How He Built A $3 Million Dollar Insurance Agency At Age 26

Ladies and gentlemen, in this video I'm going to be interviewing a 26 year old agency owner who's doing $250,000 per month in his agency and is training and mentoring producers that are doing $100,000 a month and more. In this video, we're going to be speaking with Ashton Delango Lunde. Ashton, welcome to the channel.

Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.

Absolutely, absolutely. So for people who maybe haven't heard of you or don't know who you are, just kind of give like a little bit of a background of yourself, how you got into the industry and what you're doing currently.

Yeah, so it's like you said, you know, Ashton Dingo Lunde, I, I've been doing this now for, for almost half a decade. Very simply saw, saw a job ad on, on ZipRecruiter one day and you know, I was a server in a barbecue restaurant. Loved what I did, had no problem with it. Just wanted something to where I can make at least, you know, three grand a month. And saw a job ad that said, hey, you can make 5,000amonth part time. I was like, well, that's more than I want full time. So I applied and said, hey, if it's half as good as they said, I'll take it. And the, the rest is kind of in history. And that was back in 2020 now.

Okay, so you got in the, you got in the industry, right, during the pandemic. Then were you doing face to face or did you start off virtual?

Yeah, I started virtual for, for a week or two. I, I didn't do well. Booked a bunch of appointments, 34 appointments, didn't make a single sale. And so my, my upline, my mentor said, hey, what if we went in person and saw people? I, I know it's the middle of COVID Hey, it's okay if you're scared of like going out there in person, face to face with someone, but if not, like, what if we went in person? I'm already making, not making money when I'm gonna make more, not money. Like I got nothing to lose. So someone out in person and started making sales and then in my first four weeks with zero prior experience, was able to go out there and go do 34,000 in sales my first four weeks.

Wow. So you, you started off, it sounds like you, you maybe had some issues or whatever, like just kind of like adjusting to the business, adjusting to the phones. And then you went out in the field. In the first month you sold 34k. Wow. So what do you think? Because there's a lot of people, right? They jump into the business very beginning, they get started, they maybe run into those woes on the phone and they just. They turn around and quit. So, like, what was it for you that kind of kept you into it to keep pushing and ultimately start seeing, like, some initial success?

Yeah. One of the biggest things I realized of where I struggled with, from, from virtual to in person was just very simply, when I. When I did it virtually, it was very, very transactional. It was simply, hey, great to meet you. You want insurance? Here are the numbers. And I skipped a lot of the natural, normal things that we do. When you go in person, you knock on the person's door. I always set the appointment. I wasn't randomly door knocking, but I set the appointment, knocked on their door for the appointment. And the first thing you do. Oh, hey, nice to meet you. Oh, this is a great neighborhood. Wow. How long have you guys lived here? Oh, are those the kids on the wall, the grandkids? This is a beautiful home. Now, how long have you guys lived here? Have you always lived in XYZ State? Did you move from somewhere? You do all the normal rapport building things, and that was the number one piece I was missing. I. I missed the normal interaction as a human. It was very transactional. I put a quarter in, get a Coke. Yeah. And that's where the sale is always lost. Sales are made on emotion, not on logic every single time. And so building that rapport was probably the big key that really did it for me, especially in the beginning.

Okay. And then do. Did you like the lessons you kind of learned face to face? You then brought those back over the phone? Is that kind of what happened?

Yeah. Eventually I realized that was the piece I was missing, so. So when I tried to switch back to virtual, which was a year later, I was like, all right, let's figure out what that is. And I realized, and, you know, ran my own study on myself, that if I spent less than five minutes building some form of rapport, that I. I closed 20% or fewer of those appointments. And that was done over about 50 to 60 appointments, so it wasn't a small batch. And then when I spent at minimum five minutes or more building some form of rapport, and it's not always, just tell me about the kids, tell me about the grandkids, but it's building the reform as the financial professional, as the insurance professional. If I spent at least five minutes, I closed over 80% of my appointments.

