From Pro Athlete to $1.3M Producer: Dylan Crane’s Insurance Playbook

From ProBaskable to 1.3 million in year one, the rise of Dylan Crane. Welcome to the Modern Insurance Agent Podcast. Where your host, David and Elle Dining. What happens when a millennial couple dives headfirst into the insurance world, scales a million dollar remote business, and decides to share the journey with the world? You get the Modern Insurance Agent. Here, we reveal the messy, magical, and sometimes hilarious realities of building a business and a life you love. From traveling the globe to building remote teams. Yes, even working remotely on top of a mountain in the Philippines. We're sharing insights, strategies, and plenty of laughs to help agents in entrepreneurs succeed. Because let's face it, success isn't just about hitting numbers. It's about designing a life that works for you. So let's dive in and build something extraordinary together. Welcome back to the Modern Insurance Agent Podcast. If you've ever wondered what it takes to absolutely dominate your first year in the business, today's guests will show you how it's done. But before we dive in, you can get all the resources, show notes, all the goodies that we always got put together for you as well as a cow to connect with our awesome guests. If you go to JumpstartGoNow.com/podcast, we've got it all put together for you, so make sure you grab it. Today, I am joined by the legendary Dylan Crane, former pro basketball player, and apparently pro golfer too, turned into insurance powerhouse, who wrote over 1.34 million in premium his first year, and has already built a team of over 100 agents. He's now diving into advanced markets and help his agents follow suit. So let's hop into it. Welcome to show Dylan. It's going on, guys. You're seeing you appreciate having David. Absolutely. Absolutely. I know there's so much to talk about today, so much that agents can learn from in both action, and then also the skill sets, mindsets, all these different areas. A common thread already seeing off the bat is high performance at different things, or ever in achieving that level there. So there's obviously something in common there where if I probably put you in the pro knitting league, you'd probably find a way to end up being the top pro there as well. So let's break that down a little bit. Insurance and basketball, slightly different professions, and you came out swinging your first year on their shirt side. What did that look like one even ending up here? And what do you think some of the big things that set you apart from other new agents were? Sure. So I guess one insurance I had to find a job where I go from home, made a pretty personal situation just from his family. I need to find a way to work from home and make money, or make a lot of money. There's not a lot of fields. Every single sales position that I saw that wasn't corporately based, where I had to go into an office, was essentially go door to door, which I didn't want to do, or it was like I would be capped in some way. And those insurance I found just gave me the ability to be uncapped. I remember asking the person that brought me on. I'm like, "Hey, why isn't everyone doing this?" "Did it make sense to me in my brain?" He said, "Well, all you have to do is just be teachable and just work hard." I'm like, "That's it. That's all you got to do." And that's why I came into us. I said, "Okay, if I can do those two things, which I know really good at, then I should be able to succeed at it." So that was why I got into it. I thought it was going to be easy. And then obviously, second of all, it was compared to sports in so many different ways. I think very tactically, and how I break basketball down, which is my number one sport, is everything's correlated to skills. So you have pastures dribble, and there's obviously about 90 asterisk underneath pastures dribble. There's a lot of skills that you can have underneath that, but there's the top three skills. So if you break it down with insurance, you'd have, "Okay, dial, book appointments, close appointments." So you can break it down, but there's also 90 asterisk under there. So what are all the skills underneath that? And when I started to realize that sales and sports were very correlated with each other, I was like, "Oh, this can be simple. I just have to master all these skills." And then ultimately, every time I master each skill, then that leads me once that posture being better at something or great. The one skill that I never was able to master in basketball is athleticism. It doesn't only play basketball. Okay, so I had to practice my athleticism, which was very difficult for me, and that's one thing that never elevated me to the next level, so I didn't want insurance. I didn't want to have an asterisk with insurance. So I practice every single skill until I master them. I'm still practicing them today. So would you tell agents or do you tell agents that you're bringing on the same thing? Is it being teachable in hard work or would you give them different feedback? Yeah, I almost, everyone sold them the opportunity until they start doing it. So I almost like unsell them. I'm just like, "Hey, are you sure you want to do this?" I just want to make sure that this is for you, because what I'm finding is there's