Hide & Seek Is For Kids, Not Your Business

Your prospects are Googling you right now, and the results are forming an opinion before you ever get a call. We dig into the reality that the internet does not forget: every review, post, and profile detail becomes part of your digital footprint, and that footprint can either create instant trust or create instant doubt.

We share a story about how a well-built online presence can keep generating Medicare leads years after active marketing stops, then zoom out to the bigger lesson for insurance agents and agency owners. Referrals still get verified online, and “I cannot find you” is a silent deal killer. We break down what makes you credible in search results, why an empty LinkedIn or a weak Google Business Profile repels business, and how reviews and testimonials act as social proof that sells for you.

We also tackle the mindset traps: fear of being seen, fear of being wrong, and the pressure to look perfect. Our take is simple: educate instead of brag, publish useful content instead of waiting, and remember that done is better than perfect. If you want better lead flow, stronger conversion from referrals, and a reputation that compounds through local SEO, this conversation gives you a clear starting point.

Subscribe to Invisible Agent Podcast, share this with one agent who is still playing hide and seek online, and leave a review if it helped. What is the first profile you are going to improve today?

Transcript

Digital Footprint And Real Fear

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 another episode of the Invisible Agent Podcast, teaching you how to go from unknown to unstoppable in your insurance business. My name is Mike Sorensen, and we're going to start off today by talking about how the internet does not forget every review, every post, every video, every customer interaction. It's all part of your digital footprint. And for some of the some of you, you may be very excited about that opportunity, or some of you may be kind of squirmish about that, because some of you may not be ready to have your uh your online reputation be inside the spotlight for a number of different reasons, but I can have a very good understanding of kind of why you're scared because I also too was scared. And uh some of the things that I felt was uh I was scared to be seen. I was but for whatever reason, I was scared that I might be wrong. For some reason, anything I posted online or any any customers that would ask questions, like if I post something, it was I right or was I wrong at the very beginning. Um, maybe afraid of calling, uh getting called out by somebody if I put content online or if I have reviews, if I ask for reviews, people might you know call me out online, or uh if I put out any information on like my business, maybe content that my friends or family would see, and I'd be scared um because they make fun of me. And uh, you know, that's gonna happen, but ultimately it's for your business. Like you have to grow. People's online reputation is their biggest advantage, but also could be your biggest threat to your business if it's done improperly. Today we're gonna talk about a number of different points. So by the end of this video, you're gonna at least have the confidence to move forward and use your digital and online presence to your advantage instead of you kind of sitting on your heels and just watching everybody blow right by you because they're

A Website That Brings Leads

SPEAKER_01 2:19

taking advantage of uh the online world and you are just not doing much with it. So, a quick story. Um, it was it was actually quite funny. Um, Dave tells uh Dave, the president CEO of Family Financial Solutions Group, he told a really fun story about how he still, I mean, to this day, he has not actively marketed his business, his Medicare business in years, longer than I have. And he still gets calls from Google about working with him as like a to get Medicare through him. He tells us a fun story about how a client called and said, Hey, I found you on Google, and they say you're the best Medicare agent. And it's funny because you know, I don't know if there's a whole lot of places online that actually say like they, you know, X person is the best. But what's funny is his online presence was so good. His website was so good, his reviews were so good, his testimonies were so good. He had blog, he was written, he was writing blogs for years leading up to when he stopped marketing his business. It's not because it was like, you know, he was bragging online about how good he was, or that he had like ads still going. It was that his digital reputation was still intact after years and years and years of not actually doing much with it. But it was just so well built at the very beginning, and there's so much good information in it, it's still working every single day. Online does not sleep, you know. Like I say, New York never sleeps, like your online presence never sleeps whatsoever. So anything that is posted on there will continue to be seen for years and years and years. That's just the modern world limit we're we're living in right now, is if you put it up online, it's gonna stay there forever until you take the until you manually take that down. But even bigger point is they called Dave and said, Hey, I heard you're the best. Like they didn't get a referral from somebody else, they just went online and read information about Dave. And people trust other people's recommendation more than they will trust you. So to put it another way, people will trust how who like people will trust the people that have worked with you versus you telling them how your experience is going to be. So for anyone who's not online or not doesn't have a Facebook, LinkedIn, or any way to uh demonstrate that you are in a business that is open for business, people will trust Google more than they will actually trust you. And your online presence will speak for you. Whether that is a good thing and whether for most of you, whether that could be a potential bad thing. Uh, because I I run into a ton of agents all the time, uh just initially working with them and then also just like finding people to work with where they have social media profiles, they have an online presence, but it looks like a serial killer is running their website. Like they have no photo, they have one job maybe updated in the past like decade. There were no explanation, no about me, no like bio, like nothing. But I mean, it is their name. It some of them may have a profile picture. When people say, Oh, I have an online, yeah, I have a Facebook page, I have a LinkedIn, I don't really use it that much. Like, that is your biggest tool and your biggest advantage right now in 2020, going into 2026. Like, there is not a heavier thing to be doing in 2026 than putting a lot of time and effort into your online presence. Okay, so again, by the end of this episode, I hope you'll have the confidence and at least some some direction or know-how where to go to how to get this started and how to move it in the right direction. I think we talked about it in one of our first episodes about agents um playing hide and seek. To and you a lot of agents, again, it is not your fault. Like a lot of people when you get into insurance, just tell you, hey, look at all these product brochures, try to understand the product, and then try to sell to your friends and family. Write 200 people die and go sell friends and family too. That is like a lot of onboarding in a lot of the insurance industry. And no one is talking about like, hey, like it's really easy to get an online profile and reach out to people, or at least make content, or have some sort of documented area where people tell other people about how good you are, like how easy that actually is

