Cody Askins Marketing MASTERCLASS For Insurance Agents & Agencies

How long you been on Social, bro?

December 29th, 2015. 2015, so 10 years. So I need you to give 10 years of all your best information in an hour. I've learned a shit ton from Cody this last couple years over about marketing, and, uh, it's been a huge driver, dude. We both understand that dynamic and we found a way to work together really well and just kind of make things work and You know, I steal his marketing ideas and he keeps letting me show up and talk to his crew. And, you know, he had that. He's never spoken anything of ours.

I don't think.

Not mine. I don't think when I've run—

not the one that you've run. You've been our stuff, right?

But not my stuff.

Yeah.

So I appreciate you coming in, dude. Kill it. I'll let you run the deal and I'm gonna hang out over there and hide. And y'all welcome Cody, please. My dear.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

What is up, you guys? How's John been so far, dude? If, if he gauged it by that response, he hasn't been that good, but I know he delivers amazing content. So how has John been so far? Okay, that's a little better, that's a little better. All right, also, uh, you guys can see, by the way, take a seat. Thank you so much. Um, I— it's funny, John has saying all these nice things about me, but dude, like, he when it comes to teaching people how to build something, man, he does that as well as anybody I know. Like, it's amazing, right? And so I selfishly like him speaking at our stuff as well, because when he does, he delivers, right? Which isn't always the case, by the way. I wish I could say everyone that speaks at our stuff always delivers, but they don't. He typically does. And so, and to like, I've never from an insurance agency, dude, I'm not ashamed to say, like, I do what I do. He does what he does. So far, I do what I do better. He does what he does better, right? And it's a really good mix of us two hanging out. So I appreciate you. Amanda is a rock star. She takes incredible care of me anytime I'm around and with them, which is awesome. Reese has been great. Their whole team is amazing. Doing this kind of stuff isn't— I mean, it's not like rocket science, but it takes some work. You know, like their attention to detail, this kind of stuff was really impressive. I walked in and I'm like, man, I love the attention to detail. And they talked about this, the book Unreasonable Hospitality, about like creating experiences and unique stuff for people. And so if you've enjoyed today and being involved with them, let's give them a hand. Okay.

Appreciate you guys.

Also, I have a ton to cover. Yeah, about 10 years in about an hour. I do talk fast. I'm originally from Arkansas. My dad talks even faster. I've got a ton to cover. I'm going to give you as much as I can. But before I start, and I want to like literally, I'm gonna use the whiteboard a bunch. I want to teach. I want to give you a bunch of nuggets so you can take notes and leave with some stuff from my specific talk. You're going to leave with a ton from John. I'd love to add on to that. Before I do though, who knows my story? Like, I know Cody's story. Like, I've heard your story before. By show of hands, who does not? Like, dude, I have no freaking clue. Okay, good. So, that's what happens along the way too as well when it comes to marketing is like you're putting out content, people are seeing you but they don't really know you, right? Like my job when I speak or when I do social, when I do marketing is to connect with an audience that is brand new to Cody. And anytime I put out any content ever, It is not for anyone who is already subscribed or following Cody. That is not why I put out content. Now, are they going to enjoy some of it along the way? Yes. But historically, most people don't like and comment on stuff anymore that often. Like in the room, who has commented on a Facebook post in the last 24 hours? Right? Most people don't. Like I don't take the time to do that, right? Ever. And so that's my job when it comes to social is to connect. It's to constantly put out content to reach new people. And I'll give some nuggets related to that. I'm going to talk about 3 different things. Traffic, time, and talent. Okay? I'm going to cater all those to marketing. But I'm going to give you a few other things related to time and talent when it comes to scaling and growing a company. Because of the brand we built and have an amazing marketing team. By the way, when it comes to like The stuff that we do, I understand some of it. But we have an incredible team that I'm going to talk about that implements a lot of these things. Like the stuff you see, it's probably not me. It's definitely not me doing it. And it would not be what it is today without them. Right? And I'll be remiss if I was like, you know, the dude that was just like took all the credit, right? Because it's not true. Also though, when I think through those things, like my story started very different than it is today. My dad's been in business for 35 years. I got started in the business at 19. I was an intern at a local Mutual of Omaha captive office making cold calls of a phone book. Fast forward. I'll go quick on my story because I want to teach. Fast forward to 20. I'm in college playing basketball at a little Baptist Bible College. Little Bible college. Nothing crazy special. Can hoop a little, but still very small college and still hoop multiple times a week, by the way, and love playing. So anybody that does that, I love playing ball. And I've been playing every week for the last year after taking a few years off. So it's been great. And I was in college playing basketball, taking 21 credits a semester, all those things, very busy. And I decided to get my license. I went to recruiting meeting. There was about 10 of us in the room. And the manager said, "Hey, everybody stand up." He said, "Now take a look around." I'm brand new to really what selling insurance is all about. And the very first thing the manager does when he's trying, you know, in this recruiting meeting is, Everybody stand up. Take a look around. He said, now 9 of you sit down. You stay standing. And he said, now look at the room. He said, maybe one of you will make it. I don't know about you. I'm very competitive. And I'm like, bro, if there's going to be one, it's going to be me. However, the good news is we can all win, can we not? Right? Even when you recruit 10 people with— when you're in your agency, they can all win. Is that fair to say? And so I sold my first 8 months cold calling, cold door knocking. I would do call nights and have college kids come make cold calls with me at night. I would also go cold door knocking with no leads, no age leads, none of that back then. And I made on a 35% to 50% commission level. I think it's safe. I can say that in this room. A lot of rooms I can't say that because they're like, that's what we make now. So I got to be careful. But I think this room is okay. And I made $117,000 in my first 8 months. 20, 21 years old. Fell in love with insurance. Sold for years. And I made that not because I was really that good. Dude, I just worked my freaking tail off and built rapport with people really well. But at the end of the day, the one thing I did well that anybody in the room that's producing it at an even higher level than I did is because I consistently made sure that I sat down and asked 10 to 15 people to buy life insurance every week. Part-time. And when I did that, I made 2 grand. When I didn't, I didn't make any money, right? Like it was literally that simple. And even my business today, still true. And so I made 6 figures then kept selling for years. And then the end of 2015, December 29th, 2015, I started putting out content on YouTube. And the first year we had 351 subscribers, which is atrocious, by the way. I was the worst YouTuber of all time. However, I at least started putting out content and that has grown over the years, thankfully. And I'll get into some of those numbers in just a second. But my goal with YouTube was literally just put out content to help other insurance agents. I didn't try to monetize it for the first couple years. I didn't know it was going to happen. I just knew that I wanted to put out content because along the way I've always wanted to speak and train and do some of those things, okay? And then after years of doing that, agents started reaching out saying, "Hey, can you help us? Can you help me with this? Help me with this. Can I— Can you— Can I— You know, what leads are you using? Can I use those leads?" Right? Whatever, whatever, whatever. And it grew. And now it's grown into what we do today. Okay. And so, however, one of the things I want to share that John knows, most people don't know, about 2 years ago, May of 2023, because we have our conference company, I've done a lot of speaking and training and coaching. And then we had a marketing company with leads and marketing. And I had a business partner that was running that company. And in a few years, it went from zero to $5 million a year in revenue. $1 million a year in profit, which was cool. But then we, business partner, executives in that company, etc., stopped doing what we said we would do, started hurting my reputation. And that company started— that I was an owner in— started losing 6 figures a month. Okay? Because everybody sees all the stuff that— all the Cody stuff now and they're like, okay, He must be worth a bazillion dollars. Life must be perfect. Even though I'm very blessed and grateful, my wife's amazing and our dogs are sometimes okay, I'm far from perfect. And so I share that because I went to that business partner and we were losing six figures a month and he's like, dude, he was running it. He's like, dude, I want out. I can't handle this. And so I went and bought him out of the marketing company. And that was two years ago last month. Paid $1.25 million, $250,000 up front, $30,000 a month for 3 years, right? Close. And still paying him every month actually. And I share that because a lot of the stuff I'm going to share is going to make it seem like business and life has been easy for Cody. Trust me, there are still things that happen. Like when the marketing company is falling apart and we're losing 6 figures a month, at the same time, my mom was going through cancer for the 3rd time. My father-in-law was diagnosed with cancer for the first time. Our house had 50,000 gallons of water go underneath it and create a black mold in half of our home. Right? Like at one point several years ago, we had business bank accounts with negative 6 figures in them. That is not a good thing to do, by the way, okay? But as I share this, I want you to know that Cody has also been through some stuff. Some of this is going to make it seem like I've got it all figured out. I don't. But I'm going to teach what I have at least figured out or at least what I think I have figured out so far. Is that fair? OK, you guys are still with me, yes? OK, cool. Yes?

