I know for a fact that content can change your life, just like it’s changed mine and so many others in this industry.

You may be skeptical, or think that your time is better spent on traditional prospecting methods. My goal with this episode is to change your mind.

The single biggest thing you can do right now to get to that next level in your career is to start making content.

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Video Transcript:

This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Hey, welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 298. Today we are talking about three reasons why content can change your life. Content is something most producers still ignore today. Most are not bought in that to the fact that content can actually be an effective part of a prospecting blueprint. But today I’m going to try to change your mind.

I’m going to share three real life case studies that prove that content can change your career. Heck, it can change your life. In this episode, you are going to learn how content can help you become an invaluable resource to your team and the market. Number two, you’re going to learn what content can do for you. When it comes to building credibility 24 seven how it can have you walking into rooms with prospects with more credibility than anybody else.

And most important, you’re going to learn how content can turn into inbound leads and actually have prospects reaching out to you, wanting to do business with you. All of that is career changing. It’s life changing if you ask me. The most important thing, though, is you have to be bought in. Are you willing to show up consistent? Lee every single week, even though results aren’t guaranteed?

Are you willing to be patient enough to let content do its thing? If so, this episode is for you because I am excited to share what content has done for my career, what it can do for yours. And I’m even going to share a couple real life examples of how it has changed our client’s life. So buckle up.

Tune in. Episode 298 is dedicated to content and what it’s going to do to change your life. Here we go. Hey hey, welcome back to Bullpen Sessions. All right, happy Friday. This is episode 298. It’s hard to believe we’re just a couple episodes away from 300. it’s been a hell of a five year ride, I think, so far.

starting this podcast, I can remember the first episode I ever, recorded. Didn’t quite know what I was going to do with the podcast, but here we are, three, almost 300 episodes later. So I hope you’re still getting a ton of value out of it. If you’ve been tuning in for quite some time, I want to thank you.

I am grateful that you continue to tune in every single Friday, and I hope we are delivering a ton of value with this content. So today I want to talk about three reasons content can change your life. And my goal is in this episode, I’m going to share three real life case studies, that prove that content can actually change your career, if not change your life.

Talk a little bit about what content’s done for me. also what it’s done for some of our clients as of recently, that has really made them bought and, buy into the fact that content is something that has to be part of your prospecting strategy. And I want to talk about this today because I still see a large section of the insurance industry that’s not buying in.

And I get it, you know, when it comes to prospecting in the insurance industry, we’ve all been taught traditionally that to think of the direct outreach tactics, you know, the traditional tactics of cold calling, cold emails, heck, you may still go door to door networking, you name it, we’re all in search of quick wins. That’s how we’ve been taught in this industry.

Insurance sales has been built on the desire for quick wins. I understand, however, the game has changed a little bit and you have to back up that activity with stuff that’s going to build awareness for you. And content is one of the best platforms to build awareness. And today I’m going to share three great three reasons. Not only will build a platform and awareness for you, man, it might change the trajectory of your entire career.

And I know it’s definitely done that for me. And so if you’re tuning in right now and you are one of those advisors who has not bought into the importance of content, let me start by saying I get it. It’s easy to believe that it’s not impactful, that your prospects aren’t on the social media platforms that you are on.

but I am going to try to challenge that thinking today, because here is where you may be sitting, despite the fact you don’t believe in it. You’re staring at a pipeline that is a bit more empty than you want it to be, and you’re sick and tired of getting the opportunities that come in few and far between.

And when they do, you find yourself coming in second place. And there is a truth to the phrase that second place is the first loser. It is, it is okay to be second place sometimes, but it’s frustrating when you constantly come in second place and they’re always choosing somebody else over you, and you’re sitting there wondering why that’s happening.

And so in our work that we get to do with with agencies and advisors, we see a lot of advisors right now who don’t have the right pipelines. Their pipelines aren’t full enough. They’re not in they’re not filled with the right kind of prospect. And a lot of prospects or producers start to turn desperate when they try to talk to anybody and everybody.

And the you know, what happens with that? It doesn’t work. And here’s the other side of the coin. We don’t talk about nothing. I did bring this up in a previous episode. When things aren’t going well, you start bringing the wrong energy to your prospecting. You start resenting your prospecting, which means you do it because you know you have to, but you really don’t like it.

