SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hey, the craziest thing that's ever happened to my agency is back in March of 2024, I sold 51% of our combined organizations for an evaluation of $70 million. I'm Justin Brock. I run Bobby Brock Insurance and Go Guru, and I'm an insurance dude. Look, I got my hat backwards. I'm a dude.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Boom! We got we quote. We got the fluff. Real world stuff. That's the dude. That's it.

SPEAKER_04 0:41

I didn't even have my hat on backwards.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

There you go. We're now dudes.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Yep. Where's my hat? I know. Dude, it's been it's been a while, Justin.

SPEAKER_02 0:50

Yeah, it has been. Probably it's probably been a couple of years.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

You were growing like a weed back then, and you never stopped. No, man. Never stop, never stopping. I think I heard that in the movie or something.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Um, so for anybody that doesn't know you, I guess you kind of gave the the 30 second, but um what have you been up to uh since last time we talked to you?

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Yeah, I mean we're we're an odd, you know, an odd bird type of group, man. And we started off, uh started off as an independent agent working on Medicare, MedSups, door-to-door, you know, like a lot of people start out, uh built into uh a small localized agency where we had internal agents. I wasn't out recruiting a bunch of agents or anything back in the day. Um, you know, but we were having a lot of success with local grassroots, traditional media, and then social media ads back in 2014, 15, 16, 17. I started growing really, really fast, writing a ton of applications myself, hired LOA agents or career agents, if you will, W-2 agents. And, you know, that was growing really fast. Was reading a bunch of books by Gary V Russell Brunson talking about, you know, things like what to, you know, if you know how to do something, tell other people how to do it, either document it or sell it, or both. One Gary V would say document it. Russell Brunson would say sell it. Um, and so I I started documenting it uh online, created a Facebook group for agents in uh 2017 uh focused on Medicare. We're the only ones focused on Medicare at the time. It's got about 14,000 agents in it right now. In that, we started developing other strategies to help agents. You know, now at this point, we have we have a software product that we lease to them. We have almost, I think maybe over 500 now um members in this in there. We developed a university for them. We do five weekly live calls for them. We have events in our office, and all on the back of that, you know, we started recruiting on the brokerage side and have about 4,000 agents that write with us around the country. And we're up to about 50 employees. So I don't know what I did to grow it as fast as we've done, uh, other than, you know, built the nucleus and then showed other people, and apparently other people wanted to replicate it. And we just tackled every opportunity that was six inches in front of our face for the last 10 years, and turns out there's a lot of momentum in the insurance space right now for the people that are willing to go out and get it. I mean, you guys know that. I mean, I I've been watching you guys for a while and y'all are tackling it. It's a shame more people don't approach it as intensely as some of us do, because the ones that do and the ones that put it out there and get the information out there will find that there is a huge appetite for content, you know, especially in the agents circle, but also in the consumer space.

SPEAKER_01 3:38

So Yeah. Yeah. And it doesn't, it's like it's crazy. Craig and I have talked about this a lot. Like for the podcast, I mean, we've been doing this for a while, but even just that, right? We take that, put that on YouTube, whatever. But like, even when we're hiring in our agency, it's not foreign, you know, it's it's for insurance agents, but like even when we're hiring in our insurance agency, people are Googling and like, oh my gosh, they have the pot this podcast. And like it just sets you apart from everybody else.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

I'm telling you, so okay, so like that's so funny you say that because you're constantly struggling with like as our business, you know, we're in small town Tupelo, Mississippi, you know, probably bigger than you're envisioning, but still not a big town, not a big city, you know, it's you know, 200,000 people working daily, 50,000 population in the town uh live in. And, you know, as we've grown and gotten bigger and and people see how many employees are working there, they're still thinking, like, okay, this is this local Medicare office. Why has it got 50 people working there? That's weird, you know. Um, and so then we started doing all these like localized sponsorships, charity events and and and getting our name out there and sponsoring the young professionals groups. And they're like, but this is a Medicare focused group. Why are they doing all these Tupelo young professionals like events and stuff? Um, and then it's just become aware. And now we're at this point, like it took a while to break to this mold of like, what are we trying to do? We would go and hire marketing people and they would come in and they'd be like, I don't know, an insurance office. And we had to bring them in and kind of like explain what we're doing. You know, we have a conference we do once a year that's got over a thousand people at it. We have, you know, six or seven mini events that have 40 to 50 people that are paying three to five thousand dollars to be in our office to learn from us. We have a different concept all on the back of, you know, building this agency too as like a showcase that this is we us practicing what we preach. And um, you know, so it's been kind of cool because when we started doing those sponsorships and getting the word out there and people started learning about us, now I have this huge line of resumes. Like if I need to hire two or three more people next week, there's like a it's like a line out the door of people locally that want to work here, but but that didn't happen overnight.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

And without without the content online and without the the events and that that type of momentum that you're creating, you know, and I know a lot of insurance agents are out there, they're like, I don't need to hire anybody right now. I need to sell, I need to market, I need to automate, I need to uh I need to replicate myself a little bit, but like I don't need to hire five, six, seven, ten, twenty people. And that's true, but I'm telling you, there comes a day when you're like, wow, all that content that I was making, that at times I was thinking, why do I keep making this content? You know, yeah, big time. You know, yeah, 10 views here, 20 views here, 300 views here, a thousand views there, and all of a sudden this shit mounts up and like it mattered a lot more than you realized.

SPEAKER_04 6:30

So and the little micro fame, right? Like if you're in if you're somewhere at some insurance thing, they people recognize you. And it's weird, right? Because it's like, well, we're just yeah, yeah. Dude, in Cancun, an agent came up to me, goes, Craig, and I'm like, I no idea who this person is, right? He goes, Hey, and I'll give a shout. It's it's his name's Max Anderson. He's an agent, he's an agent in uh in Minnesota. But he he like he's like, Hey man, I listen to the podcast. I'm like, What? Like, just like what?

