Lessons From An Alaskan Fishing Trip | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 212

On this week's episode, we're going to be talking about lessons from an Alaskan fishing trip.

Hey, everyone, this is Chad Owen. Welcome to this week's show. We are going to talk about some good stuff. Stuff. Yeah. And good eating stuff.

Good eating stuff.

And stuff. I've already eaten some of the stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. We actually cooked it yesterday. But anyway, lead the way.

Yeah, so.

Oh, by the way, this is Caleb north, my sidekick. Yeah.

Glad to be back.

He's the one that pulls down the viewership because of the way he looks.

Yeah, that's right. Well, and that. And it's because of the way I look that our YouTube channel goes up in views. Is it really where they can actually.

See me tap boy, you got your little tat covered up there. Let's see your tat.

Yeah, you want to see?

Just got a new tat. It's kind of deflated though, because arms are a little small, but yeah, I didn't. You're scabbing over, though. Interesting. Yeah. Just don't.

I've had it like two weeks.

Yeah. Don't scratch it.

Well, it does get itchy.

Yeah, you don't. You know how you do that?

I do.

What? You know how you itch it without itching it.

You just don't.

No, you just.

Oh, you just slap it.

Slap it. I was like. Because when I got mine, it was the same thing.

Really?

And I'm like, that is so weird. And sure enough, not only do you know, you get taught about annuities, you get taught how to take care of yourself. Tattoos.

Yeah.

Because when you have, you know, retirement, realized financial tattooed on your body, you know, we're going to tell you how to take care of.

We should do. We should do some kind of thing where. Figure out some kind of agent competition and. And then you get their face tattooed on your body.

No. Heck no. Never. There's no. Even if you told me you're going to write, I don't know, billion dollars, I think I would do. I would do anybody's face for a billion dollars. But I would sit there and say, as soon as it heals, then I'm getting a lasered off. Okay. But it is painful. I've heard lasering, getting them tattoo lasered off is painful.

That's what I hear. It's worse than the. Worse than the star worst thing.

Okay, so now to the real stuff. We usually do that because, guys, we're real. This is not, as you can see, scripted. We're not one of those people that. Hey, Caleb, how are you doing today? Well, gee, I'm doing great. We just don't do that. Okay, so lessons from an Alaskan fishing trip.

Yeah.

So does this happen to be from one of my fishing. It is.

Okay, well, I mean, because you're back back today, first day back from Alaska, Great trip. I got to see some really cool photos and live vicariously through it. But you know, you made a post on LinkedIn and I'm going to highlight kind of what you said in that post. But the idea being that the annuity business is real similar to fishing. Right. See where you're going with. And so it was. You can spend a lot of time and energy and resources into doing it.

And still seasick and throwing up on the boat. Now I actually did not do that this time. I could not believe it. There were actually some five foot waves and I did not get sick.

That's pretty good.

I didn't even feel nauseous as trip. But yeah. So we know that getting leads, right? Or not getting leads can definitely make you sick.

Yeah. So you, you can spend a lot of time and energy and resources and not have the success you want. And the annuity, the annuity business can be real similar to that. And there's a couple other ways that kind of outlined this. I'll just read the first one. That just because the fish aren't biting doesn't mean you have the wrong bait. It may just be the way you're working it. So it is with leads. You see what I mean? So very true. You know, agents often will just chase new leads. They won't close something or whatever and then onto the next lead source and they'll jump ship from the lead source so quick that they don't even really have any good data on it to really determine. Because you test leads for what, six months?

Six months usually. And you know what the funny thing is that you say that we were fishing in like 200 some feet of water, but they put the weight at 90ft of water.

Okay.

And I'm like, why are fish hanging out in the middle?

Yeah.