not a lot of people that are coachable and work hard. A lot of people think they work hard. So there's a lot of people that have found that think they're working by sitting at a desk. They think they're working by thinking about it, or they think they're working just by constantly going through the motions and then never actually improving. They think something's just going to change. And the people that think they're coachable think they're actually doing what their mentor or applying or boss has told them to do, and they're not actually doing it. So when you go back and listen to the recording of whether there was an appointment or they were booking the appointment, it sounded nothing like the script or it sounded nothing like what that mentor or up-planet told them to do. And so I'm really listening to it. It's very difficult for people to do those two things, which is why I think there's a pretty major problem on why there's only 8% of insurance agents to actually succeed. I wonder almost like the same thing with pro basketball. I think a lot of kids, including myself, grown up, I want to be pro athlete. In basketball was one of the many sports. I want to be a pro athlete. And coming from pro athlete is like, are you sure? Because that's day in, day out, mornings, evenings in the gym. It's missed life a little bit on that from this sole dedication and focus that it really takes. And even then, most people will never make it to that level on that side. And I think that is probably one of the right ways to approach describing this industry, because it's also not something you can really succeed at or make it happen without that level of work or focus. Sure. Yeah, I think how many of those athletes that are listening out there, how many of you are guilty of just going to the gym thinking you're practicing by just shooting around the gym? Right? So there's probably a lot of people out there that are just like, I thought I was practicing. I went to the gym, but you never got any better. You never improved your skills. You never worked on a skill. You never sat in the hardest part for me, but basketball is sitting there and just doing ball-handling drills. So boring for me. But it was like, that was my worst piece, because I literally hated to sit there and do ball-handling drills. It was annoying. I was boring. I felt like it wasn't improving. So it's the same thing in insurance. Like, figure out that one thing that is just really annoying and boring for you. But guess what? That's probably the one thing that you're not as good at. So you're not to sit there, work at it, practice it. The more you do it, the better you get, obviously. And I love the translations, because I've always found sports and like, business, like there's so many similarities a little bit. What lessons do you think from basketball translated directly to how you work and lead today? The one like, work ethic. Sure. Beyond work ethic. Okay. So, well, there's a lot of things. We'll take film. Or I love that. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So like, so when I went through and watched film with basketball, I could automatically feel like I was doing something, or I was doing something that was working on, but I wasn't actually doing it. For instance, like I would a lot of times work on how I looked when I handled the ball. Like was I actually selling the move or was I actually, but I wasn't making the defender do so. There's something that was doing wrong. Right. So I noticed, okay, if that's not working, okay, then I have to switch it up. It doesn't just like magically happen if I continue to do the same thing over and over again. Nothing works. That's like the definition of insanity. Same thing in insurance. It's like, okay, if I've read this script the same way I'm emphasizing the same way, the same way, let's call it a thousand times. And it's not working. Okay, there's a problem. Right. So it could be my tone. It could be my voice fluctuation. It could be how I'm saying it. Maybe how I'm patterned inner, like how I'm patternizing it, if you will. There's a lot of different ways. Or it could just be like, you're not saying it correctly. Like it could just be saying, you think you're saying it, but you're not. Or you could be adding something. So I think that's a pretty good correlation of watching film, either listening, probably how it's a listening to yourself, because that's the only way to improve. So making the seeing both of those that directly correlated with basketball for sure, and that helped me realize, okay, I have to do the same thing with insurance in order to get better. Is it annoying? Yeah, but you gotta do it. And the percentage of successful agents now makes more sense, because as you talk with agents, how many are doing roleplay, how many are reviewing their calls off this versus, well, must just be the next next lead. That was an unqualified next lead, right? I love that. I love that studying the game, whether that game's basketball or that game selling in shirts, right? And at what point during this process of hopping in and starting to work through your first year, did you realize or maybe mentally already from the very beginning just visualized it, but did you realize this is going to be huge? This is going to be big. This is the