 Since you started personally producing, you went from zero to, what, 1,500 clients? Something like that. In how much, about, in how much time? Well, I'll be at three years on June 1st. So in about two years and ten months. Okay, so two years, ten months, zero to 1,500. Two AEPs. How do you do it so quick, man? Because there's a lot of people that have been doing it for two years and ten months, and they don't have 1,500 clients. Front to back, how do you make a plan? Well, you gotta have a goal in mind, number one, set a goal. And set a goal ten times higher than you think you can achieve. Oh, come on now. Say it again. Ten times higher than you think you can achieve. Whoa. So my goal this year is 1,500. Face to face. Again, this is face to face. So it's a different ball game if you're doing it over the phone. You could probably set your goal twice as high and achieve it. I think around 1,500 is the most that one human being can pull off doing a face to face model. That's 1,500 AEPs written by him in a calendar year. Yes, that's the goal. That's strong, bro. That's the goal. How I hit my goals is, I said I go with 1,500, which seems crazy, right? And so then you go, okay, how do I get to 1,500? Break it down to monthly. Then break it down to weekly. Then you break it down to daily. And the daily tasks, well, they still seem arduous. Yep. Because to hit 1,500, there's 300 days, 365 days. I break it down to 300 because I want to take about 65 days off a year, right? In the ballpark. I don't want to work every day. So you're now at 5 a day, which sounds crazy, but if you have the pipeline, if you have the support, if you have the plan and everything in place and you're doing things like you're supposed to, it's not that difficult. The difficult part is staying disciplined. The difficult part is staying motivated. The difficult part is not getting discouraged when things don't go right. Because it's real easy, especially when you're on that thin margin of ice where I'm spending my last $500 to do this mail drop. It has to work. That's the kind of scenario that I've put myself in several times. Hey, if you want to work like a machine, you want to get a ton of money and you want to write a ton of business, then this is the dude to listen to Mr. Joshua Youngs. Welcome to the studio, sir. Thank you. Glad you could have me. Glad to be here. Dude, appreciate you being here, man. I love you. You're always rocking the brand, dude. Medicare piece of mind. All day every day. Different color. That's a question for you guys. Are you rocking the brand? That tells me that you believe in you, what you're doing, the mission and you believe in having some purpose in tying some identity to the big things that you're doing. 100%. 100%. People struggle with that, man. Where's the brand? I love the branding thing, because you and I align so much on that. Socks, pop sockets, shirts, polos, coats, sweaties, hoodies, masks. That's right. To me, branding, I didn't realize the importance of branding when I started. However, what I've always tried to do is copy people that are successful, companies that are successful, other things. One thing I noticed when I went into the field after running a large FMO for a long time was most agents don't have a brand. They don't have a logo. They don't have any of that stuff. They just kind of operate as some guy out of their house, which is okay if you have medium goals. Yeah. If you want to have big time top of the food chain kind of goals, that's not going to work. And this dude's got some of those goals, by the way. He just wrote 196 apps in quarter one of 2021, right? Yep. Solo. By myself, yeah. Crazy. Yeah. The ability to brand, to me, I did a bad job of it. You say I wear my shirt and all that kind of stuff, my hat and all that kind of stuff, which I do. However, like I was telling you the other day, if my assistant calls my clients today, half of them have no idea what she says when she says I'm Jackie with Medicare piece of mind. Sometimes they'll hang up, other stuff. And so I've done the branding, but I haven't done a good job of promoting the brand. And so that's where I'm now connecting with it. I have my car is branded, my clothes are branded, my office is branded. Everything is branded. Everything that I do has that intention of creating a brand. Yep. But for you personally, if you're building a brand, the power of the brand comes in just like Coca-Cola, just like American Express. You recognize the logo and you start to unknowingly or subconsciously associate that brand or that company with certain things. And so that is the phase I'm at now. It's a good brand, by the way. Thank you. Someone's going to try to buy the brand from you one day. I just feel it. Well, they're not going to. Has it happened yet? Has anyone approached you about it? No. Because that's a really good name. It's a great name. What I would recommend as you're picking a name for your brand, pick something of what you want people to have. Again, most people, most big brands out there, if you're looking at them honestly, they use their name. So Foley, Montgomery Ward, Sears, Roebuck, you name it. Most big companies are using a person's name. That's right. Because most