Wow. Really? Just from Just from building more of relationship. You said, you said something there. You built the rapport as the financial professional for an agent that's watching this, like, you know, at least for me, like the general consensus of when someone says rapport, you think of like the fort method or whatever, like family, occupation, recreation, transition. Right. You said building the report as a financial professional. What does that mean?

Yeah. So one piece is confidence. Anything you do, you have to do it confidently. Even if it's wrong, even if you're not sure it has to be done confidently. And this is what I mean. If I ask you any question and I don't sound like I know what I'm talking about, that immediately lowers my status in that prospect's mind.

And it happened anytime, especially if I try to talk about someone's finances. You mentioned I'm young. Well, I was even younger half a decade ago. You have a 20 something year old coming to your kitchen table going, hey, if it's okay, could, could you tell me how much money you make? Why do you need to know? They always say no one wanted to tell me about their finances, their income, their expenses. Like, listen, I asked about the insurance thing. I didn't ask you to run through my finances. Just tell me what it cost. And I got a lot of that because I didn't say or do things confidently. And so that was one of the biggest pieces when you're building rapport is anything I do, it's confident. I make those statements. If I'm going to walk through, hey, here's what insurance does, or here's this kind of insurance, that kind of insurance, I have to sound confident. And even if I didn't know something, I was still confident in it. Ask me a question. Hey, what about this? Hey, that's a great question. Let me make sure I have this exact right. I'm gonna give my senior field underwriter a quick call. I just want to verify something real quick. That way I can make sure that it's, you know, the absolute best for you. I did that confidently, even if I had to go bring in someone else. What if I went, oh, yeah, I'm not, I'm not really sure. It maybe let me, let me call someone and let me figure it out.

Yeah, at that point you're dead in the water.

And so that's one of the keys, especially when I say as a financial professional, is just doing what, anything you do with confidence. And that's going to project a lot of trust in you. Another part of the rapport is when I'm in that connecting phase, my goal is I want to get that attention off of me and get that attention on to them. And that's one of the other biggest pieces of it, especially in the beginning of putting that focus more on them than it is me, whether I'm booking the appointment and they go, why are you calling? Well, I want to get that immediately more focused on them.

What do you mean by that? Because I think some people are like, when you say putting more the focus on them versus you, are you saying basically like instead of them worrying about your qualifications, they're now thinking about their situation? Is that kind of what you're, what you, what you mean by that or.

Getting the, the focus of what they're, they're trying to, to look at switching that around. And for instance, we dial a lot of leads, at least in, in our agency, we focus a lot on, hey, we're going to grab leads, we're going to dial them and book an appointment whether we go see them physically, virtually or over the telephone. And so a lot of those people, especially when you're dealing with newer agents, we're going to have aged leads, we're going to have leads that someone else has called already but a sale wasn't made. We're going to have leads that have been through the process a few times, so on and so forth. So a lot of the resistance you're going to get, especially on that first phone call, is someone's already talked to me before. I've already went through this. No, thank you. I've gone through the process. Well, I need to get that focus off of me, off of. Here's why I don't want to move forward and get the focus on them. So, like that intro that I love to use, and it's very psychological, the way that we phrased it, but we give. Hey, is this John? Yeah, it's John. Hey, John. This is just Ashton again. I'm lowering. Hey, this is just familial, so that way it's not, here's some random salesperson calling me. This is just Ashton. I'm sure you get a ton of these phone calls, Tim, and for some reason the system never got updated. But it looks like you asked for some information about the mortgage protection. I think was a couple of months ago. What, what ended up happening with that Again, I shifted the focus. Everything in there is scripted and intentional. The, the speed up, the slowdown, the stutter. It's not because I have a random speech impediment. The, the stutter is a Pattern interrupt. I. I want to change where their focus is going. Hey, you asked for the mortgage protection. I think it was a couple months ago. What. What ended up happening with that? I don't want them to go, oh, yeah, it was a couple months ago. Why are you still calling? What. What ended up happening with that? I want to direct them to. What did you do? Did you get coverage? Did you not get coverage? Was. Did someone tell you it was too expensive? I'm shifting that focus off of who am I? What am I. Stop calling me to. Oh, yeah. Here was the thing. I wanted them to help my family. And here was what was happened with that. And I get that shift in that connecting phase. And now I'm moving through so much more fluidly and I'm building that rapport at the same time because I'm positioning myself as an expert walking through them. What happened to that? It was too expensive. Oh, really? What did they say? Now we're walking through that and it's much easier and eliminates and releases all that sales pressure.