opportunity that I thought it would be. There's a couple moments. I'm sure a lot of us out there were like, "Hey, we want to quit even after we've sold 10 policies or whatever it was." The first day is the very first day I made sure. So this is a quick tip for you guys. Speed is very, very key when you're moving initially. How you move and how you dial, getting as much activity as possible, the fastest possible, and failing very quick, was I knew it was very important for me to figure out the game. So what I did is I took my notebook and I wrote down, like I literally sat here and wrote down every single number. I didn't have a dialer yet. I didn't want to purchase something that I didn't think was going to work yet. So just try my phone first. So I just went through, wrote every single lead down. I had 250 leads. Made seven appointments my first day really only cared about the first one because I wanted to see if it worked, right? So my very first appointment, they showed, closed an appointment, right? It's closed if, right? So I was like, "Oh, so I just made $1500 an hour? Okay, all right, that's sweet, right? They're cool." So that was number one. So I was like, "Okay, this thing is kind of real. Okay, I'm not, like I had some help doing it, right? So I wasn't like a pro right away. I did have some help. I didn't do it by myself." So then I closed, I did 5K AP my first week, okay? Then I did another 4K, kind of like that next week. So I roughly was in the first roughly called 12 days. I did 9K AP off of 50 cent, like, bonus leads, like really, really old. At the time, to everyone else out there, you guys are probably like, "Oh, good deal. That's phenomenal. I thought that was terrible. I wanted to make more money." Okay, so I was like, "Okay, so I didn't think at that point since I thought that was terrible, I wanted to make more money. This thing really worked." So I would say first day was helpful. I did 50K my first full month, okay? So after that, I was like, "Okay, I made like 25 grand that month. I'm like, "Okay, I'm starting to see it." Right? And then I was actually still technically working part time. I was still working full time hours, but I still had another job. Okay, so I had to do like three, four hours over there and I looked like I was working. So I went in and I had to go into a company that was I was in Tennessee and they brought me in and was like, "Oh, why haven't you been working so much?" And I'm like, "Well, you know, the last of going off my family and so on and so forth, right? I'm not trying to say I was working something else." And I quit. So I quit my job because I felt like ethically I couldn't keep going. So that point was very nervous. So the first week that I decided to commit all in 7am to 2am, which is what I did pretty much for the first three, four months, which just worked a lot of different time zones. I did 25K. My first like legit full-time week, like putting everything in insurance. At that point I was like, "Okay, this thing works." And when I put my like 100% like all full time into it, what does hard as I can? I thought like in August of 24, that changed everything for me. Oh, that so even at the point where you've done 50K your first month, you had about 25K in come in. You were still like, "I've still got this job over here. I'm still not totally convinced yet." And it's so interesting because you do have the ages to come in like, "Man, if I can make an extra couple thousand." Or like, "Oh, I just did my first sales. I wrote 10,000 a month. I'm quitting everything. I'm so it." But you know, you coming from high level pro athletes, you can make income and stuff from that. Like, your levels of expectations and what you ultimately wanted out of this were already down that line. So it had to be pretty convincing to you to finally be like, "Okay, yeah, I'm all in on this." Yeah, 100%. My income goes initially really okay. I see people obviously making money. If I can do 100K then that's where I'd be satisfied. 100K a month. From like, a little news to you now. But yeah. I could do 100K a month. That was like, "Okay, we'd be good." And you know, at that point when I was like, "All right, if I did 100K a month, that kind of gets me where I can see this thing works." Because I still thought there was somewhere out there that I could probably go and still do it. But when I saw that that was happening, I was like, "Okay, I'm so good. You know, nobody to worry about it. Go from there." And like you mentioned, you know, you did it with help initially and everything as well. You know, just like an embassable talking about improving these areas of the game, I would assume it wasn't all just based off your own analysis and determination that you had your team, you had your coaches, you had your trainers. You know, what does that look like leveraging help support and areas to level up with it? So I had the mindset already, like the analytics of my brain have a work. Like that all made sense. I knew where I was weak. I knew my weaknesses. I knew where I was strong at. I knew, like, okay, every action, you know, needs to be fixed or it's good, right? So, I really, really leaned on my mentor at the beginning, like we roleplayed, especially within the first probably, I would say, till the end of August, I roleplayed, she's