You Can Bear The Weight, But Can Your Business?

When your agency finally feels smooth, that can be the most dangerous moment of all. The outreach feels easier, the results feel predictable, and you start thinking about coasting, but comfort is often the first step toward stalled growth. We share a simple rule we’ve learned the hard way: when the weight gets easy, add more weight. That mindset shift can change how you scale your Medicare book, your insurance lead generation, and your daily execution.

We walk through the practical filters that make “going all in” a smart decision instead of a risky one. Not every opportunity is for you, and chasing every new vendor, marketing campaign, or referral partnership creates chaos fast. We talk about why switching strategies usually causes a performance dip, how to stay selective, and why boredom is a terrible reason to change what’s already working.

Then we get real about energy and burnout. If your growth plan drains you, you won’t do it consistently, and consistency is the whole game in insurance sales and agency marketing. We discuss auditing your week, identifying what actually makes you money, and delegating admin work and draining tasks so you protect your time, your family, and your mental bandwidth. The goal is simple: commit hard to one or two channels that fit you, then scale them with confidence.

If this helps, subscribe, share the podcast with an agent who needs it, and leave a quick review so more insurance agents can find the show. What’s the one part of your business that feels “easy” right now?

Transcript

Unknown To Unstoppable Setup

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.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

Welcome to the Invisible Agent Podcast. My name is Mike Sorensen. Just have me today, but episode by episode, we're teaching you how to go from unknown to unstoppable. And today we're gonna have a very fun topic, but something I on some way, shape, or form talk about uh each week with insurance business owners, and that is how to know when to go all in. Um, and I start off by saying when the weight gets easy, add more freaking weight. Because you know when you're supposed to go all in, it's when the weight gets easy. That's when you want to start adding more. If it feels comfortable, if it feels predictable, if you feel what you're doing is extremely manageable, that's not the sign to start holding yourself back or go on cruise control. So today we're gonna break down when it is a good time to know when you should actually start going all in.

The Weightlifting Rule For Growth

SPEAKER_01 1:20

Um and it's very similar. I that's why I add with the we start with that hook there. Why we talk about uh lifting, I want to use that as kind of like the metaphor when it comes to your business because I think it's perfect. Um, when you when you first start getting into lifting, if anyone's gone to the gym or even running lifting, you use the same thing, it feels kind of brutal. Just like when you first start running your business, start, you know, start doing client acquisition, marketing, all that stuff. Every rep, every time you give outreach, kind of feels like a battle in the beginning. But after a while, something crazy starts to happen. It's that same, those same reps, the same actions due every single day, that are trying to produce results. Starts getting easier. That the weight you're trying to lift the next time you go to the gym seems a just a tad bit lighter. And every time each more you go, each time you go, it just keeps getting lighter and lighter. Now, no growth happens when you are comfortable, things are predictable, things are super manageable, and you're on cruise control. For a lot of you who are maybe a smaller, a smaller business, maybe smaller shop, solo entrepreneur, um, that is not the time to just let this thing go on autopilot. This is the time in this metaphor to add more freaking weight because you will it's like it's like progressive overload uh of your business when it comes to the weightlifting world. If you have a predictable way where you're getting in clients, or maybe your marketing is starting to work really successfully, it's not that's not the time to really evaluate and say, like, hey, things are good, let's just keep things the way they are and just keep doing the same volume. I'll tell you right now, I run into a ton of business owners that find a way to start actually successfully finding clients and they just stay at that level. Because, you know, one, maybe they're they're satisfied, which is great, you won. But if you're trying to understand, like, when is there a time to kind of you know get the most leverage and start tilting the lever in your favor to start doing more? It's it's actually at the times when you sit down and say, like, I'm out, how much more can I be doing right here? Because I got a predictable system, I got this is working super effectively, this marketing campaign is working super effectively. Now this is this is the time where you can start to identify that when it is easy, that is when you go hard. When the weight gets really easy, that is when you add more weight. That's where progression happens, that's where growth happens. Because staying comfortable will not build you strength. If I go to the gym every day and just put, let's just say like a hundred tons on a bar and just do that every single day I go to the gym, like I will never increase my strength. Like, I may tone my arms, may look maybe nice after a while, but I will not build strength because I'm doing the same weight. I'm not giving my muscles anymore to stimulate them to grow. Just like you. If you just want to keep bringing in the same amount of people, same every month, every month, year after year, that's great. We're in the insurance game. Residuals will obviously build up. But if you're really looking to like go all in and grow the business, that is when you actually decide to say, hey, this has worked really successful. Excuse me, this has worked super successful. Let's just figure out a way to go all in with these particular strategies so we can grow this thing to the moon. Lifting weights and growing a business are the metaphor is kind of perfect, so the business is going to work the same exact way. So hopefully by the end of this episode, you would get the confidence to identify what's going on in your world, in your business that is easy, that is delivering results that you can go all in on and actually pull yourself away all the things that are actually draining you and maybe triggering you, maybe slowing the growth, progression of your business. Identify the things that are actually just not working for you. Which

