I’m going to be delivering a TEDx style talk later this week all about grabbing attention to grow your business, and in this week’s Bullpen Sessions I share some of the key things that I’ll be speaking about.

As we close out 2024, it’s important to start planning out what you’re going to do differently in 2025 to reach even more people. What we do helps people, and you can’t help them if you don’t have their attention.

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Video Transcript:

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

Hey, hey, welcome back to the Bullpen Sessions podcast. My name is Andy Neary, and this is episode 312. In this episode, I will share the number one marketing secret that will skyrocket your insurance business. Whether you’re a producer, an agency owner, or an industry partner. This episode will benefit you. I’m going to actually share, a keynote talk, parts of a keynote talk that I’ll be giving later this week as part of a Ted X style presentation, which I’m excited.

I have never done one before, but we’re going to talk about the number one secret growing your business in 2025. Yep. We have entered a day and age where it is no longer about who you know. It’s about who you are. Who knows you. And I’m gonna convince you by the end of this episode. You, your team, your agency, your business needs more attention.

So buckle up. Get the paper, get the pen out. Start taking some notes. Today we are diving into three questions you’re going to answer clearly so you can go grab more attention next year and the right attention from the right prospects. Here we go. Episode 312. Hey hey. Welcome back to today’s episode. In this episode, I’m going to share the number one marketing strategy that is going to skyrocket your insurance business in 2025.

Whether you’re a producer, you own your own agency, or you’re an industry partner, this is an episode you do not want to miss. Today we’re going to be talking about retention and why your business needs more attention. And at the same time, I’m going to share highlights of a talk I’m going to be giving later this week in Nashville.

It is a Ted style talk. It’s the first time I’ve given a talk like this, and I’m excited to do it. So as I record this, this is the first time you’re hearing it. So I hope you enjoyed today. But we are going to talk about attention. My goal today with this episode is to convince you next year you have to get more attention if your business is going to grow.

There’s too many agencies out there. There’s too many producers out there who are damn good at what they do. But not enough people know you exist and that’s your number one problem. Not enough prospects know you exist. Whether you’re in the business, you’ve been in the business for two months or 20 years, it doesn’t matter. The same is true for both of you.

Now let’s talk about attention. You know, my career path has been a path of what I would call irony. As a kid, I hated attention because I was a chunky kid. If you’re one of my fellow chunky kids listening in, you’re going to feel this story here. I hated attention at as a kid because when you’re a chunky kid, most of the attention is negative, right?

Kids pick on you as a as a young boy, girls were definitely not attracted to you. And before, you know, I was a kid growing up in the 80s, been for mental health was a mainstream issue. Companies like Levi’s made it clear they had they had made a gene just for me. Size Husky. If you’re tuning in right now and you were a size husky wearing boy, I bet you can feel my pain right now.

You know, I wore glasses that were thick enough to burn ants on a on a hot summer day. I was the only seventh grade basketball player to make the team wearing B cups. I was chunky. If you looked at my seventh grade basketball picture and look at who I am now, you’d say, no way is that the same person.

But as a kid, I hated attention and I really reflect back on how it impacted my childhood. All I wanted to do is fit in, you know, in grade school, my enemy was not the bully in the playground. It was the, annual presidential fitness test. You remember that thing? Oh, yeah. I think they created that that test for two reasons, you know, number one, yes, I know they wanted to assess the fitness of the youth in America, and it was important.

Still is. But number two, I think they did that test every year just to to remind the fat kids how out of shape they were. And I can remember walking into the gym at Parklawn Elementary, and I’d see the pull up bar over on the wall, the sit in reach box down on the ground, ropes coming down from the ceiling and sweat would just start pouring down my face because I knew what lie ahead.

You know, as a as a chunky kid, I could barely do any pushups. I couldn’t do any pull ups. My sit and reach could be measured in centimeters, not inches. Climb the ropes. Hell no dude. And you know, every time I had to do the presidential fitness tests, all the attention was on me. And there I stood, wanting to be anybody but me.

You know, kids laugh, kids mocked. And when I look back at my childhood, I hated attention. But now that I look back at my childhood, there’s one important lesson that I still take with me today. As I’m about to turn 47.