for almost like 60 days, I roleplayed over about four, three to four hundred hours, a little bit more than that, right? So I was, I was increasing my skills at a very high level. So I think that's why a lot of people struggle, is there, and they never really get above average? Let's just call average 5K, 5K a month, you know, making three grand or 20, 500, many other contract level. Right? So they never get above average because they're, you're going to find those people that are begging for insurance. There's your, there's your 5K, right? And already to the next level, okay, you got to handle, you know, some objections. So let's go on 10K, right? Okay, then now kind of we have some more room now to purchase more leads, right? So you have a little bit more income. So then now, okay, we give a little bit of our skills, now we've 20K, right? So now we're almost at the, I would say above average level, okay, doing 20K a month, you're essentially a top producer at that point. Okay, so then I do a little more because now I have more money. So now I get to the next level 30K, all right? Because I have, have more money to invest in leads. My skills are obviously increasing because I'm doing more appointments. I'm on the phone a lot more. And you're probably getting a little bit more mentoring because now what's happening is, you're probably, your mentor is probably starting to notice you now because now you're starting to do 30K. So I was like, okay, I understood that in the beginning. So I was like, okay, if I just put more effort than everyone else, then I know this guy's going to help me more than everyone else. I made my mentor 50 grand in August, my second month. So, and that was in his bank account. So I'm like, okay, you probably, I would help me too. So I just knew that if I put in more activity, I worked harder, and I did more than everyone else, then ultimately I was going to make more money and then also make everyone happy. So, and it's a pretty cool industry and setup when like your success also helps someone's else's success and everything side together, which also is like, okay, I'm a time mentoring, helping, development. There's, you know, you think the corporate world, that's that's not really a thing. It's like, you know, here's my job, my role, clock, eight clock eyes, very different than building your own business and what that looks like. So, and love like, hey, I'm going to bring all my skills at my knowledge, my my my my work ethic, and you're going to help me on these areas I can increase to ultimately end up where where I want to be. And so let's let's break that down a little bit. Whatever you'd like to kind of share of what what did that look like over those first 12 months, like especially like how do you structure days, styles, appointments, like obviously efficiency and peak level performance was was a part of that. So how would that look like to you? Yeah, so I pretty much ran on Monday through Thursday. I would essentially kill myself for four days. Right? I didn't like working six days. I liked having some form of off times. Okay. So I like watching football, I playing basketball, I working out and all the stuff, right? So what a day today would look like would go from roughly I wake up around five, five, six, depending on the day. And then I'd go start 7 am. So then I'd start working east coast. I live in central time zone. So I'd start working east coast. That'll those for an hour. I usually get two or three appointments from those. My goal just kind of back up a little about my book. I have about six or seven appointments a day. So if I'm on the four days, then I'm going to do 42 appointments throughout my work week. So then 42 appointments, ultimately my ratios, how I built them up, starting in August, where I sold a hundred 89 applications in a row. So I knew that if I could just book an appointment, then they were going to close. Right? So I was like, if I 42 appointments, you know, roughly I'm going to do about anywhere between depending how large the app was 28 to roughly 40 KAP from that. Right? And then, but if I if I didn't get my six appointments on the day, and I would say I had 30, then I was going to do anywhere between 20 to 30 KAP. Right? Just to bend me how large the policy size was. So I knew I had to get six appointments a day. So anyways, I would start from seven to eight a.m. And a lot of people I think when they I think dialing is that they take breaks. They'll go get lunch, they'll go workout, take a break during the day, whatever it is. But like, I kid you not. I would go downstairs. I'd have my food pre-made from the night before. I would go warm it up, and then I'd come back and I'd sit at this desk all day. And I would dial, and I would dial, and I would dial. That might be exhausting for a lot of people, but that's kind of what it takes. So like, if I'm on the phone, hang up, boom, dial again. On the phone, hang up, dial again. Like, there was no breaks. So I knew that I had to speed everything up in order to catch up with everyone else. So I almost think of me being an erase. I love leaderboards. Competitive. So when I see the leaderboard, if I'm behind, okay, I got to speed up and work faster than that person right in front of me in order to get to that next level, to pass them. It's just like