Episode 157: Nextdoor Ninja with Kim Angeli

Welcome to the Unstoppable Profit podcast. This podcast will give independent insurance agents all of the tools to grow your business and live life on your terms. Wherever you are today, if you're starting with nothing or 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 Stromsol.

Welcome everybody, to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. I am pumped and excited, beyond excited, to have back on the podcast, my great friend, Kim Angeli. Kim, welcome.

Thanks for having me.

Hey, you're welcome. And some new things have come up. And recently conversing with Kim, I learned about these things and I said we've got to make sure that we get you back on the podcast and share the latest and the greatest updates to help these agents grow their business, create wealth so they can have more freedom to live life on their own terms, which is our goal within the UPP Platinum and elite coaching programs. And Kim was telling me what she has going on and I said, omg. So thank you, Kim, for investing some time today to share with Unstoppable Nation everything that is going on. Kim is the founder of Grateful Box and I have always loved what she does with Grateful Box and gratitude. A way of living.

Right, Kim, choose Grateful Living.

That's right. That's right. And she's a next door marketing expert. But the one thing that you may or may not remember about Kim, and this is in my mind, an absolute key and why it's a great idea to connect with Kim, is Kim has a history. I'll let her tell it. Actually, Kim, tell them about your history as a proud independent insurance agency entrepreneur.

Well, I used to own a property and casualty agency.

Yeah. So how many, what generation were you?

Well, I bought my dad's book of business eventually. Yeah, he got sick. But I started my agency actually 11 days after 911 from scratch with my Cisco severance. I got laid off from the dot com and so I took that. I'm a big risk taker. Of course my husband's not. Oh, how we get married to those. And so I literally took my Cisco severance 11 days after 911 on September 22, started Angeli and Associates.

Wow.

And then I ended up buying my dad's book of business when he got sick and my his business partner's book of business and then I merged it and sold it in 2016.

Yeah. So you've got, you know, roughly 15 years or more experience as an independent insurance agency entrepreneur. Case in point, everybody that's either listening to and or watching this podcast is likely an independent insurance agency entrepreneur. So you understand, you know, their daily challenges, the battles they're going through, that you walked in their shoes for a long, long time.

So.

So you have that unique ability to understand what they're going through, and that's fantastic in my mind.

Well, and I grew up in that business, so I grew up in the. With my parents owned an agency, and so people would call the house, and my dad would say, did you call the fire department first? I mean, you know, because it was all about relationships. I mean, it wasn't transactional. They kept clients for years, for four decades.

Right.

Some of those clients are still in the books today. Yeah.

And so those are the conversations you guys had at the dinner table. I mean.

Right. Well, they came to my wedding, and I'm like, you are? Who are you? They're like, oh, my. Your father insures my auto repair store. I'm like, oh, my God.

Right, Right. I think that's fantastic. And that's. That's a great contributor, too. So, Kim, let's talk about business owners, insurance agency entrepreneurs, or any business owners and how they get their business on Nextdoor and how to use that advertising feature. Because Nextdoor went public November 2021, and the CEO of that company came from Square, right?

She did.

So walk us through what that means for Nextdoor going forward.

Well, so Sarah Fryer, who is the leader of Nextdoor, she's the CEO, made Square a household name in the business world. Now, you, as a consumer might not know about Square, but a lot of local businesses use Square for cash flow every day. Right. And she said on the day of opening, because, you know, I'm.

Follow her and follow the whole company, because I've been stalking them since 2012.

Success leaves clues. Right?

Success leaves clues. She said, we are the antidote to Facebook, and she is not lying. I've actually been running some split tests with clients on visibility on Nextdoor versus Facebook, and the results are staggering. Because during COVID there was a major shift with Nextdoor. And I'll just repeat this in case we didn't cover this last time, is. Let's just rewind for a brief moment. Not very long. I don't want to go there long to 2020, when you and I and the rest of the world were literally going under lockdown, and we were seeking, where's the toilet paper? Where are the paper towels? Who's open? Well, those conversations, Mike stopped happening on Facebook as much as they happened on Nextdoor. Because Nextdoor is Hyperlocal. They grew 17% during COVID 17 times. The membership people getting, oh, what's next door? Oh, well, you can go and find out about local businesses and what's open and you're actually chatting with your, your local neighbors. It's just like your local area. Really relevant. It was super hyper relevant because imagine this. Let's say if I went on my Facebook, I have 5,000amazing followers. Don't know how, why they follow me, but they do. And I went and said, hey, where can I find paper towels.

