 Didn't he do like a million dollars of life insurance premium per year for like five years in a row on his own? Seven figures selling, and it wasn't just life insurance, it was Medicare supplements, long-term care, it was all of his products. One of the big things that we talk about with agents is, you know, you need to stop thinking of yourself as a product pusher and be a problem solver. There's a lot of agents that are like, I'm never going out to build again. It's easy to say that right now, but when all this is over in a month or two or whatever, and we're all hanging out in Vegas, you know, together, you can go back out, you know? You like that? What I don't like seeing are the people who are just like, now they're going to go on the virtual sales, right? They've kind of made that switch in their brain, ah, I'm never doing business the old way again, because you can't do as much over the phone. You can't do as much when you're sitting, as you can when you're sitting across from somebody. I think where we're going to see is after this is over, people are going to try and hit it super hard, and they're going to try and enable themselves to be able to do low in sales. Yeah, it's as often as possible, but I think trying to go either way, 100%, just doesn't make a lot of sense. You are listening to the 8% Nation Podcast, created to help you become a top producer in the insurance industry. Enjoy the show. Tony, welcome. We're back. 8% Nation Podcast. Dude, it has been way too long as COVID interrupted our flow. We had like three guests that we had to cancel because they're in person. It's true. So, but we have the man, Matt Coots with us, right? That's right, man, dude. I'm a big fan of Matt Coots, Jerry Smith, JLS, the whole JLS family of companies, you know? Yeah, you guys are ballers. Like just to give you a quick little resume, 1400 agents you were at the helm of, about $20 million a year in production. So we're honored to kind of pick your brain today. So really today's just going to be casual. Just kind of conversation. We want you to see if there's any wisdom you have. Also, you said that you've been in the business for 20 years, is that right? Shortly. So I'll be turning 38 in August and my work anniversary will be just a little bit after that. So 20 years, man, don't know where it went. That's crazy. That's insane, bro. Well, so it took you 20 years to get 1400 agents and 20 million years of production. That ain't a bad track. So what is, you know, walk me through sort of your journey. I mean, where'd you start? Where are you at now? We'd love to just hear a little bit about your story. Yeah, so I actually started off in the property and casualty world. I'm a second generation PNC agent. Took me a number of years to, you know, it's kind of one of those things everybody has to find where their specialty is, right, in the business. And sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes like you Cody, you knock it out of the park in the first, what, nine months and you know where you're at after that. For me, my journey was a little bit of a walk around the block, so to speak. Started in PNC, a family-owned agency and went from there to figuring out that I wanted to be in the life of financial services market, got into the senior market specifically, started building a marketing company, met Mr. Jerry Smith and the rest as they say is history from about six years ago. Nice man. Yeah, that's where we're at. The legend, the legend that is Jerry L, Jerry Lee Smith. Do you remember when we were in New Orleans and he called me and my phone says, and this was the day one that I met him. I put him in my phone as Jerry the legend in quotation marks, Smith. And so Cody saw it because he called me while we were on top of that building in New Orleans. Yeah, that's right, man, that's right. Dude, you know what's cool about you guys what I've always enjoyed is you and Jerry both will go out of your way to do something, help someone. I mean, I'm this young dude putting on this crazy event at 8% and in the East on Stadium in Nashville, spending $100,000 doing something insane. And Jerry really got behind the mission of 8% immediately. Like one of the first dudes, man. And not only did he get behind it, like, you know, he was basically behind it. He had put money behind it, but he actually had some of his friends come in and be a part of it as well, which was huge, man. You guys are two for two so far. Yeah. Foncers of 8%, so thank you. My pleasure. Which is amazing, man. Yeah, I think that first, the first 8%, I think we had five people that we brought with us. I think we had five booths there. I mean, it was a good time too. I still remember Ray Lewis and he blew me away. Yeah, he was good. He was good. Him and Grant, Grant and Grant was good too. Using his, what did he have? He had a paper plate that he said he wrote notes down on the plane ride there. Yeah, that was good, that was good stuff. Well, let's tell a funny story real quick. So you are one of the guys that I remember. So one of the first things that I did with Cody when I partnered with him was I jumped, we did a, your tour, what'd you call your tour? It's just like an in-person free flight training. Yeah. So we picked four cities a week and we hit four cities every week. We got in the suburban and drove from, and one of the cities was New Orleans, man. And you came in. The smallest turnout by far. Yeah, that was good. So you drove in