INS 003 - Nicholas Ayers on How to Hack Human Behavior

1h 1m
Entrepreneur and insurance agency owner, Nicholas Ayers, joins the podcast to explain how to hack human behavior to grow your business. Get more here: https://ryanhanley.com

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Runtime: 1h 1m

Transcript

Speaker 1 JP Morgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation-driven finance.
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Speaker 6 Well, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show. And today we are talking with the

Speaker 6 I want to say wonderful, I want to say tremendous, just incredibly incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking.

Speaker 6 Nicholas Ayers, the founder of Made You Look Marketing, one of the premier, if not the premier, insurance advertising

Speaker 6 course program, I want to say. We'll say philosophical and tactical system for actually getting real leads that produce real results into your agency.
And we go into what that means.

Speaker 6 So if you haven't picked up on it, this is an insurance-specific podcast.

Speaker 6 Although, you will see that whether you're in the insurance industry or not, the core principles that we discuss around marketing, branding, advertising, lead generation are ubiquitous.

Speaker 6 It does not matter what industry you're in.

Speaker 6 And we actually use examples from both the mortgage industry, the real estate industry, and I can tell you firsthand, financial advisors, CPAs, lawyers, really any professional organization or

Speaker 6 enterprise that falls under the professional designation could take real tactical and

Speaker 6 core principles from this episode. It's a ton of fun just because we dive into a bunch of different topics,

Speaker 6 all of which are going to help you grow your business if you're willing to do the work. Before we get onto the show, though, I want to just give you my quick CTA, my call to action.

Speaker 6 My friends, if this is your very first time with my show, I would love for you to subscribe.

Speaker 6 There is just tons of great content that we've already produced all the way back to the very first episode, my masterclass and communication that I did with Marcus Sheridan.

Speaker 6 And then through that episode up until the one you're listening to, just incredible thought leaders, incredible people sharing what they do with you. So I hope you subscribe.

Speaker 6 And if you're someone who's listened to this show for more than one episode and you enjoy this work, you want more people to find it, you think there are more individuals out there who would benefit from having these conversations in their earbuds please head on over to itunes leave me a rating and review just algorithmically that's how more people find this show thank you for listening i love you for listening now let's get on to nick ayers it gets you know when you're stuck in an office for 10 hours a day 12 hours a day you know but it feels like seven days a week yeah you have to try to do some sort of change of pace a little bit every once in a while so yeah i'll change up the lighting configuration a little bit and uh i don't know just makes me feel like i'm in in a different spot sometimes.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I feel that. I feel that.

Speaker 8 Sometimes I sit on the right side of the kitchen table and sometimes I sit on the left side of the kitchen table. And, you know, it feels like a whole new world.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it feels like you might as well be like, you know, on a beach somewhere at that point.

Speaker 8 I have an office downstairs. We're actually moving in like a month.
That's why I'm sitting at my kitchen table that and for the last almost year I haven't needed to sit at the kitchen table. But

Speaker 8 my wife's like, well, we have this office that we built you downstairs. Like, why don't you work there? And I'm like,

Speaker 8 because

Speaker 8 it's in the basement and we only get so much nice weather here. And like, the sun's out.
So I want to be up where the sun is because it's dark and cold. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Where are you guys moving? Do you guys stay in the same city? Do you guys move like that?

Speaker 8 I'm literally moving like two and a half miles from where I live right now.

Speaker 5 Don't you don't you go to, I see you like in your vlogs.

Speaker 8 You go like to a co-working space right it looks really cool with the brick background and all that stuff yeah it's called the troy innovation garage the place actually is pretty sweet um it's run by a buddy of mine uh who was in the pr business and just fell in love with the idea of co-working and put his company in this co-working space that he kind of built up around it and then um now he is kind of transitioning out of the pr world and is building these co-working spaces and he gives them like each one he gives uh like so the one in troy is called the troy innovation Garage.

Speaker 8 He has one in Albany, New York, called the Bull Moose Club. And I think he's looking at a couple other cities right now to build another one.

Speaker 8 And he wants to take this concept where it's a co-working space, but it's not like a WeWork, which nothing against WeWork, but they're all, you know, if you've been in one, you kind of know what the setup is.

Speaker 8 Like, these are very specific and unique to the culture of whatever that town is. So

Speaker 5 I tried doing the co-working space thing, and I feel

Speaker 5 like it has to fit a certain type of person.

Speaker 5 At least maybe, I don't know if they're all built the same, but I wonder when I gave it a good year of being in a co-working space. And

Speaker 5 it's just, it's, I don't know, sometimes it's hard. If you're used to, if you're not used to working with a lot of ambient people walking around and talking and stuff,

Speaker 5 it's a challenge to be in an open space, I feel. Because, you know, if you're on the phone at all, or if you're trying to focus and you've got...

Speaker 5 you know, everybody is, you know, raving about the newest kombucha in the kitchen or something. It's just hard.
I don't know. Maybe it's, maybe I'm just not built for a a co-working space, but

Speaker 5 they're too distracting.

Speaker 8 I don't think you're wrong. I think it definitely takes work.

Speaker 5 So, I

Speaker 8 know, I do. I do.
I think it takes, I think it takes, like, you have to be, I do agree with you. You have to be the right kind of person.

Speaker 8 If you are, so, in general, I do not, I have to be in the right mood for small talk. Like, even though I think probably to a certain extent, my public persona may be that I'm an extrovert.

Speaker 8 I am, I really don't enjoy talking to random people at all.

Speaker 5 all.

Speaker 8 If I'm in the right mood or I'm in that version of who I am, then I love it. And it's great.
And I love talking to people and ask them questions and it's awesome.

Speaker 8 But I'd say most of the time, I just like people to leave me alone so I can do my stuff.

Speaker 8 I find it just to be exhausting. I actually went to a 40th birthday party on Saturday of a friend of mine and it was fun.

Speaker 8 And after an hour and a half, I looked at my wife and she looked at me and I was like, I'm good.

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 8 I've had enough. 90 minutes of fun is enough for for me.
Like, nothing against my buddy. Like, I'm happy for him.
I had had enough small talking, and it was like, I'm time to go.

Speaker 8 But, uh, a long story short, um, I have been a member of that. Uh, I had been a member of that co-working space since three months before they opened.

Speaker 8 So, there's literally like holes in the floor, like jackhammers going off.

Speaker 8 And I just throw like noise-canceling, I had these old Bose noise-canceling headphones, and it's like whap, I can be put into another world.

Speaker 8 so that's how i've made it work but it definitely can be distracting at times and some people don't get the clue

Speaker 5 no no i i feel like for most people it's like a social club like they just go there they'd rather instead of going to the bar they're like i'll just come here for eight hours a day and i'm not an alcoholic if i do this and so they go to the bar and or they go to the the co-working space and it's just a social event for at least it was my experience um

Speaker 5 and i don't know just the aesthetic of seeing like people moving around and stuff it's like i gotta focus and maybe that's a bad thing. Like, you're right.
It does take a lot of work.

