The 2-Year Content Strategy That Built a $70M Business

Justin Brock. Over five years he was able to go from a zero valuation to $70 million valuation for his insurance business.

To lock in that level of security for your family forever, it's hard to beat that feeling. There's casinos all around us here in Vegas. It's like playing with house money.

And that's a game that most people won't play because they need money today. Which game are you going to play? If we back up to the point where someone is, let's just say, making six figures, doing insurance sales, real estate, mortgage sales, you said the way you did this, to make this actually like a system, you went into digital marketing.

That's the approach. I took to it and had some big wins. But I would all day when I started and then at night I'd stay up all night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts and playing around with Facebook ads platform.

So when you look at what ads worked the best with getting these customers, was there like a formula or a framework that you followed?

I think the number one thing was.

So, you know what's crazy is we're all going to spend the next decade or more working in our business, doing sales, marketing, whatever it is that you do. At the end of that road, we're going to have something. Now, wouldn't it be nice if that thing was worth way more or if we had some way to do a few tweaks along the way that could make that thing worth 10 times more. That way you can retire with extreme wealth and do all these things. And I thought that this was only for the super rich, super wealthy, but what I found out is it's actually attainable for every single one of us. If we knew the blueprint, if we knew the game plan. So for today's episode, I brought on Justin Brock. This guy made his mind up that he's going to build his insurance business a certain way. And over five years he was able to go from a zero valuation to seven seventy million dollar valuation for his insurance business. And many of you are in a similar business right now, whether it's that industry or another industry. And he was able to create a, what was it, a 34 million dollar exit for yourself.

Yes.

And this just happened in 2024, guys. So five years ago he was here, five years later, he's now at this point. And so thanks for being on the show today, bro. I would love to break all of this down.

Absolutely. Yeah, it's, it's incredible to, to see, you know, how long some people work to kind of build Themselves into a very profitable prison. But then it. If you know how to design the path. And I didn't know either. I actually, the first five years in the industry I spent doing it the wrong way. And then I saw other people with exits and said, hold on now, maybe I'm looking at this wrong way. Maybe we should be building an asset.

Yeah. And before we're going to get into all the tactics on how you did this and how people can apply, because I think there's so many lessons for them throughout your journey. But before we even get into that, I think it is important and I don't feel like this message is out there of like, what is the exit plan? You know, everyone's talking about making money, passive money, active money, flipping houses, doing sales, marketing, running an agency, whatever it is, real estate, all these things that I talk about. But how do you get out? You know what I mean? Like, all they talk about is how to make more money. And then what are we going to do? Just make some more money, hopefully invest it and then retire. I guess that works for people, but for me, I would like to have some value to the thing I'm doing. Like, this is my life's work. I would like it to be worth something, you know, rather than just, what's your pipeline this month? How much money did you make this month? And I think for most people in sales, the only value they have is whatever they're making this month.

Yeah.

And if you, you could spend 20 years building your business, what's your pipeline this month? Oh, I've got this much sales. Okay. That's how much you're worth. Oh, this is a slow month. Well, you're worthless. Like, that's not fair, you know, So I think, like, that's the main thing that I think people need to get out of that thinking and into what we're about to talk about.

You know, I think sales is like the gateway drug for me. Like, it, it got me into this world and, you know, I was able to make money. And when I came into it, like my, my modest goal was replace military income of 60,000.

Yeah.

And then you kind of blaze past that and you start to open your, your eyes and you get around other people and see what they're doing. And that was what opened me up to the idea of building a marketable asset that has value of value at that. And 70 million was not even. It still wasn't the target. We actually just, you know, are in a great industry with great multiples on your net revenue. But it is nice to be, be able to begin with the end in mind and, you know, figure out what you want to do and create that freedom. Coincidentally, I found that I still want to double down and continue to work. But it's always nice to be able to do things on your terms versus feeling like you absolutely have to show up every day just to make ends.

Yeah, that's really cool that the people who achieve the best outcomes and as far as financial outcomes, you'll find that they don't stop working. Like they just, they just love the game.

Yeah.

And, but now it gives you that freedom to do whatever you want, which is really cool. Like you said, live life on your own terms. And I think that's what most people want, you know, so just if we rewind five years ago, because I think this is really the part that would bring the most value. It's like, okay, so five years ago you're in insurance, you've been doing some door to door stuff. What made you switch to be like, okay, was it like, I saw these things going on and I'm going to switch the way I'm doing business, or was it more about, I just want to find a more scalable way of running my business.

So first it was, you know, like you said, door to door sales. And I realized pretty quickly I got a boost of confidence realizing that people will buy things from me and not by doing anything nefarious. Like I could go out and actually help people get them the product that they were going to buy from someone anyway and make them trust me. And that was great. But there was a lot of distance between, between each individual sale and so on on the road. I love podcasts, by the way, because I was listening to podcasts in my fully unloaded Toyota Corolla back then.

Yeah, yeah.

And I would, I would listen to these podcasts like productivity marketing. And eventually I made my way across some podcasts, like some of the things Russell Brunson was putting out at the time and, and started thinking about marketing. And I'm telling you guys, like, I wasn't the kid that was 18 years old. That's like, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I went in the Marine Corps, did that for eight years, had kids, had a family, and I came to that late. But marketing sales was the gateway drug, gets me to marketing, start doing a little bit of marketing, realized I was able to develop leads and I could build a small sales team. So I did that before I was ever thinking about the big goal of like, what is the value of what we're building, it was really, how can I sell more by help? Or how can I help more people by shortening that prospecting cycle. But then that got me to win these incentive trips where you would go with insurance companies that sometimes will do, like, their top salespeople and bring them together. And I started meeting guys who were on those sales trips who later on sold their insurance agency. And I would hear the rumors of what they were getting paid. And that had me looking into. So it's like this layer of like, I'm gonna learn how to sell. I'm gonna learn how to prospect better. I'm gonna learn how to market. And then it was. Was, wait a minute. What I'm building has this big marketable as a marketable asset. Now I need to learn business operations and how to do that. So it's not like, you know, a lot of these guys are. I find most people that are selling their businesses, they're not Harvard MBAs, you know, they're just guys that are figuring it out one step at a time and. And just doing the work, you know? Yeah.

