Episode 110: WHY This Agent’s Revenue and Time Off is TRIPLE the National Average

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or are well on your way to the success you desire, with the right people, processes and promotions in.

Place, you will be unstoppable. And now I'd like to introduce your host, Mike Stromso. Hey, friends, this is Mike Stromseau bringing the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am live with the unstoppable Mr. Russ Castle. I am pumped and I am excited. Russ was one of the early interviewees on the podcast way back when we started this journey. But here we are, over 100 podcasts later, and what I have learned about Russ recently led me to know that all of you must hear this story and the update on this story. Russ, welcome to the podcast again, sir.

Thank you very much, Mike. Honored to be here.

Yeah, no, no. Grateful to have you here. So.

Niches to riches is ultimately what it's all about. And we're going to pull out of you what you've learned in your journey of over a couple decades and how people can really execute those three words, niches to riches. But before we go there, Russ, just for everybody who may not know the detail or hasn't heard of you, and believe it or not, Russ, it may come a shock to you. There's people out there who don't know who you are, and that shocks me too. Give us a little detail, who are you, where you're from, etc.

Well, part of my story is not I always want to not be known. So it's part of that. It's good. Third generation agent. Grandfather started in the 40s, dad started in the 60s, I started in the late 80s. So it's been over 30 years in the industry. It's insurance by Castle, the sign behind me. We're in Redwood City, California, the heart of Silicon Valley and small office. Excuse me, I only have three employees, even though, you know, our revenues and our numbers are good. About 19 years ago, I went from being a generalist. Like most agents, I'd always dabbled in niches, but really started getting into our biggest niche now being habitational. And we've come full circle to. All we do now from a marketing standpoint is market to those niches, excuse me, just to the habitational niche sub niching. So we have other, you know, it focuses within habitational, but all we market to is landlords all over California, not just in our backyard. And then we round from that, our personal lines. So we do about 20, 25% of the accounts we write commercially, we also write the personal. So that's in a nutshell where we are.

Congratulations. And let's go back even before habitational because I know you were dabbling in a niche before Habitational which really didn't develop possibly the way you wanted to develop. What was that?

Yeah, the industry I came into before I joined my father's firm was fire sprinkler and fire extinguisher contractors. So that made total sense for me to start going after because they are in California, they're an ENS market, but also nobody really was targeting them. You know, a lot of them were written under like plumbers because they're fire sprinkler contractors. And we did a decent job. We actually got up to 60% of the market, which was huge. But it was a 10% commission, very service happy with certificates, etc. So it wasn't as profitable as I wanted. So I started looking for other avenues that I could do to be able to be as profitable as possible.

So you learned, you learned by starting a niche and you learned a lot about niche marketing in that niche and you learned what not to do.

Correct.

Which kind of led you to what you do now. And not only do you do now, you, in my observation and collaborating with agents all over North America and sometimes beyond, do better than anybody else. So what gave you the idea of going into pursuing Habitational?

I basically looked at, we affectionately referred to it as our acre of diamonds. You know, I had a number of clients that were landlords. One in particular, he was the CFO for our largest client at the time, which is a large law firm we still have on the books. But he started buying apartment buildings and we were his one stop shop for everything and started looking at that and saying, hey, maybe we can do more of it. I have a passion for it now. I am a landlord as well. So it was something I had an affinity for and there was a market that was easy to get to and found the right carriers to write with. So the rest is history, as they said.

Fantastic. So you identified that opportunity within your own existing book of business?

Yes.

Aha.

I tell people all the time when they're talking about niches and I'm always willing to share. I won't give anybody in California my deep dark secrets in Habitational. But it's very easily transferable doing niches from one business to the next. And so because of it just looked and said, hey, what do I have an affinity for? What do I like? My dad liked doing law Firms, for example. That's how we got this biggest client. I don't particularly want to write a lot of law firms, so I was looking at other areas and that's how we came apart across the habitation.

Yeah. And you know, Mr. Jesse Parenti as well, who is back on podcast about 105, 106, which we strongly recommend. Go listen to that as well. Who's niche driven. He too, you know, started one niche. Understand, understand, understand now understands how to build a niche play and moved it over to another niche and is dominating that nationally. So he's got a platform that you don't like. You have your business model which works well for you. So that's really the mentality. Go ahead, Russ.

