How I Made $300 MILLION in 5 Years from Insurance Sales ft. Luke Acree | Ep79

If you know the person on the billboard, the billboard stands out to you a million times more. As soon as you and I interact personally, all of a sudden my emails, now they're more visible to you. My ads on Facebook are more visible. Why? Because the human personalization drives every other marketing that you have.

Welcome back. We have another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Got my buddy Luke Acri here. He's the owner of Reminder Media, doing some cool shit for a lot of people in a lot of spaces with a lot of clients. I know that.

Well, we're trying to, you know.

So yeah, man, hey, I see and hear your numbers and I'm like, all right, something's working. And, um, you know, a part of my strategy has always been along the way is like, if I help people make more money, it always just works out. And clearly what you're doing is working to help our world. So I appreciate that, man. Yeah, man, would love to hear a little bit more about, um, what you guys are doing, doing out there to help. Obviously we, we have a, a cool little crew of agents and working with a new crew, dude, that probably hasn't seen you before, like direct to me, you mean kind of a new base shop, and make some introductions there as well.

So, well, I appreciate you, man, and, uh, I'd be remiss if I didn't say appreciate the relationship. We've known each other for a few years now and connected at conferences and stuff like that, and you were kind enough to come on our podcast, Stay Paid. So I am honored to be able to be on your show. Um, I can give people kind of a 30,000-foot view and, and willing to go wherever. Yeah. You want, um, we're a marketing company at heart. Marketing's my passion. Right. I tell people like, you're, you know, a business owner selling insurance, helping people with their life and health or whatever you're doing 80 hours a week. That's what I do with marketing. Like, I, I love it. Um, I, you know, marketing's really broad and we've gotten into more types of marketing over the years. Uh, but the core of what I focus on is what I call relationship marketing, because I believe the core of every business, you can almost call it the currency of business is relationships. And the more people in your area that you get to know you, like you, and trust you, as Zig Ziglar always said, the more business that you're going to generate. So every business owner I come across knows they have to keep in touch with their database. I never really have to convince an agent that, hey, if you want to sell insurance, you got to get people to know you, you got to keep in touch with them. The, the problem set is, well, how do you do it? How do you do it in a way that you can do it at scale so it's automated You can do it in a way that is perceived well by the consumer so they don't just throw it away. They actually enjoy what you're sending them. And then most importantly, how do you turn it to a proactive outreach campaign so you can generate ROI? And that really is where we try to live, is I wanna build you a platform, which we have at ReminderMedia, that gives you being delivered to your clients, to your database, and most importantly gives you a reason to reach out, whether they raise their hand because they filled out a form on a landing page or their magazine was delivered and you're able to now call them, uh, to try to ask for a referral. That's really been the core. What we're known the most for in the industry is our customizable magazine. So, you know, there's, there's tons of companies out there that do social content. We do those as well. We do paid ads for people, but our flagship that's unique to us is, um, the customizable magazine. So we create for businesses their own 48-page coffee table publication. It's their magazine, no other ads, just features them and great content. In. Our most popular in the insurance space is a health magazine because you want to be branded as health and wealth. The real kind of, um, unique thing about it is it's not filled with just insurance information because nobody would read that. Nobody would care. It's actually just filled with info that people love. Like we have a Better Homes and Gardens type magazine. We have a business one that's kind of like Inc. magazine. We have a health one, we have a lifestyle one, but it's just filled with content that a consumer might enjoy. And because they enjoy it, they keep it. So when I send it to you, John, it's nice enough that you go, okay, I'm not gonna toss this right away cuz it's nice. It's a coffee table publication. It's perceived as a gift. We track the shelf life to be 4 to 6 weeks. We track the referral rate to be about 31% across our client base.

No way.

Um, but the main thing is like when I send it to you, and this is for every agent listening, like if you wanted to try it out and go, okay, I'm gonna send this magazine to 50 of my people or 100 of my people. The only thing I beg of you to do is call the people you sent it to, because that will make you a client for life, because it is your reason to reach out to your database. The number one reason people leave their insurance agent, according to a lot of the research out there, is they have not received consistent and valuable communication from their agent. Half of your database right now, according to the stats, has not heard from you in the last 18 months. And it's not because they haven't heard from you, you know they have. It's just that all you're giving them is insurance-related product information and the consumer tunes that out because they don't care. They expect you to take care of that stuff for them. What they want is to make sure that you care about them, that they trust you, that you have their best interest in mind. And a lot of times you do that by just giving them things of value, not things of product.

Yeah, I think that way less people contact clients ever, even once, than you think. Yeah, it's really bad, bro. It is.

I have learned that, man, in the insurance space especially. It's like, yeah, in some other spaces it's not quite as bad, but I get it though, because you're trying to, you know, you're— it's an industry where you buy leads, which is very valid, and you need to do that. I'm actually a, um, I preach to people you should do that. We even do Facebook advertising for leads for agents, but yeah, but the hell, yeah, exactly. The core of any sustainable business is a brand, and that's a high macro way to say it's referrals, it's repeat customers. So you're trying to build a brand where people are attracted to you, and the way you build a brand is you get people to know about you. The reason why you go buy leads is because you're trying to find out, well, who's my ideal target audience? Well, these people showed interest in insurance, they're my ideal target audience. Let me get my brand known to to them. But where we stop is we think it's just in the calling and just in the sales process. But if you go, no, let me do that plus do what the actual top producers do, let me build a brand, let me actually get my name known in a way where people know me and like me and trust me, and then ultimately you'll build a business that attracts.

Yeah, that's sick, dude. I, um, what, what industries are the best at it? Because for those that don't know, he does this for way outside of insurance. Yeah, all kinds of stuff. But just off the rip, I'm just curious, you had to pick one.

Best at probably client relationships would probably be financial advisors. Um, yeah. And the reason why I think they are is because built into their process, they do these things called annual reviews or biannual reviews.

You mean like we should be doing?

