Why You Should NOT Recruit Agents

This video is probably gonna piss your upline off because I'm about to tell you something that is totally and completely contrary to everything that they have told you about the business. But you should not train or recruit agents and you should not build a team specifically if you're newer to the industry. I'm gonna tell you guys my own personal story from my own experience and explain why I think that. Here's why. So when I first came on Julian, my business partner at Advanced Agent Marketing, is the one who brought me into the business. So, so he brought on me and his other roommate. Then I came on and brought on my two roommates. So Julian was the first one recruited. So he was the first one to get licensed and start selling. So he had all the bus that were coming behind him that he would have to train. But he had about a month head start to go ahead and get his bearings under him and learn the basics of the business. So Julian's first month he wrote about 30k in AP, which not bad for a new agent by any means. All of the company was impressed and everyone was kind of like looking at this guy like this dude is very talented and has a ton of potential. This the thing was he wrote 30, but he only issued like 3500 because nobody taught him about underwriting or anything like that. He actually lost money his first month selling insurance, writing 30, issuing 3,500. You take away gas, hotels, food, all the other stuff and gift cards because we were running these gift card leads, he didn't make any money. Having spent all this money his first month, not made anything back, he now had to train me a month later. So we rode along in the car. He split business with me and kind of helped train me up on everything so that I would be ready to go on my own. We did this for two weeks. So we went, rented a hotel and you know, middle of nowhere, North Carolina, hustled our asses off and sold insurance for two weeks straight. And he was kind of training me on underwriting and teaching me everything that he knew about the business, his month long of experience granted. So instead of focusing on becoming profitable himself, he had to focus on making sure that I was going to be okay and that I understood everything about insurance so I could go sell my own. So in our first two weeks, those two weeks in middle of nowhere North Carolina, we were able to write about 6, 7K. But after hotels, gas, food, gift cards, and being at a 50 point comp, we only profited about a thousand bucks. So that was 500 each. And this was before chargebacks, but after two weeks, I was ready to go out on my own and start selling. However, now the other three guys were ready to come on. So we were kind of like splitting the training. He would ride along with them sometimes, I would ride along with them sometimes. But both of us, like, to be honest, we didn't know what the hell we were doing. We were still trying to figure out everything. Neither of us knew how the hell to be proper profitable in insurance and barely knew how to underwrite. We would call our upline all the time to get questions answered. So both of us were writing a ton of business, splitting it with other guys, but at the end of the day, we weren't profitable after all expenses. Julian was training more people, splitting a ton of business, not making any money, but just like running on a freaking treadmill of writing more insurance. So the vanity metrics were looking great, right? We were at the top of the leaderboards, running a ton of ap. Everything was awesome. Super. So the higher ups of the company, they started throwing people under us because they're like, these guys have potential. Let's give them recruits. So now not only are we still trying to crack the code on not getting business to charge back, getting business to get issued, and, you know, making all of our business stick and be profitable, but now we're having to train Julian's roommate, my two roommates, and all these other people that they were throwing under us. We would spend hours and hours onboarding, training, recruiting, motivate them, and get them profitable. However, the thing was, we. We didn't even know how to be profitable ourselves. This continued for months and months of us trying to recruit, motivate, and train all these people so they would stick on the team. But the guys under us still struggled to sell, and some of them went so broke that they had to go into credit card debt just to pay their bills. Flash forward a few months, and believe it or not, everyone on the team left. It was literally only Julian and I that were still actively selling insurance. So after all of the effort that we had put in trying to get this team ready to go so that we could earn our infamous override, everyone on the team was gone. No override for us. And despite that, with everyone being gone, believe it or not, we were still unprofitable, but we were still encouraged to recruit and train more people. So that's my personal experience with trying to build a team when you're new to the business, in my opinion, and in my experience, it doesn't work. But let me break down the reasons why it didn't work so that you can learn from what I made a mistake on and Julian made a mistake on and not make the same mistake for yourself. So the first thing is we simply just hadn't cracked the code and figured out how to be profitable yet. We had all these people that were coming on behind us that we were trying to get right, and we hadn't even gotten ourselves right. You know, when you hop on an airplane and they're like, you know, make sure that you put the mask on yourself before you help those next to you. You can't help your kids if you're dead, so you have to put your oxygen mask on first. Exact same way with insurance. I can't teach somebody how to be profitable and make money and survive financially in this business if I'm not even doing it myself. And it doesn't mean that I couldn't learn to do it. It just means that it takes time. So the second reason is we delayed the process of mastering the business because we were so distracted on trying to train and recruit all these other people. If instead of focusing on everyone else, we had just figured