people, that's how they build their brand is they build themselves. For me, it's less about me with my brand and more about my down line, more about my consumer, more about my long-term goals of what I want to take this thing. And so that's where the branding will pay off is in the backside of the stuff that you don't think about. Because when you have an opportunity to work with a brand versus a non-brand, everyone's had that opportunity in the store. Do I want the corn flakes or do I want the frosted flakes? I'll pay the extra 90 cents. A lot of people do. Some people think there is no difference. I would argue that there is. Just like a generic and a name brand drug, there might be no difference in the chemicals they use, but there's also a quality of resource too. So you can have high-quality resource and you have a low-quality resource. Same thing with your brand. You've got to represent your brand as is for sure. Yes, that's so good, man. And since you started personally producing, you went from zero to 1,500 clients? Something like that. In how much time? Well, I'll be at three years on June 1st. So in about two years and 10 months. So two years, 10 months, zero to 1,500. Two AEPs. How do you do it so quick, man? Because there's a lot of people that have been doing this, two years and 10 months, and they don't have 1,500 clients. A lot of business. But they would like to. So you've got to have the drive, number one, you've got to have the work ethic. You've got to have the integrity of all those things, of course. You've got to have a plan. You've got to have an idea of where you want to go and who you want to work with. There's several different segments of the market that you can focus on. I recommend focusing on all of them. Too many agents, in my opinion, are what I call specialists or they're hyper-focused on one thing and that's the thing they do and that's all they do. Someone like me will come along to an agent like that and steal your client because I'll help them with something else. And then since I help them with something else, I'll help them with whatever you help them with. And so front to back, how do you make a plan? Well, you've got to have a goal in mind. Number one, set a goal. And set a goal 10 times higher than you think you can achieve. Come on, I'll say it again. 10 times higher than you think you can achieve. So my goal this year is 1,500. Face to face. Again, this is face to face. So it's a different ball game if you're doing it over the phone. You could probably set your goal twice as high and achieve it. I think around 1,500 is the most that one human being can pull off doing a face to face model. That's 1,500 apps written by him in a calendar year. Yes, that's the goal. That's strong, bro. That's the goal. With every goal, obviously you want to smash it out of the park. It doesn't always work that way. But what I find is if you set it high enough, wherever you hit, it's a success. That's right. Versus if you set your goal too low and you don't make it, you're considered yourself a failure, which is, that's a good way to not be successful as if you have that negative connotation going. So have a plan. Have the right support in place. I can't stress how important it is to have a support system. So most of us in the field that don't have an agency built yet, don't have a staff. We don't have a contracting person. We don't have a PR person or any of that stuff. And so we are the one person show. If you're a one person show, what you've got to do is you've got to leverage your organization. What I call make them earn their override. If you're going to earn your override, then you get the support you need. You get plugged into systems. Ask other agents that you know are successful what they're doing, how they're getting the support. Oftentimes, a lot of agents I'll run into talk to, they have no idea that you can ask for a co-op as an example. Something like that, what a co-op is, I guess I'll explain that co-op, you get an agreement from your upline, whether it's the top of the ladder or right above you. You get an agreement that whatever marketing you're doing, as long as it's compliant and approved, they'll share the cost, usually at 50-50, where if you're doing a mail drop and the cost is 500 bucks, they'll pay 250, you pay 250, it doubles your marketing horsepower. That's brilliant for those that have never thought like that. You think outside the box. You're not in the box. You're living out of it. I want to make my own box. Yeah. Yes, why? You're going to find 1,000 videos from Cody and other people telling you the inside the box stuff. There's nothing wrong with the inside the box stuff. The inside the box stuff is very, very effective if you're able to duplicate it very repetitiously and judiciously. You've got to have that system dialed in to do that. The other way, another way, not the other way, there's not just one or two ways. There's 1,000 ways you can be successful insurance. What you do is you go through as many different trainings as possible. Do all the carrier trainings. Do all the conferences. Do all the events. What you end up with is a combination of 10 or 15 or 20 different lessons that you can then internalize, digest, and then the most important part is being able to regurgitate it as your own. Too often I see people trying to copy what other people are doing and if you don't have the same vernacular, the same vocabulary, the same mental strategy, the same everything, it's very hard to duplicate results in a sales environment because 90% of what we're doing is relationship. Yes, so it's so important. 