How To Make $100,000 Your FIRST YEAR In Insurance Sales ft. Christian Brindle | Ep72

No matter what happens to you, you're only gonna fail if you give up. It's a long-term game. Maybe you're making a couple hundred grand a year and you want to go to a million, or you want to go to a couple million, you want to scale up your operation. Don't underestimate what you can do in long periods of time. I wish somebody had told me that when I was, when I was newer.

Appreciate y'all getting on for another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Have Christian Brindle, who, if you— I don't know if my team is gonna put out the pre-this or not, cuz it was recording. We really know nothing about each other, but I've heard each other's names in the Integrity family together, is my understanding. And here to learn more, dude. I've read a little bit about you and it seems like you're killing it in the space and you wouldn't be involved if you weren't. So I would love to know a little bit more, dude, about what you got going on.

Yeah, well, John, it's a pleasure. You know, I've definitely heard your name mentioned a lot, you know, and from my understanding, you know, you guys are doing, you know, huge things and you're killing it. Um, it's, it's great to get to meet you, and I appreciate you having me on the show today. I'm excited.

Yeah, absolutely, man. Absolutely. I mean, the goal with this thing was always to like, I don't know, try to demystify how to make money in this space.

Yeah.

And you know, I hear a lot of— I do a lot of events, I speak, I've been around for over a decade doing this thing and started out slow on my end, so I kind of understand the not quick path too and doing it the wrong way path. But it's like, when you figure it out, man, I hear as you probably do— all the reasons why people can't win. And I'm like, the one thing I know is I know someone at every company rich. I know someone in every line of insurance rich. I know someone working every— leads, not leads, seminars, not seminar— any— I know people doing all of it making money. So I'm like, how do I bring that to the world with a voice different than just mine? So here we are.

Yeah, 100%. And, you know, I, I feel like It's always an interesting concept, right? When somebody says, 'cause you hit it right on the head, everybody has a reason when they're not successful other than the fact that there's something that they did wrong or something that they didn't do that they should have done. And there's always something to blame. You know, I'm in the wrong vehicle, I'm in the wrong line of insurance, the leads I have are no good, or my upline's no good. And not to say that there's ever like 100% not truths in those things. Maybe it's not the right fit for that person, but like, You know, the leads is my favorite one because if there's someone else crushing it with those leads and they're the same leads and you're not, they're doing something you're not.

But they got a bad batch, bro.

Right, right.

100%.

Right. Like, it's, it's not rocket science and people make it like, you know, they make it such a complicated thing. And so, yeah, it's, it's a, it's a whirlwind for sure. And I think when Anytime you see and encounter a lot of agents like you have and like I have, sure, you hear it all over the years.

I don't know, how do we weed through it? You have thousands of agents, right? Medicare space is a straight Medicare. You mess with anything else?

So Medicare is definitely our bread and butter. We do, we do ACA. I'd say our, our secondary product focuses that we sell alongside of Medicare is we sell ACA And we sell final expense.

Okay, cool.

But Medicare is definitely our bread and butter. That's what we're known for and that's what we're really, really good at.

How much of that did you grow up selling in the space?

You know, Medicare was probably all I sold for my first 6 years in the space, primarily. Like, I was, I was the definition of a specialist. And so, you know, I got extremely good at it and, you know, I got so good at it to where, you know, every single detail of how it worked, the product lines, the carriers, everything like that. I knew it backwards and forwards and everything like that. And so, um, it wasn't until probably the last 5 years or so that we started to bring those other product lines that, that related to what we were doing into the mix. But Medicare is definitely like our, our roots.

Okay, what do Medicare people do wrong, bro? I know life, I don't know Medicare at all. I just learned what AEP was last year and I still barely understand it, but I know what it means now.

Um, it's not my—

and I, I work with some people in that because there's obviously a lot of principles that are the same. Um, but from your perspective, what are, what are, what are the Medicare folks watching messing up, man?

