What It Takes To Become A Better Insurance

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Hi one of the best things i ever did was i actually sent emails to 10 people who i very much trusted that my dad my grandpa you know you look at things like fellow co-workers previous bosses and there’s a set questions that you can ask you can say hey what do i do really well where would you say i could do better if you would rate and send those emails be ready for that feedback um it’s very humbling but you never get it if you don’t ask very few people in life no matter how much they love you and how much they’re they’re your number one fan when i come to you and go you know when you do this you kind of sound like a jerk like people don’t want to give you that feedback but if you ask for it they will so that’s a great way wow you know what’s funny i don’t know why but i was getting like the chills when you’re sharing that because that’s so powerful but so many people are i mean you i’m going to try it now because you’ve got me thinking like okay i haven’t asked anybody in a while most people

 

 just volunteer their opinion a lot of times but i i would love to know you know and i’m getting chills too thinking about because um so many people are so scared to jump out and ask someone like that like that’s one of the most unique things i’ve actually ever heard on our podcast that’s really cool [Music] [Music] welcome back to the ca power players podcast live every tuesday 8 a.m central center time i’m your host cody asking today i got a special guest one of my favorite people she is awesome she’s everywhere miss kim six killer the president of magellan healthcare kim welcome to the podcast thanks for having me cody how are you i am awesome it’s great to be around you as well um you’re one of those people by the way that are just positive vibrant smiling great with people you’re you you go to a lot of stuff right so you’re well known you’re you know you’re around which is awesome um so i’m really excited to really dive into more of your story today i know we’ve done that on the marketing side several times we haven’t got a chance to do that together yet on the ca side so i’m excited for that yeah

 

 so i appreciate your time today um who was kim before magellan and before insurance and all this kind of stuff i just want to learn your story a little bit yeah so um i pretty much grew up my entire life in kansas and then um i was actually in law enforcement so i worked for for several years wow um yeah so dispatching love doing that but then my husband and i when we got married he is a sergeant on the police department and we decided somebody needed to be able to be home during regular hours for the kiddos yes so i took a job over at security benefit in topeka didn’t know what an annuity was kind of worked my way up from the call center there and got the opportunity to get into the imo space and kind of the office service work for the back office of carriers yeah agents and um got the opportunity to go over to another large

 

company here in town and really work on life insurance and then i love medicare um my grandma had some situations where she kind of was getting taken advantage of and they weren’t really pitching the whole story to her so when i got the opportunity to break into that and kind of help be that advocate for seniors that kind of became my niche and then brian and jared our co-owners came to me about nine months ago and said hey why don’t you come here and here i am i love it i love it well you got a ton of experience in a lot of different places um 911 operator i bet you’ve got some stories you could uh that you we won’t share today but you probably got to you know we do we do definitely have stories we can talk about over over cocktails sometime

 

 yeah yeah in puerto rico what was the um what was that like like how do you what did you learn there that you still like use today yeah i so probably the biggest thing was the fact that you just ha you have to put your trust and faith in others um you can’t know and be all things and so it’s really humbling to know as a a dispatcher those officers really depend on you to ask the proper questions to forward think and really pass the information along so communication is key um and i really talked to my team about that today we’re one big team and everyone is just as important as the other and it’s just about asking the right questions and if you fail to just learn from it like things are going to happen but yeah that’s my biggest thing what was about insurance

 

that kind of stood out to you when you were considering jumping into insurance oh man i tell you what the ability to really kind of build your own future i love how insurance obviously after you kind of get going you get things underneath it you can really kind of formulate your hours and what you want to do based on what’s important to you so there’s a freedom in you know knowing that you can be at your kids soccer games knowing that you can go on those vacations that’s that’s important yeah yeah and would you say you have more freedom now than you did before um

 

yeah definitely i travel a lot right now but i actually make that travel schedule myself so my daughter is a female wrestler and so i knew that i could say hey this is absolutely not a date that i can be available to work because if she’s going to state and those kind of things so i can control that more that’s awesome yeah that’s smart um because you’ve worked with i mean what thousands of agents over the years thousands of agents yes so previously i actually had about 550 direct agents that i was in charge of really um coaching and taking care of which is that’s a lot of agents um but they were amazing i one of the things that i feel like i’ve always done well

 

is when i’m with someone kind of like you what i talked about you are the most important person like i’m with that person i’m focused on that person giving that person what they need kind of talking through things and so now we’ve got about 4 000 agents with magellan um and we’re just kind of working through who wants to add medicare make sure they kind of close the back door on their practice to keep the fox out of the hen house and it’s good yeah yeah i love um well i mean so there’s a lot of people that work with let’s just say that someone’s working with 50 agents directly but not 550 directly

