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Stay Paid Podcast
"The Sky Is NOT Falling" | Why Medicare Agents Should Stay Bullish Right Now
00:42:22
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- [00:00]
A
Foreign. Sales and marketing podcast on a mission to help you close more deals, keep more clients, and build the life of freedom you're working towards. That can only happen if you take action Today. My name is Josh Dyke, Chief Marketing officer at Reminder Media, joined as always by Luke Acrey, president of Reminder Media. And our guest today is Christian Brindle. Christian is the founder of Everything Senior Insurance and a nationally recognized expert in senior insurance solutions. As the co owner of Lead Heroes, Higher Heroes, Seven Figure CRM and the Seven Figure Medicare Agent Summit, he has made significant contributions to the industry by educating clients on their Medicare options. Christian, welcome to Stay Paid, guys.
- [00:46]
B
Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure and honor. I love everything you guys are doing and I'm excited to be here.
- [00:52]
C
Yeah, man, it's awesome to have you on the show. Respect what you're doing. Also, you have your summit coming up. It's literally two weeks away and we're happy to be at your summit. It's something we've gone to many years. You throw an incredible event coaching Medicare agents and in the insurance space, how to be successful. So I want to pick your brain on that. But I would love to start with, like, the industry feels like it's in, you know, a little bit of turmoil. I hear a lot of doom and gloom coming from a lot of people because, you know, at least in the, you know, Medicare side, like commissions, you know, people are complaining that carriers aren't paying. So you have that change, you have technology changing, you have this legislation change, you have all this stuff coming at the industry. If maybe I would love to hear your thoughts from two perspectives. One is how is how should an agent control their mindset and keep going in this when everything's in flux? And then what's your kind of view on the industry moving forward? Is it totally going to change in agents or maybe the agent population is going to shrink? So two big loaded questions there.
- [01:54]
B
Yeah, yeah, definitely loaded questions, but necessary ones. So I love it starting off, I guess, from the agent perspective, right? Like, what does the agent need to be thinking about? And to me, I think from that side of things, what it comes down to is what I would ask any agent out there that's in the Medicare space, I'd ask them this. I'd say do you feel like the vehicle is still a vehicle that can take you where you want to go? Do you think it's the right vehicle for you still? And if the answer to that question is no, I would ask you to really kind of pay attention to some of the things that we're going to talk about in this podcast today, because I do feel like if you look at the trajectory of the Medicare space, it has been one that's been really filled with disruption and change. That's not necessarily a new thing. There's been plenty of shifts. If you go back in history in the Medicare space, right, you go back into the 90s, there's been shifts, you go into 2005, 06, when Medicare Part D came into the fray, you have shifts, you go in the under 65 market, which kind of goes hand in hand with Medicare. In 2010, Obamacare comes into the fray. ACA goes through a major, major change in the under 65 market. So we've seen shifts like this before. I think the reason why there's so
- [03:19]
C
much,
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B
I guess, peril in the feeling of a lot of agents right now is it's been kind of an avalanche of things happening all at once. Right to your point, Luke, AI coming into the fray. Right. And that kind of being this looming thing about like, will this be able to replace agents? I think every industry is probably asking themselves that question right now. I don't think it's necessarily unique to us. But then in addition to that, you've had legislation that's passed over the past five years or so that's impacted our plan structure hugely. And then you've had CMS really passing a lot of additional rules and regulations over the past five years or so that has caused agents to feel squeezed. So I think they're feeling it from all directions. But the question I would ask all the agents is, do you feel like it's the right vehicle? And hopefully, I think by the end of this conversation, I can convince you that it still is, because I 100 believe that it is. I'm very, I'm very bullish still.
- [04:18]
C
Are you seeing, like, with AI in particular, and you think of your agents, right? Are you guys seeing actual tangible efficiency gains? Because everybody, you know, everybody likes to talk AI and, and I'm a huge believer. Josh knows, I think the robots are going to take over eventually. But, you know, are you actually seeing tangible use cases where it is being used for either quoting or paperwork or some of the prospecting on little things? Okay.
- [04:51]
B
You know, like, I'm not seeing it to where it's, you know, I look at it right now and what we have today from the AI perspective as super automation.
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C
Okay.