out the business, figured out how to underwrite, figured out how to keep business issued and retention and all of this other stuff, then a few months later, we could have brought all these guys on and taught them stuff that we already know instead of just teaching them things as we learned it. And the last reason this one really hit me personally is that since I wasn't making money, I was being asked to go out and recruit all these other people. But since I wasn't making money, I didn't really believe in the opportunity as much as I would have. So, for example, right, if somebody tells you that you should go to this restaurant, but they haven't even tried it, how much are you going to value that review or that testimonial? None at all. Well, it was the same way for me, right? I was trying to tell all these people to join the insurance business business. And, you know, this would be such a great opportunity, but I wasn't even seeing the fruits of my labor myself. So for them, they could kind of feel that and sense it, that I didn't truly believe in what I was telling them. And so they didn't really take the opportunity seriously. And the guys under us, they would hear about the struggles that Julian and I were going through. Not making money, dealing with chargebacks. And so they kind of throttled themselves a little bit in the business because they were scared to face all the chargebacks we were. And they saw that even the people that were putting in the most effort weren't even seeing the results. So here's what I would have done differently. And real quick I just want to pause the video and say something because there may be a misconception in your mind. I am not against recruiting or building a team. The matter and the question is when should you do it? That's what everyone gets wrong. It's not that you shouldn't recruit and shouldn't share the beautiful opportunity of insurance with other people. It's just when should you do it and when should you take the responsibility for their success? And here is my personal opinion on the answer to that question. I think that for the first six months you should solely only focus on personal production. You should become the most efficient and effective producer that you can possibly be. Learn all of the ins and outs of the business that you can in six months build out systems and frameworks that you use in your own business. That way when somebody else comes on, you can teach them what you know instead of teaching them how to nothing. So here's how I recommend doing it in the first six months of the business. I think you should document your journey. So film content like this make Facebook posts. You could even do like little Facebook lives as you're kind of going through things and learning them. And write down all of the things that you learn because you're going to be able to teach that to other people as they come on later. Most importantly, make sure that you're making money and that you're profitable. Imagine trying to build a house on quicksand. Doesn't matter how good the rest of the house is, if the foundation is built on quicksand, the house is not going to stand. So if you are the foundation or the rock of your team, make sure that your finances are straight and in order before you start adding other people. So as you're going through that six months and learning everything, film YouTube videos like this. It doesn't have to be crazy edited like this video is. You could literally just like grab your phone and film a video talking about your day selling insurance posted to YouTube shared in a life insurance Facebook group. Before you know it, people are going to start watching your content. Then instead of being that greasy guy that chases people down on LinkedIn, asking them if they've ever heard of the insurance business or considering switching IMOs or DMing people in insurance agent freedom which side note is against the rules or get banned you can have people come to you who are already watching your content, already interested in what you're doing, and want to learn more about working with you. Take for example, a guy like David Duford. I think he did the recruiting model perfectly. Instead of six months though, this guy took years of focusing, perfecting his craft in the insurance business and selling a ton of final expense. Then he started posting content for a while. But he wasn't even recruiting people when he first started. After a little bit of posting content, building a following, he then opened up his agency and went from nothing to having a multi million dollar insurance agency. Mostly because of his YouTube channel and his content. How many of you guys have ever received a DM from David Duford begging you to come work for his agency? Agency? None of you. Because he doesn't do it. He doesn't have to. People come to him because he's already a trusted and respected source. The problem with trying to go out and recruit a bunch of people, DMing agents, even going after people that aren't in the insurance industry is now you seem needy. You have the exact same offer as everybody else that's in this business because everyone is trying to recruit everyone. But if instead of doing that, you bide your time, you're a little bit more patient, you perfect it first for yourself. You once you're already a trusted source because you're posting content, you're offering free value to other agents, then all of a sudden one day snap on the recruiting switch and people are going to be flooding and knocking at your doorstep to come work for you. So that is why in my opinion, you should not recruit as a beginner insurance agent. You should perfect your business and become profitable first. And then instead of going out and chasing people, you should have them come to you and become a trusted source by offering a ton of free value. So that's going to wrap up this video. Thank you guys so much for watching. If you agree with me, let me know in the comments. If you disagree with me, let me know in the comments. I'd love to hear it and get an open discussion going there. You guys got value from this video. Be sure to like comment down below, hit that subscribe button and I will see you guys in the next one. Peace.