This is crazy too, because it kind of. You. What you just outlined there is a journey that most people go through. And this, guys, this works regardless of whether it's mortgage sales, real estate sales, insurance sales. Like, it doesn't matter what you're selling. Even people some people in my community will watch will are selling services to businesses, like agency stuff, you know, or coaching or consulting. It doesn't matter. Like, everybody starts off selling something, and then you do that, you make money. That's great. You can only go so far. So then now what you want to do is build a sales team. So I need, like, people who want to go to the next level, hire people, and then they start making. Not they can do more sales, so they start making more money. But then I think what really flipped the switch for me and got me into the seven figures and beyond was becoming a good marketer. That's what you talked about. So I feel like it's like sales. One to one sales, you know, one to many with the team and doing that and scaling that as much as you can. And then it gets into like, okay, I want to become marketer, not just work on sales, because I think the best marketers don't have to be the best salespeople, because now you're. You're bringing in so much, right? And then from there, I think people just usually will make so much money, and I think they think that's the End. And it could be for you, like, maybe you make so much money you, you make seven figures a year or you make good six figures a year. You put that money in the right things and then you retire. That's cool. But I think they don't realize that there's this whole other level to the game, which is what you just talked about, which is now build that into a marketable asset. Like an asset that has value that can be purchased by private equity or another business.

Yeah. And it's. Some of those things become like, score. Like you said, it does turn into. You're gamifying it a little bit. So like, if I'm, if I'm, you know, I'm selling and if some, at some point it's, I'm trying to get out of the grind, then I escape the grind to some degree. But then there's like this, oh, there's this other level. I could completely escape it. And then, then you do escape it. Like when I sold, you know, technically you're escaped, like, you know, I don't, you don't have to do anything. But at that point you kind of feel like, okay, but there's still these, these other levels I can get to. You know, you get into. I mean, if you really look at, I feel like the hierarchy of, you know, just business 101, it's sales marketing, you know, general biz ops and sales team and culture development. And then you get into like corporate strategy and investment strategy and diversifying. And so it's like, it's not, it's not that any of this stuff is all that high level of information. It's just you're, you're, you're piling on enough info one layer at a time to build your, your mind into the asset that you need. And you're just not afraid to screw up, you know, because like, you know, when we're, When I first started hiring salespeople, it was still like, you know, are they, are they going to be good? Am I going to be able to train them? What I found out, like you said earlier, is I was, I thought I was a good salesperson. I was a better marketer than I was a salesperson. And then I hired people that were much better salespeople than me. Some, some were, some weren't. But I didn't need them all to be, you know, if I could be a good enough marketer, I could turn a mediocre salesperson into a cash cow.

For the business, 100%. So, yeah, I think of that being the big thing of like, okay, I'm going to flip into marketing and bring in more business, bring in more leads and we will get into the tactics on how to do that. But I think what I want people to understand is like, look, we see people in our industry, insurance, you've talked about this. There's so many exits and it's the guy next door. Sometimes it's not like who you would think who's having this big outcome. I've seen people, I've been shocked to see, bro over the last year or two, there's been so much consolidation within our industry. There's a lot of people selling their smaller mortgage business and getting bought up by a bigger company and having a really decent financial outcome for that, even in a down market. I've seen real estate teams being purchased by another company because the team has really dialed in their sales processes and they have high quality people and somebody just wants to pick that up and go. And they'll pay a premium for that. And what this premium is, and we'll get into explaining, this is the multiple that people pay of your ebitda, which is basically your net revenue. Right. So can you quickly explain for people like whenever there's an acquisition, the main thing that people look at is ebitda, which is basically just your net income. Right. After a certain amount of expense.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Even earnings, before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. So a big acronym.

It's basically your net.

It's closely, very closely related to your net income. Sometimes it could be a little more than your net, sometimes it could be a little less, depending on the business you're in and what variables there are.

But so it's like before these certain types of, like somebody might do a huge depreciation write off, it would be.

Before that, right before that. So sometimes you get hit a little bit on your net revenue, but sometimes like in our case our EBITDA was slightly higher than our net revenue, but not a lot. Like just a little bit. Yeah, like add backs and, and then also you'll have companies that might be running certain, you know, egregious personal expenses to their company and they'll let you remove that because once you sell it, you're not going to do that anymore. So.

Yeah.

But anyway, basically your net revenue and when you're looking at, you know, your, your multiple value of your net revenue, you know, some industries will have a 1, 2, 3x, some will have a 5 to 7, some will have a, you know, 7 to 15. And then in software, sometimes you'll see 20 plus. Like I've seen as high as like 25. This. You got to understand what they're buying though. They're buying, they're buying a predictable amount of revenue, but also a growth in that revenue. So if they buy you at 10 million in EBITDA or net revenue this year, but you've been growing 30% net every year. So like what they're hoping is that three or four years in, like you've grown, you've had this compound annual growth rate that they are buying you at a discount. Now there's risk involved in it for them. But this is where the true passive income investors are. The people that are investing in these private equity groups that are coming in and buying things that are already existing. Right. But how you break into that, we're kind of in this world where everybody thinks you can't break into the wealth. But if you build the active income operation from the ground up, be it insurance or H vac or any kind of real estate brokers, any, anything like that, whatever it is, I can build it and then I can sell at a multiple high enough, all of a sudden now I can take my money and invest it with the same people that bought my business.

Yeah. Truly passive.

Yes. Then you're truly. And that's how you break into it. Most people are thinking like, I'll never have that much money. Well, you just have to build something that they value that much. And then those same people you're trying to be like will buy your shit.