 

 

yeah um what did you enjoy about that what did you not love about it what did you learn that you can pass on to others that would love to be able to work with 550 at one point maybe from a monetary standpoint but it can sound like super overwhelming you know yeah so it can be overwhelming but the thing is just as much as they have expectations of you it’s a mutual respect that you have your expectations so communicating with them not just your strengths but also your weaknesses so i would tell any of my agent partners hey if you want to get a hold of me right away shoot me an email i’m that person all day long who as i’m doing other things will keep an eye on their email some people aren’t that way some people will say hey text me setting those expectations in that realistic communication um tell people how you best work

 

 

and so that sets volumes and then it’s just the trust of setting expectations so if cody if you came to me and said hey kim can you do this for me and say um sure let me look at this and here’s when i will get back to you and setting that timeline i think people forget to set an expectation up front and then they don’t understand why somebody’s checking up on them constantly well my expectation and your expectation aren’t leveled and so i think that in itself does volumes for a relationship yeah yeah it definitely does um and they’re not also too like if they’re needing something from you it’s okay to say here’s how i want to get back to you and help you you know yeah i’m shocked you said email because i hate email but you love it right so that’s where

 

 

 yeah what’s funny is it’s good that you’re saying that though because if you think about it like in you guys listening if you think about this i would have never so i would have you know i would have maybe sent kim information a different way but but now i know you know what she checks email often she’s she she’s got a bunch you know she’s got people emailing her all day but she prefers that you know and so that’s that’s good to know that makes a lot of sense yeah it’s it’s funny

 

because everybody’s just built differently right we’re all wired differently my thing is there’s a lot of things that i i know off the top of my head but getting me on the phone to tell you might be harder because i’m booked all day long training and coaching other agents but if you ask me something i can easily shoot the email with the data to you and then you’re not waiting for six hours for that response and so and some agents prefer to get on the phone and that’s okay too and that’s where i love technology nowadays with calendly and everything it’s like hey you don’t have to wait for me to tell you when i’m available go grab a link take any time on my calendar you want and so that’s one of my favorite things is yeah that’s really smart so i’m glad you mentioned that because i was just speaking to a group um oh i forget uh last week somewhere in chattanooga and they said they were talking about how one of the things that people

 

they struggle with was time management and i was i was thinking about it i’m like man how often are we going like back and forth with people on trying to schedule something it’s like no this day no this day no i can’t do that no i can do that when the link just solves a lot of problems and so i’m not saying i want to physically go use a link but it makes it so much simpler for both parties to just jump on each other’s schedule you know it’s really smart it’s really cool it depends on where you’re at in your career like obviously you don’t want people to be able to book up all of your time because

 

 

 of what you have going on but i also like you can time block with that too so obviously eight hours a day every day is not open for people to book for me but i make sure that i have certain times every day that i set aside so i know that they’re taken care of and i also love that again it’s a way of kind of training the person that you’re working with and they know okay look if i want time with her i need to put that on the calendar of course you still get the emergency text things happen and that’s you want to have time for that but you also want people to understand your time is valuable too and you want to schedule it properly yeah yeah what what you mentioned that um you were helping coach and mentor and really help agents get to another level in their business and you had a numerous amount you were working with um what’s some of the things that you did that you saw you and your agent saw success from that you

 

could provide some context to someone that’s trying to be better at helping coach and mentor their agents along the way so one of the things is i think that as we get going and we’re such a busy instant gratification society that we think that we have delivered a message but the truth is we may have missed out right as you’re scheduling something you may tell cassidy something but you forgot to tell derek but you thought you told the team right so i what i do is i make sure to block in times where i do those trainings so a marketing once a month i have a marketing call any of my agents who are in my hierarchy can join in we have a discussion about that and i love open forums so obviously you want to be able to control that chaos a little bit with some kind of a person helping you but i want to deliver the message and then i want them to ask the questions but i also want them to feed on each other and yeah i think it’s better that way i used to spend all this time doing one-on-ones ones

 

and i was talking about the same thing over and over and over and then i was like oh i could just hold one and have 10 of you in it and then we break off where we need to so yeah yeah that’s actually really smart too because there’s a lot of people that are like they end up delivering the same message like 12 different times a month when they could really like organ that’s that’s actually brilliant because then they can organize that into a more of a group fashion you know that’s cool yeah and so like i know wetmore does a lot of things where he’s got like some of those pre-recordings as he’s like recruiting stuff i love that as well when you’re doing recruitment and different things you can do some of that pre-recording but the actual training

