Trying to be Everywhere will Kill Your Business

Trying to grow your insurance agency by adding more states, more carriers, and more lead sources can feel like progress, right up until it becomes chaos. We start with a question that has nothing to do with insurance and everything to do with survival: why didn’t AT&T go down in flames, while other giants like Sears collapsed? The answer points to a mindset every independent agent needs, adapt with intention and stop confusing motion with strategy.

From there, we bring it home for Medicare agents and life and annuity producers who are tempted to “sell everywhere.” We talk about the real cost of multi-state selling: different Medicare birthday rules, changing regulations, licensing and appointment fees, and product differences that can make you sound unprepared fast. We also dig into how carrier exits and even county-by-county plan changes can punish agents who don’t have their finger on the pulse locally.

The biggest takeaway is control and capacity. Time, money, and brainpower are limited, and if you spread them thin you lose the relationship edge that drives retention. We share why a local focus creates better conversations, deeper trust, and a business you can actually sustain without burnout or shiny object syndrome.

If you want to go from unknown to unstoppable, hit play, subscribe on your favorite platform, and share this with one agent who needs a better strategy. After you listen, what’s the one market or community you’re ready to truly own?

Transcript

Welcome And Big Question

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.

Why AT&T Did Not Collapse

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast. This is where we teach agents how to go from being unknown to becoming unstoppable. My name is Mike Sorensen. And I'm David Cheatham. And today we have a fun, really a lot of topics that we're going to be covering today. But first thing we we really wanted to cover at the very beginning is something that isn't insurance, but has to do with maybe what's going on with a lot of local businesses on the insurance side. Is that is, Dave, you brought it up to us when we were first building out this episode is why didn't ATT go down in flames?

SPEAKER_01 1:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

I think other businesses falling out, these big, big corporate brands falling out, why didn't why didn't ATT follow that same suit?

SPEAKER_01 1:10

So yeah, I I look at I I go to you think ATT and what ATT has done as a business, right? So if people know history and you know the the Mobell and how big it was, and the government came and you know said, hey, you can't be a monopoly. So they made them break up and all these other things. And even at that time, these the telephone industry company should have closed out, but that's what ATT was.

SPEAKER_03 1:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

It was a phone company. Then the next thing you know, they go into offering internet services. The dial up, you know, the horrible noise.

SPEAKER_02 1:44

Um I still hear it in my head.

SPEAKER_01 1:46

What was it? Uh the movie Just Got Mail. Uh was that the name of the movie?

SPEAKER_02 1:50

Ryan and Tom Hanks. Yeah. Yeah.

Sears And The Online Miss

SPEAKER_01 1:52

So I mean, I just remember that AOL. I remember that noise. I hated it. Uh, but so they pivoted to that. Then they, you know, they uh maybe internet was even before that. Um, technically, I don't even know. But I I remember um you know that was part of the internet, but then they the cable, when did cable come in? I don't know when that came in technically. Uh, you know, when I was in college, I didn't pay attention to all those things. Uh, but all of a sudden, so AT ⁇ T from a phone company has now then they added cable, they added internet, they've added the mobile phone, they bought a satellite company. They've done these things to change and pivot to where the people are, unlike if you take a company like Sears. And uh Sears to me was probably the bigger shock. I mean, Sears was a catalog company. Uh, you know, it was actually before it was a catalog company, it was much smaller than that. But they became that catalog company to send out things all over. I mean, people would ship houses, they would ship houses to people.

SPEAKER_02 2:56

Isn't there one of the employees that works for FFSG live in a Sears house? It's like a modified, it's a modified.