Yeah, there's definitely things that cross over in terms of things they're doing wrong that you see in all lines, right? We kind of hit on it a little bit, right? Like making excuses, complaining about leads, all of those different types of things. But I think, uh, above all of that, or maybe not even above, but like Beyond those things, I think with Medicare specifically, that's intimately Medicare-focused that people make mistakes on, is I feel like they really, really overthink how much they actually have to know before they actually get out there and start selling. That's one of the things I see the most with Medicare agents, because you compare Medicare to something like final expense, it's a far more complicated product line to learn, right? You have You have, you know, networks for certain plans. You have election periods. You have, um, you know, a lot of rules, a lot of regulations. You have scope of appointments. You have all of these things. And there are a lot of regulations involved with Medicare, but I think agents find themselves going through their testing, their certifications, especially when they're new. And, and then, and then like there's some people in our space that all they do is they preach compliance, fear of compliance. You know, you, you— I hear a lot, you step over here and you may take one step out of line and you're going to get struck by lightning. That's how people feel after kind of hearing that type of messaging. And I feel like they, they think that they have to become just a super, super deep expert on every little integral part of Medicare before they can get out there and sell. And I just don't think that's, that's realistic for really anybody. I think Medicare is no different than anybody else to where you want to know what you're doing enough, but at the same time, you kind of do learn on the fly. You learn by doing, you learn by making mistakes in a way and getting punched in the face. You'll never make that mistake again. Right? Um, so I, I think that's something that's super unique with Medicare, like the agents, agents, it's common for them to be afraid of the compliance and feel like they need to know everything before they even get started. And, and I don't think you can know everything without having that real life in the trenches experience. And so they just never get there and they never, they never do anything.

Yeah, it's kind of like everything in life, you sort of gotta figure it out as you go.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. Me and you are figuring this bitch out along the way still. Yeah, I mean, it's like to get to that next level, like, we don't know how to do it yet either, right?

Right. Yeah, I mean, you know, You know, you know what got you to where you are, but you're still figuring out what you need to do to get to the next level of where you want to go. You don't know what you don't know. And so it's kind of like, you know, learning on the fly in a lot of ways. Um, the other thing I think Medicare agents do wrong is I think they overregulate themselves, as crazy as that sounds. There's a lot of regulation in Medicare, but I see agents misunderstanding rules and adding layers to rules that aren't there, that don't exist. I, I see that all the time.

What's a big one or two? I want to hear them. I hear about them and I'm in the life space, so I'm curious what's actually happening.

Yeah, so scope of appointments, let's use that as example. This is one that's fresh in my mind because I, I dealt with this a week ago. Last week I was on a training and, um, pretty seasoned agent, you know, um, is basically telling agents for— so for scope of appointments, let's talk about that for any life agents that don't know what scope of appointment is. Scope of appointment is a, a government-created document that has to be signed by the beneficiary, in most cases 48 hours before the appointment, and they have to specify what product lines they want to talk about. But what a lot of agents don't understand is it's a CMS document. It's overseen by CMS. It's regulated by CMS. CMS oversees certain products. So Medicare Advantage products and individual prescription drug plan products. They don't oversee health-related products like MedSupp. They don't oversee dental, vision, hearing plans, indemnity plans, ancillary products. The, the confusing thing about it is those products, dental, vision, hearing, hospital indemnity, MedSupp, all of those are mentioned on the scope as options for the person to mark down that they want to talk about it.

Got it.

But you don't have to compliantly get them to sign a scope for those products. But they're still agents. Like, I, I talked to an agent 6 months ago that's been doing this 10 years that has been thinking for 10 years they need to get a scope signed for MedSupp sales and for hospital indemnity sales when they didn't, when they didn't this whole time. Because, because those product lines are overseen by the state departments of insurance, the state governments, and they just did two separate set of rules. And, you know, I had an agent one time ask me, they're like, well, why Why are they on the scope then? I'm like, I don't have a good reason for you other than it's a confusing, um, government document that contradicts itself.

It's not that deep.

Yeah, you know, it's not—

someone in a Facebook group probably told him he was going to get in trouble if he didn't do it. For sure, for sure.

So like, imagine how much more of those products that agent could sell over 10 years if you weren't doing that.

Easy. Can you get in first with that one and then sell the Medicare when you get there, or is this— you still got to do that scope?

So the, the other thing with Medicare sales is permission to contact rules. So if you sell that product first, let's say you sell a dental plan first, yep, they're technically in your book of business, they're your client, so you don't need a permission to contact again to reach back out to them for anything.

So for anything, so once you have one, you're good. Medicare, even if it's final expense, or it has to be in that product list?

Got it. No, no, it can be final expense too, it just can't be on the same appointment as a Medicare Advantage plan or something like that. It can be separate appointments though. But, but for— if they were to come back and try to sell a Medicare Advantage plan, they'd still need the scope and everything like that. But they're your client already. There's an existing relationship. It's a little easier to be— to do, you know, you could call to schedule the appointment, get the scope done right there, and then do the appointment a couple of days later. But not as big of a deal because it's not a cold relationship as much. But yeah, I think, I think that's another big one, right? Like agents misunderstanding the rules and overregulating themselves and really kind of getting in their own way.