No, I was just going to say Jesse and I collaborate a lot in, you know, just because I do habitational and he does restaurants or pizzerias and now cannabis. There are a number of principles that are very universal from one niche to the other. And we jokingly had this actually at one of our platinum meetings with you. You've heard athletes talk about the 10,000 hour rule, and I think that's in anything that you become successful in, you got to put in the time and it does. You know, I had success in my niche, I wouldn't say day one, but fairly early and have continued to build on that. But that 10,000 rule is kind of the tipping point of when you really start to see all that work, the blood, sweat, tears for all that time really paying off. So that's a good thing to know going into it. Yeah, it's great to have success early, but staying the course.

Yeah, the only time that success comes before it works in the dictionary.

Right. Well, that and it's a philosophy and you can clean this up for me, it's the consistency, you know, doing what you promised you would do at that point and keeping doing it long after that moment or that feeling left. You know, one of my, I'll say, personal gifts without trying to be egotistical, is I like to have a system and I like to continually follow through on it. Kind of drives my wife nuts sometimes because I am so predictable. But it's, you know, have that plan, keep following up on it and keep going. You know, clients, prospects of mine will call all the time and say I do a ton of direct mail in my niche and they'll say, I've been getting your fill in the blank junk mail, postcard, trifold, whatever it might be for years. I don't care. They called me. That's All I'm trying to get it to do, but it's being consistent. Not do one mailing for example, and then stop because you didn't get a good enough response. It's having that momentum over all that time. When you do direct mail, you don't necessarily always hit the right time for that prospect, you know, and so that having it come repeated over and over, that's always key.

Yeah, let's get back to the beginning and. Which will lead into why you do direct mail. But in addition to that, putting systems in. So you developed a system even to help your wife in those particular situations. And you have the shirt, right? And it's a two word system. Yep.

Got goals.

Actually, it's a funny quick story. Both of my boys are in their 20s and that was my Christmas present from them last year. It's a shirt with the company logo on the front and the back is the Got Milk campaign. But it's got goals and they know me well. So it's all good.

Yeah. And then so for your wife it's yes, dear, Correct.

Oh, that's the other one.

Yes, I saw your shirt on that. So anyway, all right, so let's go back. Let's go back to the beginning. You identified habitational as the niche that you were going to pursue and you had an idea, right. And you took action because you're action oriented. Remember a decision and action. A decision and action. You took action. After that decision you went out and started taking digital pictures. And I remember the beginning of that story. It's like that's a great flipping idea. Tell us more about that.

Well, most ideas, at least most of my ideas have been, I'll use the term borrowed, stolen, you know, what have you. My father actually came up with the idea once I started talking about the best way to market to these landlords of how do you get, how do you wow them, how do you get their attention? And digital cameras were out a lot different now. This was 19 years ago. And so what I did was I took Thomas Guides in my city. I had a list, I bought a list that's a whole different topic but. And I went out and was looking just at apartments in my hometown of Redwood City or the county, actually San Mateo. And I spent every Friday driving and shooting, driving and shooting. And then at the end of the day I go home and rename that file the address. So I knew which building it was. Premise was that we sent out. It was very labor intensive back then. We've tweaked it because now we do statewide. We can't do that. It's too labor intensive. But we would send a flyer an 8 1/2 by 11. Mike Stromcel owns a 10 unit of building on 123 Main street in Red City. That picture of that building would be there at. And then we would do a whole workup on what we thought the estimate of the proposal was so that it got your attention because it's your building. And here's what we would be covering in price. And it got the phone to ring off the hook. Within three months I went from my county to statewide just because of that one little thing that we later tweaked and we don't do those pictures anymore. So just, you know, it's test, test, test is probably the root of it all.

Absolutely. And I wasn't aware that that was Jack Castle's idea. I may or may not give him the credit when I see him next. But anyway, that's another story. So that one idea with massive action has launched this incredible dominating niche. And to back something you said a couple of minutes ago, I would also suggest that you don't want to give your secrets out to anybody and the state as an example. But here's the other thing, Russ, and take this. I know you're a very humble guy. You're not full of ego and all that kind of stuff. Kudos to you. But nobody knows what you know about the habitational industry with relation to insurance. And we'll get to that in a few minutes. So you know, they can't play with you because of all you become in that realm. Great job, man. So what was your thought process in just going statewide?