Yes.

OK, good. Thank you. I can't help it. I have to get feedback when I'm speaking or I'm just like— I don't know. I just shrivel. Here's our current companies really quick. So we have— I want to share what we currently have and what our companies currently look like. And then I'm going to share some of the stuff that we've learned along the way. So we have CA and Kaboom. And 8%. Okay, that's pretty much all one company. That company is on pace to do $10,468,509 this year. Okay, we have the agency side with my dad. I am an owner, but a partner, but I'm not actively involved in the day-to-day. That company has over 1,000 writers and will also do 8 figures in revenue this year. Uh, we have a P&C side that most people don't know about where we've acquired 8, maybe 9 soon, P&C agencies along the way in Missouri. Uh, that company is on pace as after 5 months, uh, it's on pace to do $1.9 million in revenue with about a 38% profit margin, which is about $750K in profit. And then we have an RIA that will make, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars this year. It's new, but I don't really— I'm not a financial advisor. I don't understand RAs, but that's where our company's currently set. Okay. And so as I go through some of this, this will be helpful because I'm going to go through initially traffic, then some time, then some talent. Also on the CA side, as I share some of this on the— just on this side, not including the insurance side, all the stuff I'm going to teach you the last 7 years We've done over $35 million in sales. Should have been more. I just screwed it up. Okay. But now this last couple of years, it just keeps getting better, which is good. However, here's what I've noticed too, though, with most companies, most agents and most agencies in our business. Most don't have enough prospects coming in. That's traffic, by the way. They're scared to invest. Anybody still scared, like legit, you'll be honest and say I'm still a little bit scared to invest in my business sometimes? Is that fair? Do we have— yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Me too, by the way, okay? Believe it or not. Do everything— most agencies try to do everything themselves. We have— so who's making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year but you're still doing everything yourself? Okay, we're about to fix that. Who— where's my control freaks in the room? Okay. Struggle to find good people. Who struggles to find good people? Anybody? Have trouble holding people accountable? Most new leaders really struggle with that. Making decisions too slow. Who feels like you make decisions too slow and you would save time if you would make decisions quicker? Okay. Think too small. Who thinks that you're kind of held back by how you think, and you think too small, and you could think bigger. Okay? And then most don't get in the right rooms, right information, but guess what? You're in the room, so you're in the right room. You're getting information. You're hanging out with John, which is great. Okay? And the cool thing about what we do is, and these events, is you don't know what you don't know. Right? You've learned some stuff today that's going to help your business that you didn't know before. Okay? The first thing I want to talk about is— I'm going to talk about traffic, time, and talent. The first is traffic. Okay? So, that's getting traffic into your business. Here's what's interesting about traffic, okay? And as I go through traffic, I want you thinking, how do you increase traffic in your business? Have you thought of some ways today of what you've heard so far that you could already increase traffic in your business? Is that fair to say? That most of us have heard some things that— Okay. So here's what's cool about traffic. John talked about social media earlier. There are 5 billion people in the world actively using social media. 5 billion, over 60% of the planet actively uses social. There's been 150 million new users adopt social media in the last 12 months. Okay? And I think it'll be even more the next 12 months and the average consumer, spends 2 hours and 24 minutes per day scrolling social media. Okay, who's guilty of that every now and then, right? I've done it today and I catch myself, I'm like, what am I doing, right? But 2 hours and 24 minutes a day of this is a long time. Can we agree, right? A lot of wasted time. Okay, here's what's interesting about Traffic Too is here's our YouTube channel. Our YouTube channel has 44 million views. YouTube's paid me about $350,000 the last 9 years to post videos from monetization. We have 140,000 subscribers. But there's one main YouTube nugget that I paid a YouTube coach to learn about 4 years ago that accelerated my YouTube growth faster than anything else. Okay? And I'm going to give it to you. Okay? So, he asked— When I hired this YouTube coach, his name was Evan Carmichael. He has multiple 7-figure-plus subscriber counts on multiple different YouTube channels. And he said, "What's the method for your titling of videos?" I'm like, "Just whatever sounds good." You know? Like it looks great, right? And that's what's— This is normal, by the way. This is everyone that ever does videos. That's what they do. He said, "Here is the secret to growing on YouTube." Because he— before I say that, he said, "Because the title is what gets someone to find the video. The thumbnail is what gets someone to click on the video." Does that make sense? Okay? Now, when— and this can be true. This— what I'm going to share can be true for just social media as well. The title, you should— So, like, here's an example. There's a title that I found called— Here is what it looked like. How to sell life insurance— Amazing. All caps. It was— This video was put out by a guy named Tristom. It was put out 9 years ago. And it has a million views, okay? So, if you were going to do a video on how to sell life insurance, should you make up a random freaking title that you don't know if it's going to work or should you title your video like that? But most people don't do that because it seems too simple. Guess what? I titled my video the exact same way. I made sure the content was different inside of the video. Title my video exact same way. And then literally, That video has gotten hundreds of thousands of views over the last few years. So now we never make up a title. We go— because what happens is if this video has a million views, does that mean a lot of people found it and clicked on it? Because it could be found, but if it doesn't have views, it didn't get clicks, right? Now, I don't know the watch duration and all those things. However, the market is already telling you what people want to hear, what people want to see, what people are responding to. Same thing with TikTok. Like dude, if you're doing videos on TikTok about IULs, you shouldn't make up the script. You should find the top 100 IUL videos online with a ton of views that are real views and not from ads. And then you should shoot those 100 videos with the exact same script and upload them as your voice. Because the market has simply already told you what works. Now, are you going to be as good on camera and have the same personality as the random person that got a million views? Not initially, right? The market rewarded me for my video skill of 351 subscribers the first year, like, like I mentioned. What does that mean? That means that nobody found Cody. Nobody cared. I got dozens of views. My mom was watching like 7 times every day. It was incredible. Okay. However, I didn't deserve it yet. Does that make sense? It's like dialing 30 times and expecting to make a million bucks like most new agents do. You haven't earned the right yet. Same thing with this kind of stuff, okay? Now, that specific YouTube nugget is— even if you're just— okay, so who's putting videos up on YouTube every now and then? Okay? You should go— let's just say you sell Medicare, whatever. You should go to YouTube. You should find all the top videos with the most views that also have a bunch of likes and comments. They don't— if they don't have— if it has like a 1 million views and 12 likes, like it's— it was probably boosted as an ad. But if it's got 1 million views and maybe 50,000 likes, about 5% by the way, okay? In likes, then guess what? That video specifically has done well and I should reshoot that exact same video with my own content maybe. But the exact same title. Does that make sense? Okay? Has anyone ever heard that before? Most people never share that and it's the simplest trick in the world. And it has helped us grow our YouTube channel from very, very slow to now we're growing by thousands of subscribers every single month. And now, our videos are the ones people are titling for theirs because I've got 3,600 videos on YouTube. Okay, does that make sense? Right? Okay. Also, when it comes to video, here is our— here's my video formula. Also, I'm going to— I'll do a little bit of engagement. If you have questions, raise your hand. But my goal is to give you as much in the 60 minutes we have together. Okay. I know I'm moving quick. I'm going to give a lot to you, but that's my goal. And then I'm going to give you more at the roadshow tomorrow. Here's my video formula: hook, story, offer. Hook, story, offer. If you're scrolling on TikTok, How long do you give the video before you swipe to the next one? Okay, so let's just say video, video pops up now. How long is that? It's like a second, right? Or less. And it's only getting worse because of TikTok. So should you start a video with Well, my first video ever, December 29th, 2015, I started out the video and I said, "Hey, my name is Cody Askins from the Cody Askins YouTube channel. Thanks for being here. Please subscribe below. I really, you know, appreciate you watching the video. Here's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about the 5 things to help every new insurance agent make money." And 14, 15 seconds in, I said nothing, right? Because my job, by the way, in our industry is to get people's attention and to keep it. It's to get it but it's also to keep it, right? Most people are okay at getting it but even more people are terrible at keeping it. Does that make sense? So, for what we do and what you do because eventually you're going to want to build a team and attract people and recruit. Well, guess what? All the things I'm sharing today you can use to sell more customers but you can also use it to recruit an insane amount of agents, right? And to help a ton of agents. And so most people are okay here. They're getting a little bit of attention. Does that make sense? Like, who had seen— and again, thankful to our team— who had seen a Cody Askins? Who had seen my face at some point since you started insurance? At some time ever, right? The entire room, right? That's the goal. Now, some of you, who's consumed a little bit of our content? Who's consumed a lot of our content? Okay. Who consumes our content every day? Less. You see that, right? That's my fault, by the way. It's not your fault. Because my job is to get you to see me every single day and for me to keep your attention every single day. Now, is that hard in the world we live in? Yes, because most people don't know this, the average human being sees around 8,000 ads per day. 8,000 a day, right? So we think about that. Think, mention all the ways that they could see ads. Billboards, commercials, Instagram. Facebook, TikTok, Vioree. Like everywhere. Louis Vuitton, Louis Vuitton, right? Everywhere. Is that fair? I'm walking down the street. Just walking earlier, taking a walk and doing some phone calls. And dude, I saw State Farm across the street. I saw Allstate right here in the same complex. I'm like, "Man, dude. How many freaking insurance offices are there?" I'm like, that's who we're competing against. Well, if the average human sees 8,000 ads a day in all these crazy ways, what should your goal be when you make an ad? Stand out, be different. Should it feel like an ad? Not if— because guess what? You don't even realize you're seeing 8,000 ads a day, logos, mail, whatever, right? Somebody's wrapping Tesla Cybertrucks, whatever it is, right? Like it's everywhere. We tune out the ad now because we've seen it so many times. That makes sense. And so my job when it comes to our formula is to get someone's attention really quick. So like when we do events, the very first thing I say is insurance agents who live near Atlanta, Well, guess what? I'm more likely to keep their attention, would you agree? Because I'm speaking to my niche. Here's a cool tip, okay? Here's a cool tip. If you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. If you try to speak to everyone, you end up speaking to no one. What does that mean? That means you need to know who you're speaking to. So, when you're recruiting, do you want to attract everyone? Like if you're 23, like Roy, how old are you? 25. Wouldn't it be weird if everyone on Roy's team was a 70-year-old grandma? Wouldn't that be a little strange? What's the average age of your team?

