The LFG Show
Talking with movers and shakers who grew up with nothing and worked their asses off to achieve success. Let's 🤬 Go!!!!
The LFG Show
How a Musician Built a 7-Figure Medicare Call Engine ft. Miles Arnell
🔥 New LFG Show Episode Drop! 🔥
One hour of sleep, zero excuses—and a comeback story worth studying.
🎤 Miles Arnell went from touring as a Sony-signed artist to losing everything when the COVID pandemic hit...
💥 From $40K profit months to a scalable Medicare machine, Miles breaks down the exact pivots that fueled LeadBairn’s rise:
- Moving away from brokered traffic ➡️ direct buyer dominance
- Securing *UHC & Humana approvals* like a pro
- Crafting hooks that convert without crossing lines
- Optimizing *CPA, AHT,* and agency feedback loops for predictable scale
We unpack why Medicare beats ACA’s volatility, how to fire bad buyers to protect your brand, and how to scale inbound calls from Meta, Search, and Display without losing your soul—or your margins.
Timestamps:
0:00
ASC Day One Energy and Setup
From Music Grind to Sony Deal
COVID Collapse and Reset
Discovering Pay-Per-Call and First Wins
Building LeadBairn and Medicare Focus
Relationships Over Brokers
Choosing Clients and Freedom Mindset
Moving to Nashville for Dual Paths
Travel, Creativity, and Growth
Open Enrollment Strategy and Capacity
Compliance Without Killing the Hook
The Future: Paper Call and Going Direct
Milestones, Time Management, and Scaling
Visualization, Goal Systems, and Mindset
Where to Find Miles and CTA
Bro, we're wrapping up day one of ASC. What a fucking show this has been, man. We're we're lit up. We're in one hour's sleep, but we don't give a fuck. There's no excuses, right, Miles? No excuses. I won't Miles R N L. You and Sat Maria. We did a we did a uh quick interview last year on the Street Center of Times Square. Yeah. It was great. That got a lot of good feedback. Definitely. Now we're gonna go deeper. Let's go deeper. We're gonna go deep, man. I want to know how you got in this industry, man. First of all, you're looking jack. Well, thank you. Thank you, man. I work out every single day.
SPEAKER_01:Health is wealth. Health is wealth. It's a cliche, but it rings true. There's no doubt about it. You know, this must be the place to be.
unknown:Go.
SPEAKER_01:You know what? I've done 10 podcasts today.
SPEAKER_02:I didn't realize that's what it said. It's perfect. That's great. This must be the place to be. This is. So, bro, let's talk about how you got into it. It's a rags and rich story. People love racks and rich stories. Of course. Let's talk about it. Let's go back to the Raz, man.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go to the roots here. So, so I'm a musician first and foremost, right? Spent the entire decade in my 20s grinding it out there. It's an entrepreneurial thing, too. The music industry, you gotta make your own way. Well, record labels used to give millions of dollars to artists. They don't do that anymore. So eight years of grinding every day. I get signed to Sony Music. I'm on my way up. I'm opening for Nelly. I'm charting overseas, millions of streams at Spotify. I'm making it. I'm living my dream. COVID comes, wipes me out. Rub pulled out from under my feet, lose everything. Back to living with my parents. How old were you at the time? At that time I was 30. I was living in Vegas before now. I was playing like no.
SPEAKER_02:How old is that? Like did it blow your ego? Like what how what's going on in your yeah, mentally?
