The Ryan Hanley Show - The Max Revenue Approach: Brand Building, Sales, and Outbound Reach

Episode Date: October 12, 2023

Became a Master of the Close: https://masteroftheclose.comReady for a thrilling journey into the world of insurance, brand building, and sales? * Max Revenue Newsletter *▸ https://maxrevenueletter.beehiiv.com/** Connect **▸ Website: https://www.findingpeak.com▸ Instagram: https://instagram.com/ryan_hanley▸ Subscribe to the Podcast: https://www.findingpeak.com/podcast*** More About the Episode ***This episode guarantees insightful strategies and tales from the trenches as we unpack the game-changing methods of Max Revenue in revolutionizing the industry through outbound calling and outbound reach. We also share our transformation narrative from the Ryan Hanley Show to Finding Peak, aiming to help you attain top performance through intentional action.Discover the resilience it takes to start anew in the insurance industry and the pivotal role mentorship plays in this process. We unravel the grit needed to overcome obstacles and the power of self-belief propelling you through the 'valley of despair.' You also get a glimpse of how Max Revenue has leveraged internet marketing to build a strong brand and the challenges and victories associated with running a thriving consulting business.We conclude by exploring the creative application of YouTube videos to reach potential clients, understand the buyer's journey, and create content that resonates with individuals seeking answers. This episode promises an enlightening adventure through insurance, brand building, and sales. Catch the wave as we navigate through the dynamic world of insurance and discover how Max Revenue has transformed the industry through innovative strategies.#leadership #insuranceLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

in a crude laboratory in the basement of his home Hello everyone and welcome back to the show. Today we have a tremendous episode for you. This one's going to be brand building and sales focused. Talking about how the great, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-marketing, all-knowing, all-selling, Max Revenue has taken the insurance industry by storm, capturing producers' and agency owners' attention alike and attracting a massive audience in a short amount of time as they share really relevant, practical tips, tactics, tricks, philosophies, strategies on building a book of business through outbound calling and outbound reach. Guys, this is an episode, whether you're in the insurance industry

or you're not in the insurance industry, you are going to love this. If sales, if growth, if brand building is something that is important to you, that interests you, you're going to love this episode. And I can't wait to share it with you. Before we get there, I just want to let you guys know, if you haven't seen it already, that we have a new brand. We have rebranded this show, formerly The Ryan Hanley Show, to Finding Peak. And the whole idea is whether you're in insurance, whether you're in leadership, you're in sales, whether you run a not-for-profit, whether you just want to be a better husband or wife or parent, finding peak performance in our lives takes intentional, purposeful work, right? And it's around what provides meaning, dialing in

on those things and being very intentional and purposeful to them. And it is where I'm going in my life. It's the thing that I'm most focused on. It's where I want to take to them. And it is where I'm going in my life. It's the thing that I'm most focused on. It's where I want to take this show. And whether that's growing your insurance agency, growing your small business, whether you're an enterprise level leader, whatever it is that drives you, finding peak performance in that thing, the path, the journey, the effort, the intentional and purposeful action is the only way to get there and dialing in on those things and bringing in thought leaders and working through concepts and sharing those concepts is what this show is going to be about moving forward. That's why we did the

rebrand. I hope you enjoy it. Guys, if you're not subscribed to the show, subscribe to the show. If you want to get on the newsletter and get exclusive content, go to findingpeak.com right now. Hit pause, type into your phone or wherever you're listening. go to findingpeak.com. Right now, hit pause, type into your phone or wherever you're listening, go to findingpeak.com, www.findingpeak.com, punch in your email, and you're going to get all kinds of great stuff delivered exclusively to your email every week. Resources, ideas, quotes, things that are going to help you implement these tactics and strategies into your life to get on the path to peak performance. I love you for listening to this show. Let's get on to Max Revenue. Well, it's cool to finally talk to you in person, long-time follower.

Yeah, you guys are doing some interesting stuff. I appreciate it. Yeah. How'd you get hooked up with Micah? We used to work at the same firm. Oh, yeah. Down in Texas, was it? Yeah, I'm out of Louisiana, but we worked under this. We were in the same region, and I heard him on a call one day,

and I was like, huh. I really like what he had to say because he was building it with cold outbound and that's kind of my thing. I'm not from where I'm at. And so I just, I liked what he had to say and I knew he had kicked ass. So I kind of started picking his brain

and then one thing led to another and oddly enough, we still never met in person. You guys just never met in person? Ah, that's funny. And how long you been doing the letter um i guess maybe 11 months i left in january uh and joined a new firm and then started playing around with it at the end of last year. But I mean, I don't know, it didn't really become a thing until a couple months in. Why did you guys start it? Is this the interview? Or are we just jamming?

Yeah, I mean, yes and no. Depends if... Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, I gotcha. Yes. Yeah, I mean, yes and no. Depends if we... Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay, I got you. Yes, I guess. Okay, yeah. So just to be quite honest with you, I had... I just, I really found the industry hard.

I heard a lot of competing advice. And when I reached out to Micahah when I was in probably year one he was he was saying stuff that you know most kind of went against traditional wisdom networking all that and so I told him I guess what I'm saying is what he told me really helped me and so I started to see some success and as he mentored me and we went along, I basically told him, I was like, listen, I know online marketing because I'm sitting in cubicles next to guys that are having the same issues I'm having. Like everybody I talk to that's a new producer, you know, they struggle most of the time. There's like a 90, 95% failure rate.