Probably 25.

And are they male or female? What percentage are male? 80%. Okay. So, what is that telling him? Like I had one lady come up at our office. She's in our Power Player Mastermind for agencies. And she said, she said she's 42. She's also— I told you I'd use the whiteboard a few times, did I not? She's 42. She makes 7 figures. She's a mom. She's married. And she told me, I only want to attract and recruit— she's on an exposure plan with us where she is on retainer with us so that we can get her publicity in the industry and exposure to our audience, right? So in this example, she said, I only want to attract young male athletes. Athletes, right? Athletes. Young male athletes. First of all, you're married, but okay. Young men, young male athletes. Okay, guess what her team is? Yes, we, we, I said, okay, in front of the whole room, I said, give me your top, top 10 agents. Agents, agencies, whatever. The top 10 people in your organization that have done the best, who are they? It was 90% women and majority were in their 30s and 40s. Oh, and guess what? They were moms and they were married. Why? Because that's who she is. That's who she speaks to. Now, can you still attract and help a lot of people? Yes. But guess why a Cody event is drastically younger than majority of the boring events in our industry or our conference because Cody's still 34, right? Do I wish it was 25? Yes, I do. I could just take my brain now and we could— Roy and I could start over together at 25. I would enjoy that, right? We could go sell a ton of books together for sure. It's an inside joke. However, that's who she's attracting. Does that make sense? Right? Also too, you've got to— what you do, what you say, how you do it will attract certain types of people, right? It will. So a lot of people, when they come into this, they try to become someone different. You have to be authentically you. I think that's why our content has resonated and reached more people in the, in the industry than anyone I know over the last 9 and a half years? Well, number one, we put out more videos than anybody else. That's— you normally win when that happens, by the way, even if they suck. However, then we have an amazing team to back it up that can help a bunch. Also, though, we have got to where we are known for giving, right? Like, we are known that Cody gives a ton of value for free. Right? Like, John didn't pay me to come here today. Right? You didn't pay me to come here today. I mean, it helps that I'm going to be here tomorrow for my own event. But like, dude, I just love doing this. And hopefully, your business grows because of a bunch of stuff John said and something small that Cody said. Right? That's the goal. But guess what? I want to help the industry, but I'm still going to attract A lot of young men. In her example, young male athletes. I tend to attract a decent amount of athletes because I talk about playing basketball, right? So, what does that tell you? It tells you that your job when you're connecting with people is to share things that are true about you. Stories of origin is what I call them. And that will attract people that resonate with your stories of origin. Are you following me? Okay? Is this making sense? Or am I getting too complicated and too deep? Also, most people don't know is 85% of people watch social media on mute. 85%. Anybody notice that where you watch, you're watching social but the sound's off? And then if you like a video, you turn the sound up or you think you're going to like a video. What does that tell you? It tells you that captions on videos, the actual words are really important or 85% have no idea what you're saying. So if you're uploading videos without captions, it's just a waste, right? Complete waste. Because 85% of people watch videos on mute. Also, we talk about traffic sources. Also, I've dove way into traffic and marketing. And I'm about 30 minutes in. So who knows what all I get through today. But I'm really focused on this which was technically the topic I was assigned to give. So maybe I'll give a little bit the other stuff. But here's what's interesting, okay? Is I want you to think about all the different traffic sources. So like my goal, when we talk about, you know, I want people to see me and I want to keep their attention, I want to get their attention, I want to keep their attention. My goal is to be omnipresent, okay? Which is I'm everywhere all the time. That's a goal. Is it always true? No. But like that is the target. However, here's what I want you thinking about. When you think about your business as a funnel. What are all the ways that people learn about who you are? So like in my example, we've got Facebook, we've got Instagram, right? We've got YouTube, we've got TikTok, we've got LinkedIn, even though it sucks. We've got Twitter or X, right? We've got email, We've got ads. We've got events. We've got our sales team. We've got calls. We've got text. We've got retargeting, which I'll talk about in a second, right? We've got— shoot, I've done live shows over the years. I've done live videos a bunch. I actually built this. My video team built this contraption where I could do 4 or 5 phones at the exact same time and be live on all the platforms at the same time from different cell phones. That's a little complicated, but I was like, why not? I'm going to do one live. Why not do 5? Right? Maybe a little unique, but lives. There's also our podcast, right? You've got YouTube Shorts, but you also have YouTube long forms. We got 3,600 videos, right? We've got our 8% conference. We've got road shows. Right? Like I've got— I'm here now. I'm at other people's events that are not mine. Right? Like, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. My goal is to have as many of these things as I possibly can. It's like fishing in the ocean with 1 line versus 60 lines. And two, most people put one video up online and they think it's going to just go viral. And they're like, oh my gosh, I'm doing so much. And I'm like, it's like throwing a pebble in the ocean. It rippled, right? You saw it ripple, right? No, no, no. You threw a pebble in the ocean. It takes— what's one of John's favorite Phrases. That's one of them. DBAB, GSD, and do more, right? Do more. Well, guess what? This seems overwhelming. I get it. Cody Eskins has a full marketing team, multiple videographers, social media manager, web designer, graphic designer, tech person. I don't do any of those things. However, those things all get done. But it is the way that we drive in so much traffic. Like John Wetmore leads earlier. Dude, if we get thousands of leads into our HubSpot every single month, HubSpot emailed me again recently and said, you are at capacity for contacts again. If you— you got to either turn a bunch of these into non-marketing contacts or we're going to bill you a bunch of extra money because you have hit the limit for your account. Dude, the limits happen like a dozen times the last 10 years. Right? And I just keep having to pay them