My license is statewide. So I think a couple of things. I'll just pivot here and say I learned years ago and I'll date myself. Going back to the yellow page ads. When somebody starts a business back in yellow pages or let's even now and you want to do an ad, whatever it is, most of those salespeople will come in and say, well here's what your peers are doing in that industry. Just copy that. Well, my thought process that I learned a long time ago is I go 180 degrees opposite. If everybody's going to the right, I.

Go to the left.

So where most agents and it's not that I'm right and they're wrong, it's just two philosophies. Most agencies will be a generalist and write everything. You Mike, you have your niches, but you will write everything. Our agency, when I started Taking over more and more from my dad into today. If you were to call our agency today and you own X business, pick an industry, we're not going to quote it, we're going to tell you somebody, either an independent, a direct writer or somewhere we think we might be able to refer you to. But we're not going to take that time to do all that extra work because we've got our systems down on landlords and that's what we want to talk about. That's who we want to do. We've got it scripted, we've got it, you know, we're very efficient. So that's kind of where we went. And that's been an evolution over the 19 years.

Well, and another thing that happened as you started to grow the niche and explode the niche, if you will, two things happen, actually. One, the carriers started to take notice that, oh my gosh, how are you writing all of this business so fast? Let's get back to that in just a minute. But what allowed you to write that business so fast and so efficiently? You built your own rating sheet, Right, I remember that, yep.

Yeah, Back then it was before. I mean, now it's all done on the website, but it was, you know, 8, 10 different multiple factors and it's just a mathematical formula. So while I was talking to the client on the phone or the prospect on the phone, I could get those answers and give them in real time. I mean, now it's become more and more people want their responses back, if not instantly, within a couple of days. This goes back 19 years when you usually would talk to a prospect and come back maybe a month later. So to do that, it was cutting edge. And a good, good tip I was told years ago that I totally believe in is when the prospect is talking to you, that's when it's of interest to them. So the sooner you can close the deal or at least get them for buy in, the better. Rather than saying, oh, thank you for spending however long it is on the phone or face to face or whatever. Now let me go do my work and I'll come back later. If you can get them interested and get them hooked up early, you just close that much more.

You identified the niche, you decided to go statewide, you became cutting edge because you developed your own rating system to close the majority of them on the phone if they were a good fit. The carriers took hold of this and said, oh my gosh, what are you doing? What kind of leverage did that give you in dealing with your top carrier as an Example?

Oh huge. Our little agency. So I said earlier there's only three employees. My habitational niche is one person that does the service, I do the sales and we're 10% of the largest carrier statewide. So I say that again, not to be gloating, but it's just efficiencies.

And so that allowed you to start some new specific sub niches within the habitational niche which you were in the forefront of developing. How did that work out? And so let's combine that with your knowledge and expertise in lists. And you told me recently that you just purchased another brand new list and you spend and excuse me, invest by the way, it's a mindset, you invest a lot of money in lists. Tell us all about that.

Well, the first thing is in doing the lists, to me any niche to Jesse will talk about other people that are niche players. Probably 80% or more of the success is in the list and having the right information example, everybody knows that's listening on the call. Pretty much the guidelines of habitational is the property information. Well, the list I buy isn't just a generic list of an owner. I buy it from a real estate vendor list, list vendor. And years ago my sub niche was owners that own multiple locations. And that developed from me knowing the manual, probably knowing it better than most of the underwriters just because that's all I do. The underwriters do all commercial, not just commercial, have residential. And so I came up with my own sub niche, trademarked it, et cetera, so that it's out there. The people call and say it's public information and enough people know it now it's a five door more list. If you own five locations or more, I've got a unique program. But by getting that list, that very first list I bought had 2,500 prospects in it. The next time it went to almost 10 grand. The third time it went to 60,000. That list cost me $70,000. Now I say that again, I'm not trying to brag, but I had invested enough in the niche and had enough of a.