a race. If I'm in a race, I got to speed up. So those both correlated with me. So when I sped up, the more than they did, the more than someone else did, that'd be number one. Okay, so the faster I dialed, I knew the more components I would set, then the more money I would make. So I did that for pretty much 12 months straight. And an average month was around 100 to 120 applications. And I do on average within the first 12 months, I think my average was around 110 AP throughout the course of those 12 months. And that led me to now have roughly, almost 1,300 clients. So then now I could go back and it made selling a lot easier where I didn't have to purchase as much money on leads or I didn't have to work as much as my skills. I learned more advanced markets. And then ultimately I still made the same amount of money, but just not spending as much time. - Optimizing. And question, because you mentioned, when you are dialing, and you talk about the number of appointments in a week, are you setting appointments? Are you running stuff on that first call? What does that look like? Do you have appointment center? - Yeah, everyone always asks that. Like, hey, do you have a dialer? Do you have someone doing something for you? No, I did that all myself. The only person that I had that would really assist me, was my production assistant. So if I needed to get business issued or maybe there's some penny requirements on some policies, I was really working primarily simplified issue. So I do your America, your mutual home halls, your core bridges, that would do all those things that I knew on the app, if they were gonna get approved or not. So I primarily try to stay in that realm, but if I could get out of that, then obviously, I had my production assistant do that. So I would do everything myself, and I'd sell the policies I'd write the apps, I'd get that all done, and that's what brought us there today. It's just, I think the key thing, well, a lot of people don't really realize is, you know, if you have a dialer, for instance, okay, you can't, you, a lot of times, you can't really text out of it. You're not gonna be able to text from the same number, which is key. You can't really attach the form they filled out or the information that they were given. So a lot of times when they people, people just get random calls all day. So I knew I had to do both. I knew I had to do text and call. When I did text and call, when that started to get them familiar with me, they answered after the next couple, you know, a couple of messages, and I started to build a relationship really through text, started to help them understand I was real, and obviously verifying the information they filled out. And were you setting, when you connected with them, for these leads, you got a hold of the leads, and these, these leads, you're dialing out, not inbound live transfer, and when you got connected with them, was that to then set an appointment, or do you, okay, and when you set an appointment, were you setting same day or setting like next, 24-day hours? - Depends on busy my schedule is, but it was usually same day. So I never do live transfers, 'cause I didn't work at my speed. I always needed like a batch of leads, and just work them as hard as I possibly could. So I had those leads, worked them, set same day appointments. Sometimes I'd set next day appointments. Obviously, go as a nut set over 24 hour appointments. My show where it was still good, even I have to push out. But, you know, I like to keep it as close afresh, 'cause you don't know who's coming behind you, right? And then you don't know what other information they're gonna hear in the time being. So, you know, try to keep it as quick as possible. - What advice would you give a new agent that is looking to break their first six figures, let alone seven? - For four. - Yeah. - Sure, number one, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, starting the first week, just like you do basketball, if you're gonna go practice a thousand shots, again, do you know what your percentage was at the end of those a thousand shots, right? It could be 90% and then you think you did terrible, 'cause you missed the last shot, right? So, you gotta know your numbers. If you don't know your numbers and you're never gonna get to the next level, and then second of all, like, what's your work ethic would like, right? So, what I did is I kinda, I noticed, there was one day in particular, I remember I was gonna bring on a pretty large, it was a portion of an iPhone. There was probably about 20 to 25 people that was gonna bring on, and, you know, I remember thinking I just didn't work out, probably with contracting, and you know the stuff on your transfer from my MO, and I remember like, man, I could have been on a production for a little bit. And I paused myself when I was like, I'm not doing that, like I'm not here to just sit around and just like look at TikTok and Instagram, and just like, you know, act like that, I'm just gonna waste time and waste days, like I'm on this earth to do things better, to be the best version of myself, to change the industry, I know I'm called to do that. So, if I'm just gonna sit there and look at Instagram, and take a look at that, I know that's what everyone else is doing. So, I had to snap my head back