You’re not enjoying it, and you wonder why that attitude, that energy with your prospecting is leading you nowhere. Energy matters and I’d rather have you prospecting, having fun doing it, bringing a more positive energy to it. And if I can help you deliver more positive results like a bigger pipeline, more opportunities, more inbound leads, I know you’re going to bring a more positive attitude to it now, before I dive into the three reasons I believe content can change your career, let’s talk about why your pipeline might not be as full as it should be, nor are you actually hitting your sales goals that you set out to do.

Back in January. First thing, you’re not consistent. I don’t know how else to say it. You’re not consistent. You’re just not putting in the work week in, week out. You may you may show up for a week or two, go all in for a week or two, but then you let your foot off the gas and you just are not staying consistent.

One of the things I’m going to talk about today with content is when you’re not consistent. People distrust consistency, especially when it comes to content. You’ve got people that are following you and watching your content, and all of a sudden in a week or two, you don’t show up and then you’re back and then you’re off. That’s it.

They just trust that they start just trusting you. You don’t want that. The next thing is you lack patience. And we talked about I mentioned this in a few minutes, earlier about how our industry has just bred you to believe in short term wins all the time. And this leads to a level of impatience that is actually hurting your growth right now.

You have to have a you have to have patience and your process with your prospecting today. You’re so focused on short term, you’re missing the big picture. And here’s the reality. Sales cycles are longer than they used to be. Most prospects you encounter today will not be ready to buy from you today. And that’s okay. But what are you going to do to build awareness when they’re ready?

What are you going to do to make sure when they’re ready, they don’t forget who you are? And I’ll tell you, from my own experience, there is nothing more frustrating than being forgotten. I can remember years ago picking up the phone, making cold calls, and once in a while you get one on the phone that’s kind of interested, right?

But they give you the hey, I really like what you’re saying, but bad timing. Call me back in six months. So you do. And six months later when you make that call, they have completely forgotten who you are. Worse yet, they may have already made a change and you’re pissed because they didn’t include you in that process. And the reality is they forgot you.

You have to be unforgettable today, and you have to go at your prospecting with a level of patience, that you probably haven’t had before. And you got to be consistent. It’s consistent patience and persistence. It’s three things up on my wall. I use these every day because they’re facts. And the only hack in sales right now is consistency.

You there is no hacks and the having the perfect script or the perfect prospecting activity. The only hack is doing what you need to do every day. That’s it. And so when it comes to content.

Content gives you the ability to build awareness that you couldn’t have built a decade ago, right? If you think about how long social media has been around it for today’s conversation, we’re going to focus on social media content. There’s other forms of content, right? Speaking emails, webinars. That’s all content. But today I’m really going to focus on social media and probably even more focused on LinkedIn.

This is something we couldn’t do ten, 15 years ago. Right. And so you have an ability to build awareness at a level that has never existed before. And it’s interesting, you know, when I think about social media content, a lot of my clients that are really doing it well come to mind. A guy like Chris Hamilton, you know, I’ve had Chris on webinars before to talk about his journey.

And it’s funny because I will talk to advisors today who reach out, want help. And they know that I’ve worked with Chris before and they will actually comment that, you know, I know what Chris is doing, but don’t talk to me about what Chris is doing, as if they can’t do that or they’re not willing to commit to do that when the answer is, that’s what you got to do to win.

So if you’re looking at a guy like Chris Hamilton and saying, hey, yeah, I get it. But he’s got he’s on a different level. I can’t do that. You’re already going to lose because that is what you got to do if you want to build awareness, if you want to become the the, the go to resource for your target prospects, you got to put in that level of commitment to content.

I hate to tell you, the days of posting a couple times a month are not there over. You’re not going to get anywhere with that. So let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about how content can change your life. I know that may sound dramatic, but I truly believe it. you know, for me, I made a decision over ten years ago to go in on content.

Ten years, go to the to the day. It was 2014 when I moved to Colorado. And LinkedIn was very different than it than it is today. But I made a decision on social media that I was going to start showing up more consistently, and build some awareness and credibility. Now, truth be told, I probably built more credibility early on with my own peers in the industry.

but ultimately, it did lead me to build a lot of credibility with prospects. And it was in 2014, I realized the power of content, which leads to the first reason why content can change your career. When I started creating content at the agency I was at at the time, my teammates saw what I was doing, management saw what I was doing, and even though they may have balked at first, not quite sure with what I was doing with it when they started seeing the type of prospects it was opening doors with, they started to see the benefits of content, because at the time I was working with an agency, Vulcan Bell was based in

Longmont, Colorado. They had built a fabulous reputation in Northern Colorado. We had two offices in Longmont and Fort Collins, but they really hadn’t done a ton of work in the Denver market, which is a much bigger market with the bigger players. So I made it a point that I was going to go try to build that Denver market, and I knew a building a brand like this was going to have to, happen.

