 Hey we're outside the office, Dylan and I are about to jump in the car, take a little ride and I'm going to walk you through, we're going to drive to my first office I ever had, the first apartment building I ever door-knocked, an old client's house, business area that I used to door-knock when I was doing B2B sales, um, SIG's first ever office that we ever had, once we went independent, um, mutual office and then come back here. So I'm going to take, we're going to jump in the car, go for a little ride, take it through some different spots that were a part of my career and then I want you guys to see. So we're jumping, we're jumping in the, uh, the Audi SQ5, okay, I just got this, uh, end of last year, early this year, a fun car, kind of nice, you know, it's going to definitely beep at, there we go, it's definitely going to beep at both of us, this thing loves to, I don't put my buckle on, well that never happens, I always put my seatbelt. All right, so I want to walk through, I want to talk you guys through and show you, um, several different spots, okay, so right now we're at our office here, we're where we office now, we've got six different suites here, about 8,500 square feet and I want to show you around the six or seven different spots, it's raining in Missouri today. Only, well, I want to talk you through six or seven different spots, um, because I see a lot of agents commenting, like, I'm getting a ton of agents that are, I would say we get about, we get about 1200 new subscribers to our YouTube channel every month and a lot of the agents that we get, um, are brand new, they're like, hey, I'm getting my license, like I talked to a few today that joined Success Society that, or they jumped our new CA cell system and they are, um, just getting licensed, they're new, they don't know what to do, right, they don't know how to go make money, um, or we're getting a lot of agents that are felling, they're quitting, they're struggling, they're not being successful, and so I want to really walk you guys through and talk you through, um, the early days of my career, how I made it and how I believe that you can make it too, okay, um, and I want to be, I want to be an encouragement and motivation to those that are struggling or to those that are new to show you like, hey, it's, it's not always as easy as we think, right, if you think about the fact that 92% of interest agents fell, um, that's a big number, that's a huge number and, and, and why is that? Well, I think the big reason is people just quit, man, you know, in this business, we did a theme recently with 2,500 insurance agents on a virtual conference and it talked about how if you don't quit, you can't fail, right, so we're only a couple miles away, I'm actually fixing to pull up into the first, um, office that I ever had, I actually started, I started in a cubicle, okay, in a local mutual office in a cubicle, um, and then ended up getting my own office, you know, after I was out producing everyone else, uh, and, but if you don't now produce everybody else, you deserve to just stay in a cubicle, okay, so, uh, this is the spot, okay, this is literally the spot, um, where we had, I don't know how, I don't know how big it was, um, but I had an office, I had a cubicle as an intern, I actually had a cubicle, um, right through this door, it was a little break room, if you go through that door and you turn left, I had a little cubicle as an intern, literally sitting right in there, uh, we should just barge in, camera and all, but maybe a little weird, uh, so not, not only there, I also had another cubicle, um, in the back part, so they had a little courtyard and then some other offices and cubes in the back, literally right through this back area, um, was a cubicle area where I was actually, as a brand new insurance agent, 20 years old, I was sitting in a cube right through those windows, and then also when I got my first office, I went out and bought like a $2300 desk, because I didn't have a desk or chairs or nothing, and my office window, um, you see the little fountain, it's the one just to the right, so it's, it's the last one on this wall, and there's two doors that come out, but the ones with the blinds, just to the right of the little fountain, just right at the courtyard, was literally the first office that I ever had, and it's the office that, um, I was the, I was in a cubicle, and I was in that office when I made $117,361.13 in my first eight months, and it was a lot of, like you got to think too, you got to remember, I was playing basketball, I was going to school full time, 21 crit hours a semester, I would have to, uh, trick, I would have to come back, literally, I would go sell for several hours after, I would go to school, then I would go sell for several hours, like cold call and doorknock and stuff, then I would go to a basketball game, after the basketball game, I would have to come back and actually turn in all the apps and fax them in, I would be here like 10, 11 o'clock at 9, 10, 11 o'clock at night, all the time, because to me, um, I've always been someone that will do whatever it takes, no matter what, you know, that's just my philosophy, um, I hope you're like that, because if you're not, you're going to struggle, you know, um, so that was my first office ever that I was a part of, I also want to take you to a, uh, apartment building over here that I doorknocked, and I remember doorknocked, and most people are going to think this is really weird, you know, they're like, oh, I'd never doorknocked an apartment building, you know, well, I didn't know what else to do, I doorknocked