Yeah, that makes sense. So when you think about this being more realistic, if we back up to the point where someone is, let's just say, making six figures, doing insurance sales, like doing real estate mortgage sales, I guess the first step would be to get more sales, to build that, to be more scalable. Right. To increase their income. That's step one. And then you can get into scaling a team, becoming a leader, hiring leaders, all that stuff. But in that first step, you said the way you did this to make it more of like an actual system and predictable rather than the roller coaster that most salespeople are on. To make this actually like a system, you went into digital marketing. So it was it literally just running ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Originally it was Facebook, just. So I actually came across a podcast back in the day called the Art of Paid Traffic.

Okay.

And. And I was just back again. I was door to door sales and I would listen to him and he was talking about Facebook ads. And this was early in the monetization of Facebook. I mean a few years in, but people weren't doing insurance much on there. It was actually before the sponsored tag would come up on Facebook ads.

Yeah.

So I immediately went and made a page that was just my name. So I had my profile. But then I had a page, Justin Brock and I'd start running ads and like if you went and looked at these ads like they wouldn't work today, you know, because this stuff changes. It changes with the psychology of the person digesting it. But I was actually running dental insurance ads on Facebook to 64 year olds because I could pinpoint the 64 year old age group. I could advertise dental insurance, which was a type of insurance that people wanted because it's relative to, you know, the quality of their teeth. Right. That's like a vanity thing. It's not where some insurance people are like, yeah, I kind of want that, but I'm going to put it off. Dental insurance was one that I felt like you could really get in front of people that are like, you know what, I really want to get my teeth cleaned or fixed or whatever.

Yeah, my mother in law, she needs that right now. She just was like looking at that right now.

Yeah. So it was like I felt like I was getting asked about it more than anything. And it's. So it's not the most profitable niche to like sell but I was looking for what, where can I help people and then pivot into the other sales. So I think like a hook. And it's a hook.

Yeah. Okay.

So you're looking at, when you're looking at marketing like it's always about the hook, you know, like so sometimes it's like this might be the most profitable thing I sell. And so some people go straight to that. But it might be a very difficult thing to market to. You might have to build the relationship on something else. So that's the approach I took to it and had some big wins. But I was, I mean I would sell all day when I started and then at night I'd stay up all night watching YouTube videos and listening to podcasts and playing around with Facebook ads platform. And eventually we moved into using strategy. So our strategy was a we geo target like a 50 mile radius or a designated marketing area. And then we would do Facebook in that same area. We'd have a direct mail strategy where we'd send like three letter series to the same avatars that people were looking for and then we would run like OTT over the top television to those accounts or broadcast tv.

When someone would see the ad, what was the next. What would the call to action be for them to book a call with the team?

Call us.

Okay.

So at the time, it was just call, call, call. Okay. Now, what happened was. And I. The first part of that marketing was just Facebook. My phone was ringing enough where I was. And at the time, I had no desire to build a sales team. I. But my phone got to the point where I was writing more insurance than anybody I knew in the world as an individual. And it was easy. It was just.

How much were you making at this time?

I got up to where I was probably making, you know, 4 or 500,000 as an individual guy.

Just off the Facebook ads.

Yeah.

And then you scaled it from there.

Yeah. And so. But when they would call me and I would sell, um, you know, I thought, you know, I'm good, I'm. I'm good. But I would go to these events that I was talking about earlier, and I'd find guys that have sales teams. Right. And then I'd find guys that had sold their business. But that was when I started building a sales team is I would see other guys that were actually the ones that were writing the most insurance because they had multiple people working with them.

Yeah.

And so I went back and started building the sales team. And then, you know. Yeah, it. It's. We've had a lot of wins along the way. Because then at some point I. I would listen to every influencer, but I was. You know, there's a lot of influencers out there that say things and people listen to it, but they don't implement. I would go, and I was the guy that would implement everything he would say. So, like, when Gary Vee would say, document the journey and don't ask anybody to buy anything, I'd go out and start making videos for the agents telling them exactly what I was doing with. No, I didn't recruit them.

I wasn't selling a course.

I wasn't selling them a course for two years. I was just talking to them about it. And so I developed this little niche following of all these agents. And so eventually, when we were like, now I feel like we're ready to start recruiting the agents or sell them a course or invite them to a conference. They were like, sign me up. Take my money. Because I'd been giving them all that free.

Dude, that's a nugget right there. So this is a big thing within our industry, and I only just tapped into it maybe, you know, six, seven years ago. I was doing as much sales I can, working like 12 hours a day. You know, like, it takes a toll on your life, your family, all these things. And then what helped me, I still work a lot, but what helped me go to the next level of income was building the team and recruiting. But I found it's really hard to recruit people because you can't just hit people. You can, but it's very ineffective. Like people hire recruiters and they'll call these reps who are working elsewhere and try and hook, you know, hey, we have this opportunity. Or you like slide in their DMs and it's just like trying to catch somebody at the right place, right time. But it's very difficult. What worked incredibly well was just showing them what I'm doing, giving them the playbook. So like give them, give it away for free and give them advice. Also do the thing that they should be doing. So in this case, you're doing the ads and you're saying, dude, I'm making this much money from ads. It makes my business easier. You guys should do the same thing.

So.

And then they'll trust you because of that too.

Our industry was full of all those recruit kind of old school recruiting firms in the insurance world. It's called fmo, a field marketing organization. And what they really do is just recruit people, get them contracted with a carrier to sell insurance and they make a margin off of everything they write. Kind of the traditional network marketing. I tell people like, insurance is the oldest network marketing for sure path. But they would recruit them in and do that. And when I started putting out content, I was one of the few people doing it and it was the only one that really got to the scale of what we were putting out for free. So when we started doing the events and people would come and then they were like, I want to move my contracts to you. That means they'd move their carrier appointments under our entity as their fmo. We would.

