Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Cody Askins CEO of CaBoom Leads & 8 Percent Nation

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Cody Askins is a speaker, entrepreneur, author of Zero To Six Figures, and Creator of the Cody Askins YouTube Channel which has amassed over 119,000 subscribers. Cody Askins owns & operates 8 companies totaling more than $20,000,000 in annual revenue. CA is also the founder of The 8% Nation Conference, the industry’s largest event for all insurance agents to attend.Learn more: https://8percentnation.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-cody-askins-ceo-of-caboom-leads-8-percent-nation

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. And today we have with us, Cody Askins, who's the CEO of Kaboom Leads, an 8% nation. Cody, welcome to the program. What is up, Mike? Thank you so much for having me. You are welcome. I'm really looking forward to listening to what you have to teach and educate and update because you are quite the thought leader and influencer in the industry.

I've seen your work and I really am looking forward to learning from you. But before we dive into what in the world a Kaboom lead is and what the APRAD assent nation is, tell us a little bit about you and your story and your background and how you got into the industry. Absolutely happy to. My father's been in the business 34 years. So my dad got this third in the business April of 1990. I was born July of 1990. And I so grew up in the industry. When I was 19, I was an intern in college playing basketball. And I was at a local mutual Omaha office. I decided to become a full-time agent. I go to a recruiting meeting while I'm in college playing basketball. There's about 10 of us in the room. I'm 20 years old. And the management, says, hey, everybody stand up. And so we take a look around. And he says, now nine of you sit down. He left one person standing. He said, maybe one of you will make it your first year. And I'm like, wow, it's a real positive way to start this. However, I'm very competitive. I said, if there's going to be a one, it is going to be me. And so I went to my dad and said, hey, I feel like I need a target. What's my target be? He said, you're my son. You're going to make $100,000 your first year. Now, 20 years old in

college 100 grand sound like a very big number and so like you know what i don't know but but the fact that he believed in me it raised the belief in myself and so i actually pulled out a pin and a pad and i said okay i'm gonna make that a goal and so i said i will earn a hundred thousand dollars my first year at 20 years old i dated it i signed it my dad signed it and i hung it up in the wall of my cubicle and then every day i went out to make it a reality somebody hung up you know i got the dorses in my face whatever or like a rough day at school or practice, I would constantly see that in my cubicle. I also wrote on a post-it note by my spodometer,

you'll make six figures your first year. I wrote it on my mirror in my dorm room. I wrote it on my nightstand, and I wrote every day twice a day that I will earn $100,000 in my first year. I will see and run at least $10 appointments every single day, and I will earn at least $2,000 every single week. And I went out cold culling and cold door knocking,

selling life insurance with no leads, no age leads, none of that. And I made $117,391.13 in my first eight months and fell in love with sales and insurance sold for years. The end of 2015, that's very putting out YouTube videos to help other insurance agents. It's been eight and a half years now. We have over 3,000 videos on YouTube, about 12,000 videos online, 120,000 subscribers on YouTube, about 350,000 agents that watch our content. every single week. And a lot are actually outside of the country. Our number one city for our YouTube channel is London, believe it or not. And we have a team in Springfield, Missouri, that

helps agents and agencies around the world with marketing and events. And now I'm hanging out with Mike Saunders. You know that, and you barely took a breath in all of that. So that was pretty amazing. You know, I think we can unpack that and probably spend about four and a half hours on just the first section of goals and vision and goal setting and writing down not just like yeah yeah i set that goal once writing down and i know that from my work in personal development and goal setting it has been said that when you write it down and every day and multiple times per day throughout the day it is way better than just yeah reading it on a piece of paper so i love that you had the goal a b that you just repetition uh focused on that over and over again and then you hit it in eight months

not 12 months. And then that gave you that motivation to go, okay, what's next? What's next? Because if I did this in eight months, what could I do in the next eight months or the four months there, you know, by the end of the year? So let's talk a little bit about that mindset. Where did that come from? Because did you grow up in a family that taught personal development mindset, goals setting so that you could apply it to the industry? A little bit. I grew up in a family that was very big into sports, very by dad's extremely competitive. I would never let me win in anything. But I grew up with parents.