more money because I don't want less people to talk to. They don't make any sense, right? However, what are the traffic pieces and the traffic sources within your company of how you are attracting people to what you do? Right? There's so many different ways to do that. And most people, if you're just selling every week and it's like, "Dude, I just bang direct mail and I write 60 grand a month." Great. But the way I think about it is I want to scale something that doesn't rely on Cody Askins forever. That's what I want. And I think it's what a lot of people want without them actually admitting that. I didn't want to door knock forever. Did I love it? I don't think I loved it. But like, dude, I did it. That's what it took at the time, right? So, I did it. Also, Here's one of the things. There's a platform called AdRoll that has been killing it for us. That is phenomenal for retargeting people around the internet. And it allows you to retarget people outside of social media platforms or outside of websites that aren't owned by like Facebook and Google and Instagram. And so this— So like Trump was doing a State of the Union and right beside it, was a Kaboom ad. For anybody that had been to our Kaboom site at all, ever, boom. I got people sending me pictures of them watching Trump on a State of the Union address on some news live site, and the Kaboom ad is literally sitting right there. So it's like new— this one's like news, weather, media, like stuff that you wouldn't normally be able to show up on, right? But the way retargeting works is You have a website. It's very simple, by the way. I don't like— Most people in marketing, how do I say this? Their goal is to confuse the crap out of you so you hire them to buy from you. So you hire them to buy from them, right? Does that make sense? So you give them money. That's not the way I teach because I'm not smart enough to teach it that way anyway, okay? And whether we work together ever I'm going to be okay, for the record, right? However, here's how retargeting works. Someone goes to your website, a user visits your website, you have a piece of code sitting on your website, and because they went to the website, you can now follow them around the internet with ads. That's it, right? Super simple. We make it sound like crazy complicated, right? It's like the special— like everybody loves to talk about special, super sophisticated AI stuff nowadays just because it sounds sexy, right? When most of the stuff's not even AI anyway, if we're being honest. Like automations are not AI, but everybody thinks it is. Okay? That is traffic sources. Okay? Let me pause really quick. I know I've thrown a bunch at you guys. I also, I have to write when I'm talking. I just can't help it.

Hey guys, just created something really cool and if you want to be part of it, join the Discord group I just created. The link is going to be in here. It's a dope environment. You can chat with others that are kind of in the community. You can see beyond the curtain of our agency, have access to all kinds of stuff that we got going on, events, and my staff is in there. We have agents in there selling, me helping agents and sharing information. We're gonna, as we build this thing out, share everything out there with all of you guys. So again, follow the Discord if you want to be part of everything we got going on. Join it now. We'll see you in there. Hope to help you more.

Thoughts, questions, feedback, takeaways, something you're curious about?

Knowing that you have a YouTube channel, you pour out a bunch of different content. Do you organize it in different channels or you mainly use your channel, just put everything on?

Everything goes on my channel. I rebranded an old Secure Agent Marketing channel into Kaboom Leads, but really everything goes on, on Cody Askins. Yeah, we have— we're building up the Kaboom brand a little bit too. So yeah, podcast, all that. Yep, podcast is called Power Player Podcast and it's on the Cody Askins YouTube channel, but it's a playlist. So it's a video and we organize by playlist. Yeah. Yeah, good question.

A certain length of video you should target or just whatever you got to say?

Yeah, so short form, ideally like 15 to 30, 15 to 60 seconds. And then a lot of videos, by the way, nowadays are like 7 to 15 seconds. I've noticed a ton of content. Long form, we try to hit at least 7, 8 minutes for like long-form YouTube videos. Because YouTube, their goal is— and this is every social media platform's goal. Their goal is to keep you on the platform. So for YouTube, they want watch time. Because if they— if you're watching stuff, they can show you ads. Which means they need you to stay in the platform and keep watching content. So, if you've got a video that's getting good watch time, YouTube's going to promote it harder. Because people are watching it and they can show ads.

Okay?

Good question.

Different types of content to funnel it to different parts of your businesses?

Yeah, a little bit. More of kind of what John said earlier. Like for me, I never go in the video— go in the studio and like record videos. Like I am talking all day. I'm with people. I'm on my phone or whatever. Like we are putting up stuff that Like one guy yesterday said he wrote $7,000 in one day from our Kaboom leads. So before he started, because he said, hey, I've got something to tell you. I had a really good experience. I'm like, okay, go ahead. Guess what? That went out today, right? So there's just— there's moments in your life that could be. That's why the glasses are kind of cool. I've actually thought about my team's like, you should adopt that. I'm like, maybe I should. I don't know. It's pretty cool. I was— I didn't realize I was already— I think it was already follow. I wasn't following you. I am now. But the one video that you put that you shared with John of like the metal gate and all that, I had seen that already. I just didn't realize it until you started talking about it. I'm like, I think I've seen this guy. So, I went and started looking, right? So, it's working. Where was I going with that? I asked you if you had different stuff like you were— Oh, I'm just capturing what's happening. There's a lot of moments that we could capture. Only time I will is if I'm trying to promote an event or Kaboom Leads or something like that, then yes, I'll cater it and have a message that's like the hook, story, offer. Like the hook could be, oh my gosh, this huge telesales agency just increased their weekly lead order to 1,000 leads a week. Here's what they're doing, here's how it's working, right? Whatever. And if you would like to sell more, go to kaboomleads.com, right? With an offer. Send up a So the hook is get their attention. The story is like the content. Could be facts, could be a story, could be details, could be training, whatever. The offer is you are pushing them to do something. Yeah, call to action. Hey, if you enjoyed this, let me know what you enjoyed in comments below, right? Something like that.