On Facebook? It goes to 5,000. It doesn't go to 5,000 people. It goes to an algorithm around the world. Right, right. Someone in Australia can't help me with that question. If I take that same question to Nextdoor, it only goes to 33 neighborhoods in a 2 mile radius of my home. I'm gonna get better answers.

Right.

So that was a major shift. And then Nextdoor, of course, added a ton of more features onto the business pages where you could actually post from the business page and actually get engaged with the people commenting. Those were new features that were added. And it's only going to get more robust because the day they went public, they got a lot of cash and fusion. And when that happens, what do you do? If you had a lot of cash and fusion into your insurance agency before, what do we do? Oh, here's our wish list. Let's go implement this. Because I was having conversations with Nextdoor in 2014.

Ironically, I just called them on the phone. They had a phone number then in San Francisco, and I said, hey, I insure neighborhoods. Y' all are trying to communicate with neighborhoods. And they were only four years old. I mean, to advertise on Nextdoor was a quarter of a million dollars a month. That left out a lot of small business owners.

Yeah.

And now I can do an ad spend for a client at the $25 level and get a lot of visibility in a hyper local area that's relevant to where they want to drive their trucks or where they want to build their business. It's a very different animal than Facebook.

That's fantastic. And I love that. And we have used Nextdoor to its greatest and highest use because we learned from you. We invested in you to learn more how to do that, and it was phenomenal. So great stuff. Thank you for sharing. So again, since we last had you on the podcast, it's changed dramatically for insurance agency and small business owners. We talked about some of the most important changes already. I mean, grew 17 times, but what else is there something else that, you know, people should be doing as far as, you know, investing in nextdoor and getting in front of more people and getting in front of more eyes and more importantly, more hearts.

Well, managing your nextdoor page is super important. So I'll ask this question.

Yeah. So what does that look like? Give us some details.

So if you haven't logged into your nextdoor page because you set it up 24 months ago and you've never logged in and you're not looking at it like you're doing Facebook or Instagram or LinkedIn and your pictures are old, your phone number's outdated, you haven't added a cover page, you get Tony Robbins, who's a coach of mine, six seconds to grab someone's attention. That's it. So if you're managing your brand and all these other social platforms and you have this dead page on, on nextdoor, go spruce it up. Go make the branding look like the branding on your other pages. Don't recreate the branding. I audited one recently, about a year and a half ago, for an insurance agent, and I said, your nextdoor page looks like you're a pet sitter.

Can we clean this up? Like, can we clean up the branding to match your Facebook, your website, your Instagram? Like, we don't create different branding. We just do the branding consistently across all platforms. So if someone goes to look at your brand online, let's say someone, let's say Kim Angelou says, oh, okay, well, my insurance agent is.

Fiona Swaneepool in Waxhaw. Okay, her page looks spectacular. But let's say I didn't know if it was. And there's no picture, there's no website, there are no photos. You're going to actually not get that phone call because it doesn't look like you're managing your reputation. Like, it looks like your business is closed.

Right.

So there are a lot of pages out there that haven't been managed and they don't have the branding and they don't have the hearts and the recommendations. And so you're losing business, actually, and you don't even know it.

They're not current, relevant. Right.

They're not current and relevant.

Absolutely. And I will tell you, I look at a lot of webpages of agencies and other communication channels, and you're absolutely right. I mean, you've got to stay focused and inspect what you expect because, you know, that's your online presence, period. It's Your online business card in every way.

Absolutely. And here's just a little tip, people. Now, Mike and I, we thrive on change and shiny objects. We love it. We love change. We live for it. But 83% of you don't. And a lot of people want to know where they are going. So if you do have a brick and mortar store, I want you to take pictures of the store and even the parking lot of what it looks like. Maybe even add a map, you know, even though it adds a map, like add a map or some, or some things around you so that people even feel comfortable if they had to drive your brick and mortar store. What does that feel like? Put happy faces. Put your staff on there. Let them know who they're talking about. Please do not just put a picture of your building as a cover page. Put happy, happy faces on there. Put your face on there. They want to know who they're doing business with and make sure it feels like your website.