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B
Like, I look at it like it's in the same family of what we had in 2019 and 2020 and 2021 from an automation perspective. Right. But it's, it's the next step above that. I think that's a lot of what we have today, right. With chatbots, with, you know, AI agents, with AI callers like it, it's, it's. I've seen scenarios where it's been able to kind of help with those types of things. Right. But it's an assistance to an agent or agency that's smart, that's figuring out how to use them not to their detriment or not to their, like, extinction. I think where agents are really kind of fearful when it comes to AI is that looming presence of, of AGI. Right. Like so. And I know that's something that we'll probably get into. I was reading an article about that and said we could see it as soon as, like the, the, I guess the emphasis of it. We could see that as soon as 2028, it could take as long as 2040. You know, a lot of people think
- [05:59]
C
2030 is the year of singularity.
- [06:02]
B
Yeah.
- [06:03]
C
Then some are arguing that we're already there. I'll tell you a tangible use case that I have seen. Like, I was literally coaching an agent this morning on a coaching call and I said, hey, if you have Claude, you know, you can do this with cowork, but go to Google and use Chrome, download the CLAUDE extension and now go to your CRM. And we were talking about contacting their sphere and they keep failing their. Their goal Is to hit 25 personal messages a week with their sphere. And we just went, we were trying to do phone call and we just went to doing a text because they couldn't get any of the phone calls. It's like, let's make this easier to just accomplish something. And they struggled to do a 25. I said, what we really need, what we're missing is, you know, you have the, know how you have the skill to make the text, but you're just not doing it. So you're not prompted properly. And it's not, you haven't built an operational system that helps you to do it. So get your CLAUDE and on the Chrome extension, then go to your CRM and say, hey, go to my database here and pick out for me 25 people and give me their phone number and email and a bullet point about them that I could send a text message to and give me five of those each day. And it's like, go do that with your Claude Chrome extension. Right. Just type it in, have it do that. You can do that and then you can make that into like a task or a, you know, the skill, this task that does every day at 7am and it emails it to you and then it checks in maybe and sends you a text. Those are the use cases that I've seen, which is kind of on your point of like super automation. Over the weekend I had it take on the role of a social media expert and audit my Instagram. It was brutal to me, dude, I suck at Instagram based upon this person's, this person, this clock bot take on my Instagram. But it was super powerful because it said, Luke, you're not taking advantage of highlights on Instagram. And I was like, yeah, you're right, I used to have them, but I don't really have them anymore. And it went, I said, well, can you help me create the highlights? It went and said I can't create the highlights for you because you have to do it from your stories and stuff like that. But I'll go through your whole feed and I'll pick out for you the best posts that you have done to put in your highlights for each of the categories, like a product highlight, a testimonial highlight, stuff like that. So like that's the use cases I'm seeing, which it's not revolutionary. It's not like I'm gonna lose my job tomorrow, but it's like I would never do that because I just don't have the time nor the expertise. And now Claude is helping me do that.
- [08:21]
B
Yeah, yeah. 100 like one of the biggest things that I'm seeing like today, right? If you go book, if you go beyond, you know, asking, you know, I think, I think for one agents have gone away from googling things. I think this is society in general and now AI is the search engine, right? Like whatever your AI of choice is, whatever your LLM of choices, whether it's chat, GPT, Claude, Gemini, any of these. But what I think has been one of the biggest transformational things that I've seen broadly, right? And there's people that are doing AI callers, we're doing some stuff with that right now, kind of experimenting it against like our callers at lead heroes and things like that. But I think one of the lowest hanging fruit things that I see today that is impacting the agent's life just from a low hanging fruit perspective is when I got into the space and probably as recently as like 2020, even during COVID like there were agents paying services to build them out large multi page content websites for their agency and they're paying top dollar for these websites. They're paying 10 grand, 15 grand for these websites to be spun up. And now there's more agents than ever that are using AI to code their websites, and they're putting that code into the website builder, and boom, you have the website. You don't like it, you prompt some changes, right? You don't like the, the layout. You don't like the color scheme. You don't like this page of content. This is inaccurate. You go in and manually edit it. Something like that. But like, what. What would take them oftentimes weeks to get back and a huge amount of money is now taking them like half a day to spin up on their own. And everybody, everybody can do that, right? So, like, that type of stuff, to me, like, it's interesting to think about that. Like, I was reading an article about Meta in the last week or so, like that Meta is having a lot of their coding engineers train AI on how to do their job and then firing them. It's just like, you know, if, like, when you, when you think about that type of thing, like website builders, coders and everything like that, like, Luke, when you and I were growing up, we were always told that, like, a bulletproof industry to go into and the skill to learn that, like, is. Is so, you know, valuable in society is coding, learning how to code as a degree.