You know, and what kind of fish would I be catching if I dropped it all the way to the bottom? I'd be catching completely different species of fish. So because this guy's an expert, he knew what he's doing, he knew the level to set those weights at and where generally we're going to catch the salmon. And if you go too low once again, you start, you hit the bottom, you get halibut, you get flounder, you get all these different fish. You get a lot of junk fish too. If you're fishing at 90ft, you're probably going between 70 and 90ft. It's probably going to be a salmon. And every single time we were in that is between 70 and 90ft, every fish we reeled up 26 of them. They were all salmon.

She didn't have to deal with any of the junk.

You didn't have to deal with any of the junk. But when we went into the deeper water to go for halibut, we caught dogfish, ratfish. We caught this called the ghetto, ghetto halibut. It was not good eating and then we caught some halibut. But we had to go through a lot more effort. Not only was it deeper in the water, sure, you still that one and a half pound weight, you still had to reel it up 300ft. You could reel it up. And now, I mean, I guess if you put out when it's between 70 and 90ft, 100% of the fish was what we were going for.

Right.

When we went to the deeper water, I'd say one out of every three fish was a keeper.

Oh, wow.

And so it's when you talk about fishing and how, you know, you could be working your leads at a 300 foot level. Right. Catching things you don't intend to catch. Right. But then if, you know, through our training and through our expertise and me actually fishing with you and telling you, hey, you want to fish between 70 and 90ft, you're going to get what you want.

Yeah, that's really good.

Now, I do get some rat fish clients sometimes. I do get some dogfish clients, but, you know, Everybody does between 70 and 90ft. Most my clients are very good clients.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

So, so it's, it's, if you're in that season and perhaps you trying out a new lead system, new marketing system, something like that, and you haven't, in your heart, you know, you haven't quite given them the chance that they deserve. And I say deserve because, I mean, you're talking about the qual quality of somebody's work like that. That's something.

It's a tough one to test them unless you're doing it for a while.

It's a tough one to put on the chopping board.

Also, even the reason why I do that too is not even because of the lead system. It's because sometimes when I'm trying a new lead source, this is why I never recommend a lead source that I'm not using myself.

Right.

But if I'm testing new lead source, often it's me having to learn how to use the right bait.

Sure.

What depth do I fish at? You know, so it's the same thing. I'm just literally trying it out to see what works. I don't. In my industry, I generally do not have a captain that's teaching me this is level to fish at. Right. I have to learn. Yeah.

To the point of being a captain.

Correct.

Yeah.

Well, Admiral, maybe, you know, I captain now. No, you are not.

All right. The second one was having the latest greatest gear. Doesn't mean anything if you don't know how it works.

Very.

So it is with products.

Very true.

Right. You can, imo, your marketing organization, whatever they can, you know, flash this thing at you and it looks great and it's the latest greatest thing and that's awesome. And you go try and sell it. If you don't know how that works, it's not, it's not going to work well.

And I also think about this too. There's. There's times where, you know, we may have the right gear, but once again, the reality is if you're not using the right bait, then that's an issue. That's why I tell people it's not all about the leads. It is not about the leads. It's how good are you as an expert in the industry?

Right.

Can you help these people? Because I can take a pretty bad lead, quote, unquote. And if I can help the client because I have a really good product line, I have good systems, I have good illustration process. I have a full, you know, from the phone call to the policy delivery, have a good process. There's often I can get someone who's considered not a good lead to go with me because I'm able to help them and meet their need.

Right.

You know, I mean, the reality is trash fish are going to bite everything all the time. They're trash fish. But if you want very specific, you got to make sure you're the right person.

Yeah.

For that client.

That's really good.

And I know we're using fishing because it is often when we're using leads, we're fishing, we're putting out bait, we're trying to see what they're going to bite at. But a good live bait, you know, if you use a piece of meat, like just say a dead fish, it's not going to generally catch as much as a live fish. And that's just a fact. That's a, that's the primary Bait source.

Yeah.