If I was going to open doors. I had to create something that looked at different, that prospects in the Denver market would want to get their hands on. And so LinkedIn content allowed me to open a lot of great doors in the Denver market. And when I when management at Vogue Bell saw this, I think they started to buy in and we hit were we were starting to talk to, quite frankly, recognizable logos in the Denver market.

And we really started to see the benefit of my content, which, by the way, started as writing LinkedIn articles. That’s all I was doing at the time. But it started to open doors and and here’s where I learned my first lesson in how content can actually change my life. Yeah, not only did it open doors with prospects, I believe, and maybe, maybe I’m thinking too big of myself by saying this, but I believe in that moment I became more valuable to vote Bell to the agency than just the sales I was bringing in.

You know, I was a producer. I was also helping run our large group, Bigger Business. But when I started building that brand awareness, I believe I became more valuable to the team than just my sales. And I share that because that is one thing most producers don’t think about when they think about content. It is very possible to build a brand when you create consistent content.

I mean, just look at some of the people in our industry is that we all know people. I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Spencer Smith, Madison Baker on the commercial side. I mean, these are folks that started with no content, started building. It, showed up consistently, and they built fantastic brands, not only with the industry but with prospects.

And it’s that consistency of showing up with content that creates that brand over time. And when I started building my brand, I realized this is now bigger than the sales I generate. And as a producer, think about how that how important that is. And this is happening to our clients today. I just had this conversation that’s very conversation, right?

Right now that I’m having with you with a client two, three weeks ago. He is committed to creating content every week now for two years. It is turning into big wins for him, which, by the way, didn’t happen right away. He had to have patience. He had to have belief. And there were moments I know he wanted to give up.

There were moments I know he doubted what I was teaching him, but then he had that breakthrough moment where the big agent or record letter comes in, and then it all makes sense. And now, because of his content, because of the brand recognition he has built, not only is he leading his benefits team in sales, he is more valuable to that agency than just as sales because he’s built the brand and that is something I want you to recognize with content.

Content builds a personal brand. And when you have a personal brand, I believe at that point you can’t fail. Why? Because no matter what happens in your current position, somebody is always going to want the brand. If you’re working at a large agency right now and this, things just aren’t going the way you want them to. Or maybe it’s not a good fit with a brand.

There is always another agency out there that’s going to want that brand. Trust me. If you’ve ever had thoughts about going on on your own, having brand recognition already helps. It helps you build an agency from scratch and get a very big jump start on it. If you’ve already got a brand built. When I built Complete game consulting, when I decided to make that jump, having that brand established is what gave me the confidence to start my own business, because I told myself, if I try this and it fails, if I am absolute terrible at running a business or nobody wants what I have to sell, there’s always going to be an agency out there

that wants to hire my brand. I can’t lose and I want to share that same thing with you. That’s the first reason content can change your life. Content will help you build a personal brand. And when you have a personal brand, somebody is always going to want that brand on their team. At that point, you can’t lose. So hopefully that gives you a little room to get out there and creates more content.

Now let’s talk about reason two. that content can change your career, change your life. Content helps you build credibility. 20 471 thing I love about social media content is the moment you hit publish, that post can live out there for weeks, even months. I look at my LinkedIn activity and I see the notifications that somebody has commented on a post.

Sometimes somebody will comment on a post I made four months ago. It just happened. They just happened to see it on that day, liked it and wanted to make a comment. You see, content can help you build credibility while you sleep, and one of the biggest changes in my career that I witnessed with content is as I started to create content more frequently, as I stayed consistent year after year, it started to build credibility within the industry, but it also built credibility with my prospects that ultimately led to this.

I started generating inbound leads, both with prospects and speaking opportunities. Probably didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, because I decided to show up day after day with content, without knowing if there was ever going to be an ROI to it. Over time, I hit that point where I experienced what they call hockey stick growth. I started having prospects reach out to me, asking to book appointments with me.

I had conferences Sherm, conference of CFO, roundtable, CFO, member associations reach out to me to ask me to come speak to their groups, to their members. Why? Because they saw this content I was producing on the regular, and they assumed I was a thought leader in the area. Whether that’s true, which was true or not at the time, it led to opportunities.