- [10:47]
C
Because I was told. Did you really? Yeah, I was a software engineer. I did software engineering for a couple years. Yeah, I literally did coding and computer science because it was the most lucrative opportunity. And, you know, it's just. I didn't know any better. I wanted to be a musician, and that didn't work out because you actually have to be good. And I went into software engineering. But, yeah, now that's the first to be, I don't want to say replaced, but it's different now. All. All software engineers are now becoming architects. They're becoming security infrastructure layers. Because the coding is done by the AI now.
- [11:22]
B
Yeah. Yeah. 100. So, like, that's just like a small example of things that, like, I think is such an easy thing. And I. And I'm seeing agents do it all the time, but there's still agents that don't know how to do it. Like, I ran into an agent recently that, like, they just spent like upwards of eight grand on a website. I'm like, why? And I look at it, it's not even that good. Yeah, you know, I'm like, well, I'm like.
- [11:44]
C
And it's probably not 25 bucks a
- [11:45]
A
month you can have Replit.
- [11:47]
C
Well, Josh, aren't we about to launch like explain our website, Josh is. Aren't you guys about to relaunch our whole website? It's been totally redesigned by AI with SEO friendly, all that stuff.
- [11:56]
A
Yeah, we use Replit a lot. And so we, our marketing director rebuilt our entire website with AI and he actually spent a couple nights last week putting in Jarvis, which is literally a voice assisted assistant that will like you log into the platform to the dashboard in the back end and it literally goes, hello Josh, how can I help you? What do you need to know? And you go, oh, which pages are converting the best? Iron man filing pages are converting the best. Which blog posts are bringing the most traffic. And it just will literally talk back and forth with you on how your website is performing, what's getting you the results that you want, versus in the past having to go through Google Analytics, having to pull all of these other, you know, whether it's hrefs or looking at these other sites that are telling you how your site is performing and it's just all 100% built in.
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C
That's so crazy. And that was like what, a week probably to, to two weeks of him building that. Where usually a website like this all
- [12:53]
A
together, I mean it's spanned out, you know, maybe a little bit longer than that, but it, because it kind of started as an idea and so you kind of poke at it a little bit and then once you kind of understand the vision, it has a blog writer in the back end that will literally out and look at the most relevant news in the industry and write a blog for you and then serve it up to you for you to review and make any changes or edits right there in this.
- [13:14]
C
What I loved about replit, I don't know Christian, if you've used Replit or not, but it's like, you know, this vibe coding just you. It's essentially like you can use Claude or something like or codex and open AI. I've never done it in Claude or OpenAI, so I can't speak to it. But what I loved about with the Replit is I literally gave it our site with remindermedia.com and said I want to build a speaking page for Luke Acre that, you know, basically takes these brand elements and uses it. And it, it did like within a few prompts I had a whole speaking site built. And then I said I need a place for reviews. I built out the review thing. I need a place for booking. Like if somebody wants to contact Me and booking me and stuff like that. And it was just like, I was just experimenting with it, but it literally took me 25 minutes, 30 minutes to build, like you were saying, a speaking site. Now, I'm curious because you mentioned voice. We tried SimpleTalk AI, which was a prospecting, like, call. It didn't work for us really at all. I think we had it call.
- [14:16]
B
Excuse me.
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C
We had it call, like a thousand leads, and a lead to us is somebody requesting an item of value. Maybe it's, you know, some ebook we've offered or sample on our website. We had to call 1000, and I think it booked one appointment, maybe two appointments from the thousand. So it really didn't work. And we tried to refine it a bunch. It was just not there. Have you had any success in the insurance space, having a voice call to try to book appointments or.
- [14:42]
A
No.