Empty Profiles Kill Trust

SPEAKER_01 6:25

to set up because it's mostly free. And they're hiding, you're you're hiding, but you really don't know it. So it's not really your fault, but it is the problem that you have to deal with. So you may be hiding your business and hiding yourself and keeping yourself a secret and just expecting people to somehow magically find you. And some of this is a choice, and some of this, some of this is something you're just not aware of. I actually spoke with a business owner actually this week actually about this very thing. He said, I just take referrals. Awesome. But when I look you up, I can't find you. I can't find a Facebook page, I can't find a LinkedIn page. I do see a Google business profile, but in my opinion, it's just not optimized. I think it's worth attracting, I think it's like pushing people away more than it is attracting people. So if you are one of those people who are watching this that are predominantly just relying on referrals, wouldn't it be a lot easier to get referrals if you had some sort of documented capacity of you doing the job extremely well? Like if that's having a LinkedIn Facebook, that's optimized. If that's having a Google Business profile, that is optimized. And we're not going to cover how to optimize profiles today, but making sure that they look the best. So when if someone lands on them, that they look at you as a credible resource, not just an empty pig. And that gets into some of my arguments about people doing like Facebook ads and stuff again, a whole different sonnet about people trying to do that. Um, but for you, your prospects are trying to find you. Like some of the most, if you get you, there's free tools out there. You can look up some of the most Google, Googleable things in uh in Google uh on your like specific topic, whether that's Medicare, whether that's life insurance, like you can type in like what are the most good Google things about Medicare? And some of the most Google things are like Medicare agent in X town, like Medicare agents near me. Like those are some of the most Google things right now when it comes to Medicare specifically. So prospects are trying to find you, they're trying to research you, they're trying to read about you. But if you cannot be found, they will not trust you. A fun story, really off uh off the off the topic of Medicare. But uh, I was actually going to speak um at a NABIP conference

The Flat Tire Google Lesson

SPEAKER_01 8:37

down in Tennessee uh about a year and a half ago. And it was an August, sweltering heat. And I blew a flat tire about I was in Arkansas. Don't ask me how I got in Arkansas, I'm going to Memphis. I was going the back way, but I was. And I was about 60 to 70 miles outside of Memphis. And I blew a flat tire, went off the side of the road, and I mean I'm 60, 70 miles literally from any sign of life. So I called the tow, I called uh someone to come out and change the tire because the bolts were like I was driving, I drove for like 11 hours that day, the bolts were just weren't coming off. I was it was impossible. So I sat in my car, waited for some assistants to come, like AAA to come and actually like change the tire for me. And this literally the sweet, I mean it was like probably two hours before they were near to me. And this sweet old lady drove around the drove around my car, parked uh the and came at my windshield. Again, this is on a freeway, like literally on a freeway where cars are going in Arkansas. If you imagine the 70 mile, they're going like 90. Old lady comes out, gets to my window, and asks, hey, are you okay? And I said, Yeah, I'm buying, just blew a tire, just waiting for a tow truck. And she asked, How long is it gonna be? And I said, uh, they said it's gonna be about two hours. She's like, let me see something. Goes to her car, grabs her phone, comes back to my car, and starts Googling near tow trucks and actually tire repair near where we were. And I I don't want to like profile somebody, but she was an older woman. Like she was probably in her 60s, maybe early 70s, trying to find a tow truck using her phone. That just tells me, this is a great lesson. That just tells me that your prospects, when they have a problem, guess the first place they're probably going. Whether it's some can argue it could be their friends and family to figure out who they worked with, or they're picking up the very one thing that is near them, their cell phone, and Googling and searching who can they work with. And guess what? Whoever has the most trust online, so the most testimonies, the most reviews, maybe the also the most demonstrated capacity of doing the job, whether that's content, information, education on their profile, I believe they're getting the business. And the ones who aren't on there or if they are on there, just have empty profiles, you are losing consistently. And you don't know it. So hearing this from me, you're probably saying, like, oh, I still get referrals. Yeah, but probably not as much as you could, because you're not, you don't have the demonstrated capacity online to show you can do the job. You we can tell ourselves all day long, like, my customers love me. I do a really good job for my customers. Yes, you do, but only your customers know that. And only your customers can tell your other their other friends and family at a rate, and for most people, like most businesses cannot, especially in Medicare, cannot survive only on referral. And if you do, congratulations, you are in the rarity because every other business that I've worked with, they need to consistently market to be able to do so. When we're when you're looking at, when you're looking at, if you are one of those like, I just operate on referrals, tell me who's gonna win. The person who's actually going to be looking at their online profile, who it's built out, has a lot of information, has testimonies, has reviews that are very positive,