Yeah, yeah. And I just twisted something that I've said for years from the person that I learned it from, Bob Berg, to drop a name. Bob is where I learned, you know, people do business with people that they know like and trust. Right.

Yeah.

The originator of that. But the thing that I've recently learned, and now I say it like this because I say people do business with people they know love and trust. Love is a stronger emotion than like. But here's the, here's the change. People refer.

And do business with people they know love and trust.

Yes.

See, it's a mindset shift. And ultimately at the end of the day, that's what we want, as you know, business people is people to refer people to us. Right. Are you referable? And if you're not taking care of your platform like you were just suggesting, Kim, you're not referable.

No, you're not referable because think about the buying. Like yesterday I had to find someone to cut my grass. So what did I do? I went on nextdoor and I keyword searched lawn and this person popped up. I checked out his next door page. Is he managing? Does he have recommendations? What do they say? And I called him. And he came to my house today at 10:30 and walked my yard. He's amazing. He's texted me, he follows up, he answers the phone. He came when he said he was going to come. But I didn't even make the phone call or the text until I saw all those other measurables. See, what's happening is your phone is not ringing because you haven't gone and secretly shopped what you look like on Nextdoor Online. Do the pages work? Jimmy Pages I've gone into and I'm like, did you get this on Nextdoor? Because see, they can message you within the Nextdoor app. And so sometimes if you're not managing your Nextdoor app, I'll go in and audit one. And I've seen where you've had 11 people reach out to you and you've never responded. That's 11 referrals.

Yeah. And when you talk to them, how's things going in business? They'll go, well, we want to grow more. Well, you have to respond, wait, wait a minute. You've got 11 leads you haven't responded to. What's the issue here?

Right, right. Because they're not managing their reputation. They've let this sit over here stagnantly. And so now the biggest thing that happened during COVID is I was actually on a coaching call with some amazing clients and we discovered the free posts so years ago. I've been teaching this to clients since 2016. I've been holding onto this bus for a very long time. And used to the only way you could really grow your business and reputational nextdoor was through raving fans would be like Mike saying, you were amazing and he refers you on the page or he gives you a heart and you were really just at the mercy of your raving fans. Right. You were at the mercy of your raving fans. And then during COVID Nextdoor says, we love small businesses. We want you to connect with your local community. We're going to give you two business posts a month. They don't roll over. You can't do 20 in December. You have to do two a month. And we're going to allow you to post into the communities you serve and tell them about your business.

What this equates to is about $3,500 worth of free marketing because if you actually had to pay next door for the advertising, that's about what it would cost on average, you know, across the country. It's what I've calculated. That's my calculation with my calculator doing this since 2016.

So that is big time visibility.

Yeah.

And the opportunity lost, Mike, is I had a client recently who I just started managing next door business pages this time last year, about March of 2021. I had a client call me insurance agent in Pennsylvania and he's like, I can't get next door to work. I said, okay, well, my process is first, I audit your next Door page. And then I become the undercover boss for all your other digital marketing. And I'm going to tell you what your Google page looks like and all the other things. Right. Because nobody does that. Really. They don't go secretly shopping how they look online. They think their website people do it. They don't.

No, no. They don't care about you never log.

Back in and make sure it all works. Just, you know, they take your $10,000 and say goodbye. So anyway, I audited it and I said, well, you have zip codes turned on and you don't really get the visibility you need with the zip code. Let's cancel that and let's start a marketing campaign because Next door is cumulative. You cannot do one advertisement or one post on Nextdoor and expect to have results. Never. It's cumulative. Just like a GEICO commercial. GEICO advertises on nextdoor. Travelers advertises on nextdoor, Open Door Answer advertises on nextdoor. They do it consistently. It's cumulative. They don't do one ad and say, oh, that didn't work. We're not going to do another one. They keep doing them to get familiarity in the neighborhoods. So we built out the free posts, and I did two a month for him. And then in August, I said, we have enough hearts and enough visibility here. Let's turn on an ad. Let's do a life insurance ad and give Nextdoor some money. So we gave Nextdoor about $500 to a zip code. He wanted to be the, you know, go to person for this product, life insurance. And we got a million views for $500.

Wow.

Yeah, that's what I said. Wow.

A million views for a $500 investment.

500. We got 1.8 views for $974.

From April 8 to 921.

That is phenomenal.

So that is really, really amazing visibility because guess where I took the life insurance post from? Facebook.