Yeah, exactly. 100%. It's like built into— yeah. And financial advisors, don't get me wrong, are still— I feel terrible at it. But they're more terrible than like the financial advisor. The big pain point for them, if anybody is thinking about getting into it, is the pain point of connecting to the next generation and connecting to the spouse. Because there's somebody in the house that usually handles the money and has the relationship with the advisor. And the stats are like crazy. I think it's as high as like 90% of, uh, widows, they move their money to a new financial advisor because they didn't have a relationship. Yep. Very little of the wealth that gets transferred to the next generation does that kid keep their parents' financial advisor. Then, so same like problem set, except they're doing a good job with their current relationship a lot of times, but they do a really poor job with the other members of the household. And that could be applied to insurance. But I think financial advisors, from all the people I see, they probably do it the best. Maybe some niche industries we work in, like consultants, naturally do it well, but that's what their business is, is, is that.

So Yeah, it's crazy too. Like, I don't know all the stats in the insurance side, but I've heard certainly plenty of times that the average client buys insurance something like 6 or 8 times in their life. And they— I know from hell experience, they definitely will get a new agent the next time. Yep. It don't matter if John Wetmore sold them.

Price-based, it's transactional. Yeah, it's true. It's transactional. And that's why if you look at like Geico, 15 minutes or more can save you 15% on your car insurance or something like that. Right. That's their slogan. That there's no relationship. They're literally trying to get rate shopping like that. That's what— because they realize that insurance agents— why do I say that? Because insurance agents do such a poor job of solidifying the relationship, they know that will work. If relationship— if insurance agents focused a little bit more on the relationship, that wouldn't work. So how can you tactically do it? Well, of course, you know, buy us, you can send our magazine, do all that stuff, but you don't even need our magazine. You need to ask yourself right now, one, do you have your list of clients in some contact management system where you have a cadence of touchpoints going to them? And there's, you don't have to spend money, a ton of money to do this. Like you can literally use Excel, even though I don't think you should, but Excel mixed, mixed with AI now. I mean, you can do it. Um, and you can put 'em in Excel. These are my clients. And then ask yourself, you know, all my best relationships with, like, do you have a friend that you, you know, are really, really close to that you don't talk to for the whole year. Normally those— you have friends that maybe you grew up with, but the only reason you're close to them is because you had so much bandwidth with them. Most of our relationships that are close to us, our wives, our best friends, we talk to all the time. And so you go, okay, I'm not going to have my clients be my best friend or my spouse, but I can at least get in touch with them at least once a month. I can send them something of value. I can get my name out there to them. And if I were you, I mean, this is just what I would do is I would put it into a contact management system. Then I would get a cadence going of one email per month. It's free. Email is basically free in these contact management systems. Uh, MailChimp will give you a free, you know, up to 500 names, I think, email sends. Like you can get a free email going out essentially. Then what I would do is go, okay, all of my real clients, how do I go friend them on Facebook and Instagram? How do I find them? How do I friend them? And you're like, well, I don't know. I can't find them on Facebook. Oh man, that's an incredible reason to call. That's an incredible reason to reach out to John, catch up. Hey, John, was thinking about you. I can't believe it's been 6 months, man, since I, uh, you know, signed you up with the Health and Life thing. How's life been going? Hey, man, I would love to friend you on Facebook. Are you on Facebook? I know not all my clients use Facebook, but I try to make sure that's another way you could get a hold of me. I just want to make sure you know I'm always there for you. Are you on Facebook or Instagram? And get— why? Because social, it's such a great way to get your brand in front of your sphere. And if you— and it gets even better, the best agents, and you know this, they're engaging with their clients on social. I mean, how much are you solidifying yourself in that, that client's life when you're commenting that, hey, looks like your vacation was awesome and all that stuff? It's like they just want to know you're there. So I would do that. I would go, okay, how do I friend them on social? How do I get one email a month going? I'm basically spending no money doing that. Then I would move to more sweat equity, and I would go, how do I get a quarterly phone call? Going to all my clients, and I would base my quarterly phone call around a client event. I would do a client event where I— like, um, we just did one with Acre Brothers. I own a real estate team with my brother Steven, and, um, we do property management, that we have real estate, all this stuff. But we just did, uh, one where it was a summer barbecue. We invited 500 people of our clients. We had about 100, a little over 100 show up, but all 500 got a phone call from us. All 500 got a personal invite. All 500 will get a, a thank you email saying thanks for being a client and pictures from the event. 100 actually show up that day that we interact with. We get reviews from 'em at the event. We ask 'em, hey, would you mind giving us a Google review? That's another note we could go down is, God, man, people need to get reviews. Insurance agents are so bad at this. And with AI coming, or AI already here, how do you think ChatGPT is going to decide who they recommend in the area to help you with health and life insurance? They're going to go just like SEO and look at, well, how do I find out about the insurance agents in this area? Reviews are one of the major ways they're going to decide whether or not you should rank at the top 3 to 5 suggested agents.

So, so, hey, so Joe Blow, the insurance agent, can just go on, create a Google— what, like if you— if someone wants to do that, how would they do it?

Yeah, you literally, you could create a Google Business Profile. Google Business Profile. You can look at— here's what I would do if I were you, a quick hack for everybody. Go to AI right now and go, hey, I'm looking for life insurance. What agent would you recommend to me in the Harleysville, Pennsylvania area? Look at what it says. Audit yourself. See what the AI says. Okay. Then ask it. This is the beautiful thing about AI. So you can do that in Google, right? And see who pops up. And there's Google local service ads, right? That people use and they have their Google profiles. I'm sure it's, you know, based upon the profiles and the reviews. With Google though, it's not interactive, right?

Yeah.

So you get to scroll more, but it's not interactive. With AI, it's interactive. So what can you ask it next? You can literally go, thanks for sharing. Why did you pick these agents? What sites did you— oh, perfect. What sites did you source in order to choose these agents? Then go, why did you not choose John Wetmore? And go, and, and it will give you its answer. It will tell me.

I'm gonna ask, why did— I'm gonna— what was the— you want me to ask the second one, or can I go right?

I mean, you can literally— did you—

I don't know why it didn't—

perfect. Yeah, go. Yeah, why did— so why did you choose the agents you did? What sites did you source those agents?