If you avoid attention because all you want to do is fit in. You may be full of potential, but you’re never going to come close to reaching it. You may be full of potential, but you will never come close to reaching it. Whether that’s my childhood or your business. And that’s what we’re talking about today, is in order to grow your book today, you have to win the game of attention.

There is a reason insurance companies like Allstate, State Farm, Progressive are growing rapidly. Do they have the best products in the market? You could argue they don’t, but it doesn’t matter because they’re winning the game of attention. Every time you watch a sporting event on TV, you’re seeing Jake, mayhem or flow. That is why they’re winning and growing.

The same is true for your agency, for your business and the insurance industry. You have to get more attention next year. How are you going to do it? Well, today I want to help you unlock some clarity before you go about getting attention, because got to get the right attention. I want to help you unlock some things that are going to allow you to go get the right attention in the right way.

Attention requires marketing, and marketing requires having the right message. So if you’re going to put out a marketing message that attracts the right prospects, you have to be clear about three things. The first one is who are you talking to? Who’s your ideal prospect? I have obviously talked about this over and over on on past podcast episodes. This is at the core of what we do.

I complete game consulting, but you’d be surprised how many agencies, how many industry partners have no clue who are. Their ideal prospect is they adopt the theme from the movie Field of Dreams back in the 80s. If we build it, they will come. No no no no no, that’s not how this works. In 2024, you have to go grab the attention from the right prospects, and you have to understand you’re not a fit for every prospect.

So who is your ideal prospect? And the unlock I want to give you today is it’s not built on demographics. Just because a company is a certain size in a certain industry located in a certain geography with a certain number of employees, does not mean they are the fit for you. The riches are in the psychographic niches. It’s who these buyers are between the years.

If you went, if you go and look at your best clients right now and you dissected why they are your favorite, I can guarantee it has nothing to do with money. And if it is, you’re going about it the wrong way. But I guarantee it has nothing to do with money, and it has everything to do with it, because these people let you do your best work.

And the reason these people let you do your best work is because they’re just like you, your best clients, and you are psychographic aligned. It’s that simple. So when you think about unlocking your ideal prospect, yeah, okay. Spend time on an industry, a size, a geography. Those are important. That’s like an athlete’s height, weight and speed. But you need to figure out who your ideal prospects psychographics are.

How do they think? What do they believe? What do they stand for? Because I guarantee the reason you love working with them as they believe what you believe. When it comes to what you sell. That is where you need to go seek your ideal prospect. I have never had a broker tell me, Andy, my favorite client is, ABC manufacturing, simply because they’re a manufacturer with 75 employees.

The owners of jerk. He treats me like crap. He hates his employees. He offers benefits simply because he has to. But dang it, they’re my favorite because they’re a manufacturer of 75 employees. Said no one ever. Psychographics. That’s number one. Who is your ideal prospect? Number two, what are you saying to them? What is the marketing message now?

The unlock here. And I promise this will change everything. If you take what I’m about to say and run with it. The unlock when it comes to marketing message is to simply talk about them instead of talking about yourself. The number of LinkedIn posts I see every week from our industry. We’re an agency. An industry partners. Talking about how great they are is absurd.

Nobody cares. Nobody cares what year you were founded. Nobody cares about all your preferred partnerships with X, Y, and Z carrier. Nobody cares about your size. They want to know what’s in it for them. If you want to take your marketing message and flip it on its head so it actually works, start talking about your prospects. Your marketing should be a story they can buy into and they can jump into because it’s their story.

This is what our marketing, our strategy, is built on from Story Brand. It’s why I’m a story Brand certified guide, because every story in history has been told the same way. There’s a hero, a character, by the way, that’s your prospect, not you. There’s a hero who has a goal but has a problem keeping them from the goal.

Therefore, they need a guide. You who has a plan, a strategy to help them overcome failure and achieve success. If you simply pivot your marketing to talk about your prospects journey instead of yours, your marketing will get five times better and your message that you’re putting out there is going to start attracting the right prospects who start raising their hands.

Which leads to number three.

Where are you going to put this message? Who are you talking to? What are you saying and where are you going to put it? Now, I’ll share a quick story where my eyes were opened to the power of where you’re going to share it. In 2014, I made the decision that if I’m going to get attention from the market in Colorado, a market I had just moved to a market where nobody knows who the heck I am.