So we have a podcast. We post like 6 or 8 podcasts. You just mentioned watch time. Our average podcast is about an hour. Our average watch time is like 8 and a half minutes. That's not great. Have you run into that?

I think statistically that's good. I think statistically that's good. But if you only put up our stuff, do you put up other like 8, 10, just clips? Any, any, any long, any videos that aren't shorts?

Mainly just on YouTube video, but yeah.

So that's not bad. Um, but if everything is over an hour and the average watch time is, is 8 minutes, then it could be better. But I've got like 7-minute videos, 10-minute videos, 60-minute videos, 2-hour videos, right? So, but like my watch time— no, that's in hours. Let me see if it shows me on content. I don't even know how to look. I don't know how to see it anymore. But, but, um, it— I, I felt like it was shorter. I felt like mine was shorter, but not all my videos are an hour. So yeah, that's what I'm in actually. Oh yeah, there you go. Perfect. So mine is 6 minutes and 22 seconds. So yours is better than mine? Long form. Long form. Yeah, thank you, Reese. Thank you. Yeah, 6 minutes, 22 seconds.

Have you found that most of your— or not that you found— is most of your traffic organic at this point, or is a lot of it still—

Majority is organic, but we also do still run ads every day as well about events and about Kaboom Leads. Yeah, we still spend tens of thousands a month just promoting the brand in general as well.

Paying for traffic?

Um, probably about 20— really, you're probably mostly like 20/20.

Hey, can I ask something? Yeah, because I get to watch you do this thing. I've been to a lot of these events. Every event he does, he goes, who knows my story, who follows me, who's here for the first time? Over half the people at his events this last year, that was their first Cody event. First time they've seen him first thing, and they don't know shit about Over Half. It can't be a victim. It's true. First time, you know, as long as he's been doing it, 50%, at least 50% in every room I'm in, true, ask that question, true. Half the people don't know who the fuck he is. They just showed up because of that.

Yep.

Or something very new that they saw. After all the reps, yeah, dude, he walks in the room, literally half people are—

true.

Other than, I saw him, I saw his coach, I saw Just like y'all said, who saw my face? Yeah. They clicked on that, there's a call to action like, "Fuck it, I'll sign up." And then watching him work it, certain areas we go to, certain demographics or repeats, that number just goes up and up and up. Very few people are like, "Who were you?" You know, but I watched you do that for a lot of years.

Yes, thanks. I also have to cater, like when I'm in rooms where people don't know who I am, I've got to deliver the message a little differently. Like there's things I could have done today the last 40 minutes that I didn't necessarily, for sake of time, I didn't need to do. But I mean, to be honest, if I was trying to like get you to do something, I would have ran the last 40 minutes way different than what I just did, right? Way different. When you're doing that content, are you asking people for their permission to post that, or how does that— Oh, no. Just like, hey, blast you, okay. Yeah, I put a camera in people's face all the time and they're on my recorded Zoom. So in that example, but in, but in most cases, people want to share when they're doing good. And for our stuff, if they do really good and they give us a video, I'm going to go spend $100 grand in the next 6 months on ads with that video. And then people are going to see their face all the time, which they like. And it's good for their team and good for their brand. You know what I mean? Good for exposure if they're trying to grow. So Just depends. Yeah, I do not ever— I don't ever like ask if I can use it. No, I just don't. Yeah, I don't. But if they feel weird about it, I'll get a different one. You know, so it's okay. Anything else on traffic? Just marketing in general. I want to share a couple things related to like time and talent for people.

What's your biggest driver that you see of like your timing and content? Your clips, your like shorter mid-form content, or your long-form podcast?

Say that again. Say the first part again. What's your biggest driver of traffic? Historically, it's always been long-form for sure because it's the best for SEO in the world, right? The best. But because our following has grown so much on Instagram, I get a ton of DMs and people that are responding to my stories on Instagram. And so we get a ton of engagement in that way. And then when they're reaching out, I also have a— I have a VA that all she does is message— well, part of what she does is she messages every new follower every single day on my Instagram. She can only message 50 a day. So most days Instagram won't allow her to get to everyone. But like is messaging followers every single day to engage with them and just see how we can help them. Well, a lot of times that creates conversations for our team to go on the phone with them. But it's just by they're following me. So how often do you follow someone and you get a message from them saying, hey, what's up? Thanks for the follow. How can I help? What's going on? How can we— how can you— are you trying to get in front of more people? Are you trying to do this? And nobody ever does that. And so that was one way I was like, freak, man. That's a ton of free conversations and traffic for us.

Hey, I stole that. What was the last event that we were doing and I did with you?

You were in front of the couch, uh, Scottsdale.

You remember when I was sitting on the side? Yeah, yes, yes. January, bro, we put that in place that day. Well, you were saying it, they were putting it in place. I get so much fucking good information from that.

That's cool.

Crazy.

That's cool. That's crazy. It is. It's wild. Also, they think they're talking to John. It's amazing. And they're not, for sure. They think they're talking to me too. You know what I mean? And if they ever ask, I'm like, be honest. But they don't ask. I ain't telling them it's Abby. But if they ask, I want to be honest. But that's been big for us too. That's been really cool. So anything else related to— good question, by the way. Anything else related to marketing and social and all that type of stuff? Stuff. Okay.

With the formula of like book, story, offer, is there ever a scenario where you're not having some kind of offer at the end, or is that like a must? Like, we're putting out a video, there needs to be some kind of call to action.

There's a lot that we don't, but like if I'm on it, like if, if I, if, if I'm shooting it for the purpose of it going on something, it always has something because it's just a habit now. But if it's like they're grabbing a clip of a keynote, right? Maybe they're grabbing 60 seconds from this. There's probably not gonna be an offer on it, which is okay too. It's okay too. Yeah, good question.

What has been your most succeeding form of recruitment post, whether it's Reels?

Um, I mean, I— for, for getting, for getting people into our ecosystem and like getting them on in conversations and stuff, it's definitely stories. For sure. Like, most people don't use stories. I hammer stories. Like, my team hammers. And, and I sell too much in stories, by the way. I sell too much, I pitch too much, I promote too much. But if they don't— it's— they don't have to watch them. So it's— but like, yeah, I've already like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 the last 24 hours, right?

Like, what about people that like don't follow you, don't people are.

Um, ads.

But if I come across someone that I like, I usually will watch the story right then and there.