 

i like them live just because i gain value in as i have questions being able to kind of think through it and and play off of that so i do have some canned recording of one-on-one training but i also like to offer it live as well so and setting like expectations so i don’t spend time anymore on trainings with agents until they already fully have their life in health their a hip and then also their contracting paperwork turned in because we’re going to recruit it five times or how many times do they not end up taking off and so it’s a little bit about time protection too it’s so good i hope you guys are taking notes on this one specifically because i see a lot of recruiters that end up spending a ton of time with people and then they don’t actually follow through

 

with what they said they were going to do to begin with and they spent hours and then they don’t end up getting anything from them right which is that’s brilliant like that’s wild it happens so much too like most people don’t realize how much that specific piece is a real problem so that’s a i love that you shared that yeah and the recruiters too i think that they also forget that um they need to move at the speed of the person so if you’ve got a person who’s super on board and moving and going then make sure that you’re following with them as much as you can but if you have somebody who takes weeks to get back to you it’s okay to say hey yep i’ve got it and i

 

will get to this like because you don’t want to prioritize everyone every time you just can’t right so yeah yeah true um you’ve worked with shish and kim’s dropped several nuggets today which is which i’ve made notes of i’ve got a whole already and we’ve only been on like 13 minutes um you mentioned i i well you didn’t mention it but i know you’ve worked with a bunch of top producers over the years specifically um give me an example of not names but they did production-wise how successful they were and then also some of the things that separated them from the agents that maybe aren’t top producers yet yeah so i think where my background is a little different than a lot of our colleagues is the independent marketing organizations that i’ve worked with were first and foremost annuity producing carriers um so i’ve worked with the top uh two of the three top three items on the aodi space so one of my agents that i worked with he did around 220 million a year in annuity and that was his office production um wow quite a bit of it was his but he had a team um and then i was actually working with him for a while on life insurance and then moving into the medicare side

 

of things and the big thing is he knew when to delegate he understood that he could not control all facets of the business he ultimately wants to oversee it all but you have to trust those people that you put in place and so one of the things that i see high producing agents and business owners do is they put the people in place that they have the faith in and when i say that i really believe that there’s always a right seat on the bus for most people so it’s okay if you hire billy and you thought billy was gonna be this but over time you find that he fits here better it’s

 

okay to figure out ways to strategically have that right seat on the bus and move them because you and i both know as much as we have to delegate if i don’t trust you if i have to delegate it and check up and check up and check out micromanagement serves no one so they understand that they need to move that person on the bus if you will yes um with medicare the biggest thing that i see is if you are running a shop where you’ve got agents under you and you’re doing other things as a primary whether that’s assets under management or life insurance or annuities you don’t have to be the principal on all things so that’s something that i’m amazed at how many agents will sit there and do all their contracting and their ahip and they do all of these things to be the principal of their medicare business and never

 

sell a single contract and they don’t have to do that so you can actually reassign who your principal is they don’t have to be on your bank account they don’t have to be on your articles of incorporation there’s just certain letters that we have completely cleared out with all of our carriers and it all of that commission will pay to your business and you can still decide who you pay how you pay them when you pay them but you don’t have to do all that back paperwork um now obviously there’s some legality and that means you can’t do those sales right you can’t sit down and discuss medicare advantage plans et cetera but again why would an annuity

 

producer want to sit down and do a medicare sale when they can give it to someone else and their time is better spent elsewhere correct especially when they’re doing 220 million annuities the last thing they should have filling out a medicare app i mean goodness gracious yeah i mean he didn’t even do his mom’s own medicare app you know he’s got other people he’s like all right here we go take care of my mom that since i mean what else have you noticed like some top producer tips because um these are good like put people in the right place that they have faith in that’s brilliant also um you just really the things you’re touching on is the time

 

 piece like they just value their time to a whole nother level compare not also i think there’s an investment in having to stay the course um i have seen the difference between an agent who is successful for far longer and has that trajectory of a career because let’s say they decide digital marketing is going to be their thing that’s awesome you and i both know that you are not going to turn on digital marketing and oh look at my 500 leads next week right it is a commitment and there’s the level setting if you work with somebody like your guys’s team security marketing there’s a level 30 hey this is how long it takes but they understand that investment up

 

front so they’re not 60 days in going oh let’s cut this let’s move over here because agents by nature we’re we’re guilty of it too as business owners we like to follow those shiny pennies but you have to pick one or two things that you can do really well kind of bang those out figure out what those are run those then start adding more because the growth comes in the addition not taking money if look if ten thousand dollars in lead mailings is what’s making me successful i’m