100%. Relationships are key. Goal, support, and then an undying desire to succeed. When I went into the field, I don't recommend doing it this way, but I bought a new house first, which more than double my mortgage. I bought a new car. I did all the stuff I needed to do having a job and a salary where I can get credit and all that other crap, and I did all that first and then I quit my job and went to commission only. Each of you watching this has an idea of who you are and how you operate. If you're somebody that needs to be motivated internally like I do, that's what I do every time. I put myself behind the eight ball on purpose because that's where I perform best. I put myself under the pressure this year. I had a good thing going and I did the same thing. I put myself behind the eight ball again. I'm challenging myself for a whole new level of goals and everything else. I encourage you if you're watching this, do the very same thing because if you don't, then next year you're going to be wondering the same thing I do, what I want to do. So goal, plan, support, your work ethic, and then the most important thing in my opinion is integrity. The reason that I feel that I'm more successful than a lot of other people is I'm always going to do what's right for the person without fail. 100% of the time, no exceptions, no nothing. You've got to make sure that they understand that because the assumption is the opposite. Most insurance agents, in my opinion, forget about that fact that nobody wakes up in the morning wanting to talk to an insurance person. Nobody goes to sleep at night wanting to talk to an insurance person and nowhere in between that is there any time in anyone's life where they're like, I wish nothing else more than if an insurance guy would call me right now. So if you keep that in mind and just remind yourself, my goal is here, then break it down. So how I hit my goals is, I said I go to 1,500 which seems crazy, right? And so then you go, okay, how do I get to 1,500? Break it down to monthly, then break it down to weekly, then you break it down to daily. And the daily tasks, well they still seem arduous, because to hit 1,500 there's 300 days, 365 days, I break it down to 300 because I want to take about 65 days off a year, right, in a ballpark. I don't want to work every day. So you know you're at 5 a day, which sounds crazy, but if you have the pipeline, if you have the support, if you have the plan and everything in place and you're doing things like you're supposed to, it's not that difficult. The difficult part is staying disciplined, the difficult part is staying motivated, difficult part is not getting discouraged when things don't go right. Because it's real easy, especially when you're on that thin margin of ice where I'm spending my last $500 to do this mail drop, it has to work. That's the kind of scenario that I've put myself in several times. And why were you willing to do that? Because a lot of agents struggle with taking risk, putting themselves out there. There's a fear of loss. Well, yes. We all have our fear of loss. It's human, but with every negative emotion you can flip that around and turn it into a positive emotion and a motivating factor. So use your fear of failure as your motivator you have to choose. What feels worth? Fear or failure? Because the fear of failure is kind of in the middle and it's kind of a BS term as far as I'm concerned. You either have the fear and you feed that or you just push that away and you're not worried about the failure part. Because failure is inherent. A thousand different smarter people than I will tell you that failure is part of the process of success. Every sales person you've ever seen has failed a thousand times more than they've ever thought about succeeding. Usually it's one small thing that you never expected that cuts that corner and that opens the Pandora's box so that you can all of a sudden, oh my gosh, now all of a sudden I'm able to do whatever. It's from the grind. It's from the persistency. Every time I I'm ready to go into a doctor's office or a church or wherever I'm trying to go into develop a relationship to get referrals from I don't want to get out of the car. I don't want to go talk to them. I drive all the way over there. There's been times in my career where I drive all the way to the place and then drive and then I leave without going in there. Seriously. I've done it. I've done it. Why not? I think everybody's done it. For that fear. Okay, you're feeding the fear so I feed the fear and I feed the fear and I feed the fear and then the fear wins. You know you need to do something. You force yourself to do it. Here's the idea. If you think about it, you won't do it. Yeah, that's right. So good. There are decisions and I don't recommend playing the yes man Jim Cury game where you're