Justin Brock - President of Bobby Brock Insurance, Founder of MedicareCon | Turning $26K In Saving Into $70 Million

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What has been your key to moving so fast in the beginning the competition against other people that would drive me because that competition brought me to a level that I didn't think that I would ever achieve or never even really conceptualize? How does a Marine Corps veteran go from military service to building a multi-million dollar empire in the insurance industry? Today I sit down with a man who did just that. I had seen my dad to him making six figures in insurance. I thought it was always if they can do it why can't I do that? Nobody wants health insurance until they're sick and dying and then they need something to pay the bill but they wanted dental insurance. Justin Brock started in the U.S. Marine Corps but after nearly a decade of service he made an unexpected pivot insurance. Taking over his father's brokerage he scaled it into a national powerhouse. He didn't stop there. Built Go Guru Pro CRM and in 2024 sold his businesses for over 70 million dollars but money was never the goal. Impact was there was the vanity products that I sold and that ad it changed my entire philosophy on the internet if you just try a bunch of stuff. Eventually you can find a honey hole like that. A lot of people think to make money on social media you got to have a million followers. I would venture that you could have 15,000 if they're the right following your work in quantity of days is making grand strides towards a goal then you can possibly fathom within that individual day. From writing purpose after service, from marine to millionaire to mentoring entrepreneurs Justin's mission is to help others achieve financial freedom. Welcome to the Justin Brock story. Welcome to success story. I'm your host Scott Cleary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast never but HubSpot doesn't just have great podcasts. 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Today's episode is brought to you by Vanden now listen up this matters for your business and today's digital landscape security isn't optional it's essential without it deal stall sale cycle stretch on and scaling becomes very difficult now why because investors customers and partners all expect businesses to demonstrate strong security practices before they commit if you can't prove trust you lose opportunities so whether you're a startup founder trying to land that first big client or an established company scaling your security program Vanden helps businesses of all sizes prove that they're trustworthy by automating compliance across 35 frameworks like sock to ISO 27001 and hip up the exact certifications your prospects are demanding here's why you need to pay attention Vanden gives you back precious time that you're currently wasting on compliance their platform automates up to 90% of the tedious compliance work it helps you respond to those endless security questionnaires at the five times faster and it connects you with experts to get your security program running immediately the results speak for themselves a recent IDC report found that Vanden customers achieve over 535 thousand dollars per year in benefits and the platform pays for itself in just three months so you're going to join over 10,000 global companies like Atlassian, Korra and Factory who use Vanden to manage risk and prove security in real time and don't miss this for a limited time only my listeners can get a thousand dollars off Vanden that's real money back in your pocket visit vanta dot com slash Scott right now before this offer expires that is vanta dot com slash Scott you went from Marine Corps veteran to selling a $70 million insurance business in 10 years what has been your key to moving so fast i actually feel like you know knowing what i know now and i guess everybody would start there if you started there it'd be a different different answer but knowing what i know now i feel like it kind of moves slow like most of that progress was made in the last five years and even as that five year window went on it was increasingly more and more and more a lot of that is because i you you you develop this this confidence in you know slowly in what you know as well as you know attaining you know new information but i have to say from the beginning the thing that made me not settle on my initial goal my initial goal is just to make you know i've like i said before 60,000 i was like i got to replace my met Marine Corps income and then you know if one day i get to 100,000 that would be just glorious that was my thought but what happened was i entered a space and quickly would find people to compete against in the beginning that was individual agents that i wanted to make sure i dwarfed their production and then that became agency owners that had more people working for them or that they had recruited and then after that it became kind of marketing organizations that had multiple recruiters under them so not to make it sound too much like a pyramid scheme insurance always says the oldest multi level marketing or network marketing you know vertical and but anyway it was really in the beginning the competition against other people that would drive me and then it was the realization at different breaking points that something else was possible because that competition brought me to a level that i didn't think that i whatever achieved or never even really conceptualized like the idea of making $250,000 a year as a personal income was revolutionary and by the time it happened all i kept thinking was why i never thought i'd do that and it's not as much as i thought it was and so then and then i eventually as i ascended through kind of these these friendly competitors and you know friends in the industry that i made no money off of but we had great relationships i was i saw one sell his business for 50 million his name was Richard Kanto and you know i was in boar boar with him right before he started the talks of selling and when that happened i was like you know what we're building is that valuable like and i'd never heard of ebit of multiples and never even thought about selling a business who sells a business what is that so you know i know most of the people that like watch these podcasts have heard of that but it's there's these people out there that have no idea what the hell that even means you know and that's how i kind of learned about it and and so i just had that appetite to keep readjusting finds you know find out how to do something more about proven to myself that i could do it but then when i would do it it'd be like okay there's no going back now i got to go to the next level well who do you think were you competing against yourself were you competing against some idealistic version of who you thought you had to be for the world your spouse your parent like you have competitive nature i think that's a requirement and a prerequisite to entrepreneurship think you have to be some level of competitive but who are you competing against when you first started in the beginning i i was in my mind i was trying to my dad was an insurance agent so my dad was he never really built it into a business he had he was a solo agent he was house to house so he would go into houses so when i got on the Marine Corps i was like i had seen my dad you know go from us being very poor to him making six figures in insurance over like a 20 year span you know slowly but surely and so i knew it was possible to make some money in insurance right um it's one thing knowing it's possible another thing knowing someone that is close to you that did it but he's always kind of a hard-ass guy so when i entered it the first person i was competing against was him i felt like to impress him i just had to do way more than he did and then that happened i kind of you know figured out digital marketing in a way that made it very difficult for him to compete was not like necessarily i was a better agent than him i just was able to figure out a marketing path that led to a much more abundant outreach to me and by doing that we dwarfed that production and so then it became about me but i would find people that were doing more than me to quote unquote compete against but these are always like friends of mine but my thought was always if they can do it why can't i do that you know it's interesting because when you look for like business opportunities most people i just had a conversation about this this morning most people look for technical like technological innovation and they ride a wave and that's how they become successful they find something that's never been done before and they try and innovate but there's another way to be successful and it's distribution it's marketing distribution it's media distribution and what's so interesting and what so many people can learn from your story is you went into a very old school industry is basically one of the most legacy old school outdated industries you can possibly find yourself in and a little bit of marketing prowess it's not like you went to school and then you were like a you know you're not like the pick a marketer a set golden and Neil Patel of these guys that all they do is market all day since they were like five years old a little bit of marketing and a 70 million dollar exit later that's that's fascinating so when when did you first understand that media as a form of leverage and distribution was a game changer for you so what the the origin is i was i was actually driving house to house doing things through old school direct mailway because you first come in the old school the old guard if you will you know this is how you do it so i started doing it that way and it it worked it's very slow and so i was listening to productivity podcasts and i didn't again i didn't know anything about marketing i was like i'll be on these long drives from house to house and so i was like i don't learn something so started listening to you know sales training and then it was you know and i was like my sales are are good i don't know if i'm a good salesperson but i'm closing a very high percentage of these people i need more people to talk to so then it was productivity and then i listened to the productivity it's like well yeah that's great but i still need more people and so then eventually it was like you need marketing but i did it like you said i'm not a I wasn't a professional marketer i i just had no idea but i did grow up in what i would consider the vine era when all these people got really really famous the vine and then came you know the Jake and Logan Paul's and the David Dobricks and in the you know youtube famous and i was one of those kids as a teenager making youtube content then i joined the Marine Corps and kind of quit but that um i hadn't know you know we were making it back then we didn't know con like the concept of becoming famous off of content online wasn't really there for me looking back i was probably 20 videos away from having some kind of break out and being some little internet celebrity but you know at the time i wasn't thinking about that but i understood seeing being a small content creator as a teenager seeing you know these guys that were doing it at the same time become these mega celebrities that the internet was definitely you know social media was definitely the way to go um and uh so about you know about really i'm close to 11 years ago now when i got into it so about 11 years ago 10 years ago i'm going house to house i'm watching these or listening to this productivity podcast and eventually i came across a guy who was in life insurance he wasn't doing the same thing vertical i was but very similar and he was talking about his name is Jeff Root he's a good friend of mine now and um Jeff he lives in South of France has a very successful digital uh brokerage for life and he was talking at the time about SEO for life insurance he was popping up many sites where he would have very hyper specific um uh he had one like sale term life calm but there was a lot of websites that he was creating for like diabetes or diabetics that wanted life insurance like and he was hacking these these uh long tail or mid mid range keywords through pretty easy SEO at the time um and like it's much more difficult to crack into that now but at the time he was part of that way and so i was i realized like something was going on there and then he made a recommendation at one point he was talking about something rustlebrunson said so that was my intro to rustlebrunson early on rustlebrunson.com secrets expert secrets i was listening to that listened to the perfect webinar and that's how i kind of got into Facebook ads because rustle was talking a lot back then about Facebook ads and this was early Facebook monetization you know and uh in Facebook works now but back then it was like you know it was like giving cocaine to kids on there i mean it's like so so you know crazy i mean you put an ad up and people didn't realize it was an ad because the entire platform had existed for years now with no advertisement and so and it didn't say sponsored and so i made a page that was just just in Brock so it wasn't because back then you couldn't advertise for your profile so you had to make a page so i made a page but i named the page my name and then i run advertisements and then they would go viral because they're getting pushed into these uh into people's feeds because their ads and people would share it and like it and comment and