 Welcome to the insurance agent podcast. I'm Cody Askins with SecureAge of Mentor. We've started this new podcast to provide you everything you need to become a successful insurance agent. This new podcast is brought to you by SecureAge of Mentor. And when you think about leads, training, and insurance sales success, I want you to thank SecureAge of Mentor and SecureAgeofMentor.com. Thanks and enjoy. Well, some guys, hey, welcome. I'm Cody with SecureAge of Mentor. I get to welcome. We're starting a new podcast series where we're going to go about 10 minutes grilling and interviewing successful insurance agents. What they've done, what's been unique about them, what has taken their game to the next level. I've got Mr. Thomas Dixon. Welcome, buddy. What's going on, Cody? Good to be here. Mr. Thomas Dixon is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He is a part of the Acadian Insurance Group. And so I want to dive right in. You started about July of 17, am I right? That's correct. That's awesome, buddy, because what's cool is, as we know, about 92% of insurance agents fail in their first few years. You've been in the business about, well, what, eight months? Yeah, about seven to eight months. The reason we found each other is you follow all of our stuff, but also we became friends on Facebook. And I noticed a lot of the things you're doing, and I think we get on here a lot and talk about leads and door knocking and calling and setting and what agents can do to get in front of prospects. You've done it a little different, which is the purpose of this video podcast series is to do things in a different focus on unique ways to get in front of people. So what do you feel like has been the last eight months? What would you say has been your singular focus? My singular focus has been my warm market and particularly my circle on Facebook. That's been my biggest source of clients since I started out. Awesome. Thank you, buddy. That's something I've noticed too, is when I'm putting up videos to attract agents, Mr. Dixon's putting up videos focused at actually prospect customers and clients. So a lot there, and you know what, a lot of agents, they do it old school. They use direct mail. They door knock. They call and those ways still work today. I'm not here to say don't do that, but you've done something a little unique, which is put it on your warm market, your friends, your family, your, you know, you're getting referrals. What's some of the things that you've done through social media make sales? Biggest one outside of the videos is Facebook inbox. I go to all my friends and I have either a canned message or I have an image that I have created on canvas and say, hey, this is my name is Thomas, just let you know who I am. I sell life insurance and everybody needs a policy. I have a little spiel and I inbox them. I inbox 10 people and about two will say, hey, I don't need nothing right now. One may say, you know what? I need something my mom. Let's make every talk cost you about three or four seconds to do it. Wow. That is awesome, buddy. Thanks for, you know what? Dude, I'm getting excited. I'm getting goosebumps because that's something I have never, I've never heard that an agent is going and having canned responses and Facebook inboxing their friends and actually trying to grow their business and so, and I think that's one of the reasons a lot of agents fail is that it's the creativity aspect. It's by being creative ways to get in front of people. What else has been six? I know you do some Facebook live videos just to get attention. I do Facebook live videos and I do them a very topical like we're an insurance industry so we take things for granted like underwriting and medications, but people that's in the industry, they don't know those things. So I do a little small videos about diabetes or what to do if you get described is stuff they didn't know. I did one other day about travel license. What if my son had a travel license, what would I do? So I do those type of videos. I like that. More informational, less of a sales pitch and more informational trying to get attention and I'm assuming when they think, they may think about insurance then, but I also know that if they think about insurance later, has that happened? Yes. I've had people come back a month or two later, hey, I saw your videos last week, last month. I got a question. Can you answer a quick question for me? Sometimes I don't even talk to them, but they saw the video and I'm top of mind. Top of mind. Let me get back to it. That's awesome. So you've done the Facebook, you've done the inboxing, you've done the Facebook live videos for the videos in general. I know you've added some other production levels to them. They're certainly look very good. What's something else as far as, I know you also put some content out or some text or pictures, what's some other things that you've done just to continue to get attention because you don't seem like a hard sales, constant sales pitch because your audience would get turned off. They would. They would. Let's see. I will post timely things like if somebody, if there's been a, I don't try to use tragedies, but if something's kind of bad happened, I may do a little soft push about being covered, something real. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know what? It's something they can relate to. Everybody's got stuff going on in their life and it's like, what's real? What's going on? And how can they relate to those real things? Or like you said, two months later, they're like, you know what? I'm in the situation that Thomas was talking about 30 days ago. Yes. I thought about him. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. What's been your main focus? Final expense? Terms? General? You know what? Right now, I'm going to focus on just final expense and if they have young adult children, which is what's been happening, their kids may want a policy, then I sell their kids a simplified issue term policy. I like it. I like it. Yeah. Keep it simple. It's easy. I love it. I love it. Very cool. So how's your experience been? We get questions from agents, new agents all the time. You're at eight months, give or take a few days here and there. What's your experience been like as a new agent, grinding it out? It's not an easy career. It's not. What's been your experience? My experience has been you have to have a plan every day. Even if it's just a call one or two people, you got to have a plan every day. Oh, baby. You got to be willing to, you can be a secret agent. I mean, if I go to a grocery store and I'm having a good conversation, I say, hey, by the way, who you got your life insurance with real quick? They're going to say, I don't have any or I got it, but I'm going to ask a question. I love it. I love it. You know what? And it's, it's being bold. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's getting outside of your comfort zone naturally. And you may be different naturally. I had to put some fears aside or overcome fears or give my, well, thank you buddy. I appreciate that bro. You know what? First video ever did. I'm in the very office. I've ever did a first video two and a half years ago and I was so uncomfortable. You guys wouldn't believe how many takes there was an agents are the same way. It's not natural for you to ask someone, Hey, who's your life insurance? It's not, but it's just getting in your comfort zone, having a plan. And what's cool is you mentioned something awesome. You have a plan and you write something down and this is what I'm going to do today. You think about that all day, all day. I got to get it done. I got to get it done and those things start to come in to play. Those opportunities start to come up. You start to think about your plan specifically. That's good. That's good. What else would you say experience wise? What do you do when you've had those bad days, those bad weeks, because we've all had them. Man, you know what I do? I go to YouTube. I go to YouTube. I watch life insurance related videos. I watch a lot of your older videos. Thanks, bud. I find some new pointers. I just stay, I stay, I stay plugged into the system of life insurance because you're going to understand what I'm going through. So I watch videos of guys in the actual business doing it. Absolutely. Thank you, buddy. Yeah, I appreciate that. And agents, you can do one of two things when you're having a bad week. You can sulk, get depressed, go home and watch House of Cards or you can plug in. You can get focused. You can figure out a way to overcome it and get out of that, which is huge. I mean, you can tell just by talking to you and just by following you, you are someone that is dead set on being successful, which is one of the reasons I wanted you on our first video podcast interview is you're a regular guy, you're a new agent, you're the insurance agent that everyone can learn from, but they can also relate to. Because you're that guy that's, you know what, I've been in business eight months. It hasn't all been, it hasn't been all roses. It hasn't been easy, but I've found ways to be creative and see what's some other without giving away, you know, all your amazing things you've done. I'm cool. This is what I'm doing. I just started this yesterday. Man, look, you know, the guy that I got in with, he teaches how to do seminars. I'm cool. Call them. I'm cool calling churches. I call a church and say, Hey, you know, do you have a table at your church? Why can't we leave some materials and maybe I can talk to a small group? I love that. That's good. Yeah. I've actually, my grandfather's a Baptist pastor in Arkansas. I grew up in Jersey, my whole life, Christian schools, Bible college, all that. So I can relate. That's actually, there's the creative thing. It's thinking outside the box and then taking action because everyone can come up with ideas to get in front of a church, but it's the execution. You gotta follow through, you gotta follow through. What's your pitch like when you call a church? It's kind of like your, what's your pitch? It's brand new. I just, I actually literally started yesterday. Okay. Okay. I haven't, it was a Monday, so I got voicemails by just saying, my name is Thomas. I'm looking for, let's say I would say, I like to, who I need to speak to, that will allow me to leave some materials about life insurance and the congregation and maybe speak to them. I asked for permission and where can I, I didn't just say, Hey, let me talk to them because, you know, they're not religious talk today. Absolutely. Yeah. You got yourselves pitched down, you know what you're asking, you know, you're asking for permission, you know, you're asking, you know, and, and, uh, churches can relate to that because pastors, unfortunately, they have to preach a lot of funerals. You know, they attend a lot of funerals as part of it. People pass away, unfortunately, but it's like there, there wouldn't be a need for life insurance if that never happened. I'll be, I'll throw another thing and I'll do, I haven't got much success with it, but it's, it's, it don't cost much money. I got some flyers made. I go to go to laundry mats, I ask permission of the owner and I just leave my flyers there. I mean, if it's on the way to somewhere else, what's, what's going to cost you two, three minutes to go drop off 30 flyers and add a laundry mat and move on to the next place. Yeah. And if you get a client out of it, you know, 30 days down the road or two weeks down the road, it's like it was worth two minutes. Exactly. Your return was, you know, $7,000, $50,000 an hour, you know, something crazy because it took 30 seconds to knock it down. You know, it's like, gee, uh, any other thoughts, anything else you want to share with agents that maybe are new, they're just getting started. They're listening to this, they're struggling, whoever that agent is. You've got a chance to possibly impact another insurance agents life right now, what would you say? I will tell you to focus, get three companies and focus on those three companies to learn the underwriting, learn the process and don't be a secret agent. Let your friends and family know that's what you're doing because if you keep it a secret, you know, anonymity is the ending. That's what I'm saying. If you, if you're anonymous, no one knows who you are. Nobody's gonna buy from you. So focus on three companies and let people know what you're doing. I love it. I love it. Dude, thank you. Thank you very much. You mentioned Greg, I was, I was actually at the 10 X growth conference. Oh man, for a week, for a, that was a blast, man. I got to, I got to hang out in the back and do a little round table meeting with Damon, John. I got to hang out with a bunch of speakers. That was a blast, bro. That was cool. Yeah, it was all for me. Yeah, it was cool, but it was a lot of fun. You mentioned, you mentioned, Greg, you mentioned, how important has it been for you to find people to pattern your business after, to learn from those mentors in your life? Very important, man. It has saved me a lot of time of trying to, you know, muck around in the mud and stuff. It saved me some time to find some people and just practice it, get the feedback and make adjustments to make it work for me, for my personality. Exactly. Exactly. Hey, if they're watching, buddy, and they want to follow you, they want to reach out, how can they do that? You can find me on Facebook at, um, Acadian Insurance Group. Or you can just hit me up, Thomas Dixon was Thomas Sales Life Insurance. That's my business page. Oh, I like that. Follow that one. I don't follow that one. That's good. Dude, it's thinking outside the box. It's in your, it's in your freaking profile name. You know, it's like, dude, when I remember, when I think about life insurance six months from now, I'm going to remember Thomas Sales Life Insurance. Absolutely. Dude, thanks for being on the first video podcast series. Many, many great, awesome job. Thank you, buddy. Thank you for reaching out to me, man. I'm glad to come on this podcast and, um, go back forward with you with some good news. You got it, bro. Have an awesome 2018. Thanks for being on. Appreciate you, buddy. All right. You too, man. Take care.