Unlocking Insurance Success | Wisdom from the Expert Andy Neary PART 2

When I look at the most successful advisors in our industry and I compare them to everybody else, and there's a lot of people stuck in mediocrity. Right. And I said, okay, what separates the best from the rest? Drive and discipline. Definitely in that category. But, Jason, it goes back to something you said. The best also invest in themselves 100%. You would, you would be surprised how many advisors come to us for help, but then want their company to pay for the investment.

Yeah. And it's like, guys, it's never going to work that way.

It won't.

You have to put your own skin in the game. Exactly.

You have to pay. Exactly.

You have to invest in yourself, even when it feels uncomfortable, even when you don't think you have the money right now, going all in on yourself, betting on yourself is the best thing you can do.

Insurance dudes are on a mission to escape being handcuffed by our agencies.

How?

By uncovering the secrets to creating a predictable, consistent, and profitable agency sales machine.

I am Craig Pretzinger.

I am Jason Feldman.

We are agents.

We are insurance.

It's so funny. I don't think a lot of agents think about the fixed costs that they have.

Right.

They have this agent, and to your point, a lot of them are expensive. They have them sitting in the seat and you're like, go out and get business. And it's like, dude, you could bring them business. So much more inexpensive than it costs for them to go get business because it's going to take them hours and hours and hours just to reach someone. But like, dude, they're sitting there. They're your most expensive cost. Why not, you know, spend a little bit that will be less expensive to get people to them so that they can actually close the deals 100%. But we don't do that.

I mean, just think about the math, guys, right? It's, it's not that difficult today for an agency to have bring in at least $100 million of premium if you, if you've got a few producers. Right, Right. If we use the math, 10, which we all think is low, that's a hundred thousand dollars on marketing. Do you know what a hundred thousand dollars of marketing would do for your agency if you used it the right way?

Yes.

Your producers would have more leads than they know what to do with.

Yes.

But that's the problem.

We've done it.

Yeah. And you guys have proved it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's crazy. And I know I, I understand like, the, the, the. There's a, there is a pain Element there's a, you know, you're scared and stuff. There was one point that when I first started doing this that we built up to like we were doing $80,000 a month in, in marketing spend and I was like, my stomach was hurting because I was like this could go sideways. Like, you know what I mean? But it was um, really just knowing those numbers, understanding that we're still doing the same thing we did on the littler scale, but on a, on a bigger scale. But like there's no way that we would have even came close to the same results without that kind of spend. And it came back to us exponentially in return.

Hundred percent.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's. I mean I understand the emotional behind. There's a total emotional. But to your point earlier, there's a math element to it. So if you know the math, then the. Let the math guide the emotion, not the emotion, guide the math.

I'm in a group right now, my own coaching and one of the mentors that leads the group says it to us all the time. The only difference between you guys running your businesses and somebody like Patrick Bet David or Ed Mylett or, or Lewis, how they spend a heck of a lot more money on marketing and ads than you do.

Right.

More leads, higher price product. I mean it's all, it's, it's the same thing. Right. Business is just moving the. How much does it cost to bring them in? How much the lifetime value? You know, here we go.

If we got, if we had more agency owners understand that game of math I think we'd have here, it kind of goes back to where we started the conversation. One thing that drives me every day to do what we do is I feel not enough agencies know how to grow organically anymore. Because that's why you see a lot of, most of the independent selling. I don't think they're selling out of, out of desire, they're selling out of need. They're done, they're tired, they're, they're just. I need to sell. And it's why M A is the number one strategy for all the big houses. Nobody knows how to grow organically anymore because there is a lack of, of, of agencies that understand what you two understood, which is wow.

Yeah.

We apply marketing a good strategy to our, our game plan and throw some ad money and dollars at it. Holy cow. This thing turns into a machine.

Yeah. And it's. And you test it. You don't test it at an eighty thousand dollar spin, you test it at A freaking five thousand dollar spend and then you, oh, it worked, right? And I think that that's where like I was in that same. You're hit with so many things and the agent comes in. Especially like a captive PNC agent comes in. They're learning all this stuff. They're learning how to be a boss. There, there's, there's a million different people marketing different marketing things to them. When at the end of the day the, the cheapest cost per sale, right. Acquisition cost that there is is buying Internet leads, put a bunch of dials on them and transfer them to your people and closing them like in this world, right? Like that's, you're not going to find anything else under what, 3, 400 bucks acquisition cost, which you have to have. It can't be higher than that. You're not making anything. Right. And so yeah, it's, it's, it's just, it's wild that then there's other people like, oh, I'm waiting for the phone to ring. I'm going to aggressively stare at this thing until it rings and it nothing happens, right? They, they end up, they.

