Episode 199: Cloning Your Clients with Kevin Donlin

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.

Foreign.

Welcome to the next episode of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. We've got a very, very special guest today, a longtime colleague and friend in one of my very favorite sh. Subjects, one of my top three personal gifts, talents, vital functions. I love, love, love this subject. Welcome to the podcast, Mr. Kevin Donlin.

Thanks, Mike. We have a mutual love. It's ought to be a lot of fun. Marketing, Marketing.

Marketing. Marketing, baby. Absolutely. So if you've never heard of Kevin Donlin, you should know about Kevin Donlin. So let's get to know him a little bit, and I'm going to dive in and we're going to extract out of Kevin's mind and his experience and his vast world of marketing knowledge everything that he's willing to share with us today. But I. I don't. How do we meet Kevin? Do you remember? Was it a mutual introduction?

I believe so. Geez.

It's a good.

So I closed all my extraneous windows on my laptop to save space for this video. It's in my CRM somewhere. It's through Dan Kennedy at some. Yeah, he's one of our connection points. But it's been at least a decade.

I'm sure it was. Yeah. And I've had a couple decades with our buddy Dan and just learning and growing and learning about real marketing. So when we met Kevin. Kevin's been involved in marketing back to 1994. So I just happen to know that's 29 years, because my bride and I were married in 94. Just got to our anniversary. He sold one of his first ebooks online, payable by check. What's a check? That's the thing you write with a pen and a little book.

It is.

All right. And you had to mail it from the post office. Are they still.

He had to mail it to a post office box. This is 1994, right? It was e commerce 29 years ago.

Yep, yep. So from 95 to 98. Oh, this was very cool. I didn't know this about you till I read your bio. You were the webmaster at FedEx or a webmaster.

That was a lot of fun. That was I tell folks that's like being a mechanic for the Wright brothers. Yeah, hang out and brilliance drops on you. But at that time, FedEx.com had six web pages when I came on six. Wow. And it was, the Internet was so small they actually had an Internet yellow pages to list all of the websites. You could print them on paper and it would be current for a year. So the first, you know, phone directory of websites was about maybe this thick. And FedEx, wow.

Yeah.

I was just blessed to be a part of that.

That's crazy. And keep in mind that was 1995, a lot of years ago. Six web pages for FedEx. What a, what an experience. And since 98 he's been a copywriter, a marketing advisor for clients all over North America delivering, delivering sales gains. And this is what you want to listen to. Of more than $1 million on multiple occasions with direct mail online marketing. He's been interviewed by ABC tv, NBC News, CBS Radio, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Fortune Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine and too many others to list here. That's another reason we want to listen to Kevin Donlan. Kevin Donlan is one of our business partners, was for years in the agency business helping us with our affectionate. We get this straight third P. The promotions part, which is really where it starts. And he helped us explode in growth through his expertise. So thank you for that, Kevin. And he's the author, core, core co author of five books. Tell us more about that.

I like Core Author. That sounds like more work than co author. I had 21 quick ways to get more clients marketing multipliers. I was a contributor to one of the guerrilla marketing books that Jay Levinson had out. Geez, that's about 10 plus years ago. And then I have the forthcoming book coming out this year, the Client Cloning Blueprint. That doesn't, that's not part of the list. But it's been a fun ride and boy, you know, there's nothing I enjoy more than just sitting down with a like minded person like you and just riffing, sharing some ideas. I think we're gonna have a lot of fun today.

We're gonna have a lot of fun. And if you have something to write with and write on, great. If you don't, may want to pause this and go get it because as we say, don't think it. Ink it because you want to ink it. So you can sync it right up here where it counts. And he has, he's joining us to share some of his latest tips and tactics to help grow your insurance agency. Business. Kevin Donlen, again, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for spending some time today.

This is me. More important than fun. It's going to be useful. And I'm all about actionable ideas. No empty theory. So we're going to try to make the rubber hit the road quite a bit here today.

Yes, you are. And speaking of the client cloning blueprint, recently you sent me a copy of that. So thank you. For anybody who's hanging around at the end, we'll ask you for some information and maybe you can just instruct them how they can get their own. But let's prove that you know and have great value inside of that. So I'm going to kind of start off with a reminder for everybody, and this will kind of lead into what Kevin's going to talk about today. Everybody remembers the super complicated marketing plan, right?

