the same leads, lower close ratio, lower persistency. And the question is why? So me and Sam went through this, and Eric does a whole bunch of things most people don't do. He sends a thank you card, he does a whole bunch of additional tie-downs, he's very, very good at what he does. And so I I hear you because that's that's what I thought too. Like, yeah, the persistency is worse and the AP's down, but it's not true. It is the agent, but I also got smoked on an inbound yesterday.
SPEAKER_02I I
Deposits, Doubters, And Money Talk
SPEAKER_02think on the inbound thing, it's like I I've I've been on live transfers since I started. Not inbounds, live transfers. Yeah. Um, they've always been good. You will hate them one day, you will love them the next. Yeah. Inbounds are very, very, very consistent. I can turn them on, I can get a sale. Now, the thing for me is the persistency, I think, takes the extra actions to be good on inbounds. It takes the Eric Smith worth of effort to keep them on the books. And I think right now that like a lot of these agents, they're barely giving these people their phone number. Number one, if you're watching this, do more. At least send them a text of what you got them. Like, goodness gracious. Make them feel open to call you. Because uh some of these agents, like the the reason why your policy is getting replaced is because they don't feel comfortable calling you back to tell you somebody else called them. They can't even find your number. They don't even know where you're at. So all of our agents, number one thing we have them do, first thing you're trained is you get a sale, you're texting that client with premium, with coverage, with company, if they have a portal, how to log in their portal, and through a text and trying to get them to like that message or say something that they received it. Because it forces my agents, number one, for the clients to know what they've been sold, right? Especially if we have a slippage in persistency or effort on the call. It's like you have to forcefully show that. And if you come to me and you're like, I don't know why I'm having chargebacks or whatever it is, and it's like, bro, are you sending the text to them? And he's like, I mean, I I send it to a few of them. I'm like, bro, first off, you got to take our advice and you gotta run with it. Like, stop playing with your business. This is your business. You're like, imagine you're setting up shop somewhere and you put a big sign out front and your face is on it. Okay. That client needs to feel like they're walking into your office and buying from you because if not, you're gone in the wind. Like you're just a phone number that they've seen on their phone one day and they have a packet. And if they feel like that, they're never gonna call you. They're never gonna reach out when uh Osama calls one of my clients and he's trying to replace it, and they don't know who I am, don't remember my name. It's like, well, of course he's gonna have a chance. You know, so I think persistency is big in that because the brokerage space is pretty big now. Like FFL in general is huge, so it's huge and small. Huge and small.
SPEAKER_01Because like we have we have what 20,000 agents selling. That's not that big, dude. But it's just with the lead, the way we sell, we sell probably 20 times each individual person probably sells 20 times more than the average because they're getting 30 to they could get 30 to 40 presentations a week. Usually in insurance, it's like you're calling people you know to try to present, you maybe get two a month closed, three a month closed.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I talked to a state farm guy one time, or farm bureau or state farm, one of the two, and I was like, How many policies do you sell a month? He's like, I had a great month. I sold 10. I was like, bro, I've if the week is over and I don't have ten policies, like we struggled that week. And he's talking about had a great month. So it like put it in perspective of me, like what we do here, we're held to a really high standard. Like we just had an agent do right at after numbers updated, he'll probably do 100k. And the first time we've had someone in the agency do that, and it's just like eye-opening, like, bro, you're doing 5k in a month. Like, are you even working? Like, did you even show up? Or are like your is it your first day? Like, it's okay. But the possibilities in this business have just they keep growing. I think 200k a month is coming in the next calendar year of like people doing that, like Hall of Fame in two months.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. With IULs, crazy, dude. I bought an IUL, so you you always want to believe in the product, right? So you need to have it. Do you guys own what you guys sell? Yes, I spend like $1,500 a month on life insurance. Who's the beneficiary? Uh my brothers. Love it. How many brothers you got? Three. Cool.
SPEAKER_02What about you? I have IUL. We actually have an Americo policy on my wife, and then I also have a larger term as well.
SPEAKER_01So I just got a policy, is like I think the biggest one yet, five grand a month. But if you if you sell a lot of those, if you start to tell people about them and how valuable they are, it doesn't it makes sense to do it, dude. Like, you want to know the worst case scenario on this policy, I would get all my money back at year fifteen. If the market and I didn't want it anymore, if the market never performed one dollar, doomsday every year rolled to zero, it didn't make any interest, I would get every dollar I put in at year fifteen, and I would have had the death benefit that entire time. Or it performs good, it makes money, I keep it long term, I could take interest, I can take loans from it later. But dude, if it's set up properly, you're right. People will do 200k months.