Why Being Everywhere Breaks Efficiency

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Yeah, it's a modified Sears house, yes, correct. Yeah, yeah. Uh so but so you so you have Sears who went to this catalog company, then they opened up all these you know brick and mortar locations, not a problem. They were successful, they were growing. They still kept the catalog business though. I mean, I remember sitting down, I don't know about any of you, but I remember sitting down as a kid, and my parents would go, Okay, let's make our list of Santa, and you wouldn't have to mail it to the North Pole, and they'd bring out the catalog of the you know, of Sears and JC Pennies, and we'd get these thick catalogs in the mail, and then there would be this special toy edition. But, anyways, I don't know if you could necessarily order it. I don't know. I mean, I was too young at that point. I know you can still order things from a catalog, but I don't know about toys. But then what do you do? I mean, all of a sudden we have a dramatic shift that takes place in the buying habits of people, and I and I it there's comes a point in which their concept was not wrong. And this is why I bring up Sears out of all of it, right? They should have been out of all companies, pretty easy to make that shift. They were a catalog company that sold things through the mail. Why couldn't they just go online and do that? Now, maybe it's the same mindset as some other companies that go, really, are people really gonna buy something online and have it shipped to them? I I don't know. I wasn't at the in the brain trust of Sears or know anyone that was in the brain trust of Sears to make those decisions, but the business model changed. And so I I always say that we have to look at where the business model is supposed. So um, but I think too many times, especially in today's age, people are trying to be everywhere and it kills the business. And I think this is where, you know, again, I'm gonna take some of the current companies like Amazon. If you notice, Amazon goes in, does something, and then they all go, oh no, maybe that shouldn't be it, and they pull out of it because it's not working. So a company can't be everything and everywhere it's impossible. So what did they do? And this is where I I really kind of go on to like, you know, one of the tips that I want to talk about is efficiencies in your business. And this is where that whole entire Sears model is, right? The market changes, carriers change. If I'm everywhere, I'm not gonna know all the details about that market.

SPEAKER_02 5:37

Well, we were just talking just before we we launched this about we're talking about birthday rules and anniversary rules with states and how they're I mean, the there's not one state like the birthday rule is identical. So if you're trying to sell in, you know, this is called cross-state or multi-state, like there are so much rules, regulations, birthday rules. The the be the to do right by a beneficiary, the amount you would actually have to keep track of would be significant. And you're trying to wham bam, thank you, ma'am, this into an hour, hour and a half appointment. That for me, it's for me, you know, call whatever. It I seems irresponsible, but like the way for you to successfully grow for me, I just don't I don't see that being one good for the beneficiary, and two a smart business move unless you've got like employees, staffing, you've got a significant amount behind you to be able to do it. And the average agent is a solo, you know, solopreneur, whatever you want to put the term on. That is how that whole transition for most agents is. It's solopreneur and they try selling and the amount of bad and for bad, I guess, business advice at the very beginning about the blasting trying to be everywhere because you know, if someone raises their hand in another state and you you can you can buy a lead there, they buy leads and they'll just make calls. It's it's it sets up for agents to lose their license because of all these legal ramifications, those regulations that are changing. And you know, we're even talking about phone calling rules, buying leads are actually compliant and good, whole nother DIGO worms there. But no, that's from an efficiency sense, it for me and I think for what we teach, it's not it doesn't align in that that regard.