in the gear, even though I had a negative, even though I got punched in the face, I had to bounce back up, figure out a way to make it work, and then get right back at it, and then that week I remember, I ended up doing, I think, 58,000 AP in that week. So, you know, that just, it's just sometimes you just kinda need to kick in the face, you know? - Yeah, you bounce back pretty well, I would say, right? - Yeah. - And that actually brings up a great topic, just talking about that, is starting to duplicate the leadership developing team on that side. What kind of insights around, 'cause obviously you know your performance, and your improvement in putting things in place, and work ethic and everything, was that looked like starting to bring on team members and to develop them and try to instill that within team? - Well, I'm a time of person that I do like to have a lot of control in the things that I'm doing and building, and the hard part about that is when I'm bringing on a team I can control their actions. If I want to build a great culture, I want people to love what they do, and I want people to be accountable for the goals that they're setting, right? If they're setting goals, then they have to be the ones that are gonna live with them not hitting it, right? So I know if I'm gonna build a great culture and a great organization, then I have to be their ultimate cheerleader and a great mentor to them. I'm not a boss, they're not my employees. I'm going to treat them as humans, and as people that really are gonna be okay with what they want to do, right? I've found somebody else that's gonna do what I do, right? Or even is putting in that activity to get there, but it does take a special person to be able to sit there all day and sit at the desk and literally kill yourself. It does take a special person. So most people are okay with, hey, 10, 15 grand a month, that's a great salary. That's a phenomenal salary. So I think that's been a challenge for me, is just being okay with people just doing less, 'cause I can sit here and write 30k, left the back of my hand like in one day if I wanted to. So that's hard, but I have to want what people want, and whatever makes them happy is gonna be, what our culture's gonna stand for, and that's ultimately how we're able to retain agents, which you've been doing. We've retained, geez, we don't really have a lot of turnover rate. We keep agents, and that can be a lot of factors, but just understanding how people function, found they function better when they're happy. Any kind of analogies or correlations between obviously basketball team sport, and working with teams throughout that, between the team side of sports, and developing out, running, and being integrated with the team. - Sure. - And then it's inside. - Yeah, obviously, well, we've done, we've done a couple things. We've done a personality test. That's been great, because ultimately, people aren't gonna wanna be coach, I like to be coached. People are gonna wanna be coached differently. So as being a coach, is what I am, I have to figure out how people operate. So that's number one, so we've done a lot of personality tests. Every new person that comes in, they're doing a personality test. I have to figure out how I'm gonna work with them. - Which one do you like? - Whatever the one you do, 'cause the 16 steps, ENFJ, you get all those-- - Fire bricks? - Yeah, there you go, my own bricks. Yeah, I have another name. It's my assistant just kind of find some stuff that I have ideas for, and she just puts it in the play. And then I can just read it and see it, okay? So that helps. So I'll get the Myers rig, that's helpful. And second of all, okay, I've coached basketball for him. It was a basketball trainer. People aren't gonna be motivated by me yelling at them. There's a lot of coaches out there that just yell, right? I'm not gonna perform great. I'll be yelled at all the time. Might be sometimes, I might need to kick in the pants. But most of the time, I'm not gonna be perform great in yelled at. So if I play the debaskable, people are gonna be motivated by different things. They might be motivated by a different motivational speaker. They might be motivated by someone else said something differently even though it's a saying the same thing, they just said a different way. They might be motivated by leaderboards. They might be motivated by their goals and being accountable for something. They might be motivated by accountability partner, which is what we institute as well. Everyone has an accountability partner. So they're designed to check in with them three, four times a day and make sure they're doing okay and make sure they're trying to follow their goals. So it really boils down to wanting to be being coached differently and understanding that if people are going to be coached differently, then you have to institute different systems to be able to help them succeed at that level. And when I'm going to be like me, but I didn't need an accountability partner. I didn't really need to be yelled at because I always try to be the best. Some people need that, some people don't. It's just different personalities and need different things. So understand that as an organization and helping people grow. That way has, you know, this month we had a record, or