SPEAKER_02It's soon. I I mean I'm watching the work ethic and tech. Tech is doing a lot right now. Like inbounds is like the start of it, but outbounding has become less dialing than anything I've ever seen ever. Like some of these guys are running full-blown appointment schedules and never talk to the lead until they're appointed time. Like we've been running appointment setters for a long time. Uh, you know, over in the Philippines, they call, you pay them six bucks an hour. Well, now you got AI doing it for pennies on the dollar relative to that. And these guys are you're having agents roll into the system that are good at, you know, developing AI, they're good at developing sites, like you're seeing all kinds of stuff developed. So over the next year, I'm I'm gonna say it's gonna be hard to find an agency that's pure outbound dialing only without some sort of tech stack that's helping them get appointments on their calendar. Um, because it it's the workload on them just feels different. The appointments, like, and they have time to outbound too if they need to, but dial numbers is no longer as it used to be for a top producer, would be like 300 dials, 400 dials, set your appointments and do whatever. I got guys making 15 dials
Training Systems And Discord Coaching
SPEAKER_02in a day, and 15 of them are appointments, you know, and it's like the tech stack's gonna get crazy in the next year. I have no clue what's gonna come. These you got all these people with cheap ability to develop with Claude now, like apps, everything. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00I'm from the South, like yeah, I have just like Justin Al, like he was on a podcast before, he he just talked about him, he just did 100k a month. Um but like I'm talking I'm calling him, I'm like talking to him, and he's like, Yeah, dude, I just call my appointments. Uh I barely have time to like dial because I have so many appointments throughout the day. And I'm like, dude, a year ago, like that guy was doing $500 a day. Like nonstop.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Pre-booked appointments is gangster.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's awesome. All done with AI, drip settings. There's a lot of programs that do it out there overall, but now you're seeing people develop the tech stack themselves. Yeah. Not even oppone it. Yeah, they're not even going to GHL and donating the hundred bucks a month to do it anymore.
SPEAKER_01They're going, hey, Claude, build build this in 30 minutes. It's like a full stack. It's not as easy as it sounds, because like a lot of the stuff won't work. It'll build it, but a lot of buttons will be broken. But dude, Claude coding is like a thing people do at night now. That's what I was gonna say.
SPEAKER_00I had a I'm a big Pokemon guy. And uh on Target, it's like there's Pokemon drops. And I was talking to Claude and he coded like a whole bot for me that could like buy the stuff on drops. In person or no, no, no, like online. So it's like Claude like was able to code something. I needed he told me to do the exact steps, take it to this website, put the code in, it will make you a bot, and it will start buying you stuff. And I never did computer engineering, I never coded a day in my life, but it was like it took me like six hours of work, and now I have a bot that's able to buy things for me.
SPEAKER_01So my son is into Pokemon, he's six, and I know how hard it is to get Pokemon cards, you can't even get them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, it's uh yeah, you can't. You can't, you literally can't. You have to like know somebody or you have to have a bot of some sort.
SPEAKER_01And so that thing just buys it as soon as it drops.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, as soon as it drops, it puts it in your cart, all you have to do is click buy. But it alerts you the second like it's available on Target's website, and then you know it's already in your cart at that point, so you just go and click buy. What's your best card you have? Oof, I recently pulled like a $2,000, $3,000 Charizard. I'm gonna get it graded. Hopefully it's like 15K, 16K. How do you get it graded? Uh you just send it into PSA, like you pay 80 bucks, you send it in, and then they just send it.
SPEAKER_01And you can get 50, dude, I need a Charizard.
SPEAKER_00Hey, 15k, I heard one's for sale. Yep. Hey, send me 15k and it's all yours, bro.
SPEAKER_01Dude, some of those Pokemon cards are worth some crazy money.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't even I don't know anything about Pokemon. I just know one of my friends called me one day and he was like, hey dude, like I just made $5,000 off one Pokemon pack. I paid $60 for it. I was like, how do I do this? And he was like, yeah, go to this store, go to this store. Showed up to the store, I spent like two grand on Pokemon cards. I was not profitable at all. And the same thing as the business, my mindset was, okay, this didn't hit. I'm gonna buy more Pokemon cards and hopefully I make more money back. And yeah, I've been stuck for the past. What'd you get? Um Sended Heroes. I don't know. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Now do you got it is that Charizard the ultra rare one or whatever? No, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00It's just a regular Charizard. It's like it's like from Spark and something. Spark and cert? I don't know.
SPEAKER_02He's definitely not putting it on a chain around his neck and going to WWE with it. And getting $15 million worth. Yeah, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00Definitely not on that type of time, and I wish, but you know. Amen. I'm in it for the love of the money, not the love of the game, I'll be honest. Do you play Pokemon like battle people at the park? I have no clue.
SPEAKER_01He is in love with money. Loves money. My kids also got Pokemon Go, the little app. Have you seen that? Oh, that's scary. Yeah, yeah. Bro, you walk around and you you open your camera and there's like Pokemon there and you capture them.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, but they that started back in like high school, but like people were getting murdered for doing that. Like people were like people will like go to random places to grab like a Pokemon because it was like a whole map. And in Houston at least, we had like three murders over there. Why though?
SPEAKER_01Were they in people's yards or something?
SPEAKER_00No, it would just be like in the middle of the woods, and like little kids would actually try to go out there, like teenagers would start to go out there, and it's like some crazy stories about that stuff. Yeah, that Pokemon go for a minute. But your yours sounds tame, like backyard.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, mine's like we walk to the park, like it's like yours is a little different.
SPEAKER_00Yours is a little different. Um but yeah, no, the the Pokemon industry is definitely super profitable, I say. It's like super, super, super it's kind of like Rolex.
SPEAKER_01Like if you buy it at retail, it's worth more money.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's a bit he's a big return guy. He grabs a new hobby about every Tuesday, you know. He's super devoted. Um right now he's trying to become a scratch golfer. We should throw that in the podcast for our future reference. Um what are you shooting?
SPEAKER_00Oh Jesus, that's debatable. Um 90s. I'll say we on a good day we can land in the middle of the 90s. Oh, so you got a ways to go. I just started like two months ago.