Speaker 5 Cause if I'm focused on my computer, like, last thing I want to see is a bunch of people, you know, doing somersaults or something. Cause whatever.
I don't need to see that.

Speaker 8 You know, I also.

Speaker 5 I feel like an old man, like, get off my lawn type guy. Like,

Speaker 8 no, I think, well, here's what I would say.

Speaker 8 I think that I do think as you get more mature into your career, and I don't want to say older because I don't know that it has anything to do with it, but I do think as you become, as you be, as you mature into your career, you start to understand the habits and routines that allow you to be the most effective version of yourself.

Speaker 8 And if performance or some level of performance, if you're holding yourself to that, anything that breaks those habits, you know, you don't appreciate as much because

Speaker 8 it just, it takes you away from

Speaker 8 being able to do your best work. And, you know, if I'm away from the coworking space for a while and I go back, there is an adjustment period.

Speaker 8 If I'm there all the time, then I just can give people that look like don't f with me like i'm i'm in the middle of something or i'll just straight be like yo man i got something to do like and walk you know or you just have to say that to some people that's that east it's that east well you have the luxury of that east coast kind of uh stereotypical attitude like everybody gets it yeah

Speaker 8 yeah you get a prick it's socially acceptable to be to be a prick to people and and they just have to deal with it um and and that is one of the advantages to being on the east coast is you just like look man i got these things to do like go figure go you know go figure it out yeah go down your thumbs get out of here

Speaker 8 yeah

Speaker 8 so well man dude hey i i appreciate you coming on um i i just you know you're you're you're a guy that i've obviously uh followed your work for a long time we've you know gotten to know each other and and that's been fun um especially we got to know each other a lot better after i uh after i took a i took a solid swing at your organization um misinformed but but certainly a solid i forgot all about honestly i forgot all about that until you just brought that up yeah i I was well, you know what, I was thinking about it the other day.

Speaker 8 I was, I was like, I was just thinking about our interactions and stuff and the industry.

Speaker 8 And obviously my mind's been, I've just had, you know, I've been in a new space now that I'm kind of back working with

Speaker 8 insurance industry in general and starting to help some people on a consulting basis.

Speaker 8 Like it, you know, and then I, we had our call coming up and I wanted to talk to you because you have so much going on that I'm interested in.

Speaker 8 And I was like, man, I, you know, we were kind of knew each other. And then peripherally, right? Peripherally.
Yeah. Like, I knew of your work.
I had seen it and thought it was good. And then

Speaker 8 what was like on Agency Nation Radio with Marty, I took a swing at IAOA and

Speaker 5 he reached out to me.

Speaker 8 Well, the funny, so Grant, who I just had on,

Speaker 8 Grant Botma. So to people listening, you know, the players, Grant, who was on one or two episodes ago.
He came at me hard on Twitter, like real hard, like, you know, real aggressive.

Speaker 8 And you were more diplomatic. You're like, yo, man, I think you have some misconceptions, what we're all about.
Let's get on the phone.

Speaker 8 So then you and I got on the phone for like probably an hour, an hour and a half, whatever it was. And then after that, I was like, I'm good.

Speaker 8 And I think I went on the next episode and was like, I was misinformed, like, I had heard some things, and, you know, lesson learned, don't you know, get to know that's a, I remember, I remember that now.

Speaker 5 And, you know, speaking of like Grant, like, Grant's like the perfect person.

Speaker 5 He's he's very intellectual and he's very

Speaker 5 strategic. And like, he can strategically think of words right on the spot and

Speaker 5 I think you know he he he won't probably admit a lot of this but you know he's like one of the worst people to get in an argument with or to get into a verbal battle with because he'll for I've seen him do this others I've seen him just completely annihilate people in the nicest way possible and I'm like man I wish I had that gift because for me I'm just when I want to like bulldoze or something, I just bulldoze over it and I'm like a bull in a china closet half the time.

Speaker 5 And he has a way of making you feel really dumb.

Speaker 5 That's one of the reasons why I really like hanging out with him because, you know, that sounds bad to say, but he has a way of making people feel like inadequate.

Speaker 5 And he's not, I don't think he's trying to intentionally do that. It just comes off that way.
And so, yeah, I actually remember all that. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I think we, it's a struggle we all face.

Speaker 5 You,

Speaker 5 we were younger. It was probably a couple years ago now, I think.

Speaker 8 Probably four years ago.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you just, you're young and you're dumb and you just kind of do stuff. I tell people this all the time, I'm going to ride ride the young and dumb thing as long as I possibly can.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 You know, what it taught me too was

Speaker 8 I definitely was still very bought into the tribalism of like the national big eye and stuff like that. And just these things that today I detest about our industry.

Speaker 8 That's not meant to be a shot at the association, just tribalism in general are things that

Speaker 8 I just detest. And I actually read this, I just shared it on Twitter, actually, this awesome article today, how empathy is killing social discourse.

Speaker 8 That there have been three consecutive studies over the last seven years that have found almost the exact same thing. The more empathetic you are, the more apt you are to

Speaker 6 feel

Speaker 8 actual joy when someone who's outside your empathy group is in pain.

Speaker 8 And the whole point of these studies is like, how can you have people on both sides of a conversation who would classify themselves as very empathetic? You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 Ultimately hate, like literally hate with a passion,

Speaker 8 this other group. Like, how can you, how do those two things work in the same? Because you think, if I'm an empathetic person, I'm empathetic to everyone.

Speaker 8 And what they found is that's actually not the case, that the more empathetic you consider yourself to be,

Speaker 8 the less empathetic you are to anyone who you consider outside of your circle.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it's that, I mean, so so I think, you know, tribalism and, you know, the herd mentality, I think, is just, it's, it's something you have to always fight against because it's innate in us.

Speaker 5 It's, it's how we have survived. It's how we've survived for hundreds of thousands of years is by getting together in a group of people that we find similar interests or affinities with.

Speaker 5 And we think, okay, if I'm friends with this person, then when the barbarians come over the hill, they're not going to kill me. You know, this person's going to protect me.

Speaker 5 And, you know, so it's like it's natural in us to feel that way.

Speaker 5 And it's natural for us to feel empathy towards people with similar affinities i i have a lot of empathy for a lot of people who fit my criteria and mode of what

Speaker 8 is you know subjectively right or wrong and but for the people that are outside there i'm like well go screw yourself you know yeah you figure it out for yourself so i think there's a lot of truth in that yeah it's just it's interesting to me so uh not that that tangent is very important but uh at that time you know i was also i think i That conversation was in some ways a very pivotal moment in my own career because it made me step back and reevaluate where I was receiving information from and the filters with which I passed that information through.

Speaker 8 Because I said,

Speaker 8 you know, this, I mean, this was literally days after I had published that podcast. I had had the conversation with you.
It happened pretty quickly.