and i was telling them to call my cell phone this is how dumb the ads were and my cell phone was ringing off the hook and all it was was a dental insurance ad because in my eyes i was like what what this is probably part of Russell's pitch is like what do people want to buy and they say sell them what they want then sell them what they need well people wanted dental insurance because they wanted their teeth to look and feel good like that's a different type of thing nobody wants health insurance until they're sick and dying and then they need something to pay the bill nobody wants life insurance really you know those are harder sales people need some of those things but they didn't necessarily want them but they wanted dental insurance it was so as the vanity product that i sold and that ad man it it changed my entire philosophy on the internet because all of a sudden i'm like i can throw up and add and spend at the time maybe 25 bucks a day and just get phone call after phone call after phone call no it's not quite as easy anymore but um you know everybody like if you just try a bunch of stuff eventually you can find a honey hole like that and the only thing i didn't realize is that honey hole is going to dry up and if i knew that i would have spent a lot more money a lot faster uh hindsight's always 2020 i mean but that but by the way that is like such a good lesson because i know a lot of people right now we're talking about for example like tiktok shop people are saying you can make a ton of money on tiktok shop selling consumer goods now whatever happens in uh in a in a couple days when when maybe it doesn't exist anymore in the us that remains to be seen but the point is yeah can you build a foundation yes but then you have to be smart enough to figure out a diversify and how to go into different channels how to explore new things like the the process of testing and finding new like grand slam marketing it's never ending and i'm sure you've gone through a thousand different versions of marketing over the course of actually building this business and even you know tomorrow you're going to see lack of performance which slightly worse performance on one of the million things you're trying right now and you're going to try a couple new things as just business it's just business it never ends i think that you have to keep disrupting and reinventing it's kind of like you were talking before this we're talking you talk about the distribution of this of your platform being on ot well i talk about ott all the time you know at that is a medium we use right now for like otto the top television advertisements through different streaming platforms and it's like television for targeted avatars so if i'm if i'm going out and i'm able to target a range an age range and i'm in medicare that's always great because you know i don't want that are 25 looking at a medicare ad right um but ott's been great it's like the best of broadcast television but like really targeted but these are yes and i became a junkie on advertising so you know i now i've i've done i've done and do most of these i've done radio broadcast television ott billboard campaigns um lots of different social media done some on tiktok don on linkedin i've done i've i'll try and i still use direct mail but we use direct mail now using kind of the dan kennedy magnetic marketing method where we're like trying to really high quality pieces that invoke an inbound response you know not a not a bait and switch spammy stuff because the insurance industry is full of people marketing to look to look like a government entity or using a bait and switch campaign and and i'm like if you just come up with quality marketing and quality messaging you don't have to do that and then you build higher lifetime value customers and that's just been our approach is like let's let's get clever but not gimmicky you know i mean i think that listen there's people like you that are going to come in and they disrupt and obviously i mean you look at your own success so if you if you do prioritize the customer if you have like a high EQ marketing strategy if you actually speak the problems they have no bait and switch bullshit if somebody does that it's going to work for a while until it doesn't and somebody who actually markets properly is going to come in they're going to take you know they're going to take market share they're going to clean up because that's what customers want customers are smart customers aren't stupid i mean it's kind of predatory if you're going after old people with these bait and switch tactics for sure but even then they're smart or someone in their circle of influence or their family is going to be a hey this is this is not exactly what it seems to be but yeah and that's what only you see in iron breezy it's the bait and switch marketing has plummeted the average lifetime value of the customer i mean while hours range really high but they they don't understand that like you know they people would come in with money into this industry and they'd be like oh wow i can spend two hundred dollars and acquire a customer that's worth you know fifteen hundred that's great you know and it doesn't you don't get all that right away but the the lifetime value of that customer right and the fifteen hundred is a realistic lifetime value of the customer if you can keep them happy for a long time but it's not realistic if they if they pop on a plan realize they got bamboozled and hop all three months later or six months later then you're actually losing money and so we've had a lot of these people come in and they think oh the customer for fifteen hundred let me get as many of as possible but if you go and do it the wrong way it's not fifteen hundred it's five hundred four hundred three hundred and so that's happened where it's kind of lowered the lifetime value on average but meanwhile hours have stayed the same so it's been you know it's honestly it's refreshing to see when you're in business and you see someone come in and do something the wrong way and then and then get kind of you know capitalism penalizes them for it eventually you know the free market works if you let if you let it you know sometimes they'll be like trying to add some regulation to fix something and i'm like if you guys just wait it's going to fix itself because these people are getting fucking hammered on the back end because they're doing business the wrong way you know a huge shout out to federated computer for supporting today's episode let me explain why I love federated computer why they are friends of success story they are changing the way businesses by software because we all need software to run our businesses I don't care what kind of business you're building but the best business software doesn't have to cost thousands of dollars each month so federated computer replaces a lot of the software that you're using right now let me explain the average typical federated computer customers save seventy five percent or more on their software bill and gets great software top notch customer service and support and a software solution that is uniquely installed for your business without any sort of surveillance or breaches of privacy for example if you use google for email sales force for crm slack for team 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check them out yeah I think that the way people buy is changing rapidly I mean most of the research is done before you even engage with the company now it's what it there has to be so much trust built people are doing their you know people are fact checking they're not just taking the company's word for it and that's going to completely to your point sort of self regulate the market because the consumer so smart I'm I'm curious you mentioned something that was interesting that's a very interesting I like that Russell Brunson quote idea was it sell them what they want and then sell them what they need why did you not just build a business selling them what they want is it too crowded like I mean you you built a business in a very unsexy industry you could have kept selling dental insurance I mean these companies do that and probably do very well so what was the the thought process and your thought process but also help an entrepreneur who's just starting out understand how they should interpret that quote for what they want to pursue yeah so I mean the the origin of me interpreting that quote was if someone reaches out or expresses interest in a product that you think well okay I can help with that product but that's not exactly what I help with then you can you just enter that conversation I think this is where where kind of sales comes in you know sales meets marketing is like okay they want to dental insurance so we talked to them about dental insurance we can absolutely help you with that this is how that works by the way we also help with health insurance Medicare and life insurance do you have medic do you have Medicare right now I was specifically targeting people for dental insurance that were close to aging into Medicare because you get Medicare when you turn 65 and retire and that kind of thing and a lot of these people would be close to that or on it and not really have an expert that's helped them navigate it and so when I would sell them the dental insurance it was the lead they lead in for me to build rapport and then I could find where they were undercover or maybe they were paying too much for something they didn't realize they were they had redundant coverages or you know or they had chosen something based on the limited set of information so the selling what they need is like finding what they don't even know to ask for so from a business standpoint there are things that are kind of commoditized like people know people are going to buy gas people are going to buy electricity people are going to buy water right you know there's there's things that people are just going to buy you know all you got to do is be conveniently there the most convenient one for them or have a monopoly on it like utility companies do but otherwise you can find the thing that they're going to buy be conveniently there to get on the phone with them and talk to them about it it's not baiting switch I can help you with that worst case scenario I helped you with what you want it I might make a smaller margin on that product but then I have other things that I can help you with and I just use that that dental like we'll call the dental insurance or whatever that lead in is to I help somebody with this problem if that cost me 50 bucks to get that customer and I make 200 or 150 or whatever I'm still profitable but it's also a profitable lead flow that I can use to be like let me see if there's also this other thing that I can help you with where my margin is better and I'm not talking about you know do it and it's it's people that actually need the help so what we like they're very frequently in the way I started is I'd find people that have a standardized Medicare plan there's their supplement plans called uh they're like letters plan F plan G plan and whatever you'd find the plan that they have make sure they understood it but they're standardized so whether it's etna mutual home hall humana united health care it's the exact same covers no difference in network because they're on Medicare so they can go to any doctor they want to the takes Medicare the supplement just pays their out of pocket for them but you'd have one paying 200 when they could get it for 100 so all we were doing was identifying that they had it and they were paying double what they needed to and then getting their call staff so but they didn't necessarily know that that was possible so the selling them what they need is finding a way to get on the phone with them to build rapport so that they trust you to talk about the top the other topics and then proving to them that there is this other thing that they need to do that they didn't even know and that's why they're not going to reach out like if you just say if I just was out there all the time saying I help people with you know Medicare supplements they'd be like well I got one of those well they didn't know they're paying double the price but what's the easiest way for me to go on the phone with them and my early own and we do it different ways now multiple ways but dental insurance was just a great way to break like a wedge it was like a wedge in it was a break the ice it was a get your foot in the door yep you know it's something to be said about that because if if you if you are a good entrepreneur an ethical entrepreneur you know you know the product that you're selling offers tons of value if you don't care enough about your customer to understand all the other products or services are kind of adjacent to the main thing or the first thing that you're selling you don't offer those things I truly do believe you're doing them a disservice because they're going to get that from someone else anyways so they're getting they're getting this at a premium from someone else maybe they were bamboozled by another company if you didn't do that then you're actually you're actually doing your own customers a disservice yeah and that's kind that was that's the kind of conviction when we're built a sales team you want your you want your sales team to have a high conviction about what they do and the only way to really do that is to train them to do ethical things like if if you're if you're somebody who and I've worked with sales reps that definitely had more easily