Why did you—

because the hack is for everybody. Now you know what sites you need to go get your content on. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like, what did you use? How did you determine this decision? And now it's telling you, it literally tells you why it made the decision it made. And so now you can at least go, okay, is there a way I like, um, for real estate agents, it quotes all the time FastExpert, a site called FastExpert.

Yeah.

And that's a site where you can have reviews on and that you can get ratings. Oh man, if I'm a real estate agent, I wanna make sure my profile is up to date on FastExpert. I wanna make sure I get reviews from, from clients on FastExpert, like those type of things. So then I would go, why did you not choose John Wetmore? I did this for Reminder Media. Who would you recommend for magazines? We were like one of the, uh, top ones. Who would you recommend for postcards? We were there. Who would you recommend for, uh, ads, leads, like social media? We were not listed at all. Why did you not recommend ReminderMedia? And it told me why.

Yeah, and I just told me why.

I sent it to my marketing team. Now I'm blessed that, you know, I have a marketing team, but I said to my marketing team, I said, hey, update all of our landing pages because we do offer these things. It said we don't have training. It said we don't have a bunch of stuff. We do have all these. We are not telling the world through the web that we have these things so the web crawlers don't have them.

So it's like easy and free, right? So this is a time—

yeah, I would invite people to a client event because you can get reviews, you can get people face to face. It gives you a totally easy reason to call them. Most people won't show up to a client event. We're about to do one on the 21st, I believe it is, or 27th of September, where we're inviting everybody to an ice cream social. It's gonna cost us $800 to rent out an ice cream shop for literally a couple hours. All of our clients will come through that have kids and get free ice cream. We will meet them, thank them for being clients, right? And, and you build so easy. Yeah, you build such good rapport. And here's the, the real trick. We don't even pay for it. Now, in the real estate world, I don't know if insurance— you would have to educate me if insurance could do the same thing. We ask our lenders to chip in, the title company to chip in, the, the home inspector that we use to chip in, and everybody chips in $100. That by the end, you don't even pay for it. It's a free client event essentially for you because all your partners that you send business to, you're literally asking to chip in. So I think as an insurance agent, you could go to the real estate agent and say, hey, I want to throw this kind of event for my clients, rent out this ice cream shop. It's going to be $1,000. You want to invite your clients in? Um, because it's basically, you know, flat fee type idea and pay $500. I bet you, you could do it. Um, and it's just easy to me. I go, if I'm breaking down for people, Hey, you want to get your brand out there, you know, buying leads, you 100% need to do. I really believe that. That's why I keep saying it. You got to do that. But where you're failing is you're not then taking those leads that you don't close and putting them into a bucket that you nurture for the rest of the time because a no is not a never.

Yeah. And just the yeses.

Yeah. And then do an email, do a phone call a quarter, invite them to a client event, get a magazine going out to them. Get a, uh, postcard going out to them, some type of piece. And, and then the idea is, and you hear me talk about this all the time, is there's 6 degrees of marketing. Ultimately, there's a direct mailbox, email inbox, social media, right? And you could kind of say almost the web. There's face-to-face, voice-to-voice, and then screen-to-screen, text message, you know, video message, things like that. So you have these 6 high-level frequencies that break down into subcategories. But how do you make sure that, hey, do you have a piece of physical mail going to your database? Do you have an email going to your database? Do you have a phone call happening with your database? Do you have a face-to-face interaction with your database? Do you have a screen-to-screen, a text message going? Man, um, what, what's coming up? Thanksgiving's coming up. Perfect hack for everybody, and there's systems out there that will automate this for you, but sit down for all of your A-level clients. Like, if you're trying to upsell people to annuities, right, and maybe you're a health and life person right now or something like that, It's like, who are all your best clients? Are you going to sit down and take 30 minutes to send them a personal message, text message on Thanksgiving? Hey, just want to let you know I'm grateful for you, thinking about you, appreciate you as a client. You send that text message. And what people miss about the personal interaction, it's like you and I haven't connected for a while, right? We see each other at conferences, but I wasn't able to go to a lot of the industry events this year. And, um, it's like my marketing is hitting you. You're probably seeing my marketing still, Stephen Reminder Media's name. But it almost loses, um, it gets tuned out. It becomes noise ultimately is what happens to any brand. Sure. All of it. As soon as you and I interact, right? As soon as you and I interact personally on this screen to screen, if we got together for a beer, all of a sudden my emails, now they're more visible to you. My ads on Facebook are more visible. Why? Because the human personalization Drives every other marketing that you have. If you know the person on the billboard, the billboard stands out to you a million times more than if you don't know the person on the billboard. So why do you need to take the time to do a face-to-face, a phone call? Because it elevates almost 10Xs, to steal Grant Cardone's term, of all your other passive marketing, all your magazines, emails, postcards, social media posts. All those things are noise. But they're good noise, but they're noise. Everybody's doing them. But when you connect the dots, there's a human. Oh my gosh, now they see it.

So sure, that's pretty cool. I like it.

I love it, love it, love 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. Um, we have agents in there selling, me helping agents and sharing information. We're going to, as we build this thing out, share everything, um, 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. So on this side of things, if client— if agents are like, all right, I want to do— I'm— you're— I'm in, I want to do some marketing, But like me, dude, I'm lazy and I want to make it the easiest possible.

Come to Luke Acre.

No, I'm just kidding. What would we do, Luke? Yeah, I'm curious how it works, the flow, because quite frankly, I haven't sold in so long, I've never put agents or clients in your deal.

Yep. So if you like a flagship that I would want to start people with is the magazine. But, you know, we have different tracks for different people depending on your needs. So if you need to reach the masses, maybe you want to advertise to a T65 list because you're selling Medicare. We can help you buy that list. We can help you market to it with postcard designs. We can walk you through that flow. Um, the— let's talk about like the magazine one specifically because I think it's the most valuable.

Question, Luke. So you're saying you can also market to generate new insurance leads as clients?

Yeah.

Our platform is not just market to your previous clients.

Exactly. Our platform has grown to where if you need to generate business, We do Facebook ads, Meta, really Facebook and Instagram. We do postcards through direct mail, and we can buy and curate and build lists for you based upon demographics.