Asked me how many views Facebook got. Now, we didn't give Facebook any money.

Right.

But with a free post, we get 8,200 views.

So how many views did they get on Facebook?

3. And I was one of them.

2.

That's the difference. And I'm not local. I can't buy insurance from him. He's in Pennsylvania.

Right, Right.

I did a split test recently with a client, took an ad off. This is not an insurance.

But took an ad off Business principles or business principles.

Right. Took an ad off Facebook. He ran. We got. We've already gotten 1.8 million views on his business this year. We did that last year. But see, nextdoor is cumulative. He's become very familiar in the community because of the branding. We've been posting for a year, Right. That Facebook post, two or three likes. I was one of them. I can't be a client. He's in California. He's in Sonoma. See, everybody that saw it on next door, he can drive his truck to. That's the biggest part.

That's the biggest part is that it's hyper local.

Right?

And so that client I just mentioned, he literally. We will. Our goal this year, which we will reach, is 10 million views. And outside of what he pays me to manage it for him, which is insignificant, right. Is $3,300 in ad spend for 10 million views is what we'll give next door. $3,300.

Now, that's where the urgent, important, critical nature of making sure that you're keeping it up to date. And is your recommendation that people you know check in at least once a day? Sure. They identify what's happening.

It's not a week. It's not even that unmanageable. Mike. I'm telling people, you log you. I mean, you can have it on your phone where if you get a message on nextdoor, it actually will text you or email you. Right. If someone messages you, if you're. If you have the right email set up.

Right.

You're gonna get that right to your phone. The two posts a month you can use for free. I say go in on like, April 7, post one, go on April 21 and post one. That's twice a month, right? Twice a month. And if you want to do an ad, you can set it up for 30 days. Now, I do split testing, and I'll test one here and test one there, and then I'll turn on a zip code. But I'm the next door ninja. I'm not expecting you to do that. If you just did.

Here's a great example is if this insurance agent just did free posts in 2022, just did free post, no ad spend. And every time he does A post is 10,000 views. That's 20,000 views a month on the business in a zip code he wants to serve. Right. Two miles around his office. It's the free post. Two miles around your office. 10,000 times 12. That's a lot of views on your business.

That's right. In addition to that. So if somebody views, you know, your platform on nextdoor, you do you know who they are?

It doesn't tell you the demographics yet. Okay, I Want you to think.

But do you get a name? You get a first and last name.

If they leave your recommendation, not a view.

Got it. Okay. Well, fair enough.

Still, Yeah. I mean now.

They, they're rolling out new ad demographics and things like that. And so I can see in other not an insurance agent pages and some other platform pages, different industries, they're rolling out a new advertising platform which is going to tell you how old were they? What time did they look at it? All that stuff's coming. You have to think that Nextdoor is only 12 years old. And they really built. They put the, this is. Was their goal. They put the neighbors on here first. They put the audience on here first.

Right.

And then they let businesses advertise into it. And I will tell you, it's not noisy. The ads that I run locally for some of my business owners, I see them right on my phone under local deals and there's only four or five local deals going on a week. I'm pretty sure there are more than four or five businesses around me in Charlotte. But nobody knows how it works. They don't even realize that they can do this stuff.

It's unchartered territory. Yeah. Yeah, that's fantastic. Back to recommendations for just a minute. So also I was just working on this this morning and as an encouragement for everybody, social proof is so critically important. Social proof with pictures.

Yes.

So critically important. And so that should also be part of your platform on your nextdoor page and because it begins to answer the question, why should people do business with you over and above in and all other options available to them? What other people say you've already done for them, that makes all the difference.

Right? And the hearts. Let me just say this.

Yeah.

The Geico's of the world who are paying for national sponsorships, they're paying, they're paying a lot of money to get space on next door for national sponsorships. The difference between a local insurance agent, independent insurance agent who sets up their business page, you have the ability to get hearts, which is the measurement for nextdoor. The more hearts you get, the more people love you. Right? So an agent that has four or five hearts on their Nextdoor page versus an agent that has 100 hearts. Two things happen. One, Nextdoor gives you more visibility because they know people, more people love you. Right? They're going to give you more SEO and that's all tailored. They have SEO, they have AI, they have all that going on now. That's new. That didn't happen two years ago. They didn't have that function, all the AI and SEO is already built into this. So basically, more hearts equal more visibility. And you have to know if Nextdoor knows if you're managing your page. So there's about 2 million business owners who have claimed their business page.

