Funeral Director or Wedding Planner? Which Insurance Business Are You Running?

Growth doesn’t come from chasing more leads. It comes from choosing the right ones, setting sharper goals, and executing a plan you can stick to. We break down the four moves that consistently turn overwhelmed agents into steady, confident business owners: define a real business goal, narrow your niche and avatar, build a clear marketing plan, and master time with ruthless time blocking.

We start by reframing “sell more Medicare” or “grow life” into outcomes that actually guide daily action. Then we dig into niche clarity—why Medicare itself isn’t a niche and how to profile the people you can serve best by mapping their pains, language, and trusted places. From there, we connect that avatar to the right channels and messages, setting budgets, milestones, and simple kill criteria that prevent you from burning cash on tactics that never fit your market.

Balance is the ongoing challenge. We explore how to avoid the teeter totter between overanalyzing and aimless wandering by using a GPS mindset: know where you are, decide where you’re going, and adjust the route as conditions change. Principles remain steady; tactics get updated. Finally, we tackle time: the silent constraint for every solo owner. You’ll learn how to run a quick time study, block your calendar across creation, prospecting, appointments, fulfillment, and learning, and decide which hats to take off first as capacity grows through smart hiring or outsourcing.

If you’re ready to stop reacting and start directing your agency, this conversation gives you a simple, repeatable blueprint. Subscribe, share with a colleague who needs more focus than hustle, and leave a review with the one change you’ll make this week.

Transcript

Setting The Stage For Growth

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast, the show for insurance agents ready to go from unknown to unstoppable, where visibility, strategy, and real-world execution meet. Hosted by Dave Cheatham and Mike Sorensen.