Stop Forcing Bad Strategies

SPEAKER_01 5:17

starts by uh point number one. Do not try to force a square peg into a round hole. And this, you know, metaphor seems fairly obvious. Like it's impossible to do so unless you have crazy brute force strength and a crazy strong object. It's not going to work. So not every opportunity is going to be for you. It may be pushed like it's going to be for you, maybe sold to you like it's perfect for you, but maybe it's not, because there is always going to be something new and something shiny for you to look at to detract you from what already is working. It happens time and time again. Every year, there seems to be a new vendor, a new marketing campaign, a new strategy that seems to be the new age wave to uh get clients or to grow your business when any of those strategies, even the old ones, will work if you just continuously do them and get better month over month. So understanding that you don't have to pick every single opportunity. Being selective is actually the greatest way to grow your business. Making less saying yes, less times will actually grow your business. Um, and and not every strategy is gonna fit you because there will always be a different way to do old things, they're trying to put a new foil on make something shiny out of something that has already been tried true and tested that you're already doing. And I talked about in other podcasts that when you try to change and do something new, you will see a decrease in performance for a good period of time. So if you are going to make a change, whatever growth pattern you are currently, trajectory you're on currently right now, if you're going to make a change, it you will see a decrease in performance, but you better be able to almost guarantee me that your increase in performance better outtrend what you're currently doing right now for it to be a justifiable decision to do. In simple terms, if you're going to change, it better yield you way better results than what you're currently doing right now and the path you're going on. Because ultimately, if you are going to change, this more likely will feel forced, it may be frustrating, and it may feel unnatural. That doesn't mean necessarily you shouldn't do it, but it means you should go slow and figure it out, make tweaks and try to make it better. Or if truly necessary, if what you're currently working, doing right now isn't working, that is when you make the shift. But for a lot of people, you don't have to be doing new things, you just have to be doing what you're currently doing more efficient and better. The the amount of people who are truly just not cut out for something that they're currently doing is very far few in between. It does happen, but make sure that you don't just get distracted because what you're currently doing right now is just boring to you. And you just want to change it for the sheer fact that you just want to be entertained. That does not grow your business. That is just a distraction, and you will do you will decrease whatever you're doing consistently until you figure out something that works that you're just getting bored with. And if you're bored with it, that is honestly, you know, the term is pretty overly played, but it's like that's where the work begins. Like that's where the thing, when that gets tough to be able to consistently show up every day and be excited about something that's just not exciting anymore, that is tough. But ultimately, if it's producing results, that is the right thing to be doing. Number