SPEAKER_02 7:02

It's so weird, man. Like, you know, I think uh But I was with my wife and she was like, you know, yeah, she was like, What you're doing to speak for a lot more it's weird, like the viewership, you know, you could like that's what people don't get is like they think I gotta have I gotta have 500,000 Instagram subscribers and two million YouTube subscribers, and it's not it's not like that. Like you can you could be consistently getting you know three, four, five hundred views on a YouTube video posting, you know, rapidly, and you know, maybe get one or occasionally does twelve, fifteen hundred. You don't understand, like, I feel like that represents way more people than we realize, but also the the the type of niche content you're doing that that viewer is worth more than a hundred or a thousand of Mr. Beast viewers, right? It's a different type of value proposition. Not that not to take anything away from what he's like, he's amazing at you know, content creation. And I I learned from people like that. Um, but like that type of audience is each individual audience member is worth much less than my audience member or your audience member, right? And um, and then there's just all these other like secondary and tertiary out that you get, like the idea that when I go to hire now, I'm not a local, and then this is something I struggle with, is I'll teach Medicare agency owners, like I'm and they're like, Man, you've got this great team. And I'm like, yeah, but we're different, like you, you know, and and so to to break that mold, you have to figure out a way to make people want to work for you, want to work for you, you know. And I'm recruiting young guys in and young girls, young ladies, young men, and they're um they're excited because it's it's not that they were wanted to work in insurance, none of them did, um, but they're excited that they're working somewhere that is forward-thinking, fun, innovative. And the cool thing is they'll work way harder in that atmosphere than they would somewhere that they're not bald in. That's this, I don't know if it's like, I don't believe I don't necessarily believe that every generation is different. I think there's always this generation that says, well, this generation's the lazy one. And then that generation gets older, and they're like, now this generation's the lazy. The the people's 20s are weird. You know, they go through some ups and downs. Eventually, a lot of generations have had to acclimate and say, I have to do what I have to do to make money for my family, and we all will do that when we have to. But when you're in your 20s and you have choices, and you do have choices because it's like, okay, I don't have a bunch of a wife and a bunch of kids right now, my expenses are low. Maybe my parents are letting me freeload for a little bit. I can have time to figure it out. I'm looking for something that I really can buy into. Yeah, and if you own those people and give them something that they'll buy into, like that is way bigger and more impactful, just saying, I'm just gonna hire people. I know when I first started hiring people, my dad told me he's like, Well, if you hire them, they better do what you tell them to because you're paying them. And I was like, I don't believe that because I know in my world, like for who I am, I'm 36 now, but at the time I started, I was 26. And I was I just got out of the Marine Corps and I was thinking, you know, I couldn't quit the Marine Corps, but you know shit, I could quit any other job now. And if I don't like it, I'm gonna quit and do something else. That's what I thought. And I had a wife and kids, and so I was like, people with no wife and kids, they're definitely gonna quit if it's a shitty job. Yeah, right. So that was just kind of my mentality. I was like, I uh when I'm team building, I want to provide a an opportunity where there's upside, where they feel like they're part of something cooler than anything else that exists. And you know, if I was in Miami, the bar would be higher, you know. But in Tupelo, uh, we are the coolest company here.

SPEAKER_04 10:31

So I mean it's not a good thing. I don't think that you know the sales job just isn't as sexy as it was before, right? Like in in the olden days, like when I was coming up in sales, like that there was no other, you know, if you want to make more money than the regular track, you have you do sales. Like that's hands down the only thing you can do, right? Like, unless you're a doctor or a lawyer and who wants to do all that shit.

SPEAKER_02 10:51

So you have 14 years of school and five years in air.

SPEAKER_04 10:55

Now they're you know, they're raised, they they come out of the womb and they have an iPad in their hand and they're learning all of everything about being an influencer from the time that they're a kid, or you know, till they're they're old. And so they have a different perspective.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

It's like uh in in um the movie Um The Social Network, uh, the uh the twins that are trying to sue uh Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, um, they go to the the Harvard president and he says Harvard graduates today would rather invent a job than than learn to take one or take one or whatever. And I saw that was funny because that was like the cusp, is like that was the tech boom era, right? And so it was like, you know, okay, I want to I want to work at a tech company, or I want to be a tech guy, or I want to create a tech solution. Now it's the influencer, like you said, it's the Mr. Beast, um, you know, easy path, with Ashy and uh whatever, and all the many ones in between that. I mean, my kids don't watch Nickelodeon or Disney, right? They watch some YouTuber that they like. Yeah, it's so wild. It's it's a completely different world.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

You know, you you brought up the the generational thing, and I like I've thought about this a lot. When I started in the insurance agency, uh like I felt really different than the older agents. And older agent agencies were were not appealing to me whatsoever. So I was thinking and and a lot of older agents would talk about like the younger generation, and oh, the younger generation doesn't blah blah blah blah. They would complain a lot. So I'm like, what's the difference? Like, what's the deal here? What and so like like in I kept searching, like what what what is the difference? Like like how do we create this culture? You you know, younger people are talking more about culture in a business rather than paycheck. Um, and then you know, coming across uh Maslow's high hierarchy of need and just going from like the lowest form of like just trying to survive all the way to self-factualization, yeah. I think what happened was you have, you know, Craig's generation that came out of like the World War II era. No, World War I. But like War of 1812. Yeah, the War of 1812. That was my first war. My grandma, my grandma lived during the depression where she raised her brothers and sisters and didn't eat so that they could have food. And my grandma growing up, like hoarded money. Like it was all like there was no self-actualization. There was no like trying to fulfill some sort of purpose. But then, so that era was that, right? Get paid a lot of money, I'll work my ass off.

SPEAKER_04 13:21

Save, save, save, save, save.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

Yep, like so. They had that, that like connection. Next generation, my mom's generation. So they're they're not wanting to go to war. They don't want to do it like they used to do it. Um, they're they're starting to get more into that self-actualization, right? Because they didn't have to experience the same hardships as our as like my my grandma.

