 Hey, as a beginner, there's three things you absolutely must know prior to getting the industry or right when you get into the insurance industry. The three things, I'm going to roll through each one and I'm telling you, I had success and made $117,361.13 at $20 while in college and playing basketball because I knew these things. I at least learned them pretty quick and I actually adopted them and I put them into place. The first one is you need to be able to set a target, a goal, a target. Most successful people, I would say all successful people really, they don't go into something and have success without actually premeditated pre-planned success. So I want to ask you, as you jump into this venture, what's your actual, what's your target? What's your goal? What do you want to do? And I would say it needs to be a little more predefined than, hey, I just want to make $100,000 my first year or I'm making $48,000 working down the street. I love to make $50,000. Let's have some specifics about that and what most people don't realize is when I was an agent, yes, my goal was to make $100,000. And I went into a recruiting meeting and the manager had us all stand up and then said, okay, take a look around and then he had everybody but one person sit down. And then he said, maybe one of you will make it. In that moment, I actually set a goal, a target. I wrote it down and I said, I will earn $100,000 my first year in the insurance business. Not I may or I hope or I will maybe probably think I will. No, I will earn $100,000 my first year in the insurance business. I dated it, I signed it and I put up in the wall of my cubicle and every day I went out to make that a reality from cold calling and cold door knocking the hardest way to do it. But I had success because I set a target for myself. So I want to challenge you as you're taking notes as we're deciding for you right now what you want to do. I want to encourage you to set a target. I'm telling you, this will pay off for you. Number one, set a target. If you need to pause and write it down as we work through this workbook style today, then do that because I want you to have a target before we continue. Okay, so now we've got a target. Excellent. Second, know your numbers. I'm big on knowing your numbers. Now what does that mean? Well for me $100,000, it was $2,000 a week. It was $400 per business day. How do I make $400 today, tomorrow, and the next day? But to go even further, I knew that I needed, I made about $400 to $500 of commission per sale. Me personally, I don't know what it is for you, but this was me a decade ago. And because of that, I needed five sales a week, $2,000 a week divided by the amount of commission you make per sale, bam, I needed five sales. So I followed the set, sit, sell model. I call it the triple S system, set 15 appointments to hopefully sit with 10 and actually sit and give presentations to 10 people. Now it could be over the phone either way, right? And then actually, and then hope to sell five of the 10 from the 15 that was set. So set 15 appointments, sit with 10 appointments, ask 10 to buy and actually close five sales. Now that could be four appointments and then one's a couple where you get two sales, right? Again, I knew that when I actually sat with 10, I was going to sell my five every week or at least pretty freaking close. So for me, it was all about knowing my numbers because I wanted to break it down, right? And so I want you to break your numbers down so that you know what you need to do. And I used to write down, I will earn $200,000 this week. Every week on Sunday nights, I would prep, I would write things down, I would take this thing seriously and some of you are going to hear this and it's going to like, you know, you're not going to write it down and take it seriously. I'm telling you, for a target to happen, for a goal to happen, for those numbers that you set and that you now know of what you need to do every single week because you're going to break it down and do it in a weekly system because you can have one good week here, one good week here, one good week here. You can string together a phenomenal year, one week at a time because a year, big goal, semi-annual quarter, I was like, Oh, it's three months a month. Okay, that's cool. But week, if I can win the week this week, I can win the week next week. If I can win the week next week, I can win the whole stinking year. Okay, so as you're starting to do that, you need to know your numbers. It's super important that you actually know those. Number three for tips is you need to have prospecting methods and you need to be prepared to go out and prospect to see people. The biggest question for you right now is, how are you going to get in front of people? And yes, I cold called and cold door knocked, which is the hardest way to go. Not easy. I didn't even use leads. Now, there are other systems that you can use, and I've even got a course on this in our over at training.Codyaskins.com on insurance agent prospecting 101. You need to figure out this a two or three hour course, but you need to figure out what are your prospecting methods going to be because you don't want to go into each week like it's a roller coaster