Speaker 8 And I said, how can I have felt so strongly one day, three days ago? And today I feel completely and utterly different after, you know what I mean? And if I had actually met you in person

Speaker 5 before,

Speaker 8 you know, I had heard some of the things that I had heard, I would have never even gone down that path. I would have gone, hey, man, like, I'm hearing something, like, what's up with that?

Speaker 8 We would have talked about it. You would explain exactly what you would explain to me.

Speaker 8 And I would have been up and gone, you know, man, some people are saying some things about this, but here's what I know is actually happening. You know, so it's like

Speaker 8 it definitely changed the way I personally

Speaker 8 filtered information and, you know, kind of thought before I spoke, I guess you could say. So it was, you know, whether

Speaker 8 intentional or not, a very educational moment for me in my life.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's been great since then, right? We've taken those lessons and we've applied them to other things now. And,

Speaker 5 you know, I think honestly, like, it's, it's made our relationship

Speaker 5 better, right? I mean, so it's, I think that that's, I think it's been, I think it was a great thing. I actually kind of forgot about it until you just kind of brought it up there.

Speaker 5 So that's, uh, yeah. But I forget what I did yesterday half the time.
So

Speaker 5 it works.

Speaker 8 Well, I, you know, I, I probably reflect on things too much i try to i try to not make the same mistake twice as much as possible um

Speaker 8 except i keep rooting for the bills um that that's a mistake i'll probably make for the rest of my life but um

Speaker 8 you know i i try to not i try very hard not to do that um that's just something that it really bothers me personally when i when i small little things that you know like things happen like big major things that if you had taken a moment to think about you could have not made that mistake twice sure so I do tend to reflect on those things quite a bit but none of this is actually why we had why I want to have you on the show other than I just enjoy conversating with you yeah um the last few years like I guess since that moment has had I mean you're

Speaker 8 you've had some some created some new projects you've changed the state that you live in you've just had some major changes and I also think you know there is

Speaker 8 There's been this interesting movement in the industry, and maybe this is the best place to start, speaking specifically about the insurance industry, is that

Speaker 8 you have made you look marketing. There's a video, advertising, marketing, community, coursework.
I think you even do some consulting stuff.

Speaker 8 We'll talk about all that as we go.

Speaker 8 But you're driving. You're one of the driving thought leaders and really practitioners around

Speaker 8 taking your message into the digital space and how to do that in a very strategic and tactical way that produces results.

Speaker 8 Not kind of the fluffy, you know, hey, you should do a YouTube video kind of thing. Like, like, here's how you actually do it.
Here's how it produces results.

Speaker 8 Very, very boots on the ground, tangible stuff. Yeah.
And, and, and you're one of the pioneers of that.

Speaker 8 And at the same time, um, you know, I'm here, here, I've been gone from the industry for nine months and I, and I step back in and I'm hearing, you know, it was funny, like being gone nine months, for some reason I came back and I was like, you know, I'm going to come back and things are going to be so much different.

Speaker 8 You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 Like, I don't know why I thought that that would be the case, but I was like, I'm sure i know this is the insurance industry right yeah i know i know it's like but i just was i come back in i'm like oh my god like what do you mean you're not doing that like it's been nine months like that that feels like the right answer to me and there's why

Speaker 8 like why why are we still questioning

Speaker 8 like automation putting your message out into the marketplace, like having at least a digital component to your business.

Speaker 8 From where you you sit, why are we even still having this should we debate?

Speaker 8 Not, you know, it feels like we should be into how or who helps us or where do we put it, not, but we're still questioning should we, and that boggles my mind.

Speaker 5 Yeah, you know, I, and honestly, maybe, maybe we're seeing the same thing from a little bit different perspective. I actually see it as improving, to be honest with you.

Speaker 5 I mean, I remember five years ago, the word automation was like this,

Speaker 5 it was this foreign concept. And today it's this, now it's this really third rail buzzword that people don't even know what it means, but they get really excited about it.

Speaker 5 And so I do think that there's growth in that arena.

Speaker 5 I remember sitting in an event in San Antonio. It was one of our very first conferences.
And

Speaker 5 we had 120 people in the room, and the word automation came up, and it was like people saw, you know, it was like Wizard of Oz, they see color for the very first time.

Speaker 5 And now, you know, we have everybody that is automate, you know, the people who are automating a lot of things. Do I think the tide has completely shifted?

Speaker 5 No, I still think that I think that there's still a lot of work to be done on a lot of fronts, whether it's automation, whether it's marketing.

Speaker 5 But you also, I mean, and maybe this is one perspective out of many, but, you know, a lot of people that I talk to have been in the industry for a really long time.

Speaker 5 They were in the industry building their agencies in the yellow page era, in the bus stop advertising era, in the newsletter era.

Speaker 5 And not that those eras are still all completely gone, but it is different. But they built their agency in a much different model and they grew relatively well.

Speaker 5 They grew relatively fast in a different era. And now, you know, there's almost this need, well, I don't need to do that because it's approached from two places.
One, a place of fear of

Speaker 5 learning something right. I don't want to go have to learn Spanish, but if you drop me off in the middle of Tijuana, I better pick it up pretty fast.

Speaker 5 And, you know, there's this ignorance that I don't need to do this. You know, I didn't have to build my agency this way.
Well, Well,

Speaker 5 the time has shifted and times have shifted, and communications changed more in the last five years than it did 50 years combined previously. And so I think there's still a lot of that.

Speaker 5 I think a lot of people are just still content with whether, and honestly, I don't fault people for that. I mean, that's exactly where I want to get.
I want to get to a spot where I'm content too.

Speaker 5 And whether or not I ever get there is completely different. But I think that I do see positive shifts.

Speaker 5 Words that we use today weren't used years ago. You know, today the big word is data.
Like that wasn't something that anybody thought about one year ago, two years ago, three years ago.

Speaker 5 Now everybody thinks about it. Automation is the same way.
Marketing, I feel, is on that path as well. People know that they need to do something.
I think what they get lost is there's so much.

Speaker 5 coming at them from different perspectives and there's so many shiny objects that you don't know where to begin and it's it's it's paralyzing and people would rather stay put bury their heads in in the sand than actually you know take a step in a certain direction i see this a lot with um with with people that i work with i mean people who pay money they still come in paralyzed and you know we've had to adjust some things but i i think i i do think it's getting better not at the rate that you and i would want but i do i do see it improving so

Speaker 8 where do they begin because i i I agree with you. I think this is, I think in many ways, I think you, I think you've nailed the two things.
It's, hey, man, I'm making $300,000 in personal income.

Speaker 8 You know, my wife's got a new car. You know, we have a house down in Florida.
I get to play golf. I do some work.
My kids' college is taken care of. Why, what do I need to do?

Speaker 8 Like, what do I, why do I have to kill myself with this new thing?

Speaker 5 So I think that's. Yeah.
And God bless them. I think that's a great spot to be in.
And depending on how long you want to ride that wave.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 5 If you're only someone who wants to be in the industry for another couple of years and then you sell or whatever, man, yeah, I'd be right there.