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B
You know, I think where it's effective to me is it's. It's one of those things where usually when somebody's calling out to leads, at least the way that we've always done it, is like we try to direct them to a specific phone line, right. Because we don't want to use our main lines or our important lines or anything like that. Right. It's like we'll get them run into the ground, right? Spam, likely, all that fun stuff. So we got to keep those lines separate. What's nice about it to me is, like, if somebody's on the phone or not, somebody can answer the phone and lead calls back. The AI can instantly answer the phone. That's been nice, but in terms of our actual effectiveness of it, like. But the, The. The thing that's, like, nice. The thing that we've seen so far in the early tests of it is so far what we found is our callers can get a better cost per booking an appointment than the actual AI can. What. What I'm wondering is if we continue to revamp it and as the technology improves. Right. Because the technology is advancing around the clock, you know, like, you know, every couple of months, it's probably much more advanced than it was even a couple months prior to.
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C
Yeah.
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B
What I'm wondering is if we keep working with it, if that ends up. If that. If that pendulum starts to swing the other way, but as of right now, our callers are more cost effective. But what I'm wondering is three years from now or even two years from now, does that pendulum swing the other way? And so, like, we're just kind of dabbling in it right now. To see if it's something that can be something that kind of grows into things for us. But the early testing of it is, we found kind of similar results. But there's some things about it that I like and I, I think that it's just going to keep getting better and I think it'll get to the point. And there's some services I've seen right now and some AI callers I've seen right now from others, not ours, but like I've seen from others that like, unless it told you it was an AI, it's very difficult to tell that it actually is. There's some out there that are really, really good today. And so it's, it's interesting. I think that technology is going to continue to advance. I think a lot of it right now is like, it's very clear, it's blatant, it gives it away very easily. A lot of times they have to disclose it too. I mean, but does the caller always paying attention to that? Maybe not so much, you know, but if it's just, if it comes across as AI slop in your ear over the phone, it's not going to be effective, I think at all. But I think as we go, I'm curious to see how the technology advances to where it's more, it's, it comes across more realistic, I guess.
- [17:20]
C
So like I thought they were saying this is the year of voice, but more and more people are saying this is really the year of text because it has really gotten down text like, you know, yes. And stuff like that. It's not, you know, voice maybe will be next year or the year or after. You have such an incredible conference right in this seven figure Medicare agent summit. And it obviously you're always trying to help agents go to seven figures and beyond. I'm curious, what do you see is working? You know, I love marketing and sales. What is working right now in your mind? Producing leads for agents. And that always is the name of the game. How do I actually produce business? What do you see is working out there?
- [18:06]
B
Yeah, I mean I think, I think anything that you can do that books an appointment instead of books a lead for you to call. And what I, and what I mean by that is I think the days of booking leads is shrinking right to where the agent calls 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 times. You know, like they're trying to get them back on the phone, they're trying to reach that person. I think that part of it is kind of shrinking. So what we've really been focused on is like how can we focus on having an appointment booked automatically through, through a say through a marketing process and to even into even more so. Right. Like there's so much focus being put right now in our space on inbound calls, you know, like inbound, inbound calls and things like that. But what we found is a lot of the ones that are doing it, it's lower intent, you know, they're calling in for like a real shiny benefit that very few people qualify for, like the grocery cards, you know, on the Medicare side and things like that. So, so like the intent isn't always there for us. What we found that our bang is the most bang for our buck and all the different types of marketing that we do. Like we do a lot of pre scheduled appointments for our agents, we do a lot of turning 65 in person seminars. What we found is our best kind of model right now is running digital ads. Maybe it's on Meta, maybe it's on Google, something like that. And generating an opt in for the, the best cost we possibly can and then having one of our callers from our call center at Lead Heroes call out to that lead, verbally vet them and confirm their interest. And then you know, for if it's an in person seminar, confirming a verbal RSVP and if it's a pre scheduled appointment, scheduling that appointment on the agent's calendar and when we've gone through that on what I call double verification process. Right, because they opted in. Yeah, but the intent might not be as high. But if they opted in online on the digital form and then they verbally opt into one of our callers, they've opted in twice, two different ways in a short period of time. And the intent is usually very, very good. We typically find, unlike the seminars, for example, if somebody goes through that process and they do both opt ins, we probably have upwards of an 85 chance they're going to show up to the seminar. It's a very high percentage. And so that's what we're really focused on right now. And that seems to be really working. But we, we have so many agents that we work with in different capacities. You know, we have 850 agents on our, in our FMO side of the business now. And I think aside from that, what I'm seeing that's working is, you know, I think T65 seminars are really, really making a comeback. I think people are yearning for in person, real authentic interaction.