I was like, there's a really big need for this. Like, how do you, how to build the book for the rest of us? You know, like if you don't have a prestigious name in your community or you weren't handed seated business, like how do you do this thing with cold outbound from scratch? And there's really nobody that had really covered that. I felt like, or I couldn't find them. You know, I thought Randy Schwantz's stuff was, you know, pretty revolutionary. I can only imagine what it was at the time, but it was like, okay, well, that's great. But like, how do I open the door? How do I get in? How do I build lead lists? How do I

prospect? And I just thought there was a need for it because i was basically like the same age old thing like you just you make you create what you needed right and it's kind of that's kind of what it was yeah i um have you spent any time with like david crothers's stuff in the killing commercial uh community so i've talked with david a number of times um i've never gone through his course uh or whatever his system is um but i mean there's no doubt about it i mean the dude's he's an he's a good he writes a lot of business so he knows what he's doing yeah the cold outreach stuff is really interesting. I initially, my entire agency was going to be based on cold outreach. You know, when Rogue Risk, when I first went to launch Rogue Risk,

it was going to be a digitalized middle market agency. So essentially, I didn't want to take on the overhead of having a huge office and all the stuff that normally comes with it. But I was going to be 50 to 100 miles from my home, you know, doing middle market stuff, just doing it digitally. And I, you know, knew there were ways to deliver the same services, et cetera. I had a Cincinnati appointment. I was like, I'm going to, this is, you know, this is going to be what I do and it'll be

great. do and it'll be great and um and then covid hit and every potential prospect you know was gone and no one was answering the phones and we had to pivot to what we are today which is really this digital marketing based inbound small business shop just to survive but my point in saying that is only, I think that every producer in the country could have an established, profitable, consistent book of business if they were willing to pick up the phones and do cold outreach. And maybe some of the other cold outreach stuff, if they like letters or drop-ins or whatever your way of doing it is. But like, this is absolutely a method for all the financial freedom that you want and no one will fucking do it. Like no one will do it. I mean, it's just like, I, cause I've been doing a version of what you guys are doing for 12 years now. I

have been speaking to insurance professionals about how to grow a book of business for more than a decade. And I have become, I'm so glad that like you guys are here because I hate talking about the things that you guys talk about. Like I'm so sick of it. I hate it. Like I just, I can't even take it anymore because there's like a couple of ways to make money in this industry. All of them involve work. And what it comes down to is you either want to do the work or you don't.

It's not like I'm not good at cold calling. Yup. Everybody sucks at cold calling until they do it a whole bunch and then you get better at it. Well, I'm not good at being on video. Yup. Everybody sucks at being on video until they do it a whole bunch and then they get better at it.

I just, I can't, I can't, I can't, like at this point, I'm like unapologetically fed up with the people who read everything, listen to everything and do nothing. You know what? I think I have a little bit different slant on that, but it's still kind of the same thing. It's like, I actually think that most producers are willing to do the work.

They just hear competing advice. And so they don't know which willing to do the work. They just hear competing advice. And so they don't know which one to do. And so if you tell me that if I just go to lunch with a couple of people a week, or I can make 200 cold calls a week, which one do you think I'm going to choose? Well, they're always going to take the easier option. Again, this goes back to,

I think it has to do with a general sense of most people talk shit, but are actually just lazy at the end of the day. And this goes for everything. This isn't just insurance professionals, but I think our industry tends to really shine a bright light on it. It's like, you know, I use YouTube, right? So YouTube is one of the areas where I have had a tremendous amount of success multiple times in my career. And there's a very simple path, which I live where I've given away for free for a decade. Do this, make money.

It's that easy. I've seen middle market guys use it. One of my best buds, Gordon Coyle, gets venture capital firms to send him six-figure premium E&O accounts through the philosophy that I taught him with YouTube marketing. Dude, there's a handful of people in the entire country that have ever actually done it. It's right there. Boom. It is work. You have to do it, right? Just like you have to cold call, or if you're going to do,

you know, Carothers' thing is the folders and the drop-ins and the, you know, he's got the whole shtick with the drop-ins. Yeah, it's work. Just no one wants to do it. I don't think it's competing ideas because they're always going to choose the easier one. I don't think it's that they don't have the markets because that's just a bullshit excuse or their area doesn't have enough business or whatever.

To me, it is you're either a worker or you're not. The workers figure it out and are looking for nuances to get an edge. And then you have all the non-workers who they're going to read every newsletter you put out. They're going to subscribe to everything you do. They're going to pay for your producer book and your digital marketing inbound guide and and never do anything I just I've seen it for so long I hate to be so pessimistic but it is um I've just and maybe it's a failing in in me and and I love this why I love your brand I mean I'm my I've never done I don't do as good a job of branding as you guys do um and maybe that's what it is but like it I just never, I just keep coming back to the fact that they just don't want to do the work.

They just don't want to actually do it. I don't know. No, you know, I, I can only speak for myself and, and, and I, I, I guess, you know, I've been guilty of that through times. But like my biggest hurdle and the reason why i failed the first two or three years was because i just i took all this competing advice and i tried to like put frankenstein this thing together and you know bor not to bor uh big firm small firm um network co-call i just kind of did a little bit of everything. And it was just this ugly Frankenstein.

And I never just picked one path and went all in on it. I just did a thousand different things. And I'm a big Hormozzi fan. And that's one of the things he talks about, you know, just like distractions and picking a path and sticking with it. And it wasn't until my fourth year in the industry that I did that. And then I started to experience some success. Like I'm not the million dollar producer, or at least not yet. That's Micah. I'm just, I'm the marketing and branding guy. I,

I take his knowledge and I just put a nice little bow on it and an eye patch and I put it out there. But, you know, whether it's, whether there um but you know whether it's whether it is you know your stuff which is like inbound which i'm fascinated with your stuff and i'd like to talk about that at some point yeah we can um whether it's that or cold calling or whatever it is you just got to pick one when you try to do everything that is a recipe for disaster so i i did that and it damn sure didn't work. So that I completely agree with that. I completely agree.

Now, you said something, you know, your first two or three years, I think you said you failed or whatever. Define that for me because you're still here. So you couldn't have failed, failed. You know what I mean? Like what in your mind, those first two or three years when you would classify those as, as failed. And I, and I understand your reasons and all that. What, what, what does that I had to hit within three years. And I think I was somewhere around 200,000 after three years.

