3 Things I Wish I Knew As A New Life Insurance Agent

Alright ladies and gentlemen, in this video I'm going to be showing you guys the three things that I wish I knew before I started selling life insurance. We haven't met yet. My name is Tim Shooker and got in this industry about three and a half years ago. And since then, you know, I've seen success personally producing a business partner. Julian and I have also been able.

To train and coach dozens of agents into six figure earners.

So you know, these are kind of like the things that I wish I knew and also like what I want.

To, what I want to tell you.

Guys is like this video is not necessarily going to be how to be.

Successful, but it's more so going to.

Be the things that are going to prevent you from being successful and cause.

You to fail out of this business, right?

So at the moment I have a agency that's on pace to do over a million dollars in production a year. And if I had known these things earlier, I think I would have been a lot further on in that journey. So without any further ado, let's go ahead and jump onto my laptop and.

I'm gonna break it down for you guys, alright? So let's break it down here on my little virtual whiteboard. Alright? So the first thing I want to talk about and this is the first thing that I wish I knew and I see so many people making this mistake, maybe you're already, you know, in the process of making this mistake is they don't pick one product, right? There's a term that's floating around the Internet, it's called shiny object syndrome. And this is something that every single agent has or at some point will have the temptation to have, right? So most people do, what you're probably doing is you say, oh you know, I'm going to start with this product and I'm going to expand and do all these other products and I'm going to sell annuities and Medicare and all these different things, right? And that's great, except that it's not. And when I first got into the industry, what I did is I basically got in, I started selling final expense. But the agency I was at, they basically their whole model was they wanted to be the one stop shop for retirement, which is cool. But think about like the most successful businesses out there, right?

Facebook for example. Facebook does social media, right? They've grown a social media platform to a multi billion, even a trillion dollar company just from doing social media. They didn't do, you know.

They didn't make, they didn't try to compete with Apple and make phones. They're only now starting to do this stuff way later on. But when they were growing, they only focused on one thing. And as a business owner and as an insurance agent, especially your focus, you only have so much focus, you only have so much time. So if you jump into the business and let's say you start with final expense, and then you start jumping into these other products, you're shooting your focus in all these different directions. Because it's not just selling the product, it's learning the product, it's understanding how to sell it, it's understanding the different options for the product, and then selling the product and then dealing with the back end and dealing with the different companies. Like, the more that you can narrow your focus and just master one thing, the more success that you'll have. And I made this mistake because I jumped in and I was trying to sell Medicare and annuities and hospital indemnity and dental plans and all these different things and final expense and term life, and it just shot me in all these different directions. So join a company, pick one product that you want to master, and don't even think about touching anything else until you're already making six figures or multiple six figures, right? You can make 100 grand doing any of these products, but if you try to do all of them, you will not make any money. So don't be the, you know, person that looks like a freaking zigzag going all over the place, right? This is. Most agents, they're just doing this. You want to do this, pick one, and then just stick with that. And then slowly, as you start to master it, you'll just become better and better and better and better. And then if you want to, you know, you can go out and then add on another product and get better and better and better and better at that. But usually you want to pick products that are going to be in the same market. So if I'm selling, for example, you know, final expense, then I could also sell, like, Medicare or something on the side if that's what I wanted to eventually get into. But to start off with, you just need to pick one. So that's the first thing I wish I knew. And, you know, that cost me a lot of money. The second thing is basically the difference between, like, a farmer and a teacher, right? So what is a farmer and what is the teacher? And like, why, why is this something I wish I knew? Well, there's essentially. There's basically two main routes that you can go in whenever you get into the insurance business, you can either become a farmer or you can become a teacher. And a teacher is an entirely different job, it's an entirely different path than a farmer. But a lot of agencies will try to convince you that you can do both really well, when it's actually really tough. So let's talk about the teacher first. So what is the teacher? A teacher is basically somebody that is teaching other agents how to be agents, right? They're training a team, they're managing a group of salespeople. And that's basically what recruiting is, right? You get into the business and they tell you, hey, you know, recruit, recruit, recruit. You need to teach all these people how to, how to be agents. You need to duplicate yourself. And you need to have so many freaking downlines that your downlines have downlines. And those downlines also have downlines, which have downlines and downlines and downlines. And it just looks, I mean, guys, this looks like a freaking lightning bolt. That's essentially what they tell you to do. It's like you just have to, you need to recruit the whole freaking country and then recruit the whole continent.

And the problem with that is when you first get started, you're not really prepared to be a teacher. You can't do it because you don't know what you're teaching. You can't teach somebody that you don't. You can't teach somebody something that you don't know how to do yourself. And that's the problem that people run into. But the teacher route is still a great route. It's just waiting and delaying to become a teacher. So you need to sell successfully first before you can teach others how to sell successfully. And I usually recommend like focusing on selling for about six months to a year before even like opening the option for yourself to become the teacher, right? So that's the teacher route. And what I've seen is like the most successful teachers, the whole myth of like, you can just build a downline and the downline builds the downline and all that stuff and then you're just, you know, sipping Mai Tais on a beach. It's just that it's a myth. It never actually works that way. If you do that and you ignore the agents, you're gonna get hit with roll up debt and, and people are gonna quit and they're gonna be complaining about the exact same things that you guys complain about, which is they don't get any training or support. So to be a good teacher, you need to lead from the front. You're not gonna be, you know, living off of the sweat of the backs of other people. Because at the end of the day, if everyone is living off the sweat of the backs of other people, there's nobody to actually sell insurance. So this is what a teacher actually is, not this, Right? You can't just like, expect to recruit a bunch of people and have them pay your bills. It's just. It doesn't really work that way. Maybe for like three people at every agency, but it's not the. That's not the dream, right? So if you're going to become a teacher, you should have everything that you do from the start aligned towards this. So when you're learning the business, you should be learning the business and learning it in a way and trying to understand it in a way that you could then teach it to others. And when you're selling, you should be documenting what you're doing so that you can then teach it to others. So that's the teacher out. And a lot of people think they want to be this, but they don't actually want to be this because this is what it is. It's not this, but you're sold that it's this. Now, the other route, this is what I think most agents actually should be doing, is being a farmer, right? And when you get into the business, you're told, hey, you know, just focus on selling for a little bit and then just go and recruit a bunch of people to sell. And you're always just focused on the next deal, the next deal, the next deal. How can I find the next deal? The next deal, the next deal, the next deal. But the way this business was actually designed is for you to build a book of business. This is a concept that some people know about, but they don't really tell you about it everywhere because it's in their best interest not to tell you about it.