Visibility Becomes Credibility

SPEAKER_01 11:55

versus a person like yourself who's kind of hiding, I'm gonna take the guy who's got the content, who's got demonstrated capacity of knowing what he does. And then also the reviews behind it saying, like, oh, what he's saying online must be true because everyone loves him. That's the person who's gonna win. Your visibility is your credibility. A great example, like if I needed if I needed a procedure done, and they told me that, hey, you're gonna go to one of the best doctors in the world. Let's say I had to get like heart surgery. Knock on him. I had to get heart surgery. You're gonna go to one of the best doctors in the world. His name's John Smith. Right, for the sake of the correct. But when I go to look up John Smith, the man doesn't exist anywhere online. How comfortable am I gonna be going to what they say is the best doctor in the world when this guy doesn't even exist online? Either I'm now part of some underground community of doctors that specialize in heart surgery that is great, that don't want to be known, or I'm going to a guy who's actually probably not the best. Or damn, I'm taking a really big shot at this actually working out. Same thing with people on Medicare. Like they're not going to risk probably the biggest decision they're gonna make the rest of their life with somebody who doesn't exist online. They want to go with somebody who's got demonstrated capacity of doing the job that shows that they can do it at the finger at their fingertips, at their phone, where they can see document information and see reviews of people that trusted you that had a good experience. So that's number one. Stop playing hide and seek. Number two is you don't have to be humble about this because a lot of agents, and including myself, you know, again, not me standing on a pedestal, we stayed quiet because we didn't want to sound like we're full of ourselves. Which, if you are going online to boast about how much you know and frame it like that, yeah, that's gonna sound weird. But for the majority of us who are going online to talk about helping others, we're doing it from an educational frame. So if you're just going on there educating people about how this process works, Medicare, Social Security, different aspects of Medicare Advanced versus Medicare Supplement, wherever you want to educate them about, you won't sound full on the full of yourself. You will sound like someone who knows what the hell they're doing. And if you can back it up with good testimonies and reviews, that's the perfect combination. Someone who knows what they're doing, and everyone loves you because you know what you're doing. Like that is that is how you get more referrals. But again, the truth is, is your silence isn't building trust with people. It's actually building the antitrust that you are actually breaking your own business because you don't want to be online. You don't want to be visible, you don't want to make content, you don't want to go to your customers and ask for testimonials, you don't want to go to your customers and ask to fill out a Google review. You feel weird about it. Right? It's just like the visibility online, it's just like any easy marketing. I'm gonna say easy marketing, any marketing philosophy we've heard for the past decades is they need to see you a number of times before they make a buying decision. They need to see your marketing flyer, they need to see your seminar mailer, they need to see your postcard, they need to see maybe it is an online ad. Like they need to see that a number of times before they make a buying decision because they need to be familiar with you and they need to hear the information and need to trust you. What better way to do that than seeing your online profile and seeing