SPEAKER_02Make sure that camera was recording that he said that. Okay. Yeah. So yeah. He we we tried to explain it to him like how difficult that is, but he's devoted. I mean, the guy is got a coach and out there putting in the work, which is very relative to why he does good in business. Like, uh he puts in the work off the court for sure. Never seen Osama with golf clubs and his friends make fun of him for it, like his back home friends, because they're not really golfers, and now he's become a golfer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's uh it's but it's been interesting, but so FNG took me golfing with Allison Lee, who's a pro, she's on she's a pro woman golfer. And uh bro, I couldn't even hit the ball. It was so embarrassing. And then she tried to make me feel better, and she was like, I think it's your clubs, which really made me mad. Bro, I went straight to the range after it hit like a thousand balls. So I could like go out and actually hit the ball.
SPEAKER_00That's that's funny you bring that up because the first time I golfed, we went to Hawaii with America. And we were playing with Lindsay and everybody. And I was just in a group with me, my girlfriend, and like this g one of my agents Blaze. We were just sitting in the back trying to hit the ball as much as we can. I just kept failing over and over again. We almost killed Lindsay as well. The ball. Yeah. It's crazy. Oh, it the ball they were shooting everywhere.
SPEAKER_02It went through the golf cart. Yeah. Her and her husband were in here. And it went through the golf cart. And I was like, oh my god, Jeremy's gonna kill me. You almost killed him?
SPEAKER_00Oh not me. Not me. One of the agents that came with us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and I was like, Jeremy's gonna fly to you.
SPEAKER_00I was literally watching it, I was like, that's my paycheck. I was like, we're gone. We're there. Terminated contracts happening very soon.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it was crazy. But shout out to the carriers. Yeah, if you talk smack on Americo, don't come to my house.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Dude, I think it's hard to run an IMO without Americo.
SPEAKER_02It seems to be true to me. Yeah. I mean, it seems pretty tough out there in the open waters. Yeah. If you're in those open waters and you need a safe place to come, I got a life raft. It's called Americo.
SPEAKER_01Hit me up. I love it. All right. Give us one tip each on building a team and selling, and we'll wrap this thing up.
SPEAKER_00Um, don't be selfish. I mean, whenever you're hiring a team, um I I can I agree. Focus on your personal production, obviously the whole non-yards, if that's kind of your goal in life and like whole non-yards, but you have to understand somebody joined this business because they liked you, because they gave you a shot more than the business. As much as we say, oh, I recruited this guy, yeah, you did, not the business, realistically. So don't make the business fit into the person, make the person fit into the business. And what I mean by that is every agent is going to be different, right? I hear people saying, Oh, I'm not trying to hold his hand all the way. You have to, because you you have to understand what type of person he is so you can make him fit into the business. Because the business won't fit everybody, but you can make that person fit the business with just a few things that you just notice. So I say, focus on your guys, give them the time of day, it will be worth it. It will be worth it. Even if your production goes down for a month or two or three. Like if we all look into the bigger picture, we're all trying to sell or book a business. We're all trying to, you know, we're all trying to have a bunch of friends that make a lot of money. And if you're focused on your sales, you're just throwing people just random leads and you're just dialing all day. Yeah, you got a lot of money. Like, like, hats off to you. But if your guys are struggling, like, that's not good. Like, in my opinion, like, I'd rather make zero dollars and see my guys make 40k each each month for the next year than me make a hundred K or even a million dollars for like four months. Like, I'm not in this for the money. I'm I'm here to build my friends, I'm here to build a culture, I'm here to build people up and make them into something, you know? Help them get to their final destination, help Marlon get his uh million dollar month agency, help August get cl if getting closer to God, taking care of his family, and just t having more freedom, that's his goal. That's what I'm gonna wake up and work on every single day. So I'll just say just don't be selfish and be there for you guys.
SPEAKER_01How'd you like come up with this uh approach?
SPEAKER_00Um, this is gonna sound really bad, but in door to door I was really good, I would say. Um that's how I met August. My whole thing was make the most amount of money with the least amount of work. And I was young, I was 19, 20 at the time, just got into door-to-door. And I did that for a very long time, and I'll see people around me just struggle. They weren't my guys or nothing. They were just struggling. And then I'll see, or up line at the time, he would just be like, just work harder, work harder, and I'm like, no, dude, like you can focus on him for like a few days, and then he will he will be that guy. Like he will be that guy without having to do 70 hours in a day. Like all it takes is you putting into a you put you knowing the business, you putting in an hour of your time into this guy is worth 10 times more than you not talking to him and him down uh like knocking for 70 hours. So it got to a point where I had a lot of money in crypto, I got extremely lucky. Um so I'm not struggling.
SPEAKER_01Like how much money? Good amount. Like you're like what though? Um like there's levels to crypto money.
SPEAKER_00I was I pulled out basically in the beginning of this year, whenever I took out everything, just decided to focus on my guys. Uh pulled out 784,000 in total. Um what'd you put in? 3,000, 5,000. That's what I started with in 2017. 2017. What'd you buy? Uh bought Solana, a lot of TLC, uh, Litecoin. Um got into Shibu Inu, that's what changed my life. Uh, that was like the meme coins or whatever. Um, and then I just started having made it into a business, started having a Discord. People used to subscribe to my Discord, the Ho Nine Yards. Um, so it was just that was like my life for a very long time. Very long time. So yeah, I I was dabbling in every single part of crypto. I was doing futures with crypto, which was a little bit different, you know. Um, but yeah.
SPEAKER_01Where do you think crypto's going now?