Market share that I could do that. And no one else is doing does things coverage wise, simplicity of one policy, etc. That no one else does. And you got to realize you've got an owner that has a portfolio of let's say 10 houses. Everyone else, they're getting 10 separate policies and depending on the frequency, they're getting mail all the time. They don't know what's going on. So while I'm cutting edge on the Niche, I'm cutting edge on helping them eliminate their frustrations. You know, coverage premium are all important, but I would say honestly that most of those people in that sub niche are as happy with getting one policy, one bill, better coverages than they are getting the best rate. So there, it's not always price. In my niche, price is very heavy. But there's other things that you can look at in niches that will help solve that prospect or that niche owners, what's keeping them up at three in the morning? You know, price is always important, but if you could do other things to be able to help them, you're going to go along a lot farther down the road.

Yeah. And one of the things that I'm sure you didn't even know this 19 years ago when you started to develop this niche. I mean, these people that are quote landlords, they're already pretty successful. Would you agree?

Agree.

I mean, buying resident, buying all these investment properties to gain passive rental income, they've already been successful somewhere else.

So here's a funny note. And this came up probably two years ago. So I've been doing it for 19. So 17 years into the niche. Most landlords don't own one building. They own multiple. While 17 years, Mike would call me for that 123 Main Street. I would quote 123 Main street now, part of that scripting. And again, I have a mantra that I always play to myself over and over. Less is more. And you know, getting that, putting the blinders on, on the horse racer and just focusing on what we do, all we do, polish that jewel, all of that. And so what I do now is once they're done telling me about 123 Main Street. I'll say, Mike, and do you own any other residential rentals? And depending on their response, sometimes they'll come back. Well, this is the only one I want to talk about. I will preface it and say that's fine, but just know I can get you a better rate if we combine them all. I had one yesterday. They had 17 locations. I think we were on the phone for 20 minutes. You want to give them all to me right then that one sentence, that one little tweak has helped increase the revenue. Probably, you know, I won't say the best, but one of the best. And it took me 17 years before I realized, you know, I had the aha. Well, here's something. And that is, that's another good tip with niches. And especially if it's the same one or a couple of people in the office doing it over and over is scripting. You know, I go through the same process. My worksheet gets me to ask the same questions so that I can perfect it and I can do little tweaks to see is it going to bring a better response. So I could talk about this for hours.

I could listen about it for hours. So thank you for sharing. Absolutely incredible stuff. So anybody who is out there in the process, if you will, for lack of a better term, of quoting a rental dwelling and you sit on your laurels and just go ahead and quote the one rental dwelling to what Russia said. Repeat that phrase again, Russ. That turned it from one location to 17.

Do you own any other rent? I ask Rentals. Sometimes they'll say commercial buildings. And that's fine. I can write them too, right. When I come back and explain my program, it's residential rentals. So it just, again, it's the tweaking of that. And we're always testing. 19 years. I'm not doing the same thing I did 19 years ago. 10 years from now, I won't be doing the same thing again. Continuing to tweak and continue to sub niche. You know, there's been sub niches I've tried within habitational which have fallen flat. You know, the big boys. Bezos talks about the millions he's tested. Well, you know, I don't have millions to test, but I can continue to try and improve that so I can become more and more of an expert.

So. And you don't want to. I mean, you've made the business decision that you don't want to create an empire like Amazon, although you probably could if you wanted to. And we've talked about that in our coaching session. So absolutely incredible stuff. And in addition to that, you're talking just into the conversation that's going on in the minds of the marketplace, which is, you know, doors, rentals, you're talking just like they do and you learn to do that. Developing niche. Yeah, go ahead.

No, I just said you learn their language, you start. You start to become them. That's why you need to have an affinity for whatever niche you're looking at. Everything I'm talking is regarding landlords, but any niche, you know, if it was Jesse and cannabis, you start talking their language and you understand, you know, being one of them is helpful. Me being a landlord is helpful.

Right.

So I know the frustrations and you go from there.

So, yeah, fantastic. So let me jump back to one other thing real quick. So you identified the niche, you did some marketing to it began to dominate it built it up, wrote a rating program to continue to dominate with speed. Got the carrier at your feet saying what more can we do for you? Named the program, the carrier calls the program internally what you named it. And it's evolving.

Let me interrupt. They tried to. I went to one of the dog and pony shows and they were calling it the five doors or more program. And I very politely talked to the VP and said that's my trademark name. Not for you, that's for me. So there are some things that I'll draw the line. It's my information, it's my knowledge, but you got to be protective of that.

I must ask, did they make you an offer?