I think one of the biggest things that I learned is I grew up with parents that believed in me, believed I could do anything. And they were never there to talk negatively or put a damper on my goals. I remember wanting to be a professional baseball player, professional basketball player, like those type of things. My parents were always rooting for me versus, you know, a lot of parents that just, like, kind of poo on people's dreams and don't believe in them. And so I think that's a lesson that I learned.

And I was very grateful. I realized everybody has an amazing childhood. And I'm extremely fortunate to have incredible parents. And that's been a big part of my success. You know, and that's wonderful. And I appreciate that and applaud that. But I will also say that you could have that exact same response from someone else. And they would not have taken advantage of that.

So just having that background and parents and, you know, environment is. one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is you bet you needed to have done something with it. Like the old saying, you know, knowledge is power. Yeah, yeah, knowledge is power. Nope. Knowledge is potential power. The true power is when you put that knowledge into action. So I love that you have the environment, but you have to do something with it, you know. And I think you saw that, that, um, that success. At what point did it strike you to go now I've got some things dialed in? And, you know, I'm confident that you follow the Tony Robbins Kani type of concept, Knai, you know, constant and never any improvement.

So it's not like you go, I've arrived, yay, now I'm going to teach other people, but you're constantly improving yourself. But at what point did you think, okay, now maybe I can kind of teach some other people that are coming up, same as me? Yeah, I had a manager years ago that when I was 20, 21 years old, he said, hey, there's a couple agents. They're in northern Missouri. they're like five, six hours from you.

Can you drive up and help them? Because they haven't made sales for months. They're brand new and they're really struggling. I said, well, I don't know how much I can help them, but I can take them door knocking. You know, it's kind of funny in insurance. You start doing halfway decent. You're like the manager in charge and you're training everyone if you write four policies. And so I was like, you know what?

I'll see what we can do. So I drove up, spent the day with two agents. I took them door knocking, cold door knocking. and we made five or six cells throughout the day. I would alternate who would go with me. I remember going to the first door. We knock on it. We get in.

We build rapport, build value, make the cell, leave the house. And the clients were like high-fiving and hugging us on the way out and practically adopting us. And these agents were like, what in the world just happened? They're like,

you didn't like talk, you didn't like explain every detail of the policy and read underwriting guides and all this stuff. No, because nobody wants to hear that. Like what people want. want is for you to build a relationship with them and find a way to solve a problem and help them. And so I spent the day teaching that.

I left the apps applications with them. I didn't take a commission split. I got in the car with my manager and we drove back to Southwest Missouri in Springfield here. And the manager said, hey, how was today? And I got emotional on the drive home because I said, man, I had way more. fun helping someone else succeed and make money than I did make money for myself. And I found a real passion, something I wanted to do. I remember thinking, man, if I could ever do this, this is what I want to do.

So I started putting out videos in 2015, not knowing where it would lead, but we've had, we've been able to help an enormous amount of agents by just trying to bring value. And if they work with this grade, if they don't work with this grade. and it's been fun. That's amazing. It's like the old Zig Ziglar, if you help other people get what they want in life, you will get what you want.

And it's that fulfillment. It's the Bob Berggo-Giver aspect of, you know, providing value. Also reminded me of, have you ever heard of this concept before? You need to sell the futures, not the features. You know,

so don't get the weeds of all that. All that other stuff can come. Like once they get it, because when you confuse you lose but once they get it then you're like oh well of course you know the policy would have this this But you can't lead with that and you can't get into that because they haven't really fully grasped. And they don't they don't really know where that future where it's going to take them and that peace of mind and that comforting feeling and all the benefits of that product. So I think all those things that you just said are just powerful. And the really cool thing is probably before you got in the car with that person to go door knocking, if they had said to you, okay, now first of all, tell me all of the qualities that make you a top performer that you're going to show me when we get in there.

you probably would have scratched your head and said, I don't know. But when you get in there and you're just like, okay, let's, you know, you just flowed with what you kind of were wired to do. But then when you kind of backtrack it out, it's like, oh, well, you know, I didn't get into the weeds with. And, you know, I'd ask them more questions. I got them talking, you know, some of the qualities of top producers are just there. And then now you need to show your people like what you just said.