Speaker 5 I i mean honestly i'd be right there with you like let's go golfing even though i don't golf but um you know for you

Speaker 5 just rollerblade alongside them as they're i just rollerblade man i'll rollerblade with the drink cart man you know it's it's it's all good no i i think that uh the majority of the industry is not there and that's not what they're doing right a lot of agency owners struggle i mean the majority of agency owners struggle yeah so and so they have to they have to start somewhere for me uh i think it's really easy to say and this is a mistake that I see a lot of people fall into, a trap, is they want to learn mechanisms.

Speaker 5 And they think they want to learn mechanisms. They want to learn Facebook.

Speaker 5 They want to learn Google. They want to learn email.
They want to learn automation.

Speaker 5 And I think all that stuff is very tangible, nice stuff, but it's really just the fruit of what's growing on the tree. And I think the tree has to be rooted in deeper, deeper things than that.

Speaker 5 So for me, like someone who nerds out on this stuff,

Speaker 5 I spend some time figuring out, tinkering, what buttons to click, but really I spend my time trying to learn human behavior, psychology, persuasion,

Speaker 5 how to apply those things in what I write and what I say, not just on the marketing side, but the sales side. And learning, okay,

Speaker 5 this is the mindset that people have. How do I overcome that? How do I, you know, with this mindset is going to come this series of objections.
Why do they think this?

Speaker 5 Why is it that they want what they have?

Speaker 5 How are they going to envision themselves with the result that we're trying to get them?

Speaker 5 And so i think when you learn things i think this is applicable to any industry is learning uh just human psychology and i know it sounds weird but i think when you learn how people behave and who cares i you know i had this conversation with somebody the other day i said you know advertising was around before the internet it's hard to believe but it was and marketing was around before the internet and they relied on different things and different tactics When you learn, when you understand how how people behave and why they make decisions and you know, we were talking about the herd mentality you know how to how to think about that you know from the whole pick from the whole big picture then screw the platforms you know tomorrow new platforms gonna come out you can figure that out relatively easily uh but you know learning how people behave and learning how to put that into words or into sequences is going to be i think where you have more success and so that's a that's a bigger picture thing and most people don't want to uh devote themselves to learning that stuff but really it's the best thing that's going to help you not just from an inbound but from an outbound from a sales standpoint from how you just talk to people on your team standpoint i think that it's it's really critical do you think that's one of the defining characteristics between

Speaker 8 um say

Speaker 8 i don't want to just say agency owners but just an insurance professional who has figured out how to put themselves in a in a place of

Speaker 8 relative comfort or sustainability versus uh an insurance professional who has not understanding human behavior that is

Speaker 5 well i i yeah i well i think that it's if you want to if you want to grow and you want to improve i think that that's what you need to do i mean um

Speaker 5 i think there's probably a lot of successful agency owners that probably have figured that out right as it pertains to the insurance vertical right you you tell them a number of objections they'll tell you exactly why that person's probably thinking that way and they'll they'll know how to overcome it so i think that there's things that maybe that they inherently have developed without maybe even knowing that they've developed them um and i would say that that's probably what causes people to have success.

Speaker 5 But I think it's how people in the industry, outside the industry, how anybody has success in communicating. And I think everybody has a different style.

Speaker 5 My style is completely different than most people's style. And there's a lot of intentional, I would say there's 95 intentional thought into why I do things.
It just fits me as a human being.

Speaker 5 And it wouldn't be good for other people to replicate.

Speaker 5 But I think that

Speaker 5 it's definitely a skill set that

Speaker 5 you have to learn and you have to develop. And you have to do it with trial and error.
Yeah.

Speaker 8 You know, I come back to my father-in-law a lot because I feel like I was blessed in many ways to have him as the person who taught me this industry.

Speaker 8 Because, one, he's very old school in how he goes about things, but he's also been incredibly successful. And if you were to ask him, I mean, he would have,

Speaker 8 there is no way that he has ever studied human behavior. That being said, his ability to adapt a story or a pitch or

Speaker 8 a mechanism of the experience that he provides in his agency to someone based on the way that they respond to certain things, like their human behavior, is uncanny.

Speaker 8 And he just developed it by digging deeper into the business and wanting to understand that next layer, never actually reading about it, but just listening to people reacting and you know, hearing no a bunch of times and figuring out how to get closer to yes.

Speaker 8 And, you know, that

Speaker 8 I am concerned, and this, I mean, I'm very interested in your take on this. I'm concerned that we're losing that, that the rush towards marketing, we forget that you still have to sell.
And to me,

Speaker 8 the individuals that I see who seem to have the deepest understanding of human behavior, whether that's

Speaker 8 spending time actually in some sort of learning or literature or deep practice to learn learn it, or it has just come from trial and error over time and focusing on it.

Speaker 8 Those people tend to be from a sales function because it's, you know, kill, you know, you either kill it or you don't eat, right?

Speaker 8 And I worry that the farther we remove ourselves from actual sales, from actually

Speaker 8 that the majority that we're going to start to lose that. I'm not going to say you have to lose it because I don't, I don't think that's the case.

Speaker 8 I'm saying just that natural tendency away from sales in some some regard

Speaker 8 and more of a reliance on advertising and marketing,

Speaker 8 we could start to lose that a little bit. Do you think there's anything to that?

Speaker 5 Oh, for sure. I mean, I see it in the insurance industry.
I see it in every industry. You know, I have the privilege of having my foot in other,

Speaker 5 you know, seeing, observing from the outside in how other people in other niches and other verticals. approach us and it's all the same thing, right?

Speaker 5 We get caught up in the vanity metrics of now we've accomplished something, right? I, you know, from a from a

Speaker 5 literal standpoint, I have an ad running and it's getting a lot of views and it's getting a lot of impressions and people are clicking over to it and I'm even generating a lot of leads.

Speaker 5 I got leads for a dollar.

Speaker 5 Great.

Speaker 5 How much money are you making? I mean, that's really at the end of the day, what it should be about. Those things should help facilitate and do that.
And most people, they don't.

Speaker 5 Now, keep in mind, I also talk to a lot of people who will

Speaker 5 make a lot of money and do really well with the same thing. And

Speaker 5 a there's a uh like this chasm this the separation between those who understand that

Speaker 5 and those who are just in it for the vanity metrics the people that are actually focused on you know revenue we all think we are but you know i think our actions dictate that we're not and you know i ask people you know who generate say leads right and i'll say well how many times do you i see this a lot like in the mortgage this is a good example i'll throw somebody else under the bus uh in the mortgage vertical uh mortgage lenders i would say sometimes fall even below the the,

Speaker 5 they're a layer below on the totem pole of what I call laziness, you know, in financial services, because they're not used to having to sell anything. They get referrals from real estate agents.

Speaker 5 And, you know, they'll generate leads and they'll, I'll say, oh, great. How many, you know, how many applications have you taken? How many pre-approvals have you, have you gotten?