SPEAKER_00Downhill. Why? Uh there's too much war is going on currently. When I say downhill, I'm talking about like the short-term vision. Like I'm I'm gonna put majority of my money back into crypto whenever I see Bitcoin back at 30,000. You think it's going back to 30,000? Yeah,
Americo Strategy And Carrier Selection
SPEAKER_00I mean, um, I don't want to get political or nothing, but Trump just bombed Iran yesterday. It's you know, that that didn't make crypto go up, you know? They just made it go down. And if we all think that war is gonna end anytime soon or any type of conflict is gonna end soon, I think we're completely wrong. So I think I'm I'm staying out of it until I see Bitcoin at 30k. And if that takes 10 years, if that takes 20 years, if that takes two months, you know, I'm waiting on it.
SPEAKER_01Alright, let's see what crypto what Bitcoin's at right now.
SPEAKER_00I think 60. I would say probably like 60 something.
SPEAKER_01Six is it sixty-fourk?
SPEAKER_0063 last time I looked, I'm not there.
SPEAKER_01Crazy. I just bought my first uh Bitcoin in like years and years and years and years.
SPEAKER_00Well, if you're having them as long-term investments, it's just don't look at it and you'll be fine.
SPEAKER_01Everything I do is long term. I don't look at nothing short term.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, see, I'm I'm kind of the opposite, to be honest with you. It's like I don't I don't I'll look for the long term, obviously, if I'm trying to if I have like a if we're talking about half a million into an investment, if we're talking about like 100k into an investment. But my goal, same thing in life insurance, is 10x. That's my role.
SPEAKER_01Bro, you you know how what it the future looks like for you guys in 20 years? Not there. Bro, not there.
SPEAKER_02Well, the money that's being made right now, like lives impacted. Bro. It's like I just reshared a story recently today. It's like look at what we've accomplished with so little, and now wait to see what we do with a lot. Like, that is so true. It's like we're getting more stacked now, like, as in tech, ability to train agents, grow, build faster, and getting our teeth kicked in by these people like every day. You can check any leaderboard anywhere. You are getting beat by somebody. I think you're the only one not getting beat by somebody um in all of FFL. So would love to be at that status.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, it's kind of crazy thing about where we were two years ago to three too. Wow. It's it's it's honestly wild.
SPEAKER_02It's it's yeah, yeah, it's yeah, but on the question on how to build a business, this is what I think is super important. Is um so Andrew, when you were at you know, 100k to 500k, somewhere in that range, those are some big gaps in there, some big challenges. How were you recruiting? What did you do, and what piece of adversity was like sat you down and you had to get back up from it?
SPEAKER_01Alright, so first of all, Drew, on our little chart, when were we doing what year were we doing about six million a month? Can you pull that up? Actually, actually, can you pull that up on here? Yeah, let me let me see if you can find this. I want to see what year this was. Because five five hundred thousand a month puts you at six million dollars a year in total issue paid business, and then my numbers show you need roughly fifty people. Some people are gonna sell one policy, some ten, some fifteen, in order to hit 500k a month. A hundred people is usually right around the million mark. But people come in and out, in and out, in and out. Like they'll sell for a couple months, they'll go back to door to door, they'll be like, shoot, I should have just given this a hundred percent. If I if I put the same effort in, I would have made 10 times more money, or they go back to a job or something else, and they're like, Man, if I just would have actually focused and I wasn't like I wasn't taking time for granted and really dialed, how much would I make? But let's look at this chart. So this is our team numbers. Oh, this is this is the month by month one, Drew. Do we have the year by year?
SPEAKER_02Imagine your six million year not even fitting on your chart.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm interested to see this, and I think you guys would be surprised how long it took me to get there.
SPEAKER_02We had a conversation about that, but I want to hear this answer first.
SPEAKER_01Um I want to see the year. I'm assuming this is like 2017 that we're doing 500k a month as a team. Now m here we go. Okay, 2017. Yeah, so 5.3 million we did. Fast forward to 2025, we did 324 million. Now, this is the crazy thing, dude. 2014 we were doing 80,000 a month because these are yearly numbers. But that was my sixth year in business. Jesus. In insurance? Yes. Because I started when I was 18. You almost been here for two decades. Yeah, coming on 20 years. I would take two decades and 324 million dollars. However, that's what I'm saying, dude. Don't don't underestimate what 20 years later looks like. And then also don't fall for the trap of people telling you you should do something else. Because you'll go through cycles of negativity. It's like companies like get sick and there'll be negativity everywhere. And someone's gonna go, let's do something else. And it's a it's a healthy pruning for the company that it needs to grow because you got to get rid of the negative people, but you just can't take the bait yourself. You know what I'm saying? All right, so 2017, uh, we're doing 80 grand a month. Uh no, my bad. 2017, we're doing 500 grand a month. I'm frustrated because at the end of every month, I'm telling my top guys, hey, dude, we want to grow, but I need you to do 30k this month in order for us to hit our goal. And then I go the next dude, I'd be like, dude, what could you commit to? Could you do 40k to hit our next goal?
SPEAKER_00Is there a way to go? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Go pee. Thank you. Um, and then I'd be like, okay, have you ever done that with your team? Oh, 100%.
SPEAKER_02Like tell them they gotta like hit certain goals to get to our goal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02This past month was probably our biggest one. We've done that on for sure.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so what ended up happening, dude, is like everybody took Christmas off. And we thought we were gonna have this massive goal, and we hit this massive goal, and we went backwards. And it wasn't like taking the day off, it was like taking like the whole entire month off. And so, me talking to Sean, who I would ask him questions about like what should I do, he goes, Bro, you have you don't have a team. This is what he told me. You don't have a team, you have zero. And if you keep waiting for the guys that you've been working with for a couple years to all of a sudden wake up and build a big business, you're lying to yourself. So pretend like you have nothing and start over. That was his advice to me. So I literally went and I was like, I started looking for new people. And I and I'm like, dude, they're gonna do what they're gonna do, but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna try to force them. Now the new people that came in, they motivated the crap out of these guys because they didn't want to get past. And and so what I learned, dude, is if you this business will get boring and depressing if you don't constantly help new people come in and change their lives. Because money gets bro, once you can buy whatever you want, it's almost a curse. Have you felt that or no?