SPEAKER_02 13:41

You know, it's so funny when you say this. Like my my wife she gets into the TikTok sphere, and you know, there's these people that'll say, like, it's so funny, it'll be, and this is uh this is not the dog on any generation. I just think everybody, they're ethnocentric, and and that that that's for their their age, ethnicity, what they've gone through, yeah, socio and economic facts, everything, they're viewing the world through their lens. And one of the ones I think is so funny is like people now that are like, oh, well, if I'm if I'm like I'm 36 now, like, okay, I was in I was in eighth grade when 9-11 happened, and then uh, you know, the housing crisis, you know, crisis. And I and so it's funny to me because I there's these content creators, especially people my really people younger than me, that'll say, like, oh, it's no wonder we're all screwed up, we had to go through all this. And I'm like, Yeah, wait a minute, like, what are we talking about here though? Because like every generation had some crazy shit going on. I mean, we had everything's always crazy. Cold war period where they were like doing drills telling them, like, oh, they're gonna nuke us.

SPEAKER_03 14:45

So if you get under the desk, we had to get under the desk.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

And then there's Vietnam, there's World War World War II, it was awful. Korean War, you had all these different things, and you had Desert Storm, and then you like, I don't think uh like, I mean, there might be like loopholes in there where it's less bad than other times, but I'd say we're probably in some ways we're we're in one of those. Like, and so I agree. So, like, I don't think, but it's funny because those people are watching that and they're like, man, no wonder I'm screwed up. I had to live through all this. And I'm like, right, no, everybody has their shit. Like, you know, you just have to, and so I but it's not you, I don't think it's just young people. I think the same thing with like the boomer generation might say, All these kids these days don't do this. And I'm like, wait a minute, weren't boomers the ones that would stock having organs to do an acid in 1969? And I'm but I'm like, as a generation, they had the same issues that any other generation has, you know. Right. You know, my my mom was Gen X, my dad was a boomer. You know, she would have been like on the older side of Gen X, he'd have been on the younger side of the boomer. You know, both of them to me have their issues. I the way I view Gen X because of my mom and like my relatives that are in that age group, is they were the ones raising me like hotbox and Marlborough's in the Mercury Cougar with the kids. You know, there's like every generation has like pros and cons, but like I don't think one's worse than the other. And if you just understand that, like you said, self-actualization, young people these days, because of the exposure to what is possible, maybe they have a higher expectation of quality of life early on. Now, at some point, yeah, some of them are just gonna have to get to work because they didn't figure shit out, you know, and you gotta pay your bills. And when you start popping out kids, somebody's got to take care of them. You got to do take care of your stuff. But in that period of time, I would say like that 20s era, that decade, 18 to 30, 18 to 32, somewhere in there, I think they're playing the field a little bit because they're like, I want to find something that I can get behind. And it's not all about money. It's yeah, I need more money than I need more than X, but I also want to do it in a place where I don't want to kill myself every day.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Well, I think, well, that and that was my point. And I think you just nailed it, is the older generation, it was money. And now it's more purpose-driven. So you don't actually like like that's what these like older agents, I don't think, uh, understand. It's like they're thinking, like, oh, I got to pay more. And like, like they're not coming in and they're not doing all this stuff. It's like, dude, they don't want to pay, they want to be a part of something bigger. And you've created a business that is this small. They're you're not trying to do anything bigger. To your point, with your agency, you are creating something bigger. You're creating a movement, and that's something that younger people can get behind.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

I did um, I did, it has it, it comes out in July, but I did uh John Lee Damas' EO Fire podcast the other day, and he was asking me for a title. And the title I used was People Want to Work, they just don't want to work for you. That's the same concept we're talking about. It's like you, you know, when you're team building, give them something to aspire to. You first of all, you need to be a a a vibrant, you know, leader. It doesn't mean you have to be Napoleon, you know, but like you have to be someone that it's like, hey, I can get behind this guy. That doesn't mean they want to emulate you in every way, but there has to be something about you, you know, as a leader. And then as you grow, the leaders that you put in between, these have to be people that people can respect. You know, that there's their traits that they want to emulate, especially young people. They're looking for mentorship in some way. Now it's not always money, it's not always business building. Sometimes it's just mentorship and how how to be happy and how to be a better dad and how to be a better husband or wife or you know, all that kind of stuff. And I and I'm I'm enthusiastic that I think a lot of businesses are figuring this out and that it's going to be part of a good culture shift. You do have to pay people enough, you know, you can't gip people. Like it is expensive to live these days, you know. It is. I mean, um, you know, inflation's a re inflation's a hell of a drug, you know. But yeah, like I am so it is expensive, but like it doesn't mean you people have to get rich, you know, they just have to make enough money to be comfortable so that they can focus on the mission and then they have to also buy into that mission. And then you end up getting some I have employees that you know that are really bought in that are like it's like having three people work for you, you know, because they do so much. And it's not because I'm begging them to do that much, it's just because some people just inherently do that and you find your winners, you know. And um, I one thing I struggle with that's a popular top like talking point is uh like Gary V's one that says fire fast, faster ways, hire uh hire fast, fire faster, promote fastest. Thank you, Kinzie. Um and uh I struggle with the firing part. I mean, we fire people, yeah. Well, he even says he has struggles with that.

SPEAKER_04 19:47

I I mean exactly. You gotta have a problem if you don't struggle with it, right? Yeah. I mean, let's be let's put it out, let's be real, right? Like, I mean, it's a person and I I feel shitty, even when they're shitty, I still feel shitty. I know like maybe I did something wrong.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

Like, I have this factor with me, is like if I feel like they're trying, like I I'll hold on to them for a long time. Like if I feel like they're trying, even if I feel like their their skill level or capability is far off, if they're trying. If they're not trying, I still hold on to them longer than I should. Yeah. But the ones that are not trying are the easier ones to let go because I feel like, look, you're not you're not in it. But I hate that, like when I have somebody that's like, oh, you're there, you just need to quit making stupid decisions, you know, hold on to that, you know, way longer. But I also think there is a positive aspect in the culture uh when people believe that, you know, it's it's a it's a double-edged sword because you have to make sure that the stragglers aren't strung along to the point where other people think they can do less and still be strung along. But then you also don't want to make people think that any tiny little mistake is gonna be the end of their career, you know. So like it's like this balancing act between there. And I think that's probably at this point for me, that's the harder part is just when do you cut ties versus when do you, you know, how how long do you to work on someone? And then you know, and and have as you develop middle management, you have to tune them how long that should they work on someone.

