Phase 1 | Module 1: Identifying Your Personal Brand

And we start by directing the question to you. What is your personal brand? Because this is what we are trying to create for you guys. Name brand recognition. We want your prospects to know who you are. I don't care how long you've been in the industry. Matt, you've been 20 plus. Jeff, you've been 20 plus. Yeah. We could still argue not enough prospects know who you are.

Right. And so we could always use more prospects. Now here is another reality. In today's world.

Business is about who knows you. Today. I know when I got in, Matt, Jeff, you were probably the same. It was all about the Rolodex. Who do you know? I started at Northwestern Mutual in a college internship. And any. If you guys remember that what they had you do is write down a hundred family and friends who do you know.

Today it's changed. Business is very much about who knows you.

I had a conversation with an advisor last week who's in a market. He goes after a very specific niche industry, but he's in a market where he feels like it's saturated. He feels like he and his competitors are going after the same business, saying the same things. And I said, when you will find yourself in that situation.

Business really becomes who knows you. This is when you have to lean in to be the one they see the most. Because if you feel you're all saying the same things, if I see you the most, you're going to become my de facto go to expert. And that's what we want to do now. This is where our industry has a big challenge. If you do not stand out, you are always going to get passed up for the recognizable name. Matt, where did you come from? Marsh or Mercer? Yeah. Very recognizable, right? Yeah. I bet you want some business sometimes off the logo.

Absolutely. Deep bench. And we sold the firm.

Right. Well, new front, large guys. You're at one group. You don't have that advantage anymore. You can't just say, hey, look at our logo. We're the biggest in the industry. No. And if we don't stand out, if we look anything like them, they will get picked nine times out of 10.

It's just why it's like in the health insurance space. No matter what we want to say about Blue Cross Blue Shield, guess what? It's a recognizable logo that makes consumers feel warm and fuzzy.

So this is key. We have to find a way to stand out. In fact, the next slide is, nobody has been fired for hiring these guys.

No one's been hired for. Fired for hiring Aon or Mercer or Gallagher. Even though you know you do better than them.

This is the safe choice.

Instead of looking like a vanilla ice cream cone, what I want to help you guys do through this academy is look like this.

Who does not want to be the hot fudge Sunday? We want your prospects looking at you and saying, I don't know what that is, but that's different. I need to, I need to find out what this is.

And that's done through your message.

If there are four questions I want to help you answer in this academy.

These are the four questions that I think drive effective marketing. And by the way, guys, when I say the word marketing throughout this course, think of it. Interchange the word marketing with prospecting.

The four questions are, who am I talking to?

What am I saying to them?

How am I saying it?

And where am I saying it? That's what we're going to get clear on. Who.

What, how and where.

Now.

Those answers might be different for each and every one of you.

But as long as you build a system with a good message you can repeat with confidence, it is going to work. And I'm going to give you a little secret. There is no perfect process.

We need to have a process and that's what we're going to build today. So let me share my story real quick because most of you, I don't. I've only known you guys for very, very short length of time. So I've been in the industry 22 years. I shared my early story of being a failed advisor early on. But in 2014, I made a very big change in my career. My Amy. So I got two Amy's in my life. Amy Essig, that I'm going to teach you throughout this course.

And take this message and get it in front of as many people as we possibly can at one time.

This is the name of the game. How are we going to cast a wide net with our message? Here's a great example. Any of you guys can answer this. If I pick up the phone today and I call one prospect, how many prospects can I call at one time?

1. 1. If I go pound the pavement, park my car and I go door to door, how many doors can I knock in on one time?

That's linear awareness, right? If you, if you just do the math today, anybody know, do you guys know how many calls it takes today to get a prospect on the phone? Any idea?

15. Close. 18.

Now do the math. If I want to reach or get 10 prospects on the phone, how many calls do I have to make?

180. Right. If it's 18.

Yeah.

Yeah. If I'm really good at it. And I do that. A call every two minutes, leaving voice messages. That's six hours to reach 10 people, to get 10 people on the phone.

Now, we're still going to talk about picking up the phone as part of this course, but what I am saying is we got to find a way to say, wait, how do I get one message.

In front of a lot of people at once? What if I can get one message in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people at one time? That's how I start using my prospecting time effectively. And that's what starts checks. Starts to check the box of that credibility, which not only gives you what you need when you walk into a meeting, it will have people reaching out to you and who would not love to have an inbound lead.

So what I'm talking about is reputation leads to relevancy. This is what I learned. But when we moved out to Colorado, when I built my brand and I said, here's what I'm going to put out there to the market.

I. If I. If I did it long enough, it would create relevancy. I became relevant in the market.

So here's what I want you guys to think about right now.

If I gave you a sledgehammer, okay, and you were standing in front of a brick wall, and I said, you need to find a way to poke a hole in this brick wall, knock a hole in this brick wall to walk through.

What would you do with the sledgehammer? Would you take it and hit all parts of the brick wall so it finally knocks down? Or would you focus your efforts on one part of the wall and hit it over and over and over again?