I’ve got to get a lot of attention fast. This is when I made the decision to build a brand and people told me, dude, you’re crazy, you’re egotistical. Why would you do that? I needed attention, remember? I was a chunky kid who hated it. It required me to get out my outside, my comfort zone. But I did it anyways.

So I went on social media and I started writing articles on LinkedIn. I started posting content on LinkedIn. I started hosting webinars. I leaned into public speaking. Eventually I started my podcast. Why? I needed attention, not for vanity, for revenue. And here’s what I learned. 2018 I’ve been doing content social media podcast. It just launched a standing in the Omaha airport.

At that time, I was working for an agency out of Omaha and flying back and forth between Denver and Omaha, probably on a monthly basis. I’d be prospecting the Nebraska market, then I’d spend time prospecting the Colorado market. But here I was on a Friday night leaving, my office, leaving my headquarters to head back home for the weekend.

And I was standing in my southwest line, as you know, in your number line, I was probably about 18 to 19. And if you’ve been to the Omaha airport, you know, it’s not that big. And here I am standing in line and a guy, a gentleman comes up to me and he puts his phone in my face.

And it was kind of caused me to recoil a little bit. And he asked, you said, hey, man, is this you? And as I got back to my senses and looked at the phone, what he had on his screen was my LinkedIn profile. I said, yeah, that’s me. And you said, man, I got to tell you, I love your stuff too.

Awesome. Keep posting it, keep it up. My name is Steve and I said, great to meet you Steve. I’m Andy and we chatted for a little bit. He told me about where, you know, he’s from Denver, part of a business that’s based out of Omaha too. So he too goes back and forth. So we had a little a little casual chit chat, and then he got in line because we had to get on the plane.

And I did what every one of you would have done. After having this conversation, I look Steve up on LinkedIn and lo and behold, Steve was at the time the HR director, eight zero of a 5000 life company headquartered out of Denver. And I went, Holy shit. And it was here I learned a really important lesson. Now I know where your head’s going to go.

Andy, do you end up winning the account? No, I didn’t, I got a meeting with Steve. But, you know, one thing led to another, and and again, I just wasn’t the final selection. But I did learn a very important lesson here.

Business is no longer about who you know.

Business is about who knows you. Well, I want you to let that sink in. Business is no longer about who you know. Business is about who knows you.

And. What I also realized is, if you’re willing to commit to a consistent game plan of grabbing attention.

Your business will reach its full potential. Awareness and attention is the secret ingredient you need so your business can reach its full potential. Exponential awareness will lead to exponential growth. So as you wrap up 2024, I know you’re focused on renewals, focusing on trying to maybe close out some some some last minute wins and you start to look ahead at 2025.

I want you to ask yourself, your team, what can we do to grab more attention next year?

And attention. Is nothing more than marketing. And marketing requires you to be very clear about the three questions I shared today. Who are you talking to? What are you saying to them, and where are you saying it?

Remember, your ideal prospect is sitting in the psychographic niches, not the industry niches. Your marketing message needs to tell your prospect story, not yours. And as for where are you going to put it? You just need to focus on exponential awareness. How can you? How can your team, how can your business put one message in front of a lot of people at one time to get the attention you need so people know who you are?

Because that’s the name of the game today. But let me wrap this podcast episode with one more question that I think I have really learned over the course of roughly nine years of creating content. Yeah, I’m pretty clear on our business and who we serve, so I know who we’re talking to. We are constantly dialing in our marketing message, so the what we’re saying to them is constantly evolving, and I really believe we set the tone for how to grab exponential awareness in this business.

But after nine years of creating content, I’ve learned there’s a fourth question that no marketing budget can calculate, and that is how you’re going to impact the people you serve. I’m going to share one more story with you before we wrap that, I think will really drive home the the importance of grabbing attention, you know, after about 6 to 7 years, grabbing attention, of creating content, of being on LinkedIn.

I quite frankly, at that time back 2019, 2020, I was probably doing it more for my ego. When I started to, to, to gain a little industry notoriety or whatever you want to call that, you know, some people like to call that celebrity, which I don’t believe in. But I realized there were times I was probably doing it for the wrong reason.