That's when you blow up.

And so when they. But it was like I never had to ask. They were asking us. There was periods where I was turning them away. I was like, we're taking on, we're going to take on 100 agencies this year. That's it. And we'd have three or 400 reaching out.

And then because you did the groundwork first.

Yeah.

So I feel like for anybody who's watching, it's like build the brand. And you're like, well, how do I get paid off this today? No, maybe you don't get Paid on it at all for two, three years. But then you'll get a massive payday down the road. And that's a game that most people won't play because they need money today. So it's like, okay, do your job, make active income, do well. But then on the side, your hustle could be just to get. Build trust and build a community. You have to do it in a genuine way, because people can tell these days, like, this dude's out to sell me something or he's just helping. And what I found is then people will show up to things, events. And then if you ever did want to recruit in the future, you can, because these people will want to work with you. And it seems like, you know, you could spend time trying to get the next sale, or you could spend time getting the individuals or teams that would bring you the next hundred or thousand sales.

Yep.

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, which game are you gonna play?

That's what turned into is we have. We have our. What we call our W2 sales team, and they're. They are kind of our incubator for ideas that we then share with our. Our 1099, our brokerage channel. So we'll have these agencies that they're trying to build, the agency we build so they'll move contracts to us. We're making a smaller amount of the commission off of them, but we're showing them, like, all the mistakes we've made and learned from. We're showing them what we're doing and kind of being that kind of guiding light for them, and that's what they were looking for. And instead all the other old FMOs that were around, they. They couldn't really teach them anything because they weren't doing it. We were doing it and documenting it for them before we ever even asked them to make a dollar off of them. So by the time it came to that decision, like, a lot of them were saying, why would I not like, you're the one teaching me and somebody else is making money off of me. I'll definitely move by it was this. Only this year, we actually hired recruiters. And so far, all they've really been doing is cultivating the relationships we already had with people.

Yeah. Just closing the circle.

Yeah.

So that's crazy. So I think that's awesome in. In terms of how you would recruit is building a community first and helping the industry, and then you can recruit from that pool of people because they already trust you. And it doesn't actually turn people off because you're not really coming from it. From a salesy standpoint, it's like, dude, I can help you. I'd love to work with you.

I think it's important to like before we started talking earlier, you were saying, you know, sometimes people, when they're trying to be a personality online or build a personal brand, they'll look to people that have one and try to do what they're doing. And sometimes they haven't put the groundwork in enough. So like, you know, when the core of what we built, like we don't. I don't have hundreds of thousands of followers. I have a very niche following because all I talked about to them was health insurance, Medicare, what policies were selling what, what carriers we're working with, what ads we're running, where we're running ads. Like how do you build a brand for consumer side? So I wasn't teaching them how to be an influencer, I was teaching them.

How to help, how to make money.

Aging into Medicare or individual people that are going self employed and need health insurance. I was teaching them how to market to those people. And so we, So I think that's important too is like if somebody wants to, you know, do really well, you don't necessarily need 100,000 or a million followers or subscribers. You know, I'm not saying that's not helpful at some point too, for different reasons, but you might just need to be talking to the right 500 people, thousand people, 2,000 people. And in doing that though, like you said, if you're not authentic in the message, they're not, you know, like you have to know what you're talking about a little bit or they'll smell it from a mile away.

Yeah. So it's like grow your business. Share what? Share your learnings along the way that will build industry. You'll be a thought leader within your industry.

Exactly.

Alongside you're actually making good money and growing your business. I think a lot of people like, well, if I'm growing my business making money, why would I want to be a thought leader? It's because there's going to be some opportunity that you don't know about that's five years away. You know, Jesse Itzler said this, he spoke at our event. And this dude's a billionaire. You know, he's got all these crazy outcomes in business. But he told me that the biggest outcomes came for him that came from along his journey were things that were not on the roadmap. So it was like four years into this thing, he met somebody through a meeting and then they launched this thing and it turned out to be $1 billion exit. You know, it's like that wouldn't have happened.

Right.

You know, if he wasn't a thought leader in that industry or doing things or meeting people, you know. So I think a lot of people, like, need to see the whole road before they start. What if the road is like, dude, I just know that if I build a personal brand and do it in an authentic way and build a community, there'll be some great outcomes down the road. I don't quite know all of them, what they're going to be, but I just know it's going to happen.

Yeah.

And so that's how I started. And it's helped me a ton and open doors I didn't think were possible.

We had, we had, like. It's crazy because a lot of this, you just make it up as you go along, you know, and. And it's helped me to get around guys like you who are in other industries where maybe you're further along in an industry that, you know, has evolved a little bit more. Yeah. Because then I can kind of see like, okay, this is coming for this industry, most likely, because all industries are kind of on this timeline of, of evolving. And ours, I feel like, is always behind, so I can look to other industries to learn. But, you know, it's. It. The thought leader concept is, is good because instead of, like, thinking, like, I have to be an influencer, it is like a. You can be a niche thought leader. Yes. And there's all these events like I started getting invited to. We have this thing called the National Associations of Benefit and Insurance Professionals, and they have all these chapters around the country and they'll have like a hundred people meet in them. And so several years ago, as my brand grew, I started getting invited to go to all of them to speak for. And they weren't. They didn't have like a ton of money, so they weren't paying me. Occasionally one would try to pay me something or they pay for my travel.

Yeah.

But the whole point was like, you're going to talk to 100 people, 150 people, 200 people in your industry. And at the time, I still was kind of like, is this worth it? But it was totally worth it because you're building all these relationships with people and you never know which one of them is going to turn into the next agency we're working with that's doing a thousand applications under us that we're making $50,000 a year or Maybe they.

You know, they do something even bigger and they take out your agency, you know, like huge. Yeah, there's something there too. So I had the same kind of thing of getting good at digital within my industry, then teaching that to the industry.

Yeah.