- [21:08]
C
Do you think that's because of trust? Meaning, like it's driven because there's so much noise we call it in marketing and that like the, in person, it's like even though you actually might get not as good of content honestly as maybe for a video, like they could watch a video from you or go see the average Joe agent at the local library, your content might be better, but inherently there's more trust at the in person level. Is that, that's where my gut goes with that. I don't know if you would agree.
- [21:39]
B
Yeah, I would, I would agree. I think that's a lot of what it is right now, especially for our demographic for seniors. They crave real and authentic and they crave trust. And I feel like now with so many people trying to utilize AI and everything that they're doing from their content to their marketing, everything is starting to kind of look the same. Not for everybody. Some people are doing it really well and you can kind of, you know, there's a uniqueness to it. But like if 10 people use Chat GPT for example, to create a week's worth of LinkedIn posts or Facebook posts or ad copies or anything like that, right. And they're not going through with a fine tooth comb and cleaning up some of the, the quirkiness of it, of what it spits out, it's all going to look pretty much the same. Right. It has a format that it follows. Like, even if it's doing it in your voice, right. You can tell it where it came from. I'm, I'm scrolling on social media all the time and like I can pretty much tell with, with quite a bit of certainty. Sometimes there's things where like it's pretty close or I'm like, oh, I'm like, this one's pretty good. It could be, but I'm not so sure. But I'm fascinated by that aspect of it because I think anytime you have a new technology, the masses use it badly and there's a few people using it well.
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C
Yep.
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B
But the masses are using it badly. And so I think from a senior perspective they, they crave real, they crave real life interaction. And it's becoming less and less common for them to experience in anything they deal with. Right. Everything is transactional for them. Everything is automated, nothing feels personal. And I think there's an attractiveness on going somewhere, talking to somebody, looking them in the eyes, hearing from somebody in person. You know, it's real. Right. And I think that's a lot of where it comes from. But we've seen a lot of, of booming in that right now. Funny enough, it's almost like, it's almost like, you know, yinging when everyone's yanging in a way. But, but that's, that's been very effective. Some of our best agents and agencies, you know, are proficient at running Facebook ads. Facebook. Facebook ads. You know, it's funny, I saw an agent the other day in my Facebook group and he's like, he's like, he's like, well, the algorithm sucks now and I don't run them anymore. I'm like, it's amazing.
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C
It's great.
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B
It's amazing. Like, what are you saying? Like, you know, we have, we have amazing results with it right now. And I think it's because platforms like that go through algorithm changes and updates and people don't update themselves to the changes and they just think it's not good anymore. But it's better than I think it's ever been right now in a long time anyway. Maybe not than it's ever been, but in a long time. And so, you know, I think the digital marketing is really working really well right now. I think the T65 seminars for that reason is working. And I think agents building a real genuine brand is, is really, really working in a big way because I think in our world, seniors are craving, like I said, real, real trust, real interaction, real, real, real per person that they can get behind and believe in. And so those are the things that I've seen that like our best agents are doing really well and then, and that we're having a lot of success with internally.
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A
What are you seeing in terms of like, is Facebook one of the largest kind of lead sources from that perspective? What are you seeing, like cost per lead sort of metrics?
