--:-- Ryan Hanley: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Ryan Hanley Show. Today we are talking with the wonderful, the tremendous, just incredibly thoughtful and thought-provoking Nicholas Ayers, the founder of Made You Look Marketing, one of the premier insurance advertising course programs. I'll say philosophical and tactical system for actually getting real leads that produce real results into your agency, and we go into what that means.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you haven't picked up on it, this is an insurance-specific podcast, although you will see that whether you're in the insurance industry or not, the core principles we discuss around marketing, branding, advertising, and lead generation are ubiquitous. It does not matter what industry you're in. We actually use examples from the mortgage industry, the real estate industry. I can tell you firsthand, financial advisors, CPAs, lawyers, really any professional organization or enterprise that falls under the professional designation could take real tactical and core principles from this episode.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's a ton of fun because we dive into a bunch of different topics, all of which are going to help you grow your business if you're willing to do the work. Before we get on to the show, I want to give you my quick CTA, my call to action. My friends, if this is your very first time with my show, I would love for you to subscribe. There is tons of great content that we've already produced all the way back to the very first episode, my master class in communication that I did with Marcus Sheridan, and through that episode up until the one you're listening to, just incredible thought leaders, incredible people sharing what they do with you.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If you're someone who has listened to this show for more than one episode and you enjoy this work, you want more people to find it, you think there are more individuals out there who would benefit from having these conversations in their earbuds, please head on over to iTunes, leave me a rating and review. Algorithmically, that's how more people find this show. Thank you for listening. I love you for listening. Now let's get on to Nick Ayers.
--:-- [The interview begins]
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: When you're stuck in an office for 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, but it feels like seven days a week, you have to try to do some sort of change of pace every once in a while. I'll change up the lighting configuration a little bit. It just makes me feel like I'm in a different spot sometimes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I feel that. Sometimes I sit on the right side of the kitchen table and sometimes I sit on the left side of the kitchen table, and it feels like a whole new world.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You might as well be on a beach somewhere at that point.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I have an office downstairs. We're actually moving in like a month, that's why I'm sitting on my kitchen table. That and for the last almost year, I haven't needed a kitchen table. But my wife says, "We have this office that we built you downstairs, why don't you work there?" And I'm like, "Because it's in the basement and we only get so much nice weather here. The sun is out, so I want to be up where the sun is because it's dark and cold."
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Where are you guys moving? Do you stay in the same city?
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I'm literally moving like two and a half miles from where I live right now.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Don't you go to a co-working space? I see you in your vlogs, the background looks really cool.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, it's called the Troy Innovation Garage. The place is pretty sweet. It's run by a buddy of mine who was in the PR business and just fell in love with the idea of co-working. He put his company in this co-working space that he kind of built up around it. Now he is transitioning out of the PR world and is building these co-working spaces. The one in Troy is called the Troy Innovation Garage. He has one in Albany, New York called the Bull Moose Club. I think he's looking at a couple other cities right now to build another one. He wants to take this concept where it's a co-working space, but it's not like a WeWork. Nothing against WeWork, but if you've been in one, you know what the setup is like. These are very specific and unique to the culture of whatever that town is.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I tried doing the co-working space thing. I feel like it has to fit a certain type of person. I gave it a good year of being in a co-working space. I don't know if they're all built the same, but sometimes it's hard if you're not used to working with a lot of ambient people walking around and talking. It's a challenge to be in an open space. If you're on the phone at all, or if you're trying to focus, and everybody is raving about the newest kombucha in the kitchen, it's just hard. Maybe I'm just not built for a co-working space. They're too distracting.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I don't think you're wrong. It definitely takes work. I agree with you, you have to be the right kind of person. In general, I have to be in the right mood for small talk. Even though I think to a certain extent my public persona might suggest I'm an extrovert, I really don't enjoy talking to random people at all. If I'm in the right mood or that version of who I am, then I love it. I love talking to people and asking them questions. But most of the time, I just like people to leave me alone so I can do my stuff. I find it exhausting.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I went to a 40th birthday party on Saturday of a friend of mine. It was fun, and after an hour and a half I looked at my wife and she looked at me. I was like, "I'm good. Time to go. I've had enough." Ninety minutes of fun is enough for me. Nothing against my buddy, I'm happy for him, but I had had enough small talking.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Long story short, I had been a member of that co-working space since three months before they opened. They literally had holes in the floor, jackhammers going off. I just throw on my old Bose noise canceling headphones and I can be put into another world. That's how I've made it work. It definitely can be distracting at times, and some people don't get the clue.