Speaker 5 Well, I haven't gotten any. Okay, well, let's dive into that.

Speaker 5 What's your follow-up process like? How many phone calls are you making? Well, I make a call and I leave a message. And, you know, if I have to leave a message, maybe I'll shoot an email and so on.

Speaker 5 Great.

Speaker 5 When's the next phone phone call well you know i'll call them the you know maybe the next day it's very like there's nothing systematic about it there's nothing there's nothing intensive about it there's nothing it's very it's very up in the air and kind of gray and you see that results and It's, but we get so excited on, well, I've done this, I've accomplished this, but that's great.

Speaker 5 And that's, that's a nice vanity metric that you have, but what are the, what are the actual, the real results aren't the, what you've accomplished on the ad or the lead, but it's what you've, what you've deposited in your bank account.

Speaker 5 And that's what sales does. And sales is not just, you know, me tricking you into, you know, buying something.
That's not what sales is. That's actually the worst part of it.

Speaker 5 That's the complete opposite of sales.

Speaker 5 Sales is a very long process of, you know, people going from a series of being completely unaware to aware to making a decision and believing that that decision is going to give them the result that's going to solve an internal problem in their life.

Speaker 5 And they're so bought in to that

Speaker 5 solution that it could be a $1 or it could be a million dollars. If they really feel like it's going to solve a real problem internally for them, then they're going to do whatever they can.

Speaker 5 They're going to beg, borrow, still, sell blood,

Speaker 5 perform tricks on the corner in order to get the result that is really going to solve an internal problem for them. And so I think

Speaker 5 there is a real separation there. And I do think that the successful people

Speaker 5 understand that. They understand that it's not just about the vanity metrics, but it's about

Speaker 5 the actual results that those metrics are supposed to provide. And insurance agents fall into the trap.
They, you know,

Speaker 5 you can't go on my Facebook without seeing somebody posting about and bragging about that they got $1 leads or 50 cent leads. It's great.
Awesome. Congratulations.

Speaker 5 Let's talk about the results on the back end, you know, what that actually means. I mean, I tell people, people ask me all the time, well, Nick, what do you do with your ads?

Speaker 5 I tell people, I'm lucky if I close 20% of them. 20%.

Speaker 5 And that's because out of 100, you know, 50 of them, I can call them every single day and email them every single day until Jesus returns. They're never going to pick up the phone.
They ghost me.

Speaker 5 30 of them lied and 20 of them become actual customers. And so

Speaker 5 that's the real reality that nobody wants to talk about, but

Speaker 5 it is a separator.

Speaker 8 Yeah, that's why the lead business is so hard.

Speaker 8 You know, I learned that, I, you know,

Speaker 8 we learned that the hard way through trustandchoice.com. You know, when I was doing that work, that was, I mean,

Speaker 8 you want to get punched in the face every day. It was that business because that was SEO-based leads.
So you're working really, really hard to get them.

Speaker 8 They're not really of the volume, but your hope is that they're of higher quality, right? That's the, what you're hoping the trade-off is.

Speaker 5 That's right. The intent is going to trump all that, right? Yes.

Speaker 8 So

Speaker 8 then you listen to the phone calls that would happen.

Speaker 5 And there are hostage negotiations.

Speaker 8 Oh my God.

Speaker 8 It was like, it was almost like the, there were, were and i this is not an exaggeration in hundreds if not thousands of cases the phone because because we listened to to a lot of the phone calls to try to figure out what we were doing wrong you know what i mean yeah um you likely weren't doing anything wrong and uh you know i i I'm not, I tell people, I don't believe I'm a very good salesperson.

Speaker 5 I rant and I ramble. I say things on the phone I shouldn't say.
I give up too easily on a, I'm not very good. So I always tell people, don't look at me as the example of sales.

Speaker 5 Like, I'm not Grant Cardone here. And,

Speaker 5 but it's, it's weird when I analyze phone calls either from people on our team or people that we work with. And

Speaker 5 they come to me and they go, Nick, I can't have any success with these. Well, okay, well, let's dive in.
Let's listen to the phone call.

Speaker 5 The phone call is, you know, and using mortgage again as an example, it's, okay, what's your social security number? How much can you afford to pay right now? You don't have a down payment?

Speaker 5 It's like it's a ransom call.

Speaker 5 You know, you might as well put like the machine over the thing and be like, i have a million dollars you know it's basically what it ought to be like it's no no difference um you know there's no rapport there's no relationship building marketing is all about relationship building that's all it is a funnel is nothing but a relationship builder it's not this mystic uh weird thing and it's not some scientific formula either it's nothing it is all it is is I'm building relationship and building rapport, whether I do that through a series of text messages, emails, phone calls, in-person visits, direct mail.

Speaker 5 How am I building a relationship with this audience? And how do I get them to pay attention to me? How do I get them to turn their head, you know, to look at what I'm doing?

Speaker 5 And how do I actually solve a real internal problem? That's all marketing is. And I feel like we've made it this a, there's two sides of it, but we made it this mystical thing,

Speaker 5 like it's the force. And the other thing is we've made it like it's the scientific formula.
Like, I just it's a calculator, and that's neither are correct.

Speaker 5 It's it's just how do I build a relationship with people.

Speaker 5 And if you use Facebook, if you use Google, if you use direct mail, if you telemarket, if you show up at community events and craft fairs and whatever, like that's that's all it is, and yeah, it's all it should be.

Speaker 8 It's setting expectations, and then when you talk to them, you're delivering on the expectations that you set. And it's it's just funny to me how many people

Speaker 8 try to make it so that the person doesn't want to buy insurance for them. Like, like they, they approach the call as like a series of like tumblers.

Speaker 8 It's almost like Raider, uh, it's almost like the last crusade where Harry, where, uh, where Indiana Jones has got to run through the, the different, and they're just, it's like, we have this prize, which is the thing that you actually want, but we're going to make you run through this obstacle course of challenges in order to get there.

Speaker 8 We're not going to take your hand. We're not going to give you the guidebook.
We're going to like just blindfold you and send you into a minefield.

Speaker 5 Yeah, let's hope that those things don't chop your head off in the meantime, right? Yeah. If you make it to the other side, then congratulations.
Now you got to pick the right cup.

Speaker 5 And if you fail, then, you know, no, it's true.

Speaker 5 And that's why I think, you know, and I feel like that's a mistake that happens when you just focus so much on the... on the mechanism instead of the the actual bigger picture.

Speaker 5 And, you know, you focus on the mechanism, you're bound to do this thing. You get get so caught up in chatbots.
You get so caught up in Facebook ads. So caught up in all, like,

Speaker 5 just

Speaker 5 build relationships with people. Just people have internal struggles and internal problems, and that's why they buy things to solve internal problems.

Speaker 5 And, you know, insurance is a wonderful thing to solve real internal problems if it's presented right.