Medicare Rules And Multi-State Risk

SPEAKER_01 7:17

Yeah. And and I think again, that some of what we're talking about is the the birthday rule from if you guys don't know that really is a is a dealing with the Medicare insurance, specifically Medicare supplements, but there's other rules in other states, right? For for on Medicare. But I even go back a couple of years ago, long-term care, when states are saying, hey, now uh you have to have a long-term care insurance policy in the state and and what happened there. Uh different life insurance rules, different annuity rules, and in what you can do, what you can't do. Like some people think, oh, because you're licensed in a state, then you can just sell in all 50 states if you have that license. There's some states that say, no, you can't. Uh, you know, you have to be present in that state. Again, some people don't know the rules of, you know, if the beneficiary comes to, I mean, we're housed in Illinois. If a beneficiary comes here in Illinois, am I able to write that individual because they're here? Or does it go by where the legal residence is? Well, does can I go to Indiana and if I don't have a license there? No, but if I have a license in Indiana, which we do because we're in all 50 states, but if I go to Indiana, am I able to write that individual? The answer is yes. But what about if I just do it over the phone or over Zoom? Again, every state is different, and not everyone knows that. I remember a number of years ago, I had a lead in a state, and it was uh it could have been a pretty big case. And what I found out was if I was going to write that person, so their in-laws were here in Illinois and they were gonna be in Illinois on vacation. I couldn't write them. I had to go to their state and write them in their state. So again, quirks and every single state laws. And this is kind of goes into how much time do you have as a business owner running that business to know every little intricacy in every single state. So that's one. Uh number two, a carrier's product here in Illinois, uh, you know, we have a, you know, a recovery care plan, which I think recovery care plans are important. I believe long-term care plans are important, right? So recovery care, this here in Illinois on some of the carriers is completely different than if it's in Texas or Florida, or even if states even allow it.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Or just in Wisconsin. Just in Wisconsin, it's I I I believe I know the care you're talking about. It's it's different even in Wisconsin.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Right. So how can you assume? I can't assume that the plan that I would talk about normally here in Illinois is the same plan, same, you know, outline of coverage, same benefits as it is in other states. Again, can you do it? Yes. But efficiency in your business, if you truly are about the relationship, not the transaction, right? The relationship is always gonna win. If I have the relationship, I'll get the transactions, I'll get the sales. So, so you know, I I think we're looking at that. I mean, again, I I'm gonna go back to Medicare, that and the annual enrollment period leading up to it, you know, people's, you know, heads were on fire, their hair was on fire. I mean, they were like, what am I gonna do? This carrier's exiting the market. I don't have anything to sell, there's no commissions, there's this, there's that. Well, imagine if you're not in that state and you go to another state and you're in your writing uh business. So again, I'm gonna use, I remember sitting here and getting a phone call from a national marketing organization. And they said, Hey, um, I guess you guys in Illinois are gonna be good. We we understand that this carrier is not exiting at any any market. And I go, what are you talking about? They're have plans exiting Kane County, McHenry County. Like, I and they're like, Well, that's not what we were told. I go, well, that that's great. That's maybe not what you were told on a national level, but on a local level, we know that they're they're leaving. Again, what would you do when you are an agent who wants to keep the business, who wants to help the client? You have to know all those changes that are going on.

Product Differences By State

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Plus, the changes by county, even even the changes by county in Medicare, it's it's I mean, it's crazy how you can be a neighboring county and the plan looks significantly different than if you just hopped over the border. I mean, that's yeah, that alone is I mean, and then geez, we haven't even touched on like if we're looking at multiple states, like, which uh I've worked with a ton of agents that get that culture, they get that kind of that bill or that shock when they see that they got contracted in, you know, 18 states and they're getting this big appointment fee bill on their desk. They're like, what's this? It's like, yeah, that call center you worked for paid for that for you. Now you're the business, so you pay for it. And that is, I mean, you want to talk about efficiency, like a way to set yourself up maybe hundreds of dollars behind from day one, not talking about AHIP or even getting licensed. That's that's hundreds. I mean, for some agencies, thousands of dollars that you have to pay out of your pocket just to be appointed there. It's yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 12:19

That's important. The more efficiency I want to talk about is you know, the market changes. And and I'm not even talking about carriers at this point. I think people have to understand that we have other market changes that take place from you know, and the big one for me is demographics. I somebody can go, oh, you can go market in Chicago. I always say that the Chicago is so big. There's the neighborhoods in Chicago that are so different. But those neighborhoods have changed over the years. I'm a huge Cubs fan. So, you know, I go to Wrigley Field at one time. You didn't even want to go by Wrigley Field. Like it was not a nice area to be in. Now, you know, then it it changed, right? To not necessarily being affluent, but it changed to being uh an area that people wanted to go to, not because of the Cubs, but because of all the redevelopment that was happening in the area. Then next thing you know, it's changing again. And it's changed again. And it's it's a different since I've been alive, since I've known Wrigleyville, as they call it, has changed dramatically over the years. And what would that do to your business if you didn't know that? Or what happens if you were trying to market into an area and and truly do that efficiently? And what would that mean? Uh so so I think it kind of leads into one of the other points that we want to talk about is that that you know the the finger on the pulse of what's going on.