And there’s not a better feeling than having a prospect come to you or having a speaking engagement opportunity fall in your lap. Having an event come to you saying, we want you on our stage so that you can talk to your prospects. You see, this is the credibility you want to build today that you’re just not building. Hiding behind a cold call, cold email and going door to door again.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t be doing those, but it’s it’s it’s a yes. And conversation. It’s yes. And but you’ve got to be building this awareness via content that supports everything else. And if you show up with content consistently over time, you’re going to build credibility. You’re going to walk into meetings with prospects who already feel like they know you.

You want a leg up on the competition. That’s how you do it. But most importantly, the thing that’s going to change your career is the inbound leads. When a prospect reaches out to you wanting to talk to you, you have all the leverage. You have all the control. When a conference reaches out to you to come speak to their members, you’re in control.

You have the leverage. There’s not a better feeling than that. I can remember one of our clients who who experienced this feeling for the first time. He had doubted social media content. He really didn’t want to be a part of it. He didn’t see a benefit to it, but he committed. He gave me his commitment that he was going to give it a try.

So they started putting out content where they were interviewing clients. this is Chris Byer, Chris Boling and they have shown up week after week for almost, what, three years now? Almost four years. It’s absolutely amazing. But I remember the moment Chris Byer had his little epiphany when he walked into one of the biggest prospects they’ve had locally.

I think it was the city, one of their local cities, a business they have always wanted to have, but never one. And at that time, Chris Boling and Chris Byer had built a nice little brand called CB squared. Chris and Chris, if you’re listening, a big shout out to you guys. I am so proud of your consistency. But they walked into that meeting with the city.

Now remember how many board members they were sitting in that room, but when they got introduced to that board as CB squared. That’s when it clicked for Chris. this is what it means to build credibility. They ultimately won that group and a lot of groups since then because they’re building credibility 24 seven through the content they’ve been putting out now for 3 or 4 years.

That’s the type of level of commitment it takes for you to build that kind of brand awareness. So reason number two, you put out content. You’re building credibility 24 over seven, you’re building credibility while you sleep. You’re walking in the meetings with prospects with more credibility than anybody else. But most importantly, you’ll have prospects reaching out to you.

You’ll have speaking opportunities. You have all this amazing opportunity to shorten your path to success. Now let’s talk about reason number three.

Every post that you decide to make on a platform like LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to hit a prospect on the right day. This is something I hear. A question I get a lot from advisors is Andy, how much content is too much?

My answer is, well, how many chances do you want to give yourself to land in somebodys feed on the right day? Because if you’re only going to post once a week, that’s one time a week you give yourself the chance to land in somebody. Feed the right day you post every day. You’re giving yourself a chance. Every day to land in the somebodies feed on the right day.

It’s up to you. I’d rather have more chances and what I mean by saying every post gives you the opportunity to hit a prospect on the right day is you don’t know who’s watching. You see, there’s a truth behind content that nobody talks about, and that is the people who are often your biggest fans or the biggest fans of your content are the people who never like or comment on it.

But every day they tune in. And it could be your largest prospect. Let me share a story with you that just happened a few weeks ago that I know changed this advisor’s. View on content, and he was already committed to content, but I think it changed his career a little bit too. I got a voice text from a client just a couple weeks ago.

Now let me set the stage. This this client, is an advisor who has committed to content for a couple of years now. He does it a very fantastic job of it showing up every week, putting out content directed at his ideal prospects. And I when he started, he had his doubts. He didn’t think it was going to benefit him.

All I remember, you know, a couple a couple months into three months and he even shot me a note saying, man, I don’t think this is worth it. But he’s actually garnered some wins. Mailers offer content, so he has been committed to it for quite some time, but this might be the coolest story of them all. So shoot me a, a voice text and says, hey man, you’ll never believe this.

He met with a prospect a little over a year ago, and I believe it was through a referral. And that prospect, upon meeting with him, said very clearly, we’re meeting with you because of the, we got referred to you or the connection. But I’m gonna be honest, we are very happy with our current advisor, and we have no desire to make any changes.

Fair enough. So he met with the prospect, and when he left, he he kind of agreed, like, yeah, they’re not going anywhere. In fact, he met with them. Great to meet them. Let’s stay in touch. But he he let it go when he left. He hasn’t spoken to that prospect in over a year. But he’s a patient man.