But then in 2021, I got the wake up call, of why attention matters. I got a text message from a friend. And he he wanted to see if we could catch up. Now, I hadn’t seen him in a couple of years, and so I sent him over a zoom link, and a couple days later, we jumped on zoom.

So I was excited to see him. And I’d quickly learned this zoom chat was going to be much more than catching up. And as we got on the call, he started sharing with me what his past two years had been like. Remember, we had just cut out of the lockdown, out of the pandemic, and he shared with me that he had a really rough 24 month patch.

He had gone through a pretty nasty divorce and during Covid he battled Covid and and was hospitalized and it was pretty touch and go, yeah, he had a rough, rough bout with it. So here we are. We’re sitting on the zoom call, I on one screen, side of the screen and he on the other. He said, hey man, I wanted to jump on zoom because I know we haven’t seen each other in a couple of years, but I want to jump on zoom.

Just thank you. And I was sitting on the other side of the zoom screen, gone thank me for what I haven’t seen in a couple of years, man. He said, well, I got to share with you. You know, it’s been a pretty rough two years between the divorce, Covid, I kind of lost hope. And he said about six months ago, I actually thought about ending it all.

I didn’t see it another way out. He said, but I got to be honest with you, man. He pointed his finger at me. I got to be honest with you, man. You’re content to get me going. It’s given me hope. And the reason I wanted to jump on zoom is because I wanted to thank you for keeping me here.

And I said, on the other side of that screen, it’s like the air just went out of me. And we wrapped up the call and I probably sat there for another ten minutes, just kind of dumbfounded. And as I was reflecting, it made me realize that this whole game of attention. It has nothing to do with me, and it has everything to do with who I’m impacting.

And that’s the message I want to share with you showing up every day on LinkedIn, getting out and speaking on stages in front of your target audience. Maybe you start a podcast someday. All this stuff that requires or that that leads to attention. It’s not selfish. It’s actually selfless. Attention’s about impact. And I’m here to tell you the more your impact grows, the more your income is going to grow.

And remember, take it from the fat kid who hated attention.

I need your agency, I need you, I need your business to get more attention next year because you will never know who it’s going to impact or how it’s going to impact them. But I promise if you just make it a goal to grab attention and you build it off a mission to impact others, your business will skyrocket next year.

It’s not about you, it’s about the people you’re speaking to. You never know who’s watching, but they are and you will never know how will impact them. But it will.

And I’m here to share with you as a is a living testament to what happens when you just are willing to put the content, put the message out there every day in hopes that you can impact one person. I am a living testament of what it can do for you and what it can do for your business. And I’m asking you to do the same thing.

Quit sitting on the sidelines waiting until the perfect moment. Quit making it about you. It’s not about you. It’s about the people you serve. So my ask of you next year, as you sit down with your your self, your team and try to figure out how the heck are we going to grow our business next year, set sales goals, set a strategy, but damn it, get some attention.

Your prospects need to hear it from you. Remember, this ain’t a game about who you know anymore. It’s about who knows you. Now, I’m gonna wrap by sharing one thing with you today. If this message has landed on you and you are now excited, fired up, motivated to get out and put your message out there, this is what we do as a business.

Complete game consulting. Whether you’re a producer, an agency, a company who serves the industry, we help you find your ideal prospect. Craft a marketing message they love, and put it out in a way that gets a lot of damn attention in a short period. Amount of time. And if you know you need to do that next year, I’m excited to announce that in 2025, we are launching our new program, the Agency Growth Accelerator.

This is a chance for you, for your team to get the coaching, the consulting or the content done for you to go get the attention you need next year to hit your sales goals and break sales records. So if you want to know more, shoot me a DM, connect with me on LinkedIn. Hit up my my guy Chris Florida to get on a call to figure out how the heck you’re going to make this happen next year.

But at a minimum, go get some attention again. Take it from the fat kid who hated attention, who just tried to fit in. I don’t want your business to just try to fit in anymore. Quit trying to be the best kept secret in town and go get as much attention as you can next year. Exponential awareness leads to exponential growth.

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.