New Insurance Agents Should Do In Their First Year

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• on Apr 16, 2022

Hi you had to pick one thing that you want to drive home to help agents that are listening um if there’s one last thing you’re like okay here’s the thing you need to do or think about or take action on what would you like to leave with I’m serious when i s when i say spend money yeah like i wish i would have spent more money because i look at where i am now but i know where i probably could have been back then and then things might have been different i’m perfectly happy with how things have turned out obviously but i i know that sounds funny but i’m gonna be honest from a guy that grew up milking cows and you know

 on a farm all his life with dad doing construction working hard to understanding that it’s really easy to make money in the insurance business correct if you just spend some of that money that you’re making you know i think sometimes i know for me i just kept holding it because i kept thinking well i might not get that next month true i might not make those sales month yeah um not knowing especially being so young not knowing if i work hard i’m gonna make the sales yeah and i know that now now it’s like yeah i can i know i can spend the money because i know i’m gonna make it next month [Music] all right ty james welcome back to the channel buddy what’s up so for those who don’t know ty we haven’t seen tai before okay tai is we’ve been friends for even before you decided to marry my sister right then i was like i don’t know if we could still be friends is that that okay is that normal um we’ve known each other for you were 15 right yeah you’re 30 about 15 years

 yeah about 50. 15 years cause we’ve been friends 15 years um brother-in-law be married to my oldest sister for nine years be going on nine years nine years and then also business partners now in secure insurance group he’s got young insurance on his shirt there because we acquired a medicare mostly medicare agency in marshfield missouri for those who don’t know where that is we’re in springfield that’s about what 30 minutes away 30 minutes or so and so i really want to talk about his story um transitioning from just an agent captive starting out brand new having having success there having successfully independent side we even ran a call center for a little while and had some success there um now really running a full-blown office and operation and and really catapulting that as well as sig so right i don’t know where to start that’s a lot but i i got started we got started sort of roughly the same time 2000 and without 2010 yeah or end of 2010 really 

2011. 2011 we you know became a full-time captive agent you know and from a captive agency for three or four years and then moving on to being independent side in 2014 when we started up secure insurance group yes and then you know doing that for several years obviously we did the call center yep uh for a year or so back in 2015 2015 march 2015. had some success there took it from zero for we were selling five expensive mets up took it from zero to a few dental vision hearing plans a few of those i think were up to like 80 policies a month within a few months yeah but we were selling final expensive medicine totally cold calling so for those who don’t know anybody call centers we had openers cold calling the state of Missouri right people that were what 67 to 74. roughly somewhere around there leading with med sup and Medicare trying to sell the meds up and or selling

 final expenses we weren’t doing Medicare advantage plans no we weren’t doing any no which is crazy thinking about me it’s not on a lot of money yeah dude think about the amount of Medicare vantage points that just literally walked yeah or just think about the amount that answered the phone like there were we didn’t realize at the time there was more of those answering the phone than mets up when i went back and looked there was 12 we had 1200 leads that were that we had spoke to that had a med advantage that gave us the information that they had advantage that’s right we did bucket it like we dispositioned it as maker advantage that went into a certain bucket within zen call back then yep yeah that’s crazy yeah so going from doing that and then we moved in where we we just all wanted to make

 a little bit more money so obviously everybody sort of did their own thing a little bit yes and then um here a few years ago 2018 we acquired the which is young insurance yes it was a local brand been there i think this will be their 30th year in 2022 wow so we’re gonna make it a big deal for the 30th anniversary but acquiring them obviously everybody knew who they were ton of Medicare clients how many um they had like fifteen hundred yeah about fifteen hundred fifteen sixteen hundred which for uh you know they were set they were 72 and 66 years old they yeah by themselves they had one lady that had been there seven years you know but yes i do have a question so if so most people are listening would you rather having done both where you built your own book and you’ve acquired if you could do it all over again and you and you could figure out how to do it would you rather build it or buy it and buy it yeah why well it’s it’s fun building because you get to see what you’ve done and you know everybody personally and you know everybody 

i mean that is a big difference knowing everybody and not knowing everybody when we acquired it that was our biggest fear is what is gonna happen you know are these people gonna stay with us i mean we’re young so you know we’re young guys coming in we’re gonna take over this people you know these guys are older yeah and are they gonna look at us the same this or that and so you have those things that cross your mind like when you’re buying a business but yes man buying is just you get to acquire it you get all the money it’s just you literally get the revenue next the next month yeah i mean there’s a lot of headache that goes into buying it you know with commissions and making sure you get everything contracts making sure you make everything moved over llc’s right and then some people don’t want to move the contracts because of this or that so some of that stuff is difficult but always we have learned that buying you know this that was coming about about the seventh business so far so you know it gets easier and easier as time goes on but yeah you know acquiring that big of an agency there’s a lot of things that come with it but i would always from now going forward i’d always choose to buy yeah for sure and then 

