Brian Appleton: Insurance Agent Summit | The Business Blast Podcast #592

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Alright everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast Podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have a good friend Brian Appleton with us. He is the host and creator of the Insurance Agent Summit, which is the insurance industry's largest online event for insurance agents with more than 10,000 attendees. He is the co-author of the best-selling book Customer Service Is Just Foreplay: The The modern customer experience will separate you apart from your competition. So welcome to the show, man.

Hey, bud. Happy to be here. Glad to do this for ya.

Awesome, dude. Pumped to have you here. We'll dive right into the first one, Bryan. The first one is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Yeah, well, you know, thinking of, trying to think, I've had a lot of stuff that's happened in my life that I feel like has, you know, given me opportunities to learn from, but the one that's been most recent is my daughter was born about, 2.5 years ago. After that, my wife got sick. We didn't know what was going on. We went through a lot of doctor's appointments and just a lot of things trying to figure out what was going on. Then we finally did, and she had to have a pretty major surgery. I say all that to say, thankfully, we're doing great. She's doing really well. It wasn't cancer or anything really serious, but through that process, I guess it was really challenging. My My personal life suffered, my business suffered. It was just a really challenging time for us. I say all that to say the valuable message through all of that for me was it really put into perspective what's important for life. I reevaluated my life and evaluated where I was at and how happy I was. That forced me to look back at when I was younger. Really, when I was in my 20s, one of my teens and my 20s, oftentimes we look back at the time and say, "Man, I could be happy with—" $20 in my pocket and good friends and a drink in my hand sometimes and just hanging out and having fun. Also looking at that time, I had a lot of insecurities as well. Now looking, all of that has forced me to now say, "How am I really fulfilled and happy and secure with my life?" Now being 35, I feel like I'm in a much better place and really just being happy with the little things in life, of a smile from my daughter or a laugh from my wife. And so the valuable message is to just, I guess, appreciate where you're at and enjoy the ride a little bit.

Yes, man. Dude, congrats on the daughter, dude. That's awesome. Yeah, thank you. It's exciting. So cool. The next one I have for you, man, is what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Sure. Well, I work a lot in the insurance industry, which is pretty boring. So I'm trying to think of your audience, you know. I mean, You know, one of the most valuable things I can tell anybody, and you know this too, Tyler, is sales copywriting. That's really how I cut my teeth of being an online marketer. It's helped me in so many ways with my business, what we do with the Online Insurance Summits. It helps me with selling, it helps me with interacting with just people in my daily life. So being a good sales copywriter and really working on that and making it an art and a craft. I'm far from great at it. I mean, I'm really, I'm still a novice, but I continue to learn and try to get better every day. But that's such an important skill for any industry that you're in, so I would just tell your listeners to really look at that and make it a part of what you do and a skill set you try to build.

Definitely, man. And I'm just curious, like, for myself, that's something that I, when I first started out, I really dove into as well. And what I would do is I would actually copy other people's sales copy every morning for like 30 minutes to an hour, just writing it. Just to feel kind of like that flow, maybe copy Seth Godin or Russell Brunson, somebody like that, and just write it down on paper. That was helping me to get better at forming my own sales copy. Do you have any tips for how you've gotten better?

Yeah. I think we both— the Dane Maxwell School of Copywriting. Yeah. I actually even did people that had done it a lot, 20, 30 years ago wrote down their copy. So there's a thing called the Boron Letters that you go through and you can write copy on and stuff like that. So I think it's that. I think it's also reading and being engaged with the great copywriters. Get on email lists. I mean, I'm on Jeff Walker's and Dean Kennedy's and I'm trying to think, Evan Pagan, I followed Evan for a long time. His stuff kind of weighed on me a little bit. I kind of got off of it, but I think it's going to be as many of those as you can. See what they're putting in their email copy. What subject lines are they using? What— you got to follow those people and engage with their stuff. Check out their sales pages. I mean, you got to look at what everyone's doing and then try to adopt a style that works for you and think about your audience. I mean, honestly, a lot of the online marketing stuff that works in a lot of other niches, we've tested in ours and it doesn't work very well. We have to be a little bit more professional. Our stuff has to be a little shorter and to the point because of the audience that we deal with. So you have to take that into account, but yeah, try to get as many lists as you can and watch what other great copywriters are doing.

Got it. And the next one is, what's your best piece of just overall business advice, so not necessarily industry-specific?