I do too, actually. Yeah, yeah, I do the same thing. Yeah, I do too. I've watched a couple of your guys' stories today, actually, believe it or not. Yeah, because of that. Yeah, because y'all were tagging John, and I'm like, oh, see who this— let's see who this was, you know. Yeah, cool. Has this been good so far? Helpful? Okay, let's jump into a couple other things. Here's one exercise I want you to go through, okay, that will help you with scale is— oh, because one thing I was gonna share earlier is like, we've been able, because of the brand and marketing and this kind of stuff, we've been able to take 7, and we've sold one not like to the scale John did, but like small, but like we've been able to take 7 different companies to 7 figures the last 9 and a half years from all of these things, right? And so this kind of stuff does specifically work. Here's one thing I want you to do. I don't need to write it down. I want you to write down how much you make. Actually, I will write it down. How much you make per year? Like what kind of money you think you'll make this year, okay? I'm curious. What kind of money do you think you'll make this year? Okay, I'm going to walk you through an exercise. So like, somebody give me an example of what you wrote down. Somebody write down 150, 200, 250. Give me an example of what somebody wrote down.

I wrote 200.

Okay, perfect. Cool. 200 grand. Okay, so if you take that divided by 50 weeks and you get rid of 2 weeks for vacation, That's $4,000 per week. Okay, you guys follow me so far? If you take that divided by 5 business days, that's $800 per day. If you take that divided by 8 hours, it's $100 per hour, per business hour. Did I do that correct? I think so. $100 per business hour. So I want you to ask yourself what are some tasks that you are doing that are not paying you $100 an hour to do? So, like here's one question is how much could— Like how much of your— What's your name by the way? Kaylee. Cool. So, Kaylee. How much of— Thank you. How much of your week? It's spelled unique too. I like it. How much of your week could you give to an assistant? How many hours a week could you give to an assistant? To do for you? Hypothetically.

Well, I'm just new in this but I would say like—

We'll just assume she's already making $200, right? And she's not new.

If I'm already making $200, probably 40 hours a week. I'd like to book appointments or—

Maybe. Yeah. Maybe that high. We'll go with 20 just for easy. Yeah. We'll just go with 20, okay? As an example. So, in that example, What could she pay an assistant? What could she pay an assistant per hour? $15? Yeah. $15. Perfect. So, $15 an hour times 20 hours is $300. Well, that same 20 hours at her, if she's already making that kind of money, is valued at $2,000. Which means she's getting a 7x return on her own time. Does everybody see that? Her value is $2K. She's paying $300. How much added revenue can you bring in if you had an extra 20 hours in your week to not do stuff that you don't want to do, right? So like, as an example, I do not manage my social media. I do not manage my DMs. I do not manage my email. I do not manage my calendar. I do not manage my travel. None of those things anymore. And guess what? That's freed me up a ton because how much of your week is typically emails, social media, DMs, calendar, travel, like all the things, right? It's a lot. Fair? It's a lot. So how much more could you produce and do if you were able to give those things? Also at our house, not saying this is the right way to structure it, My wife and I have been married 11 and a half years. She takes care of everything at the house. I do nothing. Literally nothing. Now, occasionally, if she's like, hey, can you take out the trash? Absolutely. Right? But I do nothing at the house. Pipe breaks, trash can breaks, dogs throw up. I will help out. I love my wife. She's amazing. Cody does nothing at the house. Does that make sense? Why? Because Cody takes care of this and she takes care of that so that we can build something unique and special. Now, I feel like that has at least helped me. I kind of like that arrangement, by the way. Okay, so don't tell her she's crazy, right? What's some stuff that you could delegate that you believe could make— like, like, Roy, what kind of money do you think you'll make this year? —How long you been doing this? It's freaking insane, isn't it? What kind of business can you freaking go make a half million bucks in a year and a half, right? It's amazing. Okay? Now, in his example, that number is $250 an hour, right? So, anything that is— Is more of your income going to come from personal production or overrides? This year?

Okay.

Okay. But there's like, he could go to onlinejobs.ph. He could hire an assistant for $6 an hour and she could do some tasks for him and free him up to make more money. Does that make sense? Okay. And so I always, I always ask myself like, how can we scale without having to do everything? Also, I'm going to touch on the 5 voices really quick, and then I'm going to wrap, because I got about 5 minutes. What's cool about this is I have— so like the 5 voices, I am a pioneer, probably no surprise there. Connector is my sales manager. He's a connector, and he's the best sales manager I've had. Guardian. My VP of operations, Cassidy, is a guardian. And when John said Amanda pisses people off, it's because she's a guardian, I'm guessing. They're more direct. They think everyone should do stuff at the speed that they do, but people don't. So a guardian is good for managing an operation. Phenomenal. Creative. My lead videographer who manages my brand and my tech guy are both creatives. These are my executive team members. I got about 30 team members. These are the executives. Nurturer, Lindsay. She manages big relationships and projects. So when Amanda is working with our team, she's normally working with Lindsay, right? Well, that's phenomenal because she loves— nurturers, they love to put people first. They love to nurture relationships. And their champion values. 43% of the population is a nurturer, and that's the biggest slice of the whole pie. And Lindsey's in that role because that's just who she is. She enjoys that. So what's cool about that is though, we've been trying to find an event— a director of events for years to manage our events. We do a lot of events. Cassidy still manages the operation and still manages all the events, which is an insane amount of work. Well, we've been trying to find someone. Well, we keep hiring the wrong people. We've hired like 5 people that have just failed at managing my events. They just couldn't do it. They couldn't take it. Too much stress, too hard, whatever. Well, my wife and I had a lady named Tara that reached out to us. She worked for us briefly like 6, 7 years ago. Well, Tara has worked her way up at this local company called Big Shots. We've been and hit golf balls. That's like a knockoff Topgolf, like a poor man's Topgolf, OK, in Missouri. And Tara worked her way up with that company. She was the general manager. She managed 150 people. And she got paid $115,000 a year. And she— some stuff happened. She left and was trying to go somewhere else. Well, she wanted to come work for us. Guess what? We've had trouble finding someone to manage our events. She's a Guardian. So it was literally a perfect fit. Now we'll see if it lasts. It's still early, right? I get it. She could walk out tomorrow. Who knows? She won't probably walk out tomorrow because she's coming to the roadshow. So probably be safe there. But we needed someone who was a Guardian to run that role because what are Guardians? They're known for their respect for order. Systems and due diligence. Does that sound important with event planning? I would say so. So like a lot of people, they hire people and they, I've hired creatives to try to run my events. Ideas, innovation, and seeing opportunities. Dude, I'm the one freaking seeing opportunities for our events. I don't need them making up ideas. Nurturers, they're too soft. Connectors. Yeah, but connectors are not good at order and systems, right? So again, A lot of this is based off of you finding people in the right roles. And then when you get a team in the right roles, it's on the same mission as you. And they have a lot of talent. And they're the best at what they do. Like Aris as an example. As you've seen over the last couple years.

A year and a half.

A year and a half. Crazy. It's amazing where something can go because you can go look at their YouTube channel now and you can look at their YouTube channel 18 months ago. It's freaking night and day. Right? But they found— Are you a creative? Interesting, right? That's like— It would be weird if he was a nurturer, right? In that specific role. Does that make sense? So, this allows you to understand people. You can have them take the test and you can figure it out instead of guessing. Because most people, they hire people based on they seem cool, I like them. You seem like you'd be fun to hang out with. Let's pay you. It doesn't work because it's not scalable. Does that make sense? Okay. What were a couple— Let me do this. I'll finish with this. What were a couple— I got a bunch more but I'm going to end. What's a couple of key takeaways from everything you heard today? Just to help me out for future.