Find Your Fault Line Before Burnout

SPEAKER_01 8:50

two is understand your fault line. So a fault line is just a point at which you come to where you just crack. You can't go forward, you can't go any further. So for those of you who decide to make a change and you say, Hey, what I'm currently doing right now isn't yielding me any results, I need to do something different. Remember, there is always a different way to approach things, and this might be an option you have to take. If it feels forced, make sure you uh go slow and adjust. But even bigger, the new thing you're doing, and this is something I'm super adamant about, and you know, this this could be controversial in some respects. Whatever you decide to do when it comes to growing your business, I don't care which way you do it, is it different, marketing campaigns, referrals, online, doesn't matter. Make sure it does not drain you. Make sure it gives it, it doesn't set you off balance, make sure it doesn't trigger you because you want to avoid burnout. Because ultimately, if it's a money-making activity, you want this to fulfill you. You want to, the type of marketing you want to do, the type of way you want to add clients to your book, you actually thoroughly want to enjoy doing because the odds of you doing it long enough for it to work are a extreme likelihood versus things you don't enjoy doing that actually drain you that you're not excited about, you will do far less than if something you do enjoy. Now, sometimes the thing that actually works out the best, you just might not be aligned with. And some are you say, well, you should do that. If that brings you the most clients, then just deal with it, suck it up. But you will do it, you will not do it consistent enough or put enough money towards it and put enough time or energy towards it if you do not enjoy doing it. So I'm a huge proponent of when you are marketing your business and trying to grow that you do something that actually you enjoy and aligns with you. Because at the end of the day, if you do something that doesn't align with you or you do not enjoy, it will just drain you to the point where you have nothing left, you're burned out, and you don't want to do it anymore. And if you stop doing something consistently enough, what are you doing? You're just stunting your own growth. Now, I'm not here to say like everything about business has to fulfill you. I'm not saying that. Because not everything is going to fulfill you as a business owner. There are things that will drain you, there are things that will trigger you. But what I'm telling you right now, the thing that makes you money shouldn't be one of those things. You need to manage the things that drain you and pull energy from you and try to delegate as much of that away from you. I have a great example. Talked to a business owner at the end of last week, actually at Friday-ish afternoon, and they were discussing uh, I I've never I've never felt more drained than I do right now. It's like, and she's written more business than she's ever had right now. When she first came to us, she had in the mid-50s of clients back in 2024, and going into now at the end of your towards the end of 2025, she's surpassed, she's looking at surpassing over 200 clients at the end of 2025. And she's saying, I've never felt more drained, but yet she's written more business. I was like, Well, you know, do you like marketing? Do you like, oh my god, I love working with clients, I love meeting them, I love scheduling appointments. It's like, okay, then what is draining? And she listed off like a number of things that like she has to do that she's just currently frustrated with. That is the self-awareness that you need because ultimately all the things that she labeled to herself that she hates doing are all things that could be easily delegated to somebody else if she hired somebody. Again, part-timer, full-timer, depends on your situation, kind of you know, where you're at as far as like income and also time allotment. But all those things weren't like things that she has to do in the business. But ultimately, there were also things in there that don't make her money that she enjoyed doing. So, for a lot of you, when you're looking at what you enjoy doing, what you don't enjoy doing, try to segment out all the things that you don't enjoy doing and give it to somebody else to do. If you're just starting out, you're just kind of have to kind of unfortunately just kind of have to push through the barriers at the very beginning because ultimately you have to get enough money into the door to be able to pay for somebody. But I I gave her, I gave her a very simple exercise to say, like, you need to understand where you're spending your time, which fulfills you, and spend a majority of time, the time doing that, and find a chunk of time where you do all the things that drain you. Because ultimately, if you're going throughout the week and your draining activities are pulling away from the things that make you money, in between the times that you're supposed to be making money, if they're like sprinkled into your day, you're not being as effective or as efficient as a business owner. And when you're trying to go all in, it is super hard to go all in if you're sprinkling all the things that pull and distract you away from doing the one thing that you should be doing. That's making money. So if you're just if you're figuring out right now, one figuring out what strategy, what aligns with you, or if you are currently having one that already finds one, good. That's the first thing. Number two is find a way to get everything off your not for everybody, find a way to get everything off your plate that doesn't fulfill you or make you money. That's number two. Number three