Sure, so I would say one of the best pieces of advice I got from a mentor is add value first. You know, he would tell me, you can't get what you want till someone else gets what they want. Now, I don't necessarily love the verbiage of that because it makes it seem like It's a transactional relationship, but there's a lot of truth there. And, you know, before that, I would always be, you know, in my 20s, and as an early entrepreneur, I would be lots of times thinking, what can I get from them? Well, how can they help me? How can I grow my business through this relationship? But when I shifted through this mentor in my early 30s to really, okay, what do they need? How can I help them first? And adding that value, and a lot of people are just naturally good at that. It's taking me a little while, and it actually feels better when I do it, but it can be little things, and it can be just even through our summit. What I do through my business actually helps people, and so they're more than willing to build a relationship with me and help me in return. Really shifting my mindset, there's no shortage of opportunities out there. When you add value, opportunities naturally come to you, or you see more opportunities. That's one of the simple things is just Always ask yourself, what can you do for someone first before you try to get something out of the relationship?

Definitely. And if you could give the younger Brian one piece of advice, what would that be?

You know, it's— this is a good question because it's taken me a while to realize this, but I go through ebb and flow with it. But to just, you know, the old saying, you know, money doesn't buy happiness. It really does. You know, like money and possessions, when I would focus on that so much, it's like the key to what made life worth living. The first job I had out of college was working at an insurance agency as a sales producer. I got to tell you, a lot of guys drive up in Maseratis and Ferraris, and you go drive by their homes and they got what looks like really nice houses. The longer I was there, I realized a lot of these people were miserable. They were just unhappy. You got the guy that's going through his fourth divorce. The kids aren't really a part of his life. You find out he's really living paycheck to paycheck. From the outside it looks so— it just took me a while to realize there's really a balance between striving for big goals, which is great, and I'm not saying you should ever just settle, but there is a journey between where you're at now and getting to where you want to go. It's about the journey and not the destination. I had somebody tell me this in one of the self-development programs I did. Life is is like climbing a mountain with no mountaintop. There's no destination to get to where everything's just perfect and it's all figured out. Life's a mountain with no peak. So we have to enjoy the journey and be happy with where they're at while striving for a bigger goal and to achieve the things you want to. But don't think those things are gonna— you gotta be happy now or you're not gonna be happy when you have all those things. So realizing that along the journey has really helped me. And that's the advice I'd give to my younger self is Just do that and be okay with where you're at. Yeah, man, and that—

I feel like you kind of answered this next one as well, and maybe you want to elaborate a little bit more, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

Yeah, I think it does go into that, which is gratitude. I mean, the more that I'm grateful for what I have and when I tell myself that, and, you know, if you've got a morning routine out there, I would say always make gratitude a part of it. There's the 5-minute journal and things like that, but, you know, making gratitude a part of what you do and just when you are great. Again, like I said, I have a daughter. When I get to see her laugh and be happy, when I get to be with friends and do simple things like be outdoors or play games, or when I'm just enjoying that. Facebook is a slippery slope, guys. When you're always looking and comparing yourself to what do I not have, what are they doing, how come they're on the trip and I'm not on the trip. So that and relationships are what make life worth living. Being grateful and being around people. And having meaningful relationships is really what leads to happiness.

And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from that?

So I've read a lot of books. This is— I've asked people the same one when I do the summits. It's kind of— it can be a tough question sometimes because there's a lot of great books. I read early Rich Dad, Poor Dad, 4-Hour Workweek, Think and Grow Rich. I mean, those are all ones that have big impact in my lives. I'll just talk about what I read recently. One of the best ones I've read recently is a book called Profit First. I don't know if you read or heard of it, but very simple concept about how to run your finances in your business. Very simple but very profound. I love books like that that simplify the complex but are profound, so I would highly recommend that one. It's a good read, quick read, and every entrepreneur should read it. Awesome, brother.

Thanks for sharing that with us. The next one is, what is your favorite quote and why?

Yeah, so I don't know that I'm necessarily a big quote guy, you know, but I've been thinking about this some recently, again, to all the things I've talked about today. My high school principal, I remember being 18, It was his last year. We were getting ready to graduate. He looks at us and says, "Boys, enjoy this moment because life goes fast." The older you get, the faster life does go because you're comparing where you're at now to all the years that you've lived. So when you're 60 and you're looking at all the life that you lived and you've only got this year, it feels like it goes pretty fast. So I was thinking about this this morning and I love the Ferris Bueller quote. If you've ever seen the movie, fantastic movie, one of my favorite. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it. So it's just a great quote, still holds true for me today.

Yes, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find and/or connect with you online?

Yeah, check out our website insuranceagentsummit.com, or obviously search for Brian Afton, LinkedIn, Facebook, connect with me. Happy to do that, but check out our website. Sure, specific, but if you want to see some of the stuff we do, and then you can always find me on LinkedIn or Facebook. Perfect, man.

Thanks again for jumping on. Yep.

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