I'd say about a third of them actually manage it well. So they're giving those people that are logging into their page, posting from their page and getting recommendations. Now, I'm assuming, because I have. This is just my opinion, watching what I see. I manage about a half a dozen or more private accounts because I'm in the system. They get more visibility because they know you're using it.

The algorithm helps you.

Right.

So GEICO can't get recommendations. National sponsors don't get hearts. Local business owners get hearts. And you can see them on the page. So like Grateful Box right now has 40 hearts. Actually, I don't even use it for advertising. I just use it for, you know, for testing and stuff. But I have a restaurant that has over 1100 hearts, so.

So the. Yeah, go ahead.

That does pizza. So he gets a lot of visibility for his brand and his restaurant because he has more hearts than his competitor.

Right, right. So how do people get hearts?

Recommendations from raving fans.

Aha. Aha. So every phone call is an opportunity, right?

Yes.

Every communication with a client is an opportunity. Every communication with the prospect is an opportunity. Every communication with the center of influence in your local community, AKA a maven, is an opportunity.

Absolutely.

That is fantastic.

And you can take that recommendation Mike and copy and paste it, put it in a testimonial. I mean, they are beautiful because there are two or three sentences. It is not like, like my Facebook page. Like, people write these amazing sentences about their engagement with you and you can place them other places.

Right.

It's beautiful. I love it.

That is fantastic. I'm uber pumped and excited, so. And I can't wait to help agents make sure that they get not only their. Their page up to date, get in the right place, but begin collecting those hearts in the same breath that they do. Say Google reviews. And I love the fact that you also help audit, you know, they. What they have going on in Google in addition to this platform. So that just increases your value even more. So you were talking about how all of this benefits independent insurance agents and their ability to build deep, meaningful, significant relationships with their local communities. Because that's what we have to offer, right? We're a local independent insurance agent. We're not beholden to any insurance company. We work for you the customer first to provide you all the options. I've said that once or twice on my journey anyway. But what other benefits for life? I used to say, I think when I was sleeping I was repeating it. But anyway, what are the benefits for agents and having their nextdoor platform having it up to date as they continue to collect hearts and build relationships. Anything else?

So my question for an agent is, what would your business look like if a half a million people saw it in the next year while they were scrolling through looking to see whose dog was lost, what restaurant to find, what lawn lawn service to use? These conversations are happening in the community on nextdoor. And if you are not managing your reputation and engaging and thanking the people that bring you referrals from nextdoor and asking where did you find out about me? The opportunity lost is huge.

Because it's visibility. What would you pay to be in a radio or TV ad for half a million views?

Right.

What would you pay for that? Because this is what I take. Oh, let me find it. So I take now to my speaking engagements. The yellow pages.

So how many. The yellow pages, remember?

I'm just kidding. Yes, I remember.

Let me find. Here it is. Here's the yellow pages. So I want you to think about the yellow pages with recommendations. So that's what nextdoor is. It's a directory of services that are local to you.

Now, they're just green and they're online digitally and they have your neighbors comments about them. See, back in the day I would have said, oh well, let's call Troutman's bathroom restoration and see if they're any good. I couldn't see what the neighbors thought about them. That's nextdoor in all intents purposes. That is what it's for is things for your life and your neighbors have commented on the business.

Aha. Got it. And I just had another great idea that came to my mind. You're talking about other restaurants that are local to the area, other people that are local to the area, maybe other businesses that are local to the area that you're intermingling with, what an incredible opportunity to build relationships with them and build reciprocity. If you just intentionally go out to help them.

Right.

And go to them and say, hey, I want to help you. How can I get more of the people that we do business with to you?

Right, Absolutely.

Because an amazing opportunity.

Covid shifted the mindset to support local people are consistently thinking they came out of unconscious unawareness into conscious awareness that maybe we need to support local more because they got Shut down.

Right.

Remember they got shut down. They literally were the ones who had to shut their doors. And so this is what I tell people. You know, when I speak in person. I always say, when do we go to Google and want to give a shout out? After we've had a really great experience or after we've had a horrid experience?

When do we naturally want to go give a review?

When we've had a great experience?