this week we had a record week, we did six thousand outside of myself. So we're on pace for a month to do around 400,000, which would be our largest month ever as agency. And that's kind of one year. And so, yeah, we're doing great. So anyway, there's a little insights. - So your coaching style is in, who's the guy throwing the chairs? It was John Wooden. - Bobby Knight. - Bobby Knight, yes, yeah, not Bobby Knight style. Probably, yeah. (laughing) - Which, I mean basketball coach, perfect study 'cause there's a lot of different interested in Bobby Knight coach K and all kinds of, all kinds of the coach that they're Phil Jackson or ever. - Yeah, yeah. - So, okay. And what do you find is the key to helping those agents get to their first wins quickly? And I say that because typically you've seen like the very first wins agents get policy, money hitting bank balances. Maybe that belief for that key that you're going forward. - Sure, yeah, obviously there you've mentioned is, like, how do we get people selling fastest, right? And it's ultimately having a new computer system. And that's a part of any great business. Why is people buy iPhones? Well, they have a great product. Things are going to work. It's really nice. It's affordable to some people. And ultimately, they keep building a better, better iPhone each year, right? So you first of all have to build a system that works that's duplicatable, right? And when you find a new computer system, your team's ultimately going to succeed at a high level. And then from that system, you just build out a making better. So that could be the leads. It could be how we coach. That could be the processes that could be, how quick we get in with someone, live dialing. That could be sitting on appointments with them. That could be a lot of different things. It just depends on what that person needs and what they feel comfortable with. But ultimately, you have to have a duplicatable system. Then it's like the same thing. You build asterisks underneath it or one, two, threes. And then you grow it and depend on what works on that person, but you have to start with the system first. - I love that. And talking about systems and transitions optimization with everything too, you know, you, I would assume correct me if I'm wrong. Like initially off the bat, we're doing more of like more protection type policies and that's some fight issue like you mentioned. And I've made this transition to advanced markets and doing more and more on that side. Can you talk to me a little bit through that transition with that look like? How is, you know, kind of how you decided to make that move? - Yeah, of course. And doing over 1300 applications my first year and you know, 1.34 million, man, that's exhausting, right? You can't keep doing that, right? And I felt that there's a more protection life insurance people are there's a different type of personalities there. So you're gonna come across some crazy people and they'd ultimately they're just gonna hit you on a day where you're not feeling it and that's gonna make you, that might make you snap a little bit and you can't do it. So I'm like, man, I gotta get out of this thing. So I still do it, I still do it, obviously. I'm doing it at a much lower level but I transition to advanced markets 'cause I'm like, okay, so if I applied the same work ethic and then from there I sold the same amount of policies, that means I essentially quadrupled potentially even five X my income. And I'm like, so if I'm making 80 grand a month, but then I added advanced markets and there is like, is that I make 400 grand a month? Okay, so you're sure that that made sense to me, right? But I just didn't understand how to correlate it and help it make sense in my brain. So I just had to find someone that knew what they were doing and they just taught me how to do it. And it took me a little bit, it took me almost like over like week two weeks, three weeks. But when I started doing it over and over again, saw how worked like really understand the process, that started to change. So I think that goes back to the principle I mentioned earlier is like not only like, what is the aspect of being the best version of yourself? Constantly growing, constantly self-developing, constantly learning, working out, right? There's all these things that funnel underneath it. It's the same thing in interest. Why are you okay being stagnant with where you're at? Right? Why are you okay with your agency only doing average numbers? Why are you okay with you doing average numbers? 'Cause guess what, how good of a leader you are is ultimately gonna determine how big your agency is gonna be. Your story is going to determine how big your agency will be. Who you're under will determine how big your agency potentially will be if you have the right mentor. So that's what I realized and I knew if I was gonna take my agency to the next level, I had learned advanced markets. 