One part over and over. You hit one part of the wall until you break through, Right? What does that have to do with you? My goal is to help you move from an unknown entity. And I say unknown, not that nobody knows you. We're saying more people can know you. And I want you to put. I want to put you in a position to feel unstoppable. And the key to doing that, if that line in the middle, that gold line, is the brick wall.

We'Re going to make you become known for one thing, very few things. One challenge we have in this industry is we can help all prospects do anything. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. That's what makes you sound like the vanilla ice cream cone. What we want to get really good at is saying, all right, when I think of Matt, Richard, when I think of Nick when I think of Jeff. He's the go to on this.

That's how we create this name recognition. I'll give you some real life examples. Anybody know who Gary Vaynerchuk is? Gary V. Anybody ever heard of this guy? He's a huge social media influencer. He's known for marketing. He's got one of the larger marketing agencies down in New York City. But what's interesting is he's got all these businesses today because he's got brand recognition. But he started out as the guy who sold wine at his dad's liquor store. That's how he became known. He sold wine at his dad's liquor store and he started a whole video YouTube channel on it. He became known as that. And then once he broke through the wall, he could do anything.

That's what we're talking about is instead of trying to go wide and far on who you serve and what you do, I'm going to challenge you guys to get really focused on what you do better than anybody else. What is that one thing? If I give you the choice to only become known for one thing, what is it? And we're going to get into that here in a few minutes.

So this is what we've got to determine. We've got to start by asking, who are you?

Here's what I want you to think about though. This is the key. I talked about the misconceptions of what a personal brand is. It's nothing more than your reputation. It's not some fancy logo up on a wall or bright colors. It's just your reputation. How do you want the market to talk about you?

And this might seem obvious, guys, but why I think it's such an important step one in this process is I have watched too many.

Producers.

Sacrifice their reputation for the sake of revenue.

I've watched too many producers try to act or be anybody they have to be to win business. It's not the point.

It's not the point. The point is you want to show up as you your unique brand and go find the prospects that love your brand. I'll share this story A quick story on this topic that I just saw the other day. So I started my career with Federated Insurance after Northwestern Mutual. Anybody had heard of Federated before? Yeah. So you know, I sold everything business, commercial insurance, health, disco, life, you name it. Well, I was in Wisconsin. There was a producer in Illinois that had his territory down there and he was lauded as our industry, our regional all star superstar because he came out of nowhere and was just selling things left and right. And I'll never forget this. We had our regional kickoff. We always had it in. Thanks. Around Thanksgiving. And I actually roomed with him. I'm like, oh, I'm gonna get to learn from this guy. This is awesome. And he started telling me in the room one night what he was doing to get sales. And I'm like, this guy's shady as hell. Like, how he's winning business is so unethical. He went on stage the next day and told everybody how he did it, but he told a load of bs.

Check this out. This is about reputation. I'm not kidding you. Over this weekend, this last weekend, I googled him. I like what, I wonder what this guy's up to these days.

He just got out of jail.

With a four year sentence because he built his own insurance agency but was scamming people out of premium dollars.

Wow. Reputation, guys. I'm like, wow, this guy went from region all star because of what he was doing. I. I saw what he was doing, said, yeah, that, that sacrificing reputation for revenue. And he just spent 48 months in jail. So this is what I mean about never sacrifice reputation for the name of revenue. So we're going to start doing some exercises now.

That I want you guys. This is the workshop part of today. And we're gonna get. Because it's three of you, we're gonna have time to go around and talk about this too, which I love. So here's the first question.

What makes you unique? You personally. Now, before you write it down, before you think about it, I want you to think about it this way.

If there's one thing your competition cannot replicate, it's your story. It's your story. If I said, all right, knowing that what is one thing that makes you unique? I want you to write it down.

What if we don't know what makes us unique?

Andy, I want you to write something down. We'll workshop it, give me something, and then we'll. We'll get. You'll see where this is going.

You already told me something unique about you, Jeff.

Nobody's ever bought insurance from me because I won the national championship 26 years.

Ago, but I talk about that. We'll talk about that.

You all told me something unique already. That's the funny part. We already accomplished this in a way at the beginning of the call.

Most likely. By the way, this uniqueness should have nothing to do with your business.

And as you guys are feeling or thinking about this, what's so funny is when we do this with people. I'll give you a great example. I just did a workshop at a conference a couple weeks ago, and I asked this question and a guy couldn't come up with anything. I pushed and I pushed. I said, really? There's something. What. Give me something about your past that makes unique. And he literally went like this. I actually used to be a, an actor in movies, but I'm like, that's a bet. How many, how many advisers are former movie actors turned advisors? None.

But he went, nah, nobody cares. Everybody cares. And you're going to see how we're going to use this. So, Matt, what one thing that makes unique?

So I came up with authenticity. I am authentic. And I'm the same person on the weekends with my family as I am on a Monday morning as I am in a prospect meeting. They're going to get consistent now.