Teach Online Without Bragging

SPEAKER_01 15:18

people who loved you? Easy way to do it. You're not bragging. And I think if you still think when you're educating, you are bragging, you are not really doing so. You are just re-s you are reassuring the viewer that you can help them and you are good at what you do. Again, I've used the word already a couple times. Demonstrated capacity. You're just showing that I'm an insurance Medicare insurance agent that helps you with Medicare. All the information I post is just showing little bits and pieces of how I help you. And if you want to be a part of the whole process, cool, schedule a point with me and we'll talk. That is in plain and simple what you're trying to do online. And for a lot of us, and for for me, like it, I'll be this is full disclosure. Like 50% of my job is trying to find new partners to work with. So you may call it recruiting. I look at you know, business development. So I have an extremely hard time. If I'm if I was just working out with Google in general, I would not make a living doing this because the amount of people online doing Medicare versus people who are offline doing Medicare is significantly weighed to the people offline because I can't find most of you, which is a problem for you. And unfortunately, a little bit of problem for me, but we've got other ways we get around that. If there's one thing you could take away from this is you will write more business just by being searchable. You will write even more business if you find a way to speak your mind and demonstrate the capacity of what you do online. The third thing is is better to be done than it is to be perfect. Because another reason why some of you may or may not start doing more online work is because it won't be perfect. And full disclosure, you never had a shot at it being perfect because it will never be perfect, and we just have to accept that. Just like there is no perfect business, it just doesn't exist. There were some there was a there's a really like predominant guy in you know the business space that says some stuff just stays screwed up. He uses you know kind of more vulgar term, so I don't want to say that here. But he said some things are just are just gonna stay screwed up when it comes to you starting to get an online presence and start maybe making content or building out social media profiles, like just know it's not gonna be perfect. You're always gonna want to fix something. That's okay. Social media is no longer about really the look or necessarily the looks when you're first getting on. It's about the information. As long as you're posting good information that is valuable to your end user, you will get more visibility. And if you continually do that, you don't need to make perfect posts. You don't have to have perfect videos, you don't have to have perfect views. Just getting it out online into the online ether, you will get more visibility by doing so because you are trying to win attention. And attention is what if you get the more eyes you can get on you, the more you more business you will write, you will attract people and you will push people away. That is the whole point. But to get online is the first and most important thing, and to put out content for people to consume. Again, it doesn't have to be perfect. When it comes to reviews, there's a I see a lot of it in the Facebook groups of uh actually one recently, about a week or so ago, where someone got a one-star review and they were talking in the actual group, like, how do I get rid of this? I don't want to get rid of it because I will find a review of a restaurant or a business a hell of a lot more credible if they've got 500 reviews that are a 4.4,

Done Beats Perfect Every Time

SPEAKER_01 18:47

4.5 star review. Then I've seen some insurance agencies that have seven to 800 plus reviews that are all perfect five stars. Sorry, you will run across somebody who doesn't like you or doesn't like the way you do business. It's inevitable. If you're doing this long enough, you will get someone complain about you. But to have that many reviews, I know that you were you were scrubbing your bad reviews and you're trying to get them off your profile. Bad reviews are what makes it authentic. You don't want to create this in a vacuum and make it seem like everything is perfect because overall no one believes it's perfect. You were just trying to fool your consumer to thinking that we work with over 800 people that thought we were absolutely perfect. It's not the case. It's okay to have the one-star, not perfect review. It's okay to have the two-star, the three-star, the four point five-star. It's okay. If we start seeing it shift to where we're seeing a ton of one-star, two-star, three-star reviews, then we need to look ourselves in the mirror and see what we're doing. What you really need right now, if you if you're you're listening to this and you're like, all right, I think it's it's it's time to be online. What do I need to do? You need to have a starting point. For me, I started doing content probably about two years ago. Really, not well at all. If I if I really were to be really more honest with myself, I really started doing content, doing content about four-ish, five-ish months ago. Like really started getting serious about it. Before I just started doing a post a day. Could be a 30-second video, a minute video, could be a text post, like something that I thought would be valuable to my ideal client that I'm looking for. And from there, start doing just a little bit more and see what people like. Not everybody is going to value your content, but your end user will. And there's certain formats they like if that's short video, if that's long form video, if that's text posts, if that's a text plus an image, if it's a carousel. You will find over time what really works. And the more volume start putting into it, you can find out quicker. Instead of for me, like it took me a I was doing a post a day, maybe that for about a year and some change, and never really understood what people actually liked until about four or five months ago when we started doing like 35 to 40 pieces of content a week across like five different platforms, four different platforms. That is when I understood, like, oh, that's what people like, right? So that's it's really, it's really important. But for you, it's start making real content that is real value for the person you're trying to for the the end user. If that's gonna, if you're a medic, you're looking for Medicare beneficiaries, they're turning 65, whatever your ideal client is, your avatar is figuring out what they want and creating that for them to consume. That will be your biggest thing. Just start getting activity in. When at the very beginning, again, it says it's not gonna be perfect, even imperfect visibility is still better than not being out there at all. So it kind of talks about like all press is like I think all press is good press. You know, even if it even if it is even if it is bad, like it could be good because then it gets still people talking about you. It's all about the information, like I