from wherever, a couple hours away or whatever. I'm about an hour and 15, so right now during this wonderful lull that we've had, I've been down south, we have an office. So our main office is in Ohio as you guys know, which you guys still gotta come up there. So yeah, we wanna hear about it too. We've got that live event center now too, so we definitely need to get you guys in, do something. It's good. So a training event there. Oh yeah, I think we can fit about 30 people up there. So, and we've got facilities to stream and stuff too. So, but yeah, so I'm down south at our Southern office, we're having an apartment, and yeah, it's about an hour and 15 minutes away from New Orleans, so it's been a good amount of time there. Yeah, well, we're all hanging out at the event, and then you and Cody went off to go talk business, and this is in the very early stages. So me and Dylan, I think, was mad at the time, when had like a shrimp po-boy, and we're like, I hope Cody's okay, did he just get abducted by this random dude, like, they didn't know you were. They didn't know you were. Well, they're trying to call him, he's okay, check nose, and the whole time I'm up front speaking, and I'm like, I know the dude that just came in a couple minutes late, and is sitting in the back, dude, I know this guy, you know, and then you quizzed me immediately after. Yeah, yeah, I was like, I'm not just gonna tell you who I am, you have to remember. I know, I felt that too. It was good, no, I mean, so, and we do some business together on the marketing side, and I just, I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing, which is really the point of this podcast. So I'd love to hear, you know, what are you guys doing? You know, the JLS family accompanies, what does that mean? You know, just keep in mind that our audience typically is, you know, not always, but sometimes younger, demographically, newer insurance agents, so better looking, you know, young, attractive. Right, well, with this girl over here, I mean, come on. There we go. I know the other thing I remember from that trip to New Orleans was that everybody was just tall. It's true. I'm six foot, so I don't feel like I'm short, but I'm staying in this room. I've got Cody, Landon, I think one of the other guys was like as tall as you were, I mean, it's just. Maybe do. Maybe do cruising. Yeah. I mean, it was just like, what did I just walk into a basketball team? I'm like, perfect's where I need to be then, but. We could play some basketball with the best of my best. That's true. We do. We thought about an impersonation, three-on-three basketball tournament. Okay. Be pretty sick with it. I haven't been playing a lot because I blew out my knee plan, but yeah, I'd be down, I'd be down. That get you out of retirement? Yeah, well, I mean, I had the whole ACL and meniscus surgeries about six, seven years ago now. So I'm in the clear. I've been sticking to tennis though, but yeah, no, I'm like, come on. I like to say in record ball. So catch us up on, okay, so 1400 agents that you're leading, marketing, all kinds of stuff, right? So walk us through sort of what you're doing, why you're doing it, why did you end up where you're at? Just kind of give us some insight on what you're doing. Yeah. So, you know, when we're working with agents, one of the things that, and this is going to be right up in your guys' alley with what's going on right now, is we try to diversify what they're doing a little bit. You know, if you're a Medicare specialist, then you need to be cross selling off of that. And if you're not cross selling, then you're like the many agents, I'm sure that you guys have talked to over the last, you know, month, month and a half year that they're kind of spinning their wheels. They may be trying to, maybe trying to go out and just do the digital sales, the phone sales, stuff like that. And actually, Cody, I was on your podcast or webinar Saturday for a little bit, jumped on for a few minutes. So, you know, good stuff there. You know, just, they're trying to figure out how to do business in this new environment, right? And unfortunately for a lot of agents that are out there, if they hadn't been cross selling in the past, and especially if they're newer and they don't have a block of business that they can go back and work, you know, they're going to be struggling. And so it's just about working with whatever the agent or agency situation is trying to help them engage with different product lines. There's 11 courses in your market product verticals. So, you know, figuring out what combination of those product verticals, what combination of the products inside of those verticals, because let's face it, there's a bunch of different products inside each vertical, right? You name it, a dozen different life insurance companies that have something unique. But it's about finding out what works with what they're doing now. So, you know, we do a lot of partnering, a lot of listening, a lot of advice. But at the end of the day, it's how, you know, how do you go forward in your business and work as efficiently as possible in whatever the environment is. So. And those that don't know, I think a lot of people do know Jerry, you know, but maybe those that don't, didn't he do like a million dollars of life insurance premium per year for like five years in a row on his own? So, I'll tell Jerry's story. This is possibly one of my favorite stories, guys. So, Jerry gets