And so a lot of other companies which are my competitors will have me like literally right after this. When we get done shooting, we're flying to North Carolina who to speak to their organization and it's a friend of mine, but it's if, if it's back to mortgage industry, it's, it's my competitor.

Yeah.

And I'm going there to teach them what I'm doing.

Yeah.

It's kind of weird. Like you feel weird, like, hey, I'm giving them my whole playbook for free. You know, he's not, he's covering my flight. But it's like, well, I'm building trust, I'm creating content, I'm building my brand. I'm a thought leader and that's going.

To think bigger than my business competes with their business. Because you think like more of like all the eyeballs that you, you get. You never know which which set is going to be tied to the person that you're doing a huge deal with.

And, and it's interesting, some consumers do see this as well. And you'd be like, well, isn't that confusing? Because now you're putting out industry content. But what I found is the consumers respect you more now because they view you as, hey, I like, he's a thought leader in industry. I want to work with the teacher, not the student.

Yeah.

So it puts you on a pedestal even with the consumers who have nothing to do with the industry jargon you're talking about.

Felt that like we have all these local regional offices that we built just a few, but we had that, you know, individual health insurance community, Medicare community. As we would grow, you know, a lot of them would follow me online. So I have like 70 year olds that are, you know, on Medicare that work through our office, that follow me and they'll like comment but like it's, you guys are doing great things and stuff and it's like kind of cool and fulfilling because like they in no way are like the target of that content, but they're still seeing, appreciate the idea that you're, you know, that their agency that they're working with is attached to people that are like the foremost thought leaders in the industry.

So when you look at what ads worked the best with getting these customers, was there like a formula or a framework that you followed for like, okay, I spent a bunch of money, I tested a bunch of things. This is the stuff that works.

Yeah. I would always say. And I don't know, I feel like, like I was talking to you earlier. My face. Like sometimes I write Facebook posts and they would do really well. So I felt like maybe one of my skills or get something I was naturally okay at was ad copy.

Yeah.

And so I would initially do a lot of no image, no video post engagement ads where I would just write something about an insurance plan or different type of policy or a problem we see in the insurance industry, or a story. I'd write it, I would just run it to, you know, whatever demographic I wanted to and then the comment section would flood. So I think with, with Facebook ads. And I was watching. I can't remember, I think his name is Stubby. The Australian guy that does that. Yeah. So I was watching one of his videos the other day and he was talking about it. I've been doing this forever. But he. I don't think people realize how important it is to get engagement on your ad. You know, like when people are engaging freely on your ad, Facebook and Meta start to look at it as like, well, this isn't. This ad is making us look good. So he's paying us to show it to people, but we're gonna show it to more people because. Look good. Yeah. So because they care about user experience. And they'll technically show an ad that people don't like because you're paying them to, but they're gonna make it more expensive. So. And then eventually I went into video. I never did image ads. We do now. We do heavily image ads now. But early on it was all video. In the video, I would do long form video. So I'd have people that were telling me and these were not high quality videos. I was using Camtasia and cutting them myself. Yeah. When I started, I would, I would like, man, they were terrible. You would. Especially as quality of stuff as you guys do. But I would make a video where I would just talk about everything that's coming to change. This annual enrollment period for Medicare, I'd run it to people 64 and over. So it was like mostly people on Medicare. And I would, it was just like they could never call me. And they would get tremendous value from the ad.

Yeah.

And that was just free flowing to it. Right. We didn't do. Now we do more book calls. We do some of the strategies. We do VSLs. We, we practice a lot of the jargon. But I was one of those guys that would listen to a marketing tip from like Russell Brunson and instead of like following him step by step, I'd be like, he'd be like, run Facebook ads, do video. And he'd have like eight more steps. And I've already put an ad up. Like, yeah, but it was amazing because it would work. And so I find like so many people are so worried about getting it perfect versus just going out and putting something up and then seeing what works. I did.

It could always be optimized later.

Yeah. And I did learn some tips along the way. The art of paid traffic and Russell and some of those. Dan Henry was when I did his Facebook ads for entrepreneurs course back in the day. And some of those early tips that helped was like, when it's not working, change one variable at a time. Don't, don't. If it is working, don't drastically increase your budget all of a sudden. So there was like certainly contextual tips that helped me not screw up. But I think the number one thing was just try something.

Does one stick stand out to you? Of one ad that like you made, Whether it was a written post, a video, one of these longer VSL type videos or. And it just took off and it.

Was first written dental post. Did really well to get my phone ringing. Built a lot of early relationships. It'd be hard for me to put a number on at the time because I was terrible at tracking and analytics at the time. But then those early update ads. But now even this year, we ran ads in all of our brick and mortar location areas and 50 mile radiuses inviting people to seminars and what. So they could come to these in person seminars for like insurance changes for the year or they come to the webinar. But the whole, the whole video is creating a little bit of urgency about the market changes this year.

Yeah.

How people need to change something. But those ads, I mean they slapped like. But I think we're where I see a lot of marketers that'll have like one ad that brought millions in. We're for us. It's, it's all you're having to do a lot of ads. So like I'll have one that works for two or three months very well. But then I have to have another one in the pipeline.

Yeah.

So this is another one that the same guy I was talking about from Australia when he put it.

Sabri Subi. Yeah.

Or Subi. Yeah. He's got great content. But I completely agree. He said if he doesn't have 20 a B split test running at a time on ads that aren't working. He gets anxious about it. And I'm the same way. Like we're always, maybe not 20 at the time, but we might have five split tests running now at a time of just different ads, different, different copy, different images. And one, and every now and then one works. Oh, last year we ran an ad on the agent side filling our, our event that we have about 1500 agents at and that I had one that was just a ticket image ad run to a custom audience and then ran to a lookalike audience separately off of that custom audience. And it was just cooking like all, I mean, for probably six months straight.