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I feel like for most people, it's like a social club. They'd rather go there than go to the bar. They think, "I'll just come here for eight hours a day and I'm not an alcoholic if I do this." So they go to the co-working space and it's just a social event. At least that was my experience. The aesthetic of seeing people moving around, I need to focus. Maybe that's a bad thing. You're right, it does take a lot of work. If I'm focused on my computer, the last thing I want to see is a bunch of people doing somersaults. I don't need to see that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I feel like an old man, "Get off my lawn" type guy.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I think as you mature into your career — and I don't want to say older because I don't think that's what it is — but as you mature into your career, you start to understand the habits and routines that allow you to be the most effective version of yourself. If you're holding yourself to some level of performance, anything that breaks those habits takes you away from being able to do your best work. If I'm away from the co-working space for a while and I go back, there is an adjustment period. If I'm there all the time, I can give people that look like, "Don't mess with me. I'm in the middle of something." Or I'll just say, "Yo man, I got something to do."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You have the luxury of that East Coast stereotypical attitude. Everybody gets it.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: It's socially acceptable to be a prick to people and they just have to deal with it. That is one of the advantages to being on the East Coast. You just say, "Look man, I got these things to do. Go figure it out."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I appreciate you coming on. You're a guy that I've obviously followed your work for a long time. We've gotten to know each other and that's been fun. Especially we got to know each other a lot better after I took a solid swing at your organization. Misinformed, but certainly a solid swing.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I forgot all about that until you just brought it up.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I was thinking about it the other day. I was thinking about our interactions in the industry. My mind has been in a new space now that I'm back working with the insurance industry and starting to help some people on a consulting basis. We had our call coming up and I wanted to talk to you because you have so much going on that I'm interested in. We kind of knew each other peripherally. I knew of your work, I had seen it, and I thought it was good. Then on Agency Nation Radio with Marty, I took a swing at IAOA and he reached out to me.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Grant, who I just had on, Grant Botma, for people listening, came at me hard on Twitter. Real hard, real aggressive. You were more diplomatic. You were like, "Yo man, I think you have some misconceptions about what we're all about. Let's get on the phone." So you and I got on the phone for an hour, an hour and a half. After that, I was like, "I'm good." I think I went on the next episode and said I was misinformed. I had heard some things. Lesson learned. Don't — get to know.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I remember that now. Speaking of Grant, he's the perfect person. He's very intellectual, very strategic. He can strategically think of words right on the spot. He probably won't admit this, but he's one of the worst people to get in an argument with or get into a verbal battle with. I've seen him completely annihilate people in the nicest way possible. I wish I had that gift. For me, when I want to bulldoze something, I just bulldoze over like a bull in a china closet. He has a way of making you feel really dumb. That sounds bad to say, but he has a way of making people feel inadequate. I don't think he's trying to intentionally do that, it just comes off that way.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I actually remember all that. I think it's a struggle we all face. You were younger. It was probably a couple years ago now, maybe four years ago. You're young and you're dumb and you just kind of do stuff. I tell people all the time, I'm going to ride the young and dumb thing as long as I possibly can.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: What it taught me was that I was still very bought into the tribalism of the national Big I and stuff like that. These things that today I detest about our industry — not meant to be a shot at the association, just tribalism in general — I just detest. I read this awesome article today that I shared on Twitter about how empathy is killing social discourse. There have been three consecutive studies over the last seven years that found almost the exact same thing: the more empathetic you are, the more apt you are to feel actual joy when someone outside your empathy group is in pain.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: The point of these studies is, how can you have people on both sides of a conversation who would classify themselves as very empathetic, yet they hate the other group with a passion? How do those two things work together? If I'm an empathetic person, I'm empathetic to everyone. What they found is that's actually not the case. The more empathetic you consider yourself to be, the less empathetic you are to anyone you consider outside of your circle.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Tribalism and the herd mentality are something you have to always fight against because it's innate in us. It's how we've survived for hundreds of thousands of years, by getting together in a group of people with similar interests or affinities. We think, "If I'm friends with this person, then when the barbarians come over the hill, they're not going to kill me. This person is going to protect me." It's natural in us to feel that way, and it's natural to feel empathy towards people with similar affinities. I have a lot of empathy for people who fit my criteria of what is subjectively right or wrong. But for the people outside that, I'm like, "Go screw yourself. Figure it out for yourself."