Now, side note, I split my entire book with somebody else because I tried to do like this team selling model, which we can talk about. So I brought in over what my goal was but i split a lot of revenue so i made a lot of mistakes from like a mentor mentee spot but anyways so once once that three years was up it was basically like okay you can either hit the road or you can just go straight on your you know just go straight production. And so I just went straight on production. And so then after year four, after year four, yeah. So then after year four, after, you know, I wrote some more business and I looked at it and I was kind of like, I had an opportunity to go be

a part of an agency where I had some equity. It was kind of a fresh start. I had a lot of dead weight, a lot of stuff in my book that I was like, you know what, starting over wouldn't be bad because now I actually know how to build this thing and I would do it differently. And so it was kind of just, you know, I think not that they were ready to move on because they, I mean, they were bought in and I have no beef with them at all. They helped me in every way that they knew how. It just, I just needed a fresh start and I wanted to start over. And when I did that, I was like, you know what? I'm going to take Micah's stuff with my fresh start and I'm just going to bring people along for the ride. Because he had just left his firm a year before that too. So it's like, hey, watch us build our books in real time was kind of the

initial thought. So I'm going to reframe your first three years as being a failure as that is exactly the way that those first three years should have gone. Because the first three years in this industry are supposed to suck. You're not supposed to know which or dad gave them the book. That's it. Those are your three options, right? The vast, vast majority of us absolutely get our ass handed to us the first three years. And you're supposed to, because that's where I found my thing is digital marketing, right? That's how I found it. I was terrible. I was taught from one of the best old school traditional insurance salesmen. My father, my ex-father-in-law, he was just amazing. I mean, this guy had all these little old school tricks that I still use in a digitized fashion today. And just awesome stuff. Just mind bending. The prospect doesn't even understand what just happened. They're just signing tricks

that were amazing. And I don't mean tricks in a nefarious way, just ease of spinning it so that they frame it better and boom. Okay. I still was terrible. 50,000 miles in the car, dropped a million business cards off, cold calling all day, all night. And I was awful at it. It just was not for me. But during that time and all that pain and suck, that's when I found that with Inbound, I could be really, really good at that. And then that catapulted my career forward. I think that when I'm talking about the people who aren't willing to do the work, I'm not talking about the results. I'm talking about the people who aren't willing to do the work, I'm not talking about the results.

I'm talking about the actual effort that they put into figuring out what their thing is. And I think that what you just described is actually, as much as it to get to where you want to be in an agency that you have some equity in, you believe in and a cool and a cool kind of partner in a separate side project like Micah, if you hadn't gone through that shitty time. So like that is to me a very natural path in our, in our industry. I think unfortunately, and you guys have it on here, you have so many people who are in either legacy situations or et cetera, who just simply don't know to even do the work that you did. And I think

that's where a lot of the problems come from. And then they try to spout off shit like they've actually ever experienced the pain and people listen to them. And it's like that person, I have this saying, I only like to work with people who walk with a limp, right? If you haven't been battle tested, if you're not hurting, bruised, battered, you know, an eye patch because you've been through war. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I don't want to listen to what you have to say because you haven't experienced the pain of wanting to just like slam your head off your desk and cry as an adult because of how because something's not going well you know and then build yourself back up from that so i think that your journey is exactly the journey that everyone should go through because now you know how to

do your thing as much as it probably wasn't fun during the time oh yeah 100 i've got a uh so i just on on the personal note so my wife is a physician, so she does, she does well. She's a doctor. I've got five kids. I started over at 35 to get into this crazy industry. I'd always been in sales and I'd always been super successful. But like, you kind of hit a ceiling there of earning potential in sales. And then I was like, well, how do I make, how do I make like really good money? And it was like, be a financial advisor, go into commercial insurance or start your own business. It was one of those three. And so I chose this industry and here I am, I'm three years in, I'd always been successful. I was short of my mark. I've got five kids. My wife just had our fifth kid. She's ready to work less. So now i'm not only am i like trying to do my thing but i'm trying to replace a doctor's income a large portion and

like for for two years i went to sleep like nauseous yeah how am i like i'm i'm failing this isn't working what am i doing and, it just, it was a crucible. It was incredibly humbling. But, you know, everything happens for a reason and, you know, it's all going to work out. I know what the hell I'm doing now. Right. So, yeah. Well, see that's, and that's, and that's the point. And I don't mean to be so fluffy on this, but like, dude, so many people just never get to that point.

Like, you know, that's one of the things that I sit here. And if there's anything about my career that, you know, when I, when I sit and I allow myself to get negative, I think about the fact that I've had to restart so many times, like everything, you know, just everything in my life feels like momentum, momentum, momentum, restart, momentum, restart. Like that's literally like, I'm, I'm, I'm started writing a book. I'm writing a book on, um, uh, discipline and, um, self-discipline, not, not disciplining like your children or whatever. Um, although I do like to be slapped in the face during sexual encounters. No, uh, I didn't say that out loud. So I've started working on this book and I've started outlining stories and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, holy,

this through line developed, restart, restart, restart, restart. And I started saying to myself and thinking about here I am, 42, about to be 43, like looking out into the future of where I want to go. And it's like, I know now exactly where I want my life to go, where I want it to be, what's important to me. And I had to go through all that shittiness to figure this out. Cause five years ago, even I didn't know I was surviving, right? I was just, you know, surviving. And I think that so many people never actually, they don't put themselves, this is what I respect so much about what you've done when you were willing and had the guts to restart into a new space at 35 years old. A lot of people don't have the guts for that, right?

They would have just stayed where they were and accepted that plateau and kept going. You were willing to restart. You then were willing to push through years of not being performing as well as you would like to perform, right? A lot of people would have pulled the rip cord and said, ah, it's just not for me and left, right? And you've gotten through all that to now say, I know exactly what to do. I know exactly how to get there. I know, and I can put in the work and I've built a network to get there and now I can do it. And I think far too many of us, when, when, when stuff really starts to get hard. And this, this is the part that I've, that I've, I've put just a tremendous amount of thought into when stuff really starts to get hard.

They, they, they pull the ripcord and it's like, nah, right. It's like cliche, but it's like, you're right.

There's like 10 more steps and you're on the other side of the mountain. Like it's right there, you know, and then we give up at that point or we just say, ah, I've gone high enough. I'm good right here. I'll just complain, but stay right here.