SPEAKER_02Hunt a hundred percent. I think honestly, that starts at a a sooner pace if you become a top producer. Like if you're doing 50k months, especially 60k, you get a in those areas, you get pretty much, you can travel wherever you want, you can buy whatever you want, you go get the car you want, basically.
SPEAKER_01Like, but then what happens? You're like, oh, I'm not it didn't answer it, didn't it wasn't the answer to all my prayers and all my problems? It didn't magically fix things like you always imagined. Yes. And then you're like, oh shoot. So what I've realized, dude, is bringing new people in and helping them is the answer to everything.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so let me ask you this follow-up question to that is how many people is the perfect number of directs at any point in your business? Is there a perfect number?
SPEAKER_01I think there's a lot of ways to do this, and there's a lot of right answers. Because you got people who have a lot of directs, you got people that have a lot of um people in downlines. But my answer is this, dude. If you treat this like a real business and you hire people that can support more directs, so if you can hire a recruiter and a sales trainer to help support five new directs, you should take on as many as you can forever. You should never stop taking them on. But where we fall short, and where I fell short, is I didn't hire the help to be able to manage that. I was trying to do most of it myself with a small team. So, question is how do we hire them and where do we hire them? The the recruiter. The recruiter, dude. I ran an ad for a an assistant in Las Vegas. I got 800 people responded in Las Vegas. Is that like on Indeed? Yeah, on Indeed.
SPEAKER_02So you just went through, filtered till you found somebody you liked. Are they still active today? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Do they have access to the city? She's an animal. Do they have access to your like portals and stuff? If I hire an admin, yeah. Do they how how do you like my biggest concern is uh, for example, is trusting that person to handle all my personal information?
SPEAKER_01I mean Drew, can you can you hear me? Were you talking?
SPEAKER_02You just tell him to get closer.
SPEAKER_01Oh dude, you gotta trust somebody,
Inbound Leads, Persistency, And Follow Up
SPEAKER_01man. You can't it's like what I tell agents when they come in. Trust me until I give you a reason not to. But don't punish me because someone else screwed you five years ago. Thanks. Yeah. And like, dude, if they steal, then you they weren't the right person.
SPEAKER_02So okay, so she's she has some sort of inflow of leads currently for you, or just embedded?
SPEAKER_01So I have that right now. Our setup is we have four employees, and some of them help manage debt, some of them do training, some of them do contracting. Drew does a little bit of everything, he's the one running the podcast. But all I'm trying to say is you can take more directs on if you hire and train salespeople. And if you do that, your business can grow whether you're here or not. But dude, if something happens to you and it can't grow anymore, that's a major problem. And that's 99% of agencies for sure.
SPEAKER_02I think the biggest problem that we run into as agency owners is knowing how to do that, of who to hire and what their job is and how to get them like leads to work or to put on their schedule to get new recruits.
SPEAKER_01Same way you do life insurance, bro. Just run ads. You could run ads, you can get lists of people that are licensed in your area. You can run Craigslists. Do we used to run Craigslist ads? Hilarious. All the time. And someone just told me the other day, they're like, we still run Craigslist ads. Check this out. I was doing I was thinking yesterday. How do you recruit for free? Um you just DM people on social media, right? Yeah. So, Drew, pull that graph back up for me. Check this out.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna question you like this after the podcast, but I figured it'd be good for him to roll it.
SPEAKER_01Just roll it. Alright, so last month we had 4,000. Oh, my bad. This is January, so this is old. We've grown like crazy since the so from January to now, we're at 50 million of issue pay premium. We have we're we're averaging 750 new writing agents a month, and we have like 5,500 writers total. But I was doing the math, dude. If you took 5,500 people and you re everybody said, I want to recruit, I want to build a big team, and they sent a hundred messages out a day. Each person, me, you, everyone, sent a hundred messages a day out on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, saying, Hey, are you open to um are you open to learning about a sales opportunity? Bro, what's 5,500 times 100?
SPEAKER_0255,000? No. No, five.
SPEAKER_01550,000 messages a day going out. Holy sh. So I'm like, bro, what if just a tiny fraction of people respond?
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, we're not doing enough. I mean, I do have a question following up to that, because I since I started the business, Kate's always pushed like DM people. That's how she found me, and we've always done that. He's so good at that. So good. Um, it's become like the door-to-door entry like industry DM and them has become a little bit saturated. Your offer has to get a little bit better to stand out.
SPEAKER_01Um, you don't think so? No, I think it's timing. I think like you find the guy, his manager just like didn't give him the money he promised him. He's gotten the message four times, he gets it the fifth time, and he's like, shoot, I'm gonna click this freaking thing.
SPEAKER_02Which is why we always go back every year. We start DMing them right around the end of summer.
SPEAKER_01But it's just not just door to door, bro. Like, do gross people that bag groceries at the supermarket, who cares? Anybody. Anyone.
SPEAKER_00So are you are you guys at that time frame, were you guys just recruiting anybody and everybody, or were you guys like being picky on certain things?