SPEAKER_01:It's emotionally devastating. Yeah. Because you you work towards this thing and and and the artistic brain, like the right side of your brain is a different thing. Because that's that's your heart, right? So it's it's pretty devastating to to have all that momentum and then lose it. Uh but randomly, I found the paper call industry through a buddy of mine who lived in Connecticut at the time with my friends. He says, Hey man, he's driving an R8, he's walking around the pool on the phone all day. I said, What do you do? I really want to know what you do. Because whatever lifestyle you're living, I'd like to replicate this lifestyle. This seems like a good path. And uh he said, Why don't you come over? Uh, yeah, we'll talk about it, we'll see. You know, maybe you can work for. So I worked for him for a while. Uh, everything went great. I learned the tricks of the trade. He kind of went his own way. And I started my own company. We did three million in revenue the first year. And I realized there's something here, and it really started to click for me. It's the same spirit I took from the music industry and applied it to this industry. Relationship building, everything's relationships, you know, channeling that passion into a new avenue. And over the last year and a half, I started LeadBairn, which is my current company, and uh it eclipsed all success that I had previously to that. And now we're pretty much focused on Medicare exclusively. Uh, we do run some ACA final expense. We started as a network. We're running internally now as well. We have two contracted subpublishers that drive a lot of our traffic as well. And uh we're all compliant, we're doing this thing the right way. There's a lot of liars, cheaters, and um hypocrites in the industry. There's no doubt about it. And we made it our mission to not be one of them. We're gonna do things the right way, play the long game, and be in this thing for the long haul. So I was able to take that experience for being in the music industry, having that success, and applying that same effort toward this industry. And I fell in love with that. I've met people like you, and I've met so many people that are now my friends and almost like family, and we all build together. We make money together and we scale these campaigns together. It's been wonderful. Yeah, they're fun together to create memories, right? We do, especially in New York City. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. We had a good time last. Remember, uh, we had somewhere nowhere. Yeah. We had a great time. Yeah, that was a good, that was a good party. We threw, yes. So let's go back to that moment, right? The the year you did the three million. I mean, you were you were like, you know, went up, down, right? Yes. And you were coming back up. Like, what was the breakthrough moment where like you're like, fuck, I got this. I'm coming back. I'm gonna come up.
SPEAKER_01:The first campaign where we where where, all right, my take home for the month was about forty thousand dollars profit. And I realized there's a real opportunity here, there's a real network of people who are dedicated toward helping one another succeed and win, and there's value because it's health insurance. We're getting people policies, we're helping provide leads to real insurance companies, to, to really solid advertisers. And that was the moment where I realized that not only is there money to be made here, there's lifelong, like I said before, friendships or relationships that can be built here that could lead to other things too, partnerships. There's all types of things where that have stemmed from that initial experience, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I my red ASC right now, right? My first ASC was in 2017. Yeah, I met my business partner. I didn't know he was gonna be my business partner, but we had a meeting upstairs, right? The fucking guy didn't even, he doesn't drink, but he's buying me like I ain't the kins. I don't know why he's buying my feeding me, and like, and we didn't uh we didn't get anything going maybe for like six months, a year. Yeah, a little, little something that then I merged my company with him, right? And and that happened here at ASC. So it's just amazing, like you said, the relationship, and you don't know just because you don't get something out of something like bridal way, right? You never know where it's gonna go, right? No, and you gotta keep talking, keep nurturing those relationships, especially if there's a good vibe. And if there is eventually something will come out. If it doesn't, at least you guys can share information.
SPEAKER_01:That's it, right? Exactly. Right, you get like us meeting one another. Yeah, you know, you you don't know. We'll work together someday. We don't know how yet, but it's just the relationship, it's the friendship. It's it's it's great, it's all good.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's what it comes down to. You know, you're not dealing with like an asshole, right? Who wants to you get to a point, but I don't know what's happening here. When I started my business, bro, I turned on clients that should never take it on, only because I wanted to get every deal. I take out like a thousand dollar buyer or two thousand dollar buyer. Sure, those motherfuckers were the worst. Yes, live and die out for every damn fucking lead, right? Right. And then you get to a point, like, you know, I don't need that anybody anymore. Hey, you don't work, we don't work like that. Go go go work with that group, whatever the fuck, right? Right. And and it's such a powerful thing because then that's really comes down to living. Why we get in this industry to live life on your own terms, right? Yes, and this is not your usual. I was interviewing somebody. Well, we do is not normal, right? You mentioned your body, your boy at the pool, blah blah blah. That's me too. I I was in Denmark two weeks ago doing a conference call riding bikes for my Ray Band glasses. Exactly. You know, closing deals. Like it's like one of those fucking beautiful things.