Reviews That Feel Real

SPEAKER_01 21:58

said before, it it does not have to be. Like right now, I got like a ring light. I've got a nicer camera than I've had before. I got a nice setup, nice monitor system now. But at the beginning, I just I just had a cell phone that I would just do selfie videos with. Like that's that's how it all started. And then I got a stand, and then I started adding other things. The big focus is on the information, like the content you were actually typing out, saying in videos, and also the reviews and testimonies you get. It's all about that. Keep that really similar. The moment you start getting an idea of what people like, then we can start ramping up the volume, maybe getting better equipment to actually do this with. So aesthetically it starts looking better, plus the information's dialed. That's perfect. Because ultimately, when you start to do this more, your online footprint will grow. When your online footprint grows, your reputation will grow with it, and your business will grow with it. Because one of the most valuable things to know is people trust other people's experiences with you rather than you telling them how their experience is going to be with you. It is super important to let other people do the selling for you and for you to put out enough content for it to make it easy for them to buy from you or easy for them to want to sit down with you. Because your online presence also gets to show your personality. It also gets to show the way you talk. It also show the way how delicate you are. If you have any how your bedside manner is, how maybe how funny you are, right? You're listening to these podcasts and maybe watching it, like you're getting an idea of kind of how I am over the course of these episodes. Like if you were to sit down with me and have a cup of coffee, like you're probably gonna get the same thing here. Is that something you like? Is that something you don't like? If you don't like it, great, cool. If you like it, awesome. I'd love to do business with you. So it just gives them a feel of who you are to make it easier for them to buy for you later on. It's proof. These these reviews, this online profile is just proof that you can help your customer go where they need to go. And that it's also proof that you have succeeded in doing so on a large enough volume where they feel comfortable working with you because you've just done this so many times. If you're just getting started out, it starts by really taking, and I talked about in a previous podcast, we talked about a quality service and a and a strong relationship, your first five to ten customers are going to be super important to how your next hundred are going to be. Because if you can give it such a high quality service and build such a strong relationship with your first five to ten customers, if you squeeze that lemon, you'll produce. I mean, I talked about an agent who produced two to five, uh two and a half uh times the amount of referrals just from the first five to ten people that you talked to, just because you gave such a high quality service. And those people will then give you reviews and testimonies they can bring to the next

Simple Content Plan That Scales

SPEAKER_01 24:55

10, 20, 30 to show, like, hey, like you have the same problem that Jando had. Like, she seemed pretty happy. That is going to be your biggest leverage point that I think a lot of insurance agents are using to the best of their ability right now because social proof is demonstrated capacity that you could help them. And without any online presence, without any social medias, without any Google business, without any content, no one knows you can help them. No one knows you exist. And if you have profiles on there, they don't even know if you can help them unless you give them the information they are looking for. You don't want to be the person in the back seat watching every single person drive past you doing the one thing that you're afraid to do. And if it's a skill thing where like you need to find the skills to be able to be on camera to talk into a camera, then you have to address that. And you have to find someone that can help you do so. If you are comfortable talking on camera, then you just need to do this a lot more, but also focus on the quality of the content and quality information before you just start riffing off a ton of different content that really isn't good at all, doesn't make sense, it's not aligned with your end user, and you just start wasting a bunch of time. So if you're gonna start making an online presence, make sure you first understand like this is the best thing for most for your business is to stop playing hide and seek. If you're gonna be out there pushing yourself online, you don't have to be humble, you don't have to be braggy, but you don't have to be humble. Tell people how you can help them because ultimately they need to hear that themselves, that you are confident and you have the demonstrated capacity to do so. Know that it's all about the information. Don't worry about how it looks at the beginning. Because again, the fact that it's getting out there is better than it's not getting out there. Done is better than perfect. Remember that. But that's all I had for today. So if you're if you're a business owner and you are currently trying to grow your business, whether that's about referral, whether that's doing other marketing systems, I promise you, having an online reputation will

Final Push To Share And Follow

SPEAKER_01 27:05

just promote and grow your business even faster if you leverage it correctly. Again, we do not pay any ads or try to market this podcast. We clearly do it off the value of the information. If you find this valuable, you found that this information was just really good, um, you can reach out to us, let us know how good it was, if that's all uh if that's something you want to do, or just give it to another business owner that you'd feel it could be valuable for. Keep following because in this show, we will continually, week after week, just give you tidbits of information that you can take to implement in your business to help yourself grow and go from unknown to unstoppable. Because ultimately, that's what this pod job this podcast is all about. So thank you so much for listening, and we will see you on the next one.

SPEAKER_00 27:47

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.