The Core Promise: Four Keys

Right Experts, Right Places

Defining Real Business Goals

Niche And Avatar Clarity

Building A Focused Marketing Plan

Coachability And Custom Strategy

Avoiding False Comparisons

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Welcome to episode three of the invisible agent going from unknown to unstoppable. Want to grow your insurance business? Start here. So are you in a funeral home while planning your wedding? So this is a key in which we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about four different tips to keep you in the right place to become unstoppable. So one of the things that we're going to talk about is, you know, uh, one of our, again, the director of growth and business development at Family Financial Solutions group is Mike. And uh Mike recently is starting to have a uh a family. And, you know, Mike just recently, uh, he and his wife had a baby. And, you know, when you are in a family and there's pregnancy, where do you go to? Do you do you go to your general practitioner? Do you go to a specific specialist? Do you go to an emergency room just in the very beginning of the process? Hopefully you don't have to go to the emergency room ever. Like, so, you know, when I was talking to Mike about this, and we just on the road one time, we were talking about, you know, him taking, you know, family leave and him being away for a while, and you know, me talking about, you know, everyone I know the time they should take. And I really emphasize, right, because it's part of our company is family, the values of family. And I said, hey, Mike, you know, take time for your family, take time to spend with, you know, your wife and your child, you know, as a new life is born, and time is going to go by fast. But I say, it's none of my business, but do you guys find the right doctors that you're comfortable with and and listening to them? And and I know um, I don't know um his wife well. I just, you know, know that very caring and health conscious individual, and along with Mike, two very healthy individuals and healthy mindset, and and they want their body and everything working at the peak performance. And I there was he was talking about you know, finding a doctor and finding the right doctors to go to. And that's really one of the things that that's key. So going to the right places and going to the right people to get the right information. And so he spent the time in the right places, not the wrong places. And so, a couple of things I want to talk about is one of the things that we see on a regular basis when we talk to an insurance agent that says, Hey, I can't grow. My business isn't growing and they're lost. And then we're talking about again, this this podcast really is for the insurance agents that want to grow an insurance business. And it can apply to many other businesses, don't get me wrong, but there's no business goal a lot of times. I'll ask them, yeah, what is your goal? What do you want to happen? And they go, Well, I want to grow my life insurance business, or I want to grow my Medicare business, or I want to grow my property and casualty business. And I go, what part of that do you want to grow? Again, that's a product. And too often, as insurance agents, we don't think like insurance business owners and we have to do that. And as an insurance business owner, I'm not thinking just about the product I am selling. I'm not saying that you negate the product. My product is going to help formulate who I want to work with. But if I'm my goal is to write more life insurance or to write more Medicare, you know, I'm asking what type of life insurance, what type of annuities, whatever, what type of whatever you're trying to do, and who does that best fit for? And that niche, or some people call that avatar. And every time I say that, uh, individuals go back to the movie avatar, that's not what we're talking about, right? Building out the avatar. And specifically, I'm gonna talk about Medicare right here. And that is Medicare itself is not the avatar, right? There's so many different niches and avatars within the Medicare space that you have to narrow that down. So, first, they don't have a business goal. And then when there is a business goal, it's it's not focused on the right areas. So have a business goal, but really focus on those niches in the avatar and who you can serve, right? So again, Family Financial Solutions Group, I wanted to create solutions. Now, solutions, right, might not be the product itself. It might not be the insurance product, but sometimes we have to have those discussions, that education standpoint. So, what challenges do they face? What can you bring to the table to help solve those issues? So when I started going over 20 years ago in the Medicare space, uh, I really kind of had a niche market that I went after. And it was not the turning 65, it was not the, you know, the duels, it wasn't the low income subsidy, it was, it was one specific niche, one specific avatar. And I learned everything I could about that group. When, and I learned that because when I went after and to work with business owners, it wasn't just business owners. I took the business owners, all the business owners out there, and I narrowed it down to a very narrow niche. And then I figured out, you know, again, what the problems that that niche had and how I might be able to solve it. Now, the first group I had was not one that that worked. And I knew that before I even went marketing. And then I found the area, right? Now I went from a product down to a concept, down to who does that concept, who can that concept work for? And then I found the niche or my avatar that that fit into that and that fit with my personality and who I wanted to work with. So who are the type of people you want to work with? Who are the people that you enjoy working with? Right. My dad would always say, you don't really work when you love what you do. It's not a job, right? I I love getting up and going in the morning. I love helping and serving insurance agents. I love seeing and celebrating their growth, their business development. It's something I truly enjoy doing. So I don't mind. Matter of fact, I don't think about the hours I put in. I just work. I don't even time flies by by because I really want to serve and help because it's enjoyable to me. But that's my business. And my business has shifted, right? Absolutely. When