SPEAKER_01:It's life-changing, yeah. It does allow you to live life in your own terms. And it's cool. I live in Nashville now. We got a beautiful high rise. Nasheville or North Carolina? Nashville. Oh, kind of so. Oh, wow. Home market's low and up there, right? It is. It is. The high risers are going up. The city's transforming. It was a honky tank town. And uh the building I live in now is uh it's filled with entrepreneurs, tech entrepreneurs, and musicians. And a lot of people do both. And it's the same thing. I mean, I work by the pool every day, and and having that sense of freedom, it it releases you, releases the tension, it allows you to really dig in, really focus, and and really sense the limitlessness that is part of this industry. And that allows you the capacity to scale and just make it happen, man. That's a good word, limitlessness. Yeah, it's it's like grow of abundance, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Is what it comes down to, and then yes, the connections you make, you never know where they're gonna go or whatnot. Right. I want to talk too what caused you to move to Nashville? Like what was the decision? How do you how do you make that decision?
SPEAKER_01:I felt it was the one place where I could live a successful double life and still write and produce music, you know, that double life. Okay, it's it's a great double and be a bachelor, be a very much eligible bachelor down there. I live downtown, so I can have some fun, uh, scale my company and be creative. Yeah, so so I'm fulfilling you know both hemispheres of the brain simultaneously, and I'm having some fun. You have to enjoy your life too. So if you have a way to enjoy your life and scale your company, you've won. Oh, that's the best.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's I I I love I think I think it's so important that's everyone's different. Like some people are here, everyone's built differently, right? Yeah, I think you you you're you're an adventurous person. I mean, you're a musician, obviously, right? So I'm adventurous, so I I like it when I go. I travel, I always get new ideas when I travel. I get you know, being in London, even like these guys driving the other side of the road, your brain doesn't think different. Even when you're walking, you might get run over by a fucking bus. That's right, right? So you're gonna like, hey, it's it's real true shit, man. Right. So like you're washing your ass, but like you develop a whole new gray matter, man, by doing that. So I can like when you move, you get out of your comfort zone. Obviously, Nashville's way different than Connecticut. Oh my god, different era, but yeah, you you you talk a little different, you meet different people, and then you learn, you grow as a person. And I think that's what that adds to continued success because we're we're in a creative industry, man. No matter what it is, you gotta get creative figure new different angles gotta work, you know? Right. It's all to different people, right?
SPEAKER_01:It allows your your brains literally like biologically making new synaptic connections. That's all those synaptic that's a great matter, synaptic. Yeah, and and and philosophically, when you're exposed to new experiences, new people, new situations, environments, yeah, you naturally grow as a person, and your capacity for understanding what the next step might be in your life grows too. Yeah, and that sense of abundance and limitless limitlessness just grows. It's dude, it's amazing. It's amazing.
SPEAKER_02:I was gonna say, like, if someone's watching this and they're they feel like they're stuck to hit a plateau, right? Fuck, I would say move. Get out. If you live in uh in this city, fucking research another city, maybe travel there for a weekend, see if you like it or talk to people, right? And just just move around, and I think that'll help you out. Go to another damn country. Yeah, I know a lot of guys that live in a Medellin, chilling over there, and then no, and you know what? These are these guys. I mean, it's different. You have a family or something, but they're they don't have any kids, man. They're not married, right? Dude, the the the dollar is like four to one. So if you get a more bang for the buck, and there, and there's a bunch of like you see, you talk about Nastral, you have the entrepreneurs, like there's an enclave, right? Yes, and it's easier, it becomes easier to network because you find you've you'll try, right? So yes, I really think that's another the beauty of our business is that you can work from anywhere in the world. You as long as you have Wi-Fi, right? Yeah, a good connection, communicate with your clients, we can make money from anywhere.
SPEAKER_01:It's that's the life-changing part about us, exactly. And that's and allows you to network. So, like I work every day from the pool deck, and there's three different entrepreneurs I'm working with. One is a cameraman and he's selling a course on on how to be a successful cameraman. One runs an uh OF agency and has an Instagram marketing company, and we just feed each other ideas. That's great. And there's ways we're gonna probably collaborate together because of that. But without this industry, without being involved in this, I wouldn't have that opportunity to network with those people because we're on the same schedule, which is essentially they're our own schedule. Yeah, because we've worked to that point. I see it. Yeah. All right, so let's talk, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's August, what's a fourth? Yes, sir. Two months away. Open enrollment. It's coming, man. Pumped up. You excited?