We're going to go a layer deeper. You'll see why this is important, guys. This is an exercise just to give you ideas. What did you share with me at the beginning that is something unique about you?

Passion for Corvettes.

Okay, write that down. Passion for Corvettes. That makes you unique. And I'm going to come back as we're done here. You'll see where this makes sense. Nick, what makes you unique?

Well, now I'm kind of second guessing mine because you said it probably shouldn't be related to the business. But the one I wrote down was I have a degree in risk management and also in underwriting. So it allows me to be.

I went to college. I actually went to college for this stuff. Yep. But if I said, all right, just let us get to know Lick up knitting to lick. Let's let us get to know Nick a little bit. Tell me something unique about you, Nick. What did you tell me early?

I love to travel.

Love to travel. Write that down. I love to travel. I know that doesn't sound totally unique. You'll see where this makes sense here. Jeff, what about you?

I don't know. I wrote.

I'm a hard working problem solver.

Okay, we're gonna. That'll come up here when we do an exercise in a few minutes. But if I said, Jeff, give me something really specific, I want you to write down. Won a national championship playing lacrosse. Just write it down.

Obviously, lacrosse is a big part of your family, correct?

Yep.

Okay, here's why this question's important. Guys, we're about to answer a second question, but this first question helps create this for you to win business today. You have to create likability and credibility. You can't have one or the other. Here's why. If all I do in business is create likability, here's what happens. I get caught in the friend zone with prospects. They like me, they take meetings, but they'll never take me seriously enough to hire me. Anybody ever been there early and maybe more early in the career? Oh, yeah, prospects like you. They'll take a meeting with you. But am I actually going to sit down and say, all right, it's time to go to work and hire you? That's why my first 10 years were terrible. I was a likable guy.

The flip side is, all I focus on is credibility. If I don't know who you are, I'm not sure I like you.

Yeah, I see you're smart. Probably not going to hire you either.

If we focus too much on credibility and nothing else, this is where we lose a piece of business or an opportunity to someone we know. We're better like him, really. They won the likability game.

If it was just knowledge and you know you're smart, you'd win a lot more than you do. Gotta have both. What makes you unique is what helps the likability side. So here's what I'm going to pose the question to the three of you. Matt, Whether it's Corvettes. Nick, travel, Jeff, Lacrosse. When you think about those hobbies, sports, passions, have they taught you lessons about life and business?

Yep. Matt, give me one example. What is being a Corvette fan and growing up with a dad who was as well. What. What is something it's taught you?

You know, Andy, it's funny you say that, because I was just thinking. I'm always thinking about what is my next LinkedIn post going to be?

Right?

And we talked about this. I mean, new front is just modernizing the industry with technology.

So I was.

I went back and I said, okay, what is the horsepower of my dad's 1970 Stingray? 300 miles per hour. What is the horsepower of my 2001? 350 miles per hour. What is the base horsepower of a modern day 2023 Corvette? They look like freaking supercars out there. 490 horsepower. The thing that changed technology. And so to me, it was simple as that. You need to modernize as time and technology advances.

Homework assignment. Make that post. I want to see that post. I want to be tagged on it by the end of the week. All right, Seriously, Nick, what's one thing travel has taught you about life or business?

I'd say, being able to deal with people of many diverse backgrounds and navigating unfamiliar situations.

Navigating unknown situations when you have language culture barriers. Yep. You have a picture from Iceland. I do. Making a post about that by Friday. Okay. This is what I love about the. The smaller groups. I can literally assign you homework immediately. Hey, Jeff, what's one thing lacrosse has taught you about business or winning the national title? Whatever. What has it taught you about life or business?

Well, I guess, you know, you got to put in the hard work to get the job done. As I. As. I think as long as we're doing a puff piece about how awesome I am. I also won the state championship in high school. But before we talk about me the whole time, I also want to say that my senior year, we lost the state championship. In my sophomore year, we lost in the national championship. So I've been, you know, top of the mountain and then lost at the top of the mountain to fall all the way down.

Oh, okay. Let me ask you this. Do you think greater lessons came out of the national. State national championships or the state and national championship losses?

I think a lot more about losing the state championship my senior year than winning my junior year.

There's your post. I want you to make a post saying, what a lot of people don't know about me is I play high school and college across was fortunate enough to win a state championship in high school, in a national championship. But. But you know what? What most people may not know is I also lost a state championship and a national championship as well, and I actually learned I want that post by Friday.

Those are. Here's what happens, guys. Why am I'm challenging. And we're not even close to getting to the LinkedIn module yet, but why I'm challenging you on this is this is what starts letting prospects get to know you. Now, what it's not about is Nick taking a picture on his travel, saying, look at me, Aren't I cool? I'm in Iceland.

What Nick's saying is, I love travel, and one of the things I love about it is going into unknown environments with culture, barriers, whatever, and being able to navigate. It's a lot like what you sell, Nick, isn't it?