I was writing business, again, I went from really focusing on life insurance, long-term care, and annuities to then focusing on long-term care. And then went back to small business owners and helping them and having an agency and helping people with other agents. And then I went to helping in the Medicare space for different reasons and really focusing on what avatar, right? I took everything I learned prior to that and applied it to the business goal. So I need a business goal. I need to know who I'm going to reach out to. I'm reaching out to too many people, you're going to be focused all over the board and you're spending time and all in the wrong places. So take some time, set a foundation for your company and figure out who you want to serve and figure out that avatar and niche. If you don't have somebody to talk to about that, reach out to us. More than happy to help and give you a little bit of guidance. The second thing that we see that people are spending the wrong time in the wrong place on is they have no clear marketing plan. They do what they hear. They do what they see other people's do, right? And they see that and they go, oh, it must work for me. No, it doesn't. In fact, we have insurance agents that are too quick to move on, right? They go, oh, yeah, I think I might like to work in that area. And they spend a little bit of time there and then they leave, right? So the agents that we find that are the most successful in their business, and the ones that we have coached, and we've coached many, many agents. And the agents that listen and follow what we we teach and they follow that methodology, we do not do a one size fits all. Too many agents think that. And too many agents won't have that conversation with us, or they're not coachable, right? But if you're coachable, find a coach that will coach you. If you're not coachable, you have to do it yourself. And hopefully you're honest with yourself. But don't be doing just because somebody else does it, you should do it. Just because you hear other people's doing it that you do it. I was just at a conference and they say, what one person can do, you can do. That's not true. That's not true. If that was the case, we we'd all be in the NFL, right? The Super Bowl. You know, um, I would be a quarterback. There's many quarterbacks. Many, there's been many, many NFL quarterbacks. I should be able to be a quarterback. No, that's not true, right? We all have different skills and abilities and experiences, and you have to lean into that. But you have to create a very clear marketing plan. So once I have my avatar, once I have my business goals, now I create a marketing plan around those business goals. And do not give up on that marketing plan too early. It's one of the biggest mistakes we see. Now, I say that, but also don't be foolish. We had an insurance agent come to us and they spent$15,000 on business reply cards and did not have one sale. And there's so many things that were wrong with that, the situation, right? So if you have a group or an upliner, a mentor, or someone just keep on saying, you know, just spend, just keep doing this marketing plan, keep doing this marketing, keep doing this marketing, and you're never getting results, right? So eight months down the line,$15,000 later in that one sale, there's a problem with that.$15,000 on credit card debt. It didn't, it didn't work. So, so be very, very clear on where you're spending money, where you're spending time. It does it deal with your marketing plan. That that's key. So we have that clear business goal. Now we're we're developed a clear marketing plan. And now what do we do? The next thing we see people do is they go into this funk of, is it working? It's one or the other. So I call it the teeter-totter of your business. I don't know about you as a kid, you know, we would, you know, in on the parks, it would be the teeter-totter. One person would go on one end, the other person would go on the other end, and you're supposed to go back and forth. But really, you know, I was, you know, a terror, you know, I was a little bit heavier than my sister. And so I would get down and I would hold her up. And so she was up here and I was down here, and she was terrified up there. And I remember her crying and whining, right? Because she's she was terrified. I was in control of that. And so then I said, okay, I won't do it again. And then she did it to me, but I was a little bit bigger. So I jumped off. You know, I remember scraping my knee or whatever, but but I was able to jump off. So um, so too many times in our business, we don't find that equilibrium. We we do this, right? And there's this fine balance that we have to find. And so, what is that? Um, I see agents that come in and they spreadsheet to death everything. You know, they spreadsheet plans, they spreadsheet their business, they spreadsheet all these different things. Now, I'm not saying that spreadsheets are bad or your KPIs are bad. You should, as a business owner, have KPIs. But if that's all you focus on, then you have a problem, right? You're probably not focusing enough time on doing the marketing or on meeting with the prospects or selling or educating or all those other things that you should be doing, right? As a business owner, if you're a soulpreneur, we have many, many hats that we have to put on. And what hats are you going to wear and and when? During the day, I can't tell you how many hats that I used to wear. Today we have tons of different opportunities, right? Some people I hire out things because that's what we do. Some people we have internally that I've hired for. We have a marketing group that we don't do all the marketing, but we have people in the house that do some marketing. But we also hire out some of that marketing. We have individuals that help other insurance agents on the training and the modeling. We have a director of growth and business developer that's wearing another hat because I can't wear all the hats. And eventually you have to know what hats you're going to wear and what hats you're going to take off eventually. Maybe not. We have insurance agents that are very happy with where they're at, but they have to wear multiple hats. So don't wear one hat too long. Or just the opposite is make sure you're wearing a hat. So they maybe spread shirt sheet to doubt that they wear one hat too long, or they just go wander into never never