fracturable psyches where they're they can really convince themselves that something is good that isn't necessarily good just for the because it's better for them I work with people that are there's a spectrum on that right you know there's there's the spectrum where somebody's like so good where it's hard for them to even be a salesperson and it's like they can't even like they're they're buying everything from their framework and they're they may be overly cynical or something right and then there's the person on the far right side that could sell anybody anything because they're just out to make a buck off everybody we look for somebody that's on the ethical side of that but that can also really buy into like you have a set of information a skill set that you can utilize to leave people in a better place than you found them and make great and a great income doing that and when you're building a sales team if you don't have a a process and a product and a or a service that can actually do that then your sales reps a lot of them are not going to buy into it you know they're going to we're going to be like I don't I don't want to sell this shit I feel like a scam ours people do not want to people want to make money but people do not tip most people do not want to make money like fucking people over they just don't want to do you know a few do but not the majority no no everybody wants to make better money but they just they want to feel good about the way they're doing it too if I can if I can feel like I left a wake of people better than me and made a shitload of money doing it then I can go to bed and sleep like a rock yeah a big thank you to indeed for supporting 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like sales are like they're one of the most important positions you can hire an organization most people have a really hard time finding good sales people or hiring good sales people because you've built out a really strong sales organ I now I know you have an opinion you have sort of some wisdom on this because just what you just said what would be the advice for people who are trying to hire great sales people who don't have you know they they're just starting out they don't know what to look for they don't know how to engage the right personality kind of that balance that you just mentioned do you do anything more formal like a disc profile or like some sort of other test or what do you do when you're trying to find the right person yeah we we actually our team is as used chat GBD man to make like a really cool matrices out of the disk assessment so we have everybody take a very simple paper disk then we upload their scores into a we'll put it through a form that populates on the Google sheet that powers all these like graphs and stuff it's just funny like I don't know how useful it is but it makes us feel really cool like we have this great app but we didn't we do you as it worked out I mean as it worked out it certainly worked I've had people that before I was doing it effectively that I had in service positions that based on the data we've seen in those those disc profiles that we've moved to sales positions that they were suffering in service and we were looking at firing and they end up being some of your top sales people and vice versa so so there's definitely absolutely and those sales and service are probably like you know the most polar opposite you have your high S personalities are great in service your high D high I are really good in sales I I have my own beliefs on it the way that we sell and then because we're dealing with you know the elderly you know we try to go with like high I personalities that just bubbly you know good people good energy for ourselves people but high D personality do really well in sales my I had a video I did a interview with Sean Mike Kelly and I said something about higher you're like alpha personalities or not I don't I don't like hiring a lot of them and then of course a lot of people were commenting you know that's just because you're not alpha enough to alpha the alphas or whatever and I'm like that's because they're they they they and this is a blanket statement there's certainly some great I would consider myself I don't know I don't want to say I'm concerned about alpha because it sounds don't but like I would say that when I hire those high D personalities a a significant portion of them are those people I'm talking about with that fracturable psyche the ones that can kind of manipulate what is good based on what is good for them and they can be a little bit difficult they're great a lot of them are probably great at running a business they're great at leading a big team they're great at you know whatever but if you can find a coachable high D personality somebody that really values you as a mentor or somebody on your team some of your managers as a mentor and they but they are a highly driven person they can become one of your apex employees it's just difficult because high D personalities are sometimes very sure of themselves in a way that they become uncoachable right so high I has been a great you know thing for us but then you know there's a spectrum I tell people there's a there's the there's their EQ and IQ right so like if if they could be a high D personality but be very stupid and then he's got a stupid asshole right at home necessarily you know I don't I don't disagree with you dude I would never hire somebody that self labels them like refers to themselves as an alpha that to me is like a whole host of psychological issues if you ever with a straight face look at me and you tell me that's how you self identify I think you have a lot that you're going through like that's that's a that is a wild fun thing emotional they probably have a lot of emotional issues themselves to like feel the need to say that you can feel that in yourself like I'm confident in my abilities I can lead a team I can do these things but I've seen people that have done have accomplished nothing that called themselves an alpha and I'm like I think you mean asshole like I don't mean out like you know but you know that's just but I did catch some flat from the self proclaimed alphas on Instagram you hit the you hit the red pill community that's why yeah and I was like I was looking I was reading a couple of the comments and I was like if you're such an alpha would you be commenting on this video about this like I just can't really get like like a super mega alpha would be way too fucking a guy who a guy who has all the money in the world all the you know whatever relationships all the I guess the the stereotypical alpha male is all the money all the women all the success are you really sitting at home on a Saturday night commenting on YouTube I don't think so bro I don't know too many cool people that I look up to that have whatever they have and have it all that are commenting on YouTube on a Saturday night maybe that's just me maybe I know the wrong I feel like everybody that I know that is what it's funny like you know because you see those that type of riff raff and and I know who I am and I know what I've accomplished and I know what how I feel and how happy I am and so like I'm I'm sitting there and nobody like you're just not an alpha and I'm like I don't even care I don't know what that means I you know what I don't think anyone knows it what I am is what I want to be because I'm happy I'm enjoying man man listen you have a beautiful family you got you had a 70 million dollar exit you built a great bit like I think that this is a kind of all the things that most people aspire to achieve you also served in the core like I mean there's not too many boxes you don't check so you're I think you're good I got married in 19 so I don't have all the women I got the one and I got my daughter and that's all the women I need I think that's all anyone needs that's all anybody needs dude I think that's perfect well yeah so let's talk about let's talk about you found a gap um you found out how marketing sort of leverages that gap in the market now you're growing this business so let's obviously there's been a lot that you do there's a lot of different ways to market a lot different ways you grow systems processes people hiring all of it you do you've done all of it but what are some of the key inflection points some of the big things that contributed to the growth outside of like the running the Facebook ads at the beginning what were some other major milestones or things that happen yeah so we talked the marketing side consistently like understanding that honeyholes dry up and so when I found them I was I would spend money quicker even times when I spent money and lost a lot of it there were some broadcast TV points where I actually did lose a lot in markets that didn't convert the same as other markets but the increased willingness to do that I did go and buy some much some smaller agencies over time and I packaged them with hours so that helped me out tremendously um but I think the the scaling of the sales team was another we're talking about being able to scale internal sales team and then we actually created a lot of content online for other agents before we had anything to sell those agents because we weren't recruiting there's two ways to do things in our world you can hire an agent and so when I would hire an agent I'd take a brand new agent somebody that we would get licensed hire them all their commissions are assigned to our entity and we do all the marketing for them we pay for all their licenses all that and that's what we call kind of a career agent they get a salary plus commission so their commission is lower but they're in a controlled environment and you can take someone that isn't necessarily someone that wanted to be an insurance agent like so I would take people that were like retail store managers or have a basketball coach just different jobs cops they would come in and do these sales positions like this and they're making you know double the money they were making before in these other positions and they're very happy with that this is more than they ever thought they'd make in a controlled environment no risk um and so you can do that and that's what I did first or then you could do the brokerage side and what that means is like you're taking on the people that are getting the lion share the commission and you're making a small amount of override over the off of their production they write a policy if they make a hundred bucks you might make 10 or 20 um but your job is to recruit them in train them motivate them whatever so we started creating content online for agents basically because Gary Vaynerchuk said uh that's why he started doing it and he said you know just put content out and see what happens you know um so we started doing that and we built this pretty large um especially for our niche online community right now is uh 15 is a Facebook group so we started has 15400 health insurance agents in there um and that group led into us doing conferences and um like many workshops and kind of creating that entire value ladder for that group which eventually became a value like kind of a value ladder where some of them would ascend to moving their insurance contracts through our organization where we made override under production which makes us invested in their success right so that that that social organic social media organic youtube actually did play a huge part in some of our evolution as well but i do and now it's like a niche community building that's really what it was and i think that's an interesting thing so a lot of people think to make money on social media you gotta have million followers or whatever i would venture that like you could have 15,000 if they're the right following you can do really good i mean and that could be like one thing here's a mark that i missed though right so we're we're we're marketing direct to consumer two people going on Medicare i started making the agent community and i'm um i started building youtube content for them i think we're like a hundred k youtube subscribers now but the um all that content was going out towards insurance agents while we were growing a sales team that marketed direct to consumers and we would use our direct to consumer efforts to document what was working and what wasn't working for the agents so it was like we were we were practicing it and then preaching it versus you know just preaching it you know which does happen um but what i where i missed the mark was at the same time a friend of mine decided well i'm gonna make a facebook group for the consumers her facebook group for the consumers is like 200,000 Medicare beneficiaries in there and she just gets hell our referrals off of this thing now i need one thing to do that at the time i was sitting there making an agent group um and then i went back and tried to make a consumer group but there's waves there's timing with stuff so like you know what i would tell people like you remember when clubhouse popped up and people or there were people that were getting famous off a clubhouse really quick right now threads is the thing you know and it's is it a big thing i don't know but you gotta you have to throw hell marries into platforms and and and concepts on platforms when they're new to get that wave because that facebook group wave is i not see it's gone but like for that exact niche we're so far ahead of any competitors that it would be difficult to catch up you know and now you know you get pops up a health insurance agent facebook group