So if you're using good processed, good system, it's going to be attractive to a lot of people that normally if you're just using a penis to meet that, just sitting there doing nothing. And I know it's an interesting analogy and I know not everybody's going to fish, but the reality is you've got to know how to work those.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. And then two, knowing what you're trying to actually work and then what's going to, like you say, being an expert, what's going to actually be the best solution to the problem? Using the right gear, so to speak. Right. The best product for what they're going through. Not just trying to put them in something for the sake of getting the deal, but actually assessing their needs and figuring out what is going to solve that best. You've got to know that bouncing around from boat to boat makes it hard to develop relationships with any one crew. And very so it is with IMO's.

Yep. I heard people hear people say quite often, well, I'm going to spread out my business to multiple FMOs. And the thing is, if you can't commit to that captain or whoever it is at the time that is your fmo, why should they put all their vested effort into, you know, if they know. And I hear people do this too, and agents, we know this. I mean, we've seen these people. You know, I'm going to use this company over here just to get these particular insurance companies, but I know I'm not going to really write much business because they're not my primary insurance companies. But I want the benefits of that fmo. That's not right. And in my industry, I am very loyal and everybody knows that. Like, I have very particular relationships that I've developed over the years. That's why when somebody asked me, well, what's your lead system? You know, you're not getting that unless you're part of our team. That's the reality. I'm not going to tell you the people that I've worked 18 years to build relationships that trust me, right. And they know that if I send them someone, they are going to stick with six months of trying to do it. They're trying to do the process. Now. The reality is you don't need six months. I've already proven I'm not using a lead source that hasn't worked for me. I'm not going to recommend a lead source that hasn't worked for me or that I don't have really good agents that I know. Like, I don't do seminars, but I know which seminars. Seminar systems work because I have agents that write a lot of business from these seminar systems at work. So you've got to be loyal to your, you don't jump from boat to boat.

Yeah. And I've, I've talked with agents and I've heard a lot of different arguments for, you know, most that I've talked to, they're. They say, yeah, I'd. I'd rather be, you know, committed to one group. I'd rather have everything under one house. I think the challenge that they have with it is that it's almost this.

They're not intimidated, but maybe nervous that if they put everything under one group and then they, that group ends up not doing what they said they would do, or maybe they're all servicing. Yeah. Then you still have, you should just get your releases if you need them. But, but I think that's the concern and I guess I would argue kind of what you said there of like, if that's your concern and you're only willing to go 10% with this particular IMO, but you expect them to go 100 with you. Yeah, it's like, well, what's the, you know, how, what's. That's a hard expectation.

Unfortunately. Agents have got this. They've been trained to. The FMOs at your beck and whim. You know, whatever you ask the band demand. That's what's supposed to happen. I like it when I have an FMO to where I'm working with them and they go, you know what? That's not really the best for your situation. This isn't a good lead system for your personality. For example, if you're. I'm a radio host. So if you're not willing to do some serious driving and you know, I'm in San Antonio, but it covers all the way up to Dallas, all the way down to the Mexican border. Now, I have 125 mile radius. I'll drive. But if you're not willing to drive long distances, then radio is not your lead source. No, you know, I just want to sit in my office. I'm probably not going to have someone in southern San Antonio, which is about an hour and a half away, drive to my office.

Right.

So same with North Austin. It's an hour away. I need to make sure I go to them. That's why I rent appointments. So if somebody says, I don't want that. But here's the catch 22. Even in a size, I would say if you added San Antonio, Austin, and everything in between, you're probably looking at 4 million people.

People at least.

Approximately. Yeah. I mean, it could be even higher than that. But they say, well, I only want this zip code. Well, do you know how many zip codes are in our area? There's a ton.

Right.

So they won't expand their territory enough. So they. They say, you to get a lot of fish, you got to cast a big net. Right. It's kind of interesting. You know, we got our lines down, and we had three poles out, and when we hit that, we couldn't even get a second line in the water. I mean, it was dropping down, and the guy's like, oh, my gosh, we got another one. We got another. I mean, we hit our 26 lemon of salmon really quick.

Wow.