You know, but so you run one ad and then you talk about this. It's the ad is run and then it gets shown to read like you're running it to the people who engage with that. You're retargeting them. So how many times, you know, do you have to hit the same person with an ad before they actually will book a call or take a.

Great point, Great question. Because Meta, you know, they'll put on the, they'll give you the creative fatigue warning. I think that is the biggest bullshit warning really, because I personally, you know, the point of diminishing returns for me is when the ad stops returning a good quality, you know, return. I've noticed that that is about 25 to 30% of the way through how good the, like how long I'm going to run the ad when they put that on there. So I think, you know, one big tip is like, don't always jump at everything Meta throws at you. Always. Obviously if they're shutting your ad down, that's different. But when, when they're just telling you that, you know, the creatives fatigue, like they might be saying that because it's shown it to most of your audience two to three times, I might want it 12 times. It's funny in sales, you know, we say, oh, the most sales are made after the 5th contact or the 12th contact. There's different stats you'll hear, right. But then we expect an ad to only be shown to them two to three times. Like I want the ad to be.

Shown to them the same ad or.

A different ad, a combination. But we will, we will do the same ad. So because like with our ticket ad, with all these ads, like even when we're inviting the webinars or seminars or if we're doing ticket at ticket sales ads, from what I can tell, there's this Those people that'll see it six times and then convert. And it's just like it has to subconsciously, you know, inundate their, you know, their, their. Their feed. And we used to think, you know, used to, I'd run them like feed only, or now we run them everywhere. Because it's like even the sidebar. Because first of all, I don't think it costs very much to do the placement in the sidebar. But it's just one more impression. And so I think too many people are looking at Facebook ads is like very conversion oriented, whereas we've been more like, I just want to inundate their subconscious, you know.

Yeah.

With what we're doing. So it's like that omnipresence approach. And some people think to be omnipresent, I gotta be on every platform. We did most of ours with Facebook.

And so did you ever do this where you ran an ad? Because I've seen people talk a lot about this, running an ad to consumers. And then they would join a webinar rather than doing the call, you know, trying to call us or book a call because maybe they're not ready to talk one to one. But they would be like, this would be a step right before that.

Yeah. So we do. On the, the direct, on the kind of B2B, the agent side and the consumer side, we do a lot of webinars. So we'll come up with a topic. It's funny on the agent side now it's pretty organic because we have a good email list, we have the Facebook group, and so we can, we can fill those webinars with three to 400 people without spending any money on ads. But on the consumer side, it's mostly ad driven. We'll do a lot of what we call Medicare 101. We'll target people when they're turning 65, and there'll be like a year within six months to a year out. And we're just putting on that educational webinar and then we get them in there. Some of them set up appointments after that. Because the whole point is to set up an appointment.

Is this live or prerecorded webinar?

We've done it both ways. They're about the same result. I think you get a little bit better when you're actually live. When you're live. But you know, that could be. Have its own issues, obviously. So we'll do. But now what we do is we make them. We do make them at a certain time each. It's not like evergreen where as soon as they go, it's like, oh, we're gonna be live in five minutes. Yeah, we run it where it's like every Tuesday. Every Tuesday. And so even when it's a recorded webinar, it's a recorded, you know, static page that they get a trigger link to 10 minutes before it starts.

So it gives the appearance of live.

Yes.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, we, we called these when I would do a webinar for consumers, then when we would want to run the same play again, essentially without having to do another webinar. Yeah, we would run the ad saying, you're watching the encore.

Okay.

Instead of saying it's a replay. I felt like when people said replay, it was like they would just not.

Think it's live value, like a rerun or something.

Yeah, it's like, send me the replay and I'll watch it. Nobody ever watches it, you know, so it's like, no, on next Tuesday, we're, we're, we're doing the encore presentation. So they would come back and watch it and come in at a certain time, watch it. And you can use any of these platforms nowadays, like Webinar Fuel, Webinar Jam, and it gives the appearance of a live thing, but it is pre recorded. They can still chat. You can have your team in the chat. So I think like that is a big strategy that I think people, it's just underrated. You know, Brunson talks about like doing. What did he say? If you did a webinar every week, you'd never go hungry.

Like, yeah, all webinars are, I mean, fantastic for us. And what we'll do like on the agent side is we'll do a webinar on a topic. So this works really well. So if you can develop a community or a following at all and it doesn't have to be huge with that Facebook group. I'll go in there and I'll be like, you know what would be a cool topic is, you know, like how to sell your insurance agency. We'll say, hey, I'll just go in and put a post up and say, would anyone be interested in joining a webinar where I talk about how to, how to sell your agency or your book of business? And then, you know, I'll put like three top bullet points. We would, I would cover these three things. Comment me below if you would want to join. And it'll just like, me, me, me, me, me. Like, it'll just be tons of people commenting. And then of course, we'll just Have a landing page that we reply to them in comments. The funny thing is, when you're doing that, you know, if you do about 100, they'll shut you down for commenting. So we'll have, like, everybody on the marketing team going back to them. And then we'll do an email blast with that same webinar to get a few more people on there, and then we'll have three or four hundred people on there. And then in the webinar, we might sell tickets to one of our events or, you know, we might talk about a product that they should do, or we might turn that into a, like an ongoing mini course where we're saying, you know, for a thousand bucks, you can join. Where we go more in the weeds on this over the next four weeks. Well, then it's like, for four weeks, every week we do a lesson. But I turn. I can turn those lessons into a mini course that you sell for 150 bucks, like, later on.

So, yeah, this. I'm glad you brought this up, bro, because this is really important. When you make a post, whether it's in a private community, like, we use school, we do communities there, whether it's in a Facebook group, a Facebook post, an Instagram post could be organic or paid, whatever, asking people to comment. And I know this can, like, technically, we'd be pushing the line, like you said, with some of Facebook and Instagram's rules, they'll be like, well, we don't want you to comment.

Bait. Yeah.

