 Cody, dude, you have been one of the most successful individuals that I've known that has built a personal brand. I would love if you could just take us along that journey. First off, this is going to be an interview style. I want to interview you. I want you to unpack as much as you can. We could probably do this for three hours because that's how big the story is, but we're going to try and condense this and get some nuggets of actionable takeaways that these insurance agents can learn from and work towards building their personal brand. The first thing I would love for you to walk through is, first off, why did you decide to start building your personal brand as aggressively as you are? When did that light bulb switch? How did that start? It really flipped about two years ago this month. We first started four and a half years ago putting up videos on YouTube, not really knowing what would go, what would be the point behind it, why I was doing them. I just thought, wow, this is kind of cool even though I was sucked at it. At some point it clicked and I'm like, you know what, I've got something special here. People are responding. I'm actually doing good in the world. I'm helping insurance agents. Why don't I really double down and go a little bigger and just see what happens? Because every time I've ever done that in my life, something good has always happened on the other side. What does that mean though to you? Did that mean doing one video a month instead and now doing a video a week? How did it start? Take me to the very beginning. Two years ago to this day, we added a second videographer who is now the main videographer in Dylan. We decided to put on 8% Nation because I thought, well, I've seen other brands explode because they not only had a YouTube channel, but they had a conference. Then we also started to actually spend money. I could remember two years ago when I was spending at one point $1,000 a day on advertising and marketing. How important is building a personal brand in the insurance industry? It's a lot more important than people think. Even if I went and I went back to, okay, Cody, you're going to sell insurance every single day. I would do it on a national scale. I would hammer home with a brand and attention, YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc., Instagram, and I would eventually be the thought leader for whatever niche I wanted to be in. And yeah, it would probably take a few years. I could redo everything we've done faster now because of everything you know. I made a ton of mistakes. We learned a lot, but insurance agents can absolutely do it. I could just cut everything off at the knees right now and say, okay, I'm going to go back to building an insurance agency direct consumer and have a seven-figure company inside of 24 months. For sure. Without a doubt. In fact, so many meetings have we taken where they're like, why are you not doing that already? You're saying, and they're like, well, you're just like your heart is in it for the insurance agents or whatever it is. It's just, yeah, it's not in. I enjoyed selling. I was really good at it, but I enjoyed helping Susie make sales more than I enjoyed myself. That's awesome. So what does it take to build a personal brand in the insurance industry? What are some actionable steps that someone just going into the industry needs to take specifically to start going down this road? A few things for me, you've got to put out video content multiple times per week. Don't care what it looks like, what anybody thinks. A limiting belief for me has always been, and I've learned that I've got to get these things like, I've got to grow in time and get these things out of my head. I've always used to care, like what people thought, I would read all the negative comments and they would wear on me. You're a scam. I don't know where they get that from. You talk too fast or you talk too slow or you don't talk too loud or you talk too soft. It's just, oh, you're from Arkansas, you've got an accent or no, you don't talk like you have an accent. It's insane. You can't please everyone. So the sooner you realize that and just do a lot of it, I used to think a website didn't matter. Boy, does that really matter? We have great websites now and we get leads that come in all day every day. What's super unique? I never saw this happening this fast. I'm less thinking about building a national brand and I'm more thinking about how to build an international global brand. It was crazy to me that this weekend, on Memorial Day weekend, just happened. We're filming this on a Tuesday, who cares. We had agents reach out from Australia, Singapore, Egypt, Canada, and the UK. I think I'm forgetting in India, all six of those different parts of the world this weekend. I got proof on YouTube, Instagram, emails. It's astounding to me that I feel like, so I've been in the marketing world my whole life and I got my degree in marketing and this wasn't really a thing even five or six years ago. How important building that personal brand and putting that content out because I think it's also easier now than ever. You can upload videos on YouTube straight from your phone. You don't even need software at this point. You can shoot within the actual platform. Not to mention with Google, they are integrating the actual search engine optimization with YouTube as well. If you're a Medicare agent or a life agent or a health agent and you're not creating content, to