The Reward of Remaining Focused | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 135
Podcast episode where Chad Owen and Caleb discuss the importance of remaining focused, especially for insurance agents. They argue agents should pick a lane (e.g., annuities, Medicare, life insurance), become experts through concentrated practice and training, and avoid chasing multiple product lines. The hosts use analogies (catching one chicken, predators focusing on one prey), personal anecdotes (family, faith, Krav Maga, quarantine), and practical sales steps (fact-finding, education, solution) to illustrate how focus drives mastery and better earnings.
Chapters
Hello, everyone. Welcome to today's podcast. I appreciate everybody honestly taking the time out to listen. And I know it benefits you, but it also benefits me. And what do I mean by that? When I hear the testimonials from people and agents, how they increase their business, they're able to help more people. I mean, the way I look at this, if I help one agent, I've literally helped potentially thousands of people. Because over the years, how many people are that. Is that agent going to meet with? And, man, I just love that. It's very rewarding. So, that being said, I want to get right into it. What do we got going?
Well, it's funny you say that you want to get right into it, because we're going to talk today about remaining focused.
Huh?
And the importance of remaining focused. Right. And that's. It's funny because when I, you know what?
We're going to talk about remaining focused. And I'm purposely going to keep you unfocused to. So you can see how focused you can stay unfocused.
You can try. You usually do a good job of throwing in a little bit of humor in there, and sometimes you make it very easy. Well, you know, I'm glad I provide plenty of material.
Stay focused. What are we talking about today? I already got you off staying focused.
And I really want to talk about. I've talked to a lot of agents lately that are specifically been talking about how they're doing the Medicare for their residual, and they're doing some health for residual.
Same problem about for 16 years.
Oh, I'm telling you. And then life and then annuity, and they're doing all of these different things. And the question, always master of mind, the question I always like to ask when I hear that is, okay, what are you an expert at?
Yeah. And, you know, it's funny you say that, because that is an on. I mean, my mentor has been in business for 40 years, and that's been something he's been saying the hardest thing to get agents to do is to focus on one thing.
Right.
And become a master at that one thing. And that's why we have very few experts, because we have people that want to be a part of everything and not master one thing. Now, I'm not saying you can't be an expert multiple things. I'm not saying you can't be great at life insurance and great at annuities. But you know what? You got to focus on one thing naturally. I mean, it's very rare that you see a guy who's a pro football player and a pro baseball player or. But it happens, but it's very rare. Yeah. Bo Jackson, most. You weren't even alive when he was.
No, but I know who he is.
But you know, it's very. Was it Tebow? Tim Tebow? I mean he wasn't. I would say, I don't know. I mean he, he's way better in football than I am and he's way better in baseball than I am. But he can actually play both sports very well. And I mean I trained him for years on physique and clearly how to build muscle. He hasn't quite achieved it yet. You know where I am, but.
I'm working on the stay puft marshmallow effect for him. But you know, it's very rare. You see people and I was walking, watching track and field yesterday and high jumper has a body for high jumping, Right? A sprinter, a 50 yard dash or 100 yard dash. They have the monster legs like they can take off and they can sprint. That sprinter is not going to be a good high jumper.
Sure.
So the way I look at it is find your lane. There are some people that are naturally geared towards life insurance. That's just their thing. They're naturally geared towards Medicare, they're naturally geared towards annuities. But the reason why they're so good is because they focus on that, right? I mean I hear people talk about Medicare and they go into things that I wasn't even aware of, but it's because that's what they focused on. Same with health insurance or a long term care or life insurance or annuities. They focus on that, they train on that. And I mean whether it's chasing FMOs or IMOs or the same thing, I mean, I know technically they're not. Please don't email me. Say the differences. Marketing organizations. Yes.
But you know, they chase everything but they focus on not one thing. Like, sure, I've said this before, I focus on my relationship with Christ. That's a focal point. I focus on my relationship with my wife, I focus on my relationship with my kids. And I assure you the biggest problems I ever get in is when my wife walks into the room and I don't focus on her and she starts talking to me and I'm focusing on TV and then I don't even hear her. And then she goes, did you hear me? And I'm like, that's a weird way to start a conversation.
Yeah.