Delegate What Drains You

SPEAKER_01 14:19

is don't drain your bucket. This is a big one because for a lot of you are watching this. I I mean if you if you have an agency and you have a lot of employees, this is for you too. If you're a single standalone agent, this is this is even probably more uh geared towards you because you don't have any other employees. Your time, energy, and mental bandwidth are limited, and that's for everybody. I don't care if you're Mark Zuckerberg, I don't care if you're Elon Musk. They only have so much time, energy, and mental bandwidth that they can use in a given 24-hour period to help grow their business. So for you, I encourage you to audit your week. Just like I gave in the previous example of that agent that I've been working with for about a year now, that she's now, you know, she's gone from mid-50s clients over 200 clients in this past year. She did it in a way that now she hits to a point where she now has to audit her life. Because before she had to grow to a point where like she got to a point where she hit her ceiling. For you, you might be at that ceiling already, or maybe you're already past that ceiling and you're still struggling. Find everything that drains you, find everything that makes you money, and find everything you enjoy doing that maybe doesn't make you money but also fulfills you in what you do. And segment out that time and make sure that you are not draining your time because ultimately you have a family, you have potential kids, you have a husband, you have a wife. Like you can't let the business pull all the goodness from you. So when you get back home, you give your family the scraps. Because I speak from personal experience. When I first got started in Medicare when I was writing business, I was on the road every single day. I was gone for 12 to 13 hours, 14 hours a day, and it ruined me. It literally ruined me. Like my health was bad, I was eating out all the time. I got home, I was crabby, I was cranky, I didn't want to do anything because I was just driving, I was at appointments, I was talking to people all day. Like I was not good at that point in my life. To it was my you know, girlfriend, now fiance, now wife. Um, at the time, I gave her the scraps because I wasn't able to look at myself in the mirror and delegate or get rid of all things that drain me. I I at the point I kind of had to do everything I had to do there. But if you're at a point now where you have the money to be able to hire somebody, do it. You'll make the relationships with your family, the relationship with your friends, the relationship with your kids, husband, spouse, wife, whatever, they will become better. So I think it is a worthy investment because all the things that now drain you aren't going to drain you, and you get to make more money and spend more time with the people you care about. Like it's a net positive. It's a net gain in pretty much on every angle you look at it. Yes, you're spending money, but you're getting so much on the back end. Because again, if you pour everything, every ounce of yourself in your business, there's nothing left to give. And when there's nothing left to give, you'll lose more than just your business. Okay. It's very important. So going all in, you have to be very aligned with how you have these things aligned. Because if they're not, you will lose more than just money. You might lose, you know, kids, you might lose spouses, right? You don't want to do that. So protect your bucket and guard your energy. Your energy for you listening, and I'm I've I've probably said it 80 times in this actual podcast, but your job is to make the company money. You are the biggest asset to the company. So you doing anything else but that is, in my opinion, a net negative. And anything that should be done that is draining or admin work, tasks, service calls, like find a way to hire somebody who can do that for you. If that's on a very limited part-time basis, or if that's country full-time, good. That is what you should be doing. And all that draining energy you're you don't have to do anymore, put it back in the business or put it towards your family. Take them on a trip. I mean, it might be one of like cut out work early. I'm I'm up here in Wisconsin, cut out work early, go up to Wisconsin Dells, go during the summertime, tell you with your kids, take your wife on a date. All right, that's I think that's the things that especially for me in this business now and my previous business, like I spend so much time focusing on the things that help make money and drive the business when like other things get pulled away. So big big thing that I would take forward is the understanding your week on where you can align all of your ad time and energy so you have something for home. So that's number three. Don't drain your bucket.