Oh no, they stopped doing it though. The next show I was told by one of the other reps, they were all kind of scolded not to say that term anymore, which was fine with me. So I don't want my competition using my, you know, trademark niche.

Yeah. So you, you understand how to reach these very already very successful people who want to invest in rental and passive income, et cetera, et cetera. And you reach them in a primary way marketing wise, which is direct mail. Right. Why do you just keep direct mailing them? And if you want spill the beans on how much you invest in direct mail. Right.

In any niche and I'll go back to doing any niche, not just habitational. You got to test Mike and his coaching programs, which is huge. I've been in them almost since the start and Mike and I have known each other for 20 years. I still learn stuff. So what isn't meant to be a promo for Mike. He didn't ask me to say that. But by getting together with like minded people, the juices flow and these ideas come out. Well, I'm sorry, go back to your question again, Mike. I just lost my train thought.

No worries. Thank you by the way. So at the end of the day the list and marketing to that list via direct mail. You do more direct mail than anybody that I've ever met for an agency your size and it works. So talk about the investment in that why you do direct mail versus something else and ROI and that's type of thing.

So I do direct mail because again I've tested it, I have referrals, I have other avenues that I get leads from. But the most lucrative one is direct mail because that works for me and it's taken a lot of time of doing a simple split test your constant and it's called an A B test and one little Tweak, you know, is it dropping it on a certain day of the week, is it adding a different color paper? There's all these probably 30, 40 variables. There could be, but over time that little tweak, it didn't help or not. And so to me, direct mail has worked. The math numbers always have to pay for itself. My rule of thumb is for every dollar I make in commission, how much am I, excuse me, for every dollar I spend or invest in marketing, how much am I making in first year commission? As long as I break even one to one. And there's actually some years I've gone even a little under a dollar to a dollar. But as long as I can cash flow that I'm keeping the client eight to 10 years. So I'm more than happy doing that. So the numbers for me, for example, my two niches. One of the groups is a 240,000 prospects on the list. The other one is 60,000. Excuse me, the other one is 90,000. But that's how many prospects are on the list. Part of the list purchasing is scrubbing out those that don't make sense. A perfect example for me, if an apartment building is owned by Stanford University, why am I even calling, mailing, whatever, so they come out owned by JPMorgan Chase, etc. So of all of these lists, the bigger one I only market to about half of it. So just over 100,000. The 90,000 unit one is down to about 60,000. Mike talks about buying lists every two to three years I buy a new list and I compare it to the old one. But the easy answer there is for two reasons. Lists are getting better and better. And in California now we pretty much maxed out all 58 counties on that public information that I need in my particular niche. But it doesn't work in every state. I've helped people in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Texas, etc. What we have in California isn't mirrored in all 50 states. So that's one thing. The second is property owners, they buy and sell. Well, my list from two years ago, there's probably less than 10% that's changed. But it's enough of that for me to be able to reinvest and update that list. And as I've done that over these 19 years, I now get emails where available. I now get phone numbers where available. So there's other avenues I can start testing.

A year ago I started emailing. I don't get all the emails, I get a number. But you also have to know what your hit ratio is. I'll just throw out a couple of things. If you're doing direct mail, if you get a half a percent that respond to you, you're doing good. I'm at about.

0.3. But again, as long as it's a dollar to dollar, I don't care. You know, in the early days I was getting as much as 3 to 1 ROI, so it was phenomenal. But as long as I'm making a dollar for a dollar, so that's the first thing in direct mail. In the emails, it's as much as 20% don't work. But as long as again, that cost is there, it's a numbers game. And that's really what we've become is a numbers game.

Well, you know, if I may give you a coaching tip.

Please.

So you said 20% of the emails don't work. Do you know why?

Yeah, most people have three to five different emails.

Well, not only. Yeah, not only that, but they change them too.

Exactly.

So anyway, there's more opportunity for his knocking. I mean, we could go on off into lost souls, which we developed within our masterminding and coaching, which really created a whole nother opportunity for you. But we don't. We're not going to go there today. Gold, Absolute gold. And the thing that makes me shake my head in a good way for Russ is, you know, pre adversity, if you will. Russ would market, market, market. Right, right, right. Grow, grow, grow like mad. With no debt, by the way, because think about it, if you buy an agency, you've got debt for five years. Yeah, he might be a little bit behind first year, but he has no debt. Organic new business. That's niche driven, my friends. Gold in those hills. So with that being said, I'd be talking to Russ. I said, well, I'm gonna go on vacation. We're traveling for the whole month, blah, blah, blah. So I gotta stop marketing like three weeks before so I can go on vacation. Well, what a problem to have. I've got to stop marketing so I can go on vacation.