Get clients, keep clients. And Kevin plays in both of those. I'll say his probably greater expertise is getting clients, but through the copy and all the other marketing strategies, it helps with keeping clients as well. Right, Kevin?

Yeah, you know, it's not sexy, the, the retention part, the keeping clients. I'm glad that you include that. That's so important because otherwise you're just pouring water in a sieve. You know, pick your analogy. The leaky bucket. People forget that. And if you just plug some leaks, you have to work less to retain and grow your revenue. And especially in a business like insurance, where your book of business just is going to naturally grow if you take care of your clients. You can't have two people coming in the front door and one person going out the fire exit every day. That's, that's, you know, you're losing money and you're losing time insanity. So keep the clients. That's, that's a part of my client cloning blueprint, actually. It's a retention 100 agree.

And if you're in the PNC business of the insurance agency industry, that's especially important because ultimately that is your wealth. Yeah. And we teach agencies to grow their business, create wealth, and have more freedom. So. And you help with all of those things. Thank you, Kevin. So, Kevin, you talk about the fact that people should make marketing job number one. Why is that?

Yeah, that's something I just wrote about on LinkedIn today. You know, marketing, marketing is important because if, if your marketing is done right, it makes selling easy. Probably the best definition of marketing I ever heard. It was from Peter Drucker. He said, you know, the, the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. Superfluous is an SAT word or a. An MCAT word. Unnecessary, super simple. So if you do your marketing right, which is, you know, finding the right prospects for your business, qualifying them, educating them, this is all marketing. If you do all that, then the sale, the selling, is fairly straightforward. It's like making 99 hacks at a big tree. That's the marketing. And then you just push it. That's the selling. And the tree topples. That's easy. So marketing done correctly, done right, makes selling superfluous, makes selling simple, easy. And so that's why it should be job one in my estimation. If you don't have your marketing in order, you're going to end up working for somebody else. So it's, you know, it's your. It's your most important job.

Yeah. And part of that is you wrote, today I'm looking at it, write a new job description for yourself.

Yeah.

List that as your most important task.

Right, yeah. Job descriptions are essential. Anyway. If you're running an agency, you're familiar with how to do that, but you should be in the business of marketing your agency, because without the marketing, you have no agency, you have no clients. I mean, it's not. Again, this may sound trite, but, you know, have you given this some thought recently or ever about your most important function at work? Every day. And what I do, I practice what I preach. I block out the first 90 minutes of every morning. It's just me working on my business. Marketing is what I'm doing in that 90 minutes. And so find time, block it off morning, afternoon, evening, whenever you work best, and make that your function, your number one function. Try that for a month or two and see where you get. Couldn't be any simpler. It's. It's simple, but it's not easy because it's asking you to make some, you know, changes to your routine, to your habit, to your way of thinking. But marketing could and should be job one. For anyone watching or listening, I want.

To make sure everybody here heard what Kevin just said. 90 minutes invested. Daily habits, Kevin.

Yeah, we'll talk about habits. I've got some. I got a little tool here that everyone can use to, to form new habits that, that matter, especially marketing habits.

We like that. Thank you for sharing that. So, yeah, daily habits, you got to be marketing. I mean, way back when, a few decades ago, one of my early marketing contributors to my mindset said, you need to spend the first time, 30 minutes of every day doing something regarding marketing. And he said, if you don't Know what to do? Start writing handwritten thank you notes to people.

Bingo. I was just gonna say that. Look, I mean, they're within arm's reach. I can always reach and get some thank you notes.

Yeah, I'm not gonna spill the beans in case somebody receives one. I just got order some new ones myself.