Say No So You Can Commit

SPEAKER_01 19:02

Number four, know when to say no and know when to go all in. So this is where this is the juicy stuff. So it might sound great because you're networking, because you're talking to vendors, maybe you're talking to carriers, and they start giving you a ton of opportunities. Like, oh, we have this pharmacy open up, or oh, we just have a new marketing campaign just opened up, or I need to introduce you to all these different finance advisors because I believe they can help you out. Again, these are all potentially great opportunities. Saying yes to everything is not a strength, it will just create chaos. And for those of you who are just starting out, sometimes going through this at the very beginning is okay because you need to know what's gonna what you're good at and what is actually gonna yield you business. And that's when you start like going down the funnel and refining what you do. For those of you who are already writing business and maybe just be struggling, it's probably because you're either doing nothing or you're trying to do too much and say yes to everything, which you have actually no direction. You're saying yes to a bunch, but it's actually not yielding you anything and actually stretching yourself very, very, very thin in the meantime. Growth comes from being selective. And I talked about before, like actually, you saying yes less will actually grow your business. And there was a super I heard it on a podcast uh probably about six months ago. It was hilarious, but it was talking about like business owners in in general, and it was a great example. And he he said, Did you ever hear about the guy who got rich day trading, drop shipping, selling insurance, flipping houses, and also doing life coaching? No, because the person who does that isn't going to be successful at all because they're kind of stretched themselves way too thin. Now, that may not be a the a perfect metaphor for like people in the Medicare insurance business, but it actually kind of is because we try to do so. If a carry has an opportunity, we say yes to. It may be outside of our market, maybe outside of our strength, maybe outside of our avatar, but we say yes because it's a free opportunity. There may be a new marketing uh uh marketing marketing campaign from a vendor that they say is super successful. Leads will convert over 40 to 50 percent proven. And you're like, oh, let's go throw money at that, but we don't stay consistent enough because maybe it's not going to yield those 40% that was advertised. So you dump a bunch of money in and you don't get any ROI out. Right? Or it's those financial ties you got introduced to where they said, Oh, you need to talk to them. They got a lot of retirees, but when you go meet with them, he's not interested. Uh he's he's interested in working with you, but only if you give referrals back. So now we have to understand again, we have to look at the opportunity and ultimately is it aligned with us and is it it actually going to yield the results that we want? And can we actually commit to servicing back? Okay. But the more decisions we make and say yes to, the more we should really have to put wholeheartedly a full effort behind. And and for me myself, I said yes to uh very little at the very beginning. But I sucked myself thin over of territory. And what I found would working with agents what I was training with, when I was like sitting at appointments while I was calling with them, scheduling appointments, and they told me about all the opportunities that they're saying yes to, because people are trying to help them. People will try to help you, yes. But you will you will do a disservice to the person that is giving you the offer if when they give you an opportunity, you don't go full head of steam into that because no one wants to do anything half-assed. And I think we say a lot of yes, we say yes to a lot of things. We don't realize we're actually giving it a half-assed effort. And we're not going all in because anyone who's if there's anything worth doing, you will do it 100% and you will do it longer than a few months. And in my experience, I see a lot of people give it only a few months and say, oof, that was a waste of time. I mean, I threw one mailer out there, or I met with the financial one time. He said he was gonna send me referrals, but he never sent me anything again. He hasn't sent me any referrals in six months. I met with him one time, or that he uh uh that that carrier uh pharmacy they got me into, all the leads were bad. Like people were just asking about PvP reviews, like yeah, but you only went there one time, or you did it only one time, or you waited only a few months for leads. Like, if you would have given it 100% of your effort, I believe, you probably would have got different results. But because you said yes to too many things, you couldn't give it 100%, and that's the problem. When you when you find when you actually find things that align with you, your strengths, what you actually enjoy doing, and they're sustainable and they're strategic with what you're trying to aim for, that is the perfect time where you can actually decide to go all in. But until then, if you're making too many yeses, it's harder to go all in to all in 10 different things. It's a lot easier to go all in when you say yes to one or two. So when it comes to your strategy right now, identify the one to two things that are making you the most successful right now. And again, I'm not saying that you have to do this forever. I'm saying if it's successful right now, I assume that you can probably find a way to go all in with those one or two and just do more of them to find more clients. And the moment you do that, I probably can almost guarantee you write more business because you're giving it the time and energy it rightfully deserves rather than going to 50 other directions and leaving this off to the wayside. Which leads me to my last point. And I kind of alluded to at the very beginning. When