Yeah, I see people do that even in our space with like calling rules and dial rules and when you can call. And you mean they're way overthinking the stuff? And I'm like, totally. Yeah, craziness.

So you've been on—

how long you been in the space total from beginning?

Yes, so I started in 2014. Um, I was, I was 21, so I'm in year 11. I just, I just passed the 11-year mark for me in the space. And, um, yeah, so I'm 32 now and I've pretty much spent my entire adult life in the insurance space. I don't know anything else. But I know that, but I know what I know really well.

Family or just connection or shit luck, or how'd you get in?

So my, my, my dad was an agent, uh, for 25 years before I got in. And my dad was an early pioneer of Medicare sales in Utah where I live. I live in Utah. And, and so he was an individual agent, you know, sold a lot of business, built a nice, you know, little agency book of business. And so I came in as a downline of his And he kind of taught me the, the early, you know, kind of, you know, basics of the business and everything like that. And, um, I, I started my, my own agency and, um, I was a workhorse, man. So I put in a lot of work and, um, our agency grew exponentially. But by, by the time I was about 6 years in, we were, um, bringing in probably almost double the revenue his agency was. And then, and then about 3 years ago, we bought his agency out. We bought his agency so he could retire. But, but I, but I was introduced to it from my dad. Second generation, like a lot of people.

And then what's the deal with Integrity? How'd that play out? What's the—

yeah, so, so, you know, we, um, when, when I first came into the space and I was a downline of my dad's, I didn't understand anything about hierarchies or uplines or overrides or anything like that. At the time, I was just focused on selling. My dad had his, his contracts and mine by extension split across a bunch of different FMOs. At that point in time, we formed a pretty good relationship. And, you know, it came to the point where since we were so much bigger than his, after a period of time, you know, we ended up switching places. We qualified for levels he couldn't. And so we moved above him. He moved below us. And then before we acquired his agency, But we formed a pretty good relationship with the folks over at Agent Pipeline. Shout out to Agent Pipeline. And so that's kind of what opened the door with that Integrity relationship with us. And then, you know, before long, we, we, we, we put a majority of our contracts over with them. Um, and that kind of, you know, opened the door for us to be able to, um, have that Integrity, uh, relationship and that Integrity conversation.

That's cool. Neat. It was a neat experience. Different.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Weird people over there. The things you learn along the way, it's like, oh yeah, it's cool.

Yeah, it's, it's crazy. It's crazy because, you know, when you first start as an agent, you're never— you're not thinking about any of those things that happen up at the top. You know, you're just completely unaware of it all. Um, and then as you go, you know, and those, those doors start to open, you're like, oh wow, there's a whole layer to this. That I didn't even understand and probably still don't fully understand, um, that, that I'm kind of learning. And so, yeah, yeah, it's, um, but yeah, yeah, you know, great folks at Integrity. We love the partnership.

Yeah, it's been fun. How well do you know the guys at like AAMC? The Whites? Not Mike White, Hunter White? Not well?

Not super well. I feel like I met a couple of those guys, um, at, at a partner event a couple years ago in Dallas, but they go way back with all your guys and all the Agent Pipeline guys.

I just Yeah, live right near Hunter, Mike's son. Oh yeah, each other. I didn't know if y'all were buddies or not. He's your age?

Not, not, we don't know each other super well, but, um, I've, I've heard, I've heard of him. I've heard good things.

Ah dude, he's like the godfather of Medicare. Yeah, I understand. Like everything I hear, like he knew everyone a million years ago. Super nice family too.

Yeah, so, and they've, they've been super, you know, pioneer. They've been really big pioneers in new product developments with carriers and all kinds of things like that. They've done so many great things. I mean, they're, they're a leg— they're a legacy agency, your company, really, at this point.

Yeah, we— I ran into him at a country club local. Just, we both had Integrity gear on coincidentally, and I'd see Integrity logo at the school, and we're like, what the heck? And one day it kind of connected us. So it was pretty neat. Yeah, let's dig it, dig it. 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 am 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 of the training videos will be directly on my YouTube channel that's available to members only. Super easy to find. So join now if you're interested, click below. See you in there. Love it. How, um, so how many agents today are there in your entire organization selling? Yeah, cumulative, like what's it look like today, right? 10 years in, basically 11 years.