Yes, I heard it. Of course, hon. Yes, yes, I will do that. And it's so fun. I mean, like you said, my wife and I've been married for 28 years, and I love her to pieces, and we get along so well. We love traveling together. But you know what our relationship is? What is. Because I focus on her. And so, you know, when we're trying to become an expert in what we're doing, I mean, there's things I know nothing about, but I can watch YouTube and what I do, I go straight into YouTube and I watch person after person after person trying to learn how to, I don't know, build a flower box or something. Garden box. I did. And I watched probably 15 videos on different people. Did it put their eyes together, but I focused on that, and I was able to create something. So I would say focus is so incredibly. I mean, think about this. Life is built today around distractions.
Right.
Distracted driving, you know, while you're recording a podcast, looking at your phone, you know, things like that. It's just a matter of being very.
Easy to be very distracted.
When you're looking at producer, he's on his phone, but he's probably. I know what he's doing. He's actually looking at how to become better at what he's doing. That's really what's going on. But focus is so important to become an expert. No Olympic athlete ever became an Olympic athlete by not focusing on something. Right.
Right.
And so you got to have the eye on the prize. And what's your dream? What's your purpose? Right. I mean, my focus is my identity. Who am I? And then that allows me to come up with what my purpose is. And then my purpose allows me create what I'm actually doing. And so I love helping people protect.
Yeah.
By nature. I mean, you've known me for what, six years now, I think. And, you know, I'm very protective by nature, so that naturally rolls into what I do for a living. Right. And so I get to protect people all the time. Well, the only way. So I love Krav Maga. That's one of my martial arts I did. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to do it for a year or so. But, you know, I love that because it's all about protection. And so everything I do really, is revolved around how much I love something, therefore how much I want to protect it. That's what I focus on.
Right.
And I don't get distracted. You know me, I don't get distracted. I mean, when it's. When it's time to do what I need to do, it's going to be done. Right.
You don't take a vacation before the vacation because that's a distraction.
Yeah.
You don't.
Well, yeah, when I'm on vacation, I am.
You're on it.
Yeah.
You don't get distracted from my work.
Every once in a while, though, this is where it's a challenge, because, like that conference we're going to in May, that's generally not a vacation because I'm. I have my team with me. Right. I'm, you know, I go to the conference and I'm starting to think about, okay, man, that's great. That's great. How can I implement that? Sure. But when we go on just straight vacations is what's the focus? What are we going to eat today?
Right.
Yeah. It's just relaxing. Yep.
You know, the agents that I've talked to that are doing this and that in the other, generally there is a genuine desire to try to help people in those different areas. But the reality as well is there is an incentive financially. And I think that a lot of times agents buy into this idea that, well, if I do this and I do this, and I do this over here, and I do this over here, then those four things added together will end up making me more than any one of those things could.
Yeah. So I'm going to tell you, this is going to bring a huge smile onto your face. It's probably one of the most important things in your life you ever talk about. So what would that be?
What's one of the most important things you ever talk about? My producers.
It's chickens, okay?
Oh, you're talking to me. I didn't know you were asking me.
I thought it was a real question. You get this guy talking about chickens, it is gone. He's gone forever.
I love chickens.
But if you have a group of chickens, how do you catch a chicken?
Oh, there's a bunch of ways.
Yeah. But how do you catch a chicken if you can only catch it with your hands? How do you catch a chicken? I can't focus on one chicken, Right.
Oh, you're saying no utensils.
Yeah, no, you utensils. What, are you gonna throw a fork at them or what?
Okay.
You know, people listen to this while they drive. Jed, you can't be that funny.
Okay, so if you have a group of chickens and you want to catch one, what do you do? You focus on one chicken, right? Yeah, that's the mission.
And even that's tough enough in another.
Well, I could catch it, no problem anyway. Especially if I had a Fork, according to you. But, okay, so I focus on one chicken.
Okay.
I have a likelihood of catching it versus if I focus on all the chickens.
If you look at all the birds, you're not going to ever catch one.
No. And that's actually. If you think about it, even when you watch predators hunt, they focus on one.
That's true.
They're going after an entire herd, but they find one, and they go after it. And that's kind of a, you know, an interesting thing when you're talking about sales, because we're not talking about finding the prey.
Right.
But we're talking about. That's our skill set. We want to focus on not all the distractions around us, so we focus directly on that, and that's our target. So if you want to be an annuity expert, you have to focus on annuities, and you have to dig in, you have to dive, you have to train, you have to just soak in the knowledge. Why? Because you want to be the expert in that area.
Absolutely.
So, yeah, focus is so important. If I could get agents and this man, out of all the podcast topics we've talked about for a while, this is the one that just drives me nuts because I watch people with so much potential, but they can't sit still.