What are you targeting in my space? Like final expense? Are you doing anything else?

Sorry, say that again. I missed that.

In my world, what are you targeting for client leads for agents, say?

Yeah, so I mean, depending on what you're going after, final expense, or you're doing truckers, running ads for people to do final expense, or running ads for people to do Health and Life and stuff like that. We're running Facebook ads for that. Um, we are curating lists and sending direct mail for people to do that, whether they're doing it for a seminar or they're doing it for, you know, another campaign that they have.

Final expense leads or whatever.

Yeah, exactly. So they, um, will either work with us to curate a list or they will bring their list to us. Um, some people have their list, which is great. Uh, so we'll get a campaign going there. Uh, on the magazine side, Our core concept there is repeat and referral business. So you have a database of, of past clients and clients you're currently serving that you should be in front of. Magazine, you know, you got Thanksgiving or Christmas, I don't know when this comes out, but you got that coming out right around the corner. Send, instead of sending a holiday card, send our holiday magazine to your best clients. That's a perfect way to test it. We do an onboarding call with you with our coach. They will help you get your photos and list uploaded. We will then create the magazine for you, design it all up, show it to you. We can get partners on board, we can advertise the product services you you want in your magazine. We then take care of everything from design to sending. Yep, you're, you're—

every individual's custom, everyone's custom.

I can write a personal letter to each client that you send it to. If you have a seminar you're doing, I could send you 15 magazines that are customized specifically to that seminar. So ads that talk about what you talked about at the seminar, appointment cards and stuff like that, and then the rest can be customized to your VIPs. So I can do all that. I always tell people as a visual I can do a 48-page coffee table magazine designed and delivered custom to the individual that you send it to with a personal letter for less than a Hallmark card at CVS or Walmart. Hallmark cards are $6, $7 without postage. This is $4.99 shipping included. Minimum order's only 50. So think of your— yeah, 50 applications that you've done recently. How do you smother them with love so they don't go somewhere else or they don't, you know, you know, pull back or something like that. Yeah, yeah. And so that is our normal, um, process. People will sign up, they'll hit their top 100 usually.

Sure.

Um, they go through a 20-minute coaching onboarding call, listen, photo, we do everything else, they approve it to go to print, it hits homes usually 4 weeks later. We have a deadline every week they can hit, so it's really flexible. Um, right now everybody's getting in for Christmas and Thanksgiving because they want to do this instead of a Hallmark card or something like that. And what's unique about the magazine is it's exclusive. So if I send to John, no other agent, no other business can send the magazine to John. So that address gets locked down to you.

No way.

So it's an exclusive one. Yep. So the same applies, like if I'm you, the, the strategies I look at is you got your database you want to keep in touch with. You got your community that you want to be out in. So all the doctor's offices, hair salons, all the estate planning attorneys, financial advisors, they all have waiting rooms. Not all— you should put the magazine in all their waiting rooms, or we'll send the weight to the waiting rooms for you. Third would be partnerships. Instead of just featuring, you know, this in a waiting room of a doctor, put that doctor on the magazine. Literally put that financial advisor in the magazine that you're sending out. They'll feel like a million bucks. Now you're building influence in your local community, building your own little BNI network, right? These little business networks that happen in these different communities. that's another way. And then last but not least, would have some sent to you to hand out at your appointments when you meet people face to face. They're evergreen. They don't have dates on them. Uh, so high quality pieces. And so I always tell people, I mean, for $250, you can, you know, hit 50 of your top clients with a really high quality piece. You can't even take 5 clients out to dinner for that, you know, today. So that's a really— that's why I think it's been a home run for us of like, what else can you do? For literally $5 to a client that will make them feel valued, that's unique enough to stand out, automated so you don't have to do anything, high enough quality so it lives in the home for 4 to 6 weeks. It's very hard to go. And there's a lot of gifting platforms out there. Like Snappy is one we use in our company where we send gifts. The problem is it's like, you know, to get a good gift, you're spending $15 to $20 just for a a decent gift. So you times $15 to $20 times 100 people, you're like, gosh man, that's quite the investment to do consistently. And so people fall into two traps. They can't do gifting, it's too expensive, can't do it enough. Yeah, they all do postcards and emails, but those don't have shelf life. Everybody does them. So we're kind of right in the middle with the magazine. It's not quite a gift, but it's not quite a postcard, and it lives. That's why it works.

So I got the bulk thing, makes sense. So someone, if one of our agents is like, cool, I want to sign up, I got 100 clients, 500 clients, whatever they got. Yep. But then I want to get everyone going forward going in, is there some kind of like automated like bettygo or do you have to send them in bulk?

Um, no, you can do, um, increments of one. You can add them right there in the interface. We can, um, you know, depending on what you're doing, we can, you can send them to us, we can upload them for you. There's a lot of ways clients do them. We have some clients that hook up their CRM, you know, stuff like that. So Yeah, but you can add them, you can do 51, 52, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it's just however many you add, just when you go to print, they come out. I don't know if I said this, they come out every 2 months, so it's 6 touches a year because the average shelf life is 4 to 6 weeks.

You just pile them up during that phase, the interim.

And so 6 touches for you, done. And then you also have a digital version that you can send out to the rest of your database, you can post on your website. All the content is digitized for you, so, and automated for your social. So all the content that you have from motivation to business to lifestyle to travel to art, all that stuff can be created. And we do content calendars where you can tell us what content you like, and we'll build the whole content calendar for you and auto-post for you onto your Facebook feed.

Where do you want people to go?

Um, I would go to remindermedia.com, and let's do a deal for them. Do remindermedia.com/Wetmore, and, um, we will hook you guys up for a deal. Yeah, we'll give you a free month for all your agents of our digital platform. We'll give you 15 free magazines on your first order. Uh, so go to remindermedia.com/Wetmore. Just, uh, when does this come out? Give me a second to get that site up.

But yeah, I'm like, I didn't know this was a thing, so I found out with y'all right now.

Uh, well, I'm finding out right now too. My team's like, what? We're doing what? No, we might as well.