Address too. When we hang up, see, we're gonna mail each other thank you notes like two old vaudeville comedians getting on stage 30 years later doing the same act. That worked then. It still works. So yeah, thank you notes. I could talk for two hours on thank you notes, but thank you notes, you know, it's. It's direct mail for busy people. If you don't know what to mail, mail a thank you note. A thank you note, it, it makes you tangible. What, what you're selling in insurance is a promise. People write a check. And what happens after that? It's like donating to a charity. With a charity, at least you're happy. You know, you're helping some starving kid somewhere. Or you're put. Putting clean water somewhere. But with insurance, am I making all state richer? You know, what's. What, what, what's this got to do with me? So you're. It's a promise. And it's intangible. It's, you know, it's worse than intangible. It's money going out with nothing coming back. Peace of mind. How do you give a value to that? But a thank you note is a tangible thing. You can hold it and, and it's valuable and there's research upon research that shows something that's tangible is more believable. It leaves, it actually leaves a deeper imprint in your brain than something you can read on screen. An email, for example. An email is literally ephemeral. It just, it's, it's fog. It's digital fog. But a thank you note that you hold in your hand, it leaves a different imprint in your brain cells. It connects them differently and more powerfully. So a thank you note is a way to get tangible. If nine other agents are quoting someone and you're the one who sends a thank you note, you're probably going to win because you're the only one who's getting tangible and real and more trustworthy. As you can tell, I'm pretty passionate about this. I could go on. But thank you notes, you know, if you've got nothing else to do. Whenever I'm in a mall, walking past a place where people, you know, the employees are scrolling on their phone, I could turn that business around. Any business around, I'll say, okay, look, if you don't have customers, you have a job. You're going to just write thank you notes. And if you have to write them the names out of the phone book, fine. But anyone who comes into your agency or into your world, if you've got five minutes or 10 minutes, you or your staff have some free time. Just bang out one thank you note. That's the key, is to start small, something that's doable. And if you want to write another one, fine. But just give yourself a low bar to get over to start this one a day. Just like vitamins or they're better than vitamins because they pay you back in in all kinds of different ways. Anyway, thank you notes. I could go on, but that was an unplanned detour. But a good one.

Well, let me detour us again. Y' all talk about pro athletes and special Forces operations as an example. What do they do?

Well, so that what they're doing at the end of every day. In the military it's called an after action report in AAR and in football or baseball it's called watching game film. What you do at the end of every day is take 15 minutes and I'm going to do it after we finish here and you review your day. What did I learn? What went well, what didn't? What can I do better tomorrow? It's basically it four questions and I've got an Excel spreadsheet going back four years now. It's got maybe 300 little things I've learned each day and I turn those into. I'm writing a book for my daughter. This is off the. This is a real detour. I'm writing a book, you know, of dad, Things dad screwed up with so that you don't have to. That's the working title. But you know, things I learned, right? And so in my business I put those to work. I've got. It's hundreds. It's hundreds. It's huge. And so I review those every month, every year. And it's how you get better. You know the reason that airplanes don't crash anymore basically is because they've done so many post crash investigations. They look at the black box, they determine what went wrong and they set up a new standard operating procedure, a new checklist in the cockpit so it doesn't happen again. That's why air travel is so safe. Imagine if you or your teenager did an after action report after the next fender bender. What were you doing, son? You know, if you went through that, you might not have another car accident again ever, if you did it correctly. So learn, you know, learn every day is a learning opportunity. And when it comes to marketing, you and I both know this. It's all about testing, which is, you know, you send a promotion out and what comes back. And it worked, you do it again. If it didn't work, you make some changes. That's called testing and marketing. And this is how you get better at it. If you don't test, you're just going to repeat the same things. And so the end of the day, you just want to just think of as watching game film or doing an after action report. But it can be five minutes, don't have to do 15. Anything's better than nothing. Just review what you did that day.

Yep.

And that's how you get better at marketing or anything.

And we probably picked it up in the common circles that we met in, in the beginning as marketers. We test, right?

Oh yeah, the testing is, is fundamental. The, the marketing I do is called direct response marketing. You do it too. You're not getting. People say, I want to get my name out there. Well, why do you want to do that? You want to get a response. You want to get people to react, call or schedule an appointment or request a quote, buy this. That's a response. And that's how you know if your marketing is working. If you're not getting a response, you're doing something wrong. You got the wrong market or you've got the wrong message or you've got the wrong offer. Those are the big three. And your, your, your marketing is, is measurable. It should be. When I do LinkedIn posts, I track the time of day that I post them. I track, did I include a picture? I, I track the title. There's a half a dozen things or so that I'm tracking. So I'm getting better at it. I can't get worse because I'm not repeating mistakes. And I've been on LinkedIn for maybe 13, 14 years. I was an early adopter. I could be doing better, but I'm getting better. And we can all get better, but only if we try to get better.

100%. So market, message, and offer. I believe you said correct.

Yeah. And in direct response marketing and in good marketing in general, the three areas in order of importance are the list, who are you talking to?

100%.