Yeah, so right now we, we kind of focused on the direct-to-consumer market, um, and for the first, for the first 6 or 7 years. So we, we built our own book of business. We have a multi-thousand client book of business today. And but so we didn't actually start working with agents until about maybe late 2020, early 2021. Today we have 600 contracted agents across the country. That's dope. But we're taking on more every year than we did before as we built infrastructure and, you know, ability to service more agents and everything. You know all about that. I know. But yeah, but yeah, we're hopeful that this time next year we can cross that 1,000 agent mark. And I think we're on a good pace to be able to do that. But yeah, that's, that's kind of in the ballpark of where we're at.

Sick.

We were kind of an interesting outfit though, because, you know, so we have, we have our internal agency, we have our— I call it a baby FMO side of our business. But we also own a lead company called Lead Heroes now. We did a merger about a year ago with Glenn Shelton's company, which he founded Lead Heroes. Yeah, he—

I don't know him well, but I know the name.

Yeah, great big beard, glasses, can't forget him. Can't believe someone—

I know it.

Yeah, so we— but we did a merger January of 2024 with his company, and so we're kind of, in a way, it's probably not the best terminology, but we're kind of in a way an insurance conglomerate these days because, you know, we're, we're merged with his company, which, you know, is, um, really helped us out in terms of lead distribution for our downline agents and for our internal agency and everything like that. Um, they also have a a very fast-growing virtual assistant platform for insurance agents. And, um, yeah, so we do— we, we, we kind of— we do a lot of different things, but it's at the forefront of it is definitely the, the insurance agency.

Yeah, trying to provide tools to help people win.

Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

How's, um, what's the money game for a Medicare agent, right? Like, I get a final expense guy, I can go like, all right, here's how you do it, here's how many you sell, here's what you make, you hire people to spread. I can I can give the vision. Yeah. You know, all I know is the cash flow is different in our games, especially early.

Absolutely.

I would love for you to kind of explain to, to a dummy what the, what the path is to making like real money as in your space.

Yeah. So there have been a handful of guys that have come in and they've been able to make six figures in their first year. It is extremely few and far between though, just because of the way that Medicare sales works. So Medicare sales is very heavily based off of the renewals of the sale. So final expense, a lot of times you'll have a lot higher of a, of a commission in your first year and not as much, if any, in the second year, right?

Like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So Medicare is more of, um, it's a smaller commission amount oftentimes. But it is the same commission amount long term. So it's more revenue. Yes, yes. It's based, it's based on, it's based on the renewal. So every January, the way that Medicare sales works is they pay an advance commission for that year that you sold the policy in. Um, sometimes it's prorated, sometimes it's not. It depends on the, the aspects of the plan and the situation. Um, but in January of the following year they start paying the renewal commission, which is a set amount, but they start paying it monthly.

Ah.

And, and so every single January, let's say a Medicare agent sold 200 applications in their first year and they were effective in that first year, that calendar year. And let's say they kept them all, they retained them all. Um, in January they would see a bump in those renewals. They would see probably a $4,000 or $5,000 a month renewal check start coming in. Every single month. And so for most agents that really make it, it's a long-term game. It's often referred to as a 3 to 5 year game to where every January you see that bump. Now, obviously, right, you want, you want to— if I don't feel like it has to take 5 years, you know, I think if someone comes in and they are really just pounding the pavement and they're really working hard and they're having a lot of contacts, you know, they're doing the sales game in a real way. Um, I think it can take a couple of years and you can see somebody make a six-figure income. Um, but it's based on that compounding growing effect of the renewals. Yeah.

So the math, if I did it right, real quick, a couple hundred bucks a client a month, somewhere in that range. Am I in the ballpark? Um, did I forget to carry a zero?

So it's, it's, it's a— the, the commission nowadays is roughly about Uh, street-level commissions is usually about $25, maybe a little bit over, um, a month per member on the renewal.

So I added an extra zero. Makes sense. I was trying to do the math from 2 to 4, and I'm like, is it $200 or $20?

Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

Cool, cool. So that's a year then, a couple hundred bucks a year per client is kind of what it adds up to in a sense.

Yeah, probably $300 to $400 depending on the year. They just, they just came out with the 2026 commissions. It's nice bump, 11% increase next year on Medicare Advantage plans.

So you get the little increase plus you get each year, so they're piling on top of each other with some carriers.

With some carriers, some carriers will implement the increase on old commissions, others will base, base it off of the, the, the contract of that policy year. So it varies by carrier. And then Med Supps, a little bit more like final expense to where it pays the percentage of the premium. So, but instead of being, you know, 125, 130, 140% contracts, you're at 20 to 25%. Not taking into consideration like people in call centers, it's kind of a different game, but like individual field agents that are selling on their own pen, the best ones that I've seen are probably doing 500 to 1,000 a year.