everything, everyone, um, cold called everything and everyone, uh, and, because I knew that when you do the math, I knew I had to sit down and ask 10 people to buy every single week, I need 10 people to do business with me, man, right, I need to ask them to do business at least, and to me, when I ran the numbers, I didn't know, like a lot of people, I struggled with the prospecting, the marketing, how do I get in front of people, um, you know, all those kind of things, and, and I just did it old school, the toughest way possible, you know, you hear about the old ages that ran debit routes and cold doorknocking and all that, that's kind of what I was kind of like in my first year, you know, I didn't work leads, it was cold calls, doorknocking, warm market, and then I would do those call nights that you guys have heard about where I would invite agents over to actually make calls, you know, and, and they would all, we would all get together in a huddle in the back of the, that office, and we would set, you know, 8, 12, 16, 20 appointments in two or three hours from straight cold, and that was the office that I started those call nights in back in the day, okay, so we're about to go over to a apartment building here that I actually, it's a residential apartment building, it's, I don't even know what it's called, but I remember selling two final expense policies from cold doorknocking after probably about, I probably knocked on 40 doors or something, and then I got into this older lady's home, I think, or apartment, I think her name was Carolyn, if I'm not mistaken, could be off, could have been her sister, two sisters sat right across, they lived right across from each other in this little apartment building, and I got into her apartment, and then she ended up bringing me over to her sister, and then we ended up selling both of them that day from literally just cold doorknocking, and it's kind of funny as you're, there used to be a no soliciting sign actually out here by the road, I don't know if that's still the case, but let's see, private property, no trespassing, well I don't see no soliciting, but I used to get kicked out of places all the time, you know, but I was nice, I was respectful, I'm not one to like, you know, break laws, I'm just one to, people need life insurance man, you know, so they literally lived in this part of the apartment, this last piece, the D building or whatever you want to call it, and they lived in the top, so right there in this window to the right, I don't think they still live here anymore, but they're still on the policies, they lived up here right across from each other, so I started off in the one to the right, and then spent some time with her, and then took me over to her sisters in the top left, and then we ended up sitting in the sisters home apartment for a good, I was probably here for like two hours, like I spent a lot of time here in that space, but it came totally from cold door knocking, you know, like we get a lot of questions about like dude, well what did you say, you know, like I would just get excited, hey I'm Cody, how are you doing today, you know, dude why are you at my door, you know, again my name's Cody, I help a lot of seniors in this area with their burial and final expenses, I like to go over some new information with you, if you got a quick second, you know, can we sit at the couch or the table, and you do that enough, like you put that freaking sweat equity in and you get just beat down and doors slamming your face, people cursing you out, people saying I'm not interested or you know you're stupid or whatever, right, you know, you get, that forces you to eventually get really good at sales, and during that time I was not great, but I was going to do whatever it took, you know, no matter what, I'm going to go back out and then go to an old client's house, actually I have a couple clients over here in this area, and we're all really close to the office by the way, Supreme Court of Missouri is not huge, 150,000 to 200,000 people, and I did a lot more selling outside of Springfield than I actually did in the city, just because I always liked selling rurally, grabbing aged leads, going door knocking those, in the rural there seemed to be a little more receptive, nicer, they get hit up less, because there's less insurance agents in the rural part than the city, and so I'm really just kind of talking you through, you know, my journey, the things that I did to be successful, the things that I know that you can do to be successful, but a lot of agents, I was talking to a guy earlier, you know, and he's like, well, you know, I don't know, man, you know, like most people think about stuff, like most people would have said, like you watching right now, maybe you would have said, hey, I'm going to go to the apartment building and make a sale, nah, I don't want to do that, I'll do that tomorrow, I don't want to door knock, you know, for me, I was, I forced myself to conquer my fears, get out of my comfort zone, get, you know, do things I didn't want to do, and for me, there was never a time where I'm like, I think I should do this and I didn't do it, because me winning and hitting my goal of earning six figures my first year was more valuable and more important than me not going and knocking on the door, you know, so for me, that was always just like if I needed to do it, yeah, I was in my head, right, like everybody else, I got in my head and now maybe you shouldn't do this, maybe this is tough, whatever, right, but I ended up doing it, you know, I door knocked this entire residential area, I literally, I remember knocking on