So I don't have to feel any more pain. And, um, you know, this industry, you use the word, it is incrucible. Like this, that's what this industry is. Like it is going to test every part of you if you want to be successful. There's no easy path. But I seemingly when you get to the other side of the mountain, you can have a lot of fun. Yeah, I wrote an article about this uh a couple of months ago it's called

the producer's journey and uh i gotta say i hijacked it from somebody else and just put a producer spin on it but basically you get to this valley of the best marketers steal bro the best marketers steal that's yep yep austin cleon i think is one that is austin cleon yep um but you go through these site you go through these different stages and you get down to this valley of despair where you're like, what am I doing? Why am I doing this? But the thing is, is like, if you don't see it through, then you have to, if you pull the cord, as you said, and you start over, now you have to start the cycle all over again.

You're still going to get to the valley of despair and the new thing. You just keep punting the ball further and further down the field and and i had done that my entire life if something didn't come easy to me i was a professional athlete like i don't know if you knew that i played i'll be honest with you i don't know really anything about you that's why i'm loving this conversation so much and you shouldn't because i'm a nobody. OK, so that's not true. You just have a you have a pseudonym that you use. Fair enough. But I had I had done that in everything in my life. Whenever something if something didn't come natural or easy to me, I quit. And I did it in work because I did a bunch of different industries.

I did it in professional baseball. I did it in my marriage. I left my marriage for a year at one time because things got hard and impossible thank god you know things were reconciled we now have five beautiful children but I had done that in every part of my life and I'm sitting there looking at myself I'm three years into this industry and I'm like fuck man you've done this your whole life like at some point you got a man up and you got to see something through you know and i could see the fruits of the marriage piece and what had come from sticking it out i'm also sober been in sobriety for 10 years and so it was like the only two things i had ever stuck to and i could

see all this fruit that had been born out of that and i'm like fucking do this with your work man like you got to get through the valley of despair and you got to stick it out let's say it doesn't work out with this firm you know your max revenue incorporated you know whether it's this firm or the other firm you're doing this for the next 40 years so fucking stick it out and uh excuse my language but um this is a pro cursing podcast okay all right so uh anyways that's that's kind of the story so yeah it's um dude you know one i really appreciate that and so you know i am don't refer to yourself as a nobody ever again please and uh three um i'm very much enjoying getting to know you okay you had not read it already have you ever read this book right here there's no plan it might be backwards for you there's no plan b for your a game by bo eisen make this the next book that you read this has

been one of the most this was referred to me by chris parody so i read it in a weekend um i couldn't put it down absolutely couldn't put it down it also helps that i'm single now so i have a lot of extra time to read um okay so I've just been reading like a fucking madman but this book is so good so here I'll get my takeaway from what you just said that is confirmed in this book so Bo Eisen was a professional athlete as well he played uh football for um uh started with the Oilers and then went and played for the 49ers. Then he became an award-winning playwright after football. And now he's a six-figure speaker and like coach guy and not in like the shitty way.

And like the, you know, he's really well-known, works with great people. So this is, so this dude's completely legit. And his whole shtick, and this is what I love about it, and this is what I took away from this book if I'm going to put it in a nutshell, but I still recommend you read it. You need to think of yourself at all times as you are the best. The best, right?

What's up, guys? Sorry to take you away from the episode, but as you know, we do not run ads on this show. And in exchange for that, I need your help. If you're loving this episode, if you enjoy this podcast, whether you're watching on YouTube or you're listening on your favorite podcast platform, I would love for you to subscribe, share, comment if you're on YouTube, leave a rating review if you're on Spotify or Apple iTunes, et cetera. This helps the show grow. It helps me bring more guests in. We have a tremendous lineup of people coming in, men and women who've done incredible things, sharing their stories around peak performance, leadership, growth, sales, the things that are going to help you grow as a person

and grow your business. But they all check out comments, ratings, reviews. They check out all this information before they come on. So as I reach out to more and more people and want to bring them in and share their stories with you, I need your help. Share the show, subscribe if you're not subscribed. And I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify I'd love for you to leave a comment about the show because I read all the comments. Or if you're on Apple or Spotify, leave a rating review of this show. I love you for listening to this show.

And I hope you enjoy it listening as much as I do creating the show for you. All right, I'm out of here. Peace. Let's get back to the episode. You're the best producer. You're the best producer trainer. You're the best husband. Whatever the things that are important to you are, the best producer. You're the best producer trainer. You're the best husband, whatever the

things that are important to you are you frame your brain at all times as you are the best and are going to be the best because what it does is it does a couple of things. One, you have to get rid of everything in your life that doesn't allow you to be the best at that. So if you're the, if you want to be the best husband and alcohol pot, uh, porno, um, a group of buddies are keeping you from being the best husband. Cause they take you off the path. You can get rid of them because they don't allow you to be the best husband or spouse or whatever, you know, if you're a woman or whatever. So, so that's one thing. The second thing is it forces you to extend your timeline because no one gets to be the best in a year. No one gets to be the best in three years. He said he sets for his life, 20 year timelines to be the best. And when you think, and this is what I love about what you just said, and it's

why I grabbed this book because it's what you just said, like you're going to be the best. And when you think, and this is what I love about what you just said, and it's why I grabbed this book because it's what you just said. You're going to be max revenue ink for 40 years. You're going to be 40 years out, right? When you set your timeline for 20 years, you now don't go, oh shit, things aren't working out the way I want right now. I'm going to pull the rip cord. You go, I just got to work through it. I got to figure out, I got 17 more years. I got 15 more years of this. I got to figure it out. And by forcing, by focusing on being the best and narrowing your focus onto what allows you to be the best and extending your timeline, you now have this, you now are dialed in to what you do. And you have the mindset of a setback is just a setback. You have 10 more years, 18 more years to do this thing. Who cares

if you're having a bad six months or a bad three months or even a bad year, because you have to figure it out because you're not stopping for so much more time. And man, I'll tell you, I have, and he just pounds it into your head in a really readable way. That's why I like this book, because I don't like books that just dive into stuff. It's like melts your brain. It's like, it's too much.

I don't need all that. But those two concepts for me, like, I feel like I've been like, I felt like I'd been kind of like floating around them for a while. And when he kind of lined them up that way, I was like, holy shit, that's the thing. Like, you got to find the thing that you want to be the best at. Cut everything else out for the most part, or at least supremely focused.