saying yes to everything. That's a dangerous slope to slide down. However, there are times to take your time and to really make sure that the decision is right. Most of the time it's action that creates results not planning. But my wife, if you're watching this, I apologize, however, she loves to plan. Loves to plan things out two years in advance if she can. I like to. I can't do that, because every time I've set a plan in my life, nothing ever goes to the plan. I'm always having to make modifications, and those processes stress me out more so than just flying by the hip and winging it. And so you might not have those skills. You know what your skill set is, and that's for me. I believe I'm so successful because I acknowledge who I am, I understand who I'm not, and I know who I want to be. And so I'm trying to avoid who I'm not. I'm trying to become who I want to be while being who I am and staying true to myself. True to myself means I don't sell out for my client. I don't sell out for the insurance companies. I don't sell for anybody. I'm always doing what's right at the time. And so if you follow that, if you have a plan, if you have support, if all that, then anything is possible. Nothing stops anyone, especially in this business. This is one of the few businesses where you have the gas pedal. It's right there. You choose how hard or how soft you're going to put. You choose what gear you're putting it in. You choose all of those things. Now, some of us might have made a poor choice in where we started, or what business we started with, or what entity, or what type of contract, or all those things. What I can tell you is, with enough want to and enough time and energy, you can overcome any of those kind of mistakes. Totally. So yeah, that's how I went from zero to, and I wish I had the real number, but it's difficult to get accurate numbers from your upline. Any of you on this call probably know that. So I'm going off of my own personal score. I probably am off by some. I don't know, probably not very many. But what shows is in your bank account. That's right. That's how you can tell that you're doing what you're supposed to do. Because over a short period of time, less than a year, you can put yourself from no income, double your mortgage, buying a car, to no problem. Everything else is fine from now on. But that's the beauty of this business. So set a goal, reach your goal, set a new goal, and then rinse, repeat. I think that's the goal. I love it. Where'd your drive come from? You're crazy driven. You're like, this dude is a work horse. Well, I'm hyper competitive. Where does that come from? Well, the other thing, I was just born with it. I'm blessed, lucky, whatever word you want to use. I have a lot of natural talents. Athletic talents, business talent, whatever talents. So I appreciate those. But work ethic, I think it's instilled in you. I'd have to give credit to my parents. You think this is why we get along so well? Some of the things that you're saying, we're like both like? Well, yeah, there's a lot of similarities in drive that you have. And so I think that's one of the things I like most about Cody Askins is somebody can run at the same pace. I believe in my heart that if you weren't the top video guy out there that you would be competition for me in the field. For sure. So I'd much rather have you as an ally instead, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we can mutually agree on that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that. So where's the drive to wake up 1,500 clients couple years like fast, you're moving 196 apps quarter one of this year like you are on a freaking growth trajectory like few in the industry have ever seen? Where do you see yourself in a decade? You had to look back decade in a decade. What what's transpired over the next 10 years? None of my goals over the next decade are really personally driven anymore. So if I look at a decade where I want to be, I in a decade, I want to have helped 20 people become a millionaire. Boom. Who's out there? Like, dude, Josh, I'm here. I want to be a millionaire. Yeah, yeah, we all do. And so that's my goal is to help people put the platform in place, put the plan in place, have the support in place. You've got to bring the integrity and the work ethic to the table, whether it's me or someone else. You find someone who motivates you the way that Cody motivates me, that's the key. And I've learned this year, I'll give credit, we're credit students who said it, it was at the Medicare con. If you don't know, pay for it. You either know it or you learn it the hard way through experience or you take the shortcut if there is such a thing and you have someone teach you, mentor you, whatever the word is. To me, mentorship, teaching, buying a course, all that stuff, it's a learning curve, shortening process. And with the insurance business, that's the biggest barrier to success is getting over the hump of the learning curve. Where's the learning curve? Well, you've got products to memorize, you've got Medicare to memorize, you've got election periods to memorize, you've got all those moving parts, you've got all the carriers, and then you've got to get down to each consumer. Each