County Changes And Carrier Exits

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Yeah, because there that's from a I only have 10 fingers. I would say that that's probably the uh I would probably say that's the biggest one because and you know, just going back to Medicare, I mean, we're seeing pretty substantial changes in this industry and we're and we can get into life and we can get into annuity and get into long-term care as well. But the amount of significant changes that are happening just in that single line of business alone, and even supplemental carriers too, like for agents to be working more than like a to be more, but working in a whole state level or multi-state with the network changes. I mean, you're in Chicago now, which it just seems like we get an email almost every other week with a network contract renewal or a network non-contract renewal, and you're trying to keep all keep all this straight. What's going on? Even we're talking about that, even we're we can talk about social security offices, we can talk about because that that's not that's all not all created equal as well. It's getting into a social security office to be no set up a time to be able to get even onto Medicare or even have a conversation with somebody. As far as like you're going into like demographics, the uh amount of people that work a certain area that are trying to sell certain plans. I was just actually on a call with a gentleman on Monday who lives in a rural part of Indiana that lives in a very heavily segmented, like low-income area, like, but has aspirations to write large net worth individuals in the area, which could be significant, but he didn't even know the area. Like he didn't have any idea what kind of people lived there, but he wanted to work the area. So without being there and knowing what's going on, it's really hard for people to understand the maybe community aspect, maybe even the social climate of that area as well, because that does play a significant role in this as well, both economically, politically, all that fun stuff. So it's it's interesting when you see such a vast amount of agents that are just pretty much just trying to take, you know, do everything, work with everybody, but they're never really having that specific conversation with the person they actually want to work with because one, they don't know what's going on in the area, they don't know the people they're trying to work with, yet they have their contract and license with all these products, all these carriers, but they have no idea what's going on. It's this is this is this is a I think a problem within the entire industry because they think life insurance or annuity or Medicare is the niche. And they don't actually have anything segmented down to figure out what is actually going on where they're at.

SPEAKER_01 16:08

Which I again, to me, this is where I mean we can we don't even have to talk about insurance in this, right?

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Um, that's a pretty broad topic, trying to pinpoint an area of where to go and you know, keeping your finger on the pulse is significantly hard.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yeah, yeah. But so again, but I mean if we're talking about marketing, if we're talking about, you know, understanding who we're gonna reach out to and how we're gonna solve a problem or what the problem is, you know, I can learn about a product and say, I'm gonna sell this product, right? Or hey, listen, this this carrier I work for in I'm gonna sell this product. And, you know, I look at some, again, some places in the country, not life and health, but property and casualty. Like they can't even sell the carrier pulled out, right? Hurricanes, whatever it was. Uh so um, you know, fires, all these different things cause issues. Now, I'm not gonna say you're gonna know when a hurricane or a fire comes, but if I'm living in certain areas in which has a better chance of hurricanes coming, and over and over again, they have right, what am I gonna do? And who am I gonna reach out to? If I'm gonna be in an area that um I'm, you know, I love, I listen, I we I love annuities. I'm not gonna lie. I think annuities are can be a great tool, not the only tool, but one of the tools, it's you know, one of the one of the products on the shelf. But if my mindset, and I believe me, I I talk to a lot of agents that go, hey, I just want to sell annuities. I just want to sell annuities, I want to sell more annuities. And then the question is, well, where are you marketing? Oh, wait, you're marketing into like you were mentioning, the individual you talked to, into an area that let's say it's 10,000 people, and you look at the demographics, and 9,000 of them are living paycheck to paycheck, can barely make it, right? And then what do they do? Oh, wait, how about the how about the organizations or people live in areas that a company which is very large had a big manufacturing company or a big presence, and all of a sudden that company just gets up and goes somewhere because of a financial decision that the company made. Now all of a sudden, those people, the residents of that town are scrambling. They're they're worried. They're where are they you know put that money? Where are they gonna live on? How are they gonna make money? And you go into that environment, you're gonna go, I'm hey, I'm only gonna sell annuities. Well, no, you're not solving the financial problems of the individuals by just saying I'm gonna sell an annuity. Yeah, right. So, so I think too many times when you have a finger on the pulse and you know what's going on, and I'm not talking about just a snapshot in time, but this is where if you can't be everywhere. If you're more localized and you have a handful of areas that you know you can do that, you can manage that. I only have so much time, right? I only have so much time. Uh, we had an individual that wrote a piece of business and they thought that the piece of business was gonna stick. It was a pretty large annuity. And next thing you know, eight months in, and they got it, they got a chargeback. The client never called the agent. They just got a chargeback. And uh, it had to do kind of with this. They were living on somebody else's salary, and that salary was no longer in existence. So they had to pull the money out of the annuity. It was, it was unexpected. And uh, when the agent was talking to me, I go, Did they meet the suitability requirements? And they said, Yeah. They actually had money other places that they could have pulled money from.