Yeah. The offer. What are you offering them in exchange for their time or their money? And then third is the creative, the copy, the message. What are you saying. Exactly. And that's, you know, my job as a copywriter. If you get the list right and if you get the offer right, then the copy is not as important, frankly. And it kind of comes together. So in, in your business, anyone watching or listening, who are you talking to? That's the most important thing. You can't sell fire insurance to people who live in an igloo, for example. So if you're talking to the wrong people, the offer doesn't matter. The, the brilliant words or, or, or, or videos or whatever you have, they don't matter if you're not talking to the right people. So list offer and then creative in that order.

I also have, I'm looking at a visual over here because they have these marketing visuals all over the place because I like to look at them and actually do something with them. I've also got the word deadline under offer on one of my visuals.

So yeah, that's the, the offer elements. We could go on. That's a, that's a little core class in itself actually. That would be right. I don't know if we could do that justice to talk about the elements of an offer. Have me back again. We can do that.

Fantastic. Part two. So let me ask you about something that you just talked about though before. I've got a couple other questions to ping you with. So you were talking about the marketplace and reaching a particular marketplace. How do you get into the mind. Great question of the marketplace.

Very important too. So what I like to do in my marketing is to use the words of the buyers, the words of the clients, the words of the market. You can find them several ways. People may have heard of this one. You go over to Amazon and find books that talk about what you're selling and then read the reviews. And you want to read the reviews that are about three and four star, one star reviews are from competitors or people that, you know, maybe the author beat, beat me up in eighth grade and I'm going to give them a one star review. It's irrational most of the time or my book was late. I'm giving this book a one star. It has nothing to do with the kind. I see that all the time. My book came late. Well, that's not the fault of the author, but they gave him a one star review. So five stars is usually their immediate family or their customers or clients, you know. So three, four star ratings. Those are the people who bought the book. So they have money in play here. They paid to learn about this and their opinions are valuable. And then look at. So just look at the wording and there are tools online that you can use. I'm blanking now. Search for free Word Cloud Generator, Google Ad or Word Cloud Generator. What you can do is have an assistant go through and find. I'll give you a couple things to do here. Find book reviews that talk about what you're looking for. The other thing would be to find testimonials from people who are buying what you're selling. So go to competitors websites and of course look at your own website. That's the very best place. Probably start there. Look at what are your clients saying about you. That's the market. So start there. Actually I, I said to Amazon because there's an infinite number of book reviews and you may not have an infinite number of testimonials. So start with your testimonials, dump them into a word cloud generator and it'll show like one or two words appears a lot and maybe three or four other ones like I'm just gonna riff your service or friendly.

Right.

You know, extensive or super duper, whatever. You're going to find words that pop out and that'll show you some themes among your testimonials and that's interesting to have and useful. But just be looking at the, the words that your clients are saying about you and that's literally what the market is thinking. You can take it a step further. I've done this several times. You can find headlines for your web pages, headlines for your sales letters just in the. What the customers are saying about you. I had one of my best performing. I, I generated a million dollars for a company in about a year. I changed the headline on their website to something that one of their target market people actually said. It was a, it was a. I can't share too much of the. Well, I can. It was, it was a company that makes testing tutoring for high school students and it was to, it's tutoring them on the sats and the acts and their original headline was Results Obsessed Test Prep. I'll never forget that. It was just a mouthful and that was them talking about themselves. We're obsessed about results. Well, I listened. I was in a.

You mean they were playing their favorite radio station?

Yeah, me, me, me. I mean it's wiifm. Yeah, the company, it was, it was worse. No, it's, that's fine for the, for the buyer's perspective, what's in it for me? That's, that's, that's important. But what's not important is what you think about yourself or what you say about yourself, because that's normally not at all what your clients and. And prospects are thinking or saying. So I overheard a kid who had gotten a rejection letter from her dream college, and she said, mom, mom, dad, I got rejected again. And boom, that was the headline. Because what happens if these kids don't excel on their SAT scores? They get rejected from their dream school. So I changed the headline from test prep to mom, dad, I got rejected and doubled sales in. In a month. More than doubled. And wow, a million dollars extra per year with a few other changes. That's what can happen when you listen to what the market is saying about you. Not listening to the voice in your head talking about you or your business. It's what are people saying? And so start with your own client testimonials and then look at competitors. As long as you can do what they're doing better or differently, that's a valid source of market intel. But that's a great question, Mike. This is how you get inside the mind of the market, and you actually use their words to sell what you're selling. It's much easier, much more effective.