But it's kind of gray area a little bit. But I noticed when you ask people, like, if you'd like this, just comment this word and. And I'll know and I'll send it to you, or I'll send you the link. What happens is, like, this can all be automated through tools like manychat. Even Facebook is going to let you automate this how. At this point. But it shows all the interest. So for like, the alternative is, like, you would just put the link or click here to go there. Nobody knows.

Yeah.

There's no comments. There's no, like, engagement. What I found is, like, if you see like, 50 other people going, yeah, you want to go. So what's interesting is people want to go to a webinar that other people are going to.

Yeah, people want to go to the mob mentality.

Yeah. They want to go to your event because other people. People want to. Nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.

Yeah.

And there's no way to put that crowd on display if it's just all sent to the page. So I know it's a little more tedious, like you said, even manually responding to each person with the link or opting them in for them, whatever, however that process works.

Right.

I think it's like, even if you. There's tools you can use for this. But like, I just think seeing all that makes it go. So I've had a few posts where we've done that and it just blows up. And because it's like it gets a tipping point where they see all these comments and then it just goes like everyone starts commenting.

Yeah. So. And the algorithm, like, so when we've put a link, you'll get like three responses and it's like, it kill. It's like Facebook cares way more that you put a link in there. And they're like, it just. They kill it in the algorithm because I guess technically you're sending people off platform, so they're like not going to make that easy. So what we'll do is say comment below for the link. And then when people are commenting, I think the interaction is also making it show to more people. Yeah. So you're so. One, they're more likely to respond because they see people are going to. Two, they're. They're seeing it in the first place when they might not have even seen it before you got all that interaction. So that has been kind of a, you know, like if you grow a school community or Facebook group using that kind of, using that, that meant that mob mentality concept is like, is big. And yeah. Like if you get on a webinar, I mean, it's the same way, like if you, if you went, took the time to get on a webinar and three people were there, you'd be like, oh, this is a little awkward. Yeah, it could be the best information ever. But it's like, I'm like not engaged. But if there's like a hundred people, I'm like, you're automatically. I think, you know, once there's more than a certain amount of people, you think, oh, this Justin guy's legit. He got this many people to show up.

Yes, it makes a difference. Now, I don't want that to scare people away from doing them because it is. If six people show up, run it, you know. But there are ways to even run a zoom as the actual quote unquote webinar where you don't have to show the number of participants. So there could be literally one person and they don't know that they're the only person because it's blocked now. Zoom meetings that you run as a webinar or zoom webinars where you actually show the number of participants. Yeah, you can do that on these other platforms. Kind of like a, you know, just kind of like a marketing secret. For a webinar fuel webinar Jam. You can put the number of the floor that you want it to be. So you can set your floor at 200. And then if 13 people join, it says there's 213 people on the webinar. So I know, like, nobody ever talks about that stuff, but like, that is.

The funny thing about that too is. So if you're doing, if you're doing a webinar and the goal is to get appointments booked at the end and you know, you'll know this and I'm sure other people would want to know, you can have it where like. Well, I think webinar, Webinar jam has a feature where you can say there's 50 appointment slots left and then like you can have someone like literally clicking the number, making it go down. So it looks like as people are booking, they're going down. So it's creating scarcity.

Yeah. And like, I think people should actually, when it's used for their own business, give the truth. Like, there it is scarce. Like if you wanted to provide a high level of service, you can only do this many appointments.

Yeah, I can't. I mean, even with a sales team, I'm still. You're limited to how many, how many hours are in the day and how many member how many people on that sales team. I have.

Yeah. So it is true. When you have the scarcity there, I think then you could play a little bit of games with like how you, how you show that and all that stuff. But it has to be real. If the scarcity is real, I think it actually still works. It's a great sales tool. I know people abuse it, but when it's real, it works too.

Like if I'm going to. So like we've used it in the Medicare market. So if somebody's turning 65, they're. They're going to make an appointment with someone. But they may be thinking in their head, well, like, I'll just make one later. And then they see that number going down, they're like, okay, I better go ahead and make it. Yeah, like, what did you really do? It's not like you ripped them off. You got them to go ahead and get on the meeting. And then of course, as long as you're training people to help them and actually do the right thing, then you're not like baiting them into a bad thing. Now, obviously it could be misused to like absolutely rip people off. And that sucks. But you know, all tools could be. A hammer could be used to kill somebody.

Yeah, that's true. So kind of wrapping up, Justin, like you, you use these tools to kind of scale up. And then we didn't touch on this, but I think it's important to, to make sure people understand. So when you talk about these multiples, I don't think people understand. So when you achieved a 770 million dollar multiple, what was the EBITDA of the business? Like, what was the net revenue?

It was about 6.3 million.

Okay. So you know, you built a business that's 6 point that nets 6.3 million a year before taxes and depreciation, all that stuff that got a what, a 10x11x multiple.

So it's, it's a 10x upfront with a 1x earnout. And the 1x earnout is tied to what's called a compound annual growth rate. So before we sold, we were growing about 34 to 36% net each year, year over year for the previous three years with them. To hit that goal, all I have to do is maintain a 15% net growth. Now, obviously we want to grow up more than that. I have retained equity, so I still have value there. And of course I like growing the business. I get to hire more people and change more people's lives and help more people, of course. But the, it's tied to that, that 1x is tied to 1/3 every year for three years past. So, like, if I do a 1x EBIT earn out, if that's 6.3 million times one, then I have a $6.3 million bonus paid in thirds over three years after 15% growth each year.

Yeah, that's the part I think people get intimidated by. Justin is like, they're like, yo, he said he sold a $70 million business. I'll never be able to do that. No, no, you need to make a business that nets you 5 million, $6 million a year, and then that will be worth 10 times that amount when you go to market it for sale. So. And that makes it actually more realistic for someone to think about now. It's still hard.