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: There's a lot of truth in that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: That conversation was in some ways a very pivotal moment in my own career. It made me step back and reevaluate where I was receiving information from and the filters with which I passed that information through. This was literally days after I had published that podcast. I had the conversation with you. It happened pretty quickly. I thought, "How can I have felt so strongly one day, three days ago, and today I feel completely and utterly different?" If I had actually met you in person before I heard some of the things I had heard, I would have never even gone down that path. I would have said, "Hey man, I'm hearing something. What's up with that?" We would have talked about it. You would explain what you explained to me. I would have said, "Some people are saying some things, but here's what I know."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It changed the way I personally filtered information and thought before I spoke. Whether intentional or not, it was a very educational moment in my life.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: It's been great since then. We've taken those lessons and applied them to other things. It's made our relationship better. I think it was a great thing. I forgot about it until you brought it up. I forget what I did yesterday half the time.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I probably reflect on things too much. I try not to make the same mistake twice as much as possible. Except I keep rooting for the Bills. That's a mistake I'll probably make for the rest of my life. I try very hard not to repeat mistakes. It really bothers me personally when small things happen, but big major things that if you had taken a moment to think about, you could have avoided making that mistake twice. I do tend to reflect on those things quite a bit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: None of this is actually why I wanted to have you on the show, other than I just enjoy conversing with you. The last few years since that moment, you've created some new projects, changed the state you live in, had some major changes. There's been this interesting movement in the industry, speaking specifically about the insurance industry. You have Made You Look Marketing, a video advertising marketing community coursework. I think you even do some consulting. We'll talk about all that as we go.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You're driving, you're one of the driving thought leaders and really practitioners around taking your message into the digital space and how to do that in a very strategic and tactical way that produces results. Not the fluffy "hey, you should do a YouTube video" kind of thing. Here's how you actually do it. Here's how it produces results. Very boots on the ground, tangible stuff. You're one of the pioneers of that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: At the same time, I've been gone from the industry for nine months. I stepped back in. It was funny, being gone nine months, I came back and thought things would be so much different. I don't know why I thought that. I come back in and I'm like, "Oh my God, what do you mean you're not doing that? It's been nine months. That feels like the right answer to me." Why are we still questioning automation, putting your message out into the marketplace, having at least a digital component to your business? From where you sit, why are we even still having this debate? It feels like we should be into "how" or "who helps us" or "where do we put it," not "should we." That boggles my mind.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Maybe we're seeing the same thing from a little bit different perspective. I actually see it as improving. I remember five years ago, the word automation was a foreign concept. Today it's this third rail buzzword that people don't even know what it means, but they get really excited about it. I think there's growth in that arena.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I remember sitting in an event in San Antonio, one of our very first conferences. We had 120 people in the room. The word automation came up and it was like people saw color for the very first time, like Wizard of Oz. Now everybody is automating. Do I think the tide has completely shifted? No. There's still a lot of work done on a lot of fronts, whether it's automation or marketing.