Speaker 5 And I feel like we just get lost in the, and it's cool because it's cool to say, I get caught up in that stuff.

Speaker 5 It's cool to say, I have this thing, I have this thing, I have, and it is cool you know if it's if it's a hobby right but if it's not making money that's all it is it's just a hobby exactly so in in your work in in the in the the uh

Speaker 8 made you look marketing world side of your life yeah um

Speaker 8 how do you start to break that down for people like when they join the join the group they they they bought in they're in there they want to be part of it they want to um

Speaker 8 uh start using video and everything to advertise and market their business and and drive new opportunities in and they and they

Speaker 8 and you can tell immediately that that person is

Speaker 8 too caught up in hey nick's gonna teach me youtube ads and not in all the stuff that it goes into before how do you start to break down those barriers how do you start to change that mindset um so that they don't they're not just throwing stuff up there that's never actually going to produce any results for them Yeah,

Speaker 5 this is actually something that we had to address within the last couple of months because there was a few things.

Speaker 5 There was that aspect, right, of people who came in and had a had a certain mindset, you know, already pre-programmed.

Speaker 5 But then there was a lot of people who we were seeing coming in that

Speaker 5 would struggle to take a first step.

Speaker 5 And they got really excited.

Speaker 5 They saw the problem. They understood how to solve the problem.
but they didn't know how to take a first step and they got paralyzed. And so one of the things that we started doing is we said, okay,

Speaker 5 uh we have to boil this down to the most simple most simplest things and how do we get uh momentum started in people so what we started doing is i i believe that the most important aspect of marketing um as we know it marketing is

Speaker 5 is words it's words it's what you say it's what people read it's uh it's those words that have that elicit emotional responses that trigger emotional responses in the brain that get them to want to either see that there's a problem or get so fired up about wanting to solve the problem.

Speaker 5 And so, what we did is we said, okay,

Speaker 5 let's take this one step at a time. And the very first thing we need to do,

Speaker 5 you sign up for our program.

Speaker 5 The first thing we're going to do is we need to hear your offer. We need to understand your offer.
We need to understand your pitch. We need to understand, we need to boil that down.

Speaker 5 We have to perfect that. You can have the greatest ad on any platform.

Speaker 5 It could be the most well-designed.

Speaker 5 It could be the best expression of an ad.

Speaker 5 But if the words aren't good,

Speaker 5 then your results are going to be poor. On the flip side, you can have the ugliest looking, maybe

Speaker 5 gritty, ugly, just whatever. But if the words elicit the right responses in people, then, and that's why I always say, you know, just this is a design aspect that I've used just in my years of...

Speaker 5 being in design is simple is always better simple clean there's nothing wrong with white space because it's the words and the message in the offer that's going to be the most most important thing and so the the where we have to always

Speaker 5 where we always have to put in the most amount of work with anybody is we need to polish the offer we have to write the script um i don't care how you film it i don't care if you film it in an office with fluorescent light i mean i kind of do but an office with fluorescent lights and no microphone um we need to really make sure that the offer is right because it's going to be the offer that people hear or that they read that's going to make that it's going to give them buy-in it's going to make them think that, okay, this is gonna solve a problem.

Speaker 5 I have this problem. I know I have this problem.
I have this problem when it comes to protecting my family. I have this problem when it comes to, I'm mis-exposed,

Speaker 5 whatever the case might be. And

Speaker 5 we dial that in. And then there, we take, it's like that scene from episode four of Star Wars.
It's, you know, Luke is shooting with the little blasters and puts the blindfold down.

Speaker 5 And finally, he can deflect the blasters. And he goes, I finally did see something.
And Obi-Wan goes, great. You've taken your first step in a much larger world.

Speaker 5 And we have to get the ball rolling in that way. And if we can kind of get people to understand their offer, and it's different for every insurance agent, right?

Speaker 5 Your value proposition is another way of thinking about your offer. What is your real value proposition? How do you actually solve internal struggles with your ideal customer?

Speaker 5 It could be with technology. It could be with ease of use.
It could be with price. It could be with experience.
I don't care what it is.

Speaker 5 You all have a, you have a very unique value proposition that is the core of your offer.

Speaker 5 And if we can figure that out and put that in the right structure, put that in the right framework, then you can have great results.

Speaker 5 And that, and then putting, you know, talking into a camera or whatever is a lot different.

Speaker 5 You're a lot less intimidated when you really understand and really believe yourself in the offer that you're presenting and how it's going to change someone's life. And so that's where we start.

Speaker 5 First base is all, not even for the batters box is the offer. The batter's box that we get lined up in is what are we going to say? Why are we saying it this way?

Speaker 5 Why are we saying, why are we using these words? Why are we structuring it this way? Why are we delivering this value upon this value upon this value?

Speaker 5 And when we understand that, then I don't care what you throw down. We're going to knock it out of the park.
And so that's where we focus.

Speaker 5 And I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong is their offer and how it's communicated.

Speaker 5 And in insurance and financial services, it's weight. It's a challenge because...
Mainly you're dealing with people who don't think this way. They're not programmed this way.
And that's fine.

Speaker 5 No wrong there.

Speaker 5 But,

Speaker 5 you know, it's very logical. It's very,

Speaker 5 it's very systematic, insurance is.

Speaker 5 And, you know, you buy this product to protect against this. And really, insurance should be the most emotional, one of the most emotional buys that there is.
You should be,

Speaker 5 I hear people all the time talk about it's hard to do this for insurance. No.
Insurance is a very emotionally charged, should be, emotionally charged buying decision.

Speaker 5 And if you can tap into that with your offer with your words you can really you can really have something there

Speaker 8 and

Speaker 5 you know that's not the sexy part right i mean i'm assuming that's why most people don't know that's not the sexy part yeah that's not the sexy part the sexy part is is what is my lighting what is my what picture am i using um that's the sexy part the gimmicks the smoke and mirrors and there's not to say there's not a place for that but i you know like most things in life i i feel like we minor on the majors and major on the minors and

Speaker 5 um

Speaker 5 successful advertisers in every vertical understand, you know, that it's not about the media.

Speaker 5 I mean, Agora Publishing, you know, sells well over a billion dollars of product a year through newsletters, long form newsletters.

Speaker 5 They're at the pinnacle of, you know, in the copywriting world, everybody, you know, they're like the, they're like the wizard and the wizard of Oz.

Speaker 5 you know, they're not using Facebook ads. They're not using YouTube ads.
They're using newsletters. Who cares about the medium? Who cares about the sexy stuff?

Speaker 5 You know, let's boil it down to why people make fine decisions and understanding that. I learned from Don Miller.

Speaker 5 I happened to be in Don Miller's mastermind from Storybrand. And one of the things he always talks about is

Speaker 5 nobody walks in the direction of a cloud. We always, even against our better judgment, walk in the direction of that which is made most clear to us.