Yeah. Yeah. That's nice. I see people speaking at events, so they're like, he did 582 of them in whatever period of time. And yeah. Yeah. That's neat. It's a, it's a cool game, which is the neat thing to see integrity come together and touch all of them, and then it's like, it's just feeding this craziness that we've become. That's why.

Yep, absolutely. Health, life, wealth, all of it. They're, they're doing a really good job.

So you have a podcast and a couple books. I've written one book, but you've written multiple. How many you got?

I forget at this point. Let me, let me, let me think about it.

Really?

So I wrote this— I, I wrote my first book in 2015, and it was a, it was a direct-to-consumer book. It was actually a Medicare educational book. We kind of used it as a lead magnet at that point in time, um, early before lead magnets were cool. Um, it was like your first year in?

Yeah, basically.

Yeah, I was, I was, I was probably a year and year and a half in, something like that. Um, And I did some research about, you know, how simple it was really to self-publish a book on Amazon. Back then it wasn't even Kindle, it was a platform called CreateSpace. Really? That turned into Kindle publishing. And so I wrote a couple books that were direct-to-consumer books, Medicare education books, things like that. And then I've written 2 books for agents. So I wrote a book called "How to Be a 6-Figure Medicare Agent." So I started a Facebook group in 2020, um, that has really exploded. We just passed 10,000 members, um, and it's, it's, it's extremely organic. There's probably 30 to 50 posts every day. It's, it's wild. I can't keep up with it at this point. But, um, it was originally called Six Figure Medicare Agent, the Facebook group, and we've rebranded it now to Seven Figure Medicare Agent. Just sounds better, um, actually. Yeah, um, And, and so, but I wrote a book called How to Be a Six-Figure Medicare Agent in 2022, I want to say 2022. Um, and then I wrote another book called Superstar: What Separates the Top-Producing Insurance Agents from the Mediocre Ones. Um, so, so I've written 2 books for consumers and 2 for agents, so 4 in total.

Good for you, dude.

Thank you.

I've done 1, and the thought of doing 2 is like, it's a lot of work. It is a lot of work, dude.

Who knew?

Like, I put this sucker out. I'll send you a copy. We send it out.

Please.

Yeah, I'll get it to you. We— I did it last year. It took a while. It took me like almost 2 years to do it, to write it and get it done and edited. And oh my God, but I love it. It's neat what it does, you know, kind of where it's the path it takes, and it's kind of wild.

Yeah. Um, yeah, I have a— I have another one that, um, will probably be ready to put out in a month or two. Um, it's, it's called— we're still playing around with the title, but right now it's, it's called, um, The, The Seven Figure Insurance Agency Blueprint. We're working on that. Um, but I've been working on that book for probably a year and a half on and off. I'll come back to it. I'll, I'll go a couple months and not touch it, and then I'll come back to it, that kind of thing. So, but we're, we're on the five-yard line with that book, so that'll be the third book for agents.

I gotta get on it, bro.

How do you use it as a tool, like, in your business?

I'm sure it's not just for fun at this point. No, you know, I'm learning this marketing thing and I'm like, all right, I'm figuring some stuff out, but I would love to hear from— shit, you're on your fifth one. Yeah, I'd love to know what you're— what, what I could do better.

Well, I, I'll, I'll share kind of some of the things that I've done, but I do feel like— so my, my business partner Glenn Shelton, he wrote a book I want to say 2018, something like that. He wrote his pretty early for agents. He's done a better job at using his book as a lead magnet than I probably have. He's done really well with it. He's, you know, he embraced, you know, kind of giving the books away. And, you know, we hold a conference every year. He— we always give away a couple hundred copies of his book every single year. And then early on, he did it as like a we ran an ad for it and did a free downloadable copy. I want to say he did that a couple of years ago, I think before our merger. And that was a way to, you know, get a lot of good leads, lead flow from that. But for me—

Recruits, I assume. Yeah. For him or for people buying— oh, I guess they were buying leads on his end. Yeah.

Yeah.

It makes sense.

At the time for him, it would have been to buy leads and, you know, to be in the funnel for that. But for me, the book, I've always looked at the book as a brand builder, right? It's just like another piece of content that's floating out there into the ecosystem that someone can stumble across and kind of get introduced to me and what I do and my company and everything like that, um, you know, the, the— you'll, you'll take the royalties that come in, but it's, it's nothing, you know, it's chicken shit.