Powell Street here, I knocked all the doors here at Dunkirk, it's a little neighborhood, I'll slow down, so Dylan can pan in, I door knocked all of those, I actually, I remember one of those, I'm going to go back, I remember one of those that I door knocked that was turning 65, no joke, that was turning 65, and I ended up setting an appointment going back and selling a Medicare policy, I think that may have been my second year though, I didn't sell Medicare my first year at all, but I'm going to go back, this wasn't on the list, but I'm remembering this as I'm seeing that house, there's just like a lot of memories come back, I start thinking about stories and like I'm the one, I've talked to my sales manager into buying a white board so that the whole team could like track their activity and all that, you know, just a lot of, just a lot of things, you know, I think about this literally was the, one of the houses that I door knocked and dropped off a goodie bag at, they were turning 65, it was just, I don't know, I don't know if they still live there, I don't know if they sell a Medicare policy with me, I have no idea, somebody else manages all that, all my book of business and all that now, but I do remember a client's house that I sold, he was in his early, I think he was late 60s actually, and I sold a pretty good size 10-year term policy to him my first year, I think his name was Jay, and I sold, you know, I sold probably close to a couple hundred clients my first year, and he was actually, he was someone that actually one of the openers had called, and I had to, he stood me up, my first appointment, and instead of just getting stood up and being like, you know, whatever, you know, I showed back up and got back in the door, because what I learned is with those cold calls, I would have about a 60%, at least a 60% minimum, like no show rate, like that's really high, like I would book 10, six would stand me up, you know, like that's, that's pretty big, that's pretty high, you know, in general, which house was this, it may have, nah, I don't think it was that one, it was this one, it was this one, so I literally, over here, I don't think I lived here anymore, so I literally had that client that I've been talking about, literally lived right here, I still remember like it was yesterday walking through the front door, don't look like nobody lives there now, I, gosh, there's another one up, Battlefield, that's close, that I also actually door-knocked and got in, I think I sold him like probably five or six policies over the next several years, children's policies, him, his wife, his brother, like that one's a little farther away, it's a couple miles, so I won't go to it, but I'm just like, I'm thinking about all these memories, you know, and I talk about like how when I mentioned my story and the success and the numbers and stuff, a lot of people think it's, I'll do that, you make it seem easy, you sound easy, like when you break stuff down, you make the complicated simple, well that's good, but it was not, it did not really come easy for me, it was, it was, yeah, I'm a, maybe I'm a natural born salesperson, but as far as like getting out and getting in front of people, that's the hardest part of this business, and just like everyone else, I struggled with that exact same thing, you know, like I just did, and it's the number one reason why interest agents fail, it's the number one reason that they struggled to get in front of people consistently, every single day, you know, now I'm actually going to take you through a business area that I door-knocked, because I didn't have a lot, I remember one day I was like, hey, I don't have any appointments, I can do something, and you know, I'm like, let's try knocking on businesses, really weird, not my favorite thing to do personally, I'd actually rather knock on houses, I know that's probably strange for a lot of people, but I literally went and door-knocked, I'm going to show you over here, cross, it's over actually a cross from the very first Secure Insurance Group office, once we went out and opened our own office, so I'll show you both of those really quick, little business-to-business area with a bunch of office suites and stuff, we're over here on Montclair now, this is a big business area, it continues, I remember talking to a, I actually remember getting an appointment with a dental office, I think it was to talk to the owner about something, about something, yeah, so this is what's called the Woodhurst Office Park, and I remember walking around in a shirt and tie, door-knocking like this whole freaking complex, this area, there's a lot of businesses here, I'm sure there's a lot of, that one's engineering, there's going to be some lawyers and dentist offices and architects, and there's another dental clinic, so there's counting, tax services, insurance offices, this is a great place to attorney-at-law, inthodontics, whatever that is, this is a huge business area that I went and just went door-to-door, I help businesses with this, what do you guys do to cover that, and I would just get into conversations and conversations and good things would happen, also right here where this Jeremiah Me thing is right in front of us, that is where Secures, you got a big old semi-truck about to pull in front of you, that's literally where Secure Insurance Groups first, when I first started after we started our own stuff and started our own office and agency and all that, we office right here, just a couple miles down the road from where we office now, but we had like, I don't know, 1500 square feet here, pretty small, started out very