The book of business is basically like building a farm. So whenever you're going out there, you're planting seeds, right? You're planting seeds. So you're calling all of these leads, you're planting seeds, you're selling policies, you're planting seeds, right? And what happens over time is your seeds, your clients will start to grow, right? You'll nurture them, you'll water.

Your. Water the relationships. And if you treat your clients right, you keep them on the books, you call them up, you know.

Keep them top of mind, send them, you know, texts, send them emails, and you basically, you know, nurture them, they'll start to give you referrals. And so what happens is, right, you're planting these seeds, planting these seeds, planting these seeds. And over time, you have so many seeds right here. You. You start getting more and more seeds, and these seeds will start to give you other seeds. So let's say this is Ms. Jones. I sold her a policy. Then all of a sudden, I sell a policy to her brother, and then I sell policy to her husband, and then her brother gives me a referral, and I sell policy to his wife, and then his wife tells her friend about me, and then her friend tells all these people at church, and it just keeps on going and going. And all of a sudden, all of these sales are coming from this one initial sale, Ms. Jones. So you basically build all of these, like, little referral trees that start sprouting out. And then maybe Ms. Jones says she decides, hey, I want to buy some extra insurance from you. I need more coverage because of inflation. And so you just start finding all of this business from the initial work that you've done, right? And you just build this massive group of people. You have all of these trees, right? Obviously this is a better drawing than my terrible drawing over here, but you have all of these trees that are basically feeding you leads and feeding you sales and feeding you referrals and upsells and all those different things. And eventually when you do that, you just have this massive, like, farm of money trees where you can call up clients and, you know, wish them a happy birthday or whatever, and business just basically falls out of the sky. And I know this sounds crazy, but this is like, I know people that are doing this, and it's a. It's a real thing that actually happens. But you need to come into the business with the mindset of this being the end goal if that's what you want to do. And if you want to do the teacher, that needs to be the end goal. But for most of you guys, you probably most people aren't really cut out for, like, leadership because it's a lot of pressure. And if you want to be a leader, that's great, but if you don't, you should be aiming for this. And the difference is when most people get in, they're just focused on the next deal, the next sale, that they don't actually like caring about their clients and farming and nurturing the relationship. And so they just churn and burn and churn and burn, and that's what ultimately causes people to fail. So when you're getting into the industry, decide, do I want to be a farmer or Do I want to be a teacher and make every action that you do when you're starting aligned towards either being a farmer or aligned towards being a teacher? Right. Now, the last thing, the third thing that I wish I knew, and this is honestly, this is one of the biggest things, is picking the right mentor. Lot of people will just join an agency because it's the first person that hit them up, right? It's the person that told them about insurance. And they don't shop around, they don't look at different agencies, they don't do their due diligence, and they don't do their research. But the one thing that you need to do, especially as a new agent, right when you're first getting started training, is the most important thing. It's the most important thing. Right? Right. If I was to teach somebody how to play soccer.

And I was trying to basically give them the highest chance of success, would I give them the best soccer shoes? Would I give them the best soccer ball? Would I give them the best field to practice on? No, I'd give them the best person to train them how to play soccer. Right. It's all about learning how to do this business, especially in the beginning, because there's so much to learn. So pick your agency based off of who you want to train you and who you want to learn from. You need to pick where you're going to work based off of who is going to teach you how to sell. Because in insurance, you essentially, you have these two different learning curves. You have the sales learning curve and you have the insurance learning curve. And so when you get started, you might fall somewhere along the sales learning curve. And this is basically just your experience in sales. But everyone, when they first get into the business, they have no experience in the insurance stuff. And this is like, you know, this is like your underwriting. This is like dealing with carriers. This is the, you know, health conditions of the clients, how the commissions work. Like, nobody knows anything about this. You're a zero over here, and maybe you're like a two or a three here. Maybe you're great at sales. Regardless, you need a lot of help here. And so your mentor, their job is basically to progress you and move you along this learning curve so that you can get to a point where you're, you know, selling 40k a month or, you know, earning six figures or whatever it is. They have to move you along the sales learning curve and train you how to sell better. But they also have to move you across this insurance learning curve because nobody knows anything about this when they first get started and teach you everything you know so that you can get to your goal, which maybe it's 40k a month, maybe it's 20k a month. Whatever it is for you, you need someone to move you across these learning curves in order you to get there. And so pick where you want to work based off of who you want to learn from. It's the biggest thing, right? Find your guru. Obviously this is a joke, but find your guru, right? Pick who you want to pick where you're going to go based off of who you want to be your guru, right? So, ladies and gentlemen, those are the three things that I wish I knew before I started selling insurance. If you guys got value from this video, leave a like down below, hit the subscribe button for more content like this. And if you guys want to learn more about our agency, where we basically give agents everything they need in order to make six figures over the phone. They don't have to pay for leads, softwares, anything like that, then click the link down below. I have a presentation that explains how that works and I will see you guys in the next one. Take care of.