we also bought a pnc one after that right um and now we even made an offer we usually we just learned about today right that my dad made an offer to buy another um agency in town correct that’s doing about a half a million a year in commissions yeah so we bought a small pnc in the same town which is Marshfield same town um it was another older gentleman he’s seen that you know one of his buddies sold so he’s like hey we’ll sell our pnc which pnc is something that you know we’ve started really diving into um a lot over the last couple years so we bought that company we merged in you know with the young office we finally got both offices together which i think will finalize all the moving and everything after

 a couple years you know finally got it moved probably the end of this year another week or so and we’ll have it all done crazy what’s the bit what’s been the um actual let’s go back to you being a brand new agent for a second think about your first couple of years what’s some advice that you could give to an agent out there watching that isn’t ready to acquire they’re still in the building stage and they’re like dude i’m struggling to build it i i you know running as the small oa program we have yep and i tell them this every time the difference between that was between me and you is you spent every dime you got you know you you spent spent your money on making you more money where i always held 

my money and you know i’m gonna make the same amount next month no problems you know i’m making a decent amount of money but that was the biggest problem i ever made though because if i would have spent more money i would have learned the process of the more money you spend the more money you make which then allows you to get more policies more renewals everything and for my first several several years you know even going from captive to independent i still didn’t understand that that’s what i needed to buy leads you know i got thinking about this the other day now about a couple weeks ago i didn’t really purchase my first like actual leads now the captive company we worked for 

you know it we they would give us leads every once a while which we it would come off but it wasn’t something i went out and tried to purchase myself no my actual purchase besides the call center in 2015 was like 2016. for a lead at all yeah that’s crazy isn’t it yeah so you know and that’s that was my biggest mistake though yeah so for all the new agents is you know spend the money even though it seems like oh what am i what if i’m not getting my money back yes you got to at least try and so my biggest deal with the loads is you know spend your

 money wisely don’t spend it on stupid stuff right spend it wisely and um you know do a lot of free stuff yeah you know so give me some ideas i was like some free stuff you’re doing or you did or you’re doing now yeah so i i’d still help them help all the loads trying to do all the free stuff they can now you know no one likes to do it door knocking is a thing that no one likes to do it but it is the most prettiest thing ever yeah you used to used to take a cold list of people turning 65 you would put it in like mapquest route planner or something yeah and you would do 25 a day you would leave something on their door if they weren’t there but you were door knocking t65 to sell supplements so it was okay right wooden 

advantage that wasn’t the goal then you already actually couldn’t even sell it yeah i couldn’t solve it and you would write a med sup at least one method policy from every block of 25. you may not sell it that day talk about that because that was that’s actually a cool activity that doesn’t cost anybody any money you have success with it i tell the loas every day you know hey when you’re going out and you’re right going to an appointment you literally can pull a t-65 list and go door-to-door and while we were selling med subs if i could have sold my advantage back when i first started yeah i would have even more clients that’s crazy but doing just the med subs yeah every time it was map quest because i think it allows you to do 25 names but some of the free stuff obviously the t65 list was something that really worked it was just a happy birthday letter it wasn’t nothing crazy happy birthday letter

 wishing them a happy birthday if there’s anything you could do to help them and you left that and left that or if they answered i gave it to him yeah yeah it was the goal to book an appointment if we like talk through what the goal was when you were there or right so when i when i answered the phone or answered the door i literally just wanted i just coming by to wish you a happy birthday my name is ty james i work with um you know xyz company and just if there’s got any questions about medicare i’d love to be able to help boom and very non-threatening that was it it wasn’t yeah it wasn’t like it was an activity play a quantity 

play with you like actually like a lot of activity yeah it was just so that that’s one of the free things you know any new agent can go do i mean that costs nothing you can get a lisp uh i guess gas money it does cost gas money yeah that’s true um you can’t invest gas money everybody knows cold calling agent you know cold calling is free obviously it’s brutal you know cold calling yeah it sucks but at the same time when you’re first starting out it ain’t easy you’re going to figure it out something new that we’ve been doing i’ve learned this from a couple of the people that does a lot of war markets is that we’ve been doing i don’t know how i bet you we did we did a event a week last year or in in 2021 wow this year um we