 

not gonna pull back on that i’m gonna continue to do that and now i’m gonna put five thousand dollars toward digital you have to continue to invest back in the business yes yes and two they always say success and what you just said was really they always say success people make decisions quickly but they change them slowly and we see so many agents that honestly they make slow decisions and then when they do they change them frequently right instead of really having a commitment level to doing something long-term for example you see a lot of people that probably do seminars workshops right to some degree with different stuff and i’m

 

sure there’s a lot of them that their very first workshop or their second or the third wasn’t the best workshop they ever did and they maybe didn’t even get a return the first time well but i bet the 50th they were like freaking workshop experts where a lot of new agents will do something and be like well that didn’t work so it must not work or it’s just not for me or i’m not them or whatever where they don’t realize that the other person may have just stuck with it yeah one of my least favorite questions is when an agent tells me hey what time and date should i hold my seminar and i’m like that’s completely dependent on your area right some areas

 

 5 30 on Tuesday is perfect in some areas you have to have it right at five as people are coming home and so you have to be willing to play with those equations until you find that sweet spot and i think that the truly successful long-term business owners understand that they know that hey and they ask questions they’re not afraid to ask for help don’t be proud like i have no problem picking up the phone and calling some of our other power players and being like hey

 

guys i don’t know what i’m doing here hey can adrian can you help me with this iu i don’t know how to do this part and leaning on people who know other things yeah that’s one thing you really just mentioned too is like they tend to keep their ego and their pride out of the equation you know listen they realize they don’t know it all well with i find i’m actually reading a book by um john maxwell talking about um developing the leaders around you and i’m reading like i’m trying to read more of his stuff leadership man some people struggle with and i have

 

too we all do it from time to time but what would you recommend if someone struggles with that like the ego and the pride piece but it’s going to hold them back you know it definitely does hold you back one of the most um maybe one of the best things i ever did was i actually sent emails to 10 people who i very much trusted that my dad um my grandpa you know you look at things like fellow co-workers’ previous bosses and there’s a set questions that you can

 

ask and say hey what do i do really well where would you say i could do better if you would rate and send those emails be ready for that feedback um it’s very humbling but you never get it if you don’t ask very few people in life no matter how much they love you and how much they’re they’re your number one fan when i come to you and go you know when you do this you kind of sound like a jerk like people don’t want to give you that feedback but if you ask for it they will so that’s a great way wow you know it’s funny i don’t know why but i was getting like the chills when you’re sharing that because that’s so powerful but so many people are i mean

 

you i’m gonna try it now because you’ve got me thinking like okay i haven’t asked anybody in a while most people just volunteer their opinion a lot of times but i i would love to know you know and i’m getting chills too thinking about because um so many people are so scared to jump out and ask someone like that like that’s one of the most unique things i’ve actually ever heard on our podcast that’s really cool it’s super and ask your wife you know ask if your kids are old enough and so if you have kids ask your kids like i have a 16 year old and 17 year old they have no problem telling me what they think but when you ask him to sit down and really dive into hey how can i do this better because it goes to all facets of life right how can i be a better wife a better mom a better business owner a better friend it’s everything yeah

 

 um let’s pivot to someone that’s working with an organization or they have contracts they’re doing this or that um what should they be without diving too deep obviously what should they be considering what should they be looking for what should some red flags be um i’m just thinking of someone out there that maybe they feel alone they’re not getting any help or the agents out there yeah just producers in general maybe they’re maybe they just don’t know a lot you know yeah um one of the things i love the different facebook groups and different things that are out there where we can all help each other but the number one thing that i see is agents who are asking hey what do i do about this on my imo i’m not getting this and i wish

 

all agents really understood that at the end of the day it’s a job interview and you as the agent really do hold the power i would challenge you and say that there is nothing that one imo offers that another imo can’t offer other than maybe a proprietary product um but so when you’re going into these discussions and first getting started as an agent just getting contracts is not the right way to do it take the time and ask people what are the good what’s the bad what’s the ugly don’t ever let somebody give you a quid pro quo situation it’s just not good if they’re not willing to help you i think one of the things i love about our fellow power players is they

 

will help you and guide the way you know you look at the roger schwartz and the tony merman’s nothing to gain from it there’s i’m no hierarchy in that but they say hey yeah let me help you with this and when people want to give and make you do better those are the people you should look to partner with in business yeah yeah it’s cool it’s almost um it’s just a more selfless approach you know 100 yeah a lot of people that in the business they they only want to help or do something for someone if they’re going to actually get something out of it um and it doesn’t