That's fire. I. I can tell you've trained a lot of agents. I want to kind of shift gears a little bit and talk about the building side. Right. So you and I were talking a little bit before we started the interview. You said about 11 months ago you'd kind of burned down the agency and started from scratch, correct?

Yeah.

So you were personal producer. 30k a month. Flash forward to today. We're doing 250k a month across. I don't know how many agents you have, but sounds like, you know, got a pretty sizable operation. What did it look like going from selling personally to now duplicating yourself and finding more people and recruiting and training a team.

Number one thing that we just really come to realize, especially over the years, it comes down to what level of activity is each person willing to put in, and that's it. And I have those expectations for each of those agents based off of what that level of activity is. You know, I. I had an interview earlier today for some agents or prospective agents.

Yep.

And person's like, yeah, I want to make 5 to 10,000amonth, but I don't want to put in more than 20 hours a week. And I've never done this before, so I'll be honest, that's not going to happen tomorrow. Could you get to that place? Absolutely. But you need to know it's going to take probably three or four months before you're at that level of income. If that's the max, you're willing to do.

Right.

And he's like, yeah, well, I want something tomorrow. I'm making five grand. So this isn't for me. Great. But. But we set realistic expectations, and it's very, very simple. It's. Are you either willing to change what you're willing to do to get what you want, or are you willing to change what you want for what you're willing to do?

So you're telling me you're not running, you're not, you're not running those ads that are saying you can make $20,000 a month working, like five minutes a week?

No, that's not you. No, no, not us. Hey, I wish if you find something like that, you let me know too, because I'll. I'll hop.

Right. Crypto yield farming. Right. That's the next big thing.

Yeah. So it's helping go, hey, here's, here's the level of activity we're going to need in order to get those results. Yeah. You know, I personally trained and mentored the number one producer in the history of the company. And in his first six weeks, he never did this before. He did some other sales, did some, like, commercial roofing and went to businesses. Hey, you want a new roof? And that was it. No. No other sales experience, zero insurance experience. And he came in and said, hey, I want to be making a hundred thousand as fast as humanly possible. I was like, all right, I think you. You think you want that, but I don't know if you do, because here's what it's going to take. He's like, I don't care the hours, I don't care what it takes, how many days a week. Like, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to do it as fast as possible. And over the next six weeks, put in 650 hours of work. If you have a calculator and put that in every six week, it comes out and says a heck of a lot of hours a week. That's what it says. And that's what he did. And he did nothing but work like crazy to get there in six weeks. Now doing, ever since that time frame, now doing 100,000 plus a month.

That's wild.

And, and that's what it comes down to when people come on and go, hey, what amount of work are we willing to put in? And we go, here's the level of result you could get. Realistically, are you okay with that? And if you're not, which are you willing to sacrifice what you're willing to do? Or what you're willing to get. Which one? And can we get to that level to where we go? Yeah, it's okay. And we agree to go. Here's the amount I'm willing to do, and here's the amount I'm willing to get. Otherwise it just won't work. And that was the simple formula. And we stopped trying to make people into something they weren't into. These crazy producers, into these super hard workers that, hey, you know, some people, all they need is an extra one to 2,000amonth. That's it. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that at all. And we realize that, hey, for those people, that's, that's where we're gonna leave them. Not, not in a, hey, we're not going to talk to them, help them, etc, Right? We're also not gonna go, hey, why aren't you working more?

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Why Don't.