Extend your timeline. And now the bad days aren't bad days. There's just a freaking moment in time. Who cares? Oh, I got all this more time it was really uh to be honest with you uh uh very very moving it sounds kind of like um benjamin hardy's 10x is easier than 2x another i got that books right here too that that that book was a game changer for me as well future self right yep so you decide who you want to be and where you want to go kind of like you

alluded to earlier and then and then that person or that thing that then becomes your rubric for all of the decisions that you make in the present yep and so i just uh it's similar they're kind of getting at the same thing i i i really i'll give you another one. Darren Hardy. Oh, come on camera. Darren Hardy's this is, this is an all timer, right? Sorry. I got one of these cameras that like adjusts on your face and it'll come back around in a sec. Darren Hardy's the compound effect. This is an old classic. This has been around for more than a decade. Super fast read as well well but it's the same concept pick a thing do the thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again

and eventually you you you you look around and you've accumulated so much talent experience relationships money whatever that you're just so much farther than everybody else. And that to me is a, it's that, you know, these are some of the things that like, you know, I have worked very hard to try to like teach my kids some of these concepts and really, even though they're young, start to integrate into their lives. Because no one freaking tells them this stuff. Like school's not telling our kids, even training classes. Like when you go and go to like a sales – for the people that are listening at home,

I have one of these cameras that follows your face, and when I bent over to get the book, it followed me and it didn't come back. It's so ridiculous. It's all good. It's all good. I'll look at your writing. Yeah, yeah. You can look at my cool American t-shirt.

But like even sales training courses do not, they don't properly express like how difficult it's going to be. You know what I mean? Like they don't tell you, look, guys, they give you like here's the five steps to sell something. What they don't say is, you're going to suck at this for a decade, and then you're going to get good. But if you can make it that decade, all your wildest dreams come true. Your wife will drive the newest seven series every year. You'll have a boat and a second home. Your kids will all go to

private school. Your friends will all envy you, even though they used to make fun of you for selling insurance, right? Like, they don't tell you that, you know, but it's going to take that long. So. Yeah. There's no manual for this thing, you know? And so you just, you figure it out or you quit. That's really what it comes down to. Yeah. So let's talk about the max revenue letter because I find it to be intriguing. I've known Micah for maybe three years, five years, a while. I can't even remember the first time I interviewed him. But then I saw him coming out, and obviously I didn't know. When you guys first launched it, I didn't know if there was anybody else with him.

There wasn't a lot of – I didn't really know what was going on. What has been the most surprising reaction to it from you guys? Like, are people just all in? It's all good. Are you getting any pushback on some of the ideas? Like just what has surprised you when you start creating like this and putting out on a regular basis, you get a lot of interesting cats that start to reach out to you and respond. So i'm just interested like what have you guys been experiencing yeah so um this isn't my first foray into like

branding and internet marketing i had done it in another space a while back and i ended up letting that die um it was in the faith space believe or not, despite what my language may sound like. But I just didn't feel right. It never felt right. So anyway, so I built up a pretty big audience before. And that's why I told Micah, like, let's do this. I can build us an audience. We just need to take your credibility and what you know. Let me package it, put it out.

So anyways, all that to be said um it's it's been wild um one of the big industry magazines reached out to us to do like a spotlight we're doing that soon um we get a ton of bait what we get a lot of is we get a lot of new producers or producers who have struggled that want a different way to do things because this message of, Hey, most of these people out here telling you how to do it, we're spoon fed and you just don't know it. And by the time you know it, it's too late. Um, and so there, so this idea of building it through cold outbound people, um, have really taken to it. So that's great um it's um we were kicked off linkedin um about four months into this thing because i used a non-politically correct word

and uh so we had to start over so what you see on linkedin is actually us starting over four or five months in what was was it? What was the word? Retarded. Sorry. I miss that word. And I said it on purpose. You know, I am. I intentionally twist the knife with things because I'm trying to make a ruckus because just to be quite honestly, this industry is so fucking boring. Yeah.

You know, and everybody's got the same take and you know there's not like there's just a lot of sacred cows that need to be killed and um so yeah so that's what we did now i have toned it down a little bit because i don't want to get canceled again um that wasn't fun but um yeah the response was the response has been great. Mike and I get, I don't know, messages daily from producers. Like, Hey, what do you think about this? Or how would you do this or whatever? And so, I mean, the one little product we have is like 195 bucks. Like we ain't trying to get rich off this thing. That's the last thing that we're trying to do. We just genuinely are wanting to help because it's a fucking slug out there. You know, it's a slug. And yeah, it's going over well. If anything, the response has been so overwhelming that I'm having to pump the brakes because I don't want it to get in. I don't want it to interfere with the main thing, which is me building my book. So I'm having to really be diligent and organized with my time. Yeah.

And that's for those of you who are listening who are interested, that's the producer playbook. You can go to max. So if they go to max revenue letter, I know it's a dot beehive right now, but if they just go to max revenue letter, does that bring them over? Yeah, that's fine. Yeah. Cool. So you just go to max revenue letter. You'll see sign up for the email list. It's awesome. I love it. And, and I still want to keep chatting for a couple more minutes, but I just want to since we're at the spot,

definitely subscribe. It's free. And then the producer playbook. I know I was actually, I just haven't gotten to 10 million things going on at work, but I was going to get it for some of my, for my production team. And I know other people that have already used it and love it. And a couple of good buddies of mine. So there's great content in there. So I definitely want to highly recommend that if you're interested in these ideas and, and you want a good, a good, a good template, that producer playbook has gotten great reviews from, from everybody I know. And there's, there's lots of people on there that have reviews as well. So definitely want to give a big shout out to that. So talk to me a little bit about where you see this going.