Well, you and I do, but most people only do it when they've had a bad one. So I tell people, go give your favorite restaurant a next door recommendation. Go give them a heart. Go give your favorite insurance agent a heart. So it boosts their visibility on the page.

Right.

And here's the last thing I will just say because I get on my soapbox about it because I'm on nextdoor a lot. I'm a user, I'm a raving fan. I was on there this morning and I see business owners using free posts with no hearts do not under any circumstance post an advertisement or a free post from your page. Free marketing without any hearts. Because what you're telling is, someone please come and buy and use my services. Nobody loves me. Just please get at least five hearts before you go and post your advertising or marketing from nextdoor. Because it doesn't look professional.

Right.

And always add a picture. Picture, call to action. Some few words. Nobody reads a book. And hearts are the keys to the recipe of success for nextdoor.

Let's repeat that because we all need to hear it more than once. In fact, we teach at least seven times.

Right, Right. So we.

Yeah.

Hearts are the measurement. They're the gold.

We want five hearts.

Five hearts. A picture with the post. A call to action. What are they supposed to do? Call now? 1-800-222. Little bit of words. Right. And just make sure you're.

And a little bit of keywords.

And a little bit of keywords up your visibility.

Right, Right. So it could be auto insurance, home insurance, umbrella insurance.

Absolutely.

But. But the other thing is it could be a phone number. It could be a number they can text to. It could be an email address. Or better than that. All of the above. Right.

And it could be a form. There are a lot of times I'll embed a form, get a quote into the post. They click here. It's midnight. They don't want to call anybody. They want to fill out the form and have you call later. Give them the option.

Yep.

Tell them what to do.

Yeah.

Fill this form out. Click here.

They're silent and waiting to be led.

They are and they want to be served. They want the best professional to show up for them.

And the other ninja strategy for all of the people either watching or listening to this is that form. Jotforms is a great opportunity. It's very inexpensive. It's a great platform. A lot of our UP Platinum and elite coaching members use it. So great opportunity there. So people are leaving truckloads of money on the table by not understanding this platform. So if they want to better understand it and better use it to its highest and best, use Kim Angeles the gal to help you with that. So we'll leave some information. Just let's go and do it now.

Well, we have a lot of resources free on gratefulbox.com we have a next door and that's G R A T E F U l b o x.com we have a nextdoor newsletter where I'm gonna give you a piece of education. I personally write the newsletter every week. It's our educational content on what's new with Nextdoor. What are some tricks and tips you don't know about that we might share with our students? I'm gonna give them to you in the newsletter. Then we have a next door checklist. It's a best practice to make sure you've got all the things on your page that need to be added. You can add photos now. You can add keyword searches under your photos now for searchability. All that stuff is new in the last 12 months, right? It all helps searchability. And then I have five things you want to know about when you do a free post. That's that free marketing from nextdoor. Like you know what are the things you need to have on there? I wrote that article recently that's a free resource because I don't have enough Kim's to help the people that need to be there. There's 30 million business owners who can utilize Nextdoor in the visibility and that's why we have group coaching. That's why we do free resources is because this platform is a way for you to connect with your local neighbors and let them know that you are open for business and you are going to serve them at their highest level.

It's just one more way if you want to reach 100% of the marketplace you've got to use 100% of the ways. It's one of the up and coming unchartered territories that a lot of other agents don't know about. So your competition probably is not aware of this and, you know, money and success. Love, speed, money and success. Never sleep. So you've got to take action now before, say, your competition does. Right, Kim?

Well, think about Facebook versus Nextdoor. Facebook has 200 million business pages.

Nextdoor has 2 million. Think of the opportunity of visibility.

That's worldwide.

So that's worldwide. That's 11 countries. So think about when we did these. I was an editor of a newspaper. There was only so much many pages you could put ads on. That's why Facebook's so expensive, is because there's just so much room. Well, guess where there's a lot of room. Nextdoor. There's a lot of ad space on nextdoor right this minute. It's not gonna stay that way.

Exactly. So first one to the dance, so to speak. And the other thing that I always want to encourage people to be thinking about, I mean, if you're able to engage a new prospect and actually turn it into business, we're only talking about first year commission. That doesn't count for lifetime value of a customer. And as I've learned from Bob Berg through his book Endless Referrals, and I know Kim is very familiar with that platform with Bob and what he does for people as well. You know, everybody knows 250 people that either come to their wedding or come to their funeral. And for just for conversation's sake, I always make it easy. All right, let's just call it 100.