I mean, I think buying back your time is huge. Like, I invest really small amount in a VA.

From the Philippines.

And I think Martin do that. All she does is call back insufficient funds, calls the carriers. Nice. So even do sometimes like helping out illustration depending on how good your VA is. And she saved me thousands without—

I can't even count how much time and money.

It's awesome. Yeah, I pay her— she works 2-3 hours a day, I pay her $100.

It's amazing. And most really good salespeople, that's the last thing they want to do, by the way, is chase money that they had already sold. Right, good, good. What else? Go ahead.

No, good, you're good. I almost made my first YouTube video for the last year and a half. I'm just trying to figure out how do I relate to most people, and it's like, that's not who I need to relate to.

I need to be myself since a lot of people like me. Yes, amen. And two, you need to be comfortable being raw and real. Like, I get the most feedback when I share all the mistakes and failures and dumb stuff Cody does. Like, people pay the most attention and they get the most feedback when I— like, that's why our Power Players group has grown. And they— what their favorite part of what we do is I literally— when I do that, I literally just talk about the dumb things that we have learned over the last 9 years, and they like— it allows them to save time, right?

So I would say you're just out there like It's not just one thing bringing all this attention, like you're doing a lot of things, you know, it's just a combination of a lot of effort.

Yeah, absolutely. Like Ultimate Agent Show, I didn't even put that on there, you know, like we just had 5 agents in our office, they wrote $100,000 on only Kaboom leads in 4 and a half days, right? Only 5 people. And we're going to turn that into like a show that we produce. Um, John Wetmore was our very first coach. On that show. And so we're gonna end up releasing that probably sometime in July.

Great takeaway was just the— if you try to speak to everyone, you're gonna talk to no one. Just how important it is to attack— you should really have your audience in mind when you actually are creating.

Yes. So don't tell me you only want moms in their 40s, okay? Married moms in their 40s. That's probably not gonna work, bro, okay? Some of you young guys are like, "That may not be half bad." Who else? What else?

Yes, sir. So I have a question. Your perspective for everything you watch us do. I've been close for a few years watching you change, obviously, in marketing. You see it. From your perspective, our team, everything I'm doing, what would you add different if you were like, in charge of my team's marketing today?

I feel like you could get— I feel like you've adopted this, but I think our email list is probably the most valuable thing we have that I never talk about. And most people don't drive enough people onto the email list frequently enough. Now, if anybody ever has a problem with Cody, it's because the first The first complaint Cody always gets is you promote too hard.

You get 500 emails a day. Yeah.

Yes. Who's on my email list? I just bought an email. Did you get one today? Yeah. I'm going to the road show tomorrow. Good, man. Let's go. Okay. So, but they say you promote too much. Shouldn't you believe in what you do enough that you don't feel bashful promoting it? Right? So, I think I think John can promote more too. Like, you know what I mean? Like, he does a freaking amazing job. Clients are winning, people are happy. And but his personality is like, I can't figure him out. He's like either crazy, aggressive psycho or he's just like chilled, relaxed. I'm like, I don't know, right? But I think— I follow him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I follow him. People seem to see me the same way, by the way. Yeah, yeah. I think that comes to mind. It comes to mind. But a lot of it is you're building something different than you— Define promoting more.

What do you think we should promote more?

Yeah. Well, so, OK. I'm giving away a good nugget here. How many times did I mention 8% or Kaboom or Power Players or something that I do when I talk today? Most people don't, right? Do I have to? No, but it's such a habit now. I cannot help it. And I actually felt bad mentioning Power Players because John has his own mastermind and y'all are his people. Fair? Like, I even like— like, what's funny is I have one client we work with. You're going to get a kick out of this. We have one client we work with that he said, my He said, my managers hate when I hang out with you because all you freaking talk about is Kaboom. I'm like, well, dude, that ain't going to change, so you got to stop hanging out with me. I don't know what to tell you, right? Like, I'm not going to change my company and my belief and my promotional style because somebody else is like maybe insecure about their leads, right?

So, hey, fair to say one day it used to be Oh, 100%.

Yes. Yes. Big time. And it was— we all do that, though. We all have imposter syndrome. We all worry about what everybody else is going to think. Like, I finally got to a point where I'm like, I know my heart is right. I know I want to help people. I know we always want to do the right thing, even though we're not perfect and we care a crap ton. So why would I be bashful about it? And so now this year, I made a commitment that no one is ever going to wonder how they can work with Cody. Right? Is that too much? That's for you to decide. Right? You got it. Thank you. But it did take some time to get really— and it's still not totally comfortable.

Yep. It just causes shit, and I don't want to deal with it.

Yeah. Yeah. True. This has been fun, by the way. You've been great. Thank you. Appreciate you guys. Thank you for your time. Thanks, John. Cool.

What'd y'all think of that? Good shit. Helpful stuff. Biggest change you'll make from that, huh? Post more. Simple, easy. Now I think this is one of those things a lot of people can overcomplicate. You know, I still joke now when I post something. I'm like, I just got to the point where more than my wife and my mom and Amanda like it. But sometimes we still put shit out. I mean, I'll get fucking 1 comment and 200 views on a decent amount of stuff. And then some days we'll post something, I'll be like, holy shit, that just got like 12,000 in like an hour. What do we do different? I don't know, we flipped the coin and it just fucking happened. I don't, I don't know how to control it. I feel like he's probably better at the controlling it part right now. We're just like, fuck, put it out. And he's, he's creative as shit, kind of learning that piece. Um, but that, um, the piece where we did what I would, what I would tie to y'all is what everyone can do simple. You should start thinking about this, and this has helped us build the whole coaching program and all the shit we got going on that we're helping people, is we just started thinking of ways to go like— again, at the beginning you don't really have anybody kind of watching or following. As you start doing it more, we started going like, I wonder who the fuck out there is following me? Because I actually don't know. You lose, you lose track of who's who when it starts flowing so regular. Now, at that last event, one of the things he did was— we'd been doing the email list for a minute, not as long as I wish I have, but for, for a minute. And I realized if we Again, this is not new. We stole the idea from him and a million other people. So if you create something that people— that you can give away to people, that they can download, they'll exchange their information for your information. Whatever you give away free, they'll give you their contact info. Granted, they can always unsubscribe. I thought it was funny at one of the events, Cody, I saw him ask who's subscribed to his email list. And then the next question, he— do you remember that? The one you were at, you were like, who's unsubscribed from my email list? And dude, like 40 people raised their hand. And then he was like, who's unsubscribed and resubscribed? And you know what I mean? It's like sometimes it is my fault. We have people that are, you know, people paying me that unsubscribe to my emails. I'm like, all right, whatever.

Like it is what it is.