SPEAKER_01Well, I was recruiting anybody because I didn't have like I was picking up a dude who lived with his mom who was like 40 something years old, because he didn't have a car to come to the meeting to try to get him to make a sale. I made a lot of mistakes because I should have I never should have done that. That's why Sean Mike's always making the joke that I would pick up stray cats all the time. And and it kind of would hurt everybody because they weren't grinding, they were just making excuses. And what I learned is if your team if the majority of your team is is grinding, the new person's gonna grind. If 51% of your team's complaining, the new person's gonna complain. So basically, majority wins, and that's your team culture. Now, there's also if more people are doing well than are complaining, the ones that are complaining will actually stop complaining and and do better because they can't argue everybody because they know they wouldn't be correct. There's too much evidence that people are winning. So
SPEAKER_02Dang so okay, so what is this is a million dollar question, and um like what is your filter of hiring someone? There like I know we say hire everyone, and this is a big thing that Sean says you wouldn't have hired me, or someone says like you we wouldn't have hired you, or like wouldn't have hired me, wouldn't have hired him. Like, how do you be careful with filters, but also make sure no one comes in to hurt your business?
SPEAKER_01Well, let me tell you what I tell people. I tell like if I'm gonna work with you, this is actually how I pitch you to get started. So I'm gonna go, hey Elliot, um you could be lying to me right now that you're a good salesperson and that you're gonna work hard, and that you know, you can sell ice to an Eskimo and that you have experience selling leads. You could be lying to me about all of that, and I could be lying to you. I could be telling you this works and you don't know if it really works. I could be telling you what I've been able to do and you don't know if it's true, right? The only way to find out if we're gonna be a good fit together is by proving it. And I would rather prove I'd rather find out in two weeks instead of six months. Because you could be doing something else else with your life after two weeks if this doesn't work for you, and I'm not gonna waste time for six months stringing you along. So the next two weeks, we're gonna get you you're gonna get your first amount of leads, and you're gonna put in eight hours calling all day, and let's see what you actually are made of and see if you can do it. And and if it's not going the right way, let's go our separate ways. Now I do that to get activity early. I want activity right away because all they need is one sale, and then they'll believe this works. So I try to push them in right away.
SPEAKER_02So let's say that person comes in, they're being negative, right? Or like something that could hurt your business. I don't want to hear your opinion on that. Like, how do you have a sign that they're gonna hurt or not worth it? What though? Um well I'd I want you to describe it. Like somebody you're like, this isn't the right thing, like you need them out of your business, like because I have a I've had people hire a bunch of people, and it actually drags them down more than it helps them. Um so like how do I teach them to like not filter, but like get them out of their business before they hurt it.
SPEAKER_01Well, I think I don't necessarily call people and go, hey, you can't work with us. I just make I provide so much evidence that this works that they can't say it doesn't work, and they'd be so uncomfortable that they would probably just go away.
SPEAKER_02I like that. Yeah. And then what about your time attention to them? Like, do you pause that? Do you like make it harder go harder?
SPEAKER_01Zero. Zero time and attention.
SPEAKER_02So what's a good identifier for you? Like, there's no shot of answering this text.
SPEAKER_01Early on? Yeah. Alright, so I expect everybody to go to the events like Ignite and the National Conference because I wouldn't be here if I didn't go. I was gonna quit. And I know how much it can open your eyes, and on top of that, you got the lead vendors, the carriers, and the best trainers in the country there. So if you don't go to that, I'm out. That's the first thing. 100% do not call me unless it's like a very good reason. Like a very good reason. So those are some of my things. If they in that first two weeks, if they don't put in the activity and call me, I'm ch I'm I'm giving them as much as they're giving me. I'm I'm checking out. Got it.
SPEAKER_02So, like for us running the virtual offices, right? It like for me, I I need to know if I'm making a mistake, is why I'm asking these questions. And it seems like I'm doing the right thing, but sometimes I come across extremely harsh in those situations. So do you ever have a conversation with them, or you just let the business do what the business does?
SPEAKER_01And what I try to do is create so many there are it's already created. I try to share so many success stories that they feel like they're missing out.
AI, Recruiting Volume, And Hiring Help
SPEAKER_01Got it. And that's through posts, like leaderboards. Everywhere you go, email, Slack, posts, leaderboards, phone calls, trainings, everything. I'm just delivering good news to people. Got it. And then they kind of go away if if they're not a part of the good news. Yeah, or it or they'll snap out of it. Like I've had people like snap out of it and start doing something six months later.
SPEAKER_00I have a question. You've been here for 20 years, roll up debt is obviously a conversation in the industry.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00How how do you do you have like like let's say you have an agent that you can kind of see persistency is not going well, probably gonna have a lot of debt. Knowing him, he'll probably leave if he gets a lot of debt. How are you handling that situation? And how would you handle a situation where, like if a guy left and then he left you, roll up debt? I haven't dealt with it just yet. That's what I'm wondering.
SPEAKER_01I like it. Alright, for one, we monitor debt weekly so we can if somebody's basically what happens is this if you don't have if you have debt, let's say with Mutual Omaha, you're gonna get an email and it's gonna say, Hey, please give us your action plan on how you're gonna pay this debt off, even if it's 900 bucks, twelve hundred bucks, three thousand. If they don't respond, then we would and we don't know them, we would look at putting them on as earned right there.
SPEAKER_02And these are all for directs, or you do these are all for directs.