consumer type has a different presence, a different need, a different want. And so navigating through who the client is, who you are, and finding that middle ground of what do I offer to the client. That's the big key, is finding that transition. Most important thing in this business is the right support. There's nothing else that replaces it. Where's the love for Medicare come from? I love old people. Where's that come from? Well, it comes from spending a lot of time with a lot of old people, I guess, over time. And then the consistency and the experience. So in my humble opinion, people that were born without TV and internet and all that other stuff have a different wholesomeness to them. They have appreciation for the face-to-face, they have appreciation for people. So yeah, my love for Medicare comes from love of people. This is a business that I love. There's no other way to put it. I love every day of it. I don't ever feel like I'm working ever. Even when I'm working 20 hours a day in AEP. It shows too. I don't know, I just don't work. It shows. I don't work a day in my life. If you had to help an agent out there that's struggling, they're not where they wanna be yet. And maybe they're new, but they're like, man, I may quit. I'm thinking about it. Like, I'm not making any money. What advice would you give them? We get a lot of YouTube comments. You'd have to find out and identify. Number one, you gotta be honest with yourself. Cause if you're not being successful, it's either something you're missing personally or something you're missing in the support system. It's not you, because I firmly believe I could take anybody, and I mean anybody, for the most part, unless you're a mean person or you have no integrity. Or extremely lazy. Or extremely lazy. But most people I could take that wanna succeed and I could teach you how to do this. It might not happen in two years, right? I would say the average person reaches success by year three or four, where they're truly comfortable at that point. And they don't really feel like they need a whole bunch of support necessarily. I think it's about a three or four year learning curve. I believe for people that work with me or someone like me or have a system like that, you can shorten that learning curve to 18 months or less. Six months with the right person. If you have the right mentality, you have the right ingredients, you have the right leadership to guide, what you need is a track. The reason I was able to do what I did was, I got a head start on everybody because I spent a long time running an FMO agency as the sales director, as the recruiter. I went through every job, I went through status person. I ran quotes, I was a life guy. I was the under 65 guy for a while. And then I spent a long time as the major support for a lot of agents on Medicare, Medicare Advantage. I had to put together programs on how to teach somebody how to sell the stuff. And I'd never sold it before. I'd never been in the field. And so you have to have training. You have to have support. And number one, if you're relying on other people for training, that's your first mistake. So I took responsibility to train myself. When it was a Friday, I remember like it was yesterday, my best friend was the Medicare guy at our agency. I was the under 65 and life guy. That friend of mine upset a person in the office and got himself fired. So at 3 p.m. on a Friday, my boss came in and said, you're the new Medicare expert. You need to know everything there is to know about Medicare by Monday. And so I went home and I studied Medicare. Like it was my job. Because that was my new job. I had to have all the answers to every question someone could ask me. And so was I able to do it? I mean, I would give myself a B on knowledge after that weekend. I went from I haven't known nothing to her, I memorized stuff in a different way than most people. So I categorize, I memorize. And so it's all in here now. And so I was able to take that and then over time develop stuff. And so that's my number one recommendation. If you don't know Medicare up one side and down the other and you don't know all the products up one side and down the other, you had a distinct disadvantage over everybody else who does. And so study, study, study. Practice, practice, practice. I don't care if you gotta call your aunt, your mom, your sister, whoever, have them pretend to be a consumer and throw curve balls at you. Your consumers are gonna throw curve balls at you. They're gonna leave stuff out. They're gonna, oh, I forgot about that medication. I forgot about this. I forgot about that. And you've gotta have a plan in place to how do I fix it? How do I overcome it? How do you overcome someone who cancels their policy? That's a question I asked a lot of people and then a lot of people don't know what to do. Well, it's gone now. I don't ever let it go that easy. Yeah, you fight. Not necessarily fight. I don't think fights are the right word. I re-educate. Because nine out of 10 times when someone changes their plan after I've helped them it's because somebody has uneducated them or told them something different or they've saw a commercial or something. Something happened. That's good. And