small, we had a few offices in there, a little receptionist area, but that's where we started, right by this little Skybox grill lounge, I'd come over here and eat lunch every now and then, I remember when I was in this office, this was six years ago, six and a half years ago actually, which is crazy how time flies, six and a half years ago, I would go out and leave town for a few days or a week and I would drive like four hours away with just a ton of age leads and senior housing facilities and all that, and I would go out and I would knock on about 50 doors a day for five, six days, I remember I would go out and knock on 250, 300 doors, and a lot of times I would come back with 10, 12 policies and applications from just going out and doing it for the week, I'd be like, dang, I made like eight grand this week, I remember one week, literally it was like $17,000 because I had a couple big cases in there, cold, just like straight cold, I always kind of enjoyed that though, I don't know about you guys, let me know in comments below, I fed off of that, somebody not knowing who I was and getting them to end up liking me and earning their trust and winning them over and then earning their business, that was a game to me, I think it was like an internal game where I'm like, okay, this person knows nothing about me, they are going to buy for me today, and I didn't do callbacks, like you think about it, I was driving four and a half hours away, I'd go to the boot hill of Missouri, well, they can't call me back, I'm in town for a few days, like I'm leaving and I'm maybe never coming back to that city or area, that forced me to close deals while I was there, I think that was a benefit too, because it forced me to not let people think about stuff and call me back and all those things, right? Do you struggle with that? If you do, that's something you've got to fix, like that's a confidence thing, that's a certainty thing, that's a you problem, more than is a them problem, like most people think well that's a prospect problem, you know, that's a you problem man, that's a you problem, it is and it's showing that you don't believe in your ability to close the deal right now, like I finally at some point believed every person I sit with, if I walk out without business, I did something wrong, I failed at the game, I remember like I would create these like fictitious goals or like games in my head or like competitive challenges or like, you know, I'm gonna go knock on 60 doors today and I'm gonna write six policies, you know, something crazy, I would like just make up these internal games to keep me focused and you need to be, you need to be focused, you know, I know a lot of people struggle with that, this was the office that we left when we started on doing our own thing and there was, I literally office right there, just left of those stairs, I had a little office right there, just left of the stairs, I remember during a bit during like a World Series trip, I would, I put up a little activity tracker and I tracked my, I tracked my production so that I could win the trip, like I would, I would really focus on winning trips, like anytime they released one I did, you know, I would bring over kids for call nights here, a bunch of cubicles, you know, like all that and that was it man, that was the, that was like, that was a bunch of stuff that we literally talked through, you know, just in general, like my first office, apartment building, clients house, businesses, you know, that I would knock, our first office, that my second office I was ever in was there and now, you know, now here we are, we've got, we started out with one suite here, now we got six, now we're running out of parking and we've got, you know, more, we've got like, I don't even know, probably 80 people that office or work or that park here, we're actually gonna have our sales team park in a different location here pretty soon, like it's crazy, it's growing, I'm loving it and I want, I want this to be motivation to you guys, whatever you want to accomplish, you can accomplish, I was no better than you were when I was 19, 20 years old doing what you're doing right now, I struggled, I beat myself up, I hit my head against the wall, like my back was against the wall and I had to move forward as the rock talks about in his speech, like I had to deliver and, and I, but the difference is, difference between me and a lot of agents out there watching right now, I did whatever it took, I had to knock on a hundred doors, I knocked on a hundred doors, most people are too scared, if you're too scared, if you won't get out of your comfort zone, if you won't conquer your fear, you will quit and you will fail and I do not want to see that, so hopefully my story and showing you some behind the scenes of things that happened in my life early in my career, hopefully those things will be a motivation to you, they're motivating me to do even bigger and better things now so that next time we do this video in three, five, ten years, we bought the, we bought a building and we got 250 employees and we're scaling and thinking bigger than we are, so hopefully this will leave you thinking bigger today, I appreciate you guys watching, hey you love this video and you want some brain food, I got five books that every new insurance agent should read, go watch that, grab the books, I'll see you over there, when you read a book, when you go to an event, when you listen to a book, when you go to a mastermind, when you buy a university, when you do these different things, okay, when you have a coach, whatever, if you don't have a coach, gosh, darn it.