SPEAKER_01Perfect. Yeah, these are just for directs. And then if the second week goes by, they get another email, hey, send us proof that you paid it off. Like we're we're on top of them, and they know we're tracking it. That way, if it gets too big, we can we can shut it. I'd rather take the loss at like 35k than a bigger loss later down the road. But a lot of times they will clear it, they just need some guidance, and if no one's watching, they're gonna ignore it and they're gonna go write another carrier. The other now, I've had bro, I one of my friends rolled me 80 grand. So and disappeared. Now, I was really upset, but on if you really look at the whole picture, I still made eight I deposited 800k that year. And I was in my mid-20s. Okay. So roll-up debt for people that are consistently working, it can be managed. The other thing is every big company has some type of risk. And the way I was taught was Walmart would be a Fortune 500 company if you just took in the fraud alone. They they would be a Fortune 500 company, and most of it, at least what I was told, was employees, and they factored it into their pricing. So what I would do is I'd be like, okay, let me just factor in that something could happen. And don't spend all my money, save some for a rainy day. When the rainy day comes, because it will all have some money to handle the situation appropriately. But unfortunately, most people they live like they're a billionaire in insurance, they're 21, they live like they're a billionaire, they buy everything, they spend all their money, and the the second the rainy day comes, it's like, oh shit. So that's my thoughts on that. The other thing is a lot of people call me and they'll go, hey, this person rolled me $20,000. Okay. And and if you're new to this business, you'd be like, dude, this I'm furious. Like, what would you do to someone if they stole $20,000 from you?
SPEAKER_02My suggestion would be don't do it. That's my I'm just gonna say that alive on camera.
SPEAKER_01All right. But get what guess okay. Let's do it. Let's let's see what you guys would say. I'm an agent. I call you. Hey, dude, this guy wrote me $20,000. What are you gonna tell me?
SPEAKER_02Write it off. Um, I mean, that's the first thing, is like get to writing. Like, first off, like, don't let it eat your day. Second of all, what's his phone number? I I need to know who this guy is. I will have a deep dive Facebook search on you. I'll know where you live. And I I'm a big proponent. I want to know, like, I'm a huge get my money back guy. Okay. I'm the worst guy to owe money to. People have seen that in uh the agency. Nobody asks me for money for any reason. But it's like, to me, two things. One is I respect you. Like you, if you leave out of insurance, I get it. You cannot make this kind of money wherever you're going. I understand. But I need you to understand that's not my money that I owe somebody. So as long as we're both on that mutual agreement, I'm gonna text you and say, hey, bro, there's five grand coming my way. How do you want to handle it? Yeah, and that usually resolves it, right? Most I have a couple right now on payment plans. I have no if they take me a year to pay me back, two years if they're working at McDonald's now, don't matter to me.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so you're uh if you're taking action, usually you can resolve a lot of these things, but I want you to answer it. I call you, someone roll me 20k. What do you tell me?
SPEAKER_00I'll tell you it's probably just write it off and just communicate with the guy. Honestly, funny enough, we have a very similar situation right now. For one of my agents' agents just rolled him up some debt. And it's not 20K. Um, it's like 5 to 6K. Um, but I just told him to shoot them in text and just hey, just be straight up with them. Hey, you gotta pay this. We can you can handle it with the carriers, or we can we can do a payment plan together. Um yeah, I I don't think you should like talk bad to them. There's if you talk bad to that person, they're never giving you that money.
SPEAKER_01Well, what I tell, like, if you call me and you say somebody wrote me 20 grand, everyone gets thrown off by this. But I tell you, congratulations. And I and they go, what? And they go, well, for two reasons. If you get through this, you're gonna be in the industry for a long time because you can handle adversity, and this is one of the negative parts of the industry. So, like, welcome to the big leagues. If it's real big, I go, welcome to the big leagues. Dude, Caitlin wrote how much debt did she have to write off?
SPEAKER_02Believe me, you want to know why I'm so good at not getting old debt? I watched that cowgirl take that on, write it all off. Homeboy better run fast now because she's got a lot of money and a lot of time on her hands.
SPEAKER_01Now, the beautiful thing for everybody watching is the industry is getting better with technology. So, like saving our butt. Bro, right now, compared to like 2017-18, it's a hundred times better at detecting fraud. Also, a lot of the Department of Insurance and a lot of Department of Insurance in the different states, dude, they're filing criminal charges. If somebody writes policies and it's not the right way with a customer that wants the policy. And uh, we just had somebody, dude. The other thing I do is I go on FBI.gov if somebody wrote policies and disappeared, and I put all their information in there and notify the FBI. I notify every single department of insurance, every single one of them, so they can start looking into it. But we just had this dude, I have this on my phone right here. He got arrested and convicted and is spending two years in jail for writing policies on Americo with AmeriCo, and then bounced out, and they found out that the customers were misled on the sale.
SPEAKER_02I love that. The carriers are really, really good at protecting us. Like your average guy can get in the business and not be genius at stopping this from happening. And it's way harder than even two years ago to write fraud.
SPEAKER_01Dude, because they know, like, they know if someone does a text code that it's coming from them. Like they if it comes from some random number, they're looking up who owns that phone number. Like, there's a lot of stuff to track it. But you guys want to know something crazy? This dude wrote, this was another time, wrote like 70K in bad business. He was the mayor of a city in California called Calexico, right next to Mexico. And uh this dude funded his campaign. He wrote all these policies on friends, family, funded his campaign, won the mayor, and then they all fell off the books. Okay. So I'm like, bro, I'm gonna sue the mayor of Calexico. Which I did. So I sue the mayor of Calexico. In the he loses immediately. Like they're like, yeah, this is all bad. He loses. I have a judgment to collect the money from him. A few weeks later, he gets arrested for bribing a federal agent for $10,000 to open up a marijuana clinic. Sounds like a solid guy.