Speaker 5 And people always make decisions that solve internal problems they don't make decisions you and i don't make decisions ryan's on things that just solve external problems you know if i let my grass grow to the to to my waist and i haven't mowed it um if it was a real external problem i would have probably solved it a long time ago i would have went up got a lawnmower and mowed my grass but i i go out and buy the lawnmower because i'm tired of seeing that the way the neighbors look at me and how it makes me feel inside I feel embarrassed.

Speaker 5 I feel like, you know, some schlep, some lazy bum who can't even mow his yard. Then I go buy the lawnmower, right? I'm solving an internal problem because I don't want to feel that way anymore.

Speaker 5 And I think that that's something that if insurance agents, if anybody can grasp that concept, that when you're selling a product like insurance, a non-tangible product,

Speaker 5 people are buying it because they want it to solve internal struggles. They'll tell you price, and for a lot of people, it is price.
But why price?

Speaker 5 What is that cost savings going to do for them? How is that going to solve anything in their life? How is that going to make their life better? Right.

Speaker 5 If you can go just a level deeper and ask why, why, why, why price? Well, why is saving money important?

Speaker 5 Why do you want to have more time with your family?

Speaker 5 If you can solve for that, then I feel like you can take most offers and you can make them really attractive to people. And I think that's where a lot of people get lost because it's not sexy.

Speaker 5 People don't want to think about that stuff. They just want to know what words do I say?

Speaker 5 What's the copy and paste solution? And

Speaker 5 it's destructive, honestly. It's good for training wheels.
It's good to know how to put reps in, but at the end of the day, you're going to have to figure that out for your audience.

Speaker 8 Yeah.

Speaker 8 I would like to think of myself as like a empathetic person, but I don't know that I actually am because I have these Machiavellian thoughts about some of this stuff after having done this and talked about it for so long.

Speaker 5 You're either empathetic or you're a sociopath. Yeah.
Right. So,

Speaker 5 and you know, that's, that's, there's no wrong, there's no right, right or wrong on that.

Speaker 8 Well, I just, you know, I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. I've been doing it for a very long time too.
I mean,

Speaker 8 I've been teaching the basic branding of the 100 insurance questions answered thing that I talk about for more than a decade. And I think Mike Crowley.
is the first person that ever completed it.

Speaker 8 And he didn't even do it in 100 days. It took him like a couple months.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 8 You know, you know, he, he did it like, or a couple extra months. Like, he didn't do one every day.
And my point in saying that to you is like,

Speaker 8 sometimes, sometimes, and this may sound terrible, but like, sometimes I, I just, I just think to myself, like, if you're really not what, like, like, if, if Nick Ayres, a guy who has proven through both himself and multiple case studies,

Speaker 8 tens of case studies, and, and, and, and, and probably hundreds of other people that have done it that haven't been in your direct, you know, under your direct oversight have shown that spending a little extra time on the words and coming up with the offer and just that time that you're not going to tweet out, you know, this that time that no one's watching, just doing that work, if that's the thing that you need to do to then have 10x the success down the road and you're still not willing to do it, I feel like then I kind of feel like you deserve your struggles.

Speaker 8 Does it make sense?

Speaker 5 Like,

Speaker 8 I just, sometimes I get, I feel like there's a lot of whining or opining.

Speaker 8 Well, opining is probably a better term for the various things that have happened in the insurance industry and the insure techs that are coming on and,

Speaker 8 you know, all that kind of stuff. Yet so few people are willing to do the work.

Speaker 8 And then I see someone like you, or I see the success of Danny Kimball and what she's done at the O'Neill group in the last few years is her career has really really come on, and she's shown that consistent, branded social media content over and over and over again, you know, really drives growth in an organization like it has in hers.

Speaker 8 And, you know, and we just have the same case studies. Now, I know there's more people out there who aren't as, you know, who just don't talk about it as much.

Speaker 8 So I'm not going to say that these are the only ones.

Speaker 5 Sure.

Speaker 5 But versus the number of people who operate in our space, the fact that there are just so few new case studies each year boggles my mind well is it is it really does it really i mean think about it from this standpoint you you know you spend some time in the fitness niche is it really any different in the fitness niche between the people who get up and they do they they they put in the extra mile to do the instead of taking selfies in the in the mirror saying that they're at the gym they're actually you know running the treadmill they're actually doing crunches they're actually doing chin-ups and and and putting in really hard work you see that on every in every spectrum right whether it's physical or whether it's mental or and I'm not even, I tell people I am not the, you know, there are lots of people that even I look to and I think, man, I wish, you know, it's, it's a developed skill, right?

Speaker 5 It's like seeing, it's like having good biceps.

Speaker 5 You think you got decent biceps until you see someone, you see a crew of people with much larger biceps and like thinking, I need to put in more work, right? I need, I need to figure this out more.

Speaker 5 And that comes with time and reps, time and reps, time and reps.

Speaker 8 So let me let me reposition my argument because

Speaker 8 my argument is not the production of high quality results.

Speaker 8 it's taking it's it's putting the shield down and blocking the first shot from the little thing like i feel like it surprises me how few people each year actually do the work of taking the first step onto the path they still stand on the sidelines that's the part and that's what yeah and the first step you know most people are sad you like illustrator you know if you look if you go to a football game or a basketball game there's there's a lot more people in the grandstands than there are on the playing field yeah and that's just the way of life and so um the first step is always ours.

Speaker 5 And that's why I've tried to address it even with people I work with. Let's take the first two or three steps.

Speaker 5 And that's why with me, it's, you know, we're going to do a series of one-on-one calls, not in a group setting, or it's just going to be me and you. And we're doing offer.

Speaker 5 Then we'll get to the sexy stuff later on. But we're dialing this in.
Taking that first step is the hardest part.

Speaker 5 I have to now, with people that I work with, I have to take control of their mouse and I have to hit submit for them because it's a paralyzing thing.

Speaker 5 People don't, people prefer, it's that old saying, people prefer known hells versus unknown heavens, right? They know what they have if they just stay put

Speaker 5 and

Speaker 5 they are satisfied with that. They're paralyzed with that.

Speaker 5 We make those decisions in everything that we do, whether it's the restaurants we choose to go to eat at, our career choices, how we raise our kids.

Speaker 5 We prefer what we're used to, even if it's to our own detriment. And we don't want to take a step out because who knows what that is.

Speaker 5 We don't want to walk in the direction of the unknown or in the direction of a cloud. We'll always go in the direction of something that's that's clear, even if that means staying put where we're at.

Speaker 5 And so, yeah, to your point, it's mind-boggling that not enough people. See, I wish, I'm like, man, I wish you would see this.
I wish you would see this.

Speaker 5 And, you know, I know my mentors are thinking, man, Nick, I wish you would see this. And it's just, again, it comes with,

Speaker 5 it just comes with being

Speaker 5 involved with it and being,

Speaker 5 you know, again, if I had to be dropped off in the middle of Mexico, I don't speak Spanish, but I'm going to learn it really fast if I want to survive.