Um, I concur. Yeah, I think we lose money on it when we ship it out and add the, all the extra goodies and this bracelet, all the stuff. Like, totally, it's, it's ad money for me, for sure.

Yeah, so, so it to me, it's, to me, it's more of a brand builder move than anything. And, you know, we've, we've given away a lot of copies of my book as well. Like the last one I wrote, Superstar, it probably only sold— the first book I wrote for agents sold, I want to say, over 1,000 copies. But Superstar didn't sell as well. Superstar sold about 600 copies, something like that, I want to say. But we gave away a ton of copies of that book. And I— and it's cool because I'll go to events all the time. Like I went to— and I just got back from an event last night, actually, in California. And I had an agent come up to me and tell me that we sent them a free copy of Superstar and they read it and it turned around their business. And I'm like, that's the coolest thing. I love to hear that.

That's my favorite. Yeah.

But this was a guy that the impression I got just based on that short, brief visit with him was he's not the type of guy that's going to watch my videos. He's not the type of guy that's going to get exposed to me. He's a, he's a guy that he's a, he's that he's a reader. He's a bookworm. So by me putting the book out there, it's just another way for people to get introduced to me and kind of get access to my, my material. That's kind of the— that's really the way that I look at it more than anything else.

Yeah, I can look at it and think shit, I might be getting that by mistake because sometimes people hear me speak or watch my content, it's a little abrupt. But then when they can read the whole story and understand the reasoning, it's like I— it's like I open up a little soft spot in their heart for me or something, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of neat. I looked at it like that.

And I think that's a great point too because, you know, you can go into so much more depth.

Yeah.

Of your story and your experiences in a book than you can speaking on a stage. Even if you're a keynote, even if you're speaking for an hour, like, there's only so much time you have. And so yeah, you can— you just have that time to explore. So even if somebody does consume your content in another way, they can get a different layer out of a book, I guess.

Yeah, it's no— they know more about me, that's for sure. Yeah, when you share it. That's a good point. I love it. Love it. Tell me about your podcast, dude. Everything Medicare, huh?

Yeah, so there's, there's two podcasts that we do. Um, so the Everything Medicare podcast we started in 2018. We're not doing that one as frequently as we were, but still put out a new episode maybe once a month, something like that. At one point we were doing— I was doing 3 episodes a week, like we were pounding it. And that is a direct-to-consumer podcast. It's— it was designed to be a lead generation tactic. And still to this day, you know, it depends on the day. Sometimes I'll say that and people will, you know, fact-check me and Google it and it'll be like the second or third or something. But It consistently comes up as the number one Medicare podcast on the internet today. Still, it's, it's gotten over a million downloads. It's, it just has gotten a ton of traffic and it's become a big, big, big lead source for us over the years. You know, people reaching out to us. We're licensed in 46 states so we can help someone almost anywhere. And so it's super organic in that way. But we've been doing it for 7 years, you know, so that's, that was one of the early things we did in terms of content creation.

When I first started doing it, I like that idea.

Yeah, lead generation tactic. But when I first started doing it, I did not know what I was doing. It was the first year of doing it. I was only recording the audio. I wasn't doing it on video. I didn't know how to do it on video. So, you know, but that speaks to kind of what we were talking about at the beginning. To me, when I think about it is, you know, it wasn't great quality of content in terms of the production value. The information was good. But I just started doing it and figured it out on the way. I built the plane on the way down in a way. And the podcast did very well. And back then there wasn't many people doing Medicare podcasts. There might have been 1 or 2 others. Now there's a bunch of them because they've seen the success that mine's had, a couple of others. But, you know, it was the right time for that type of of thing. Now we do— now we're doing more often though, we do an agent-facing podcast. Glenn and I do it together, uh, called 7 Figures or Bust Podcast. And we, we really started taking that very seriously this year. So we do it 4 times a week. Um, yeah, we do it live every day, Monday through Thursday, to start the day. We do it in the morning to start the day. We do an hour, it's live, and then we put up the recording on audio platforms and YouTube and everything like that. We'd love to have you on, John. We'd love to have you on as a guest sometime.

Yeah, you tell me when, or send me a link or whatever, I'll get on.

Yeah, awesome.