into the business at 18 years old. Similar story, right? Similar story. Gets into the business at 18 by the time he's 32. And by the way, he got into the business at the tail end of the long-term care boom. So, keep in mind that, you know, what I always forget to tell people, and I remember this the other day when I was telling the story to somebody else, when he came into the business and started learning how to do everything, was when the long-term care sales were starting to go downhill. So, he learned long-term care. So, not only did he have to learn from the beginning, but he had to learn as the rest of the market was going down how to go up, right? He had to learn how to take that and flip the curve, right? So, Jerry gets in the business at 18, starts off doing long-term care. By the time he's 32, he is writing a million dollars a year in commission. 32 was his first seven figure year off of his own plan, not counting overrides from agents, any marketing company, training bonuses, anything like that. Just a million dollar seven figure year. Went on to do it for about 15 years. And then he had his first retiree moment. Decided to retire. I think it was late 40s for a little bit there. But got pulled back in and started the marketing company. Some carriers said that they wanted him to come in and do a deal and they'd put the people on this hierarchy if he trained them. So, that's how the marketing company started. Wow, that's awesome. That's insane to think about. Seven figure selling, and it wasn't just life insurance. It was Medicare supplements, long-term care. It was all of his products. One of the big things that we talk about with agents is you need to stop thinking of yourself as a product pusher and be a problem solver. Yes. Because when you make that switch, you're no longer affected by the fact that they don't want a final expense policy. They don't want a Medicare supplement. You're looking for the problems that you're able to solve. So, and that's kind of where the cross-selling comes into play is it's not so much about selling a product as it's about selling a concept. And the concept is the problems are getting solved. One of the things, I know you guys remember this or Cody you'll remember this, but when he was up on stage at the first 8%, he did that FAQ. And one of the things that he said was if I can get the quote right, was that when he experienced his biggest boom in sales was when he got fed up and he sided that he wasn't going to sell one or two products. He was going to sell everything on the first appointment and that was it. He said that's when he had the biggest boom in his sales career at the beginning was when he went from selling one product to selling all of them and just pitching a concept as opposed to a product. And for those that don't realize that, like that's a big thing to look, that was a big turning point in Jerry's career, right? Then it can be a big turning point and a lot of people do what they're watching right now. My dad used to call what he was before he started doing that was a, I think we always call it a policy peddler. Ah, okay. Order taker. So yeah, exactly, right? Same concept, you know? But I love that he just got a unique story, man. Like he, and you guys, you guys seem to be as close as anybody I know from a business relationship standpoint, friendship standpoint. I mean, there's a lot of people that, like I can call you guys and just have an, you know, I must have said something good. I can call you guys and just immediately know that I'm going to get an honest answer. Your high integrity is that anything you say you're going to live up to and honor and do. And there's not a ton of people, there's not enough people like that at least, right? No, there isn't and it's kind of sad. One of the things also coming kind of different, but when you think about it, Jerry was younger, right? So he was in his early 30s and granted he had a very unique skill set, but you know, he was in his 30s and he was pitching these big products and things to people. So sometimes one of the things that I hear is, you know, well, I'm just not engaging clients at that level. Maybe it's because I'm younger. And the reality is, because there's a certain amount of that, but if you were just coming across as a professional, you know, if you know your stuff, if you're absorbed in your industry and you know your stuff, it's not going to matter. And that's just, you know, I feel like the, in our business, there's this level of, you know, it's almost like for about a 10-year period, there weren't as many people coming into the business because I see a lot less people that are in their like 40s than I see people that are in their 30s, people that are in their 50s. And I think for the younger generation that's coming on, which I'm still going to consider myself a part of, just for a little bit longer, right? You know, I think that one of the things that they have to understand is, you know, they're the ones that limit what they can do because in this business, you can achieve any level of success you want from six figures a year to seven figures a year. And you can do it at any age. It's just a matter of what your strategy is, how successful you are at implementing that strategy because I've seen a ton of business models that work. I've seen a lot of them. And it's all about how you go to work, how much you're willing to put of yourself into that to make it happen, right? So, yeah. It's