- [25:12]
B
Yeah, I, I think, I think it's definitely possible in our, to get a really, really low cost per lead on Facebook. Like it could be a 2, 3, $4 cost per lead. And now, now the problem with that is when you're doing that, I can almost 100% certainty tell you that you're doing the low intent types of marketing. Like we talked about the grocery card stuff, for example, right? Like if I threw up a grocery card ad right now, now technically you're supposed to get that approved by cms. Not everybody's doing that, you guys. Yeah, right, right. Shock, right? No smid code on that ad. But it's, it's, it's, it's clickbaity type of ads. And so it, and it's so easy for someone to fill out a form, right? Like if you're just running it on A Facebook form, you're not sending it to a landing page. Like, it's, it's very easy to pre populate your information, right? So like, you don't even have to click it in. Sometimes people are like, did I send that out? Did I send, Did I click that? I don't remember. So you can get the, the CPL really low. But what we try to focus on is more of a, a balance between, we want a good CPL. Like if I can get between an 8 to 10 to 15 CPL, depending on what we're trying to do, I'm very happy with that. If our intent is better. Right? Like, because I'm, I'm focused on the overall balance of I don't want to pay some crazy cpl. Right. That's the other extreme. But I also want good intent from the lead. Like, I want like a real genuine prospect like you, you, you got, you guys know, on the marketing side, right? Like, it's not always about cpl. And so there are people that are running ads right now that they're getting these low, extremely low CPLs. But I would question, like, what is your CPA on those and what is your time invested to push those over the finish line? I would argue it's pro. The juice probably isn't worth the squeeze.
- [27:10]
A
Yeah. And it's crazy. We started putting phone verification on our ads because the instant forms, they are so easy to fill out. And yeah, it was like crazy people. We didn't really see a, an increase in the cost per lead, but we saw an increase in obviously, like the contact rate on those leads because they literally get a code on their phone. They have to type the code in to verify their phone number. And I think more and more people are taking action on things that they actually want to see. They've, they've gone through so many of those. Oh, I didn't mean to fill that out. And, and so now they, they're becoming a little bit more intentional. And then if you add in your ability to market a little bit more intentionally, you have that much better chance of actually getting people that you know that want to speak to you or are actually looking for your service. Have you tried chat GPT ads yet? I'm curious. We just started messing around with that.
- [27:59]
B
Not yet.
- [28:00]
A
Okay.
- [28:01]
B
I, I talked to somebody over the weekend actually, that said that they were starting to, to dabble at it. And I'm like, I'm like, ooh, I'm so curious. I'm like, let me know how it goes.
- [28:08]
A
Like, it's very cool. All context based. So like, you don't pick your audience, you don't pick your. I mean, you pick your geography from that standpoint. But you, you just literally say, I want to reach people who are asking about X or having conversations with their AI about Y. And you just put as much context in as you can. And I can't tell if we've. Because when I first set it up, I didn't set it to a good landing page. We were running our Memorial Day sale, so I was literally sending people to a checkout page, which I know is not the best option, but I wanted to get something running quick. So we. Our account approved and I'm like within the first week we had 30 to 40 clicks, you know, through to our, our page and everything. And, and impressions were like great. And we focused on people talking to their AI about getting referrals for their business or sending something of value to their past clients. And super impressed with the early results. But still, still very early.
- [29:04]
C
What you said, Christian, with the brand and authenticity and stuff, what we're seeing and not just us, like a lot of people out there are talking about it is like the more organic your ads feel like, you know, Alex Rosi is preaching big right now, basically doing organic piece of content. And if it hits Gary Vaynerchuk same way hits, run that as an ad. Because I think the consumer has gotten so desensitized to the funnel that it's almost like you take a piece of content like this and you just clip it up, which is real, just organic content and you run that as an ad. And this is why like our marketing director sent us a whole list like green screens, walking videos, where you're walking as a talking head, just talking to the camera. Those are like hitting.
- [29:54]
A
Going live every week now on Fridays just to clip up as organic content and run those with our ads.
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C
Yeah, yeah, that's actually a great tip for the agents listening to this. Go live. Just speak about whatever product service, you know, thing you know, you want to talk about and then clip that with using AI or whatever it was like
- [30:11]
A
opus clip or Descript or something like that. It just makes magic, you know, magic clips for you.
- [30:18]
C
We, we do.
- [30:19]
B
We. I mean that's, that's been a huge win for us as well because we, we do our live show three days a week and we'll take clips all the time that end up running as ad creatives, you know, for various things and like little, you know, 22nd, 32nd clips of us talking about something that we're promoting. So like that, that, that, that's a huge win for sure and it's low hanging fruit. Like you're, you're, you're capitalizing to me on the organic side with your content and you're also capitalizing on not having to recreate a creative for an actual ad. And you have it right there, you know, and it's, it's, it's, it's getting the, the best of both worlds I think when you do that.
- [30:59]
C
We got a couple rapid fire questions for you. Yes. Your take on one is what book would you recommend right now to agents? It doesn't have to be a book. Could be a YouTube, you know, podcast or something like that. But what piece of content, book, podcast would you recommend?