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: A lot of people I talk to have been in the industry for a really long time. They built their agencies in the yellow page era, the bus stop advertising era, the newsletter era. Not that those eras are completely gone, but it is different. They built their agency in a much different model and they grew relatively well, relatively fast in a different era. Now there's almost this need — well, "I don't need to do that" — which approaches two places. One, a place of fear of learning something new. "I don't want to go have to learn Spanish, but if you drop me off in the middle of Tijuana, I better pick it up pretty fast." There's this ignorance that "I don't need to do this. I didn't have to build my agency this way." Well, the time has shifted. Communication has changed more in the last five years than it did in the previous 50 years combined.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I think a lot of people are still content with that. I don't fault people for that. That's exactly where I want to get — to a spot where I'm content too. Whether or not I ever get there is completely different. But I do see positive shifts. Words we use today weren't used years ago. Today the big word is data. That wasn't something anybody thought about one year ago, two years ago, three years ago. Now everybody thinks about it. Automation is the same way. Marketing is on that path as well.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: People know they need to do something. What they get lost in is there's so much coming at them from different perspectives. There are so many shiny objects that you don't know where to begin. It's paralyzing. People would rather stay put, bury their heads in the sand, than actually take a step in a certain direction. I see this a lot with people I work with. People who pay money still come in paralyzed. We've had to adjust some things. I think it is getting better, not at the rate you and I would want, but I do see it improving.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So where do they begin? I agree with you. I think you've nailed the two things. It's, "Hey man, I'm making $300,000 in personal income. My wife's got a new car. We have a house down in Florida. I get to play golf. I do some work. My kid's college is taken care of. Why do I need to kill myself with this new thing?" God bless them. That's a great spot to be in, depending on how long you want to ride that wave. If you're only someone who wants to be in the industry for another couple years and then sell, I'd be right there with you. Let's go golfing, even though I don't golf. You could just rollerblade alongside them. I'll rollerblade with the drink cart.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: The majority of the industry is not there. A lot of agency owners struggle. They have to start somewhere. For me, it's really easy to say — and this is a mistake I see a lot of people fall into — they want to learn mechanisms. They want to learn Facebook, Google, email, automation. All that stuff is very tangible, nice stuff, but it's really just the fruit of what's growing on the tree. The tree has to be rooted in deeper things than that.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: For someone who nerds out on this stuff, I spend some time figuring out what buttons to click, but really I spend my time trying to learn human behavior, psychology, persuasion, how to apply those things in what I write and what I say. Not just on the marketing side, but the sales side. Learning, "This is the mindset that people have. How do I overcome that? With this mindset comes this series of objections. Why do they think this? Why do they want what they have? How are they going to envision themselves with the result we're trying to get them?"
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Learning human psychology is applicable to any industry. I know it sounds weird, but when you learn how people behave, then who cares? I had this conversation with somebody the other day. Advertising was around before the internet. Marketing was around before the internet. They relied on different things and different tactics. When you understand how people behave and why they make decisions — the herd mentality, how to think about that from the whole big picture — then screw the platforms. Tomorrow a new platform is going to come out. You can figure that out relatively easily. Learning how people behave and how to put that into words or into sequences is where you will have more success.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Most people don't want to devote themselves to learning that stuff, but it's the best thing that will help you, not just from an inbound standpoint, but from an outbound, from a sales standpoint, from how you talk to people on your team. I think it's really critical.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Do you think that's one of the defining characteristics between an insurance professional who has figured out how to put themselves in a place of relative comfort or sustainability versus one who has not? Understanding human behavior?