You created the 8% nation. Let's dive into that. But now people are able to emulate and what you have. seen success in because, as they say, success leaves clues. So all that to say, what's 8% nation? So 8% come from the fact that 92% of insurance agents fell in their first three years. I've been talking about that forever. Ever since started putting out content. We started a, the 8% nation conference. I was actually in the pool with my dad at a country, local country club back in like May of 2018. I think it was Memorial Day weekend actually, is around

this time. And he said, I was like, man, I'm really thinking about doing like an event or hosting a conference, you know, because I'm like, I can't find a conference in our industry that is not put on by like an association or a IMO or an organization that is just for anyone that's not there to recruit anybody and or that's not product specific. And so he said, you know what, you should do that, right? He's always encouraged me. And so we found, we started 8% nation. Our very first year, we had four, about 400 agents in Nashville, Tennessee. we were in the club area of Nissan Stadium, had speakers like Grant Cardone and Ray Lewis and a bunch of other names,

and sunk a ton of money into the event and lost a couple hundred grand every first year, realize how difficult it was to put on events. But swung with the fences, took a risk, and really wanted to do something special and build a community that is known to help people. Our industry is very doggy dog and kind of like gang-like almost. Like if you know what I mean, if you're on this street corner, you can't, you know, hang out with me on this street corner because you're from a different city, so to speak.

And so I wanted to build something special. I believe in, it's kind of funny. Like early on, it's all about competing. But then as you build something like you have, it's all, it becomes about more about collaboration than really about competition. And so we've, we've done the conference seven. This will be our seventh year. It's our next conference is July 17 through the 20th. We do small road shows around the country. Once. a month for about 150 agents. And then we do the bigger conference for about about 1,500 agents. And that's here in Springfield, Missouri this year. We have some fun speakers. It's a unique event. It's kind of like, it's more like Taylor Swift meets John Bon Jovi meets a nightclub, meets insurance. Most industry conferences are extremely boring.

They might as well have an opera playing in the corner and everybody's asleep and it's like a nursing home. And so we believe in the entertainment element first. followed by education. Most people put education first, but if I'm not entertaining, don't keep my attention. It doesn't matter what you teach me. And so that's what we believe

and that's what we lean into. And so fortunately, we've been able to grow that over the years. And yes, it's spread our brand way more than we ever dreamed. But it's been a really cool thing where we can bring top people together in industry to share ideas and learn and build the community.

That is so awesome. And I loved how the first time out, you lost a chunk of change, but that did deter you, you saw that vision, you wanted to keep it gone. That's amazing. And one of the things I'm certain that you noticed the 92% didn't have that would cause them success is good opportunities and good leads. So what led you at some point to go? You know, we need good leads to talk to. Let me create Kaboom leads. So how did that come about and what is it? Yeah, I started doing leads and marketing back in 2016, long time ago, just because agents are reaching out asking for help.

I did that. We got to where we were helping IMOs and FMOs with 30,000 leads a month back then years ago, helped agents with leads for years, stepped away, had a marketing partner that worked on the marketing company while I ran Cody Askins LLC and 8%. about a year ago we bought our partners out of the marketing company and brought all the companies back together under one roof with one leadership team, one executive team, and all staff. And I was really, I've been stubborn with leads, to be honest. I've kind of pushed back on it a lot. But, man, agents and advisors need people to see. I learned a long time ago, if I don't consistently get to print people every single week,

I'm not going to make it. And I heard a story recently. Long story short, I had an executive from a marketing company that called me and said, hey, you'll never believe this. Our marketing company, we got this big lead order. And we were deciding whether we met and we voted on whether it was ethical to fill a new lead order with age leads. And the vote went through. And I'm like, that is insane.