SPEAKER_01:We're super pumped up. I mean, we're ready to go. Um, we're gonna have a lot of cap, a lot of availability from October through OEP in April, runs all the way to March 31st, technically. Uh, and we're and we're stacked up. We have some wonderful relationships with really dependable, trustworthy uh end buyers, direct agencies. And that's what Lead Bairn is focused on is building those direct uh relationships where we're not brokering calls five different times and we're not buying network traffic, maybe five percent, and that's about to go to zero. And that's that's been the main endeavor that we focused on the last 14 months is scaling away from the broker game and getting into the direct game. Now there's more risk in that because ad spend involved in that. Uh the compliance is more essential than ever to make sure we're meeting the demands of our buyers, but we're prepared to do so now because we put in the work ahead of time and we establish again those relationships. So we're we're gonna scale up pretty heavy. Probably gonna be doing a few thousand calls a day for you know four to six months straight. And we're really excited about that. We're very humbled. We're a humble company. Uh, shout out to my partner, Tessie Hetzel. She's incredible, she leads operations and tech. Um, and and the two of us together just make a really solid combo. I'm more biz dev, sales, finance, things of that nature, you know, strategic thinking. And the way we work together is just we're really poised to have a really blowout year. And we're excited about it. And again, we're humbled.
SPEAKER_02:I love it. Now we do you mentioned compliance, right? Huge issue in insurance, Medicare, you're dealing with the senior population. Yeah. A lot of guys, a lot of people ran crazy, aggressive, misleading angles, right? Of course. So how do you how do you handle that? And how do you stay ahead of the curve so that listen, you you still keep operating without getting involved in dumb shit that could take on the business?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you have to affiliate yourselves with people who are a little ahead of you and collaborate with them and find out what's working for them. And then you have to submit your materials to you know UHC, Humana, get that approval, and once that's approved, you try and run within those parameters. And if you're doing that, you're complying. It's it's really that simple. Now, is it difficult? Is it not as profitable to be clean? There's an argument there, but there's a gray area in everything, and the end advertisers understand that too. You still need to make a consumer pick up the phone and call in and talk to an agent. So there still needs to be a hook. In marketing, there's always a hook. Um, so so it's about navigating that sort of middle ground of what's pushing the limits and what's complying. If if you're strictly vanilla, as they say in our industry, very difficult. And the end buyers understand that, the agencies understand that, and they need the volume and need the traffic. So it's about working with them to understand what that happy medium is so that we're happy and profitable and they're happy and their CPAs in line. See, it's that's really what it is. I love it, man. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So what what do you think is a future of Legion right now? I I tell you one thing. I from walking around here, I I have seen less web uh web form lead provided. I've seen a lot of SaaS products or stuff of that nature, AI stuff. Yeah, a lot of paper call. I feel like paper call is just like the the the rave, right? Rage right now, you know. So do you agree or what wait, what's your your feedback on all that?
SPEAKER_01:I agree with that. I mean, we're we're exclusively paper call. We drive inbound calls from meta, from search, from display. So so we don't currently do lead gen, we don't currently do click traffic or anything like that. Um we're we're sort of riding the wave of what works, but we're also building a stable business around what's working for us. And like you said, we're I think things are going in that direction. The industry's just changed faces, right? It was TV advertising, then meta, then search display, lead. There's a million different avenues. As a company, you just have to find what works for you, with what makes sense, and where you have the relationships and build off of that. I I think the the future of Lee Gen is extremely bright. And I think there's still room for people to to come in, but you have to come in the right way. At this time, it's too late to come in and try and uh you know steal a quick little cash grab. It's not gonna work. With ACA, there was a period of time there where everybody looked at it as a gold rush, running terrible ads. It was it was really a borderline criminal, if we're being honest here. And uh I I think with Medicare, it's I don't think we're gonna have the same problem. That's why we went Medicare focused. It's evergreen. You turn 65, you have to switch to Medicare. Uh ACA is I'm not gonna lie, Dave, it's kind of a cesspool. So we're we still run ACA, but it's you know, maybe 30% of our weekly review. I I just I don't want to be involved with things that makes this a short-term play. I I'm in this for the long term. I'm I'm seeing the macro of this and transforming it to some new territories. I can't get into specifics, but we we may have a deal on the table pretty soon to ink where we may be a marketing arm of uh an agency or uh we'll see what happens.