me it's like, what are you doing with your life? You've got to be doing that. There's nothing else you can do that would make a bigger impact aside from just throw money at radio or TV or whatever. No one would believe this but the first two and a half years of putting out content, two and a half years daily, constantly, two and a half years, two and a half years later nobody took me seriously. That's actually the biggest reason that's our 8% nation. Nobody's actually looking at me as a thought leader. I'm going to just physically change it at all costs. Video content is one thing. Walk me through your mindset because you are absolutely a leader. I've walked through airports with you and you get recognized by randoms in the airport. That just happened once as weird as that is. Obviously you have a consulting business for insurance agents but being noticed by a random insurance agent in the airport is pretty much as on point as you can with your marketing strategy. Walk me through your mind. Whenever you're doing stories or connecting Facebook and Instagram and YouTube, what's your thought process? Do you wake up in the morning with, you know what, I'm going to shoot this type of content? Does it just come to you and you're like, get a camera out? What's your mindset? A little bit of everything I guess. I mean, for me, it's never really been about, okay, how much money can I make today off of doing this. For me, it's like I truly enjoy having a personal brand. I truly enjoy helping insurance agents. I truly enjoy waking up and coming in here and shooting video. You're like, hey, can you shoot a video? I'm like, yep, I'll be right there. I love this stuff, man. A lot of people, it's not their passion, you know, which is okay. That's great. It is absolutely my passion. How do you actually come up with the videos and the content? That's pretty, well, now it used to be very random and it still is on occasion. I'm like, hey Dylan, I got an idea. Let's shoot a video. Well, he also sends me 10, 10, 15 new great YouTube titles every week as well that we like grab a few and shoot some content. I used to tell myself, it's really crazy, I used to tell myself two years ago that I'm not a very creative person. Now it's like it just flows and I think that's part of when someone finds their passion and they enjoy it and they like wake up and try to do a lot and they're very active and they're doing stuff all the time, the busier I am, the more creative I flow. I agree. That didn't used to make sense. I agree. You know, motion and activity creates momentum and just more motivation for me as well. So one of the things that, so basically you have a schedule. Do you have like a certain goal of content you try to put out every week, month? It used to be 15 videos a week, which was a lot and the quality wasn't always there. Now we're putting out at least a handful of solid videos a week. We're putting out at least an email per day for multiple brands. We're putting out social post multiple times a day. I'm putting at least, I'm trying to get to at least 15 to 20 stories on my Instagram every day. We're spending money on Facebook, YouTube and Google. You know what my goal is? Moving forward of pieces of content per day. Yeah, 60. There you go. I want to get 60 pieces of content a day, man, between stories, between social posts. That also includes CA and 8% though. From this house, let's send out 60 a day is my goal. I think we're closer than you think. No, I know. Especially if you count your stories because there's a third of them right there. Exactly. Well, and Danielle just put like eight ticket purchases on my story that were real that I'm like, Hey, let's start sharing that stuff. That's like social proof. It's a little bit of urgency. Like for sure. You know, I do think there's a line you can cross. There's a certain individual that annoys the crap out of me that shares like bank accounts and like transactions. That to me is like tagging. When I started doing that, just deck me. And I won't bet a punch back cause you're too tall. I would, I would, I would send you please don't let me ever do this. And if I do, then just stop me immediately. But anyways, there's a line you can cross. But I really feel like as long as you're keeping it classy, being able to show how you're winning is important as well. People don't really, people want to like, they want to get, they may get inspiration from, from the, the arrogant jerk that nobody wants to really meet and they may follow some stuff, but they don't really ever want to like hang out with that person for a long period of time. I agree. I want to be the dude that we can throw a retreat in Dubai one day and people want to hang out, you know, and that sounds insane. You know, for me to say stuff like that in some of the stuff that we do and say is, is off the freaking wall. Well, what I find is, is I've got a, I've got a boom. Hey, if you're loving this video, I know you are. I know you love the branding. I know you love the stories. You want to blow up your brand. We have a new marketing channel. Landon and I are going to be putting out videos constantly. All right. So stop what you're doing. And if you want to see the rest of this, click the link, go to the new marketing channel, secure agent marketing, brand new YouTube channel, marketing content, drop and freaking hammered out daily. You want to see them. That's how you blow up a business. I'll see you on the new channel.