You're not trying to drag them into something that they don't want. Right. So sounds like for you, like you guys are just like, you're willing to take people where they're at and help them max out the potential up until what they want to hit. And then, you know, beyond that, like if someone wants to be a $10,000 a month producer and write 10,000 and you know, net whatever they net, that's cool. If someone wants to do $100,000 a month, you have the infrastructure in place to help them do that.

Absolutely.

So for a new agent getting started, I guess, like what would your, what would your biggest tips be to first of all, like start producing successfully and then if they wanted to get into agency building, like where would you kind of, I guess like a better way of phrasing this is if you were to start over, like what would be your path to success as an agent?

Yeah, absolutely. And we'll take it on those two paths. Just like you said, as a producer and as a builder. As a producer, the number one key is going to simply be how much activity am I willing to put in as quickly as possible? That has to first be the answer you have. How much activity in what time frame am I willing to do a week? Am I willing to put in 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 hours a week? Great. Find out what that level of hours is realistically now, again, everyone loves it. I'd work as much as possible, but. But then it's not realistic. You get burnt out after three, four, five days. Yep, just, just like I thought the number one producer would, but, but he didn't. Most people aren't built like that to just work 18 hours a day, six days a week for the first six weeks. Most, most people aren't.

However, what is that realistic expectation for you? And then break down that schedule. And the way that we did it for, hey, I want to start doing a hundred thousand after six weeks was we did 12 hours of implementation a day. I'm dialing leads, booking appointments, running appointments. Like I'm doing some form of production activity, activity that will generate some form of income. Dialing to book an appointment, running an appointment, calling if a sale fell off the books, like doing some form of production activity in those 12 hours a day. Then we practiced five plus hours a day. And that's how he got so good so quick.

Every day he was practicing. He also used to be a professional athlete. Work ethic was there and he treated this like he treated basketball when he played pro. And he said, hey, what did I do when I, when I didn't have something right? I, I got the camera out. I, I filmed it, I watched it back. All my footwork's off, my, my, my hands off, my elbows off, my arms off. I, I need to move here, move there. You know, I, I need to look at the footwork, whatever it is. And he's like, we have to break down. Why is it that I, I missed my mark. And it's the same thing here. If you treat it the same, you'll get crazy results.

Record yourself. All right. I'm not doing well in the first paragraph of my phone script when I'm calling and booking appointments. Play it back. All right. Do you sound like Eeyore? Hey, this is John calling about your mortgage. Do you want insurance? No. Okay, thanks. Like, no one wants to be around Eeyore.

I've gotten phone calls like that before from insurance agents because I bought a house in the past, so I got like a bunch of people calling me for mortgage protection. Man, I literally had people call me. They sound exactly like that.

It's exactly. And you have to sound like something they want to be around.

What do you think the best way is to practice? You mentioned like game tape. Are you, do you guys do like a lot of listening to the calls?

Yeah. Self diagnosis is key. So one, you can really fix your own problems. Most of the time, you don't have to have someone else. Now, in the beginning, you might not know week one, week two, maybe you need your, your upline, your mentor, your coach to help you. Hey, I listen, I'm not really sure what's off now. We have a lot of examples and hey, recorded examples. Or when you play yours back, does it sound like this one? Again, you can do a lot of self diagnosis, but when you record yourself, especially live talking to a client, when you record yourself and play it back, you can go, oh, yeah, man, I started 84 times when they gave me this objection. And I fumbled and I didn't sound like a professional. I didn't sound like I know what I'm talking about.

Yep.

Oh, someone already called me. Oh, yeah. Well, if, if it's all right, would you still talk to me? I was like, well, yeah, that's why you lost it, the way you sound. Even if you said the, the rebuttal perfectly. Yeah, the way you sounded was off.

About how you said than just what you said for sure.

And so that self diagnosis is key. And then role play that, that's the other thing. If you can Grab someone to role play. Whether it's your upline, whether it's another crossline, agent, someone else in your agency that you know, you're not direct to them, they're not direct to you. Great. Hey, grab them in role play. Hey, how do I sound? Critique me. One of the best things a sales mentor ever taught me was grab someone not in sales. It's easy to have a lens when I'm talking to a coworker, when I'm talking to someone else. But grab someone not in sales. Run through your script, even just certain parts. You don't have to do the whole thing, but certain parts, and ask them the question, how does this make you feel?