now once someone finds their group through an invite they then say well what other groups are they and then hours being the biggest continues to absorb so every time someone starts to come and compete now ours just gets bigger and bigger and bigger so we probably have 15 to 20 agents a day right now just joining that facebook group organic just keeps compounding and just keeps compounding and then though then eventually some of that revenue just starts to trickle into you because they see the value i curious if you're trying to build a community because now you have your friend that built the community of the actual individuals that you said a 200,000 person community that's the different kind of content and different kind of value add but if you are trying to create a community around professionals in your industry what's the value add that you give them like what do you give these agents that they they not only like to consume the content but they also want to bring their business over to you like how much do you have to give them so i think what worked for us in the beginning of the community building was that we didn't have any ask like i would say for a solid year in the beginning when i built that community and i know that's tough but that's what Gary Vee was saying he was totally right on this stuff for a year i didn't sell him anything i didn't ask him to go to an event i didn't try to recruit them i just put stuff out there i just basically what and i was still at the time selling interest so we started it in beginning of 2018 i had a small sales team we were growing we were probably i would say we were grossing maybe a couple million a year at this point and probably had five or six employees at the time and but i was still selling you know i was still like hyperactive and which also meant that i was living through what they were living through daily but i was doing it a higher scale than most of them and i would just put that out there here's what i did today here's a snag I ran into here's a problem and and then they would start they would start putting their problems up or what they had done so it would be they'd put their wins they'd put their problems and we were just encouraging everyone to share that share wins share problems and then anytime they had a problem i was their answering and so in the beginning it was it required an immense amount of time for no payoff from me but i kind of looked at it as a hobby man i was like an outlet you know i was working all day and then in the evening i'd sit on there and just talk to these people so instead of watching netflix i was going to dam facebook community every night talking to insurance agents about what we had done that day and that um it just built a lot of rapport now that facebook community i don't post in there personally ever now we have a marketing team i have a couple of videographers we have a filming day you know once a week i film content they put it in there and they pull up popular posts so i do video answers to them but we still just share practical content of here's what we're doing in marketing here's what we're doing so i think what what they're after is just somebody that feels like they're actually going through the same struggles that they have or they have been through them being open and transparent and sharing the information ahead of time and i think that's like gary v inter truck the original i think the original const book was thinking to thank you economy and it was basically like you know the economy is changing to do business with people that give them information they used to it be like you know insurance agents were like hey you can sign up for a free consultation well no shit that's a source nobody's signing up for your free consultation you know tell them give them the answer to their question and if they like your answer and they like how you gave it to them then they're probably going to come back to you for more answers and eventually you're going to build rapport um and so i think that's really the main thing is people are just looking for transparency ahead of time um and then uh and then another thing to notice is you're not going to be everybody's cup of tea and that's okay like um of that of that even of that 15,400 agent group if three thousand of them you know choose to do business with us i'll make plenty of money like i don't need i don't need all 15,400 of some of them might think i'm you know maybe they don't want to do business with a dude maybe they want to do with a woman now where you really get good is when you you facilitate you have those people so like if i have a person who has a different attempt to be gendered but like if somebody has a different personality type than me and then i partner with them and then i addify them then some people are going to be drawn to that person but i'm still connected to them so i still have a leg into that revenue as well so instead of being like narcissistic and thinking like everybody should like me who cares you know who cares build you know who i notice does this what i mean we're talking about insurance but these lessons are very applicable and now i'm just thinking about other other notable people to do this very well uh Dave Ramsey does this very well because he hires all these different content creators and he puts them under the Ramsey brand and they all have their own audiences and they all have their own content style and they all have their own super loyal followings and he kills it a lot of people have trouble i think it's an ego thing saying don't just follow me there's other people in the world that you can listen to as well but listen if you don't like Dave Ramsey you got like i think three other three other guys that i know of that you can go listen to all their content and it's all kind of adjacent it's all kind of finance faith family style content but if you don't like his personality you got three or four other options and all of that like make no mistake all that feeds back to his brand so it's smart it's very smart and and just the the absolute immense amount of value that you give people and you don't expect anything in return like i'm thinking about as you're saying this i'm thinking about maybe i should start a facebook community for helping people learn how to podcast or solve their podcasting problems because then they're going to listen to me who's maybe a little bit more advanced than them a little bit later on in my journey and i'm not going to get anything out of them immediately but they're going to become huge fans of i guess me they're going to talk about my show to all their other friends that ask hey what other podcast should i listen to so you're going to see this trickle down effect eventually i mean very very smart yeah i mean like there's so many things that came back to us so one thing that started happening is all these agents around that they might be in West Virginia or they might have been in you know i don't uh milwalki or wherever they're at you know they're like different areas of the country and they would get a referral somewhere that they weren't licensed and instead and you know we kind of made it known that we were licensed in all 50 states and instead of getting that license and going through it they started referring them to us and now at this point our agency here where we have i have uh 52 and w2 employees and on 21 of them are agents internally their right business are all over the country and um they refer those to us we probably get a couple hundred just three referrals that are like a hundred percent sign-up rates a year and it's not tons but it's when you do the math on it if you look at those as all around $1,500 in lifetime value times 200 with no calls for acquisition it's just like free revenue um but we get that we've uh we've started we created that value letter or we'll have kind of a free workshop that we'll go around and do these cities um we'll fill them with 50-75 people and we just go and add value to them then that's that teeters them into like signing up for our big conference we do each year as we do one big Medicare event for Medicare focused agents this is about last year's 1,256 agents they they'll buy a ticket to that even that event is not made to be super profitable because we spend a ton of money on the event but once they're there they'll sign up for software products with us they'll join our hierarchy they'll come to bigger workshops that we charge 5,000 for which those are profitable but very profitable events um so and a lot of that too like once we had the audience and we started getting the audience going um you know you just look at like the way that other people have set that up you could look at the the card don't like the way the card owns set that up the way Patrick David set his up like oh and you just talked about Dave Ramsey I was trying to think who else does that Patrick that David's doing that a lot um he's just a lot of other brands and pouring into the like Adam in his office and Vinnie and then his CFO like he's really pushing those other brands to try to grow their presence so there's there's there's several people I think it's the it's an ascension from the ego of like I have to be the guy like the real guy is the guy that facilitates a lot of other guys and gals that are fault leaders yeah I think it's a it's a smart plan I mean that that's sort of uh you know a little bit more advanced once you've built a community or built an audience or built the following but it's it's I think it's an important thing to think about because you don't have to do it all in your own if you're trying to build an audience there's multiple ways to do it and maybe helping other creators influencers industry leaders sort of separate themselves out from the pack and be thought leaders in their own right maybe that's just a a way to fast track the audience and the community that you're trying to build which is like listen at the end of the day I don't care if people discover my show or I'm sure you don't care where your leads come from I don't care if it's from me I don't care if it's from you know my my mom talking about my show to somebody at the grocery store I don't care who talks about it you're looking for the end result like that's really it you want more revenue more followers even though it's a little bit of a vanity metric you want more of x result find a way to optimize for x result there's more than one way to do it but okay let's talk about let's talk about you know you've scaled this business now you sold a majority stake for 70 million you retained 49% of the business so help me understand what drove you to sell what was the offer who approached you why did you actually we can start there and we'll go into all the other stuff yeah yeah so the so I mean you know I had that friend that had sold his business and then after I had continued to grow our operation I continued to have other friends and acquaintances that I would see exit when when an industry like when certain industries hit this kind of like this stride where private equity starts to flow through them for sure to become an appetite and it can be a little bit of a domino effect you'll start to see a lot of businesses partner with p firms and then they'll develop a platform company so in in our industry there's a couple of platform companies and these are just the way I view that is they're just companies that by other organizations platform them meaning kind of take some of the redundancies the legal the accounting the you know IT whatever off the table HR and they can take smaller to mid-size businesses and then say okay now you can grow without the worry of that you focus on sales marketing whatever it is you do and so in our business that was what happened there was some platform companies that came in and so some of them started approaching us in the beginning and then I had a buddy that sold to a to a carrier I mean he sold to Humana and so and the the multiple of the valuation he got when he did it was far beyond what most of these organizations were paying and so I decided hey I'm gonna I'm gonna talk to them and he's like yes you'd be a great fit and we started talking and then Humana decided that they weren't buying distribution anymore because that was a big buy that they had just done and they wanted to get it under control and they were in a talk later what that point I had kind of gotten it we were at we were three years in the abide administration was heavily regulatory to us and I kind of gotten into this in heat mode where I was like man I'd really like to entertain it all for at this point and there's a lot of psychology of selling a business like you know I feel like people probably I or some books on it but I feel like I could write a book on now like the the ups and downs of how many times I was like I'm I'm screwed I'm not gonna sell this I'm not dealing with this bullshit you know but I went out and found a group that did retained equity buys they wanted to buy a majority equity but they did not want to buy 100% of anybody because they wanted their principles to still have skin in the game so they wanted people that would voluntarily take less for the back end opportunity and they'd craft the back end opportunity to be very attractive like more attractive than the front end opportunity but I wanted to make sure it was a way that I can take enough off the table to like set my family up to make sure you know no matter what happens especially considering we're in a market that is under a little