That one new customer automatically turns into 100 new prospects.

Right.

If you think about it from the abundance mindset and the opportunities that are out there, I mean, what an incredible, incredible opportunity this is. And thank you for sharing so much.

And so one more secret ingredient to the recipe. And this has been my 30 year secret recipe that I will share. But it's what makes me very unique in the marketplace.

For every person today only, right? Today only for free.

You're going to show only today because you know what? Gary Vee says, I give you a lot of content because half of y' all don't implement it. So here we go.

It's more than half, Kim.

I know. So let's say you get a heart on Nextdoor. Someone thought enough of you to recommend you on Nextdoor and stop their life and commented and tagged your business and gave you a recommendation to a neighbor on the platform. I don't care how you do it or when you do it because it's never too late to appreciate. I don't care if you get in your car and drive to your local drugstore, have Stamps and thank you notes ready to go to mail them. A thank you note in the mail. No gift needed. I don't care if you attach a gift. Now my eye doctor does a $5 Starbucks card. I got like 17 of them last year and I've already up to like 4 this year. I can have a coffee anywhere in the country with a Starbucks or a water. Thanking your referrals and connecting sources will change your business. I know it sounds so simple, but it is almost like when my health coach tells me, kim, if you eat more broccoli and less chick Fil a, you will lose weight. Oh my God, that sounds too simple. But if you would just thank the people that give you a heart on Nextdoor, they will continue to do it and do it again and do it again and do it again. Thank them anywhere on any social media.

Referral sources.

100% agree. That is gold.

It is actually the million dollar secret of high level producing people. We just don't talk about it a lot because we assume you know it. But I'm telling you, I have thank you notes everywhere. I even have my briefcase because if I have an opportunity to leave someone a thank you note and impart kindness and gratitude on them traveling around the world, I have them in my bag.

And I won't even tell you the stories of my life, of how it changed the trajectory of my travels just having them.

100% agree. Here is a newest, one of the newer items to upp, a gold nugget, Kim.

So I love it.

You just dropped a gold nugget. And shall we just help them with another gold nugget?

Yes.

Okay, so for those of you who might be listening only and you're not watching the audio portion, just go to YouTube and search Unstoppable Profit Producer and then go to the videos. All of our podcasts are there, the video portion, so you can see what I just did. But one of the ways that they can also enhance those thank you cards, by the way, great strategy, Kim, is they can snipe the portion off of next page, open up a blank word document, paste that snipped portion from next door onto the blank word document.

Print it out, and I carry three sharpies all of the time at least. Okay. And these are the ones that I bring. I have a blue, red and black. And so what you do is you write right on that printed out snipped page from nextdoor, like, wow, thank you. A personalized. Kim, you are so incredibly generous. Thank you so much. Gratefully, Mike. And you've got it in multiple colors and then agree. Add the $5 coffee card or whatever you want to do.

Unbelievable.

People call me Mike and say, I still have that Starbucks card in my wallet. It has no money on it, but every time I see it, I think of you and the kindness and thoughtfulness of you even doing that.

That's super powerful, very powerful.

And I do it because I am grateful they stopped their life to refer me like. I'm super grateful that they stopped their life to send me someone who might have needed my services.

Absolutely powerful, powerful stuff. I mean, you don't need to come up with 22 new marketing programs. You just got to make sure that you take as deep a dive as possible into every single relationship that comes before you and pay attention to what's going on and your business will explode forever. And that's one of the incredible, amazing things about the independent insurance agency business. You have absolutely no limits to how big you want to grow your business except those that you make for yourself, right?

Absolutely. I agree 100%.

Kim, I think this is in the last question I had for you. You already jumped ahead of me, which doesn't surprise me one bit. But is there any other ways that showing gratitude to referral sources and recommendations is so important? Can you think of anything else to help everybody as we begin to wrap up?

Well, a lot of people overthink this. It's really not a numbers game. It's a trust game.

Aha. Money follows trust.

Money follows trust. I don't care if I'm trying to sell you this little speaker like it's a trust game. Is it going to work? Is it going to break? Is we need to dive deeper into our top relationships and our circles of influence and really get to know them. I did gratitude calls last year in Q4 because I teach gratitude calls. And you can send that fruit basket all day long. But if you are not reaching out to your clients and saying, hey, or your relationships and saying, hey, what are you trying to achieve? How can I help you? How can I be of more service to you and taking that deeper dive with people? You will always just have surface level relationships and you are always going to be looking for new.