true, right on. Well, you, why don't you give us a little bit of, you talked earlier about the, we were talking about this content conversation. You talked about the 26, what was it, the 26? Oh, yeah, so the 26 scenarios is, that's what we call the system of selling that Jerry made. It's called the 26 scenario selling system. And it's based off of this concept that every time you go out and you meet with somebody that's turning 65, they're in one of 26 different scenarios, right? So, either they are somebody that is on original Medicare by itself, somebody that's on original Medicare with a med sub, somebody that is on a group plan, maybe like a try care for life if they're retiree from the military or it could be retiree benefits from like the shipyards. We have shipyards down here in Mississippi. It could be from mining, could be from the railroad, right? So any retiree retiree benefits would be group health. And then we've got people who are on Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, okay? So those five, somebody's made one of those five healthcare decisions, right? That's their situation. Then you're gonna have people that are healthy and unhealthy and all five of those. So now we're up to 10. Then we're gonna know because we know everybody's income level is different, right? So we're gonna have people that are low income, middle income and high income. So 10 times three right at 30, subtract the high and middle income Medicaid individuals because we know that that doesn't really exist, right? Subtract those four and we're at 26 scenarios. So when you take and we were, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but we're really big on chess imagery. That might have something to do with the fact that Jerry was like middle school and high school champion and like all over the Midwest played everywhere. Look, right? Checkmate. Yeah, checkmate beat the mess. Yeah, in the game. So, but we're very big on our chess imagery. And when you think about it like that, the 26 scenarios are kind of like the chess board and the 11 core senior market products, the verticals are kind of like the chess pieces and how you move those pieces on that board in those different situations is gonna be kind of, whether you win or lose the game, if you make the sale or if you don't, what combination of moves, right? Because in chess, there's a lot of different opening strategies, right? There's a lot of different closing strategies, a lot of different opening strategies, but it's all about how you engage, how the opponent plays your moves and all of that. So, we look at a lot of the different opening strategies that we work with the agents and agencies on. We look at the closing strategies and just try and tweak them the best that we can and add in the products that we can. And that's how we've grown and seen the success that we have, for sure. Back when Jerry was 32 as well, what were some other things that like an agent watching right now can really learn from? You mentioned, right? He went from piloting policies, one at a time to, okay, I'm in here, I've got more of a selling system, I'm going after every available product at this point, right? Or whatever that may be. What are some of the things that are, you guys embody, they're a part of your beliefs and that other agents can learn from as well? Oh, man. So, when you start talking beliefs on me, I instantly hear Coach Bird. There you go, there you go. Yeah. So, one of the things that, one of our core beliefs is that every agent, you're gonna love this, Cody, and you can pillage it, but keep in mind, we get some accubation for that. One of our core beliefs is that every agent, every single agent has the opportunity to achieve seven figure wealth. Not necessarily seven figure income, but seven figure wealth. And that means multiple, multiple six figures a year in income, obviously. But that kind of wealth is something that every agent should have the ability to, to create for themselves. That's good. So that's one of our core beliefs. That's, that's one of the reasons why, you know, another, another one that we have is just that, you know, there's, if you've, I don't know if you've gotten a copy. Did we send you a copy of the book, Cody? I don't know if we, I thought we gave you one at the, Checkmate? Yeah, I thought we gave you one. Yeah, yeah, it's in my nightstand while I'm in. Okay, perfect. So, but literally, if you look at that, there's 10 myths in that book. And so those 10 myths are wrapped around pitfalls agents commonly run into. You know, whether it's cross-selling, whether it's, you know, it's difficult, whether it's closing the sales difficult, the generation is difficult. You know, all these different myths that an agent getting started, gets smacked in the face with, and then all of a sudden they're hitting a pitfall, they're falling down, they're not getting up. In the back wall. They're just, they're not rolling through it. And so those, avoiding those 10 myths is another core belief because if agents are struggling, usually it's because they're running into one of those. So. A lot of agents are struggling out there, man. You know, hence 8%. No, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And going in line with that too, we have something we call the six pillars of seven figure wealth. And that is six tools that we, six resources programs that we've identified that agents need to include in their business