SPEAKER_01 21:16

So yeah. I think one of the litmus tests for me is is that old saying by Dr. Spock, which is the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. So I always get that, like, I always get that feeling of like shit, like, yeah, you're right. Like it, like that bad person will infect the rest. If they're complaining and they they're not like they don't like to show up to work anymore. It's like it's like I gotta think like the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. And like I'm one of the few too. Like if if you know, I gotta get rid of them. Like I but it it's hard to do.

SPEAKER_02 21:52

We use that a lot, like where you have anchors, passengers, and rowers. You know, um your passengers are just pulling their their own weight right. Rowers are actually propelling the entire ship forward. We are a ship. And then anchors are holding us back. The anchors are the ones I got to cut away. You know, the passengers, of course, are they can be harder to identify. Sometimes an anchor is hard to identify, man. Like sometimes you'll sometimes an anchor is a weird thing because it'll be somebody that is motivated and is a top producer, but they're trying to steal the steer the ship in to the direction that benefits them disproportionately. Um especially in a sales team, man. That's a big deal on a sales team. You know, they'll try to use and harness the data to like benefit themselves more than the business, and that you can't have that. So you have to try to safeguard that or eventually cut ties with the people that do it. But um the other one is like you just said, I tell them openly, like, look, I love everybody that's in here, but my goal is to make sure that the business prospers so that all of us can continue to prosper because it feeds all of us. So I'm gonna have to use the Spock one now, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, because in here that's true. You know, I know you get into politics, you get the uh the altruistic people in versus the super conservative people. There might be a battle, but in here, in this dictatorship, my business needs the many outweigh the needs of the few. That's the way it's gotta run.

SPEAKER_01 23:18

Yeah, I look at the I like I look at the business like, and I've used this analogy too, is that it's a baby and you gotta feed the baby, you gotta nurture it, you gotta take care of it because it's gotta grow. Because if it doesn't, and you don't feed the baby, the baby dies. Like it just dies. Like people don't understand that you like business is either going up or it's going down. It's never going linear. Like if you're going linear, dude, you have the the Justin Brock's or or Craig Pretzinger agency, like whatever, you know what I mean? You have the people that are that are rising up and it it's like eventually you're gone. I mean, we see with AI and everything else. Like, there's gonna be a lot of people that are sitting on this like level and they're they're cool at this level, but like, dude, you're gonna die at some time.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

I I still like it, it it makes me like it's so crazy when you hear the stat, 47% of the people of the US have not even don't even know what Chat GPT is. Like, yeah, it's freaking wild, right? I know, I know it means only 10% of all the users have a paid account. Like, yeah, it's isn't that crazy? It's mind-boggling. Like, I've had a paid account for a year, and there's no way I could function without it, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:27

Like me, even like um like right now, just there's certain like goofy stuff we do with it. Um that makes me so, man. I have like we have this deal right now, like we use Google Chats for our our business, you know, like like kind of like Slack or what something. We have these channels where we use uh I don't exactly I have a CTO who sets it all up, but he's got like the scoreboards in the office and our go and a Google chat. We have a one that's cells are dope where all the sales people are in it. And every time a um every time a uh sale comes through, you know, it sends a payload through Zapier, which retrieves a separate message and GIF every time to celebrate that sale for that agent and then pops it through. So it's like goofy, but it keeps it does keep the momentum going and it's cool. And there's you know, there's various things we've we've used it for, you know, with the appointment setting, with the continued communication, especially with with older age leads, like trying to keep them hot and rewarm them, um keep the phone ringing from old age leads and age data. Um now we're looking at our retention strategy because you know we're in the health and Medicare space, so we have these enrollment periods, you know, coming in the fall. Um, AI should be a massive help to us this year in just the retention aspect, you know, in communicating with these clients and getting them to uh through our personalized URLs, shop their own plan to keep them away from our sales team so we can focus on new business. Now, you know, we will allow the sales team to participate in retention when it needs to get to that point. But if I can use AI and automation and video content and funnels and everything I can to try to get them to keep themselves happy and on the books tastefully, then I'm gonna do that because I want to keep my salespeople finding uh I want to keep them hunting, not retaining, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 26:14

I think that you just said something that's so critical and it ties back to the beginning of creating content, but like the ability to basically duplicate yourself, right? Like think you're if it go back to 10 years ago, Justin, right? If you had these tools then, it's even 10 times faster, right? Or a hundred times faster because you duplicate yourself infinitely, right? You have infinite duplications of yourself that now a lot there's some that can actually build new ones of them, right? Like you can have the AI build the AI. So it's just freaking wild. But like the fact that so if you're on the other side of the fence and you're listening to this and you haven't even logged on to ChatGPT or whatever, or even looked at any of this stuff, it's really important to understand that people like myself, like Jason, like Justin, we have the ability to infinitely scale because of all of the different we could we could just add, we duplicate ourselves, right? We could create content, we could do all these things. Now, it doesn't make it infinite, it's not perfect, right? But it's definitely makes you much faster than somebody who's doing it.