bit of scrutiny from the federal government or you know from the senate finance committee and stuff with being private health insurance you kind of never know I mean I have my suspicions that we're gonna be around for walks I don't need to have a viable alternative that they can afford currently but but anyway when that was what I wanted I wanted that security but I wanted to still be in the hunt in the game you know because I enjoy growing the business the team members that I've built are amazing they're like family to me so I wanted to keep going and I knew that my business wouldn't thrive very well if I was like selling and just hopping out the way some people do so anyway that when the company that bought into this is called a mirror life their platform going to be around for a long time in our space but they started doing mergers and acquisitions a few years back they bought a hundred companies now so they're in our kind of in our similar space and they'll probably take on more capital and buy some more now that Trump was elected and that is not so neither here nor there that's just the way it is it's it's a it's a good sign for our industry right now because it's a little deregulation for private health insurance markets is probably on the horizon but why would you not want to get out completely I mean you looked you looked for somebody who was looking for somebody to stay on yeah I if the I considered doing like if the humana deal would have came through it was so much money that it was it was such a high multiple that was being floated at the time it was difference and so we're we were at 10x without a 1x earned out which was probably like right at what I was expecting our industry to be for a company my size they were offering 15x on a rolling forward 12 for a hundred percent of the company where that was the floated idea so it was it's just so much where you'd almost be stupid not to have taken it because it was so many more years of earnings up front and so anyway when you know I didn't really necessarily want to sell a hundred percent I enjoyed what I'm doing but you know with business man it's like 90% of the time I love it and then 10% of the time I'm like oh my god I gotta deal with this you know and so it depends on the time they catch you when you're on none of those 10% days you'd be like man I'll take 6x just take you yeah but you're on a you know when you're on that high man most of the time you don't want to do that you want to keep going it's fun it's interesting I know some people that they do that it was 15x EBITDA I'm correct yeah yes yeah that was that was going to be theirs on rolling forward 12 so they were projecting your growth rate 12 months in advance and then paying you on all up front damn dude oh listen you're not hurting I got the I ended up getting the 10 plus one that that publicly traded organizing and the difference is if you get a publicly traded organization that buys you their accounting is just so much more wonky you know it's not the same so they they can technically afford to pay more you know but they just they just get in their accountings like 606 accounting and I don't pretend to even understand all that but they they can do a little bit of voodoo math that I don't quite understand I think that's how I think that's pretty much how Enron got in trouble but hey but you know they probably bought some companies that that guy got out and he didn't do anything wrong so no no I'm sure I'm sure some people made money off Enron yeah definitely no I was I was just thinking about like all the different opportunities right like you could have taken that 15x with a 12 month and then waited till the non-compete expires and then just start right back up again or you can just keep building the thing you're building I think that it's very personal like you mentioned before there's a lot of emotion and psychology that goes into exits and doesn't really matter how much you listen to podcasts or read books I think that there's a lot of the lot of emotion tied up into selling the thing that you basically it becomes part your business becomes part of your identity so that that definitely impacts your judgment is there any advice that you give an entrepreneur that is having offers just some things to think through some things and it doesn't have to be business it could be family it could be anything whatever whatever thoughts you went you know that you've had since entertaining exit yeah I mean I'm in the big ones that seem maybe too obvious are like you know any just with anything when you're can you get a control your emotional range so like don't you know don't implode a deal over you know something you don't like that someone said like if you're going through that process and there's multiple lawyers involved in mergers and acquisitions professionals you're going to it can be it can get a little exhausting there's just so many variables and details you know depending on the deal but you know once you what you're in the tens of millions of dollars like that's not going to flow from you know one body to the next without you know a lot of scrutiny typically so so just kind of take it one try to the time and and decide if it's best for you it's it is a very personal decision if somebody like this people have come to me and they'll say hey I'm getting all for this you know should I take it and I'm going to tell you I never could tell somebody shouldn't take it you know part of that is because I don't want the blood on my hands of me telling you not to take something your business imploding and then being like just a rock caught me out of taking this deal and now I'm broke you know a burden the hand is worth to in the bush now at the same time that's the advice I give other people because I'm not you I'm not you you know and I did have 100% offers and I did turn those down for retained equity so my retained equity could plummet and I could look up and be like man I'm shorted you know I'm shorted 50 60 70 million dollars or whatever it is because and I that I could have had but I'm taking a gamble on myself right there's other people that'll take even a bigger gamble where they wouldn't have sold any of their company and I think you have to look at your business though you can look at this framework from the Boston Consulting Group where they talk about the four types of businesses it's a the cash cowl the star the dog and I can't remember the other one but there's like four categories you can google this like but it's a quadrant of based on what market you're in and how big you are as an organization within that market so if you're the dominant shareholder of the market you're in and it is a growing market you're considered a star if you're not the dominant shareholder but you're growing in a market that is still growing you're a cash cow on the other side of that quadrant you get markets that are shrinking once you're a market that's shrinking and you're the biggest one in the market this is a shitty company like you should fit out but as soon as boss no I just I just googled it so you have dogs cash cows question marks and stars yeah so dogs are low market share low market growth question marks are low market share high market growth cash cows are high market share low market growth and stars are high market share high market growth I've never heard of this chart before that's amazing yeah it's a cool look at like should I sell should I not that I should I go even if you're going into a new vertical you know do I want to go into it like you you know I would it's not necessarily that you wouldn't go into a vertical that's not growing anymore if you had some sort of you know way to to grab up a bunch of the existing market share but I mean really if you have a if you have a sophisticated or out of the box way to grab market share in a growing market and that's going to be your biggest opportunity so when I was looking at it I started looking at is my market growing and is and and how big am I in this market so I was not the biggest but I was one of the faster growing ones in our market and the quest the the the not to use the certain question mark in conjunction with that but the question mark for me personally place is our market growing and you know fortunately and fortunately I mean we we're in a market that's heavily tied to the federal government contracts here with Medicare there's there's federal contracts involved and so it kind of depends on who's elected like I hate this like I never want to be the guy that's like you know I love I love the feedback from like the cardones and those guys that say you know the government is never going to make or break me however it can certainly have impact and the bigger you get the more it can especially when you're participating in a market that is that's heavily regulated by the federal government you know so and I would soon grant would agree with that now when when you own you know billions of dollars worth of apartment buildings there's there's clearly he does believe that because he got involved in politics pretty heavily this last cycle I think that is funny at that is very true government doesn't impact me but I'm gonna go on the campaign trail I'm gonna start speaking maybe maybe the government just makes it a little bit easier depending on which way it goes I hope they get out of my way yeah exactly I think I think most business owners inherently are not libertarian in the traditional definition but libertarian in the in the definition of I wish I could just ethically and responsibly build a business without too much heavy-handed government oversight now obviously I get why regulation exists and protects people but sometimes just because the government is the government and it moves slower than innovation and it moves slower than my god it moves slower than almost anything regulatory doesn't catch up with reality and that's when there's friction that's when I heard a lot of the regulations we were seeing in the industry last year 2024 they're coming out with regulation based on data from 2019 but any insider would know that data is so antiquated now like it's not relevant to the current landscape and because it moves so fast and but government officials are you know the and some of these people are appointed to head up bodies and organizations that they don't really have any experience in that you know that's an issue so yeah regularly and yeah and I would say that I'm very much libertarian because I you know I was definitely a Ron Paul Rand Paul guy as I've gotten older and pay more taxes and stuff I get why people get pushed to the right yeah but I get when you have them genuinely a you know leave me alone get out of my way lower taxes you know but you know that that definitely I guess is rightly I'm probably right leaning libertarian but I don't want I hate to be too aggressive on any of that because I don't want to be associated with some of the far right stuff either like it's like yeah a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to have to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody who's trying to build a business it's important to hire 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platforms or waiting weeks for the right candidate and how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made unindeed according to indeed data worldwide there's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of success story will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash clary terms conditions do apply just go to indeed dot com slash clary a huge thank you to net suite for supporting today's episode now what does the future hold for business if you ask nine experts you're going to get 10 answers bull market bear market inflation up inflation down honestly at this point you just need a crystal ball but until we get one over 41,000 businesses have found the next best thing they future proof their businesses their operations with net suite by oracle which is the number one cloud ERP imagine having your accounting your financial management your inventory your HR all flowing together in one fluid platform and here's what makes net suite different it gives you one source of truth for your business you get the visibility and control to make quick confident decisions while others are guessing you're working with real time data insights forecasting you're basically looking in the future of your business with actionable data whether your company earns a couple million or even hundreds of millions net suite helps you respond to immediate challenges and helps you grab your biggest opportunities and speaking of opportunities they put together the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning and net suite dot com slash Scott clary this is the playbook for understanding how to use AI for your business the guide is free that is net suite dot com slash Scott clary I get it no and by the way I think that's an important point like most I think most people who are successful are libertarian and they're fiscally conservative and they're socially liberal in the sense that I don't care what you just leave me alone yeah that's really it just leave me my money and my family that's an 80% Americans feel that way and then now they get us all arguing about the way this 10% feels and the way this 10% feels and we're all in the middle like oh my god what's going on yeah I think I think that's actually pretty accurate Twitter Twitter is not representative of the majority of Americans oh my gosh man yeah you get a Twitter and