So props to you. So let's talk about your business model as we begin to move into your accolades. So you have a business model that you decided you wanted to be your business model and you've got just three employee team members. What shall we say? But revenue per employee? Where are you compared to the. To most of the people?

National average. I actually, I've got it here. So I was very fortunate to be featured on Rough Notes about a year ago. And the main reason for that, out of the I don't know if it's 30, 40, 50,000 agents nationwide that they look at was because my revenue per employee is triple the national average. Now, again, I don't say that to boast. It's because of the efficiency of what we built in this niche. And the ironic thing is the niche is really two of us. Me doing sales when I'm in town. If I'm not, my CSR will. But I try not to overwhelm her because she's the one that services the entire niche. You know, we have. I think it's over 3,000 clients, and one person services it because it's. We don't get calls from owners hardly ever. The most she does. She probably spends two hours a day doing evidences for banks, and she knows the banks that are, you know. Anyhow, I could go on, but it's. It's just getting it to that point. I was told years ago by a mutual friend of Mike's and mine, Shawn, do you want to be a CEO and have a sales team, or do you want to be. His terms were sole proprietor. I don't look at it that because I do have a team, but my personal gift and what I enjoy doing is informing and educating prospects and selling the deal. Once I sell it, I don't need to talk to him anymore. That's what my CSR does, and she does a great job at it, so. But that's my choice to do is my business, and I get to be able to if I want to. Mike's point, if I want to stop marketing so I can take three weeks and go with my wife somewhere, that's my choice. You know, it's not. No one else is telling us what to do. We're our own entrepreneurs, and we can do it that way. Mike has coached me that maybe I should get a producer. I've had a producer in the past, but I choose not to because I enjoy only having three people to deal with. I don't want 10, 20 employees to deal with. So it's up to each of us and how we want to do things.

Entrepreneurship 101, just to be clear, roughly 3,000 clients, one person servicing all of those clients. Because the clients are successful, they pay their policy premium in full for the year and don't bother them, because that's who they are. When I started figuring this out years ago, I'm going, oh, my gosh. You know, I help people develop this stuff, but I should be doing it more myself. Opportunity keeps on knocking.

And let me add one Thing. This wasn't done by design. Yes. I looked at my acre of diamonds and I love doing landlords and I started there. But a lot of this is for lack of a better thing. I'll say I fell into it. But I also, thanks to Mike's coaching and my mastermind group, have really help me refine it and fine tune or polish that jewel enough to be able to just focus on that. I'm not bouncing all over. I refer to it being an entrepreneur as shiny object syndrome. I'm not hearing this latest idea and that one and bouncing. I've got to keep telling myself, you know Warren Buffett's thing, He says no 199 times and says, well, yes, once, maybe. So it's that kind of a process of finding out what's right and then going from there and working on that.

Yeah, yeah. Our team bought me this little guy who resides on my desk, and this guy's name is sos. Shiny Object Syndrome. The squirrel. Right. So we'll be in a session and somebody will hold this up, AKA you're off track, back on point. So anyway, so we all have the disease is what we do with it. The dedicated, maniacal focus that is the key. So kudos to you for having that. So you've had accolades. You were on the COVID of Rough Notes, industry renowned nationally niche player who has built this little empire. And we could go on and on. So you also decided because of your niche focus, to up your leverage and your credibility positioning in the niche, you wrote a book.