SPEAKER_00Sounds like a movie I want to watch.
SPEAKER_01Sounds like a movie. You can look it up. His name's David Romero. That's crazy. And name job him after soon. What? Did you get paid? No. I didn't get paid. I don't think you can collect if someone's in jail. That's crazy. No, well, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, my I I don't want to get in the situation. I haven't been rolled probably 20 grand the whole time I've been here. Like, and I think the biggest thing in this, number one, the carriers are really good. Number two is like just respecting the person you're talking to. Like, when you're bringing people in, if you're bringing in somebody that does not respect you from the get-go, like they reference you as a third person almost. That's a red flag for me. Like, you know what I mean by that, where like they're referencing you as not your name, but as like boss or pal. Pal. Or all these names that are not like they don't want to call you your name, like as if they know you. That's a red flag for me. Like, I'm sorry, but I'm not teaching you how to write a lot of business.
Debt, Fraud, And Risk Management
SPEAKER_02Um, and then the other one is, and now I want to hear your take on this. If they have extremely fast success, like overnight, like it takes two days, and they're dropping 7k bombs, 10k bombs, 2K's here, and you're almost positive they're on age leads or one batch of these fresh leads, barely know the script, right? Like, is is there a pace in which they're succeeding too fast?
SPEAKER_01I check. Drew, what did we just do with with with our guy? Yeah, we um we cross-reference every piece of data to see if he was legit. Okay, so we he we said, where'd you get your leads? Send them to us. And we're we cross-referenced every single policy to for him to not go on as earned.
SPEAKER_02We had one in his hierarchy, called it immediately. Guy comes in, never met him in my life. We run a pretty tight group. Like, I pretty much know the faces of a lot of them. I jump in their Discord room, meet them their first day, try to get a read on them as much as I can while we're this size. And I seen him drop bomb after bomb. I went and told the new upline of him, which is a couple down from him. And I was like, hey, bro, it's too fast. It's not right. It's it's it's all fraud. He's like, No, no, no, it's good, it's good. It's his friends, it's his family, it's like people he knows. They're gonna be said, nah, bro, it's not good. That's the same guy that we're actually dealing with, uh yeah. So like it's just having an eye for it, I think, fashion.
SPEAKER_01But then you need to call the police and you need to file a police report. Well, we made him pay it, so I think he's good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's he's good. He was I think they knew him or something, so like that's not like as long as we're communicating with him. I know it's fraud. He knows it was borderline, like it was probably real policies with real people, but it's not good business. Yeah. And we call that, we generalize everything here fraud pretty much. I call that fraud.
SPEAKER_00I think what we need to stop doing as well is like whenever people first join the business, they're like, oh, I can sell my whole family and get rich, and then I can sell actual policies.
SPEAKER_01You could do that, just don't be a scumbag and sell them a policy they're gonna keep that you're actually gonna help your family with. And don't LARP and be a loser and do it just to get a chain to look cool. Yeah, it's uh but you should help the people that you care about.
SPEAKER_02I think the biggest thing on that for me, my rule of thumb is personally, and I want to hear your take on this too, is like if you come in and you sell a family member, I want to see that marked as, of course, family member. And if you try to skip that in any type of way, yeah, you're going on Azer and you'll never work with me again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Now that that can be done in onboarding. Because like that's lying on an application, anyways, if you don't put it down. Exactly. Yeah. So it could be done on onboarding.
SPEAKER_02If I see that immediately, it's immediate conversation with the manager, like whoever's the the upline of the person with them. I'm like, hey, you got like one conversation with them before I get involved.
SPEAKER_00That's what I was saying, though. It's like those people that are signing up their family to get paid full upfront, it's not which is not it should it's not possible. With America, I ask you if you're that person.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you get in Jeremy's terminating, you keep playing games. Yeah, so quick, and I'm gonna call in time do it anyway.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, because uh I had an agent start two weeks ago. He asked me, He was like, Hey, can I sign up my whole family? How much would I get paid?
SPEAKER_02I was like $27, don't worry about it. It's it's gonna be a good one. But if they pass away, could be $30,000, 40 grand, like on the good side.
SPEAKER_01That's crazy. All right, I gotta run. I'd love to talk about this more. The answer to that question is pay attention. What you're not measuring, you you don't know what's happening. You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02Well, note to everybody the last question you asked me was how to get good at this business. Trap somebody way better than you in a podcast room and ask them a bunch of questions you need the answers to.
SPEAKER_01I'd love to stay here all day and do this. This is fun because I didn't I didn't tell you guys about a couple other crazy scenarios that have happened. But it's part if you want to run a big business, you have to overcome problems at every level. Starting with selling production and chargebacks, you've got to learn to overcome them, get better, then you're gonna have bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger problems. And if you knew the problems that we deal with, you would think we need a TV show because it is absolutely crazy. We do need a TV show. I can only imagine with the problems at this point.
SPEAKER_0235 million, 50 million. Like, bro, that's crazy because the highest of the high are calling you for their problems.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we we're never going to complain to each other again after Dunkin'. No, no, no. It's like bro, bro, bro. We're good, we're good.
SPEAKER_01All right, so if you're watching this, come work with us if you want, or we hope it helped you regardless, even if you don't work with us. Thank you guys for coming in. Let's
Closing And Invitation To Connect
SPEAKER_01go crush it. We'll get you back in in a year or so and see where you guys are at. So thank you guys. Appreciate you.