land. And they're just following a path. They're, they're, they're oblivious to where they're going and they're just wandering around. Now, I think part of that is you have a business plan, you have you have a business goal, you have a marketing plan, and those are set and they might be going somewhat in the right direction, but are they going in the right direction down the right path of the road? So this is what I liken it too. If my goal is to drive from Chicago, I'm right outside of Chicago, or get to be in Chicago as my first point, and I want to go to San Francisco. I know it's west. So do I just start wandering west? Do I do the hitchhiking that used people used to do? Or how what do I do? There has to be some kind of plan. Well, some people have some kind of a plan. So they go, I'm gonna hitchhike, or I'm gonna take a train, or I'm gonna do whatever. But you can't just be oblivious to what you're doing. I can't just get in a car and just get on a road without an idea. So many of us have a GPS, but the key to a GPS is what does a GPS do? I bet a lot of you said a GPS gets you to where you want to go. It tells you, right? That's not true. A GPS tells you where you're at. So I'm here. I put into the mapping software or the GPS that I used to have in my car where I want to go. And my GPS knew where I was at and would give me the directions to get there. And I would follow those directions. Now, I remember driving, it's probably about 2017, 16. I was with my wife, and the whole entire family went down to Branson, Missouri. And we had to go through Illinois and we're going down there, and it's in my GPS, and my GPS uh was a little bit outdated. I didn't update the maps. And next thing you know, we're driving, my wife and I, and we get to a point in which said, hey, just continue going. I thought it was odd. It got took us off the interstate, and we're on this highway. It got us off the highway and into this really weird area. And next thing you know, it wants us to drive on this gravel path. Like, there's no way. We're we're like an hour from Branson. Why is it wanting us to drive on this gravel path? And so I had to figure it out. And then uh luckily we had smartphones and we pulled up the smartphone, put in the where we're going. And again, the GPS told us where we're at and then told us how to get where we're going. So that wandering in never never land, or maybe following the wrong directions and not being updated, right? So I make this because your business goals might shift a little, hopefully, not too much. Your marketing plan might shift depending on the the what's happening in the environment and what happens. Uh, and so, so think about that. And then that teeter-totter, if I'm not in equilibrium, I might go off the rails one way or the other. And I might not even be aware of all the nuances and changes that are taking place. I need to be this. I need to be even keeled. I need to be even keeled in my business. I don't know about you, I have a lot of passion for what I do. And I have a lot of passion for helping um small business owners grow their business. I love doing it. But I also spend a lot of money on myself and learning and keeping up to date with technology, with AI, to marketing, to all those different things, because what worked 20 years ago, 22 years ago, 30 years ago, 100 years ago, principles are there, but the tactics might be changing. So be aware of some of those tactics and and how those might affect your business. And if you go off the rails and just wander around, you're oblivious to some of those things. If you get too emotional on things, high or low, both are bad. The grass is not always greener on the other side. When people come in and over to us and we talk to agents, right? I'm very clear on what we do. Some agents don't believe us. Agents that leave us, that's fine. We're not the right fit for them. We're not the right fit for everybody. If any group tells you they're the right fit for everybody, that they're not. We're not right for everybody. Just like your clients, right? You're not a right fit for every client. And that's okay because you are you and you have to shape that. You have to be very careful of spending too much time in the wrong place. If you don't have a business goal, you're gonna go off the rails. If you don't have a marketing plan, you're really gonna be in trouble, right? This is where that shiny object syndrome comes in all the time that I see. And that teeter-totter, you want to be at equilibrium. But then there's another place. Another place is the time suckers, I call it. So the fourth thing I'm gonna tell you about is the time suckers that are out there. And the time suckers can really destroy your business. I can't tell you many people I talked to that they said, Dave, I'm working 10 hours a day. I don't have time to do something else. Or I don't know why this isn't working. I followed everything that was said out there. I went on YouTube and I heard this and I followed that. Or I went on this and I did that. You know, I personally, I don't know how people have all the time they do. I love to learn, but I'm learning when I'm able to learn, right? I schedule my time, I time block my time. And this is really kind of the last issue that I want to talk about. Time blocking. Time blocking saves you. Do not be sucked into one area too long in your business. What I mean by that is if all I'm doing is writing business, then I'm not prospecting. If all I'm doing is marketing, I don't have time to meet with my prospects and to do the sales. I found a lot of people that say they're doing all this work, and most of the time they're they're caught in front of their screen, and the screen might be on Facebook. Yeah, Dave, I'm on Facebook. They're on Facebook for two to three hours. I'm on YouTube, Dave, you you told me to do this. I'm on YouTube and I'm on YouTube for three hours. I'm a reader, so I'm reading my book, this book. And instead of doing a time block of just saying, hey, I'm gonna read a book for 30 minutes a day, they start reading and they get hot stuck in the book and they just keep reading and reading and reading, which is good, except for as a business owner, we have more than one thing to do, right? So I like to think in like this. It's not the teeter-totter. This is on your finger, is a plate, and the plate has to keep on spinning and it can't topple over. So I have to make sure I'm