And so he called me and said, hey, I want to come work with you because I know you would never do that. And so because of just, I don't trust a lot of sources and agents never know where to turn. And because of the brand we built, we're constantly getting asked a ton of times every day. We founded a new lead brand that we're helping agents with. It is scaling extremely quickly. We really took our first order for the lead side on February the 28th of this year. It's about three months. We spell, we're spelling Kaboom different.

It's my initial CA, I say boom, a ton. And so we put that together with that. Boom. It's been catchy and fun, good from a branding standpoint. And we're doing a bunch of unique things when it comes to leads. Like we're getting two phone numbers with every lead because contact read is the toughest part of lead business. We're also having about 10, 15% or calling the agents directly. We're texting and emailing the prospect for the agent with their picture and their national producer number and inbound calls and all different things. And so we're leaning into, okay, how do we be TCPA compliant?

How do we follow the future at, you know, FCC one-to-one consent? And how do we bring value and help contact rate and closing rate? And it's been a really fun journey. We do a ton of different leads. And then we do some IUL and annuity appointments as well. You know, I don't want to get into the weeks too awfully much, but one question came to mind about those leads that you're mentioning. Obviously, if you're getting that level of, you know, two numbers and email

and all of that, those are some pretty darn good leads. And what are you providing to the advisor to say, are these exclusive or does this lead go to three other advisors? What is the exclusivity opportunity that way? Yeah. So with all the things that we do, we have to, a lot of vendors, a lot of marketing companies, they have one funnel. They drive a prospect top of funnel.

They create a lead. and then they round-robin the lead or share the leads among a bunch of different agents and advisors. Well, as of January 2025, we're expecting a new FCC ruling to actually go live where there's a one-to-one consent policy where one lead has to go to one agent who only works with one consumer. And so the only way we know how to be compliant at this point and include pictures of the agent and NPN and their phone numbers and mention the agent's name eight times and text the prospect saying, hey, here's your agent advisor, et cetera, is we actually build a brand new, it's labor intensive. It's dumb from a time standpoint.

It's less efficient from a profitability standpoint. However, it is absolutely compliant. And we build a brand new, complete ad campaign funnel for every single agent and advisory we work with instead of shit. That's unbelievable. So, first of all, you know, you see things in the industry and I've seen some hubbub out there of like, I forget who it was. It might have been Anique Senegal that put out a book or publication on are your testimonials compliant? Well, there's all kinds of talk now that is talking about, oh, look at your in, you know, in the financial services industry, there might be some compliance issues anyway. But if you're doing things that are not compliant, then you could be exposing yourself.

So you're seeing kind of like where the puck is headed going, okay. well, if it's going to go to the point of one to one, we may as well do it now anyway and use that as a benefit, competitive advantage because let me just tell you, if you buy a lead for X number of dollars and it's this lead and that's all you've got is a name number and email, what in the world does that do? Because you know human nature, they're not going to pick up the phone a call. And they might send an email, maybe two, but you're building a funnel and you're having them, you know, with customization and personalization and follow up, you know, multiple times. that's massive opportunity. Thanks, buddy. Well, a few years ago, I went through, unfortunately,

I went through a extremely bogus TCPA lawsuit and lost six figures. But I learned they sued like 30 companies at one time. That's just what they do. But I learned a lot about it and how important is to be compliant. Unfortunately, I guess if I've got to be the guinea pig, then I will be. But like the cool thing, too, is like we're getting 13, 14 different fields with every single lead. So like her IUL. they're getting how soon are you planning to retire?

What would a comfortable monthly contribution towards your retirement be? What's your primary financial goal? What's your favorite hobby? What's the best phone number to reach you? Plus nine additional contact pieces. On the annuity side in our funnels, we actually have an SMS verification code, where when they're going through the funnel, text the prospect, a code. They have to go back in the funnel and put it in.