 were doing events everybody knows you know when you’re first starting out or even well established in an area that you there’s so many events going on on around that you can either pay money for or do or someone stopping by can you sponsor this yeah and we decided we were going to change all that in 2021 every single person that stopped by instead of giving them money we asked how we could help and you should see the looks that we got but you know for a new agent it’s perfect and so i implemented all a lot of our newer agents into that and that’s something i wish i would have done back then is i wish i would have gotten more involved in a lot of the community stuff because you don’t realize that’s true what 

comes about when you’re we literally would you know oh yeah we’ll help serve the food we didn’t make the food we didn’t do anything because good thing you didn’t make the food by the way yeah no i would accept that you know we just stood there but then yeah before you know it we’re in the newspaper holding up you know the the sign because they just opened up you know just little things um as a new agent that’s i would have implemented more events more okay that’s good um what’s some of the what’s some of the unique things that you do now from a because you’re really good also at um managing a book a business from a customer service standpoint from retaining clients which is important by the

 way very important you do as good of a job at that specifically of anybody ever seen what are some ideas and concepts and things that you do in that arena yeah so we have a couple ladies up there and a couple guys that help with the customer service part of it so i give example we just sent out our christmas letter you know so we try to do a newsletter every quarter um that’s pretty much just keeping them engaged yes right making sure they understand you’re still there because i know it sounds funny but it seems like people will be like oh i didn’t you know i didn’t know you guys were still in the business we didn’t go nowhere

 yeah you know so just trying to keep i have heard that though top of mind you know i’ve heard it um so we do that every quarter um we do a lot of the basic things that people think of but do they really do it yeah um is birthday calls you know some people do birthday letters but we use the birthday calls as another way of asking you know is there something i can help you with is there something that you’ve had trouble maybe it’s ordering a new card whatever the little things right yes but not only does that help us on the end but it also keeps our customer service people busy yes you know throughout the year that they’re not just setting waiting for something to do yes um you know getting out like we did a food truck uh every year we do a big deal an event for our clients this year we did a food truck event that was a cool event by the way yeah we end up you know i think there end up being over a thousand people that came wow to that event and i’ll be honest um we opened it up to the community um to make it a community an event as well just for the fact of i wanted to be able to pull some more business in and so i’m like you 

know what let’s open it up to the community which ended up being perfect yeah because you know i love the food truck idea it probably wasn’t the smartest idea when you have seniors standing in line for 30 minutes but you know that’s just another way of helping out our clients you know everybody knows you’re gonna make you know 20 30 bucks somewhere in there each month from every medicare yep or plan or however you want to put it and we always usually take at least a month of what we’re gonna get and put it back into the client yes that’s that’s what’s always been my goal i don’t care that’s birthday calls birthday letters if that’s you know the client appreciations uh another big deal we do is we do member meetings um we ran about 75 member meetings where they’re able to come in and review their uh you know 75 as a group you know so we would have about 20 25 people

 in those group meetings do you send so do you send like hey if you have this carrier come into this yeah we did carry your group based on the medicare plan they have that’s smart yeah and so that was just an easier way to get people in review plans and things like that but also clients enjoyed it because we had snacks and you know things like that um give you example on some other things that we did that was for the clients uh we did we hosted santa uh that’s true you know we there’s just a lot of little things that we do here and there so yeah yeah um talk about the crm piece because you also do a really good job at managing crm what what should some agents think about because you’ve also learned radius bob really well too which you technically i think have i think we still have a link for like

 19 bucks a month or something right which is craziest i think you found radius bob and clue back in 2014. well if it was me or you was one of us i don’t know but we were looking we were looking hard for you we looked really hard and that just happened to be the one that we went with and that’s just the one we’ve stayed with everybody has different crms that they use yep um yeah we do use radius bob because it’s it’s you know we have special links to keep it cheaper so that’s always been nice yes but at the same time the biggest deal about a crm is being able for us or for me is being able to know when you know effective dates are knowing if someone calls in i’m not trying to search for things it’s right there right and that helps when running reports so everybody builds their crms different i think

 one deal that’s always helped us in the client management part is running the crm as nothing for but reports for your clients um because i know it’s called a client management system but everybody uses it different right we literally have built it for reports um so reporting’s always been a big deal to me knowing you know what i sold how much somebody sold in the month of october and you know you know when they’re aging into additional products you know when they’ve had a 10-year term and hey dude it’s been nine years like you know that kind of time right you know yeah we just did a life insurance you know life insurance reviews obviously are a huge thing we did a life insurance review they were worried about their term running out and then she got so worried about it unfortunately she passed away oh my god like last month you know and she was so worried about her term running out that didn’t run out for two years you know but it’s the little things and now her husband like it was top of mind her husband was like okay hey you know