- [31:18]
B
Man, I'm gonna go with the book because I love books. I love podcasts too, but I think a very timely book and most agents have probably read it, but I'd go read it again if you're afraid of what's going on right now in this space. Like one thing I didn't really answer, and I'll answer this super quickly, rapid fire along with the book is, you know, you, you had asked Luke, you know, about, about like the future of the industry. My opinion on the industry for the Medicare market right now is we're going through a trans transition. You know, when, when carriers are making plans non commissionable, it's part of a much larger chess game than the average agent can probably understand. Right. They have limited windows of time that they can phase out plans. They can only phase out so many plans that are built for the old models. And there's some legislation that's completely changed what's profitable for them on what they're able to offer on a build out of a plan without boring, you know, your audience with the details. If you don't do Medicare like where it really has been predicted to be a three to five year transition period to where, you know, carriers put out plans, they try to analyze how much business they're actually going to get on that plan and they probably guess wrong or they, you know, they predict wrong. So they're getting too much business. The rate, the margins are much thinner than they were anticipating. So they almost use these non commissionable plans as levers to, to, to turn the flow of business on and off when they don't want it. And that's what it's been weaponized as. It's not so much that the carriers are trying to save money on. Paying US carriers get a thousand dollars a month on average per member on Medicare Advantage plans, they pay agents about 25 of that. Like, you think they're really trying to save our $25 a month? I mean, it's a much bigger game than what agents understand. The plans are changing the way they're, they're, they're structured and it'll come out the other side. I really do believe that we're already kind of seeing it a little bit. This year has not been nearly as disruptive as the last two. You know, at this point in the year, six months in. But anyway, I say all that to say most agents have probably read this book already, but they should go back and read it again. And it's who moved my cheese? Because you need to change the way you're doing business. To me, the bigger threat to the agent is, is an agency that's using AI and all the new tech that's coming out right now, they're going to do laps around you. I don't think you have as much fear or should have as much fear on not being able to sell any commissionable plans or anything like that. We're just going through a shift with that. It'll, it'll turn back around. I have full faith in that. I'm not worried about that in the slightest. I'm much more worried about competitors that are using AI in a really efficient and smart way. Going up against the guy that is still doing paper apps and sitting at the kitchen table and using the fax machine. Like, that guy is dead in the next five years. Like, he cannot exist. In my opinion, maybe he can on a really small scale. Like, maybe he has a group of clients that have always worked with him and things like that. But like a new agent getting into the business, you really need to build your business in a very modern way in an, in an unmodern and sometimes behind the trend industry. So I think, who moved my cheese? Long answer, but that's probably what I'd recommend right now.
- [34:56]
C
Super well said too, because if you think of AI, just like the hardest part is we all want to adopt AI into what do we currently do. And it's like, that's not who's going to disrupt. The person who's going to disrupt is the person who comes along and doesn't try to do it at all like we're currently doing. It's like, you know, you had Walmart, the retail store, and then Amazon comes along and just boom. It's a totally different model of all retail online. And so, you know, I Think it's super well said for people to think it's like we. I listen to Moonshots. Wtf? Moonshots, which is a great, like futuristic AI type driven podcast. And they talk about how you got to create your digital twin, which is essentially if you can, which most solopreneurs can't do this, but if you can create a company that is meant to disrupt your company on the totally outside your company. So you would create a digital twin of reminder media and say you people go create the AI version that is better than what we do. Imagine what you can do and have it totally separate so you're not locked into the echo chambers, processing workflows, logistics of reminder media. Today you are literally just free flow to create a better product for the consumer. Second question for you. What's the number one thing you hate about insurance agents?
- [36:17]
B
That's a great question. The number one thing I hate about insurance agents is anytime something changes, the sky is falling and there's panic. It drives me crazy, you know, and, and it's not the first time I've seen it and it's not the last time we'll see it. Anytime there is any type of change, there is, there is running around screaming that the sky is falling. Happening, it's happening. You're hearing so much of that right now, and it's so loud because there's so many things coming at agents all at once. To be fair, there definitely is. But if you go back in time and you go back in history, there's always been the Chicken Littles screaming that the sky is falling. Anytime there's been an industry shift. And it's not that the sky is falling, it's that you need to adjust. But like, there's, there's a lot of agents out there that just, they're, they're very pessimistic, they're very negative. There's. They're just, they're just mopey. And I don't like mopey.