He’s a consistent man. And he shows up every day with content. So few weeks ago, fast forward, he gets a call from this prospect he hasn’t talked to in over a year, and they ask to meet again. It’s like cool. I haven’t heard from in a while. The reengage didn’t think they were going to go anywhere. We’ll see where this goes.

So the next day he meets with this prospect. They’re sitting in the conference room. If I have it right, there’s a whiteboard sitting up in the conference room, and he goes to the whiteboard, grabs a marker, and he’s going to start talking about some things he thinks he can help them with. And as he starts drawing on the whiteboard, one of the executives said, stop.

But the pen down, put the marker down. You don’t need to show us anything. We’re already bought in. We’ve been watching your videos on LinkedIn for about a year. We’re just here to talk about next steps. What do we need to do to get started?

That agent, a record, was about $250,000 of revenue. I want you to think about that for a second. This advisor met with this prospect well over a year ago, left the meeting thinking it was going nowhere. It did go nowhere and didn’t hear back from the prospect for well over a year, but was putting out content on the daily that was very helpful to exact business executives and ends up getting a call back from this prospect and in a matter of a day, turned that into a quarter of $1 million agent record letter.

I can guarantee that prospect never commented nor liked anything this advisor had put out as far as content goes. But guess what? They were watching. So you want to use content to change your career. Just know that every post you make gives you an opportunity to land in somebody’s feed on the right day, and that could be your dream account.

So my question to you is, now that you’ve listened to me ramble for almost 25 minutes, are you bought in? Are you finally committed to putting out the content you need to build credibility to build a brand, and to make sure you’re showing up every day, giving yourself the opportunity to land in somebodies feed on the right day.

When you look at all the people out in the industry that are doing this today, I’m not sure. Do you? In my dream, are you trying to model them? Maybe you envy them a little bit, but this is the kind of work it takes today. If you want to build a dream business, if you want to create exponential growth, you have got to put yourself out there.

You’ve got to overdeliver and give away the farm with your prospects. Share everything you know that’s going to help them. But you’ve got to be patient. You got to be consistent and you’ve got to do it every single week. If you decide to try it for two weeks and then you disappear for two weeks and then you’re back on, they will not trust you and stop worrying about what other people think.

The best thing I ever was taught when it came to content is that nobody cares at the end of the day, and nobody cares about you. They’re worried about themselves. So just put the content out and I’m sharing the same with you. Nobody cares. Stop worrying about what you look like. Stop worrying about what your background looks like.

Just put the content out if you think it’s going to be helpful because it can change your career, it’s changed. Mine is changed our client’s career because they’re willing to show up, committed to putting out stuff they think is useful every single day, and it can help you build a brand that makes you more valuable than the sales you bring in.

It can help you build credibility every single day. 24 over seven. It can have you walking into prospects with credibility, with more credibility than anybody else. But most important, every time you put a post out there, you never know what’s going to happen. You never know whose feed it’s going to hit on the right day, and it can change their life.

And potentially your bottom line. So that’s my advice to you. Please start buying in the content. Please commit to putting it out there, and you will see the same kind of change in your career that it’s had for me, for clients. And I’m going to leave this by saying this. If you are committed to content, this episode is airing here.

It’s early August in about a month. We are going live with our last social media sales academy. This is our six week course teaching you how to use LinkedIn to grow your business. This will be the last one we are going to run for the year, but it is your blueprint to use LinkedIn and content to do everything I just shared with you to build credibility, to build an amazing brand with your prospects, and to create inbound leads, and to make sure you’re putting out content that could land in the right prospects.

Inbox. Feed on the right day. If you want to know more, go to the link in the show notes. Schedule a call to see if the Academy is a fit for you. This is the last academy we’re going to run for the year. It starts September 4th. You are not going to want to miss six. this six week course.

I personally teach it and I teach you everything we use today and everything we’re teaching our clients. So go learn more, get on it. Get us call schedule with our team. Let’s see if it’s a fit for you. But most importantly, take this run with it. Use content to change your career and you will be blown away by what it does for the value you bring to the market, the value you bring to your own team, the credibility you’re building with your prospects and the sales success you never thought was possible.

Be good. That’s all we got for today’s episode of the Bullpen Sessions podcast. One thing that would really help us both and other new potential listeners, is for you to rate this show and leave a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you tune in to listen to the show. Also, make sure to link up with us at Complete Game consulting.com on social media, and please share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it.

Until next time, remember, clarity creates confidence. Confidence creates consistency. Consistency makes you unstoppable.