You know what I mean? It's just part of it. But at one of the most recent events we were doing the giveaways, I'll give away the tracker. We give, we have a resources one, a goal setting one, all kinds of different little things that were like, hey, who would want this? This. So I refer to those things a lot. Everyone in here could think of something you do well and create something, some document. 5 ways to get more people to show up for your appointments. 2 ways to get a telesales agent started. Best script to book more appointments. Whatever you want, you can make up anything. Make it a fucking PDF and offer it to download with a little form to collect name, phone number, email, shit like that. That's an easy way to start it because any one of you can create that today. You know what I mean? The schedule I used to sell $30 grand my first month. You know how many fucking people download that? You know what I'm saying? Hey, balancing selling with a toddler. You want to learn how to— you can make up, literally fucking make up anything. People will want it, you know? So I think a lot of people overcomplicate that part. So we've been doing that for a minute. What changed is when during that question where it was like name, phone number, email, the thing I stole from the last event from him is we took it a step further and we started asking a little bit more information to— what's the word I want to use— like, um, to segment them better, right? So I— we went to one part, and initially we're like, hey, thanks for following. I kind of do— I don't do it on my DMs, but I do it on like school and some of the other platforms. If someone comes in, we'd be like, hey, what can we help you with? We'd start there, and we started noticing a lot of the same answers. You know, and I'm like, damn. So then we started collecting stuff and we started looking at all the answers we got, right? We started noticing like they fall into a couple categories. And so then we narrowed it down to the main 4 we get— we tend to get combined with the things I have going on that I want people to consume, whether it be a coaching or an event or whatever it is. It's like, all right, how can I get more people in? So we, we added 4 questions. You might have to help me, Amanda, if I don't remember them all. I know, uh, it's like, what is your biggest struggle currently in the industry? So when they go to download something, a lot of y'all have filled that up. Um, and it's like we give them 4 options. I'm broke is one, because that's a fucking overwhelming majority of new agents. Um, the other option they can choose is like, uh, what is it, coaching and accountability, I think is the terminology. Accountability or mentorship or something like that is how it's worded. What's 3 and 4, Amanda? Um, oh, say again. Oh, leads. Leads is your biggest problem. And then recruiting stuff, right? And we have a response for all of those things. So if someone says I'm broke, we have— I made a video that's how to fucking make a bunch of money if you're a broke insurance agent. So now when they fill that out, that was the first step. I'm like, shit, we get a bunch of them, I should make a video on that. So now we have a video. So now when someone fills out and they say I'm broke They automatically get that video. It's like, hey, see, you filled out the thing that says you're broke. Here's the video, watch it, let me know if I can help. And then we also added another layer of it where we do a follow-up X number of days later. Hey, sent you the video saying you're broke, did you get anything out of it? Just engagement. That all happens to the CRM. And then if they pick mentorship and accountability, oh, we're going to put them on more of a drip where they can get help and coaching and things like this. But I'm not giving that to the broke guy. Why? When I gave it to the broke guy, they'd have me get on a fucking 30-minute sales call, and we're talking about coaching, and they have 9 cents in their bank account. I'm like, I, I mean, I'm, I'm not 9 cents, right? And so I learned to segment it as well. You can steal those or pick your own thing. Um, and then even more recently, one little nuance we added to some of the stuff— asked where people work, because I'm intrigued by how many people follow me now that are not with the company I'm with. That's a change in the last 2 years, 2 years 2+ years where usually traditionally everyone who followed me was either first they were only in my hierarchy, and then it went to people in other groups started following me. And now it's gotten to a point where people that not only in another space, company in our space, they might be in a lot another line of insurance in our space. And just this year, dude, I've had people start following me that are in different— they sell real estate or they do mortgages and they like my shit. And just this year, dude, we started getting some out of the country. People are buying merch, people buying the book, people are from fucking all over the place. Dude, we had this— I picked someone— I send people a bunch of shit for free a lot when they DM me or ask questions. I'm like, hey, send me— I'll send you a shirt or whatever. She had to get— where was that guy where you had to get like the location of the fucking walnut tree to send the mail? Argentina somewhere. Yeah, we had to send it to like a fucking hut in the middle of some— like in the middle of nowhere. I was like, can you just mail it? She's like, that's not how it works in the jungle, wherever it was. Literally in the middle of fucking nowhere just a few months ago. And I'm like, it's unbelievable. So we started segmenting it not only in their biggest struggle but also where they work, and it gives me crazy insight, and I can start seeing tendencies. It's like, oh weird, a lot of people from this style follow me. Why? Because they ain't making money in their style, and we talk about something different. It's a trend. Like, he doesn't know leads, he doesn't work in the lead world, you know what I mean? So when we start— I start talking about that on video a lot because I learned a lot of people that follow me come from a different platform, right? Some people sell the final expense world and they don't make phone calls. They, they are trained to knock on doors. They go straight to the door, they skip the phones. Some of those people follow me. And you start learning nuances in the different companies. It helps you not only in the marketing and building of your brand, but it helps you in the recruiting of agents because you understand their biggest problems. So we, we get on. Now I have a whole history, not only their biggest problem, where they work. I can also follow the engagement along the way so we can see what calls they attend. If they come to— like, we know how many calls every one of y'all gets on. We know what Zooms y'all get on. We keep track of who attends the most of our shit. And we're just, we're learning what to do with the information. But it's really easy as you guys do this stuff. First thing I gave away was the tracker. Any of y'all ever use it? Fucking activity tracker? Dude, I've been using that for, since 2012 I built that for myself. So I've been using that 13 fucking years. Never thought to give it away. 'Til I see his shit. And I'm like, that was really fucking dumb. I've been training literally for 10 years, throwing up information on people, and asked for nothing in return. Ever. Never. I never asked for an email. I never got QR code. First time I did a QR code was last year. I'm like, god dang. Yes, literally. I'm like, I'm doing all these speaking events and I just did it to help people. I did. Yeah, we had this whole fucking plan. That's how, like, things don't work perfect when you're trying to do things. We had this whole plan, like, I'm gonna give the talk, I'm gonna put the QR code, and they're gonna click on this thing, and I'm gonna do a call, and then we're gonna email all this thing. She's up till fucking 2 in the morning creating the slides for Lindsay, who we have a great relationship with his team. Sometimes we're a little bit of slackers on stuff, and we do things last minute, and we take for granted they're really— and I'm like, I'm sorry, Lindsay, we're gonna email you this. Actually, you know what, I'm going to talk to your tech team and give them the slide right before I walk on stage. I have done that to your team, But they're so fucking good with us, and we don't make major changes. Hell, half the time I'm like, yeah, just use the same one. So we do this the first time, and I'm like, I'm going to present the tracker and the QR code, and I give my whole fucking talk, and I walk off, and I'm like, ah, and people cheer. And Amanda and fucking Reese are looking at me like, you fucking idiot, you did— I— she was like, I stayed up till 2 in the morning doing that thing, and you didn't even fucking mention it. Because I've been training for 10 years without mentioning QR codes. Took a minute for me to get the marketing side into who I am. I've literally only added that recent— straight up just watching Cody do it, and I'm like, I'm fucking missing the boat here because I'm just used to giving info. I'm not used to taking all this into account, you know. And so I've really only been doing that solid. We gave that away February, February of '24, right? Was the first time I did that, that download, the tracker. We did that convention, didn't we? Pretty sure that was first time. And since then, so been a little over a year, 15 months, just the tracker— last time I looked at a couple months ago, had brought in 3,000 new contacts in the last year. Just the tracker alone. Yeah. And I'm like, shit, if I only had done that for the previous 12. And I mean, I just kind of— I talked about it a lot, but I was never smart enough to go like, let me use it as something not only to help people but to get their information to create the relationship as well. So again, that's a really easy thing for you guys to all look at and go, what can I give away? You don't have to overthink it, doesn't have to be deep, it doesn't have to be fancy or pretty. And, you know, but people, people definitely download it and they'll give you their shit. You know, with— when you have a, when you have a big list, you can do some, do some cool things with it.