Unbelievable. So I thought about that a couple minutes ago when you mentioned something. So if you don't know where to find five people to get the five hearts, it's right beneath your nose in your own acre of diamonds. Right beneath your nose in your own acre of diamonds. Your top 20% of clients, yes, they will help you because you're helping them. They love you, they care about you. They want to do business with you. They want to continue to give their. Give you their money.

Just ask them, right?

Just say, hey, are you willing to help me out, Kim, I'd love to help you out. How can I help you out?

Right? And you have to. And here's why. And I won't segue, but the reason why you have to ask, Mike, is a long time ago, I asked my IT guy in my insurance agency and HOAS was my niche, and I said, hey, Chris, who do you live in an hoa? My IT guy. He's like, yeah. And I said, well, who manages it? You know, do you like them? Are they well? Yeah. And he said, you need referrals. You're Kim Angeli. You speak around the. You speak. And I said, well, I want a healthy pipeline so I can pick and choose who I work with. Sure, Absolutely. I'm always wanting a healthy pipeline of referrals from people I know like and love and trust. And so in his mind, I didn't need anybody to see. See, that's where people are assuming, well, Kim doesn't need referrals. She's speaking all over the country and she's on podcasts. You have to give them the opportunity to help.

That's right. And then they want to help.

They want to help, and they feel.

Better after they help because they helped.

And then you send a thank you note to make sure to certify it's.

Going to work out, or send them a grateful box or a grateful box.

Or a grateful box or whatever. Invite them to a client event. Do whatever it takes to make them feel appreciated, because 68% of people will leave you and never do business with you again because they feel unappreciated.

68%.

68%.

Wow.

Yes.

Thank you, gratefulbox.com. by the way.

As we wrap it up today, Kim, I could go on for hours with you, and I know you could too, because you love to give. You got such an incredible giving heart. In fact, one of the things that you were kind enough to give and I wanted to let you know this.

Our grandson Elijah got one of the grateful boxes. You know, you shared with me a bunch of grateful boxes to give to the grandkids. He still tells me to this day, grandpa, that grateful box, I take notes out of there. I look for, you know, opportunities to share the gratitude with people. Because we talk about in Cousins camp, you got to have a patitude, not a baditude. Right?

I love it.

Positive attitude, not A bad attitude, right? And he goes, I love those notes. I love my grateful box. Thank you so much for giving that to me. So thank you.

Oh my gosh, I love it. That just warmed my heart for the rest of the year.

Exactly. Well, me too. And it is because of my relationship with you and your generous, giving heart. So Kim, thank you, thank you. And by the way, for anybody who is looking forward to the Be Unstoppable boot camp this year, Kim, you are going to be there.

Woohoo. Absolutely. I would not miss it, my friend.

Yeah. So anyway, you get to huddle with Kim. You can learn more about Kim and every incredible resource that she brings to the table. And thank you for bringing everybody up to date on the latest and greatest things that are happening within Nextdoor GratefulBox and the gratitude journey that we're all on to help other people.

Well, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure.

You're welcome. Remember everybody, gratefulbox.com just go there. All of Kim's contact information is there, correct?

Kim, Correct.

Yeah. So if you want to reach her, you can reach her there. And if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stromceau and I am widely recognized as a leading author, coach and speaker for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find me@unstoppableprofitproducer.com if you're interested in attending one of our virtual or live events, you can find our virtual live training events@uppfaststart.com or join us along with Kim and many many others, hundreds of agents at our live events. Beunstoppablebootcamp.com beunstoppablebootcamp.Com both of these events are designed with our latest and greatest money making strategies designed over 35 years of research in your industry to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And you can also find our podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, please go to unstoppable profit podcast.com make sure that you subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode of the latest money making strategies. And you can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and of course our YouTube channel. So thank you everybody for joining us. Until next time, get out there, make a difference, Be unstoppable, leave no regrets. Kim Angeli, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.

Thank you. Woo hoo.

You're welcome. Thank you everybody.

You love the podcast but don't know where or how to get started. Come join our next virtual training. While seats are still available. Register now@uppfaststart.com that's upfaststart.com.