Even if you're trying to grow up, even if you're trying to sell one for 10 million, if you could grow, you know, to 1.5 million net, you know, you might have a 10 or $12 million exit, and it's capital gains tax. So let's say I'm paying 20, 25% of that versus, you know, versus earned income would be, you know, 40, 37 to 45%, depending on where you live. If I'm. So basically, I'm saving a tremendous amount of taxes. It's almost like making that amount of money for almost double the amount of years.

Yeah.

But when you also. When you get that, being able to put it in passive investments, like, you just, like, it doesn't have to be 70. You know, there's other people out there that are 100, that you have stories. 150 million. A billion. Way bigger. But, like, really, it's. If I could take enough to set it aside, I had to give you a story. I had a guy in our industry that knew we sold his friends with me for a long time, and he got offered 12 million up front for his. With some earnout potential for more money. And he calls me and he asked me if he should take it. And I'm like, well, what. What are your living expenses right now? Then he told me. I was like, just like, pretty much the guaranteed interest off of this money after you pay taxes on it will be double what your living expenses are annually. So, like, it's going to be like, I'm not going to tell you what to do because, you know, there's pros and cons to both sides of this, and you never know what's going to happen. But to lock in that level of, like, security for your family forever is. It's hard to beat that feeling of knowing, like, now everything I'm doing is like. It's like there's casinos all around us here in Vegas. It's like playing with house money versus, you know, playing with, you know, because all the money I made up at this point belongs to my wife and my kids. Pretty is the way I look at it. So I wanted to lock that in. Now the retained equity I have in my business and any other ventures I have, that's. Now we're playing with fake money. Really? Yeah.

It makes it like you can live on, do whatever you want.

Yeah.

And that's the part I think that's true. Financial freedom is not. Freedom is not like, oh, I've got enough money. It's like, no, like, it's the security. It's the peace of mind. It's the, you know, just that mental space like you talked about.

So there's nowhere I have to show up.

Yeah.

To make sure that my family can maintain their quality of life anymore. Now there are crazy unforeseen circumstances like the, you know, the entire world economy melting. You know, that's, that's different. But like short of some sort of insane scenario at this point, we're about as secure as you could get. And that has a great feeling behind it.

So for just to kind of clarify why we talked about insurance. So much insurance has this type of multiple compared to other industries. Can you give an example of some other industry multiples like and why you would pick insurance over those other industries?

Yeah, so. And tons of these are good. Like I have a lot of friends that are in roofing and H Vac and I'm in Brandon Dawson's BMLP and a lot of home services business in there. They're actually getting great multiples. I mean when you find an industry that's doing 7x, that's still a great multiple. Like there are, there are tons of, like if you build a marketing agency, like just straight marketing agency where you're doing marketing for other businesses. Those from what I've heard now I'm not saying there's not anomalies in this. I've heard it's more of a 1 to 2 to maybe a 3x, you know, multiple in those industries. So they could be great money makers, but they're difficult to sell. It's hard to want to sell them. Like if I'm making a million dollars a year in a marketing agency, to sell it for 2 million would be kind of silly. Like I just feel like I'll just keep, I'll just keep running it, you know, not that you wouldn't still. But then there's on the other side, like in insurance, like ours was 10, 11, there's technically people that are bigger than us in that space. Like from what I understand Patrick bet David when he sold php to integrity. I've heard they got 17x but not 17, 13 or 14. So. But it's still a lot more than I. And he had a higher ebitda. So typically the bigger your EBITDA is within your space. And then if you add in some like proprietary software systems or like proprietary relationships or something that are, that have some big, you know, value, you can, you can get a little higher. So our industry that we're in, Medicare and health insurance with like the retirement space, like annuities, life insurance, that kind of stuff, the highest end of it is around 18x right now is what it trades at. But those are the, the multibillion dollar conglomerates that have bought people like a bunch of people like my businesses. Right. They're trading 18, so why would they pay you 10? Well they're going to the market and trading at 18. So if they buy, if they pay 10 for my EBITDA the next year they could take on more money. And, and basically arbitrage 8x on top.

Of that, they get to keep that difference.

They get to keep that difference. So, so when you look at that arbitraging of those, that's why they're paying so much and eventually they might go public. Well then it might be 20x because now you're paying in a, in a world of accounting that isn't the same as like just a true, like bootstrap business accounting. So it's, it's very, you know, intriguing. But then there are other industries like software that might be up to 25x on EBITDA. Of course with software we all know like there's a lot more risk and long shot involved. A lot of those people are taking on early investments.

Yeah.

Just to get it off the ground. Not making money for years. Insurance is one of those where you could go and make money. You know, year one is tough. It really is. Year one's tough. Year two, you're coming out, you're not, you ain't rich, but you're doing okay typically. And then by year three you're making great money and so you could be building an asset worth, you know, like we did like a 70 million dollar valuation but it's not like up until that point I was hurting, we were doing well before that.

Yeah.

So I, I like, I look at insurance that way. It was like I don't have to go and you know, put it all on the line for a decade to hit a home run. Like even if I couldn't have sold the business, we were still, we'd still still built a great business.

Yeah, it was netting you like 6 million bucks a year. It's a great business.

Yeah.

That's awesome, man. So what's the best place for people to find you and connect with you? Which platform I know you're on all, everything.

Yeah, I'm obviously trying to grow on Instagram. Our biggest platform right now is YouTube. YouTube.com justinbrock but Instagram @the justinbrock and then you can see all that stuff@justinbrock.com.

Yeah. So if you guys want more info, DM, Justin. And then also comment below anything that we covered in this episode that you think, you know, we could go deeper on. We could have Justin back on the show. Or, you know, if you want me to elaborate on anything that we covered in here, I think I love learning from the audience and seeing what they want to learn. You know, a lot of people, like, hey, I don't know what I should do on my next video. Just ask the audience and they'll tell you. So you guys let me know in the comments below. And thank you so much for being on the show, bro.

Yeah, man. Thank you guys for having me. It's been a blast.