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: If you want to grow and improve, that's what you need to do. There are probably a lot of successful agency owners who have figured that out as it pertains to the insurance vertical. You tell them a number of objections, they'll tell you exactly why that person is probably thinking that way and they'll know how to overcome it. There are things they have inherently developed without even knowing they've developed them. That's probably what causes people to have success. It's how anybody has success in communicating.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Everybody has a different style. My style is completely different from most people's style. There's 95% intentional thought into why I do things. It just fits me as a human being. It wouldn't be good for other people to replicate. It's definitely a skill set you have to learn, develop, and do with trial and error.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've come back to my father-in-law a lot because I feel like I was blessed to have him as the person who taught me this industry. He's very old school in how he goes about things, but he's also been incredibly successful. If you were to ask him, there is no way he has ever studied human behavior. That being said, his ability to adapt a story, a pitch, or a mechanism of the experience he provides in his agency to someone based on the way they respond to certain things — their human behavior — is uncanny. He developed it by digging deeper into the business, wanting to understand that next layer, never actually reading about it, but just listening to people reacting, hearing no a bunch of times, and figuring out how to get closer to yes.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I am concerned about this, and I'm very interested in your take. I'm concerned that we're losing that. The rush towards marketing, we forget that you still have to sell. The individuals I see who seem to have the deepest understanding of human behavior — whether that's spending time in some sort of learning or literature or deep practice, or it has come from trial and error over time — those people tend to be from a sales function. You either kill it or you don't eat. I worry that the further we remove ourselves from actual sales, the majority of us are going to start to lose that. I'm not saying you have to lose it, I don't think that's the case. But that natural tendency away from sales in some regard, and more of a reliance on advertising and marketing, we could start to lose that a little bit. Do you think there's anything to that?
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Oh, for sure. I see it in the insurance industry. I see it in every industry. I have the privilege of having my foot in other verticals, observing from the outside how other people approach us. And it's all the same thing. We get caught up in the vanity metrics of, "Now we've accomplished something."
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: From a literal standpoint, I have an ad running. It's getting a lot of views, a lot of impressions. People are clicking over, and I'm even generating a lot of leads. I got leads for a dollar. Great. How much money are you making? That's really what it should be about at the end of the day. Those things should help facilitate that. Most people don't make that connection.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Now, keep in mind, I also talk to a lot of people who make a lot of money and do really well with the same thing. There's this chasm, this separation between those who understand that and those who are just in for the vanity metrics. The people that are actually focused on revenue — we all think we are, but our actions dictate that we're not.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I ask people who generate leads, "How many times do I see this?" In the mortgage vertical, for example, mortgage lenders sometimes fall below the totem pole of what I call laziness in financial services. They're not used to having to sell anything. They get referrals from real estate agents. They'll generate leads, and I'll say, "Great. How many applications have you taken? How many pre-approvals have you gotten?" "Well, I haven't gotten any." "Okay, let's dive into that. What's your follow-up process like? How many phone calls are you making?" "Well, I make a call and leave a message. Maybe I'll shoot an email." "Great. When's the next phone call?" "Well, I'll call them maybe the next day."
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: There's nothing systematic about it. Nothing intensive. It's very up in the air and gray. And you see those results. But we get so excited about, "Well, I did this. I accomplished this." That's a nice vanity metric you have. But the actual, real results aren't what you accomplished on the ad or the lead. It's what you deposited in your bank account. And that's what sales does.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Sales is not me tricking you into buying something. That's the worst part of it. That's the complete opposite of sales. Sales is a very long process of people going from being completely unaware to aware, to making a decision and believing that decision is going to give them the result that solves an internal problem in their lives. They're so bought into that solution that it could be a dollar or a million dollars. If they really feel like it's going to solve a real problem internally for them, they're going to do whatever they can. They're going to beg, borrow, sell blood, perform tricks on the corner to get the result that solves an internal problem for them.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I think there is a real separation there. Successful people understand that it's not just about the vanity metrics, but about the actual results those metrics are supposed to provide. Insurance agents fall into the trap. You can't go on my Facebook without seeing somebody bragging about getting dollar leads or fifty-cent leads. It's great. Congratulations. Let's talk about the results on the backend.