One of the best questions you can ask, especially someone not in sales, because that's your target market. When I call someone and they're like, I'm not interested. Okay, well, hey, if you don't mind, if I could give you some information about the product and maybe I could change your mind, Maybe if it was cheaper and saved you money, would you want to take a look at it? How does that make you feel? It's like, you know something? I'm already feeling like, oh, well, I feel like you're kind of backing me in a corner, pressuring me, trying to get me to do what you want. I told you no, but you don't want to listen. It's like, all right, well, is that what you're wanting them to feel? The answer is yes. Good job. You're crushing it. Keep doing it that way. If what they said is, yeah, that's the feeling I want to evoke. But if they go, yeah, this is how you made me feel, well, man, like, that's not what I want to convey. All right, well, we need to change it. Either you're saying it wrong or you're saying the wrong thing right. Oh, well, already. Already have coverage. Yeah, I kind of figured. I'm not sure why they didn't get this updated. Let me go ahead and get this updated in the system for you so that way we can get you taken out and not get all these calls and texts anymore. Which. Which company do they get you set up with? How does that make you feel? Oh, it sounds like you really listen to me. You're carrying, and you just want to help me get this updated.

There you go. And then we keep moving through.

That takes all the pressure off.

Exactly. And so that was one of the number one things that. That I learned. Hey, grab someone not in sales. How does this make you feel when I say this and that can really give a great diagnosis. You know, a partner, a spouse, a sibling, some, A parent, someone like, they're gonna want to help you practice.

But if not, just record yourself or grab your upline if they're available. If they're not, grab someone else in the agency. But that practice was key if you want to get better in a very short amount of time.

100, 100. So that's on the producing side, it sounds like, you know, basically just like listening to your calls and drilling your script are like the, the biggest things, which, I mean, I have to agree with that. How do you transition from like, yeah, producer to builder? What does that look like?

Yeah, and there's two ways as a builder. One, I'll go the simple way, and then the. Two, I'll go the hard way. So. So the simple way in the beginning is if you have all the systems in place that, hey, when someone gets onboarded, they follow this system and it's going to give them the training they need, whether it's videos and most of the time it's some, some videos. Hey, welcome, welcome. Video intro video Onboarding carriers. This, that. Here's how to make a phone call, book an appointment, run an appointment. There's videos they can go through. Well, it's done for you, and that's the easy thing. And if you're in a great system, a lot of times when you bring people on in the beginning, your upline is going to help train or coach or mentor them for you. There's a lot of great places that do that. Hey, when you bring someone on, especially in the beginning, you don't know anything. You hardly know how to spell the word insurance, much less teach someone else how to do it. Well, I'm going to do that for you. I'm going to help you in the beginning, train them all in a group, individually, whatever. I'm going to help coach, train and mentor all of those people for you.

And your job is just to bring them in the door. So the goal is how many people can you just bring in the door as fast as humanly possible?

And it was simple. The way that I've always trained the, the fun little script that I always gave people was when you give someone a call, your warm market someone, you know that you pick up the phone and go, oh, Tim, man, how's it going? Oh, good. Good to hear from you, man. Hey, man, glad I caught you on the phone for a second. You're probably busy, but, man, I just found this new career and it was kind of exactly what I was looking for. I don't even know if you'd be interested or not, but if I sent you some information about it, I mean, would you just take a look and least just let me know what you think? I'd love to get your feedback, you know, what your. Your thoughts like, you know, what you think, you know, it means a lot to me. I just want to see what you kind of think about what I'm doing. Yeah, would love to, man. Okay, great. Send them something short. You know, we send. It's like a total of, like, six minutes of videos. It's like two separate videos that are three minutes. Everyone's attention span is long enough to watch two videos that are three minutes, hopefully exact. Yeah, hopefully. All right. What do you think you have time to watch? Oh, you said it was, like, six minutes. I probably watch tonight before I go to bed. Okay, cool. So if I give you a call tomorrow, there'd be enough time and you tell me what you think? Yeah. Great. They don't like it.