- [37:23]
C
It's one of the seven dwarfs, right? Mopey.
- [37:27]
B
My least favorite of the seven.
- [37:28]
C
Exactly. All right, last question for you, brother. Knowing what you know now, what would you go back and tell younger Christian? What advice would you give? Think of that high school kid, that college age kid. What advice would you give them?
- [37:42]
B
Yeah, I mean, you know, when I was in school, I wasn't a good student. It wasn't a priority for me, high school at all. Like, I did not care. I was the kid that was like, what's the point of all this? I was. I was just difficult. I was kind of a. In that way, you know, But I. I was the kid that was doing my homework five minutes before class in the hall, you know, like, over.
- [38:04]
C
Over a te.
- [38:05]
B
Yeah, yeah. But what I would tell myself is, because I remember coming out of high school and, you know, feeling like, you know, what am I going to do with my life? Is there a place for me in my life? I think for me, what I would tell myself is, number one,
- [38:29]
C
if you
- [38:29]
B
believe in yourself, it doesn't matter who doesn't believe in you. Number one. Number two, go bigger, faster. Think bigger from the get go. Because for me, when I first started, you know, and I think everybody goes through this a little bit, like, you have minimal goals at the beginning, you know, oh, I want to make six figures. Then you make six figures. You're like, okay, now what do I do? You know, like, and like, I had some. I had some mentors early on that didn't really. Didn't really challenge me. I remember talking to one of my mentors in my first couple of years, and I'm like, I want to make a million dollars a year by the time I'm 30. That was my big goal when I was like, 22. And I remember very vividly, they said, I don't think that's possible in our industry. And that for a couple of years, like, legitimately, like, discouraged me. I'm like, oh, I'm like, I'm in the wrong vehicle, you know, you don't know what you don't know. So what I would tell myself is there's limitless potential in what you're doing and where you're going. Go bigger, faster.
- [39:32]
A
That's awesome. Thank you. Christian, before we close out here, let people know how they can connect with you or where you want them to go.
- [39:39]
B
Yeah, anybody can connect with us on two places are probably the best. We have a YouTube channel that's just my name, Christian Brindle. We put out weekly videos, trainings, insights, industry information, everything like that. And then if you're a Medicare agent, we have a Facebook group called Seven Figure Medicare Agent. It has 12,000 or so agents in it right now. And it's daily conversations. You know, it's not a. It's not a Facebook group with one or two posts a week. It's 30 to 50 posts a day. It's a thriving community. So we'd love to have you inside of it if you're needing some community or a place to ask questions for free.
- [40:15]
A
Awesome. Love it. Thank you again. Thank you all so much for listening. You can get the links that Christian mentioned as well as the video in the show notes of this podcast over@staypaypodcast.com if you enjoyed this episode, I want to show your support. Head on over to YouTube. Make sure you're subscribed to the Reminder Media channel. Give this video a thumbs up if you want to get hold of me or Luke, email us podcastmindermedia.com or connect with us on Instagram. We are Aypaid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Josh Steich.
- [40:41]
C
Guys, I'm Luke Acrey. Christian, man, you are a beast. Thank you for coming on. Just a wealth of knowledge. Appreciate all that you give to the industry. I learn a ton from you. So keep going, brother. Keep putting stuff out there. My action item for everybody listening to this, right? So you heard so many golden nuggets. Go back and listen again. But do not be the Chicken Little. The sky is not falling. You have to get into action. And you heard it here from both of us is I would challenge you, something you could do pretty quickly this week and I'll give you two because kind of two different lanes here, but the consumer is thriving or craving authentic relationships like truly authentic relationships. And so I would challenge each of you. Can you reach out to a couple people in your sphere this week and make a phone call to them? Because we know 99% of people won't do that if you do that. You're going to be in the top 1% if you do that. And then number two is you heard it like Christian's doing it. We're doing it. Film a piece of organic, organic content and go put that on Facebook and boost that as an ad. Just a piece of organic content. Go. Take action on that. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers in every business. Stop. Producers take action. Take action on that today.