SPEAKER_03 19:28

Right.

Demographics Shape Your Strategy

SPEAKER_01 19:29

However, they met with somebody and they said, Oh, that annuity is a bad thing. Pull the money out of the annuity. And forget about surrender charges and everything else that hurt them. But again, people, depending on who they talk to, they don't care about that, right? So you're you have to look at what was going on. Maybe if I was in that area, I might have had an idea what's going on, right? Here, our offices in St. Charles, Illinois, for all for a number of years, they've been talking about getting rid of the dams on the Fox River. What would that do to what's going on in the area? What would it do to home prices? What would it do to the area? I've seen places my wife and I talk all the time. There's houses that are on streets that I would never buy a house on that street because it's a major street. And I'm thinking if I had friends that would come over, they couldn't park on the street. They couldn't even park in our driveway. Where, where would we hold them? We couldn't even have a family gathering anymore. Uh, I'm not saying that when they bought that was the busy street, but it happens. And you have an idea when you're doing it. Again, finger on the pulse. Yeah, we're I'm on Facebook. I'm in Facebook in a number of different groups because of where I live and where I work. And I'll see all the time, hey, what's happening at this intersection? We see construction going on, or we see that they leveled trees. And again, keeping your finger on the pulse of what's going on in those communities. Again, not even talking about a product or insurance, but even just knowing what's going on and knowing how that might affect you as a business owner is key.

SPEAKER_02 21:02

Well, I think from a prospect conversation, from a conversation perspective, what is like the most instant, what's the moment I think everyone's felt instantly when you, when they, your prospect talks about something that's in your area that you actually know about and can speak intelligently to. And it's it creates instant stickiness just by doing that. But you can also feel the moment they say something that's going on in the area, you're not from there, and you're like, no idea, haven't heard of her, haven't heard of it, don't know what's going on. Like that creates like a I don't really know you type moment, or you really don't know what I'm going through type moment. So it's not so much like even like demographic, it's like it's almost a connection between the prospect and you having understanding what's going on in the area and kind of having that what the word I'm trying to do is like uh easy flowing conversation and getting to know each other over that is I think a huge just dynamic between you and the prospect. Besides the whole marketing and like understanding products and stuff. It's like if I talk about something, you know exactly what's going on, we're gonna bond over that, and that's gonna be fun. You know, that's or it's gonna be awkward when you don't know what's going on when it's something pretty big going on in the area.

Local Knowledge Builds Fast Trust

SPEAKER_01 22:10

So yeah, I love it. Deepening those relationships, right? Yeah. So and then I think you have another aspect, and that's the control, right? Are you running your business or is the business running you? And I'll tell you what, I I believe in especially in the insurance world, we have more and more people that the that the business is running them and they're not running their business. And if you are everywhere, you're gonna have more stuff thrown at you and balancing all these other things kind of goes with efficiencies, but it's really control. And so if I can control my business, it's going to make me more efficient, more effective, and ultimately serve my clients better because I I can I can do that as well as, and I say that because I don't need to every single year pound the pavement per se and enroll 100, 200, 300, or 500 new clients every year when I can keep my book of business, right? Uh hopefully you're in the insurance business uh for a reason, and that is to help your clients, right? Uh when I first got into this, you know, they when I interviewed um at the captive company, they said, Hey, you know, a win-win, right? You your goal is for the client to win. And I was like, it was a life insurance company. I'm in my thought, my head was like, wait, how does my client win if they die? Now I had a totally wrong view of life insurance at the time in many ways, and I've learned since then. But in my brain, and when they said it to me, I'm like, wait, a death benefit? That means the person dies. So how is that a win for my client? It wasn't. But people don't buy a death benefit for themselves, they buy it for their loved ones. So that was the win, right?

SPEAKER_03 23:54

No.

SPEAKER_01 23:55

But the the whole concept of I need to control my business so that it doesn't control me, so I don't burn out, so I can do what I need to do in life, so that I don't get a divorce, so I can be with my family and see things that are going on. Heck, look at you, Mike. Uh, you know, you you now have a a little baby girl and uh you've been married for a little while. So you now have an ability to do things because there's control that you have versus things controlling you.