in order to achieve that seven figure wealth, right? So we've got a bunch of agents that make a lot of money every year, multiple hundred thousand dollars. I can't even tell you how many though. And a lot of them have gone through our training, but how we take them and say, okay, Cody Askins, you made 200,000 this year. How are you gonna make four? Yeah. How are you gonna make eight? How are you gonna beat Jerry and make 1.2? Right? Like how are you gonna do it? What's the game? Yeah, yeah. There's, in my opinion, there's two ways, right? I either got to see twice as many people and do the same thing, or I've got to sell twice as much in some way to the same amount of people. Right. And I hear that first one a lot. Now I hear that first one a lot. So let me ask you this. How many, you seem like you're, and I'm gonna role play with you for a second. Okay, I'm in. So you seem like you're a pretty hard worker. I mean, judging from your Instagram posts that I, every time I go on, there's a new story every 10 minutes. I'm like, my goodness. I'm at least working hard on IG. How does he have the energy to do this? If I was gonna say, I'd say you're in one of the top tiers of people, how hard you work. So let me ask you this. Knowing how hard you work right now, if you wanted to double the amount of business that you wrote, and you were just saying you had to write more policies, see more people do that sort of thing, do you think you could honestly double the amount of working hours that you put into it? No. No. So doubling your business by just seeing more people kind of becomes a difficult strategy to implement, right? That's right. So now you can do it possibly if you're switching to more of a, call center type mentality, something like that, right? You could see more people that way. But as you do that, your lead jump costs go up because now instead of closing three out of 10, four out of 10, five out of 10, now all of a sudden you're closing two or three out of 10 max, right? Because your numbers go down. You need more leads to be able to generate that. You can hit more leads, but you're also losing more, right? So your lead jump goes up. So if you're just trying to increase your income, if you wanna double your income, then you've gotta get more efficient. We've gotta have more of an opportunity to sell more face to face, right? So you gotta be able to sell more products to each person. You gotta be able to solve more problems. You gotta be able to create the need, uncover the need, you know, find out the purpose of the different policies they have now, find out why somebody has an annuity, find out why somebody has $50,000 sitting in a bank, take the extra step to find out what the purpose of that was. So like this, if you sell life insurance, nobody has ever bought a life insurance policy from you without a reason. Find out the purpose of that dollar value. What was that originally intended to do, right? So, yeah. Good. I like your chess and checkers, or chess example, because I talk about this in marketing all the time. It's like, I feel like people look at marketing sometimes as checkers instead of chess. What I mean is, is there's different levels of lead generation. There's different types of lead generation. I'll just talk to Medicare specifically, because I'm kinda hot on Medicare right now, because there's a lot of demand. You know, I was talking to my friend Justin Brock and these friends, everybody's been on the 8% stage. We all know Justin. And he said something that really clicked with me during this COVID-19 situation. He said, because we were talking to this prospect that was complaining about COVID. He was like, oh, I was doing seminars and now my business just stopped. I don't know what to do. And he's like kind of complaining or whatever. And Justin's like, let me ask you this. Are all the seniors still making the same transactions that they were before? Like they still have to have, they still have to have Medicare. They still have to be, all the transactions that they're making now still have to be made. So why aren't they doing it with you? Why are you looking at this as like a barrier? Because today we didn't have a concept of like this digital. What do you mean I can do business on the phone? I'm a face-to-face guy, you know? And it's like, look, man, we gotta evolve. And Justin's office hasn't slowed down at all. In fact, he's sped up. So to me, it's like checkers, a lot of people on their lead gen in marketing, they're just playing like checkers. They're just buying leads for whatever, 25 bucks or doing a direct mail drop and hoping for a 1% return or whatever it is. When really there's a more strategic way to accomplish your lead gen. A lot of people that are playing checkers, the crazy thing is, you can still make a lot of money playing checkers. But how you get to have figures is you gotta evolve that marketing thinking as well and invest in long-term lead strategies like your website SEO and also do your short-term stuff like your social media, direct mail, whatever it is. You know what I mean? So I can resonate with that. Checkers versus chess. In fact, I say that all the time on sales calls. If I start hearing people like, I wanna drop my lead cost by $1, what can we do? And I'm like, okay, okay, stop. The answer to this problem is not to drop the lead cost by a dollar. We're in the wrong ballpark here. Let's take a step back and let's start thinking about this