read it I was reading it I I don't go down the rabbit read it the whole I read it is great we've really hit it it's funny because you know recently the United health care CEO murder yeah that's in our our mystery he was and the the kind of vitriol that has come out and they eat the rich mentality it's like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg like Mark Zuckerberg comes out with this kind of like where he swings back and centrist you know on um free speech and stuff right and I'm kind of like he he took a 180 yeah I've recently I'm sitting there thinking hey good for Mark but then you read the comments and you're like they're right-wing people and the left-wing people just both hate him but for different reasons and it's like this you know and I'm like you know if you're that wildly successful there's just going to be a group of people that just you know hate you and then we saw that with the the United Health Care CEO murder because I know a lot of people that know knew him this is a guy that grew up in Iowa farmed down worked his way up as an accountant graduated about a Victorian of a local high school this was not like silver spoon you know Roth's child becomes it but that's the way they paint it and actually the guy that killed him did grow up I know it's actually ridiculous yeah it's it's it's absolutely and say I I researched the the the CEO I can't remember what's his what's his name? Brian's on yeah so I researched his background and it's actually a very humble yeah it's very humble obviously super humble American story like you know boat straps like like like good family grew up on the farm becomes valedictorian becomes a CPA works as a private accountant you know in the private market gets hired at a you know lower mid range job at United Health Care works as white to the ranks by working hard showing up and everybody I know that knows him was like he's just a super nice guy very relatable but by position this rich kid this guy that's kid that grew up rich thinks he's evil and I'm just like oh my gosh like I don't I don't get it and then people celebrate that and I'm just like this wild stuff no that was disgusting some of the some of the things that I saw and that's not even defending you know necessarily you know I know that there are problems with private health insurance like I'm absolutely not oblivious to that like there are there I think that some of it's overstated like I know people that so many people that work in these companies and the people that work in these companies are making the claims decisions and stuff are like normal middle lower middle class middle class people they're not sitting there saying yep let's kill Mrs. Jones to save money on the claim now is some of that happening by proxy and bad process I really think it could happen for sure like I'm not like like I'm not an idiot but but I think that this idea that the billionaires and the millionaires and the powers that be or orchestrating this plot to get the little guy is it's not really true man it's just but what happens is that message that message it's social fuels a lot of this social media fuels a lot of this so what happens is somebody sees something that is you know this idea just pisses them off and they echo that idea on Twitter or Reddit or whatever and because of algorithms and echo chambers the people that see that idea all kind of think the same way so then your message and your anger and your vitriol is almost reinforced and just in your mind justified because you think everyone else around you feels the same way and it just it's this flywheel of negativity and a like you to worry about echo chamber gives them the confidence to say things so now you have people that would have never said that even though they thought well maybe but then they see somebody else say it and then they're now they have this reinforcement up like well I can say that too and then it becomes like nuts if I mean you're you're obviously in sort of in this industry I didn't even think to take the conversation there but maybe you have some ideas because I don't have any because I'm so far from this industry I don't know anything really about fixing it or obviously a lot of emotion and ideas came to light because of this because of the CEO's murder because of his murder do you have any ideas about what could be done to sort of fix either the actual industry or public perception about the industry like there's obviously something broken whether or not it's it's real or it's perception something's off yeah yeah no so there's definitely some shortcomings it is a highly politicized and I think that this is important it's a highly politicized niche because private health insurance is a very is a very conservative concept it's like hey we believe that bureaucracy and governments are inefficient we should allow private markets to compete in health care to try to drive the cost down because we're we're having a budget crisis on Medicare and so federal Medicare federal health insurance and these subsidies whatever it's costing us too much let's see if we can get health insurance so that health insurance companies are are initially tasked sort of with reducing overall health care costs there's a couple of ways to do that there's not pay as many claims but the other way the long term way and what's actually being tried to happen is is value base care or health maintenance which is where you take people and you get earlier diagnoses of symptomatic stuff that you can treat before it becomes a bigger more expensive issue and this requires the entire health care system to kind of work together but they're not really working together you have like a lot of these rural hospitals that will complain that the value-based care system doesn't fit their revenue cycle so anyway but it's it the problem with this is is that the and I hate to say it this way because and this is what I think Paul I could probably get away say it politicians can't say it the American public is wholly unqualified in total to chime in on the concept because Congress and and the evolution of the health care industry has made this shit too fucking complicated for most people to really grasp but the problem is when you have the federal government saying hey let's take initiatives toward value-based care where you get people better earlier and save the money to save us money but we're also having to force you into only spending this much per head to be profitable then there probably are things with like where are we losing money I don't think that there's a lot of claims that are getting denied when people are terminally ill now when I say that yes it happens we're talking about anecdotal things we're also seeing people I believe spread lies or stories online to try to get clicks because let's say all that's coming out and I want to be a famous TikTok influencer I could go move up with a woe is me story especially if I'm a young lady and I talk about my mom dying or whatever and I say it was blah blah blah very easy to go viral on one of those stories in the heat of all that moment and then all of a sudden it looks justified I think a lot of those weren't even true as a matter of fact I believe most of the claims denials are they come down to a couple things you know the guy that killed the United Health Care CEO by the way didn't have the United Health Care never had it before I'd the other thing is the the a lot of their denials when they say United Health Care has 32% denials they're only that's only using Obamacare as a sector so it didn't use any Medicare plans it didn't use Medicare supplements Medicare advantage and use private health insurance it used Obamacare so but then I take the Obamacare some of those denials are because they hadn't met their deductible so it's not a true claim denial it's you still have you have $1,000 deductible we haven't met yet some of those denials where you are not insured here well that's not it actually even being included in the statistic you know um so when they float this 32% claims denials it's like we're not even viewing real numbers here but so if somebody calls united and they've never paid united a dime in their life united says yo you're not a customer we don't know who you are and that's considered a claim denial so the way what happened is let's say let's say you had united but you changed to blue cross blue shield and when you went to the hospital you forgot that or somebody else pulled out the cards you were an emergency and they gave them an old united card when they filed a claim and then united says well they're no longer a customer here they're not a unite they're not a current united health care customer they filed out at the hospital as a claims denial so that's it's a bullshit and I'm not saying that's all of them but that is a factor in that 32% yeah but but if you're gonna cite data the data has to be good yeah and there's side there's the problem with data is if I'm if I'm the Wall Street Journal and I'm writing an article about this I want the data to be shocking you know media has to the media is competing with the national inquiry or type headlines and so they have to come up with shocking shit and if there isn't enough shocking shit we have to paraphrase it in a way to make it seem more shocking than maybe it is yeah no I listen that's why that's why I think the healthiest thing the average person can do is just limit themselves to you know as much traditional media and social media as possible I don't think it's healthy for most people because you have all these messages just really just fucking with you yeah I try I try I say try don't like the word try but I turn off as much news as I can I mean there's definitely periods where I watch it and I get sucked back in because there are things that are important in the world but like I you know sometimes I wonder if I just was completely oblivious to ever to all social media and all the news all the politics and just live my life with my family you know I'd be happier I think most people would be yeah I think most people would be I think that there's the media just creates a ton of fear and anger on a big thank you to indeed for supporting success story because hiring people is one of the hardest things you're ever going to do as an entrepreneur as a founder as somebody's trying to build a business because it's important to hire well it's important to hire and find the right person but it takes so much time it's so labor intensive because like most entrepreneurs you have a thousand things going on and there's a good chance that you just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday how can you find that great amazing right fit candidate fast it's easy you just use indeed because you don't have to waste time struggling to get your job post seen on all these other job sites if you're using indeed you can just use their sponsored jobs to help you stand out and hire faster post jumps right to the top of the page for relevant candidates so you can reach exactly who you're looking for faster and the results really speak for themselves according to indeed data sponsored jobs posted directly on indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs you know what I love most about indeed it really just makes hiring so fast because everything is streamlined in one place no more juggling multiple platforms for waiting weeks for the right candidate how fast is indeed in the minute I've been talking to you 23 hires were made on indeed according to indeed data worldwide there's no need to wait any longer speed up your hiring right now with indeed and listeners of this show will get a 75 dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed dot com slash clary just go to indeed dot com slash clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast indeed dot com slash clary terms of conditions apply if you're hiring indeed is all you need average okay I want to I want to really understand a little bit about the exit I think that's interesting for for people that have never gone through one before because obviously that changes your relationship with money with with wealth so you sold 49% I mean I could talk to you about health care all day but I also want to talk about money it's also a fun topics so you sold 40 you sold 51% you retain 49% so that was a nice check a nice wire how did it feel when that came in what what was the emotion surrounding all of that you know think that I've watched a Ryan pinnative you would bring in dulce before talking about it so I was so I've told several people I was kind of wondering how I feel but he had talked about how he felt like and he kind of had that now now what moment and and I did have that you know it's it's not like a really real feeling so that the platform company that bought into us when they sent the wire they called me for congratulatory like the deal is closed we've sent the wire congratulations you know call and so that was kind of like okay now what well then I just go on the bank and I'm I mean it's just what anyone would do I'm refreshing the bank accounts we're just waiting for it to show up and one time I refresh it in the for they did it in two wires to a couple of different accounts just because it was multiple entity type of transaction then that first one came through and it's you know more money than I'd ever had in the scene in the bank and I had you know I had a business that was doing volume so we had um you know we've had a couple million dollar balance in there before but this was way more than that and then