Well, thanks to you. There's another story if anybody wants to talk about it later. I won't go into it all now, but it's funny because when I. When Mike kind of dared me or convinced me of the. The separation from your competition. You know, my biggest competition in California is farmers. Not any one farmers agent, but Farmers insures more landlords than anybody else. They. None of them have ever written a book. When I wrote the book and it went on Amazon, there's no other insurance broker nationally that's written a book on being a landlord. And it's not insurance. It's not all insurance. There's I think it's 32 chapters and I think four or five are on insurance. It's just my knowledge of being in that niche, doing homework and helping. I did it for two reasons. Primarily to extend the retention of the existing clients and two, to help in basically the reciprocity. If I have a prospect that's of a certain size, they get the book regardless of whether they come with me or not, Trying to separate myself from the competition, showing that I know about the niche, I care about them. And I wrote the book in such a way where if you don't know what a 1031 exchange is, for example, okay, fine, read the chapter. If you want to read it from COVID to cover, you can do that and become from a novice to a seasoned person. But it was done that way to try and have that end game in sight. And that was again, thanks to Mike and the Mastermind team.

When I decided, okay, I'll commit to doing it, what was the end result? And the irony is I only thought it was going to be 10 pages. It's almost 300 pages. And I did it in hardbound and softbound, but hardbound so that when the prospect gets it, they are an investor, they've got a substantial portfolio. So it's all good.

Hold it up again. Russ, I'm going to give you one more coaching tip, if I may. So I've learned this in my own personal development and training. Hold it up. Keep holding it up. So in my own personal development training about engaging people both online and offline, to an extent, it's a prop. So when you're talking about the book, you want to keep holding it up. And I know it feels weird because you're humble, you're not egotistical, and you feel kind of weird continuing to hold up your book. But what you're doing, if you're talking about the book in the future online, not in front of your face, like right here.

Right there, just like that. As you're telling the story about the book, make sure that you have it right there because you are further engaging people from a credibility and positioning standpoint by them continuing to look at it.

So you will lock them in even tighter. Great job, friend. So way to go. Way to go. So congratulations. And my friends, if you haven't picked up pages of notes like I have, go back and watch and. Or listen to this again because Russ Castle just gave you the menu. And Russ, one other question for you. And then I got one last question for you. Anybody that might be watching or listening to this thinking, oh my gosh, Russ has built this dominating niche over 19 years. I can't possibly do something like that. What do you have to say to them?

It's the old adage, if I can do it, anybody can do it. What I have built is a bop. So from an insurance standpoint, it's an off the shelf product. I have a trademarked sub niche but in all fairness, anybody can do that. I didn't go out and get my own proprietary plan. It's all through a preferred admitted carrier. And any agent could do what I'm doing. It's just taken that focus and drive of repetitive over and over to be able to do it. So it's amazing because I look at landlords, every agent probably has a landlord or more in their book of business. When I've done this, there's only two other agents statewide that I've come across. So I'm in Silicon Valley. The other two agents are in Southern California. No one's doing statewide like I am, or if they are, none of them are doing it to the degree that I am. And that's fine with me. I don't want them to. You know, Mike's comment earlier was about. Most people haven't heard of me. I don't want. I mean, I was honored to be on the COVID I don't want people to really know much more about what I'm doing because I'm enjoying what I'm doing. And I love it when people have an issue with trying to write what I'm writing when everybody does it. So it's all good, it's all easy to do. So. And I'm an open book. I am more than willing to help other people. Like I say, I won't give you the deep, dark secrets in California of the hab niche. Any other state, not a problem. Any other niche. A lot of the principles are the same. One of our friends, Chris, I was talking to him last week. He's looking to do it another niche and he's in California all day long. Other people have helped me get where I am. I have no problem helping others because I'm a big believer in paying it forward. You know, the one person that helped me the most really did that. So I'm here to help others.

Yeah. And you're such a giver, and that's why you have the success that you've had, because you give first. I mean, just amazing. And you, you are one of the teachers of our million dollar sales producer boot camps that we put on for people who want to learn to grow niches. We had what we said was the last one, but we get a ton of people that keep coming after us. We want you to do that again. We don't know if I can pull Russ off a vacation. As we move back to the next normal, we may be able to do that. We'll see what happens.

I might have to talk to my wife.

Well, no, I got a better idea. Both of us will delegate.

Yes.

Okay. My wife talks to your wife and we'll see what happens. Fantastic. So, Russ, thank you. Absolutely incredible. Knowledge, experience and beyond. Yes, anybody can do this. It starts with two things, right? A decision and action. A decision and action. Russ, my last question for you today is. I'm looking at you on Zoom and I see some initials down in the bottom, right? What's that all about?