Right.
And I'm one of those people, honestly, I can't sit still. It's true. I mean, I'm.
You know, you're still focused.
I'm focused.
The effort is. Is very direct. It's very intentional.
Yes. And everything I do, I remember when we were going through the whole pandemic thing, and I put on my slippers, and my daughter goes, dad, where are you going? I'm just going outside. Then I come back inside, and I. And I take them off and put them back. Dad, where are you going? I'm going out to the backyard. And then she did it one more time. I said, rachel, why do you keep asking me where I'm going? She goes, because you're a flight risk. You know, she knew, I'm not gonna sit still. I'm not quarantining. That's just. I can't. I will go crazy. And so I'd find an excuse to go to the store. I'd find excuse. I mean, I had to do something, right? And so. But my focus is on what is the mission every day. And that's why, once again, the quarantine thing just doesn't work for me, because my mission is outside of the walls of my house a lot of times. And so I love helping people, but when it comes down to agents, if I could just get them to focus, you know, Oh, I heard this leads. I heard that lead system. Oh, this one isn't good. That one's like, you know what? The same lead systems you're complaining about. The same ones I've used for the past 15 years. 12 years. And so you can't tell me that they don't work. It's. You won't focus on that. Become a master. I was just training two agents today, and I was telling them how you focus when you're on in that appointment. What's the focal point when you're first meeting with them?
When you're asking me.
Yeah. So when you're in a money. No. Okay. True fact finder, it always comes. That's my focal point as the fact finder, because the fact finder will tell me what the purpose of the money is. That's true. Yeah. So I'm sitting there. The focal point is getting information. It's information gathering.
Right.
Then I explain how the product works. So education. And then I'm finding a solution to the problem. So the fact finder allows me focus. What is the problem? Where are they? Where are the income gaps? Where are the risk problems? Now I found out. Here's the income gap. What do we need to do now? We need an income product. So now I need to educate them. So the focus on education, then I get the education. Now I'm focusing on questions. Do they understand how it works, how it benefits them? So absolutely. I am so intentional on focusing on what's important for me. I'm doing the podcast right now. What's my focal point? Training agents.
Right.
Helping them to get better. Do I get paid for this podcast? No. I mean, I know with retirement, really, Academy. I have taken a draw at all from that. You know why? Four years we've done that and I haven't made a dime from it. But I get to help agents, and that's what I want to do. My focus is to help agents, the side effect down the road, maybe wind up making money. Well, we do. We employ a bunch of people, but it's not about income for me. It's a Focus is helping agents.
Right. And that's the key. Stay focused. Stay focused. Stay focused. Yeah, we can beat that like a. Like a drum. The reality is I. And I would be curious to actually know this, but if you were to take a list of all of the different agents in the United States, okay, from Medicare, life insurance, annuities, long Term care, all these different things, and you were to put them in a list based on what did they actually take home in earnings? I guarantee you that when you look at the top of that list, those agents are focused, focused, focused on one particular thing. It is a myth that if you do this, that, and the other, you'll end up making more. You'll end up taking more home because you can't be an expert in any of them.
How many chickens do you catch if you go after five instead of one?
Nail on the head. I mean, it's my favorite analysis.
It is a good analog. Best ever, right? Yeah. Of course. According to Caleb, if you have forks and knives, utensils, you can catch chickens that way. I'd like to see that. I'll give you two forks. And I'll give you a hundred bucks if you can catch a chicken with two forks in 30 seconds.
So my utensil was a. Like a. What do they call it? Like a. No, it's like. Like a staff. Like a. Like a, you know, like a sheep staff. Like with the crook on the end. It's like that, but it's much smaller.
Graphic. Is it sharp?
No, no, it's just to catch the back of their leg. It's just kind of. It's like a tripping, hazardous chicken.
Yes. Because chickens trip awful easy.
Just great in the back of their.
I've seen a chicken trip. They get up really quick. So isn't it great how we enter a podcast of super educational things that once again change your life? We're talking about how to trip chickens.
So maybe you'll have a client that has some chickens and you can have an intelligent conversation with them.
You will never sell anything if you use this conversation to a cl. But, guys, focus. That's so important because I see agents do it all the time. They just get distracted. They know a lot about a little, but they don't know a lot about one thing. So focus on what you're doing 100%. Hope this helps you guys. You have a great day and enjoy tripping chickens. Happy selling.