Control Your Business Or Burn Out

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Well, I'm lucky enough to work somewhere where I have the ability to have that control, number one. But yeah, I from a from a control side, I think there's there's either people that are under control and understand what's going on in their business, and then there's just people who are distracted. Because the amount of people that are that I talk to who are just looking for the place that's going to get them a lead, or they're just looking for places that they can find more clients, but they're there's nothing aligned. There is no direction, there is no mission. There is just where can I find the next sale? And there's recruiters all over online that are just pretty much promoting the same thing, like, oh, we got this lead, we got this lead, we'll help you, we'll help you write more applications. Or what is becoming a lot more prominent in this era is now like this bro culture where it's just like just sell more applications. But that is that is fun for about the first year. And this is actually a business. And can those people actually teach how to maintain structure, how to create direction, how to create clarity and actually create a business that you can sustain and grow without having to in that, be in that hustle culture because you don't know how to retain the business. That is, and I think that's been that's been, I think it's got a lot better now because we're getting more into this, like where we're shifting from that read a lot of applications to like you have to be more of that advisor. There's still a lot of talk on this side about just writing a bunch of applications, but I think the advisor position is coming more, and I I look at the advisor position to be much more under control. Like there is reasoning behind decisions. They're, they're making sure that they're doing what's best for their client and they have a direction on which what they how they want to do business and how they want to help their client. Now, how to help their client is, you know, how they're doing that is definitely arguable, but at least they have what they're it's in cement, it's in stone of what they want to do and how they want to help the people that they they promise to help. And I think everything else is just distraction. Unless you're sitting in like you're sitting in your chair, you know exactly what you're doing. You have your marketing campaigns, you have your high-retention strategy, you have how you're gonna run AAP. If you don't have any of that, you are just a person trying to write a bunch of apps and you are just distracted looking for the next best thing. The shiny object syndrome is what I guess what you what you'd like to call it. It's a pretty harsh way to say it, but it's after I'm doing this for seven years and talking to agents, thousands of agents around the country, like hear more of that than the I know exactly what I'm doing, have my plan, and can speak to it uh adequately. And that's those businesses are not run. Those are just whatever, whatever pot of gold you run into will just take you either in a good direction or right now in an uncertain market, right now in Medicare kind of shifting and changing right now, those are the ones you see in the forums who are selling their books, getting out of here because they just they just kind of ran into pots of gold. And if the pots of gold dried up, so did the business because they didn't have a direction. And that's why we're seeing this massive exodus. So people who actually do how to know how to run a business, geez, there's the I said in our own group, probably like after a major carry made an announcement about decommissioning plans, I said, geez, if you if you know how to run in our model and listen to what we teach you, like, geez, this is like the biggest growth opportunity you will have since the Baby Boomer generation started entering into turning 65. Like this is the next biggest opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

Yeah, and I don't think it's gonna end. I I I think next year is gonna be bigger than this year in the Medicare space. And I look at again, I mean, if we look at the people that can control their business, they can make that those shifts. Yeah. They make the shift a lot easier than the person that the market or the people are controlling.

SPEAKER_02 27:56

Because they make decisions. And once they decide to do something, they will do it. Not just, I'll try this, ultimately blame other people when it doesn't work out. It's never my fault. Like that's the biggest difference.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Yeah. Uh, and so yeah, I mean, I can go on to that topic and continue for forever. But again, I I want to go back to the, I think the last kind of the the tip to talk about, and it's capacity, right? So as that business owner, as even an individual, period. I don't care if you class, you think you're a business owner, you are. If you, if you are 1099 and insurance companies are paying you, or you know, whatever that is, you are in a you are a business and you're running a business if you don't know it or not. If you do a schedule C on your tax form, or you go have a S-corp, C Corp, whatever that is, you have a business. But no matter what, I don't care if you run a business and employee, we only have so much capacity for things. And the biggest one is the one that we all have that's equal for everybody, is time. I mean, I'm a self-confessed workaholic. You know, my mother-in-law made a comment that I'm a workaholic because it can helps me control my ADHD, which I I never thought about that until she said, and she's probably right. But it's I only have so much time and I have to balance my time with other obligations and other things I want to do, right? And I want to do more things, and so hence I did things to allow for that time, right? If if one thing I took away from COVID and seeing certain things happen is I I can never get the time back. I can't get time back with a loved one. I can't get my time back from anything. It's gone. Once used, it is gone forever. And so, are you in the position to continue to just chew up that time when you have no control? Um, if I'm gonna be everywhere, my marketing is less efficient. I also tell you, my time is usually less efficient. So, even even some of the best organizations that they market all over the place, and I'm not saying you can't. That's not the point of when we say that you can't be everywhere, it'll kill your business. But they have individuals that work in certain areas or in certain areas. So I remember talking to a friend of mine that was in a call center, and he said, Dave, because I was in over, you know, my license, I had license all over, but I had all the calls coming in from this geographic area because I only had so much time to learn the products and know what was going on.