strategically. You see what I'm saying? So I can resonate with that as well. Yeah, I run into this. So Jerry actually almost had a follow-up book that he was gonna title chess versus checkers. And he actually, he came up with a different book that he's writing right now. He, you know, one of the big things, you know, in this business, you gotta stay, you gotta stay on some sort of path to personal, not gonna use the word, well, I guess I'll use the word enlightenment just because you gotta keep moving forward. You gotta invest in yourself. You constantly gotta doing things. You know, people don't realize this but Jerry does coaching, personal coaching like he receives it. So he does coaching with Tim Story. So you guys know Tim this, right? He's a client of ours. Did you know that? I did not know that, no. Dude, that's awesome. And I love to hear that that like, someone as successful as Jerry. Right. JLS family of companies, not, you know, JLS company, companies, family of companies. They grew up to nine, yeah. Nine companies, super successful, ultra wealthy and he has a coach, like multiple coaches because he was at a coach for its launch too. Yeah. Well, he hasn't done a coaching packet with coach but he's gone. I mean, he absorbs, he's a sponge. I mean, he also went to the SLS meeting down in Florida. So that was when he decided he wanted a Porsche. And then his son went to that meeting at SLS that coach had and yeah, and he rented a Porsche and then he came back and bought one while he was in Amsterdam for two weeks on a boat on a river barge. He rented a river barge for two weeks. You know, had to get away, I guess, for a little bit. So anyways, where I was going with that is he, he's writing a book kind of based on some of the experiences he's had. I actually saw the first, a part of the first draft yesterday it was pretty, it's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, the whole, we actually do that metaphor of chess versus checkers quite a bit. And where we do it is obviously not in the marketing with you, Landon, but obviously you've got to have a multi-tiered approach to marketing, just like you have to have a multi-tiered approach to any business you're in. And where we use that analogy is with, for instance, final expense producers. You know, final expense producers are basically playing checkers when you think about it because they've got one product. They can move it a few different ways where they've got one real product, one product vertical. Now you're getting more and more people that are starting to pick up the easy sales on the Medicare side. You're getting more and more, I mean, the old thing that everybody used to do is they used to go from Medicare to the other sales. And that's still what we recommend because it's an easy way to get in the door. That's much better than what the Google searches are, by the way. What's that? That's where all the Google searches are also as Medicare. Well, nobody wants to Google final expense insurance. I mean, it's gonna happen still. There's no searches, but not near as many. Not near as many. You know, that's going back to the conceptual product that is for somebody else versus the healthcare product that they're gonna use day in, day out for the rest of their lives, right? They want the tangible product that they're gonna use versus spending time thinking about how that conceptual product, you know? So there may think about that, but it's not quite as much. But yeah, that's kind of one of the things is are they a monoline producer? Because if they're a monoline producer, then they're playing checkers. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, they gotta expand their moves. Is that not it? What have you guys seen during this COVID situation? I mean, is production steady? Is production down? Are you, what's your general temperature? What's going on? You know, for most of our carriers, the, not just us, but for most of the carriers that are out there, production has gone down. There are a few carriers that production's gone up on if they've had more of a virtual platform already in play where they had agents already contracted that were already utilizing it. It's just been kind of a natural expansion of the way that they've already been doing business. I don't think that shift is going to last for forever because I think most of the carriers, you know, most of the Medicare carriers already have some sort of digital enrollment in place. Most of them do, I would say nine out of 10. Whether it's phone apps or it's E-apps or whatever most do. Final expense carriers, they've been doing phone apps for a while. They've been doing E-apps for a while. It's more about the signature process versus the application process on the final expense side than it is on the Medicare side. So, you know, I think that business has gone down, not crazy, but it's gone down, obviously. And I think for most people, it's, you know, they're trying to figure out how to survive. They're trying to switch and try different things. And, you know, that's just, you know, it's crazy. And I'm sure, well, so Cody, how old are you now? 29, I'm getting old. And you got in at? 19. 