I'm all about it. So is it live with a new guest agent every day, or sometimes it's just y'all? Or if you're an insurance agent and you feel like you're stuck, you've hit a wall, you're trying to figure out sales strategies, the scripts to use, how to get like off the ground and get to that top of the leaderboard type status, have a course that I've put out, super affordable. I'm getting a ton of great feedback from people every day on the strategies they've learned and been able to implement, from goal setting to sales techniques to calendar scheduling, everything you would need to get your business off the ground and get running quickly. JWCourse.com, click the link below and get in there today.

Probably the majority of the time it's just the two of us. Breaking down different topics, but we try to have a guest on pretty, pretty consistently. Yeah, on a pretty regular basis. So what we have— we've had a lot of guests on, and, um, but yeah, we, we pump out the episodes, and it's made it easy this year because there's been a lot of Medicare news and everything like that. That's made it easy topic-wise to have something.

How many episodes y'all on now? I'm gonna see how sad mine is compared to yours.

Let me look.

Ballpark. Yeah, ballpark. I don't care, you gotta be—

I'm thinking, well, no, probably not for that one because we just started this year. Yeah, we just started doing it this year, and I did a few episodes before that. We're at probably 130, um, see if on that podcast.

I'm at 68 right now-ish.

That's a good number.

It's not bad. I'll take some advice though. How do I, how do I make this bitch bigger? Because there is a bigger one. And I like being in first, not wherever place I'm in now, cuz it's definitely not first or second.

Absolutely. No, I think for, so for me, and, and I'm, I'm not, you know, there's, there's people out there that are just crushing the content game. I, I think, I think we do a really good job at it, but there's people like Cody, you know, that is doing fantastic. I, for me, what I, what, what's, what's come down to me being successful at it is volume and consistency.

So I like that game.

I think if, you know, if I can consistently put, put out— for me, for me, the question always came down to how much can I put out in a week without the quality getting reduced? That was the question that I had to ask myself, because there's a point I feel like where you can do so much content that you're just, you're just pushing some, you're just pushing out garbage. You have nothing more to say. So to me, it became a game of like, how much can I put out without the quality being reduced as a result? And then whatever that number was, I wanted to try to prioritize it. So, you know, in the early years of me doing content, I would, I would try to find hacks to make it fit into my schedule because I'm extremely busy. You're extremely busy. It's hard to find the time. And, you know, for a long time, I would, I would work half a day on a Saturday and I'd record 2 weeks worth of videos or something like that.

Yeah.

And we'd have them ready to go. And I had my production team get them all ready to go and scheduled throughout the week and the next week and things like that. So for me, that's, that's really the name of the game is just the consistency and the volume. I think that that's really what—

You're live now every day. Every day. That's a different game, bro. Yeah, that's a different game. Kudos to you, man. I'm gonna have to watch you. I'm gonna learn some stuff. I'll, I'll tune into this one and and see what I can learn from it.

It's fun. It's fun. We talk— like, we talk about good stuff, but like, we keep— we do keep it relatively light at the same time. So I think it's, it's, it's not like— sometimes you can watch some of these insurance training podcasts. I, I watch, I watch all kinds of them. Yeah, but like, it's just a little dry. You gotta find a way to make it cool. Yeah, yeah, it's just like reading, reading a manual or something like that, you know.

It's brutal. It's brutal. I love it. Crazy. I assume it's been— now that's got to be a big driver to business for you, the marketing side. I mean, I've, I've only really started doing marketing heavy— I wouldn't even say heavy at all— maybe 4 or 5 years ago. And I'd say heavy 2 years, like really getting into like, oh, this, this stuff matters.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Like It— when I— when we— when I think about our FMO side of the business, it wasn't until recently, like in the last 6 months, that we've done any paid marketing for our FMO side of the business. It all has been organic. And so, you know, we— when, when I started the Facebook group, we also started a YouTube channel. So I put out— I put out 1,500 videos, YouTube videos on that channel. We're almost at 8,000 subscribers. Um, so like the content game for me has been a huge driving force. It's been explosive growth for us, um, over the years. And so yeah, it's, it's huge. It's huge. It's, it's great for branding. It's, it's, it's— you just can't put a dollar amount on it. I feel like it's, it's so much more powerful. And I think paid marketing is terrific and we do a lot of it and I think it's important, but It's hard to compare too many things with that organic traffic when you're able to get it. It's very powerful. I love it.

Sick. Give them something like, I don't know, a question I didn't ask you that I should give. Give the answer to something I should have asked you that I wasn't smart enough to know.