SPEAKER_02:But that's great. That's what I'm thinking. Well, listen, you you did the right thing, you position yourself to be in there, to be, to be there, right? And there's only 90% of some says showing up. I've been showing up on doing the right thing. Yes. So while everyone got weeded out, right? You do the right thing, keep your head above water, treat people got a good reputation. You put yourself in position to get those kind of duals, right? So that is that's a testament to what you've been doing in a short amount of time, right? What you four years in the industry? Exactly. Yeah, four years. I mean, it just goes to show you, but does it feel does it feel like longer than four years for you?
SPEAKER_01:Sometimes it does, right? Sometimes, yeah, especially the first two.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Because you're figuring it out for today. Yeah, you're right about the first two, man. I mean, I look back, damn. I started this in 2016. Yeah, those first two were bad. That's when you don't know what the hell is going on. But then it clicks, right? And when it clicks, it's beautiful. Like we said, you had that 40,000, what was your number, right? And yeah, I've always got the number. And I think what you're at that five-figure market, could do a five-figure profit in a in a month, yeah, right? Then you're like, oh, this shit is real. It's real. And then you look at the time that you put into it. I think, yeah, I was like, this sort of side hustle for me in my company, right? And uh I I I I I analyzed the amount of time I put into it to make oh was a 20 grand that month. Yeah. And I was like, bro, I did this shit like a fucking like a quarter of the time I was doing it at my at my main job, my consumptive job. Right. It's like, bro, if I really if I went double that, triple that, this is what's gonna happen. And growing, those numbers held true, right? Like, I I I went full time and that was scary, but it started to happen. I did the right thing, and then before you know it, you double your income, triple, hardware, 10x your income. Yeah, I mean, where the else can you do that? It's just amazing. It's one of the few bastions where that could happen, and I agree.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. It you just gotta lock in. Yeah, we gotta make it happen. You gotta have a vision, like not to get too woo-woo or philosophical, but if you write down your goals and you have a clear idea of where you want to be in the next five years, and you know exactly what that looks like, you can visualize it, you can see it, you can touch it, taste it, all that stuff. You're gonna find a way to do it. And then you take action to back up the visual that you're really uh look, this is gonna sound crazy, but you're projecting a vision into the the quantum field, into the universe. So that's can you shoot receiver.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I'm a huge believer in that because it all sucks in your mind, right? I I just aim for uh I did a Tony Robbins RP and rapid planning method. Oh, yeah. And well, I haven't I haven't been to one of those events in a long time. This was my first virtual event. My one is Rumble through right now. I'm juggling a lot of different balls, a lot of different revenue streams, right? Yeah, so I got some revenue streams that are making like fucking bullshit and I'm I'm putting time into it. So I wanted to prioritize like, listen, and I want to actually conceptualize, okay, how much time am I actually putting into it? But it's funny because I feel like I'm back in 2016 when I started this as a side hole. So I got these revenue streams that are kicking ass, but there I'm not putting much time into them. Like, what if I took time away from here, cut that off, and put more time, then look at what happened. So it's exciting for me because I feel like you know, fast forward nine years later, I'm in a great spot right now. That's exciting. I'm about to have my second jump off, right? So, but the point is that you gotta learn how to manage your damn time, man. So I was gonna ask you, it sounds like you have a pretty unique or a pretty cool way that you you visualize, you have a system in place.