Yeah, I do that shit to Amanda. She finds out when I tell people we're doing it.

I'll get off this podcast and chat them on Teams and go, hey guys, somebody's got to create a site called remindermedia.com/Wetmore and make this deal.

Yeah, it comes out at 3 PM Eastern, bro.

Release it.

No, I'm kidding. He's a couple weeks out anyway, so we're good. But I'll, I'll, I'll have Reece let you know the date. He does have a schedule that I don't pay attention to.

Love it.

So yeah, it's good shit. Cool. So what else do you think? Give some like, I'm sure you have some cool, I want to, if specifically in insurance, if you can.

Yeah.

Like someone that did this and had a dope result. Like some kind of success story, something cool. I'm sure you'll have shitloads.

Yeah, sure. Yeah. Um, two, two of my favorite stories. One is, uh, uh, Rebecca Davis. You know Rebecca? Yeah. I love, I love Rebecca Davis because, um, this story is great because she wrote a book called 100, uh, Marketing Grassroots, Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Business for Insurance Agents. I don't know if you've read her book or not. Great, great book, right? Um, it's just 100 ideas. And she signed up for our program, had so much success sending this out to all of her clients and her AP She went back to her book, added 101 ideas, put Reminder Media in her book, reprinted the book. Yeah. Cause, and she's like the Medicare Wonder Woman, right? She speaks at all these conferences, but I love that story because it's like, oh man, she had such good success in the response and the application, all that stuff that she added it to her book. But another one of my favorite stories is Zach Rucker. Um, this guy I got to sign up, I forget if it was the first 8% Nation or what it was, one of the 8% Nation conferences. And, He wasn't gonna gimme a try. And I kept asking and asking and asking, come on, gimme a try. And you know, at these conferences, I'm trying to drip on you as much as possible. If you come by the booth, I'm gonna hit you. And then if you keep coming by, I'm gonna keep calling out your name. So he was so hesitant, finally gave it a try. He sent me a testimonial after his first mailing, got 5 referrals, didn't make a single phone call to his people yet, had gotten 5 referrals off his first mailing hitting. And this is a guy that literally was hesitant to try it. And then his first mailing got 5 referrals. And so it's like those things are like what I love because like I had a lady and she's in the real estate space, but Olivia Sawyer, and she's a top producer out of Virginia. She, she signed up at a conference called BAM, which is a big media company within the real estate space. And she's a top producer. I think she's top 1% in Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices. And she was hesitant at the booth too. And I was like, hey, give it a try. You will— you're— the response you will get from this you will see it will be the one piece of marketing that you send out where people actually respond. They'll tag you in the post. They'll do that. She sent it out. I forgot about her. Sorry, Olivia, because I'm gonna have her on our podcast soon. Sorry, but I forgot about you. If this finds your way to you, um, and she hit me up on Instagram. She tagged me in a reshare of one of her clients with her magazine responding with their kid and them responding to the magazine of how much they love Olivia's magazine. And she goes in the Instagram thing She goes, you were right, Luke. Like, I'm getting a bunch of these responses. You know, I'm, I'm really happy I signed up and did it. And that's what I always tell people is my best clients are your recipients. I'm sorry, my best salespeople are your recipients. Meaning like, I can tell you all day it's awesome. I can tell you, been around 20 years, we've worked with 150,000 businesses, all great, right? They're all true stats. I'm a salesman. I want you to do it, right? Everybody knows that. So it's what's going to really convince you to do it. Try it one time. I won't lock you into a 6-issue agreement. I want you to do it for a year, try it, gauge the feedback. 84% of people who try us one time continue on. Um, and so I'm proud of that stuff because it's— it meaning like it's not like 99% do, doesn't work for everybody. It's a real stat of going, look, 84% of people who try it one time go, yeah man, I got such good feedback from this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sign up to do this.

How many of these suckers you send out? And give some clarity on that 84%.

Yeah, yeah, millions. I mean, this year, I mean, maybe 15, 16 million of these will go out.

So sick, dude.

Yeah, yeah, so sick.

And he runs a behemoth of a company, if anyone's clear. And you share it out there pretty publicly. Yeah, oh yeah, I've heard you talk 9 figures.

God's being good. Yeah, that's being, you know, good and a lot of hard work, as they say. So yeah, but, um, I love it.

Give them some— because again, I don't know who knows what. Obviously you have the Stay Paid podcast, you do the show on on in the syndicate, in the Insurance Syndicate Group. Done that for a long time. Um, and you and I've had some, some chance to sit down and talk. Like, you know your shit in business too.

Thank you. Yeah.

Um, I would love— how many, how many people work for you now? It was a shit—

so I have about— I have 300 W-2s, and then there's probably maybe 40 more contractors or so, uh, kind of spread across the country.

Given, given what you know just in general about the business, you know the insurance space well. What, what's like some top business advice you can give to people trying to— people that follow me trying to build something, they're not just trying to only be an insurance agent forever, you know, there's some people that actually want to build a brand, build a company. Um, what, what feedback would you give, dude, just in general?

Um, I think the number one thing that's been on my mind recently, the more and more I am working with, you know, other business owners and my clients If you want to build a business, you got to treat it just like that. It's a business. And what you find is a lot of people get into business for themselves and they don't show up for themselves like they would for a full-time boss. And the reality is, is that, um, you know, are you starting at 8 o'clock? Are you going to at least 5 o'clock? That's the bare minimum. That's what you would do for somebody else. That would— that's what you would do if you work for corporate America. For yourself, what are you willing to do? So then that comes down to your schedule and your calendar. And most people have no calendar. They, they go through the day without intention. They go through the day without time blocking, and then they wonder why they get confused results. And it's like, if you confuse, you lose. And so are you set? Like today, you know exactly what you're gonna be doing, when you're gonna be doing it. And a bare minimum for all of you, you should know this, 2 to 4 hours on the phone every single day prospecting. 2 to 4 hours doesn't have to be the phone, but you should be prospecting. 2 to 4 hours a day. That's a time block. That's a non-negotiable. But what most people do is they run to the operational things. Most people run to the contracts or the product information or the design of my logo. All that stuff is where most people go. We've all done it. I still get tempted to do it because I don't have to face the rejection and I don't have to face the adversity.