so I'm gonna, my first, and I gotta do it compliantly. That's a nugget. So I'll send a letter just basically, I don't know what happened, being honest. Again, you just gotta communicate with the client. Hope they reach out back. I would say half the clients I lose I want them getting back to the next AEP with that tactic. So yeah, you wanna have a plan. You wanna have support for you. You try. Most people just let them leave. You try to do your best to keep it. I didn't always. So for a long, long time, since I'm so hyper competitive, if I lost a client I'd be like pissed off to the point where I would like think about sending them like a photocopy of me flipping them off. I've thought about crazy stuff. I've gone down weird roads and different things. Yeah. But in reality, once you come to terms with it's not you. That's right. Sometimes it's misassociated. You get misassociated as you are the insurance company. I used to get mad at that. But after a little bit of self-analyzation I realized it's my fault. It's not their fault. I didn't do a good enough job of explaining to them exactly my affiliation and creating the barrier that I am not the insurance company. I work with the insurance company to work for you. And so once I've gotten that digested now moving forward I have a lot less, I don't really have a lot of rapid disappointments. I don't have a lot of leakage. I don't lose clients to other people very often. I can't say I never do. Most of the clients I lose, unfortunately, is to death, which to me is the only acceptable. Yeah. That one's out of your control, I think. I hope so. How important is the pipeline, the marketing piece, always have people to talk to, prospecting? If you take one day off. For me, my pipeline works. If I take one day off or two days off like yesterday and today, it's going to take me three weeks to catch back up to get everything back to where it was. Half of the pipeline is organization. And so if you take your eye off the ball, it's batting. If anyone who's played softball or baseball, if you closed your eyes during the pitch for even a millisecond, you lost the ball. You're going to strike out every time. You have to get lucky to hit at that point. And so that's the same analogy I can give you to the business pipeline is your level of business is determined by your pipeline. Your pipeline is determined by the work you did six months ago, eight months ago, two years ago. I just got a call before we came in here from a client, from a friend who went to a meeting I did three years ago. So they got my car from someone else from a meeting I did three years ago. And so that's the kind of trickle down you can get if you're doing the pipeline thing at all times. And so for me, at this point, I theoretically, I think, I wouldn't hit my goals, but I could easily survive off of referrals only. I could only work referrals if I wanted to. Most agents, that's their goal. The problem with that goal is with any referral source, it's always finite. There's always an end to that thing. Somehow, some way, the person's going to retire. At the financial advisor, you're getting referrals from the doctor's office is going to hire a new person. Something's going to happen and you're going to lose that referral source. And so for me, I'm always still working leads. I'm always still generating leads. Why? If something hits the fan and I have to now rely on leads again, I don't want to be bust and rust off. I don't want to be reformulating how to work the leads. I want to be dialed in, ready to where I could just start back over and rebuild it right back up. So yeah, working the leads, working the system, working you, I think those are the three things. Working. How many points do you run a week? 30 to 50. Non-AP time. During an AP, more than that. That's awesome. Way more than that. That's awesome. 30 to 50 appointments a week. What would you say the key to doing that is if someone wants to ramp up to that level? And maybe they don't. Maybe that scares them to death. Maybe they don't even want to work that hard. You've got to have a way to do that. So I have referrals, I have leads. I have leads from carriers, other lead opportunities, lead opportunities from up lines. There's a lot of different stuff that you can do. I'd say it's up to you. I choose how hard I work. You choose how hard you work. You choose how hard you work. You choose how hard you work. That's right. And so it's really up to you. There are opportunities there. Whatever state you're in, there's thousands of months that turn 65, I don't care which one it is. Sometimes it might even be hundreds a day in your area. What do you think about the person that complains about their area being the reason that they're not successful? Ha ha ha ha. I've driven a thousand miles in a day for appointments. We heard that recently. Someone's like, I can't do seminars in my area. So I just can't do them. Well, you can't, you can move. You can get in your car and drive two hours to the next town. You could, that's an excuse. You can do virtual ones. You can do whatever you want. You make two choices. You either make action or you make excuses. I love that. You pick. So I would say, there's opportunity. It