you know in that first one hit um I you know I immediately was like I got to figure out what to do with this money now like what where do I put it because like all I kept thinking was like oh my gosh the FDIC only ensures this account up to 240 thousand which is this you know most people never think about that but like once you get it and you're like I got a you know something crazy is going to happen and this is right around the time that all that um silicone valley bank stuff was going on so I'm like hyper alert to it so anyway so then I started talking to kind of um um you know money managers and um different routes to try to get it out diversified put some in real estate syndication but some in equity index phones and then I put some in um in a rich and paying fund that like puts it in multiple CDs with multiple institutions so that all of them are backed up to that FDIC insurance amount I mean I just kind of went on that mission and I did spend I did splurge a little bit when we went in bottle amber guinea I bought a new watch I did some you know stuff that you just did I could have afforded before but I just never thought I just didn't want to afford it like I was like I'll do that when I'm like really rich you know and um all that stuff was like fun for a minute but I had that Lamborghini for five months and sold it like I just I just didn't it was like it was fun for a minute and then the fun wore off of it it was just I was not like uh something I then you're driving a Lamborghini to target and you're wondering why yeah it's just seemed like I made it it made me a lot of friends because like you drive places and people don't want to talk to you about it but then you know I just uh I don't know it did did change my relationship with money because you buy these things and somebody told me the other day you uh buying it's getting it is more fun than having it so you know and that's why we go back to work right that's why people that make money like you don't like how many people do you know that are very wealthy that don't work anymore none like literally zero and I've interviewed people that have had hundred million dollar plus exits that are on paper billionaires um all of them work harder even though they'll never have to work again in their life they could live off the interest obviously you you know people very similar to me um and they all work and they all work a lot yeah that's the thing you in it's it's because you realize the most gratifying thing you've ever done in your life is creating something whether that's a product or a team or momentum or an idea whatever it is so you so you splurged then you sold some of the things that you bought and where where do you sit now in terms of your relationship with money where do you because also another another idea is just because you're a good operator or a good entrepreneur doesn't mean you're a good investor either I think that people lose a lot of money when they first have that windfall when they first get that wire because they have no idea what they're doing yeah I was afraid of investing it I went hyper conservative I mean I I had I had already read uh money master the game by Tony Robbins and he you know he had interviewed I think it was a jack vanguard who talked about people people can't like nobody can tie in the market you know and so um you know taking money they he had talked about equity index funds and so I went and put a bunch in equity index and um you know there's I have friends that have sold there's like oh I made this in Bitcoin I made this and that and I was like that's great I'm so happy for you like I'm never like I'm not a I I'm not gonna be jealous because you won because I avoided the potential walls so I'm it's funny how aggressive I am when betting on me and my businesses things I can control and understand versus investments I did do some real estate syndication which is still a pretty safe bet because it diversified over like apartment buildings and stuff so um everything I've done is and then like I said a bunch of CDs man how much how much for conservative can you get them that's pretty much that's about as conservative as you can be what kind of um if you look at sort of your portfolio even being hyper conservative this is more just a smart investing lesson for people what kind of returns can you get on your money with a very conservative portfolio portfolio excuse me like what you built yeah extremely conservative you could say and this is like I'm talking cash on cash um five to six percent the very conservative right now and that's because where CD rates and stuff are right now now that change in the future but I would say you know a lot of people will give you these like other higher numbers but like real estate syndication when you look at total return it's different because you're talking about tax advantages you're talking about um potential for um um you know then to refine and cash out refi part of that there's like all these different very you're talking about future exit value increased rents so like you might look up one day and be like oh that investment did 20 percent but what I'm talking about is true cash on cash that you could live off of and I would say you you would do be at the four and a half to six percent range uh of just basing it off of that you know I am and I know that somebody's gonna watch this and be like that's crazy you get 10 15 20 I'm not saying you can't get that I'm just saying like if you're talking about truly safe cash on cash that's where it's really do you live off uh interest you don't dip into the principal anymore or how you how have you structured your life I'm probably after that first few months of like taking some trips with the family uh I probably spend less I spend less now than I did the year before I sold the business I don't know why I really don't it's like um I don't really understand I don't know it's like it it came into focus that like we just decided we wanted to really pile that money up and like and then you there is this thing that happens where there are some stuff there's some things that you want to do that are so extravagantly expensive that you're willing to like live you know what would still be a cushy lifestyle like to save for the extremely extravagant like experiences like you know renting mega yachts in the Mediterranean for three weeks in the summer and stuff you know those are things that you know that I don't have enough money to do that you know all the time I don't I don't have yacht ownership money or private travel money everywhere but if I want to take one badass trip like that every couple years all I got to do is not be an idiot the rest of the time you know yeah that makes sense I think that you know I think that lifestyle creep is a big issue when people start to make that kind of money if they're not smart and you just have to be careful you just have I mean any amount over say 15 to 20 million I would say less than that you can you can screw it up pretty easily if you're not careful but any amount over 15 to 20 million after tax depending on you know how much you get tax if you invest that properly you should you should always be able to live off of the interest from that from that investment yeah even even guys are not monthly expenses are certainly less than the the conservative interest on our well look at I probably I probably on a typical month I don't know we probably spend 30 30 got thousand a month and then you know which I know is like out of touch for some people but like in the in the grand scheme it's not a you know but and then there might be a month where we spend a hundred you know but like you know but then it like I'm always thinking like when you tip toe into like when I tip toe into what is possible I think I don't think because there's a lot of people like you're saying lifestyle creep it's like they it can be really expensive to fake being a billionaire and and these people will buy all the watches all the cars all the stuff and all the sudden it's like technically you're doing really well but you're spending so much on extravagant things that you're overall solvency of your lifestyle and the peace of mind you have this suffering and so I'm like I feel like I have enough now where it's like why not feel content like I'm not content in my because money isn't a part of the the goal anymore then it might be like a score metric but like because it's not a part of it I can be content in what I can afford in my lifestyle while being aggressive toward the pursuits of my future business endeavors right like that that's kind of where my relationship with money is right now and I'm not saying it won't change again because it always changes like things just change in your psyche and and you might you know hit different strides but I'm in the stride right now where I'm enjoying being at home with my dogs and my family and just not having to worry about money at all like that's in that's you know and and and this is more speaking to the people that maybe have made money or are going to make money or making a lot and may sell in the future it's a different you know audience and I hope that there's a part of this audience that sees that and understands that that there is and I think that I was going to say one thing like I mentioned like 15 to 20 million and total exit value or total check size but the reason why I'm talking about those numbers is because say you had a 10 million dollar exit I don't want to see listen sometimes no matter what I do as a disclosure this conversation will seem out of touch but if you have 10 million dollars and you have and it's taxed and say you walk away with I don't know like say six million or something like that and you do very conservative investment in that like 4% and you're really only making about 240 to 150 thousand dollars a year which is a good it's great but the the point of this game is to not have to dip into the principle so that you don't have a clock on your money right that's really the goal sorry I didn't mean to interrupt that's wanted to point out why I was saying those numbers right is and like you know the the goal like my goal at one point became like potentially the exit but the heck I wasn't even thinking about the true wealth and it's funny because all this information's out there in like Napoleon Hill books you know like or upper Kiyosaki or what like these people have already outlined all this rich dad portad stuff and like the the ultimate wealth person is the one who's the investor that's just living off of the proceeds but I never really thought about it I guess I almost stupidly thought me as the business owner is I'm the investor but that's not the investor like that's I'm I'm the driving force behind that business in my you know I might have employees and they do really really well but I'm still like this driving force and true investment is syndication equity index back portfolios maybe I have some ownership in a business but I'm not even like manage I'm just like yeah I'll just invest in your business and you kick me back to proceeds but the true investment and so it has gotten to the point where I have like these I do have some superficial goals where you know I have like I have superficial goals of like passive income monthly you know like and I've talked to a lot of guys like like Grant and I'm Brandon Dawson and you know just Patrick bed David these are all people that have had large exits or just a mass large portfolios and um you hear some of some of what their what their past the income is at this point and it's like you know yeah that's what I want you know when you hear people that are making a cup you know two or three million dollars a month offer the conservative cash on cash return you're like shouldn't I don't even know that I would spend it you know like I don't know it's a weird thing and it is a superficial like talking point to the to the outside looking in and I'm sure that this is why some of the people are like eat the you know eat the rich but the point is like you want enough money to be able to like I want to be able to give money and I want to be able to go places and I want it's a freedom aspect of like doing thing it's freedom it's if something happens then you can take care of it if it is emergency medical you can you can give back you can donate and also I think the inverse idea you're talking about after the exit the inverse idea which I think is a comforting idea is to have an exit like this it does not take your whole life it takes a lot of work at a lot of perseverance it probably more work and time than you think it does but you were 10 years you were 10 years to a 70 million dollar exit and it could have been more yeah when you figure shit out first of all you only have to figure shit out once you really don't have to figure it out I mean multiple times you can if you want some people I think most billionaires have a little bit wrong with them because they keep trying to figure out new ideas and make new businesses work but you really don't if you figure it out once you're basically set for life most things that you'd ever want to afford you can afford right not everybody wants to buy an NBA team or the jets like most people are just happy living in a nice place take care of their family take care of their parents go on trips just comfort it doesn't it's not like out of touch and I think the audience hopefully my audience in particular understand how close it can be if they find the right product or the right idea and they put a little