I think we should give them one more ninja tip on the strategy.

All right, let me give you another idea. So this is how you really take this to the bank. You write something called an endorsement letter. We're all familiar with sales letters or.

Post whose letters cut out.

Sales letters.

Yeah, yeah, I got it.

Lead generation letters. What I like to do for clients is to write a letter in the voice of one of their ideal clients, and it's from. So if you send a letter from. From Kevin to Mike, and I'm talking about marketing, and I'm saying I use this guy, and he's great Mike. And I'm just like you. I own a business, and this is a peer to peer communication. I bought this thing, and maybe you should buy it, right? Instead of the company coming down to you with their sales that are buy our stuff. Where your sales resistance is up. If it's peer to peer, buyer to buyer, customer to customer, it's a completely different kind of communication. So I call it an endorsement letter. And it's basically one person telling. It's a referral on stilts is what it is, because you can send it out to thousands of people by direct mail. And I put $300,000 into a company's sales pipeline in about 45, 60 days. They'd been dead in the water for a year because of COVID But I took one of their very best clients. And I knew they were delighted because they had this outlandishly good testimonial. And we interviewed them, and I wrote the letter in their voice. And they're still mailing that letter. They're opening new states all over America. They've been mailing the letter for two years now. It's an endorsement letter. It's written from one person to another instead of from a company to a prospect. So it's a completely different dynamic. And it's the. It's the words of the market doing the selling for you.

Wow. That's not where I was going with that, but thank you for dropping that gold nugget, man. So what. What I was going to do, the majority of the agencies out there more than likely record their phone calls.

Okay. Wow.

Just for, you know, internal improvement, etc. Etc. So all they need to do is go back and pull some of those recordings.

Oh, my God.

And actually listen to them and transcribe them. Well, listen, just review the transcription. They have a whole gold mine right at their fingertips.

You've got about 500 blog posts for a start. Think about it. Take the names out. Now. There's a whole book called you ask, they answer. No, they ask you. Right. Are you familiar with it?

I've heard of it. I'm not sure which it is.

It's the name of a book. It's also a strategy. It's writing blog content based on answers to people's questions. So if you've got a good staff person answering questions by phone, they're writing blog posts all day, every day for you. Record them.

Long. Oh, my gosh. I mean, think about it.

So, Kevin, let me reel you back in. Come on.

I want to hang up and. And. And call some friends. No, I just got this idea. But I mean, think of it. You've got. You've got a book you can write.

Yeah. Oh, 100%. 100%. So, Kevin, the real question I wanted to ask you in. In the beginning, and we got sidetracked, But I hope this is helpful for everybody. I. Kevin just keeps dropping gold nugget after gold nugget. And Kevin, I have real gold nuggets here.

Nice. You know, so anyway, and.

And I can feel them dropping out of the sky. Kevin, what marketing strategies and tactics are working these days for businesses that sell high trust service like insurance?

So we've. Excuse me. I'm gonna take your time. Important to have a good speaking voice. You need water for that.

That's right. Well, I learned that I Learned that in 1989 when I was in one of my early day speaking events at a local chamber. And I was so nervous that I was so dry my mouth, I couldn't speak.

And I was sitting there and I'm like, somebody help me, bring me a glass. And nobody moved.

I, I walked straight down the aisle, poured a glass, chugged it, grabbed two more and went back and finished.

But anyway, well, so we've been talking about, I think the, the overall strategy if you're selling a high trust service, is to make your service tangible, make your promises, your messaging tangible. So direct mail, so a thank you note is going to be working for everybody. If you want to scale that up a bit. What I like to do, first of all, this is a letter. I want people to not miss the fact that this is not an email. I print my messages and mail them.

Can I invest in your business? Yeah, yeah.

So that's important is the offer I'm making here is can I invest in your business? That's more. That stands out compared to 17 ways to get more clients. I could say that. But that is a message that they hear variations of all day, every day. Can I invest in your business? Is a pretty interesting offer. And just this is dead simple. I included their, their first name in the headline. Can I invest in your business?