When It Gets Easy Go Hard

SPEAKER_01 24:27

it gets easy, that is when you go hard. That is when you add more freaking weight. Because comfort is the enemy of growth. The moment we are the most comfortable, and again, I want to replay this. If you're comfortable right now and you don't want to go hard because you're at a good income, you're at good renewals, and you're getting the amount of business you would like, that you can live a great life with your family, have vacations, make enough money to be comfortable, this is that then this is that's great. You won. Like, like you should be teaching the world, right? That is awesome. But for the rest of you who are just not satisfied with where you're at right now, and you're trying to really narrow down like where should I go from here? The moment we kind of go through these steps that I just talked about, the moment we know what's draining us, we say yes to the right things, we say no to the wrong things, and we have one or two things that are working that we know we can that are bringing enough clients, those things we identify as we go all in because the moment you stay comfortable too long, you potentially see a decrease in performance and you start not losing clients, but we're in the replacement business. People aren't gonna live so long, like they will pass away, and you have to replace them. So finding more people is important. If the rep is light and the work is smooth, and if the pressure feels low, that is not the time to relax. This is the time we should push harder for what you want. Level up your standards and add more weight to your business and try to jam more into the business because then you'll find that you can actually do a lot more than you think. And if you can't, you'll find something that's broken and be able to fix it to then jam even more into the system. So that is a super, really a super like easy. I say super simple way to do this. I would say it's easy. Super simple way to do this is to start finding out how you can potentially do more of what you're do more and actually grow your business by just finding the one or two things that work. But it takes figuring out what works for you, figuring out what trains you, how to delegate that away, to figure out how can you spend your time doing the one or two things that drive the most sales and do more of it. That is your way to know when it's good to go all in. These are kind of the the one, two, three, four, five big steps that I would be looking at if you're in business in general, but in the Medicare insurance space, like those are the things I'd be looking at right now to figure out where you should go from here. And some of you are probably at step one, and some of you are probably at step four. But if you are at the point where you're at step five where you are making what feels like money hand over fist without a whole lot of work, you have two choices. Stay where you're at and do what you're doing, because you love it, and you're comfortable, and you won. Or you look at it from like, um, this is this is how I identify Hobby Bro. This is my all-in time, this is the moment to do it. Just do it right now. It's kind of like that quote of don't you wish you knew the good were the good old days when you were in them? Like, this is your time to self-reflect on the business and say, like, oh, I'm in the good old days right now. Like, this is when it's been it it's been easy and you know, in the it's been good. Like, that's a time to start really, really, really going. Um the last thing I'll give to you is like kind of like a a memento, I guess, is it's something I've heard from a business icon in the space is when it gets hard, go slow. Like that is when you really start to pick apart, try to make better, tweak, fix. Then when that's the when it starts, it starts from going hard, it starts from when it goes from it's hard and you're going slow, the moment it starts ramping up and then now it becomes easy, that's when you go fast. So this is the one thing I will tell you is if you can identify these you know one through five steps in your own business right now, that's how you figure out when to go all in. And if you do so, I believe you will write more business and take your business to the next level. So,

Share The Show And Send Topics

SPEAKER_01 28:33

again, thank you for your time and listening. We do not promote this podcast, we don't do paid ads. We essentially share this out into the ether. You listen if you find valuable, you share with other people that you think would also think this is valuable as well. And yeah, that's how this essentially will grow. But this is this whole podcast is done pretty much made for for you. But for the agent who is struggling, who isn't satisfied, who may not be visible in their market, who wants to become more known and go from unknown to unstoppable, where you would essentially have to derail your business on purpose for it to slow down. That's how scary good we want your business to be. So thank you again for listening to this episode. I hope you got a lot of nuggets out of it. Uh, please share with us if uh you find it super valuable some of this information you're doing. If there's other topics that you feel that you're running into that you need help on, shoot it over to us as well. We'd love to make uh we'd love to make a lot of content out of what you guys are looking for too. So thank you so much again for your time today, and we will see you on the next one.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

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.