I got a question for you guys though on this because I, I really. This, this topic, I love this topic because did you guys hit a point when you had your, your marketing dialed in with this and you were generating leads and you almost like consistent, predictable leads where you said we could probably go apply the same concept to another industry. Did you ever hit that point?

Yeah.

Yes.

We just hit that ourselves because we're in the process of building our own game plan here, right?

Yeah.

And it hit me because I'm like, wow, once you see what it takes or how to build this little machine, you're like, I told my team the other day, I'm like, we could literally take this process we've just built and apply it to another product.

Yeah, you do it to anything because it's the same numbers for everything, right? Like I had, I can, I can talk about conversations I have with, with my wife here because she won't ever listen, but she was talking. So she works in, in biotech and you know, they launch products and whatever, you know, that treat cancer and, or test for something and you know, it's good. She's not listening, but she walked through the, you know, here's the development, here's. And then I just like, I rattled off the, you know, here's the metrics. Like when you do, when it goes to market, this is what they need to do. They got to cover the R D with the, you know, and, and it's just this, it's the same thing. Everything works the same. And she's like, no, you don't understand. Our industry works different. I'm like, no, it's, it's okay.

But they may call it different things.

But the same process, all the same. All the same thing.

Yep. It's, it's.

And it's everywhere. Yeah. And, and often, like what's interesting is M and A, like going and buying those other agencies is a quick path to, to growth. Right. And, and it's easy if there's a bunch of extra cash or if they're going at a low multiple and you finance it for cheaper where they'll do a carry back, whatever. Right. There's a lot of opportunity there. But we've actually, we put the numbers side by side like spending and growing organically or you know, paid organic to, to do your business can be less acquisition costs when you put the numbers on what you get when you actually buy something. Right. And there's also that at, there's the, the people that leave.

Right.

You're losing 20 when you buy it. So it's just interesting when you actually go and look at the numbers because a lot of folks talk about a lot of things, but they don't actually put the math on it. And that's what I love. I love that math.

And it, but I think it's, it goes back to Jason, you said something earlier, we talked about patience or lack thereof. Yeah, right. It's. Are you willing to show up every day, act urgently in the moment, but put patience to your long term vision, you know, and how, what I mean by that is like I get up every day. Right. I love the process. I'm sure you guys are the same. You get up, you have to act urgently in the moment, the activity, but put patience to it as well because you know what you're doing today is going to set up a big tomorrow. And I think that's where some agencies fall short when it comes to how do we use marketing to create that big win down the road. They lack the patience to say I am spending dollars today knowing this is going to create an amazing return a year, three years, five years from now. I think they're too focused on whatever I spend today. I want to create a return next week.

Right. It's like I, I think this happens with, with every type of marketing thing that, that we as agents get. So everything will work as long as you do it right. Unless you're like insulting Them like you, you can knock on doors, it'll work. But you have to do it forever. Right? You don't just do it for a week and then stop. You can send mailers, it'll work. But you have to be consistent. And so we know that applying action is going to create a result. That's just a fact. It's a lot. It's law. Right. Like that's the laws of nature right there.

One thing that I believe is that I think the more you can delay gratification in your business, like the more goodwill you can put out into the world, the more you're going to be able to return when you ask for something. So like, and then I think, like, like when you look at really big baller business dudes, they understand this the most. They understand like the long term, like the longer, longer play. And I, and I've thought about this a lot and you see really good marketing people do this where they're just given away forever, ever, ever. Gary Vee talks about the jab, jab, jab, right hook. But let's take it back to Jesus, like now. The reason being is it's the, the Bible is the number one selling book of let's just take away all the.

I mean, it does have time on its side for being the devil.

Yeah.

And it was first to market the.

Number one selling book of all time.

Yes. Right.

All market that Jesus did is give the whole time and we're still talking about him. Right? So that's like, to me, like the ultimate play in like reciprocity is just give, give, give, give, and never really ask for anything. But like I. So that's an extreme example. But like us as business owners, like, the longer that you can delay the gratification, like, the bigger the returns will be.

I couldn't agree more. I think if you go at it with the confidence that I'm not going anywhere, I'll be here five years from now. And that allows you to wake up every day again, act urgently, but be patient about it confidently. Patient. But you said something else, Jason, that I think is really important. What you're saying in your marketing is if you spend, if you focus your marketing on giving. The same mentor I mentioned earlier uses a phrase called save the best for first. Share your good stuff. It almost gives you this air of, how do I say this? Because I feel it when I reach out to prospects. You almost owe me a meeting because I've given you so much. Right. Not that I'm saying that to them, but in my Head. I'm like, this guy owes me a meeting. We have given this team so much content, they're gonna say yes. And I think you're right. The more you just focus on giving, it tends to create amazing inbound opportunities. And when you actually apply the outbound activity, it elevates your outbound activity to levels that you've never experienced before.

100 and you can even relate that to your staff. You can relate it to.