So if you do nothing else is, you know, find an offer that's just saying things differently. It's very disarming to ask people, can I invest in you? So for insurance. Well, guess what? Can I invest in you and your life? Can I invest in your life? What? I'm just making this up. What do you mean? Well, why don't we sit down for a cup of coffee? I'll pay. I'll invest three bucks for coffee and 30 minutes or as long, as short as you want. I'll invest my time and money and you learn about you. Maybe I can help you, maybe I can't. But I'll sure give you some ideas that might open your eyes. So instead of can I sell you life insurance? Can I invest in your life? There is an offer for folks. My, my rates are pretty cheap here. I'm writing this one for three. The other thing I like to do in my letters is include a QR code.

That's big nowadays. I mean, Covid taught us to use QR codes, right?

Yeah, it's. They're easy, they're free. You can get an app. I, this is a free app I got on my phone. I've been using a couple years now at least a year and a half and generates them for free. The other thing is they try to use pets. No one hates dogs and if they hate dogs, I don't want them as a client. So this is my dog Hulk. He's pretty photogenic. And the other thing, the element that everyone reads is a caption. So you know this as a direct marketer, everyone reads photo captions. Yep, they just do. And the caption here says, this is my dog Hulk. I knew you would read this. What else do I know? There's a lot going on there. I knew they would say if I, and I, and people ask what does that mean? Because I knew you'd read the caption. I know the elements of a letter and you responded to this. And this has been my best performing letter of the, of the year, the young year so far. Just, there's a lot here. I won't go through it all but you know, make an offer that's different. Make it tangibly on paper, have a little bit of fun, use, use humor judiciously, you use it if you can. And use QR codes to make it dead simple for people to respond to your message. And that's how again, the broader strategy is just find a way to send something on paper, people be real. And that's how. One very simple and powerful way to sell a high trust service is to get tangible.

So, so let's think about this and I'm going to slow down just a minute. And by the way, I agree. Kids and animals. Kids and animals. Kids and animals. There's something about them.

Right?

So you said high trust.

Money follows trust. And a lot of people nowadays, they're so inclined to just send out an email, send out an email and that's going to fix everything. So what's the difference based on your experience in sending out that high trust piece versus just launching another digital piece?

Well, again, this couldn't be simpler. I don't want me people to miss the fact that anything on paper is more believable than anything on screen. Nothing you can hold. So again, if you're, if you're in doubt, send a thank you now. That's the default. You know, you have no excuse to not do something in the mail and it shows that you took the time to find their mailing address. So of course there's a little bit of time and money perhaps that you need to invest in qualifying people and in finding their, their, their physical address. But your email inbox nowadays, just in the last couple months, I, you know, the Amount of cold email I get, which is spam, it's just going up astronomically. We're really increasingly less protected from spam than ever before. But almost no. And my favorite thing to hear is, well, no one mails stuff anymore. That's the point exactly. Your mailbox is not crowded. Your email inbox is jammed. So any excuse you can use to get in the mail to people, use it well.

And what you're doing is you're separating yourself from everybody else.

Right. So.

So what are some other ways that. Go ahead.

I'm sorry, was going to say this. I don't have the picture in front of me. It's on one of my blog posts. My agent, I've had him for 12 years, Marty, he sent me a thank you note with a gift card in the mail and it was for a referral I'd sent him. I believe he got tangible with me. And I, I don't see Marty anymore. We used to be in the same networking group. But he sent me a tangible thanks. And so what I do, I took a picture of it and blogged about it and told everybody about it. He didn't plan on that. And that's. You can't plan that or hope for that. But I was happy to do that. So in an agent, if you get a referral, get tangible with your thanks, get tangible with your gratitude. And that was a directly applicable example from my experience working with my agent. And I've still, you know what? There are cheaper. I've been told by more than a few people you're probably overpaying. And I'm saying so you know, so what? I like Marty, service is great and I can't get service. Like I called the agency and they know me, they treat me right and they send me stuff in the mail. So price is not the most important thing.

Aha. I 100 agree. I proud to say that I received a handwritten thank you card yesterday for a referral that I had sent to an agent and I had a gift card in there. Which leads me to ask a out of left field question.

What kind of gift card was was for local restaurants? Probably 20 bucks. Yeah, yeah.

I, I had a thought last night after I was very grateful, don't get me wrong, I was super grateful that they took the time to send the card and most importantly what they wrote in the card caught my heart. But it was a Starbucks gift card and I'm a fan of coffee, but I don't have time.

Right.