19, so you're about 10 years now, right? Going on 11, right, there we go. Decade, it's a decade. I can just send you a decade cake for your insurance business. Oh, man, I'm in. There we go. So the crazy thing is that, you know, when you look back at like when Obama was president, we had something just like this. We had something just like this. We had the Swine Flu come through. It wasn't as bad, it wasn't as publicized, but we had something just like it. So if we had something, because what was that? I think that was like 12 years ago. 11, 12 years ago was when Swine Flu was around, H191, right? Now, so that's two administrations in a row that have had a significant health crisis. We've got these, I mean, Puerto Rico has been hit by how many hurricanes in the last three years. Texas has been hit by how many hurricanes. Florida has been hit by how many hurricanes. You know, California gets hit by forest fires and earthquakes all the time, right? So the reality is in this new world that we're in, we're able to do so much more digitally, but we need to figure out how we're gonna disaster-proof our businesses. Part of that's being able to work digitally. Part of that is building residual incomes through the use of different products. There's not one-size-solution for everybody. It's gonna be some sort of combination of all of the above. It's the ability, because here's what I don't like. What I don't like seeing are the people who are just like, now they're going to go only virtual sales, right? They've kind of made that switch in their brain, ah, I'm never doing business the old way again, because you can't do as much over the phone. You can't do as much when you're sitting, as you can when you're sitting across from somebody. Every transactional sales, like your Medicare sales, like final expense sales, final expense, I mean, final expense sales can be tough if you're not working at current block of business, because your persistency is not as good. You have to have really strong systems, processes, and you have to be able to weather any charge backs. So the final expense side is a little bit harder, even though it's more of a transactional sale if you're doing burial insurance, than the Medicare side. The Medicare side is more transactional, right? So it's not just about doing transactional only that way. It's about, because remember those transactional sales are how agents oftentimes should be getting into the house to sell the other products, right? So I think that if people are just trying to do the transactional sales, they'll be fine. But if they start trying to do everything over the phone, it's going to be tough. I think where we're going to see is after this is over, people are going to try and hit it super hard and they're going to try and enable themselves to be able to do phone sales, e-apps as often as possible. But I think trying to go either way, 100%, just doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, there's a lot of agents that are like, I'm never going out to build again. It's like they built their business, right out in the field. So it's easy to say that right now, but when all this is over in a month or two or whatever, and we're all hanging out in Vegas together, you can go back out, you know? You like that? Well, what's some other, as we wrap this up over the next several minutes, what's some ideas, what's some strategies? I mean, you dropped a bunch of like, dude, if they don't look you guys up, I don't know how you don't after you're like, Jerry made seven figures, 32 years old. We've got 10 myths and pitfalls. We've got six pillars of resources. We believe every agent has the opportunity to achieve seven figure wealth. We've got a $20 million. We've got nine companies and 14, I mean like, I don't know how you don't, at least Google you guys, you know what I mean? That's crazy. And I have to give coaches props though, because that we believe statement, that's straight out of his training, and that's straight out of it. That's something that we really looked at, was where, you know, and we had done it in the past, but I think personally for us, our process was, you know, we want clarity as to what we're doing, right? You have a very strong mission statement. You want to help every agent in the world, right? I see that all the time in my email at least three times a day. Definitely want to help, I mean, that's strong, that's strong, but you have a clarity of purpose. You have a mission, land in, what would you say your mission is? Is it the same or is it slightly different? I really believe that security and marketing is a conduit to also help every instrumentation in the world, but my big mission is really just to remove the lack of clarity and lack of transparency in the lead development world. Like some of the weirdest things are happening right now. I know IMOs right now that are like telling their agents to do things that are absolutely horrible for them, because they make a profit on the lead field. And it's like, I don't know, like I don't know if that's really what's the right thing to do. Maybe his is to help every consumer in the world buy insurance from an agent. There we go, there we go, that's a good one. Well, I like the, where I thought he was going there for a split second was removing the obstacles that keep agents from succeeding from an advertising standpoint, you know? I kind of like that, yeah. Let's talk about that real quick, because you brought something up and it kind of lit something. So I don't know, I'm sure you guys have seen this, but what's your take on the fact that right now our marketplace is dominated by, I'd say, two companies? Because you've got integrity marketing, you've got Amerilife, those are two gigantic entities. Two biggest ones before. You've just been swallowing up all the other smaller marketing companies. I mean, here's the crazy thing. I would not consider us anything more than a mid-sized FMO. Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, we're barely a mid-sized, I'd say. Mid-high, whatever. Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing, yeah. But I'm a little partial myself on this. You know, here's what I'm going with this, is all of the large FMOs, they're now mid-sized. Because the two large IMOs are the, you know, they're the Amerilife's and the integrity's of the world. So to your point, Landon, what happens in our marketplace when a big IMO, FMO pushes on a certain strategy if the agents don't know any better? Yeah, yeah, absolutely true. That's good, that's good. I mean, and I'm not saying that their strategies are bad. I'm seeing a lot of them going into a digital platform, which is great. But if they're pushing digital, digital, digital, that's how everything's working, that's how everything's going. It's gonna make that shift, at least in my mind, that shift back to doing face-to-face sales, more delayed too. I mean, we may get out of this and find that there's a huge opportunity for face-to-face agents versus the phone agents because everybody's shifted. Kind of like when everything changes in the digital marketing world, like on Facebook, and Landon calls me up and goes, yo, we gotta shift this because this isn't working anymore, we gotta shift to another strategy. You know, he knows ahead of the curve because he sees so much business, right? Yeah, the spaces get crowded, but when it gets crowded, it increases the cost. Well, think about Facebook advertising in general three to four years ago. Oh yeah. Dude, it was a ghost town. Think about, no, think about- We're grabbing every 90-cent lead, I could. Yeah, think about internet marketing like six, seven, eight years ago. I mean, I don't know how much money you guys have spent on all the- I mean, probably not. I mean, I think at one point I spent probably like $30,000, $40,000 on internet marketing and the results were pitiful, pitiful. I mean, it was just, so then social media came around, social media marketing came around, right? And I was, I mean, I'll just be real, I was hesitant because I had spent, I mean, insurance agents are always looking for that latest, greatest- Best thing, bro. Special marketing plan, right? Nobody's using it, that's where we're mass marketing it. Bing, bing, bing! Object, objection-free leads. Right. Objection-free from a lead founder on Facebook. Guaranteed sales. What? What is that? Objection-free leads? Okay, cool. I'll take 10. Oh my God. But yeah, I mean, it's just crazy how things have changed. And so I guess, you know, one of my things that I talked to agents about is all running to agents that have contracts with like some of these companies and they don't wanna move their contracts away. And I'll say, well, you know, here's the thing, I'm not trying to take your contracts away. I'm just trying to show you how that, how you can make additional money in addition to what you're doing now with some niche products that you don't have right now and you don't know how to sell. Honestly, that's one of the things that has really helped us over the last year is it's the same thing as when you're talking to a consumer. It's about finding where the needs are and helping them succeed, right? So, yeah. That's good. Right on, man. Well, that's good. I mean, I'm good, man. I appreciate you joining us. We covered a bunch today, bro. Thank you very much. Yeah, I kind of bounced around. We didn't really, we just wanted to hang out. I mean, that was fun. We need to do a live trading at their spot. Done. Yeah, I guess. It's gonna be August 17th, so. Oh, my birthday is the 23rd, so that's perfect timing. All right, let's see. All right, let's see. Right on, well, I mean, anything else, Cody? I'm a big fan of you and Jerry, Matt, so thank you, buddy. Appreciate the friendship of everything you guys do and anybody watching, I don't put dirtbags on here. I must be good dudes, you know? Yeah, you can trust these dudes. I always say you never know people until you do business with them. Yeah. I mean, man, I haven't do business for six months and you can always tell those clients that are real dudes that kind of have the perspective of reality and are just like jerks and true people like crap. Well, as soon as you start sending TikTok videos to somebody to work with, like a buddy, you know it's real. I won't be sending you some of mine now. There we go. There we go. Landon said that Leadbender was objection-free. This podcast is jerk-free. There we go. Jerk-free. I like it. I like it, guys, it's good. All right, Matt, thanks for joining us, man. All right, thanks for having me on. See you guys soon. See you guys down in Vegas. Hey, try and get to Springfield or Branson this summer and we can go to the lake or something. Yeah, for sure. It'd be a good time. All right, see you guys. Thank you, buddy. Hey, if you liked this video, which I know you did with my buddy Landon and I, and you want to learn how to sell final expense over the phone, I got an amazing video for you guys right here. Click on that and we'll see you there. For your story, either way, one of my good buddies here in the office, Dallas, he loves to drive. We used to drive all over the state together, door knocking everywhere.