Sure.

But it doesn't help you. So what would I encourage everybody listening to this to do? Get your calendar clear. Get committed to your calendar. Honor it. Be a person of integrity. If you say you're gonna do something, do it. Because it's not about the integrity just to the other person, it's about the integrity to yourself. It's like, I do what I say I'm gonna do. And that gives you confidence. When you know who you are, you do what you say, you can function and walk in confidence. It starts with going, okay, What am I gonna do today? How do I get it onto the calendar? Now, if you're like me, which probably a lot of you are, I struggle to be accountable. I just do. I, like, I try like everybody else how to get environments that produce accountability. So find a John that is willing to hold you accountable. That is, that is like you are willing to be accountable to. And listen to them. Otherwise, what are you doing? Like, what, what are you even doing? So it's like, I just tell people listening to this is, man, we're all human. We need to put ourselves in environments where we can prosper. And the only way to do that is you've got to make a commitment, put it on your calendar, honor it, and get somebody to hold you accountable to that commitment. That will do wonders for your business. Yeah, wonderful.

What up, y'all? So YouTube memberships, we have one now right next to the subscribe button. There's a neon white join button. You can't miss it. Subscribe, whatever it says, click the link, get in there. I do a ton of coaching, teaching people how to dial, corrections, working on their presentations, working on their mindset. I will coach on theory, but I like coaching real-world stuff. And if you join the membership section, you're going to see live coaching where I'm not only helping people, but every once in a while I get in there and dial myself. There's some cool videos coming out, tons of content.

All the training videos will be directly on my YouTube channel.

That's available to members only, super easy to find. In order to access them, you have to join our exclusive training videos tier. Do More does not get access to the training videos. So join now if you're interested. Click below. See you in there. I'm gonna ask you a selfish question for me. Sure. How do you— this is a struggle of mine— all the things you want to get done in business, all the, all the whiteboarding and shit to do, and not enough people and hours to do it. How did, how did you go about going from when you had— and I don't, I don't know the exact beginning, but you didn't roll out of bed with this company. I know that. How did you go like, I got 4 people in my office and, and everyone's behind you, not because they're mean or bad people, we just got a lot going on, you know what I mean? It's like, how did you, how did you scale a staff? Obviously I've done the 10 on the 9 side. To me, the staffing W-2 side is different. I don't know why, but how do you scale an internal team and get people to like see the vision and buy in the same a 1099 and a W-2. To me, the vision is hard for me to push people to. I have Amanda, she's been with me forever. I have my social guy, he's figuring it out. And, you know, we're going like, how do we expand this team and that fits in, you know, and continues to get things done for me and the others? So I struggle with it, dude. It's like, I know it's a loaded question.

Oh no, I mean, it's a really hard question. I wish I knew a great— I mean, my raw answer, you got to kiss a lot of frogs. To find the prince. Meaning, like, I think there's a hope out there that you don't have to go through a lot of people to find the winners, and I just have not been able to do that. I have to go through so many people to find the winners, and everybody's gonna— it's gonna make you feel like you suck. It's gonna make you feel— because you do. Like, you, you— there are, are things you're doing wrong, and there are things I, I was not as good of a leader as I should have been, or whatever. But don't stop. Just keep kissing the frogs. Keep, keep going through. If that's not the person— and I heard it said, I forget what podcast, I think it was an Alex Hormozy one, but It resonated with me so much in my journey of just an A-player, you know, within 2 weeks. And if you don't know if they're an A-player within 2 weeks, they are not an A-player. They are not. And so it's like, that resonates with me because it's like, yeah, that's, that's been my experience. It's like the great people, you just know it. They're not perfect. They're not like they— but the way they work, the initiative they take, the willingness to just go is there in the people. So I would just say, hey man, you gotta kiss a lot of frogs and be willing to go through that adversity. I would also look and go, hey, you know, at the end of the day, we tend to hire based upon what we see versus practicality. And I've made this classic mistake so much as recent as just, I'm, it's being revealed to me again here today where we're at with Reminder Media. Oh, I need a, you know, I need a team lead. For every 8 to 12 people, or I need a manager. No, Luke, you don't need some structure of a team lead or a manager. All those, okay, fine. It's great to have those things. What you have is work that needs to be done. So what is the work that needs to be done to generate the result that you need? If you can't physically get the work done, then you need somebody to help you do that work. And what we tend to do is we tend to hire for structure. We tend to hire for This is what a business is supposed to do instead of hiring for practicality and going, no, I have a job. Like, when do you need a team lead? When you physically can't coach the people anymore and they need the coaching and they need the accountability. Then you create a role to be like, hey, you can call yourself team lead, you can call yourself whatever you want. I need you to be this person that coaches these people to do this job, to produce this result. And I just made that mistake over and over again of hiring based upon what org structures are supposed to look like versus like, screw the org structure. The org structure doesn't mean anything. All that matters is we have work that needs to be done, clients that need to be served. Who's going to do the work? And then that's, that's the real vision, because then all of a sudden you're not— you're not— what happens to people is they— I've done this— you hire somebody, you paint them this vision of where they're going to grow through your org chart irrelevant. You need to paint the vision of like, hey man, this is the work we have to do, and if we can accomplish this work, we can serve this many more people. Then it's the right vision. And I just see so many people make the same mistake I make there. It's like we create these org charts that don't mean anything. It's true.

Yeah. And we've had it too where I do that, and then as you know, roles change, the list of shit that needs to be done is different.

Yes. Correct. Their whole idea was built and vision built upon this org chart or whatever, this pathway. And it's like, yeah, yeah, no, no. And that's why I think— I don't know, because I'm like you, man. I'm trying to listen to these people and watch them too. It's like you look at the Elon Musk, you look at these like freaks of nature, and they don't care at all about any hierarchy of structure.

True.