So our advisors are only ever getting 100% legit real cell phones. And if you're getting that many fields, you know that that prospect is at least willing to take your call or reach it. You know, so, I mean, that is, that's huge. And I know that that's the big problem with these type of opportunities with buying of leads. It's like, how bogus are they? Did we just go online and buy a bunch of names and say, here you go? When you are getting that depth, that's a solid lead. And that should make then the agents that are buying them willing to expend that little extra,

follow-up or phone call or whatever the case is. So I think that is spectacular. What are some of the numbers, like when you are hearing back from the agents using this, or what is some of the success ROI on the numbers, conversions? Yeah, we've had about 21% of agents and advisors reorder in the last 90 days, which statistically doesn't sound high, but statistically it's pretty high industry standard-wise. And it keeps improving. I mean,

our final expense leads is probably our most common lead. We have six different testimonials that have literally come in today from agents and advisors on the success that they're having. You know, we help with recruiting. One lady today hired 20% of the unlicensed recruiting leads that you shouldn't meet one in five. And so she reordered, right? And so it's so easy to generate really cheap,

low quality leads and make a ton of money profitably, but nobody ever comes back. When we rolled up at this brand, I said, I want to be as high intent as humanly possible. I want to continue to innovate and improve in every single area as much as we possibly can. And I want to put a emphasis on actually getting repeat orders.

And so that's a big focus. And every lead is completely exclusive for everything. we do. We don't share anything. That's, and you didn't say, um, you can have, uh, this lead that shared to 14,000 other, um, agents or you could pay me huge massive amount and it's exclusive. No, your lead is X cost. It's exclusive to you. And oh, by the way, we build a funnel so that is personalized and customized for you. That's, that's amazing. Thank you. And I do a lot of work in financial services. So I hear what's out there and this is

unique. Um, final thought question section. Um, It kind of makes me think about if you are only giving these kind of leads and things, and, and that's, that's wonderful. But I remember back when you were talking when you did that training with the guy going door to door, you were teaching and training. And then here comes 8% nation. And that's like the road show. Do you have anything where people that are getting your leads or not, but can like get ongoing

online teaching, training, workshops, updates, like sales tips. The reason I'm thinking of it is like, okay, not only am I getting. all these amazing leads, but then I could tap into some learning and fine tune and hone my sales skills to get my close ratio up because of what I just learned, you know, through online. Correct. Yeah. So we have, I would say most of the agents that initially start following us are brand new. They just search on Google or YouTube and they find our videos.

And we have an academy called Ultimate Agent Academy. It's based off of our Ultimate Agent Reality Show. We've done a couple different reality shows on YouTube specifically for insurance. and the academy is $49 a month, month to month. I coach every Monday. We bring in trainers every other Wednesday. We have a private Facebook group. And then there's also some hundreds of videos inside of courses that they get for $49.

Yeah. So then that goes, you know, what I was mentioning, what I was thinking there. It's like, okay, you got your leads. Now you can stay into the academy, quick your sales process, you're out, your mindset, all of that and maximize that as much as possible. You've thought of it all short of closed in the lead for them and just sending them a commission check. He thought of that too.

I just don't have to make it. Well, you know, but here's the deal. Let me just tell you something. I was joking with that. But I would say that even if that model existed and someone would be willing to do that, I would say that that would not be,

you know, you would be doing that producer a disservice because it'd be similar to like, oh, look, this trust fund baby just living off of whatever daddy's trust fund is you're not learning how to manage your money well work hard be diligent so i was being really funny but seriously even if someone was willing to do that you it should not be done because you need to learn how to do it yourself totally anyway just my thought well it's been really amazing chatting with you so if someone is hearing this going i need to learn more what's the best way they can jump into your world and

learn more and connect with you. I'd say the best couple places to follow us. YouTube channel at Cody Askins. Just hit 120,000 subscribers, insurance agents, I think this week. And then Instagram, I'm putting up a lot of behind-the-scenes stories and social at cody. Dot Askins. And then as far as websites, I would say codyaskins.com. And then KaboomC-A, boomleads.com is our new lead brand.

Amazing. Well, Cody, thanks a million for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Amazing podcast. Keep up a good work, and thanks for having me on it. Thank you. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders.

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