SPEAKER_03 30:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 30:27

I didn't have the time to know all 50 states, all 50 areas, plus all the different carriers that were going on. And so, and again, that's not just Medicare, there's life insurance companies that are not in certain states.

SPEAKER_03 30:42

Right.

Hustle Culture Versus Real Direction

SPEAKER_01 30:43

Right. There are certain products that are not in certain states. So if you were gonna talk to a prospect, you're gonna look like a fool if you're gonna say, Oh yeah, we have this great cancer plan, and start talking about a cancer plan that's not in that state. Right. Um, because it's about a relationship at the end of the day, not not a product pushing, but you're gonna start devaluing yourself in the eyes of the individuals you're talking to. If you're gonna talk about things that don't even exist in that state.

Capacity Limits Time Money Brainpower

SPEAKER_02 31:10

Well, that's a good way to kind of just not look professional. And I from a from a time perspective, I mean, this we could this is a probably a whole episode in itself just to kind of talk about. Um, but I think anyone who's doing this business, unless they're like a Elon Musk where they can just work 24-7, 365, we all want to do other things. And I think at the same time, we all want to have a successful business in what we're trying to do. Ultimately, like there's got to be a determining factor of like what what is the highest reward for the amount of time I can put into this. And if that's if that aligns, great. If it doesn't, you have the opportunity to swing that or hire people to do other things. Like, but everyone only has a 24-hour period to get this work done to run a business. Really, with including eight hours of sleep, we only have really 16. And if you're including food, dinner, and all that stuff, we even have even less. Like there's there's a point of being efficient, there's a point of just being, you know, negligent and just doing working so much where the work quality of the work gets done. Uh quality work gets worse. So I think from a from a business perspective, if you can not try to be everywhere, like the amount of time focusing in a certain area, there'll be a greater reward by eons than if you try to take that time to pretty much go more surface level in a larger area. And we've talked about in the previous podcast about you know growing roots that are deeper and stronger than than trying to just lay along the surface. So I think the that that's really number one of the capacity time. Then there's two, which is like, I think another pretty obvious one is it's financial. It's money. Like we talked about the contracting. If you're trying to be trying to be everywhere, like you are already from a an appointments perspective, in greater debt. If you want to be a significant resource in that area where people look for you, that is two. That is financial and marketing, trying to get an amount of money into a certain area for you to become a known well resource. Well, you can't do that in a significant area, especially for the solo agents. If you're running for like a big agency, like the big guys, like, sure, that's much easier. They got a big budget financial or they've got investors in their pockets. Like, that's easy. But for the greatest majority of insurance agents in the entire country, the money, there is not, even Elon Musk, they have a budget. Like, whether he's got he's he's close to a trillion dollars net worth, he still has budget. He can't spend all of it, right? There's a determining factor of like there's only so much money we can work with. So, what amount of money can we use in a certain geographical area that will give us the biggest bang for our buck? And that's different between every insurance agent. And that conversation is very customized. So if you're going to market it in again, your state, Midwest, East Coast, whatever, your geographical like local area, you got to see what that looks like. Cause that's where you can, you'll be out of this industry extremely fast if you get that wrong.

SPEAKER_01 34:06

Right.