Dude, to yourself. You know what I mean? Like the more you can create margin for yourself, the more like you like doing what you do, the more you can create a situation where your staff shows up and are excited about work, the more they're going to be excited and, and sell to. You know what I mean? Like, it's just. It's exponentially better to, to create, to, to give. And I think so many times we can be frustrated as business owners and kind of lose sight of that. And then we get into this like, mindset of like fear and.

Where we're not giving as much. We're like, well why aren't. Why aren't you doing this? Why aren't we doing. You know what I mean? And it's like, dude, that's. That cycle is, is how you, how you can really go down in flames. You know?

Yeah. I think the traditional hand to hand prospecting combat we've all dealt with early in our careers is we. Our activity was always we do something with wanting something in return. Right. I mean that's a cold call. A cold call is I'm picking up the phone with wanting something in return. I send one email to a prospect hoping it creates an appointment. I'm doing it to get something in return versus what if we just pumped out marketing every day without wanting a dang thing in return? And then eventually we'll ask. But when we ask there Gary Vee talks about this. They almost feel guilty. So they say yes because we've given them so much. Right.

100 love it. What are some tactics that you can help some agents out with? Why don't you give them some? Give them.

Well it kind of. I'll say it goes back to who are you talking to? What are you saying? How are you saying it? Where are you saying it? You know, if I could just share some nuggets there. You know, when it's. When it comes down to the who, we actually use a, an exercise we call the five star prospect profile, which is number one, tell me who your favorite client is today and then tell me why. And the only Re answer you can't give me is because I make the most money out of.

Right?

Yeah, but. But when you dig into the why, it comes down to demographics and psychographics. And the way I love to describe psychographics is if you're looking at an athlete, the demographics of the height, weight, and speed, all the stuff on paper, right? The psychographics is, okay, how's that athlete when he or she's on the field? When it's crunch time, how do they act? How do they behave? How do they perform? Prospects are no different. Demographics are all the good things on the paper. The industry, the number of employees, number of re, size of revenue, whatever it is. But psychographics is, who are these people? What do they believe? What do they stand for? And if you can clearly identify who the best fits are for your agency, that way, psychographically, your marketing will turn into gold. If you focus your marketing on the psychographics, I love that. That's number one. Number two, then is, what are you saying? I don't know if you guys. If I could grab it. I'm actually a certified guide by Story Brand. I don't know if you ever. Guys. You guys ever read the book? Yeah, Story brand. Yeah, it's storytelling, right? It's. There's a hero with a goal who has a problem, who needs a guide with a plan to have success and avoid failure. If you use your marketing to tell that story, by the way, the hero is not your agency. It's your prospect, right? You guys will be shocked how many times I do that exercise. And I say, so who is the hero? And they go, we are. I said, oh, no, your prospect's the hero. If you apply storytelling to your marketing, it gets exponentially better. And then the how are you saying it? And the what are you? Or where are you saying it? It just comes down to, are you. Are you putting out video content, podcast content, articles, blogs? And where are you putting that stuff? Are you on LinkedIn? Are you on Instagram? Are you doing webinars? Are you doing podcasts? Are you sending out email newsletter? If you do all of that stuff, you almost can't not create activity. If you apply the cold calling and all the other stuff you have to do, if you're clear about who you're talking to, you're gonna find the right people.

100.

But it comes back to the secret we've been talking about. Are you willing to get up every day and do it over and over and over again?

Yep. So what's not easy?

What do you say to folks that, that are kind of waffling on getting up and, and doing it all over?

If I had an answer to coach discipline and drive into somebody who doesn't have it, I think I'd be worth tens of millions of dollars. It's hard, I think driving.

That's why Tony does it.

I will, I will tell you. Our best clients, ironically, are typically former high level athletes. Because we have a lot of them in the insurance industry.

They get it. Yeah.

The ones that we tend to coach. If I went, if you went through our roster of people we've worked with that have had a ton of success, they probably play a college sport sometimes even. We just worked with a guy who's in the insurance industry that was a defensive back in the NFL for seven years.

Think about, think about the level of consistency and discipline they've had their entire.

I put it this way, athletes like that don't need to be told to work out. They just want to know what the workout is.

They need a coach because they've had a coach their whole life. I mean, you know, they get it.

Yep.

They're like, look, I'll do the stuff.

Tell me what to do. Yeah, I think so. For, for. If I'm a producer right now and I'm struggling and I'm listening to this, I think it's gut check time. Look in the mirror and say, do I have the drive and the discipline? Am I willing? And discipline, I think can be taught because that's time management. That's.

Sure.

How are you taking care of your health? How are you sleeping? All those things that going in go into being productive every day. The drive, you've got to, you've got to gut check yourself and look in the mirror and say, do I want to do I love this enough that I want to do this every day? Yep. And by the way, if the answer is no, no harm, no foul, go do something else, but find a way to do something you love.