Like, you listen, even the Mark Cubans, right? I hate meetings. I want no meetings. All these entrepreneurs that I've met through YPO, uh, which is like this business network of founders and entrepreneurs, CEOs, they're all very similar in the sense of they hate this bureaucracy structure and they literally will just like, they care about the work and they challenge people on the work and, and they focus on the work. And I think there's a clip out there of Steve Jobs going, the best managers were the ones who didn't wanna be managers. But they were tired of being run by idiots, and so they just stepped up into managers. It's like, those are the best people. And I think of our organization, I go, yeah, those are my best leaders.

That's my Amanda for sure, bro.

I promise you, they have no desire to be in management, but they don't want to be run by an idiot. And they're just like, ah. So never— like, always keep your people in the, in the trench, um, because it's like, I try to tell my leaders, this is such a good principle on leadership. Yeah, your job is— let's imagine your team is digging a trench. Your job is to get in there and dig the trench with them. But the advantage you have, and the reason why you're the leader, is because as you dig that trench, you guys might be using a shovel, and all of a sudden you come across bedrock, and you realize the shovel, it might work, but it's not effective. This is not efficient. This is not what we need to be using. You as the leader have the power to go, stop, we're not going to use shovels, we're going to use a pickaxe. No, we're going to use a sledgehammer. No, we're going to use a jackhammer. That's what a leader does. But here's what the failure in most leaders— they sit outside the trench. So they, they, they go, dig faster, hit harder with the shovel instead of realizing, no, you got to be in it. Not because you have to prove to me that you're willing to work, because in the details You realize what the solution is. But if you pull yourself out of the work, you don't know what the solution is. Your job is you're the most talented worker, and you— now I give you the power to make the decision of the tool, of the process, of the thing that needs to happen, because you're the leader. But you'll never know if you're not in the trench digging. Then you're making things up.

It's like, that is true.

That's what happens to people, man.

That was sick, dude. All right, last question on that. You said earlier about the A players, recognizing one. What do you do when you recognize they aren't one? You're just like, all right, they're nice people, uh, but they're just not going to be a killer for you.

Well, it depends what level of business you're at and the risk of liability of firing and hiring. Uh, that's the true answer. Sure. It's like, you know, sometimes with huge corporate companies, they have to put them through pit—

let's say a smaller size, someone smaller, there's not an HR bullshit.

You don't got to tell— yeah, you got to tell the direct truth to them. I don't believe you're an A-player, and you got to show them what an A-player looks like. Here's the graph of success. You're, you're here. This is what I believe an A-player would do. You're not doing these things. And I usually give people a chance, 2 weeks, to show me that I'm totally wrong. And, um, if they can show me in the 2 weeks that I'm totally wrong, then I'll allow that to maintain. But they got to keep proving to me, uh, but this is just real life. Um, but ultimately what I'm doing in that situation is giving them 2 weeks to realize it's time to move on, and that's usually what happens.

Uh, what percentage move on?

Most, you know, your last statement, 90, 95% probably. I don't know the exact thousands of staff. Oh yeah, absolutely. To have 340 different— we've been through thousands of people. Yeah, yeah.

Damn, love it.

And the problem is, it's like, I feel— I don't feel good about that in the sense of like, I do question But it's the truth. Like, it's like, I don't know, am I that bad of a leader? But then I talk to all these other people and nobody's telling me anything different, and I just go, I think this is how it is. Like, I think— and another big problem is what got you here won't get you there. What you're gonna find, dude, is that like as you grow, so good, the people that are great now aren't great later because the skill set that is required And then the, the pain point that happens is you have to give them an amount of ownership and a vision at the low level, and they feel they're that person. And now when you've leveled up, you're like, hey, you actually gotta get smaller. And they don't— people can't go back. Like, um, true. And that's why they— that's why it's so hard to continue to scale with people. And that's why so much of your emphasis with your staff, man, if I'm you, should be on development of your skill because if you don't develop, the business will pass you by. And we still want you on the team because you do a great job in this component, and this component is needed. But, um, you can't be what you are today because, you know, it's, it's a different role altogether. And so it's this like skill development and forcing that and trying to encourage people in that as your company grows, roles will become more narrow. And they should. So like the example would be like social, like social media. You might have a social media manager as you get bigger and bigger. I'm not here yet, but I would love to be here. You would have a social media manager as you get bigger and bigger. You want someone just for YouTube, someone just for Instagram, someone just for Facebook. They're a master at those little things. You can't afford it. I can't afford that right now. I'm not going to have all that staff. But the point being is like, that's what you want. You want your roles to get really narrow. It's a sign of growth. It's a sign of, um, we're, we're winning is, is what it is.

Yeah. Yeah. Mine's doing the recording, the editing, the posting on every platform, my newsletter. You know what I mean? Hell, he probably does. He probably takes out the trash. Who knows?

Exactly. Exactly. And so that's insanely valuable, but as you grow, you will actually, and that person will feel like you are taking things away from them, but really what you're just doing is going, no, no, no, this is, we're getting more focused. Because we still have way more we can gain out of this one platform, out of this one thing. Um, yeah.

And I remember Amanda feeling that way. She's been with me 8 years. I remember her feeling that at first. And we've struggled to add more in like a, I figured out how to scale it without a bunch of staff, which was genius and terrible both at the same time. It's like a lot of pros and cons. Um, but you know, with a small staff, handful of people, Um, 4 we've been through. She keeps a list, we're like at 50, you know what I mean, that have come in and out. So same concept, the numbers are bad, I just haven't done enough of them.

Yeah, so that's what I would encourage you is don't feel bad about it, just keep kissing the frogs. And, um, I have found that A players like, um, the directness. A players like the critique. Um, A players do get pissed off at you and they want it their way, but they, they don't get pissed off in a way that it's like they shut down. They get pissed off in a way of, I'm going to prove you wrong, and that's exactly what you want. Like, they can handle the heat, in essence.

So I see most crumble so fast. Yeah, mostly like, I'm like, oh God, because most people don't want that.