or a wave, and you don't know what to do this week. It needs to be specific. You need to walk into the week knowing I am going to do this this week. Here's what I'm going to do. Here's the success I'm going to have, and here's how I'm going to get it done. The more organized and prepared you can be the better, right? Not so prepared that you're like, I'm not going to do anything until I know everything because you're going to take action now. You're going to take some action. You're going to be active. You're going to put forth the activity. You're going to put in a lot of activity to hopefully see future results, right? But what are those prospecting methods for you? I always recommend that the insurance agents have three prospecting methods in their first year, and this is going to change over time, and it's never going to be perfect or specific or whatever, but one is you need to be focused on specifically your warm market friends, family, etc. If you love them, care about them, and believe in what you're selling, you'll do this anyway, right? Some of you are going to be like, dude, I'm turning the video off. I ain't talking to my friends about insurance. Well, then you don't actually believe in what you're selling yet. That's okay. Maybe someday. Okay? After a warm market, which I made tens of thousands of dollars off of my very first year warm market, then you need some type of way that you're getting leads every week. For me, maybe you're buying leads from a vendor, maybe you're working with, you know, security marketing and we're generating leads at cost for you, one of my companies, I don't know. But for me, it was, I had call nights, and every Monday night I would invite college kids over to the office. I would pay them $10 per appointment for the first two appointments, $20 for the third appointment and every appointment after. I'd give them a chair, cubicle, phone, script, data list. I would call with them. I'd walk around and get everybody jacked up and excited. I'd train them. I'd buy them all pizza. I would pass around gift cards as they went throughout the night. I would give an extra $100, maybe an extra $20. I think it was to the top person of the night to set the most of appointments. We'd have, you know, me and two, three, four, five, six other people all making calls to book me appointments, cold calling about final expense life insurance. And we would cold call and we'd book appointments and I'd walk out of there a lot of times with sometimes only six, eight, ten appointments, but always at least that. And then some weeks I'd walk out of there with 14, 16, 18, 20, 22 appointments. My whole week would be booked. That was my way of having a consistent lead flow. I created the lead flow myself, which is, which is, that's an option. That's okay. Maybe it's direct mail leads. Maybe it's digital leads. You know, I don't know what it is for you. Maybe it's telemarketing leads. I don't know what it is for you, but you need a consistent lead flow. And why do you need a consistent lead flow? Because you need people to talk to every week. And if you're going to set 15 appointments every single week, you got to have some stuff circulating. Okay. So that's a second prospecting method that I always recommend. The third is you need to have third act, third activity, driver, that I'm going to go door knock, or I'm going to work a networking group, or I'm going to go ask for referrals, or I'm going to go do this. For me, the activity, the fill in, when I didn't know what to do, because that's going to happen as a new insurance agent. It's a big tip. It's when it happens, please do something. I promise you it'll pay off. When you're, when you're war market, you know, you're not working war market, or you're not working leads, or it's a Friday and you're worked through your war market for the week, your hit list on that, because you created a top 100, 200, whatever, and you're hitting it up. Or maybe it's the, as far as the leads, call night for me, maybe I would book appointments on Monday night for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I'll have anything on Friday, I would actually go and I'd go drive to like a senior housing facility or some area, and I would door knock for 50 doors, 60 doors, 80 doors, sometimes 125 in a day. That was my way of filling the activity. And some of you are like, dude, there's no way in heck I'm doing that. I'm telling you, it is extremely crucial and important and beneficial for you to fill it with activity and door knocking works for a lot of people. It doesn't have to be one of yours, but you need three different prospecting methods so that you can hit your weekly numbers because when you know your numbers, you start hitting your numbers, you have a better chance of actually hitting that long-term goal that you have laid out for yourself. So these are the three tips that you must know as you're getting into the insurance industry. Hey, if you love this, you're like, man, I want 2021 to be better than 2020 was. I got seven steps that you need to apply right away. Check out the video, they're in there. If you want to make $221,520 next year in 2021, I'm going to show you the seven steps that you need to master.