touching it in every area of the plate. And if I'm spending too much time on the plate, the plate's gonna fall and tilt over, and then the food is gonna go all over the place. And that causes a mess. It causes more havoc in our business, and we have this issue that happens within in our body then. Like we get into this, oh, what am I gonna do? And I'm I'm either gonna clam up or I'm gonna fight through it, or I'm gonna blame somebody else, or all these other things. So, one of the things one of my coaches taught me was time blocking. And everyone time blocks differently. I'm gonna recommend something to you first before you ever time block. Do a time study of yourself for your whole entire day, not just business hours. If you're gonna do just business hours, that's fine. But as an entrepreneur, as a person that runs a business, my my day is not nine to five, right? And it never has been. Now I get to office early because I found that's good. I used to be a night person until I got my dog, then I turned into a morning person in many respects. And now I'm a morning person. I usually am out of the house before my wife. That wasn't always the case. But now I also get home later. And part of it is time gets away from me because I love what I'm doing, but I do time blocking is a key. So people will say, Dave, you're always busy. No, my my calendar is full, and there's places to book into my calendar. But if somebody doesn't book into my calendar, I'm gonna, I know what I'm putting in there. So I'm planning ahead. But I call them jam sessions or sessions in which I'm gonna create things and I block that in, or I block in time to read, I time, I time block time to learn, I time block time for marketing, I time block times to meet with my clients, depending on the season, right? What needs to happen. See, one of the things I said all along, even though we're a field marketing organization and we help all these agents, I can't forget about my own clients because that was a commitment I made. Somebody that has an integrity and ethics, they're gonna, they're gonna take care of their clients. And so that's what I do. I want my clients taken care of. But during AEP, that's not my primary goal. I have this teeter totter that I have to be on. I have to take care of my clients, but I also have to help our agents. Well, to do both, I've hired staff because we were big enough that that's what I was able to do. You're as a soulpreneur have to balance, right? And there's a time to hire people, and there's the right people to hire and the right way to hire, and all those types of things. And hopefully you have somebody that's gone through that process. There's an individual that I that I I know. Um, we're more acquaintances, we're getting to know each other um better and better. But uh, you know, one of the things that I saw was a recent post that talks about, you know, who you're gonna follow, the the person that's done it or the person that hasn't done it. And and I and I said I agree with that, except for this. I don't need to bat 300 to coach somebody. Does that make sense? You can coach somebody without always being exactly what it was. Now, I I have a number of clients. We've created a number of marketing systems, we have agents that are following those, so so that I've hired people, we've grown, we've done a lot of different things. But there might be something I haven't done why? Because it wasn't around at that time. So just because I didn't Do that ever in my life doesn't mean I can't help in that. No, because there's a lot of concepts. So the other thing is just because somebody wrote a lot of business in the insurance space does not mean that they can coach you or help you to write that business. Like an individual I talked to, and uh it was and it was really what I started. And the individual said, I'm never gonna write a piece of business. I am going to have X amount of people that are written policies underneath me. I'm just gonna open the door. This person was an elephant hunter in the sales world. They had connections to the city governments, to townships, to franchise owners. And they said, hey, listen, I'm gonna open up the door and it was for voluntary benefits and have other agents write that business. And they were just gonna take a little piece of the pie. That person couldn't teach how to be an elephant hunter. We then also found out that we couldn't teach that person really how to write the right business for those individuals. So don't try to be somebody that you're not, and also don't think that you have to do everything to be able to do it. I do think that when you time block, you better find somebody that helps you know how to organize yourself. And if they'd have been ever time blocked in their life, you then go find somebody else that has. Not necessarily you have to leave them, right? If they're there upline, but go find somebody that knows under understands this concept. So have a very clear business goal, have a very clear marketing plan, be even on the teeter-totter, right? You're gonna go up and down a little bit, but don't do the swing. Right? That was fun as a kid. It's not fun in the business world. So you're gonna be on this, try to be as much equilibrium as possible, right? It's gonna go up and down. And then don't spend too much time in one area when you're wearing all these hats. Time block where you need to do. And if you get to the point of needing to hire, seek people to help you do that. We really want you to spend the right time in the right places in your business so that you can grow an insurance business, that the business isn't controlling you, but you control the business. Listen, we do not pay for marketing for this podcast. The Invisible Agent Podcast is truly only done when agents and other people are sharing it and liking it and commenting. Please do that. Please keep following us. Comment, tell us what you want to hear about, what other marketing things, what questions do you have? We really want to help you, right? So keep following us as insurance business owners to go from unknown to unstoppable. Thank you for listening and see you next time.

SPEAKER_00 24:41

We do not do any paid marketing to promote this podcast. It only grows if you find value in this and share it. Keep following as we show insurance business owners how to go from unknown to unstoppable. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.