'Cause in the beginning, how many people need three main solutions? I think in how you well, right? Essentially, kind of like a 401k with a death method. Getting out of debt, which will be due, most commenting in America. And then obviously you have lastly, there's a lot of people that are, you're speaking to a mortgage protection that are 59, 58, heading to 60, they need a row over into something that's tax-free. So when I started learning those things, started making the same, more money, but doing the same activity or even less activity and still make more money. So I knew that was key for developing my agency and not only helping my agency make more money too, 'cause I've had agents come on board where I'm teaching them these brand new markets and they're making 15 grand a month easy, just because I'm teaching them how to exercise their warm market or even their leads that they have to help them find a better solution for them. And that's ultimately helped them make more money and then obviously that's gonna increase stick rate, right? That's gonna make their agents say longer. Now they're gonna be able to teach that to their agents, right? So it just kind of follows down if you just learn a new skill. - And it's nice, especially like an annuity where like in a single sale, it can do some people's yearly income off of the single sale, right there and ultimately helping the client of the day as well. - Of course, yeah. That's a key, that's another good point to hit on. I don't know, we don't talk for that, but like a lot of people just kind of come at this business thinking about the money they're gonna make, but if they don't put the client first, they're never gonna make the money, they wanna make anyways. - Right. - You have to put the client first. If you don't then it's gonna come back to buy you, it might be a charge back, my kids suit, you, the policy will cancel anyways. - Right, so, you know, get your gun out. - Yeah, and I think that's important 'cause even though you highlighted, you came in to very quickly work towards these goals and leader boards and needing to make income levels happen. For you, it wasn't a vision of a short-term game of how quickly can I make some money in the first few months. You know, it's a business that you're building, right? And you talk about our entrepreneurship from the time you were 15 and when we have some more time, we can dive into some more things, right? But it's a long term and the more you view it that way, the more you actually end up building it, something gets sticky, right? That's a lot of ages come in and out. That's not, you don't win, get anything sustainable in the day, right? So one last question is what kind of rapid for day and we'll look forward to future conversations for sure. But, you know, what's next for you? What's the next mountain you're climbing? You've moved in Vance Markets, what's the next mountain? - Sure, man. So obviously, move in Vance Markets, growing an agency very large when I have one of the, you know, ever-preach that I know is on your call a couple weeks ago. Obviously, one of my mentors. I'm underneath this agency, so I can't be bigger than his, but I guess the goal would be to, you know, have like, and John, what more is agencies, obviously very large. So the goal would be, you know, to have a, you know, three, four hundred million dollar agency over the next couple of years. I'm a very fast this year. We're gonna have about a pretty close to four million dollar agency. And then, you know, for the next year, we double it. All right, so that would be the goal. So the goal is just to grow insurance is large-spotsal, but I know here I'm a service by calling me to do something different. I'm always gonna do insurance, but what I mean by that is like, I don't know, I am religious, so I believe God. And God's calling me to do something different. I don't know what it is, but, you know, I wanna change the world, impact the world. I know that's my calling. Right now, trying to blow up social media as much as I can impact through social media, the way to connect with the younger generation, but our current generation. And I think if we can change the world and, and ultimately change the industry, and one industry at a time, ultimately, end up changing people, which ultimately have changed their industries, which ultimately impacts the world for a better place. And I think that's part of my mission. I love that. And in the future, wanna explore that further on what that impact may be, building this big business and making changes to lives and insurbs lives through that, but maybe there is from a nonprofit side or a certain, like, certain areas you particularly are passionate about seeing some additional impacts up there too. So I do look forward to exploring that more. But thank you so much for coming on and joining us for those that, hey, I wanna connect, I wanna follow you, just mention social. Where's the best place that they can connect with you? Go ahead and follow the insurance athlete on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. I post daily content. I haven't posted any today, but I post daily content and I post around two to three videos a day and I post everything all of things from insurance, some motivation for sales tips, sports. So I do all the things on my channels. I mean, you're going to be getting pieces of content out of this today. So I feel like you're creating some content pieces out of this, right? So I love it. Well, thank you Dylan so much for the time. I really, really appreciate it. Thank you for everybody for catching us on this episode of Modern Shirts agent podcast. We'll catch you guys on the next one.