SPEAKER_02 27:18

Well, think about too, like as I'm building a team, like I'm still using human capital, right? But then when I can take that human capital and get them trained to utilize AI to amplify the effect of their job, I know some people would think, like, oh, they're just gonna let AI do their job, they don't have to do as much. That's not what I see. What I see is the ones that are actually using it, they're just getting 10 times as much done using AI in our business. And so instead of higher having me having to hire more people, I just get this one really good guy who understands the concepts. And then he can go and and it's like having like in my marketing team, like our our technical internal marketing team is is basically I have a CMO, a creative director, a graphic designer, slash event coordinator, and a videographer. And we're putting out content at a scale, we're putting out content, developing events, hosting things, doing things at a scale that probably would have required 12 to 15 people five or six years ago, you know. And we are we're hiring another one right now, another person right now, but like I would need at least double what I, you know, have uh for the same thing. So then that's just on the marketing side, the sales side, obviously, from lead nurturing and things. Me being able to do 27% of our sales in our call center from inbounds right now. You know, 10 years ago I was doing a lot more inbound, but then marketing caught up. Marketing got more competitive, especially on social. But as marketing got caught up, we used automation to level the playing field. Then people caught up with automation. Now we're using AI to level the playing field. So there's always like this concept of like marketers ruin everything. And so, you know, I mean, you guys are lawyers, lawyers ruin everything. Lawyers definitely ruin it, insurance agents ruin everything too. No, um, but like marketers, you know, if I have a process that's working really well to get in front of people and get their attention, other people are gonna figure that out. And then it gets harder and harder and harder to do it that way. And so then I have to leverage the next tool. I always have to be one step ahead. And and AI right now, and the thing about AI is it's concept. Automation is kind of a linear concept. This is how you automate. There are different variables of how to use it. But like once if then logic automation amplified into having AI, now AI can mean it's gonna rapidly expand so fast that the things that we'll be doing with it just in a few years, we can't even fathom them right now. Like I can't, I can't really explain to you what I'm gonna be doing with it in three years. In three years, we'll be in a different world. You won't be doing very much. We won't be doing very much at all. Hopefully, that's when we're gonna make we gotta we gotta amplify it as fast as like, but this is the period like to make as much money as possible because it's going if you if you're sitting on the sidelines for the next three years, you're gonna be screwed in three years. Done. You're gonna be dead. I I have agents that get pissed off at me because I tell them, like, you know, we're gonna enter the period of like coming in as an independent agent and be like, I'm gonna get started from scratch. And I hate to say this because you know we recruit agents, but like the ones that have no capital, no land grab, no brand, no uh, you know, no AI and automation experience to the point that it's our infrastructure built, you have none of that. Like if you have a brand, you have a huge book, you can survive a little bit longer without adapting. You know, it's gonna hurt, it's gonna be more painful. You should adapt as quickly as possible. But if you have none of those and you're trying to start from scratch in three years, I feel like what you're gonna be up against, you know, unless you have a bunch of money to spend or you're some sort of wizard, but like the average human just trying to come, because right now you get basically average guys that are coming into finance, insurance, and real estate. That's not gonna be very possible in three to five years, I don't think. And I tell people this, and they're like, you know, I just one guy told me the other day, is like, this is a capitalist country, and there's always gonna be room for new people to come in. And I'm like, there is, but you know what I'm what I'm saying is like I don't like the insurance industry is already one of a few that you can just pop in and be like, I'm a salesperson, I'm gonna build a business from the professional. Like, yeah, other places you got to go develop product, you know. You have to develop a product, you have to develop a service component. Landscapers don't just come in there, I have to develop, you have to start, you know, and and build this actual infrastructural component. And we've kind of got this industry where these people get to make handsome incomes by basically building no real business or value proposition outside of being an individual agent. I've met individual agents making up up to a million dollars a year by themselves, you know. I don't think that's gonna be very possible for them very long. You better have some sort of infrastructure, you better have a brand, you better have something outside of just, you know, to be fair, the individual agent making a million's probably got at least a decent personal brand, but he better start scaling outward, create human capital, you know, create, um, you know, create some infrastructure on the internet, create content, create AI, you know, some sort of uh start learning it at least so that you can learn how to leverage it because the leave behind factor here is huge. It's just it's just it is and it's I don't it's not like I'm trying to like scare everybody because the opportunity is also huge. Right. But you gotta be utilizing it and and uh you know, thankfully we are, thankfully you guys are, and thankfully we're telling more people too. Sure.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

Yeah, I mean it's it's the thing that that's like it's like one of those few things that that happened in the history of civilization, right? Like the printing press or changing from from horses to cars, like it's that big and it's that and it's gonna have that big of an impact. Yeah, internet. And it's like the the people like your guy that you're saying, right? When the horse, when the horses were the thing and the car came out, that guy is saying, yeah, right, like they're gonna be able to to put a gas station on every corner, right? And all the things that they said, and look at it. It's like there's nobody riding horses around. Well, I guess Amish.

SPEAKER_02 33:06

Who would sit in a room and watch a box with images on it night long? You know who would walk around with a box and nobody's nobody's gonna stop watching TV to uh to play on their phone all day long, you know. Yeah, and we are like I I don't even know I have a TV sometimes. Like I'll turn something on it and then I'll just be working on my phone, you know. Like I don't even really watch the damn thing. Yeah. So I don't either. I don't either.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Yeah, it's like it was like the industrial revolution, there was the then there was the computers, personal computer, yeah, 80s, right? And then and then the next big thing was the internet, which took a little while to catch on. Yeah. So that was like another 20 years before it like really caught on. And then it was like social media was like the next level of because these are all big leverage pieces, like human leverage.

SPEAKER_02 33:53

How can we keep people on the internet all the time? Yeah, and social media did.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Sorry, yeah. So there was like all these things took human leverage, which was the ultimate leverage, and like multiplied it, right? Like all these things, but like now with now that there's internet computers and now artificial intelligence, that's like I mean, it's so much leverage that if you're not looking in that direction, dude, you're gonna be crushed.

SPEAKER_04 34:21

And it's not it's not a maybe. Like this is fact. Like it's fact. Like you talk to the guy that owns the world now, the the dude that that uh from NVIDIA, right? Like he just said we have so much capacity for the software, right? So the the the those hardware infrastructures there, and that'll just keep getting built. You know, they're they said they're nowhere near Moore's Law, like the end of Moore's Law, so it's gonna keep doubling, right?