It's my most precious resource to run and get coffee. I just give them away. And our kids love them. But I was thinking, you know, maybe we need to help them people get more creative, you know, with what they're doing, as that small gift, if you will. So just. I was just curious about that. So what are two or three other ways as we begin to move to try to wrap this up? Because you and I could go on for hours that insurance agents can set themselves apart. We've been talking about some of the ways, but do you have any other one or two ideas?

Well, so I'm just going to prioritize here. Niching is always a good idea. Find a niche. So I'm thinking of the. The world's richest sport agent, Scott Boras. He got. He. He makes $100 million per year in agency commissions from the contracts he negotiates. He works only with baseball players. And the reason he got his first two clients who were pro baseball players is he said, you know, guys, you can talk to a lot of agents. I'm the only one who used to play pro ball, and I have a law degree. And they. And the guys went. And so they chose him. So if you can talk to. So, of course, niching requires a little bit of thought and, and some bravery because you got to say no to other stuff. But if you can find a way to niche geographically or by the lines that you write or the people that you serve, you know, there are. I know there are very wealthy financial advisors who only work with dentists, for example, and there are real estate agents who also work with dentists and orthodontists. So I'm not saying to be the agent only for dentists, but if you can find a way to specialize and say, well, you know, there are a lot of agents you can call, but I'm the only one who is this and that and the other thing that's powerful. So niching is always. You can work in any industry, in any economy, good or bad. The other thing, broad, more broadly, is, I just told you an example from the world of, you know, pro sports. So look to other industries for ideas. That's probably one of the most important things. It's a concept called funnel vision, which I learned from Jay Abraham, who's the smartest, smartest marketer I've ever met. And it's what we, most of us suffer from, tunnel vision, which is this. We look at just other agents and just other people. Funnel vision is like a satellite dish. You just open your antenna wide and you look for ideas from other industries. And that's how you make a breakthrough because no one is pulling industry pulling ideas from other industries like you could be. And that's how you just completely blindside your competitors and startle everybody as just being pulling ideas from other industries. That's a 30 minute.

Yeah, that's when it all changed for me because I started that date myself almost 20 years ago studying outside the industry from some incredible marketers and then, then I landed upon you as well. But yeah, Jay Abraham was one of them. And the thing I learned from Jay was risk reversal.

Sure.

Which led from us taking our one page guarantee to a four page guarantee, etc. Etc. So yeah, there's just incredible opportunities out there for everybody. So Kevin, I think we should definitely do a part two if you're open to it.

I sure am. I apologize.

I know there's more good stuff for everybody that's either watching or listening. But we like to keep these on a certain topic time frame. So let's wrap today up with one more question, if I may.

Your company is called Client Cloning Systems. What does that mean?

Well, I like to have help folks grow their business from the inside, which is if you had one ideal client and can turn them into two and then can turn that two into four, it gets pretty interesting pretty quickly. So there are six ways I've hit upon that can help you clone your best clients, which is basically you're making them so much more valuable that the growth is, is pretty much internal. It's an ideal way to be. And this is not my idea. There was a company called Bain and Company. Bill Bain was the founder. God. They were multi, multimillion dollar company and they grew almost entirely from delighting their own clients. Very little if no outside advertising. So again, I'm pulling an idea from strategic consulting. That's Bain. There's Scott boras who's doing $100 million a year, no advertising. He's delighting his clients. So this is a feasible idea that can work for any business. It's got clients. It's important for you to distinguish clients from customers. Customers. Walmart has customers. Right. They're price shoppers. You don't want them. Clients are people that you take care of. You get to know. And oftentimes they can become friends. That's not necessary. But these are people that you protect with your expertise. Those are clients you want to clone those. And so I, I could have called my company Kevin's Copywriting, but I thought client cloning. I practice what I preach. I'm the only person if you Google client cloning systems, it's all me and what I offer for my website, for anyone who's interested, it's a free client cloning kit. It's the only one on earth you can Google client cloning kit. It's all me. And it's a. It's a series of six reports, comes to you by mail, and it shows you how to grow your business from the inside by cloning your best clients.

So let's go ahead and go there right now. What is your website?

It is, surprisingly, clientclothingsystems.com that is www.clientclothingsystems.com. folks visit that website and request a free client cloning kit. And connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I'd love to stay in touch with folks on LinkedIn. That's. I'm on LinkedIn every day.

Yeah. So I was going to say, how can people get to know a little bit more about you? You just said it. Go to the website or catch up with Kevin Donlin. D O N L I N. Correct. Kevin.