 

have to be that way and and you i gotta brag on you because you have never been that way honestly um you have been someone that is willing to help anyone with anything anytime whether they have contracts with you or not and that uh speaks volumes about you as a person and who you are and how much you believe in the organization you’re with and um it’s cool yeah you’re welcome that’s cool yeah it’s there’s far too much of this in business where people don’t just live by how would you want to be treated how would you want somebody to treat your daughter or your son or your mom or your dad and so i think when you just really bring it back to basics that’s so much easier i’m not worried about secret none of us have a secret sauce let’s face it turning 65 is turning 65. everybody has done the different kinds

 

of marketing’s you can come up with all these ideas but everybody knows how to send the lead mailer or hook so it really becomes the relationship and how do you get support when you need it yes such an important piece yeah it’s such a relationship business in general um if you had to i’ve been asked this question a long time i’m curious if you had to i’m actually got a few questions that came to mind if you describe yourself in one word well how would you describe kim’s six killer tenacious yeah yeah i was gonna say i was gonna say driven for sure yeah that’s good i love tenacious even better that’s awesome it’s been used um good and bad for me but it’s it’s very um it’s very accurate i think yeah you also know where you stand

 

you know like you’re not you’re not gonna just fake stuff with people like even in our relationship you’ve been honest along the way like hey here’s where here’s where i stand and i’ve always appreciated that because a lot of people you never know what they’re thinking you know whether they hate your guts or they love you you know like but that’s not true with you which i which i which i appreciate yeah i definitely that’s something that i have um softened over time but yeah you always kind of know where you stand with me everyone does but and that’s why i tell my kids just be honest but also figure out a way to do it in a more softer way so people

 

appreciate it correct correct yeah um if someone wants to learn more about you and what you’re doing and obviously you’re putting out a ton of content you’re speaking on panels at road shows and you’re going to puerto rico or power players and you know you’re a part of eight percent you’ll probably end up doing some breakouts or something i’m sure um how would someone learn more about you how do they follow you could they reach out yeah um so they can always reach out to me um my calendly um link is available for scheduling on our website it’s partner with mhc.com and then my personal website is k6medicare.com so it’s the letter

 

 k the number six um because one of the things that i’ve continued to do as well as being on the agent coaching side is also help clients i do it more on just a referral base now when somebody comes to me and needs help but i don’t think that you should be coaching agents and telling them how to do things and how to run their business and market if you don’t sit in that chair and do it too that’s one of the things that you know pete talks about going to the field and uh emily talks about going into the field we go out and continue to do it so you can say hey when

 

 you sit down do this so they can reach out to me there um my email is the letter k number six at magellanfinancial.com but yeah they are welcome to reach out to me that’s i was a smart email you’d use first name last name and and Magellan and financial and healthcare and all that it would get really long so that’s good it was super long when i first started and i’m like hey guys i got an idea and they’re like okay yeah here’s your alias you’re never gonna have another

 

 k6 just do it yeah right it’ll be fine it’ll be fine i love it well you have a very memorable last name it’s easy to you know i mean it’s cool last name it’s most unique last time you’ve probably ever heard and so it’s pretty easy to probably find on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram or wherever under kim six killer so i love it yeah it sure is yeah what what else would you um in closing say there’s an agent out there that’s just um they’re just not happy they’re not seeing a ton of success

 

 they don’t maybe they don’t feel like they’re in the right position or they’re selling the right something or they’re you know what i mean what what what advice or um motivation could you provide to them i would say and it works for anyone who’s out there if you’re not sure life is way too short to live come to live unhappy so get in the room whether that’s a road show we’ve got all those roadshows going on across the country or the you had the virtual not that long ago but get in the room with other agents and ask the question be vulnerable and say hey i’m not sure if this is their

 

right what do you think about this and just hearing other stories they may find out hey i’m just in the wrong product line maybe i’m a medicare agent maybe i’m a pnc agent but take the time to get in the room and if for some reason getting in the room is a financial block to you i’m amazed at how many people can reach out to people like us and colleagues and say look i want to get in the room but this is a burden and sometimes you’ll be surprised what rooms they know about that won’t cost you as much or people are willing to say hey okay come to this training so correct just get in the room it makes all the difference thank you so powerful i love

 

it well kim six killer thank you so much being on the podcast you are phenomenal and look forward to seeing a couple weeks in puerto rico thanks cody you got it thank you okay thank you for watching the ca power players podcast love the interview we just had with kim six girl go look her up reach out to her follow her she’s amazing and we’ll see on the next one hey if you enjoyed this i got another one you’re gonna love it’s right there click on it see you in there i want to get everybody’s attention really quick before we dive into this because you you’ve pulled off some incredible stuff like what’s a what’s a number of how good this business has gotten well at our peak we were selling about 14 million an annual premium

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