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Because most of us are leaving jobs where we don't have a whole lot of money. I left a$90,000 job a year at the age of 24 years old, which back in the, you know, back in 24, I was like, I never thought I'd make that much money in my lifetime because my parents didn't make a whole lot of money. And I left and I had pretty much next to nothing in marketing budget. So if I were to spend a ton of money that didn't go anywhere, like I would have been out extremely fast if you get that wrong.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

Yeah. Uh yeah, I I think you nailed it, right? I mean, so we only have so much money or access to so much money. Uh, we all, and it's different for every individual, right? And uh not but it's not just the access to it, but what do you want to commit to that? I mean, I think there's a lot of issues, right? I'm not gonna go down too deep into those things. We'll talk about that another time. But uh at the end of the day, even to the people that get free leads, they're really not free, by the way, just so you know that, right? It's gonna cost you. It costs you something to do what you do, be it gas, be it a phone bill, be it whatever, electricity. People go, Oh, it costs me nothing. I'm just sitting at my house. Well, no, at least if you talk to a CPA, you're probably writing off some of your electric bill, right? Because it's a cost to your business. That's why the government says you can do it. So there is a cost to it, maybe minor, maybe whatever, but there is a there's only so much money and there's money you're putting in your business. We put money into, even if you're not in a business, you put money as an employee, right? As an employee of anything, you put money into you getting to work, are you working? People don't always recognize that. So one of the conversations I had with my wife when she was looking at uh an opportunity of going to work in downtown Chicago. Well, then the question was, well, how are you gonna go to work? Are you gonna go drive and take the toll way, which is expensive? Or are you going to go on the train or you know, downtown Chicago, most of the places you have to pay for parking? Um, or when you got to the train station, you're gonna taxi or Uber or Lyft or whatever to the your office.

SPEAKER_02 36:10

Like there's a cost to that like vacation travel that does logistically a logistical nightmare, to say the very least. That's that's that's cost. That's time and money.

Share The Show And Wrap-Up

SPEAKER_01 36:22

Yeah, time and money, time and money. And I think a lot, and definitely there's a lot more dealing with capacity. I I think the one other one that I want to bring up is is your brain power, meaning how much, how much can you actually put in your memory at one time and shove in there? I think I have a pretty good memory. However, I also have a limited brain power. And you can train your brain to have a larger capacity, but there's oh much, so much your brain is going to be able to store at one time. And if all of a sudden you're everywhere and a major shift takes place or something happens, how much brain power am I going to have to remember all of those things? And so, and I'm a big proponent of uh, I really believe an individual that is using their brain a lot, they also it wears them out. Like that, that is exhausting when you're filling your brain. That is an exhausting thing. So if you're sitting there, because it's the recall, it's not just again, memory isn't just the storing of it, but it's the recalling of it. I can I can put things in a file cabinet, but if I don't know where I put that in the file cabinet, it doesn't, it does me no good. Right. And that's really the memory. It's both. It's filing it in the place that you know where it is. And that is a lot of time and effort, and it can be exhausting. So, from a capacity standpoint, really think about you know that the time, the money, the brain power, the energy that you're putting into what you're doing. And I truly believe at the end of everything, going back to the whole entire title, right? Being everywhere will actually kill your business. And there's a reason why there's less than one percent of the insurance agents that truly what I call truly make it in this business. I'm not talking about the people that are still licensed year after year, making a couple thousand dollars or thirty thousand dollars a year, but the ones that are truly making it, there's less than one percent. It's because they get this wrong, most of them. Uh, you know, um, we've been going out for a while. I think we should probably wrap it up because we have so much to talk about. We can continue going. Uh, we don't even have to ever end these things. Mike and I had these conversations on a regular basis.

SPEAKER_02 38:35

I think we've mentioned on the other podcast, I mean, we do not pay any, there's no paid marketing that goes into this podcast. We just, we really just promote this maybe on our social medias. It only really grows if you find value in the information you want to share with a friend, colleague, keep following the show. I mean, we're on all major platforms. You talk about Apple Podcasts, Spotify. Uh, you can find us on YouTube where you can see the film version of this. Um, but we're we're trying to teach insurance business owners, you know, what we've gone through, personal experience to kind of help you go from being unknown to unstoppable. We really appreciate you listening. Again, share with a friend, colleague, maybe not your competitor, because, you know, well, then they're gonna be learning this stuff too. So maybe, maybe keep it to yourself for a little bit. But thank you again for listening, and uh, we will see you guys on the next one.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

Take care.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

Bye. 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.