Speaker 5 And that just comes with time and practice.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I guess my hope is for those listening, and I don't mean this to be

Speaker 8 quite the indictment that I probably made it sound earlier, but I guess my, I hope, again, skill level doesn't bother me.

Speaker 8 Natural inclination doesn't bother me.

Speaker 8 What I'm, I guess my hope and my hope for my particular work, because I've always maybe tried to be more of a connector than an educator, because I'm just, I'm not, I'm not even in the same ballpark as you from copywriting, from, from at, from all that kind of stuff, even from offer building.

Speaker 5 You're not giving yourself enough credit.

Speaker 8 But my point is, that's not, I would never classify that as a level of expertise. What I've always wanted my work to be is, how do I get the people who

Speaker 8 want to take the first step into a world that you know best to you? I don't need them to work with me. I want them to work with the person who's and

Speaker 8 I just want the people listening to this know that if you haven't taken that first step,

Speaker 8 there are people who will connect you with individuals who will hold your hand to that place like you're there's no there is no thing that you could possibly want to do in this space that there isn't someone who will help you wade into that pool and i i guess that's the message that i want to get out to everyone who's listening to this is like

Speaker 8 there is a range of things that you are the guy to take that person's hand and wade them down into the pool. And then for other things, there may be other people.

Speaker 8 And I just, my hope has always been that more people take the first step.

Speaker 8 I don't, I don't care about your level of proficiency because, like you said, that comes with time and practice and patience and effort and all that kind of stuff. And that will happen.

Speaker 8 What I want, what I would just love to see is more, more organizations and individuals within our industry starting to take that first step. And

Speaker 8 I think part of that comes from a general awareness of the fact that there are a lot of, a lot of really high quality professionals who know our space inside and out that can help them do that, and whatever it is.

Speaker 8 You know, I mean, if it's better utilizing your agency management system, there are people for that. If there's an internal organizational process, there's people for that.

Speaker 8 If you know what I mean, if there's high-level branding, there's people for that.

Speaker 5 I mean, that there are

Speaker 8 what I just don't like to see is the complete paralysis and stagnation where it's just like, I'm gonna hold tight because you know, you talk to somebody like, like, um,

Speaker 8 well, anyone who's who's been interested or has sold an agency in the very near future, and they'll tell you that

Speaker 8 we're probably at peak EBITDA.

Speaker 8 So you, you, you know, not that you, I'm not saying you should sell, but like

Speaker 8 allowing your

Speaker 8 valuation to slip today

Speaker 8 will only be multiplied as we go into the future.

Speaker 5 You know what I mean?

Speaker 8 So you have to be very aware of that. And stagnation is,

Speaker 8 you're not holding up the fort.

Speaker 5 Yeah, complacency is a real thing. Yeah.
You know, it's just, it's just part of human nature, right? We're complacent. And,

Speaker 5 and, you know, I think that there's, I think complacency can be a good thing, can be a bad thing. You know, if you're content, I think there's another word for saying that, if you're content

Speaker 5 with certain things, certain aspects of your life, certain aspects of your business professionally, I think, you know, again,

Speaker 5 I desire that. I personally desire to be in that place.

Speaker 5 I don't know that I'll ever see myself as being someone who's not wanting to learn certain things, but you know, I think that complacency is just a part of that human condition that you have to fight against.

Speaker 5 And so you have to jar it loose with certain things. And that's where having a good offer comes in place, right?

Speaker 5 A good offer is going to, or good, good, good, pinpointed copy or however you want to call it, you know, direct messaging can jar that loose. But

Speaker 5 and, but no, I think it's, I think it's a human condition that's, that's, we see everywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 5 Like I, it's frustrating. I, I, I, i i totally hear your point it is frustrating though yeah

Speaker 8 because i

Speaker 5 there's just so much out there and i think a lot of people are taking it on and in general i you know i it goes back it goes back to your point earlier right about empathy right you you're more uh empathetic to people that you have an affinity with and maybe empathetic isn't the right word but you you know those that frustration is an emotion that you feel or that that anger even is an emotion that you feel and you feel that because you're you're connected to this this system this this community these people you know them personally you know them professionally and you you desire for them to have more and want more whereas if it was you know cpas you might not feel the same way and so you know it goes back to one of your original points

Speaker 8 no just kidding love all my accounting brothers and sisters i lived in that world for a while um

Speaker 8 dude i i appreciate you so much this has been a great conversation i want to be respectful of of your time and uh and i just think we've hit on a lot of stuff.

Speaker 8 And obviously, you're always welcome to come on. You got an open invitation to the show.
So,

Speaker 8 I want to close this out. Just, you know, I didn't just have you on here for the conversation.
I do think what you're doing with Made You Look is an incredibly important facility within our industry.

Speaker 8 And anyone that's interested, I mean, I've recommended that your course to a ton of people. I've spent time in it myself.

Speaker 8 I think it's incredibly high-quality, high value. And anyone who

Speaker 8 is interested in what you're doing, if they apply themselves, the results are there. So just

Speaker 8 let everyone listening home

Speaker 8 who may not be familiar, let them know where they can find out more and maybe even

Speaker 8 the quick pitch.

Speaker 5 Yeah, no, so there's a few things that you can do. If you want to learn more about what we do, we have a 21-day onboarding process that I'll take you through one-on-one in a group setting.

Speaker 5 We're going to craft your offer, perfect your offer.

Speaker 5 We're going to help you launch your first ad, and then you're going to have me by your side in that 21 days to analyze your results and to tweak, prune, refine, optimize, scale, whatever we need to do.

Speaker 5 So you're going to implement. You're not going to join our program anymore if you don't implement.
And that's what we're after.

Speaker 5 We're after people that are action takers, that want the results and do that. You can find out more about what we do.
There's two areas.

Speaker 5 Number one, I would encourage everybody to subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 5 something we're promoting a lot now go to major look video marketing or major look marketing on youtube subscribe i'm putting out a lot of free content. I'm releasing the Killing Geico series today.

Speaker 5 So you can watch that. Tactical tips, things, things that people would pay for.
I'm giving it to you for free. So subscribe to our YouTube channel.

Speaker 5 Share that content with another insurance agency owner or community. And if you want to learn more about our program and what we have to offer, then go to our website, www.mageyulookvideo.com.

Speaker 5 Schedule an appointment, speak with our team. We'll see if it's a good fit for you.

Speaker 5 Again, we're only interested in those who say that I want results and I'm prepared to take the action in in order to get those results.

Speaker 5 We intentionally are not the least expensive. We don't believe that that's going to be valuable to you.
And so,

Speaker 5 but we do believe that if you're in the family, we're going to do everything we can. We're going to beg, borrow, and steal and

Speaker 5 do whatever we can to help you get the results that you're looking for. So if that's something you want to do, feel free to join our website or subscribe to us on YouTube.

Speaker 6 You're the man, dude. Appreciate the time.
Be good.

Speaker 5 Thanks, man. You too.

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