100 dude, that, that's true. That's the, that's the con. That's my go to with employees. Like, like the wrong employee on the team. That's the conversation. Do you want to do this? You know what I mean? It's like, that's my move. I get them to fire themselves, get.

Them to apologize to him, but they're gonna have to quit.

Yeah, well, because there's a missing.

You know what I need to do and I need to. And he's like, it worked, right?

There's a mistake.

You're giving them the space to know that it's not it. Don't be, don't feel bad, right? If you don't love this, you're not a fit. But don't feel bad. Like, go find something you love.

I think that's so such a better approach to just be like human, human and be real and go look, you know, instead of this cat and mouse and hey, you know, you're not beating them down until they quit or, you know, just exiting them. I mean, if they didn't do something wrong, they're just not cutting it. Then it's like have that talk, you know, we. You could be that person that actually like, course corrects them. Like they don't get it or they don't love it or what, or, or Matt, gut check yourself on this. This may make people unhappy. Maybe they don't like the way that you're running it. Right. I mean, I've, I, for many years did not run this very well. And, you know, they didn't like me, the people that. Because it was. I was Darth Vader. Darth Vader doesn't, doesn't win hearts and, and loyal employees. Right? It requires, it requires a lot of skills. Psychology, I think, being one of them probably, you know.

Yeah. Well, I'll share this, guys. I mean, I. One thing I haven't shared with you guys on this show, I, I just said to you guys that, you know, I've been fortunate to work with some high level athletes that are now in the insurance industry. Well, that was my story. You know, I, I played. I spent a couple years in pro baseball. And my story, when I got to pro baseball, I got away from all the things I did in high school and college that made me successful. The drive and the discipline, the work off the field when nobody's watching. And it's why my pro baseball career lasted two years.

What team?

Milwaukee Brewers.

Oh, cool.

How cool.

But it's also how I spent the first 10 years of my insurance career. I wasn't disciplined. I didn't have the drive I wanted. What took you nine years in nine weeks? Yeah, give me the hack. I don't want, I don't want to. I don't want the hard work. Everybody's, you know, and I, it took me a long time to get back to that. Oh, wait. There is no secret to success here. This is hard work. It's all the work I'm doing when no one's watching that matters. Ah. Oh. It's just like baseball when I was in high School and college. When it clicked for me, that's when my career changed.

And you said, oh, wait, maybe I'm not right about everything. Right.

Exactly. I was. I was a terrible employee for 10 years.

Oh.

In this industry.

Yeah. It's crazy. It's. But sometimes we need to go through that to realize that. You know what I mean? And then once. Once you realize that, I mean, I was. I was the. I was a bad person in my 20s. Like, not even a bad. A bad. I was a bad employee. I was not a. You know what I mean? Like. Like, there's good things that I needed to learn, but, like, through that, I learned a lot about how to perform by performing very poorly. And that's why I think, yeah, team sports is so good. All the employees that I've ever had that have had team sports experience understand what it's like to talk to a team, how to perform, how to train, how to interact with each other. I mean, it's just. It's. It's so great. And I wish I would have done more team sports when I was younger, because I probably could have learned a lot of the lessons that were very difficult in my 20s and 30s a.

Lot earlier that didn't help me.

But you're right, though. You have to go through those low moments to finally hit that rock bottom, whatever that rock bottom is in your life, your career, to come out of it and say, okay, I got to do better.

Right.

When I look at the most successful advisors in our industry and I compare them to everybody else, and there's a lot of people stuck in mediocrity. Right. And I said, okay, what separates the best from the rest? Drive and discipline. Definitely in that category. But, Jason, it goes back to something you said. The best also invest in themselves 100%. You would. You would be surprised how many advisors come to us for help, but then want their company to pay for the investment.

Yeah.

And it's like, guys, it's never going to work that way.

It won't.

You have to put your own skin in the game. Exactly.

You have to pay.

Exactly.

You have to.

You have to invest in yourself. Even when it feels uncomfortable, even when you don't think you have the money. Right now, going all in on yourself, betting on yourself is the best thing you can do.

Yep. We've done it. I mean, we've spent a lot on our coaches.

Yeah. 100.

Andy, thank you so much. Dude, you are awesome. I love this conversation. If somebody wants to get a hold of you, what's the best way Yeah.

I will tell you, if they wanted, we have a free training if I can just throw out there. Yeah. Broker marketing, playbook. All they got to do is go to complete gameplaybook.com and they can download that and it's about a 15 minute training. Really nice training. Or come check me out on LinkedIn. I'm there every day. Andy Neary. Let's connect.

Let's do it. Awesome. Andy, thank you so much. Appreciate you, man.

Yeah, that's been awesome.