So I mean, you guys have definitely made a stir, right? There's a lot of people in the industry, like you said, who come in. There's like 10 bazillion podcasts. I have been slowly moving this podcast away from like insurance specific content. I still love talking to people that are really interesting to me in the insurance industry. And I look at it more like, and again, I don't mean take, take the, take the hubris out of this comment, but I think of it kind of like the way Joe Rogan does his podcast. Like I'm not really interested in his fight night podcast. That's not really what I, that's not why I listened to him. I liked the other stuff. So I kind of skipped those ones. So like, I want to keep doing ones that are

insurance specific, but then I want to do all the ones around it because our entire industry is filled with the same crap. Just like they call it. What do you do? Oh, I asked for referrals. Well, what technology do you use? I'm on agency zoom. Well, why are you there? You know what I mean? It's just like, Oh my God. You know what know i mean like it just makes me want to barf but you guys have come out with a new spin the flavor the the the the the eye patch guy you know i mean like the whole thing is counter to our industry which i love i mean i adore it i think it's phenomenal that's the idea yeah and so so you know where do you see you you obviously have people's attention that's only going to pick up, I'm sure. Where do you see this going? Like, do you see this becoming a training program? Do you see it becoming a consultancy?

Is it, you know, just continue to grow and see what happens and kind of play it by ear? Like, have you guys kind of mapped out as as much as you're willing to share you know oh no i'm an open book uh uh to be honest we're just gonna kind of see where you know see where it takes us um i know that uh we're both both of our number one priority right now is regrowing our books so that's priority number one this is just kind of like uh extra on the side just because i like making a ruckus and I like doing it. We like doing it. I shouldn't say that, but we've had, dude, we've had a lot of agencies reach out to us and offer us quite a bit of money to come out and train their guys and all. And we may do all that one day. I'm just kind of like right now I'm trying to build my book and Mike is trying to rebuild his book. We're just sharing as we go along. And then whatever comes of it is what comes of it.

You know, if it turns into some great consulting firm, whenever that's time to happen, it'll happen. You know, like, but, you know, we're going to both get our books to a million. And then once it gets there, then we'll see what the cards have in store for us. I love that. I mean, to me, you know,

that is how the best consultancies, work group, you know, or workshop programs, whatever, that's how the best, you know, I look at Mick Hunt. So Mick Hunt is one of my very best friends and I love Mick. One of the, literally one of the best humans I ever met in my life. This dude's done it twice, right? Literally built an agency once, once as a team member employee kind of uh uh head of operations then did it again on his own agency then it did again and and everything that he talks about is based off his own beats right you can hear it in the way he talks about it you can hear like i've said it the wrong way and gotten you know the door shut in my face this

many times to learn how to say it the right way. And now I'm teaching you, like you can hear it in the nuances and the way people talk versus just, other people that I know for a fact, overestimate their numbers just so they can seem like they've done something so they can put a program together. And then when they talk, it feels an inch deep.

And that to me feels like the right way, what you're it feels you know it feels an inch deep and um that to me feels like the right way what you're guys doing that that feels like because you could you could figure out you don't want to do freaking workshops because you know what workshops take you away from your family workshops are do a tremendous amount of mind space you know that that kind of stuff is is once you have a bill you can kind of do it multiple times. But like another good buddy of mine, Matt Namoli, he and his partner at GNN insurance, Zach Gould, they created the Bob Alon program to teach people about their referral. They, their whole shtick was building referral partners. And like, they did that for a year and a half, two years were highly successful. I mean, they made a, they made, they did, they did a really good job for people and made a lot of money, but they got toasted on it. You know what I mean? It just did so much,

the travel and the, it, you know, there's a lot there and it takes you away from your family. So I think you guys are going about it the right way. That's, I actually am excited for you that that's the way you're doing it versus like in five years or in three years, we want to have this many clients or whatever. I feel like you start to skip steps when you do it that way. Yeah. Whatever's going to happen will happen. Right. And a lot of times opportunities present itself that you never even could have imagined. And so that's kind of the path that we're taking.

Like at the end of the day, I, I think this is the best industry in the world. You can make a damn good living for 20, 30 hours a week. Like, you know, like, so if I can make a half good living for 20, 30 hours a week. So if I can make a half a million, if I can grow a million dollar book, two million dollar book, make half a million dollars to a million dollars a year and work 30 hours a week,

that's a pretty good living, right? So if anything comes above that with max revenue and that turns out to be some great thing too, well, that's great, but I don't need it. So it's just what we say, where I'm from it's land. Yeah. It's, it's a little something extra. Yeah. I love that. I love that. So let's say I'm listening to this. I'm a young producer.

I'm struggling or, or I've been thinking about doing cold outreach. Like when you guys, your philosophy, right. Where, where, what's like maybe one, one separator that you found? Not to give away, you know, I don't want you to give away. I'll give it all away. I don't care. So good. I like that.

I like that too. That's my philosophy as well. So what's one thing that for you having now been in the, you know, feeling like you're starting to, you know, really starting to figure it out enough to talk about it, right? Like, what's one thing that you feel like a lot of people get wrong or is like a nuanced issue that people tend to miss that can make a big impact? Like, what's one of those things for you?

Okay, so unless your last name is Kardashian or Biden, you're not, you have a, you're probably not going to network your way into validation, right? And for validation being at most firms, they give you a three to five year window at which you have to hit a certain revenue target or else they let you go or you go on a draw. And I mean, you've really, really got to have some connections to be able to pull that off. So then what happens is you get a lot of young producers, they look at the other guys in the office, and I have no beef against those guys. Like I throw shade on them in my posts, but that's just to make a ruckus. Honestly, if somebody wanted to give me a million dollar book, I wouldn't not take it. You know? So, yeah. So anyways, so what you got to realize is that if you don't have that networking ability, if you, if your dad's not the head of lending at some big local bank or what,

like if you're just what I say, the rest of us of us the 95 you've got to build it with cold outbound in my opinion now you're a different story with the small business and whatever and i really want to hear about that but if you're a middle market guy you're going to have to do some level of outbound and in that outbound it's a and i know this is a bitter pill but it's a volume game man you just you have to whether you like it or not there has to be a certain number of calls uh so i found my sweet spot to be around the 25 to 30 a day micah does more like 40 or 50 we have different targets we have different niches that we go after but i would say look at your agency where do you guys have success what niches do you have where you