might not be in your backyard, but I don't live next to, I live in Colorado and I don't live, I live 90 miles away from Denver. I live in the middle of nowhere in a town of 12,000 people, 12,000 people. So trust me when I say it's not my area that I'm working. It's not. There's like 40 a month that turn 65 in my county. Even if I got them all, that's not enough for me. 40 a month times 12 is, that's less than 500. That's my AEP goal last year. And so that's not enough for most people. It might be. You can't get 30 to 50 appointments a week. If you can't even get 40 appointments a month because you can't get them all. No. You'd be lucky to get 10 appointments a month. No, no. You would be. That's crazy. I probably also look at appointments differently than most people too. Okay. An appointment to me is any opportunity I have to talk to somebody. So if I'm sitting at a bus stop and the lady next to me is of Medicare age, that's an appointment to me. Because if I work at long enough. So would you approach her? I don't have to. I'm wearing my, I'm missing my button. I usually have them ask me about Medicare button too. Do they ask you? 100%. I got a call two days ago from a lady at Target that moved from Reno to Colorado. She was working at Target. I went through the aisle to buy, I don't think I was buying hand warmers for the food bank I was gonna go to that day. And she saw my button, she asked me about it. And two years later she called me. So it works. Do I get a thousand apps a year because I wear my button or I have my card decal or I have any other branding done? No. But I can tell you that each thing that I do gets me three to five more. Somewhere, some way, somehow. And so over time, if you keep doing that long enough, it's what I call the Coca-Cola effect of our American Express. You just see the logo. Coca-Cola doesn't have to do a dang commercial anymore. They just put the logo up and you know exactly what they're talking about. Same thing here. You know exactly what Cody's talking about. And so the power of the logo, the power of the branding is not right now. The reason you set up a brand is so that life gets easier three and five and 10 years from now where you're going, I don't have to worry about anymore marketing because my brand does all the marketing for me. It's got to keep furthering and reinstilling that in the new consumer. That's good. Yeah, branding's important for long-term game. The short-term game, it's not as important. Totally agree. Do you think most people end up like not doing some of those extra things like the button, like the polo, like the car, et cetera? Because I think it doesn't work, absolutely. Yeah. Or they're like afraid to put themselves out there for some reason. Because I mean, I'm sure someone's like... Well, here's the thing. People are afraid. Why? Because you're afraid they're gonna ask you a question you can't answer. So that goes back to my previous thing. Study your butt off to whether there's no... I don't go walking anywhere where I'm worried about a question they're gonna throw at me where I'm gonna go, oh no, how am I either gonna know the answer or where am I gonna find the answer? That's so true. So... That actually goes back to a lack of confidence in your own ability to perform if someone asks you to perform. If you're not trained properly, you're not gonna have confidence. If you don't have confidence, you're gonna be a horrible salesman. Why? Because trust is the key part of the game. And frankly, it's very hard to trust somebody that has no confidence. Totally. It's almost impossible, I think. Yeah, I think. Why would someone buy Medicare for somebody if they ask them a question they didn't know the answer? And it was their job to know the answer. Why would someone buy anything from anyone when they don't have to? And so if you do it right, I don't sell anything to anyone other than me. I sell who I am, what I know, and what I could do to help people. I don't sell plan F. I don't sell plan G. That's not my job. Selling to me is talking to someone into doing something they may or may not want to do. Yes. That's not how I want to do it. Because half the time when it's under the they don't want to do that, they're gonna find the quickest way out possible. And you're gonna have a rapid disenrollment. You're gonna have a chart, whatever. It's not gonna stick. So yeah. Yeah. How many agents would you like on your team one day? Thousands. The only way for me at this point, no offense to a lot of agents out there is a lot of people watching this are great. That you do the right thing for the client every time. But there's just as many of those as there are people that are out there taking advantage of people that are doing things for the wrong reason, for money, for profit, for whatever. They're selling one company. Yeah. I just don't believe that's the right thing for the consumer. You talk about that a lot by the way. Where does that come from? Because you are very focused on making sure that you do right by people. I've felt it. Hello. I love it about you. I think of it as what if I wasn't in the business? Who would help my mom? Yeah. And knowing what I know about the business, my mom could easily be taken