SPEAKER_02 34:46

So insane. Yeah. That's uh, so yeah, I I'm I'm uh I think that there's gonna be this division of well, it's gonna be like kind of like Wally, you know, with all the people essentially the fat people on the spaceship buying. I mean, I I envision uh I don't know how long this will take, but I and I'm just this is not an endorsement for me by any means, but I envision a society where the division of wealth gets so great, but that the the people that own everything, who are gonna be the people that utilize and and harness the tools at the top, it's gonna be your your top, whatever, five percent of people, right? They're gonna be so far away from the bottom that they'll they'll pass universal base income eventually. They will, you know, I I believe this. I've been there's gonna be this entire dependent, depressed little class of people that exist buying and consuming from this group of people that is living this entirely different life, you know, and they act like the division of wealth now is great. It's just gonna get worse and worse. Because, like you said, 47% of the people don't even know what chat GPD is. So far behind. You know, it's like to not even know what it is. Like, I mean I mean, that doesn't make any sense. But um bonkers. It's like it's like Google, man. I still remember the first time I heard of Google. I was in seventh grade social studies. That's how old Google is. I'm 36, you know, it's not that I'm old, but I'm 36. I was in seventh grade social studies. We were using Web Crawler, and Belinda Nanny, my social studies teacher, said, Well, you guys should try Google. We had the little computers in the classroom, the like, you know, white ox, you know, the old school. And um we got on, I remember getting on Google, and she was telling us, like, oh, Google is means a hundred, it's a hundred one with a hundred zeros. I still remember this, like conceptually, where it's at. And there are kids right now that are in school, guarantee you, people they teachers are there's certain teachers who tell them you should look at what Chad GPT is, you know. Um, you should look at you look into that, and then they're using, and of course, then you get some of the teachers like, oh, you can't use AI to copyright stuff. There's no way around that. Have you seen the apps that kids use to do their math where they take a picture of a complex math scenario and it just does the work?

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Seen this? Like it's like which man, we got screwed. I don't know, dude. Like, I had to learn math, the quadratic equation. Yeah, the or the uh well, you know, Pythagorean theorems and so uh you know, what do they call it? Uh reflective properties and whatever. I don't even know what any of that stuff really is. I know what the Pythagorean theorem is, but I don't think I've ever had to use it. Right. So, you know, not an insurance anyway.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

You gotta love the school system, giving you tools uh that you'll never use. Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

They ought to be sitting there teaching you how to leverage chat GPT. Of course, teachers knew that wouldn't be teachers, probably.

SPEAKER_01 37:40

Well, yeah, then you you wouldn't be a good little uh slave of the school.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

That's right. Yeah, yeah. I think it was um the second Rockefeller, maybe somebody that went to the Department of Education way back in the day and said, You're not making enough um, you're not making enough uh people to work in our factories. And so it was like the uh there's I haven't read like up on this, but I've heard about it before. Andrew Carnegie. Maybe it was Andrew Carnegie, and it was like we need steel mill workers, we need, you know, and you're you're you're not creating enough people to dumb them down. So the curriculum had to change to force them into that type of like prepare them for that role, you know. And so it's like you want your education to be preparing you for a role that you wouldn't choose, but that's what it does, you know, and that really hasn't adapted much at all.

SPEAKER_01 38:36

So they started putting the school bells just like the the bells at work. Damn. Grooming, grooming the Americans in a nice little row, right?

SPEAKER_04 38:46

In a row.

SPEAKER_02 38:47

Yep. Very interesting. Well, man, yeah. I mean, it it it's it'll be interesting. I mean, our industry, you know, it it's it's kind of funny too because you know, we're on the Medicare side, and so it's like it it it will impact and it'll impact us in some ways slower than other niches or uh, you know, other industries, other age groups, demographics, right? Um, but in other ways it'll impact negatively. I can I can see like the scams that are gonna I mean because our generation, the generation that we serve mostly, and we'll do we do individual health from zero to a hundred, you know, but we'll we'll do Medicare, we do a little bit of small group, we'll do life, we'll do all that. But we're our focus has always been Medicare has been like the pillar of what we did. And um, that generation already gets scammed so easily. And now with AI and AI voice and like being able to mirror your relative's voice and all this. We actually have an employee whose sister, and she was like 35 or 40. The other day, somebody hacked her real estate attorney's email, created another email with a one after it. So, what is this caller Joe Schmoe real estate broker or whatever? And then they put one at gmail.com and then took the emails that she had and started emailing her clients saying, you know, uh you you haven't sent me your the down payment yet, or you hadn't sent me the check yet to see what she this the scammer would get. Well, his sister, the guy that works for me, who's like 35 to 40, saw this and then said, Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Let me get it to you. And what is it? And they're like, it's 150,000, and then told her to go to this bank and wire. This relatively young person went and wired this scammer 150 degrees. Oh my gosh. And and so I'm like, think about like the 65 plus community. Like, I mean, especially 70, 75, 80. I mean, they're just getting an AI is gonna amplify that. So we'll we'll see the negative, I think, implications of it before we see it like absolutely decimate the cell size. But it's already, and the other thing too is like, you know, contacting clients, I feel like is one of the big or contacting prospects is already one of the most difficult things right now because the threshold for someone to actually answer their phone now is like all-time low by a long shot. Yeah. And so if you're trying to do it like archaically right now, like let's say you're not even using automation, you're not even using if-then logic automation to get them to answer the phone.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

Using their their turning the Yeah, they're just too.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

I mean, it's basically like you're just like sending a carrier pigeon to them if you're not using at least automation, but now with AI, like, I mean, because that bot will sit there and communicate with them 24 hours a day and sound like a human. I mean, every now and then, like you got we were talking before, every now and then it'll say something goofy, but it's getting better and better every day because it's actively building its own algorithm to function. So it's not like I have to go in and change it, it's changing itself as it has issues. You know, I might can change certain things to help it along, but it's uh it's changing itself.

SPEAKER_04 41:54

Dude, I I tested our voice one that I built and it it did, I ran 120 leads through it today. We got two quoted from the first run. I mean, that's pretty good, right? I don't know how many answered. I didn't I didn't get into that part of it, but my office manager just came over. He said we got two out of it so far. And that was out after two hours. So might be something.