I love that question. I think that's a great one. Um, Here's, here's a fun one that some— it's only on my mind because somebody asked it to me pretty recently and I liked it. I thought it was very insightful. How, how and when do you know that an agent isn't going to make it and you're wasting your time on that agent? And I was asked this by a recruiter, actually, a guy that that's been a big-time recruiter and he had some thoughts on it as well that I thought were pretty insightful. I took, I took a couple of nuggets from him, but I think my answer to that, for those of you that are working with agents, is I think there's always two parties involved. There's you as the mentor, the, you know, the upline, everything like that. And then there's them. And I think anytime you find a situation where you're doing their part and they're not, or vice versa, because it happens both ways.

I've never heard it worded that way. That's for sure. I like that one.

I think like, okay, as an example, right? Like if let's say not necessarily you or me or anything like that, but let's use me.

I can handle it.

An FMO, an FMO, an upline, something like that. They're not providing training, they're not providing mentorship, they're not doing the things that they're supposed to be doing. The agent's lost. Yeah, there's something you can point to and say they didn't— they're not getting the guidance right. They're trying, but it's going to take them longer. Maybe they're still— they'll still probably make it because of their own efforts, but it's going to take them longer. Yeah, we're on the flip side. If you're going above and beyond, like I was— look, I was looking at like a 50/50, like you come 50%, they come 50%. You never want to come 70, and they shouldn't need to come 70 in terms of what's the responsibility that they have to do. They have to, they have to take action on what they're learning and what you're teaching, but you have to teach. And so that was kind of my answer to that question is, you know, you have this 50/50 kind of agreement and any time one side is going farther having to go farther than the other, that's when it's probably not a good fit. It's probably when it's not a good, a good sign long term. And there's a lot of agents like that.

Well said.

For them to be successful, someone needs to drag them literally like they're limp.

Yeah, to the finish line.

And that, and that's, that's typically a good sign that they're probably not, they're not it.

I picture my kids playing tug of war at their like, yeah, annual summer party. It's like that little game where it's You get kind of meet in the middle there. Yeah, sick. I like the way that was explained. It was clean. Love it.

Thank you.

Cool. Well, I appreciate your time, dude. Anything you want to wrap up with, share with them, info you want to pass to them, whatever you want. Take last couple minutes, end it however you'd like, man. Just whatever message you can give to people.

Yeah, well, thank— well, thanks so much, John. Thank you for the opportunity. It, um, it was a lot of fun. I enjoyed the conversation. It's fun to kind of get to know you a little bit, and we'd love to have you on the show. You know, so I'll, I'll have Bernadette reach out and we can kind of schedule that. But yeah, I would say, you know, for anybody that's watching, I know you probably have a whole mixture of people in your audience. I'm sure you have a mixture of people that are already pretty established. You probably have a mixture of people that are newer, you know, and just kind of getting started. My message would be, I think it might sound cliché and I know it's been said plenty of times, but Oftentimes the things that are cliché are cliché because they're said so much because they're good information.

Yeah.

You, no matter what happens to you, right, you find yourself in a situation where you're with a bad upline, you find yourself in a bad spot, whatever the case might be, you're only going to fail if you give up and if you quit. It's a long-term game. Like, I think about myself as a new agent when I first came in. I never even fathomed my company being where it is today. And that's in a decade, right? It's amazing what you can accomplish if you play the long game, that longevity game. And I think, you know, you're in the right vehicle even if you're already doing well. If you're making— maybe you're making a couple hundred grand a year and you want to go to a million or you want to go to a couple million, you want to scale up your operation. Don't underestimate what you can do in long periods of time. I wish somebody had told me that when I was, when I was newer. And I think that's— it's so easy to think about the here and the now and what's in front of your face. Sure. Even a year from now, it's amazing. If you look back on everything that's happened in the last year, it's like, wow, a lot has changed. I've come a long way. So I think play that game and don't give up, don't throw in the towel, and good things are bound to happen for you.

I love it. I love it, dude. It's good advice. I can, I can say I still struggle with that some days where I think on Tuesday it's not happening fast enough. Yes, you know what I mean? Me too, me too.

It's almost like I'm talking to myself sometimes because I, I do feel it happens to me. It happens to the best of us for sure.

Just being aware of it, you know what I mean, and not letting it slow you down. So it's, it's, it's, it's a fun journey, and, uh, it's cool that it's let us cross paths, dude. I appreciate your time and appreciate your patience at the beginning, of course. And if I can help you or your team or your company in any way, please hit me up. Happy to be here and help.

Thank you, John. I appreciate it, dude.

See you. All right, guys, if you need anything, hit me up. Thank you, sir.