Great.

Oh, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it, man. Click. Oh, yeah. This is awesome. I'd love to do something like this. How. How do I get involved again? A lot of times, if your upline's helping you, they'll do an interview for you. All right, great. Let me. Let me get the guy who owns the agency. He'll interview you and, you know, go from there. You know, like I said, I just started. I don't know anything. But, you know, that guy owns the agency, and he'll answer all your questions. Did great. And. And now you're able to start building an agency, building an army early again. That number one producer I mentioned, that's what he did in the beginning. In his first two months, he had 10 agents.

He was like, hey, listen, I just started. I don't know anything yet, but this is an awesome opportunity. I don't know if you or anyone else you know, would want to make maybe do it. Here's some information. Yeah, and it's that simple. And. And that's the simple way. If you have a great system, you have a great company that has those systems in place. It makes it easy.

I think the other thing, too, that makes it a lot easier to recruit is when you're already seeing success with the system, because, like, trying to bring somebody into something that you haven't proven. I've noticed a lot of people, they just kind of, like, lack conviction in it, and, you know, it's harder. It's harder to convince other people to do something if you're not doing it successfully. So like I always think that like if you're going to get started into it, like you said, for example, I think you said the guy that was doing 100k already has 10 agents. It's so much easier for, for him to bring people on when he's talking about his success and instead, instead of talking about hypothetical success. So I think that's a huge thing is just like producing yourself first.

Yeah. And that's the, the biggest piece there. And the only, the only thing I'll say in somewhat contradiction to it is I love that when you are building it's, it's not always based off of what I do. And here's what I mean. Like when, when I'm new and I'm trying to hire people like, well, tell me how you've done. What's your success like? How's it gone for you? The thing I always tell people, it's like, even if I were amazing at this, does that mean you're going to be amazing? You may suck at this. You might not be as good as me. Like that. That is 100% the case. And just because I'm amazing doesn't mean you're guaranteed to come in and be amazing too. You could not do as well. And as much as that is true, the reverse is true. Just because I'm horrible at this doesn't mean you're going to be horrible. I might not be able to sell water to someone dying in the Sahara desert of dehydration and I got 10 bottles and I couldn't do it.

However, you might be able to come in and blow the roof off the place because there is good training, there is other people successful and there is a whole system. Because when the system is the magic, I don't have to be when the system is the key, it allows me to produce an agency far more than just me of what I'm able to do, what I'm able to coach, what I'm able to be in success. Maybe I'm only a $10,000 a month producer. Well, that if people could only ever be as good as me. Well, I'll never have any someone produce more than 10,000 because there's nothing to teach them how to do better than that.

True. So you're saying a lot of it is you feel like as a builder is leaning on whatever system you have.

If you want time, it has to be leaning on a system. I, I can't train every single person hands on for 10 hours a day I can't. But if I have a system that can train and answering and help those questions of hey, I have an issue with this objection. Hey, here's a great training. Look at this, tell me your takeaways and let's tweak it from there.

Right.

Well, well now when I have five agents who have a problem of someone that said I want to think about it in the appointment, I don't have to have a 30 to 45 minute call with five people.

Correct.

And now I just spent two and a half hours of my day doing that. When I could go send them a recording of me or recording of a training, here's what to do. And they can get the exact same training from that. And if they have more specific questions, great, I'll answer that after. But now I have a base of a foundation I can teach them from. And now that's a 10 minute call, not a 30, 45 minute call. Now I just bought myself 20 minutes a person, five people. Now I just bought myself 100 minutes.

Right. When you have, when you have 200 agents or 300 agents, it starts to, starts to really stack up. You can't be having those conversations with 200 agents.

Exactly. Because otherwise I become self employed and I'm not a business owner.

Right. 100%.