Most people work to live, they don't live to work. And, uh, you know, I, you know, we could get into a whole conversation of this concept of work-life balance, but the point is is that you love what you do. If you weren't doing this, you would be doing something else. Like, you, you, like, you, you, you need to provide for you and your family and all that good stuff, but you're, you're loving what you're doing. You're coming in, you're doing it, you're working hard, you want to be the best at it. It's competition, it's a game, just like people play video games. Like, all that stuff is true. Most people, when they join a company, you know, they don't really— they ain't that. They don't want that. Yeah, they just don't want that. So at least my experience has been that. I shouldn't speak in generality, but my experience has been that.

That's all I've ever heard. I haven't given— I ask a lot of people and I keep— it seems similar, dude, across the board. And I'm like, you know, I'm trying to, trying to grow just like the next guy. It's the bigger you get, the more you realize— I feel like the bigger we get, the more I realize I don't know shit.

Yep, exactly. I got 100%.

I got so much stuff to figure out, dude.

And it's crazy. Everybody's a mess. Just to make you feel confident. If you came behind the scenes of Reminder Media, you'd be like, oh man, they're— they have the same problems I do. It's just they have way more. Like, it's happening in every department because, like, people are the same. Like, sure, we have, you know, more people, we maybe have better systems, like, because of the stuff we've done, but not really. Like, you're gonna see a—

shit's broken still, huh?

You're gonna see the stuff, you're gonna see leads mistreated, you're gonna see leads lost, you're gonna You know, it's nobody called this lead. What the heck happened here? Like, you're gonna see all the same things. So I just say that so anybody listening knows, hey, hey, this whole weird feeling you have in your brain that's like, gosh, I'm missing the whole boat— you ain't missing anything. Just keep trucking. Just keep trucking. It's literally all the same.

It's like, do you want to kill people every day, or do you somehow have patience with it yet?

Yeah, kill's a strong word, but yeah, but yes, I agree. Yeah, yeah.

Mentally, some days I'm like, I— my struggle is the controlling it. I'm getting better. Yeah, it is some days to go like, all right, problem. All right, dope, new problem, usually new opportunity, new revenue. But dude, every day, some days I'm like, I want to bang my head against the wall.

I find myself— my biggest anger right now is I'm not able to move people. I'm either too soft on them or too hard on them. And I, I'm literally confused in the balance of like, like, yeah, okay, like, am I, am I being too soft here? Am I being too hard here? Like, am I crazy? Like, it's like that, like a, like, that's my most frustrating thing. It's like I don't know what to do because in one second I'm not clear enough and I'm not hard enough and telling people, and then the next moment you're, you're crying in front of me. And I'm just like, but you wanted me to be harder on you. Like, it's so hard, dude. The push and pull, it's so hard. Um, we're going through— I've taken the whole leadership team through, um, 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership with John Maxwell. Yeah. And you know, one of the things that John Maxwell has said that, you know, he's obviously a guru of principles of leadership, and I have a lot of respect for him in a lot of regards, but one of the things that really has stood out with me is you can't, um, quick cook, bake. You can't microwave leaders. You have to slow cook them. And I would apply that to most things in life, is that things take longer than you think they do. And you should be doing things today, right now, my man, to build your leaders, to build your bench, even though it gives you no dividends today. And that has been absolutely my biggest mistake in Reminder Media is I just am such a in-the-moment person that I'm not thinking 10 years out. And I should have been thinking 10 years ago, hey, this kid right here is so far off from being a leader, but he has potential. Let me invest and maybe I'll never get any return out of that stock, but let me invest. And I just didn't do that. And it's killing me right now. I mean, it is. I'm having to go recruit leaders from outside my organization, um, because, because I got to go buy the experience now versus having self-grown it. Which, what does that hurt? Morale, because people don't see growth with inside. It hurts, you know, institutional knowledge. It like all these consequences of just— because 10 years, to invest in somebody for 10 years is a really long time.

Hell yeah.

And I'm trying to think today, like Hey, every work I'm doing right now for this 21 Irrefutable Laws, all the money I spend on, you know, the people going to this class with us and all the stuff we're doing, I might not get any return from this for literally 5 years. Maybe. I have no idea. I don't even know what the time horizon would be. I'm just saying like, that was a huge mistake for me that I see now.

That's killer. Yeah, I love it, dude. I love it. It's good stuff. So help me, bro.

I love it.

Awesome. Awesome, man.

I appreciate you, man. Appreciate the comment.

Yeah, absolutely, man. Um, any fi— any final words you want to end with, whatever you want, or if there's anything I didn't ask you that you wish I did. How are you?

Mindermedia.com/Wetmore. No, I'm just kidding.

There you go.

Uh, no, you guys see the sign behind me, take action. Um, my podcast Stay Paid is all about literally trying to inspire people to take action. The biggest killer of all businesses, all ideas, all things in relationships, everything is people just do not act. They do not take action. They know in their head knowledge what they should do. It hasn't translated to their heart enough to move their action. And I would just encourage you, you heard one thing today that stuck with you. It struck a chord, but 98% of you probably won't do anything about it. And it's not to beat you up. I wanna beat you up right now. Right? I wanna make, I wanna lift you up and say, hey, do it. Be one that actually does it and you will change your life. Um, now it's up to you. I would encourage you to get an accountability partner. That's the only thing that's worked for me in my life. But, um, you know, yeah, you gotta take action. That's the difference between mediocre producers and top producers, so they take action. Love it.

Appreciate you, Luke. Thanks for your time, dude. All of you watching, share it, like us, do all those things. Um, I'm gonna have a man— I would like Amanda to connect with someone on your team to find out some more marketing stuff, because I didn't know you did some of the stuff you do. Yep. And she's up there struggling how to implement some marketing shit, and I'm like, yeah, all right, let's— I don't know enough, so let me know who to connect with.

Just shoot me a text. We'd love to. Yeah, we'd love to help you guys out. Awesome, man. Appreciate you and appreciate everybody listening.

See you guys. Hey, thanks for watching the latest episode. I appreciate you. If you will do me a favor, certainly like this video channel, subscribe to it. And if you wouldn't mind, whatever podcast network you listen to these on, if you wouldn't mind going and leaving a review, that will help me greatly get the word out to more and more people. Appreciate you.