have all the markets? Once you know that, build a prospect list of 300 to 400 names, start banging out 25 to 50 calls a day. And if you make enough calls, you will find somebody who's in pain and that's low hanging fruit. You can go in there and solve that problem. And then as you make those calls and you build up that cold calling and you learn how to get through objections, then you can start to convert some people who maybe they're not unhappy with their agent, but they're at least willing to let you take a peek under the hood. They have unrealized pain, maybe. Unrealized pain. It's kind of like a doctor, right? Like you got three people. You got people that are healthy. They know they're healthy and they don't care what you're selling. You got people who are like, I might not be healthy. I'm willing to do a checkup. And then you got people that are healthy. They know they're healthy and they don't care what you're selling. You got people who are like, ah, I might not be healthy. I'm willing to do a checkup. And then you got people who are just in pain, you know, and you,

you're looking at, when you first get started, you're looking for the third, but as you get better and you develop your cold calling skills or cold emailing or whatever you choose, you can start to pick off some of those in the middle, right. That are kind of undecided. So that's all I would say. It's, it's nothing revolutionary. It's nothing crazy. Anybody who's in SAS sales or I was in ticket sales and minor league baseball for a while. Anybody who's done a lot of cold outbound, they already know this, but for some reason, our industry has taken a hell of a long time to catch up. It's ego.

Let me say, let me say one more thing. You got to also remember that when these older guys in your office built their book, they did it in a different time, right? They joined the country club. They were part of the social clubs. Everybody knew two to three guys. Now, thanks to this little invention called the internet, everybody knows 10 to 15 brokers. You've got to do something that stands out above other people, right? Because everybody is getting the LinkedIn requests and whatever, and that's having the right message at the right time to the right person, right? Even if they play golf with 10 other guys at the country club, if you're the guy that calls them when they get that work comp audit and they're furious, guess who they're going to take a meeting with? It's going to be you. They're not going to pick up the phone and and call three or four other people that they know but if you're the guy that calls you're going to be the guy that gets the meeting yeah

yeah i completely agree and and to be honest with you the the so so just on my ego comment we have this weird thing in our industry and i only know this from all the hate that I've gotten over my career for pushing inbound, we have this ego thing that the best producers, the best agencies work off of referrals. If you work off anything other than referrals, and somehow you're not doing your job, there is this really odd thing that like, I can't wrap my head around because like, I literally, I've heard the argument. I've heard that I've gotten the comments. Actually, Cass and I were talking the other day because we had a bunch of young podcasters that we kind of talked to. And I shouldn't say young, young in podcasting. And we were like, we were kind of giving them shit because we're like, you guys don't understand how easy you have it today. When I started podcasting 10 years ago, literally there's

there's an article in the insurance journal, which specifically references Cass and I hating on what we're doing, advocating for inbound marketing, right? Like one of the largest publications in our industry wrote an article hating on us for advocating for inbound marketing. So like this idea of like, if you're referral based, that means you do a good job and you're like a good agency and people who have to cold call or do inbound, they just can't figure it out. And that's like why they have to do that. So I do think that there's a big part of that. And unfortunately that gets perpetuated, but to your point, you asked about

inbound, right? The same exact philosophy that you just described, replace outbound with inbound, and it works for the same exact reasons. The difference is some shoppers need to be called, some shoppers go to the internet, which is why I advocate both. I advocate for you need to have an inbound and you need to have an outbound.

And I think the inbound is a derivative of your outbound. So you call and the guy gives you an objection, right? Write it down. Answer that question in an inbound in a YouTube video, put it on YouTube. You call and you get three, right? Those three down, answer that, right? And literally the inbound is just answering these calls because what's going to happen is you're going to, again, maybe not that specific person, but all the people who you, that person is one of 10,000, 100,000 people who have that same objection, question, whatever, right? So that guy then goes to the internet and goes, what is this experience mod thing? Bam. Now he finds your video, right? Watches your video. Now he calls you or when you call, he's seen your video, she's seen your video. So the idea is they

work for the same exact reason. The difference is I, you're trying, you're trying through volume to drop in in a moment of pain, but you're going to have a higher per interaction hit ratio. What I'm saying is, yes, you have to do that. And in addition, you add inbound as a derivative of your outbound. And what you get is they now on their time get to do the same exact thing, right? So now 10 p.m., this guy's got his kids to bed. He's looking through his doc and

he's going what the freak and what our mod went up again this year like what is going on what is an experience mod why is it important and now your videos are showing up your content is showing up and he's going who is this freaking ryan hanley got what is this agency? I need to call these guys. And then all of a sudden I get an email and it's like, it's the same concept, just, just capturing either side of the equation, in my opinion. So I'm fascinated by that. And I, so I was reading where, you know what the second biggest search engine is behind Google? YouTube, right? Whenever you, and the reason why I know that is because at one time with one of these other projects, I was running Facebook ads and all this stuff.

And they were talking about why YouTube ads are so much more profitable. And it's because it's actually intent-based. When someone goes on YouTube, they have a problem and they are searching XYZ. Whereas on facebook or instagram you're scrolling you're shaking your head you know this is exactly yeah so so it's intent-based so that lead that comes your way off of youtube is so much more valuable and your conversions are so much higher so i've been fascinated with that and i reached out to you like a year ago or six

months ago to try to pick your brain on it and we've just never been able to link up here can i run you through a couple of my objections yeah yeah hit me hit me yeah this is fun okay so mid-market i also now feel like a dick for not for not for us not connecting i don't know why that happened i'm sorry no it's it's fine bro it's all good everything in its due time right so it's fine um so most of what i chase is between 10 000 in revenue and 100 000 in revenue which then shrinks your buyer pool considerably right from small business now you just told me about uh gordon coil which i totally get that let's say i focus in manufacturing yeah how many cfos or directors of operations or whatever in manufacturing are going to go and search that type of video because i at least when i think about it and it's probably wrong thinking

i'm thinking oh that fifty thousand dollar manufacturing cfo he already knows that answer he's not looking for that on youtube is that a false 100 yeah that's that's that's uh projecting a perceived reality onto what actually is reality so they're all humans right so i run an agency with 25 people i google hr shit all the time shouldn't i know i'm a four-time executive two-time ceo i have 25 people. I don't know shit about HR, right? So like an HR software might be like, ah, we don't have to answer that question. A guy with 25 employees, he should know the answer to that question. I don't freaking know. I go to YouTube and I go, how do I get rid of this? How do I get rid of this person?