Very good. Yeah. Most people say Donnelly. It's because my great grandfather coming over from Ireland was illiterate and my name should be Donalyn. But he's. He was either slurring his speech or the guy had wax in his ears. And at Ellis island, it became Donlin. But it's D O N L I.

N. Well, there's a lot of pubs in Ireland.

That's another 30 minute conversation.

Yeah, I, I or more. Right. Hey, that's fantastic. Well, Kevin, you know, I'm just buzzing with more questions for you, but we've kind of run against time block because I know you are in high demand and I want to let you go. But, you know, you're talking about this ide deal client thing. I've been. I thought about this for about the last 10 minutes because we had a fella and I'm sure you heard of Mr. Bob Berg, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. So Bob Berg spoke at our boot camp last year.

I like Bob.

Yeah. And then he learned from Joe Gerard. Right. Most famous car salesman in the world that everybody knows. 250 people that come to their wedding or come to their funeral. Yeah, I make it super simple. I just say 100. It's easier math. So if you got 800 clients, you have 8,000 potential.

People to connect with. And you just talked about it. Clone the 800. Or even if you split that up and call it 200 still, that's 20,000. And then that's what you do you help that clone effect to bring in all the resources from. Yep. You've probably never seen this yet. Their existing acre of diamonds.

Exactly.

Everything you'd ever wants right beneath your feet.

Right, Kevin? Exactly. Told them. Couldn't agree more.

So exciting. I mean that's what just gets me Gideon excited and. And people don't see it and I have. I've heard of the Bain company as well Bain and McKenzie study which is what we use for our lifetime value of a customer.

Sure.

So. And that's what you do also. You help make sure the get clients keep clients keeping the client's aspect by cloning. I hope everybody's picking all this up because yeah, we're definitely going to do a part two. I'm not sure when it's going to be, but with any luck it'll be very soon and we're going to continue this conversation. Sound good, Kevin?

Fine. I was just gonna riff on a McKinsey study, but I'm gonna stop talking now and we should close and let people get on with their lives and catch up with again very soon.

Well, no more importantly, stay tuned for part two of this captivating educational series on our favorite subject, promotions and marketing with Mr. Kevin Donlin. So sound good, Kevin?

Fantastic. I can't wait.

Client cloning systems dot com. Go get. Go there and get your six part. What is it?

It's a free client cloning kit with some goodies inside.

Yeah, there you go. Free client cloning kit or connect with Kevin Donlin D O N L I n on LinkedIn. He's out there and does phenomenal stuff. So Kevin Donlin, thank you so much sir for being with us today.

Thank you, Mike. My great pleasure. Talk to you again very soon.

Yeah, hang tight. So hey, if this is your first time on the podcast, welcome. My name is Mike Stomo. I'm recognized as a leading author, speaker and coach for the independent insurance agency industry. You can find out more about me and everything we do atunstoppable profit producer.com and if you want to come to one of our virtual events, go to upfastart.com where you will learn all of this and more and how to implement it in your agency. And of course, our live event portal is be unstoppable bootcamp.com all of our events and everything we do is designed to help you grow your business, create wealth so you too can have more freedom to live life on your own terms. And that's why we exist. I've got 35 plus years as a proud independent insurance agent in the trenches doing this with Kevin Donlin and many others by my side. So that's where all this comes from. And we just want to help you. So please make sure you go to if this is your first time, go to unstoppable profit podcast.com go up to the top hit, subscribe so you don't miss one valuable episode, including part two with Kevin Donlin. And if you got great value out of the podcast today, please share it with somebody else that you know. Just send them to Unstoppable Profit podcast.com have them subscribe so they can continue to learn and grow as well. And of course, we're out there on all the channels as well. Stitcher, Spotify, our YouTube channel, Apple Podcast, Amazon and more. So we're out there for your growth, growth and learning opportunity every single day. So thank you so much for being with us. And again, Kevin Donlin, thank you, sir.

Thank you, Mike.

All right, everybody, get out there. Make a difference. Be unstoppable. Leave no regrets, take action. And remember, you got this. We believe in you. We'll see you in the next episode.

Can't get enough of the Unstoppable Profit podcast. Come join our next live three day boot camp in warm, beautiful San Diego. Invest in your ticket today at be unstoppablebootcamp.com that's be unstoppable boot camp dot com.