advantage of. My mom could easily put in a bad situation where she's losing money that she doesn't have because she's on a fixed income. The reality is a third of our seniors are living on less than $2,000 a month. And so the critical decision we're helping them make is paramount and tantamount to their golden years being golden. I feel personally responsible for helping a lot of these folks like my mom. My mom is in that category. The less than $2,000 a month, social security only, not low enough income for Medicaid, not high enough income to not worry about things. To me, that's the person I wanna help the most. That's so good. I've heard you, Tim, you talk a lot about responsibility. I talk a lot about accepting responsibility. This dude accepts personal responsibility. If he doesn't have a good year, he ain't blaming everybody else. He's blaming Joshua Young. You know, it's my fault. That's good. Every time, every time. In reality, blame is a victim's game. Blame is an excuse. I've played the game. So I'm not saying I'm holler than that and I'm bigger and I'm better than that. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is over time, if you're able to mature enough, if you're able to accept yourself enough, you can get to a point where that's not part of the deal. You don't have to worry about it. What do you think the number one reason why insurance agents fail is? Well, I don't know, not to use your stuff too much, but you quit. Yeah. I just got art from my office today. It says, do it. I mean, it says don't quit, too. That's good. I like that. So you have the option. Quitting, we're not quitting. Quitting is what you do when you're poorly prepared for an opportunity, in my opinion. Or sometimes it's just not right for you. And that'll happen. But if you're someone that you know in your heart, you can help somebody, you know in your heart, you can be successful in this business, you're just missing an ingredient. It's just like cooking a pie or any other dinner. If you miss an ingredient, it can change the whole complexion of the entire meal. You might have cash, you might have to check in with other cashiers, right? That's right. I screwed up the whole recipe. Which makes it hard to call it cashier chicken, I think. I think so too. I don't know for sure, right? But so that's an example. That's a good example. Yeah. What does 8% mean? 8%? What does that mean to you? Well, that's where I'm at. I'd like to think I'm in the top 8% of the 8%. That's where I like to be. Yeah, there we go. But the 8% is the people that didn't quit. Or that had the right training. Or that had the right, it's probably not your fault. Just in my experience in the business, I've been around long enough. If you're not succeeding right now, it's partially your fault. It's partially your environmental, conditional, situational thing. And so you've got to analyze, is it a problem with me? Or is it a problem with my situation? Sometimes it's both, sometimes it's not, but I think that's probably the biggest mistake someone would make. If you put yourself in the wrong entity with the wrong program, with the wrong platform, with the wrong goals, there's no way you're gonna succeed. So everyone in this business is gonna talk a big game at the top, right? Everyone in this business is gonna claim they can do this or do that and do all that. What I really recommend doing is taking some time to get to know the people you're gonna work with, take some time to figure out exactly how they got where they got, how quickly they got there, what they did to do that. If someone's not willing to give you that information, someone didn't do it on their own, my opinion. Cause what I've learned over time, not all, but most people that are successful are willing to share that, because somebody helped them get to that point too. And that's where I'm at now. I could easily ride this wave that I've created into the sunset forever and just be an individual producer, be one of the top producers, whatever it is, and I'd be very financially secure, but I wouldn't be satisfied. That and, in my opinion, there's more bad agents than there are good agents. And so, me as one person, I can only help whatever it is, 500, 1,000, 2,000 people a year, whenever I get optimized, I'll figure out what that number is, where my cap is, but there's a limit. And so, if I can train 100 or 200 or 300 or even five people to do what I'm doing, I've now helped 3,000 or 5,000 or 10,000 Medicare consumers get into the right plan by my guidance. And so, that's why I do what I do, is to help people. And so, I can't do it by myself, either can you, either can you. So, find the right partnership and maximize that relationship. Boom, like we are, dude. Thank you for being on, appreciate you doing this, I think everything that you do. All right. This dude is a machine, and I know you wanna be a machine, too. Thanks a lot. Hey, if you enjoyed this, I got another one you're gonna love. It's right there, click on it, see it. You have a special energy about you that you, I'm telling you guys, you get to know this cat, I'm telling you like, he just, from like a relationship standpoint, personality standpoint, you're one of the easiest person.