Now people can't work unless I'm available. Hey, I had a problem with xyz. I gotta wait for Ashton to be available so he can answer my question and I can do my job right. And that's where things start to crumble. So like on the flip side of that, of hey, I don't have the systems in place, I don't have those things, which is the way harder way to build. Yeah, you have to wait until you're successful. It's going to be two, three, four months where you're consistently producing. Now you can start hiring people. Hey, do what I do, watch what I do. Here's how to dial. And it's a lot of hands on. Here's what I'm doing much, much harder way. And I would implore and tell you to go, hey, record yourself doing some of those key things and create your own onboarding platform.

Yeah, I love that.

Here's how to dial. Here's how to run an appointment. Here's how to overcome objections. Because otherwise you'll do nothing but work from 5 in the morning till 10, 11 o' clock at night every day.

Yeah, yeah. No, you have to, you have to create systems. You have to. You know, I say like the, the biggest keys to building an agency is like, you have to have a consistent quality lead source you can plug agents into. You have to have a, an automated system that people can come into and it'll basically take them from brand new agent into a producer. You know, obviously there's, there's human intervention along the way. You got to train them, you got to help them out, coach them up. But there, there should be a curriculum that people can go through. Right. Otherwise you're teaching scratch every time. And then I think the, the last piece is having a, like a, a unique opportunity that people want to be a part of. Right. Something that sets you apart from, from everybody else. So one of the last questions that I have for you is like, in terms of going and finding these agents, are you usually like recruiting people in industry or are you going to people that are out of industry? Or how do you find people that you bring to your team?

Great question. Yeah, we, we pull from a lot of different avenues and I think that's important, especially when you try to do it at scale. One avenue that's always amazing, that never fails is, is warm market. You hear everyone talk about it. Warm market, warm market, warm market.

Sure.

Business always moves at the speed of trust. Your warm market are going to trust you more than some random person on a job board.

Right.

So it's really easy to be able to go pull someone from your warm market and help get them going a lot quicker. So, so that's one thing I love. When we say warm market, we don't strictly mean someone directly related to you. You know, your cousin, your brother, your sister. It's anyone that if you picked up the phone and made a phone call, they'd know who you are.

Right.

Oh, hey, it's you. Oh, man. How are you doing? It's been a while. That, that's your warm market. That, that's such a great avenue. Everyone has at least three to five people, bare minimum. That would at least be interested. I'm not saying they're going to get hired, I'm not saying they're going to do it, but they'd at least be interested after you showed them some videos. Like, yeah, this seems interesting. I want to talk.

Yep.

I've never seen someone have less than that. I truly haven't.

Yeah, it would be very surprising. Cold market avenues. There's a lot. I love Facebook there, there's, it's going into Facebook groups. There's so many people that you can find on all types of different job boards that go. I don't like my job, I want a new one. Great. You know, make a comment, send them a message. There's so many people out there looking for a better position, a better company, a better job.

I'm not going in there trying to make people interested. It's like these are people like, hey, I'm actively looking for something else who can help so many of those on Facebook. And then the other one is really just job boards, actual job boards. ZipRecruiter, LinkedIn, Career.

Monster, Hiri. Like there's all these different platforms that you can go get either job resumes or post job ads and get, get resumes.

Yeah. How did you find your 100k a month guy? Was that off of a job board?

Ironically, it was a warm, warm market. We, we reconnected in a sales training group. Okay, so there was a sale, a group, group call for some third party company that did sales trip. And I saw him in there. We went to the same college, we didn't even overlap in years.