But that doesn't always happen. Sure. Then I watched these other boats as we're flying over. There's these boats that. Basically a main boat. And then they sent out this little boat with a net, and then they circle the salmon.

Yeah.

Now who's catching more fish?

Oh, definitely the boat with the net, hands down. Right.

So, you know, when you're trying to get the business and you want to do 10 million, 15 million, 20 million a year in annuities, you need a big net, you need a big area to cast. Yeah. And I'm telling you, I just got back from being off for four weeks. I have a lot of fish sitting there right now, and it is a little over. It's. It's. I feel a little overwhelmed because I'm going, man, that's probably. And I've. That's probably 100 leads. I mean, it's. It's a thick stack.

Yeah.

And I'm sitting there going, how am I gonna do that? And you help me with that, because I was just thinking it. You go, well, you got to start somewhere. So I just need to start calling. And if I don't get through all of them, I don't get through all of them. I already have four pretty solid appointments. I think this week, at least three really solid appointments. And if I do that and write 2 million, why does it matter if I got to everybody?

Right.

You know, I just need to keep pressuring.

And it's not to say that you won't get to everybody right there. I mean, they reached out, and in the company.

If they've already been helped.

Cost of doing business, if I get through half this week and half next week now, I won't be just calling Today, like, if I have extra time, I will be calling during the week.

Right.

But I'm not going to leave long voicemails. Sure. You know, it's just. Yeah.

All right. And lastly, having a good guide makes all the difference in the world. And so it is with mentorship.

So it does.

I mean, if you had just rented a little kayak or something, you probably wouldn't have done that in five foot swell.

No, no, I wouldn't have. I definitely would have been throwing up my toes. Yeah.

Just taking out a rod and reel and just go out to the lake because you don't want to pay for a guy.

Yeah. The thing is that. Yeah. And it was expensive. I mean, I imagine you get those boats. It's expensive. But he went around this island to an area that was not the calmest and there was no river that I could see right there which the salmon were spawning. So you would generally think where the river is, it's going to be at the mouth of the river. He went this area where I'm going. Why did you pick this area? It doesn't make sense to me. Like, even as an expert, I've been in the ocean. I mean, I've literally been boating since I could remember.

Yeah.

Since I could walk. And I wouldn't have picked that spot. But as soon as he puts his light up, bam, bam, bam, we're getting hit. If I would have went where it was calmer, I guarantee you, number one, I wouldn't been fishing at 70 to 90ft and 200ft of water. Still can't figure it out. But that's where they feed, I guess. So having that guide, I could have spent, you know, let's just say it runs 500 a person for that fishing boat. If I'm fishing in the wrong area, I just wasted a thousand bucks for two people.

Right.

But if I'm fishing the right area and we max out our salmon and then, you know, we actually pretty much broke even because if you take what the cost of salmon is, that's what it cost to ship back. I'd say we broke even. But I had an incredible experience.

You got the experience and it's probably better than what you buy at the store anyways.

Oh, for sure. Because, I mean, but you.

I'm almost. I'm certain you wouldn't have caught what you caught had you just tried to.

I know I wouldn't have.

Right.

First of all, we didn't have the gear.

Right.

I mean, he spent the money on his boat. He spent the money on the gear. I didn't even have to. I mean, that's one of the things that kept me from not getting sick. They did all the baiting of the lines. You know, he did the netting. He put it into the holding area. If I had to look down when the boat's moving, that's when I start.

To get your eyes on the horizon the whole time.

Exactly. I'm not looking down. But no, it was well worth it because I didn't waste my money. I love it.

That's good.

So I like the analogy. Good job.

Good analogy.

I'll give you one point.

So just because fish aren't biting doesn't mean that they're bad bait. Just maybe fish it a little bit differently. And that's where having a guide comes into play. Having somebody that's actually been in the water before, they're an expert in the area, they can actually train you up. Don't go jumping from ship to ship. And definitely remember that having the gear but not knowing how to use it, that doesn't help you at all. You need to know how to use it so well.

I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day. And, of course, happy selling.