The point is they're just people right and they're good at some things not at others and some of them will know some of them won't know here's the thing dude you only need one person to watch that video and reach out to you to to win the account so like mr beast is to have 10 bazillion views. Your video might have a hundred, but if it's the right hundred people, that's all that matters to you. You don't need a bazillion people to watch your video to get a million dollar book. You need the right hundred people to watch your video to get a million dollar book. Especially if you do, if you layer those videos appropriately, right? So like take that manufacturer with 50 million in revenue,

figure out what the top 20 questions that they have are, right? Figure like take that manufacturer with 50 million in revenue, figure out what the top 20 questions that they have are, right? Figure out what the top 20 questions are. You can actually end, and I did this for a while, did this back at the Murray Group. I did a little bit at Rogue actually too, so I want to be clear about that. When I did an outbound prospecting call that wasn't going well, and I could kind of feel that it wasn't going well, I would actually reverse course well, I would actually, I would actually reverse course. And I would say, Hey, sounds to me like you're, you're in a good spot. And I'm super happy for you. Can I just, can I just ask you one question? Cause this, you know, just, just while I have you and it has nothing to do with you buying insurance for me, most of the time they'll say yes. And you'll go, what's I like to create content about this stuff.

And I like to answer questions. What's one question that you have that you commonly have? And a lot of times they'll go, you know what? I really struggle with the idea of, blah. They'll put it, bam, write it down. I just got another question. Now I know what a potential prospect could potentially search on YouTube that I want to put out there. And then you create a playlist, you answer those 20 videos, and you do it over and over. And people go, well, isn't it

all small business? Well, from a volume perspective, yes, it is going to be more small business. But if you have a way to filter it, one, so a lead comes in and it's a $500 bot, send it to a rookie, unless you want to write that stuff, right? We write it because that's our model. But like I tell people all the time, you don't have rookies in your organization. Just send it to a rookie. Refer it to a buddy down the street who's just getting started. He wants to write that stuff, right?

Like that's good. But the other piece is you can say, you know, dude, you're freaking great at headlines. Like what, what the, the missing piece to a worker's compensation policy for manufacturers with more than 20 employees. That's not the best title, but you get the idea, right? Target it to exactly what you want, right? How we saved a $50 million manufacturer 11% on their insurance. And then tell that story and then do it again and again and again and target those people. And what you're going to sue is you're going to put it out there and you're

going to get 25 views. And what a lot of people do, especially people listening to this podcast, what they do is, is they'll say, Oh, I'm only getting 25 views. You need it to be, you need one person out of the, you're not going to get a hundred thousand views. You need one person to like it, to, to, to, to see it. And then boom, do a hundred videos. If one person who's a good prospect for you contacts you on every video you create and you create a hundred videos, you just got a hundred perfect prospects into your agency. That's it.

Yeah. And here's the, so the beauty of it as well is I'm like, you make it once and it goes forever. Forever. Right? It's, you know, you write a blog post, it goes to the bottom of your feed.

You put out a social media post, it goes to the bottom. Your YouTube is like the thing that keeps paying you because it only gets more valuable the longer it sits there. And it only ranks higher and higher the longer it sits there. And I'm not trying to create a bunch of copycats, but I know the value of it. I've just talked myself out of it for forever. Yeah. So this is what I used to say from stage all the time when I talked about this topic is I'd say, I think of every blog post, every YouTube video, because blog posts, if you're ranking proper SEO, there is. But like, so I think every blog post,

every YouTube video as a salesperson working for me 24 hours a day, seven days a week, they don't take vacations. They don't get sick. They don't take paternity or maternity leave. They don't get pissy. They don't take smoke breaks. They are working 24 hours a day, seven days a week selling for you. And when you create your headlines,

when you fill out your description of a YouTube video, when you put calls to action in a YouTube video, think of it as a salesperson. Every single one is a salesperson. And if you build them that way, people will contact you, right? Like another mistake, and I got to wrap up here in a second, just to be fair to the audience and fair to you. I got to go pick my kids up from school. But one of the things that I see a lot of times when people will send me their videos, they don't actually ask for the business. Two things actually. They don don't tell people who they are, and they don't ask for a

business. They just start talking. And then at the end, they just end it. And every single templatized this shit, I use the hook-retained reward model. So it's like the hook is the first sentence. Today, we're going to talk about how small business owners can save 25% on their workers' compensation tomorrow. Here we go. Bam. There's the start. Then there's a little tiny bump, and then I said, Hi, my name is Ryan Hanley, founder and president of Rogue Risk, where we do insurance differently, specifically by giving you knowledge and information to make the right insurance decision.

Now they know exactly who we are. Then I retain them by giving them the information. At the end, we get the payoff, which is, if you like this kind of relationship with your insurance broker, we would love to work with you. We're in all 50 states, so we can come to where you are. We have many ways to get ahold of us. You can give us a call, blah, blah, blah, blah, whichever way you choose. We look forward to working with you. Every single video is exactly the same. If you watch them, there's like 475 videos on our youtube channel that is the framework for

every single video i say it over and over and over and over again because it's easy it's clean it's consistent and that's what people want they're not looking for flashy showy crazy camera angles decent audio decent video clear concise answer Give me what I need. Get out the door. I'm telling you this shit works. It works every frigging time. All right. I'm going to do it. Yes. And if you have any questions, bro, just reach out.

I promise this time I will take your call. Big league in the shit out of me. Oh, I didn't. I don't trust me. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it. I'm just kidding. I have, but no, dude, it has been so much fun. I'm glad we have had a chance to connect i've loved getting to know you this

will not be the last time we chat i i love what you guys are doing and um i'm so happy to share uh what you're up to with the audience um what are the places where they can find more about you more about about max revenue like the whole, like just take me through it. Just go on LinkedIn and go to our profile page, the company page. All the links are there, or you can go to max revenue letter.beehive.com and everything will be in the heading. If you like what you have to say, great. And if you don't, that's fine too. There's plenty of ways to do this thing. And if you don't like our way, that's fine. Go find another one.

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