bit of work into it that's really the other side of that I actually wanted so badly to like reach this audience one time like if you could just get into the heads of the 18 to 25 year old you know because it's a different point of maturity and there's some of them some some kids are an 18 already thinking about the shit some of them is 20 about 26 27 before they start to really think about what am I going to do with my life and and I just want to find that kid at the like I'm taking my life serious like that point like and I embark on that journey and you just get them to understand that if I can get a if I could build a landscaping business that's doing you know they get a yard an amount of yards and projects where it's doing you know let's say a million in EBITDA and I can get you know it to 7x or whatever and I make 7 million and let's say I keep 75% of it I got 5.25 million and then I sell that and I make let's call it 6% cash will cash I make 315,000 let's say I did that I started when I was 18 I worked for 12 years fully intentionally 30 years old I could sell that I can make 315,000 a year for the rest of my life that's not a superficial goal but there are many people that will work for 25 or 30 years to make 100,000 150,000 and what I'm trying to tell you is that with the if you if you could just program the intention that of doing it it's not like you would know everything right away because most people that do this don't know everything they're just constantly learning what they need to to take the next step but if you could learn enough to do that you could build it in a simple business model landscaping HVAC these trades or service based businesses right now are trading at such high amounts I mean you know how many people that have crawled around and shit for the last 20 years being a plumber making a quarter making 200 or 250,000 a year because plumbers make good money but now are realizing so many of them I've got a freaking business here that I can make you know five 10 15 20 million dollars off of and these are not superficial amounts if you think about putting that money back and then living off of it the thing that's really superficial or or or or I don't know if it's superficial but it's fucked up is pretending that you can work a job making 60 or 70 thousand dollars a year your entire life paying to social security save up half a million dollars and live for 20 years in retirement and be peaceful it's gonna be fuck I talked to these people I built my entire business talking to these people that were living off of social security and had tiny nest eggs and that and it's stressful because even if they pay their house off and they pay their cars off 10 years in retirement the callers are falling to pieces they need a new roof and don't have any money for that shit and so then either the kids were helping out which puts us done do strain on them they're liquidating any investments they have there's no legacy involved in their life at all and this is the American condition because you're told that the pursuit of wealth is too much and I'm like it has to be 70 million dude like but you could build something in 10 years that makes you more money than your entire 30 year 40 year career did you know yeah it's I think that that's why this edge these conversations are important because it I mean you don't have these conversations when you're going to school and if you don't come from a family who's entrepreneurial you kind of look at I don't want to say you look at like wealth as if if it's like for other people but to a degree you do because we don't have any millionaires in the family we don't have any people that exited companies in the family so I don't even know where to start maybe it's not for me and that's there that's that's the wrong idea because it's not that far away it's not it's not let a lifetime of work away and I think that you know when you when you break it down like that it becomes very it conceptually becomes very manageable you can start to understand okay let's get started let's figure it out and it doesn't doesn't take a Einstein let's say you wanted to be a missionary and you wanted to just witness to people all the time spend 18 to 30 building the landscape and coming to sell it and then the then the interest would finance your family's life while you go and do charity work or whatever you want so like it's almost like whatever affects you want to have in the world could be financed by a debt like dedicated decade that's a good flow in it this dedicated decade to getting my fucking you know house in order so that I can spend the rest of my life on adventure or charity or for calls or whatever you know I've actually found that building a business in itself helps a lot of people because people got to work somewhere they've got to make money they have to have opportunity and when you build a business you know these billionaires get to a point where nobody likes them you know but like in the pursuit like how many jobs is Mark Zuckerberg Jeff Bezos Elon but like people have helped the world and they get shit on but it is what it is you know so I'm sure that yeah I'm sure they're not complaining but I get it I get it listen I just hope that some people that are listening to this who you know are sitting on the fence are younger take these words the heart and they use it as inspiration to go build something incredible and understand that it is not you know out of reach but um yeah so we spoke about a lot what did we uh what did we not go into I'm just I'm thinking now we spoke about everything that you've achieved after your exit sort of the journey and the come up what did you what did you what was the most surprising thing that you experienced or you learned after achieving sort of financial freedom or success what was something that you didn't expect hmm I didn't expect you know some of what we're talking about earlier I didn't expect what my heavy desert like I didn't expect to have such a desire to keep working um not that I thought that I wouldn't work but I thought I would feel a little bit more um relief in the intention and then I realized that that that drive wasn't money that drive was something else inherent um I didn't expect um I didn't know how to expect for my employees to react or my my family you know like how different family members would react um and it's actually been overwhelmingly positive and I think that's a testament to the people that you're at you have a great relationship with um that you've helped will be overwhelmingly happy for you if you have people in your life that aren't happy for you that have that kind of you know sentiment negative sentiment towards it probably not worthy of even being in your life at all um so I I didn't know I wouldn't say that I didn't expect it but I didn't know what to expect from family members and employees but it's been overwhelmingly positive and but I do I think that that is because I have spent a lot of time especially with my team members and people that work for me have always tried to help them anytime they need help I've always tried to be there financially for them and stuff and so I don't I think I've kind of like earned that good will with them that you know good for JB I know he's always got my back so yeah yeah no that makes sense last thought on this when you do get that check and now your minority uh shareholder in the business your minority owner how did you set your company up your team up so that um there wouldn't be any any negative after you give up control because that's the biggest concern that people have it's if if I I built this baby from scratch now someone else is running the ship I don't have control over what they do so I was very thankful that I had friends that I had built in the industry that had sold to this particular platform company or before me and I was well aware that as long as you were growing and making money and not doing anything criminal that they would stay out of your way um there have been some I've learned a lot I mean that man you want to get a PhD in high-level accounting celibus in this man because like I we had to convert from cash to a plural accounting I've learned how compound annual growth rates work I've learned I had a great law euro my side and so we were just reading through tons and tons of that um but like on the back end I've learned a lot about the conversion of approval accounting and I've learned a lot about things like uh uh working capital contributions it's just these concepts that like at the time you're going through it and you're just like you know whatever and then later on you're like okay how did I know that I would have done this differently or glad I didn't do that now that I understand this like there's a lot of faults like that um and but like they haven't thankfully you know they still let me steer the ship um you know there's there's certain things like they have a legal department so like there's things that I used to just willy-nilly sign off on that now they want to run through a legal team which probably protects me but it is a little bit slower than I'm used to because when you're running a small and rapid growing business that you're at the helm of and you're the ultimate decision maker you can make decisions quick and you can move fast and swift um and it's kind of like we're still a really fast little tugboat um but we're but we have a chain connected to a huge barge and we're kind of like you know having to get permission to unleash that chain every now and then so no that's good that's that's also very smart I mean if you if you are if you are selling I mean I think the the quote is companies the best companies don't get sold they get bought right and if you if you position yourself properly so that you do have people that are interested in you do your due diligence as the seller as the entrepreneur and choose somebody who you've checked their references they're not going to destroy your company they're not going to destroy the livelihood of your employees it is a very important idea that if you get too excited about selling and you don't do your research like these are real things that can happen yeah so just be aware of them told me when he sold that that selling your business is a lot like sending a kid off to college and so um and he sold a hundred percent so but the that the same concept even even an idea is like you there's a such an emotional attachment to what you built that even if you sell a hundred percent you do not want to sell it to someone that's going to ruin it because these are people's people that you care about work there or this should be and you know that's everybody I know this built a business cares about the people that work at their business so um you just don't want anything bad to happen to it of course okay where can people connect with you uh what do you want people to know what in terms of non entrepreneur where can they consume more content where can they learn more about what you're doing um if you want to actually if you're in the industry and they want to work with you where did they go so give people a couple reference points yeah I mean you know made one of the main places we're trying to grow is instagram instagram.com slash the Justin Rock or at the Justin Rocks what I should say uh youtube.com slash Justin Rock and then just straight to Justin Rock.com okay cool and and when they go there um what kind of content are they going to see what what uh what type of education do you put up yeah we we put a lot of stuff like on youtube right now it's some of it is is very specific to just business owners selling business that we're trying to be more broad not just completely um niche down for the insurance industry um but we do a lot of insurance industry stuff there too because that's where a lot of our audiences comprised of um instagram same thing we do try to put up some funny stuff as well to keep it uh lighthearted um but that's what we're doing it's it's very business uh and uh in insurance industry mix 50-50 amazing um last question I like to ask so you've had you know great great life great career built incredible business if you had to distill some of the most important lessons that you've learned over your life and the the lens that I I try and put this through is if you can only pass this one lesson on to your kids because that's the most important lesson that you've ever learned what would that lesson be um it's a marathon not a sprint that's uh that's been the big the big thing guiding light for me when I got out of the Marine Corps and came into the industry my dad told me that and um it has it has proven true now I try to I try to I have an adaptation that I say it's a marathon not a sprint but you can be a Kenyan in the marathon you know you can run it as a pace setter and run it really fast just just know that you're having to set a pace where you can finish a long race I have many people that I work with that um really burn themselves out quick trying to you know sprint to the finish line and not knowing the compounding effort of daily time and pressure just you know and it's a marathon not a sprint is not a cop out to relax it's just understanding that you know your work in quantity of days you know over time like every day making progress one foot in front of the other is making much bigger grand you know strides towards a goal then you can possibly fathom within that individual day every little thing that we do is is really getting us so much further because it's it's compounding effort