SPEAKER_01:Can you share with the artist what your system is? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. So you start at the beginning of the year, top of the year, January, you get out a notebook, and this sounds crazy. Blue Ink. This is from some books I've read. And the Think and Grow Rich, Power of Positive Thinking, Magic of Thinking Big. They all hint at the same philosophical thing. And uh, you write down your goals for the year, you write down your goals for three years, five years, and you check last year, you see what have I achieved, what didn't I achieve? Why didn't I? Why didn't I not? And uh then you break it down into actionable steps and you say, What do I actually need to do in reality to achieve this within that time frame? And you just start going. And that if you know where you're going, there's no there's no mystery. You're you're you're removing mystery from the equation. You have a roadmap. If you're just guessing and winging it and winging shit, you're gonna lose, you're gonna fail. Even if you win, like again, with ACA a couple of years ago, you might make some money, you might jump in this industry, make some quick money, but there's gonna be a real longevity there. You're not gonna have a real business or an asset or anything. Um, so at this point, you just write down those goals and you you take time every night before you go to bed, you visualize it, you see yourself as that person achieving the next milestone in income or revenue for your company. Um, you see yourself talking to Dave in the podcast live, you know, and all of a sudden one day you're talking to him in New York City, and uh, and it's happening.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, it's true. Yeah, you know, Ezra Firestone. He's a yeah, I met I met him in Barcelona. Guys, he's big, he's been in our interest for a long time. So I got him on the show, like he's still like 200 million a year like crazy numbers. He didn't even talk about the numbers. Oh, he talked about his mindset. And I yes, he was leading the stage, he was moderating the whole stage in uh Barcelona for affiliate takeover. And bro, it was all mindset, yeah. 15 minutes of heat. Yeah, and I'm like, you know what? I forget. I think sometimes we take that for granted, what you're talking about. And my best months, my best days are the days I wake up in the morning, I visualize, like Tony uh Robin's talk's about your hour or power, like you're in priming, right? You do some breath work, you close your eyes, you think of three things you're grateful for, or whatever you're grateful for. It sets the fucking toll. And I know it's the days that I don't do that, I'm a little bit more antsy. Yeah, I might be a little shorter with my kids. It's not it's it's not fair to them, right? But I I something might I'm you're more reactive, right? Yes. Whereas when you do that stuff, you anchor your day, you you you you know where you're going, and things don't don't don't bother you that much. You know, like something happens to my kids. I'm like, yo, what's going on? I'm more empathetic, much better person, right? And I wish I was like every I'm I'm getting better at it. But the point is that's so important. I mean, I feel like I'm glad you talked about that because I don't feel like people talk about that enough. And that's huge for success, man.
SPEAKER_01:It is, and another thing I'll add to that is exercise, man. Oh, are you fair? I think I said it before health is wealth, man. Yeah, you know, and sleep. But you know, you and I are both not too good at that.
SPEAKER_02:I've been doing yeah, man. I've been hard. I was in Europe for a month, come back to New York, these degenerates. You're this global trouble. But you know what? We're coming back. We're getting sleep in two days. Yeah, that's that's it. I was saying two days we're getting sleep. They call it catch-up sleep. Yeah, we'll get them. Bro, Miles, it'd be great. How are you on the show, man? This has been fantastic. How can people find out more about you?
SPEAKER_01:Well, you can follow me on Instagram on Miles Arnell. You can follow me for, you know, I post business content, um, my music stuff. If you want to follow that as well, I'm on Spotify if you want to listen to my music. I have another page, Lead Baron, on Instagram where I post uh sort of some of the stuff I'm talking about, motivational entrepreneur, success tips, all that stuff as I've learned on my journey and as I continue on the journey. Uh, same thing on TikTok, and just stay tapped in. If you're watching this and you're in the industry, we don't work together yet, reach out. Let's see what we can make happen.
SPEAKER_02:Guys, subscribe, like, share, tell your family, tell your people in Nashville, there.
SPEAKER_00:Let's go, man. Get ready to level your shit up with the LFG show. We travel the globe to bring you heavy hitters from all walks of life. We've been talking some serious business from the best digital marketers, government contracting experts, to top athletic and celebrity doctors. We've got it all covered. We're talking to guys of cash in for billions with a beat. And the best thing is, we're just getting started. So hold on tight. We're about to crank it up a notch. Get ready for next level networking and maximize within the LFG community. Scare money don't make no money or honey. Hit the subscribe button, drop a like, leave a comment, and let's fucking go.