SPEAKER_02 42:16

I I do think that you gotta you one thing this uh you know that would probably be my greatest concern being, you know, a distribution company in the insurance space is uh you know, so so far in most niches, um direct-to-consumer enrollment has failed, not completely failed, but most of them have like negative CPA, they're like their C that are higher than their lifetime value uh you know from their clients, right? So um care, but carriers play different economics than brokers because they're not dealing with commission, they're dealing with premium. So their CPA could technically be higher than a broker's CPA or an insurance agent CPA. And now you add AI into it. Um, I do believe that there's gonna be a lot of companies that are gonna evolve in direct to consumer space, you know, both P and C, life, Medicare, health, every every sector of it. Um so we'll see, you know, how that evolves because it's funny because like it seemed like a lot of people were leaving that space, like like especially in P and C, you know, it's like it's kind of imploded, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on in that market, there's a lot of stuff going on in every market, but like there's there's uh it's like they were starting to say, oh man, it's just too expensive to do business this way. But now all of a sudden AI is coming along. So there you know there's gonna be startups and private equity pumping into some groups that are going to be trying new things, and at this point, they might be more successful than they were in the past, which could be and that's one of those reasons that I'm talking about these agents that are trying to get in right now. It's like, okay, get in, but you better move quick. Cause if you're not if you know, I had like several years ago in Medicare, I had a uh kind of a mentor one of um several men, I thought of a hundred mentors, but this mentor in his space and the what he was teaching me, he told me this is the land grab. And this was probably eight, nine years ago, was pretty soon after I got in. He said, this is the land grab. The next 10 years are the land grab in Medicare. And then the people that don't go and grab their share of the pie are going to really struggle to, you know, persist. Cause at some point we're going to plateau on how many people are like that growth factor, how many people are turning 65 and all that. Um, but I think that's in every niche right now because of AI. Like we're in this land grab. Go and grab your business, grab your, you know, get your processes in order, all that. Um, because what will happen, I believe, is there'll be further and further consolidation. Private equity has a high appetite for people that are doing things. Your algorithm, like your AI and your algorithm and your your automation and your brand ends up being worth a lot more than you realize because these private equity groups or these publicly traded groups that even carriers will buy that stuff because they it's shiny objects to them. They're like, man, if I could just get that, like it'll be worth way more. And it is worth more to them. Now, sometimes they'll screw it up because they'll come in and buy it and get the founder out of there. And then the founder was the guy that was driving the whole thing. Um, but I'm seeing a lot of them now where they're like with us, you know, we sold uh 51%, but we have 49% retained equity. So the concept is like keep the founder involved, engaged on the profit side of it, but control the aspects of it, you know. So there's a lot of variables out there right now. It's a crazy, a crazy market in everything, election year, AI, man, it just seems like there's gonna be some funny videos here.

SPEAKER_01 45:30

Yeah. So what what do you think? So a couple questions. One is what do you think for that you see on the sales side with all your agents and everything that that you're working with, what are some of the most successful agents doing today that's might be a little different than the past?

SPEAKER_02 45:47

Yeah, I mean, man, so uh you know, the the first ones that come to mind, the the in the Medicare space, the most successful ones right now are finding a very niche, uh niche mark, a niche avatar using Facebook ads that speak to that niche avatar, messaging-wise, getting in front of them in either a webinar educational format or some sort of you know quick call to action, getting that uh that lead info into a high-level system. Like we have one that's called GoGoo, but there are many others where people just have their own high-level, whatever, getting into communicating quickly, trying to contact them fast, and then when they can't contact them with three contact attempts, it going into that pipeline we're talking about of AI and automation continuing to follow up and just using that lead bank. And then also one of the things they're doing that's that's impactful is treating that lead bank like an asset in itself that I can come through randomly and do broadcast messages to or create new ideas. But most of the the ones that are having extreme success, and you know, more agents, people that evolve into agencies or FMOs, they're um they're having a lot of success in just thinking about rapid niche markets and trying a lot of stuff and see what six. Another thing is magnetic marketing, like the Dan Kennedy style, magnetic marketing is still working. Very creative, um uh, you know, decent frequency, traditional touches. Like, I mean, I in the Medicare man, direct mail still works if you don't do it like everybody else. You come up with something, you know, where like we send, we wrote a book for Medicare consumers, and we mail that book to every person turning 65 and in several states with a letter. Then we do a follow-up postcard, a follow-up postcard, and every one of them we're inviting them to webinars, you know, and then we have that evergreen webinar, and it's working really well. Now, a lot of people would look at what we spend on that and think, well, that's really expensive. But then you look at like the average first year return on ad spend that we're getting on those clients because we're targeting middle to upper middle income. Whereas in Medicare, so many of the people that are going to struggle in the next few years have been targeting low income. And I'm not saying like, you know, all policies have value, but I can't spend very much to get in front of a low income person because they don't buy a lot of other stuff, you know. Whereas my my uh magnetic marketing style campaigns where I'm dealing with people who are, let's say in retirement, 50,000 to 200,000 income, but I'm I'm touching them with um educational and comedic style quality marketing. When they call in or they go to a webinar and they respond, they'll buy the core Medicare policies from this, they'll buy additional cancer, they'll buy life insurance. And occasionally we have a um a sector in the office where it gets to our financial side and we'll do some annuities and other things. So that that lifetime value of that customer on average or that return, that first year return on ad span is significant. Because so I can go spend $400, $500 to acquire a customer where other people are trying to acquire a customer at $100 because it's low income and they can't cross-sell them anything and they stay on the books eight months. Well, that's like that's like staying on a hamster wheel. And when you're in a business like insurance, like you got to be chasing the renewal aspect of it. So if I can, if I can have a first year return on ad spend at all, but then have all that renewal income down the pipeline, that's the ones that are successful. You know, they they figure out a way to get off the ground enough to where they can spend more money on quality marketing and they trust the process. They don't drop a piece of mail, they don't run an ad and then turn it off and wait for the result. They just run it and run it and run it.

SPEAKER_04 49:28

Consistency over time. Like that's a long-term strategy versus the typical agent. I mean, I I did it forever where I'd buy something, go we dig anything, and then freak out. And oh, two months later we close them, right?