 i just turned in the death certificate and everything but yes you hate to miss that it laps or an end um and someone passed away or it becomes an annual noble term that premium jacks up yep and then they just started taking 600 bucks a month at the client’s account when they were taking 80 you know whatever whatever you know what i mean like it’s yeah that’s crazy yeah so that was you know just doing all those little things for the clients yes and time obviously time is a huge thing it takes time you know we did the christmas letter that takes time yes you know we had my wife that doesn’t secure social media kaylee you know i had her

 i called her i said i need i need this i need a christmas letter she’s like i think i can get it done it took her like two hours but she got it done real quick and we sent it out within two days she’s good at that kind of stuff too yeah so it was it was fast and easy but when the client gets it we didn’t just say merry christmas we said merry christmas also remember we do home and auto we do this we do that just reminding everybody of what we do yeah so um also too what are some things that you did once you we acquired 

that young insurance the book in marshfield what are some things that you did to help keep as many of those members on the books as possible you listed some of the things yeah so but immediately when we first got it we sent out a massive letter to all of them with the signed signatures of the previous owners and a picture of us with them letting them know that hey we know these people they know us we are just saying trust me that they they want us to help you now you know everything’s gonna be all right um we had them sign it we signed it so everybody signed it like when a client got it they understood okay they’re past they’re passing this on to them everything’s gonna be okay um not to say we didn’t have people call we still got people calling today like oh i didn’t know they sold wow you know it well if they didn’t come in or how many millers have we sent how many calls have we called three years three years and we still have people this year say the same thing that’s crazy but you know some people just don’t pay attention but you know that our first initial was to get that letter out to every client yes um we did put it in a newspaper 

as well you know obviously we think oh newspaper but we’re dealing with seniors here they still read the newspaper um especially in a smaller town you know about 10 000 people about 25 30 000 in the probably the the county but uh you know it’s a smaller smaller area that was important pretty good saturation though client-wise yeah and then um yeah because that was there’s not that many seniors in that area well that’s crazy um and another deal initially obviously when october came so the medicare advantage side because it was a pretty medicare advantage heavy yeah they didn’t really do much supplements there um we wanted to get every so our goal was to get every talk to every single person we did not that did not happen we talked to about 1200 um but you know because we not only did we have their clients i had my clients we had mats which are our other brother-in-law’s clients uh

 you know i think we had some you know we had when i had purchased out the call center or whatever i had those clients as well and so we had a lot of other clients that were involved into that so there’s several thousand there now but crazy yeah um in closing if you had to pick one thing that you want to drive home to help agents that are listening um if there’s one last thing you’re like okay here’s the thing you need to do or think about or take action on what would you like to leave with i’m i’m serious when i s when i say spend money yeah like i wish i would have spent more money because i look at where i am now but i know where i probably could have been back then and then things might have been different i’m perfectly happy with how things have turned out obviously but i i know that sounds funny but i’m gonna be honest from a guy that grew up milking cows and you know on a farm all his life with dad doing construction working hard to understanding that it’s really easy to make money in the insurance business correct if you just spin some

 of that money that you’re making yeah you know i think sometimes i know for me i just kept holding it because i kept thinking well i might not get that next month i might not make those sales next week not knowing especially being so young not knowing if i work hard i’m gonna make the sales yeah and i know that now now it’s like yeah i know i can spend the money because i know i’m gonna make it next month correct you know and it ain’t like to me it ain’t medicare isn’t one of those products that’s like oh i’m just gonna go be money hungry and i’m gonna go it it Medicare’s you’re you’re helping people understand what they need to do in their insurance scheme of things because they don’t know what they’re doing when it comes to Medicare so when you’re helping them yeah you’re making 

a ton of money but to be honest you feel really good at the same time yeah you’re helping them make it a decision that is a lifetime decision you know when they turn 65 they got a couple choices so starting out i is work as much free stuff as you can work as many hours as you can yes it’s because it’s not easy as oh they think they’re you know it’s easy a lot of people get an insurance thing it’s just easy um and spend the money i love it well uh how can they reach out to you okay they can look up on Facebook ty James t y um also ty.james14 on uh Instagram right i think sorry a different one yeah 14 was the basketball numbers yes that’s right tied at James 14. um email their James secure ig.secureig.com yep um anything else we’re forgetting i don’t think so boom dude thank you for your time today all right i appreciate it look in comments okay here’s what i’m gonna do i wanna i’m gonna i wanna look in comments i wanna find a comment and i wanna choose one and give somebody a ticket date percent this year but i wanna know the biggest takeaway from you from listening to tai today and then i’m going