But we, we went to the same college, we both played basketball so kind of knew each other through, through that avenue. When, when he was there in college, the high school I went to was connected to that college. And we connect in that group. I was like, hey man, like how's it going? And we reconnected through that to then go, hey, he's in a sales job wanting to make a lot more. Can't really make more. Tell me about what you're doing. And that sounds too good to be true. And then I kept seeing the results a month later. Yeah, you keep having the same results, man. I gotta do what you're doing. Which brings me to a good point too. Going back to Facebook, posting on Facebook is such a great way to draw people. I would post on Facebook, hey man, had a great day in sales, you know, man, you know, great day when you can go make 10 grand in a day. This is awesome. And posted the sales, you know, post your lifestyle. You know, one thing that's great about, especially if you're in the insurance industry, most of the time there's a crap ton of trips you get to take. You're going all over the place, whether it's in the states, out of the states, all inclusive resorts, carrier trips, whatever the case is, post those things or you get to spend the day doing whatever you want. You know, like there's a, a cross line in our agency. Hey, I'm at the, the taco bar today, hanging out with my husband, getting a margarita at one o' clock in the afternoon, like, wait, well what do you do? Do you get to go get margaritas at 1 o' clock in the after? Like, I want to do that. Yeah, you know, if that's what you do. Or, or like, hey, I have 85 kids and I never miss a sports game and I have a great job and make a great income. It's like, whoa, what are you doing that you get to never miss anything in your family's life and make a livable income? Yeah, I want that. I got to miss everything in my family.

There's a lot of demand for what we do, that's for sure.

Exactly. So posting about your life is another great way to draw people in organically. You don't have to post a job ad. You'll get people every single day reaching out to you. Like my number one producer, he's posting, hey, here's the sales I made. I was so, so, so blessed that this is my life now. You know, I, I gave him a goal. Hey, if you do a hundred thousand in three months, within your first three months of starting, 100,000 in a month, I'll, I'll buy you an iced out Rolex. And I give that same goal to every single person I hire. If I hire you, you come work here and you go do a hundred thousand in a month. In one month. By your third month, I think I even put it out to four months. Now I give them an extra month. If you do do it by your third month, I'll get you an iced out Rolex. I don't care.

Did you give it to him? Have you given it to him yet?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. He did it in the second month. Yeah, give him an ice art Rolex. He designed it. It was a Rolex black dial. He wanted roman numerals. We iced out the roman numerals, iced out the bezel jubilee bracelet. And that's what he wanted. We did custom Rolex for him and that was the one he picked out and designed. You know, that's the thing. He posted those things. He's like, all right now, now he had 30 people. I reached out to like, dude, what are you doing? What are you doing that they give you a Rolex? So I'm in sales, I don't get a Rolex. Like, and just those, those postings now, like he gets a ten thousand dollar bonus from our company every month. Give him a ten grand bonus. It's like, what are you doing that you get a ten thousand dollar bonus for doing your job? And that's drawing People in. But you know, like I said, that last piece we do is the job boards we're posting there. And then we get so many. We get probably three to 400 applicants a month. Across my agency, we're getting over a thousand applicants a month and we just throw them in a group interview. We use texting automations. We have a whole system we built out that texts them as they come in the door and it gets them all the way to auto book an interview. And we're getting them auto booked into a group interview and we get probably 10 people that show up per interview. And we're running pretty much three to five days a week. And we have three, four, five guys running three, three to five days a week. And you know, you're interviewing that many people, it makes it easy to hire because we use the job boards and we use the text to get them auto booked in. And now you have a large funnel of people as well. So that's where I like to draw from those, those three places.

Huge, man. Killer advice. Killer advice overall. Like, you know, the, the advice for the producers and the advice on the builders. I think so many people struggle to find agents, but like, it's the same thing with leads. You just have a, you have to have an overabundance so that your standards don't drop. Yeah, I think that's huge. Exactly. Awesome. Well, Ashton, where can the people find you? Where can they reach out to you if they, if they want to learn more about working with you?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's really easy to find me. You know, my, my name's pretty unique. I'm literally the only person in the world with you. Type it in Google.

Big world, man. Be careful making claims like that.

My mother made my last name up, so it makes it easy. You find my high school reel, all that. But Facebook, Instagram, all those places. Easy, easy to find me. Facebook's probably the one I use the most. Really, really easy to find me on there. We have a podcast just like you how to sell insurance. You can reach out to us there, get more great tips and device as well. But yeah, those are the best places, really. Facebook and the podcast.

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you jumping on, man. For you guys watching at home. We'll see you in the next one. Take care of.