SPEAKER_02 49:41

And then it's like maybe we need to restart, and then yeah, that's the freaking monkey mind game. Dude, I've I've done it too, man. Like it's not like it when I tell somebody to do something, and and then you tell somebody to do something, it's not like I'm saying I did that every time. I'm saying learn from my mistake. Yes, you know, you know, find a budget that you can stick with for a long period of time. Don't go blow your load in month one and then have to sit there and wait. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 50:10

So uh a hundred percent. It's like so go ahead. No, no, no, no, go for it. I can't remember. Uh I was gonna say, uh so like going forward, what like what are you most optimistic about in the next year and and what advice would you give other agents? Um, just like the last thing you said, I mean, the principles are all the same. It doesn't matter if it's Medicare, PNC, you know, the consistency of buying leads and and and like that principle is applicable against any type of of business buying leads pretty much. Um preacher, Jason.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

My biggest, uh the most exciting thing for our business right now is finding, I mean, like what I'm ultimate avatar of who I'm looking for right now. I our consumer side is pretty much an autopilot and continues to grow. But our on the agent side, I'm super excited about finding the strong independent agent that wants to become an actual business. You know, the guy who's figured out how to sell or the gal who's figured out how to sell. They're writing, you know, 150, 200, 300 policies a year. And they're like, okay, how do I get, how do I build a team? And I don't mean go and recruit a bunch of people and into a pyramid. I mean build an actual team of employees. And I'm not knocking that. We have downline agents too, but like, how do I go and build a business out of this? You know, because the there are different hard parts in business, but in insurance, I it's it's gotta be, you know, the hardest part has to be just getting off the ground into a consistent momentum. And so if I can find that individual agent or that really small agency, and then I can help them with our tools and our events scale to the next level. That's what we're good at. You know, I don't, I don't go out there and say, like, hey, I'm really good at taking, you know, brand new agents, you know, in. I mean, we work with brand new agents, you know, especially if I if we vet them and think that they have potential. But like mostly I want to find the agent that's looking to go from strong independent producer to agency owner um in the the life and health Medicare sector.

SPEAKER_04 52:10

Yeah, it's it's amazing. You get into this business and they teach you the product, right? They do it's just like here's the product, here's the product, here's how to use the system. And but nothing about business ownership, right? And like you said, to your point, we all show up here average, right? Like we couldn't do the other stuff. So we come to insurance and and it's like, oh, okay, cool. It's a you know full opportunity. And then we get trained on just narrow little piece that really doesn't help us advance the thing, you know, and then it's like finding the right mentors. Like it if you're in your space, it's like finding people like you, hopefully people look to us and and think the same way, you know, in the PNC space because it's like we did it. We could help people save a lot of time and a lot of frustration, a lot of money just by listening, right?

SPEAKER_02 52:56

Yeah, dude. If I at this point, if I was going to get into PNC, I'd be coming to guys like you and be like, all right, what's the cheat code? Like, you know, and and and the cheat, and look, it's just not like there's a button to push and create a business, but you know, going to somebody and saying, What do I not do? It's uh almost as valuable as saying what to do, you know, like where where have you wasted the most money and time? Because a lot of times the ideas you have are like, well, I'll do it this way, and that would work really well. And then you find out like, no, well, that that, you know, we tried that, or you know, or one of our people tried that, you know. So I think it's uh it's yeah, it's tuition. And and and if I can pay somebody else or a line or work with them in some capacity, in in most cases, especially if you choose a good mentor, I mean, and look, I'm not saying there aren't like some snake oil salesmen and scam artists out in the world selling stuff, like that doesn't exist. You know, there's bad, there's recruiters, uh, most of them are actually your typical old school recruiters. They have zero value add. And, you know, and that's in all the sectors that I've seen in insurance. It's but if you if you have, if you find the ones that are really practical with the preach, that seem cutting edge, that are doing things that other people aren't doing, uh, you know, and you work with them, whatever you spend with them, or you know, if you align with them or whatever, it's nine times out of ten, it's going to save you ten times, a hundred times the money, effort, and energy um that you would spend just trying to figure it out yourself. And I've seen it before. I've seen people that are like, well, I'm just gonna try that myself. And I've done that. I've tried things, and I'm gonna try this. Uh sometimes I did it by necessity because I didn't know of anyone else who'd do it. But if you can find somebody that's doing it, and think the good thing about this era we're in right now is that there are a lot of people out there, you know, in individual niches. You go and find, like you can go on on social media and different areas and find it. And like if you're somebody that lists, most people that are listening to this probably don't feel this way, but you'll see these people like, oh, if you could, if if you're so good at selling insurance, why do you sell insurance and instead of doing this content towards agents? But that's horse shit. Like I do, first of all, I do the content towards agents because it's fun. Yeah. And it breaks Amen of just doing the inside. And I do, you come to my office right over here. Guess what? All freaking day they're doing talking to Medicare beneficiaries, right? They're that's what we do. It's like 50% of all of our revenue in this big operation is coming from the directory consumer. The agents has been fun and it's growing, and I would like to do that, but that's almost like I had to graduate out of the hell, even some of my salespeople, eventually it's like I now I have another path because it's grueling to sit there and do that part of it forever. Yeah. So I'm gonna keep that operation going, but then there's this graduatory phase where some of those people then come over to marketing or they come over to agent support or recruiting or something like that. And it's it can be more rewarding to tell somebody that I'm gonna keep them on the direct-to-consumer sales channel as a full role as a top producer forever. Yeah, rough might make them think, I don't know if I can do this forever. Yes, it's more money than I've ever made in my life, but it's it's rough, you know, and you got to do it when you got to do it. But once you see another way, it's like, okay. And that's what I want to show people is like, hey, let me show you how to do the hard work to build the engine and then use that engine to fuel other aspects and other avenues, you know.

SPEAKER_04 56:19

Justin, we have to cut it off here, but I would like to ask, can we bring you back? Because this is freaking awesome. We'd love to have you back on, maybe do a part two at some point and uh keep it going. Mr. Jason has to run. He has an important meeting somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 56:34

And uh yeah, so let's do it. Hey, I'll be back for sure, guys. I really appreciate you guys having me, and everybody that's listening should definitely subscribe to and follow the insurance dudes because they're putting out great content. Where can they find you, Mr. Brock? Um, I would prefer Instagram at the Justin Brock or YouTube, uh, YouTube.com slash Justin Brock. Boom.

SPEAKER_01 56:57

Love it, man. Love seeing other people in the industry just killing it. So following you has been uh so much fun over the years. Thank you guys so much. Likewise. Good stuff, man. Thank you. You really did have to brunt. Okay.