Mike and I have known each other for years. I'm going to let you tell the story just because you tell it that you have a better delivery than me. I'm the type of person sometimes when the joke, by the time it gets to the punchline, doesn't do it. So tell them about the meeting we were in and I think it was Alabama.

Yeah, it was Alabama. So anyway, for those of you who are listening only to the podcast right now, you can find us on YouTube. Just go to YouTube. Just log into YouTube and hit the search bar and search Unstoppable Profit Producer. You'll find all of our podcasts that we have with a visual as well. You'll see this visual. So I'm looking at the initials RFUC and I have the initials mfus and it was given to us by our friend of Mastermind, Terry, who is down in Bam for those of you from that area or Birmingham, Alabama. So. So we're in a Mastermind meeting, sitting in this room and I was at the end of the table, Russ was around the table, Terry was at the other end of the table. And we're throwing around ideas, which is what we do in Mastermind to help each other. And Terry goes, mike, you are frigging unstoppable. That was a great idea. And so we left the Mastermind meeting and we're collaborating via email after that. And.

Russ throws out some follow up and I thought friggin unstoppable. So I don't know who positioned it, but.

On the email I know, but.

There was something that happened before that, though. I don't know who called me MF Us or we called you at rfuc. It doesn't matter.

It was you first. And then we went around everybody.

Yeah, that's what I do. I take action. So. So I started throwing it. I know what it was. The signature was MF Us because of Terry's friggin unstoppable. Right. So Mike, friggin unstoppable. So I signed MFUs. And then you caught on to that and you're in action. Dude. And so you said, blah, blah, blah, rfuc. And so we're going around the mastermind and our buddy Joe, who's, like, super analytical, and we got stories about Joe, too. We don't need his permission to tell those. But so Joe comes back a couple minutes later, and he says, russ, how do you pronounce rfuc?

You had to be there, but it's been one that's lasted for years and hear it all the time.

Yeah, yeah. So I'll go ahead and do it. I don't have any shame. So anyway, years later, as we started developing the boot camps, we had this girl who worked in our marketing department, and she also helped at the boot camps. Her name was Cassidy, and we also called her Supergirl. And Cassidy is one of the sweetest, most kind, most pure, innocent young ladies that you ever meet. And I remember we were back in the marketing room one day, and we're talking about Russ, and she goes, oh, you mean rfuc? Because I swore. She probably never swore in her life, but she now had permission to say something similar to that because she was pronouncing the rfuc. She goes, arfa called me today. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I would. I would call the office for, let's say, Andrea or Mike. And she would. I heard later, run. Let me answer it. So she could say hello. And a few.

Exactly. Exactly. So what an incredible fun journey it's been. And congratulations, Russ, on your success. Super proud of you. Super happy to be alongside your journey. Thank you. Great job, man.

Hey, your main reason for it, buddy. So thank you.

You're the person that made a decision and took action and keeps taking action to continue to develop, because if we want things to change, we've got to change. We've got to change. And if we will change, everything will change for us. So we hope this has helped you begin to change as we wrap up today. Russ Castle, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you, buddy.

All right.

Appreciate it. Honored.

No, no, my honor. Hey, again, friends, thank you so much for joining us today. By the way, if you're interested in attending a virtual or a live event to learn to grow your business, create wealth, and to have more freedom to live life on your own terms, just like Russ. If you want to join us on a virtual event, go to upfaststart.com that's UPP fast.

And if you want to join us at a live event, please go to be Unstoppable Boot camp dot com. That's beunstoppablebootcamp. Dot com We've got virtual and live events coming up to help agents grow, create wealth to have more freedom. Both events are designed to share with you some of the best money making strategies proven over 35 years of research in your industry. Again, to help you grow your business and create wealth to have more freedom to live life on your terms. Russ, I think it's about time to wrap it up so you can go enjoy some of your freedom and continue to grow. Thank you so much.

One last comment. If you come to boot camp, you want to talk, I'll be there.

Fantastic. I'm going to be there too, so we'll both see you there.

Sounds great.

All right, everybody, Decisions and actions. Those are the two keys that will make you unstoppable. We'll see you on the next episode, everybody.

Thank you for listening.

If you would like to listen to more episodes or share this podcast with someone you care about, please visit www.unstoppableprofitpodcast.com now go out and make a difference. Be unstoppable and leave no regrets.