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I tell people, people ask me all the time, "Nick, what do you do with your ads?" I tell people I'm lucky if I close 20% of them. That's because out of a hundred, 50 of them — I can call them every single day and email them every single day until Jesus returns. They're never going to pick up the phone. They ghost me. 30 of them lied. And 20 of them become actual customers. That's the real reality nobody wants to talk about, but it is a separator.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah, that's why the lead business is so hard. We learned that the hard way through TrustandChoice.com when I was doing that work. That was — you want to get punched in the face every day. That business was SEO-based leads. You're working really hard to get them. They're not high volume, but your hope is that they're of higher quality. That's the trade-off.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: The intent is going to trump all that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yes. So then you listen to the phone calls that would happen.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: They're hostage negotiations.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Oh my God. It was like — in hundreds, if not thousands of cases, because we listened to a lot of the phone calls to try to figure out what we were doing wrong.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You likely weren't doing anything wrong. I tell people, I don't believe I'm a very good salesperson. I rant and I ramble. I say things on the phone I shouldn't say. I give up too easily. I'm not very good. So I always tell people, don't look at me as the example of sales. I'm not Grant Cardone here.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: But it's weird when I analyze phone calls from people on our team or people we work with. They come to me and go, "Nick, I can't have any success with these leads." "Okay, let's dive in. Let's listen to the phone call." The phone call is — using mortgage as an example — "What's your social security number? How much can you afford to pay right now? You don't have a down payment?" It's like a ransom call. You might as well put the machine over the thing and be like, "I have a million dollars." There's no rapport. No relationship building.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Marketing is all about relationship building. That's all it is. A funnel is nothing but a relationship builder. It's not this mystic, weird thing. It's not some scientific formula either. All it is, is building relationship and building rapport. Whether I do that through a series of text messages, emails, phone calls, in-person visits, direct mail — how am I building a relationship with this audience? How do I get them to pay attention to me? How do I get them to turn their head and look at what I'm doing? How do I actually solve a real internal problem? That's all marketing is.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: I feel like we've made it two things. We've made it this mystical thing like it's the Force. And the other thing is we've made it like it's a scientific formula, like it's a calculator. Neither is correct. It's just, "How do I build a relationship with people?" If you use Facebook, Google, direct mail, telemarketing, if you show up at community events and craft fairs — that's all it is. It's setting expectations. And then when you talk to them, you're delivering on the expectations you set.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: It's funny to me how many people try to make it so the person doesn't want to buy insurance from them. They approach the call like a series of tumblers, almost like *Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade* where Indiana Jones has to run through the different challenges. It's like we have this prize, which is the thing you actually want, but we're going to make you run through this obstacle course of challenges to get there. We're not going to take your hand. We're not going to give you the guidebook. We're going to blindfold you and send you into a minefield.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let's hope those things don't chop your head off in the meantime.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Yeah. If you do their side, congratulations. Now you got to pick the right cup. And if you fail...
--:-- Ryan Hanley: It's true. I think that's a mistake that happens when you focus so much on the mechanism instead of the actual bigger picture. You focus on the mechanism and you're bound to do those things. You get so caught up in chatbots, Facebook ads. Just build relationships with people. People have internal struggles and internal problems, and that's why they buy things — to solve internal problems. Insurance is a wonderful thing to solve real internal problems if it's presented right. We get lost in the cool stuff. It's cool to say, "I have this thing." It is cool if it's a hobby. But if you're not making money, that's all it is. It's just a hobby.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Exactly.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So in your work in the Made You Look Marketing world, how do you start to break that down for people? When they join the group, they bought in. They want to be part of it. They want to start using video to advertise and market their business. And you can tell immediately that person is too caught up in, "Nick's going to teach me YouTube ads," and not in all the stuff that goes into it before. How do you start to break down those barriers? How do you start to change that mindset so they're not just throwing stuff up there that's never going to produce results?
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: This is something we had to address within the last couple of months. There was that aspect of people who came in with a certain mindset already pre-programmed. But there were a lot of people we saw coming in who would struggle to take a first step. They got really excited. They saw the problem. They understood how to solve the problem. But they didn't know how to take a first step. They got paralyzed.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: One of the things we started doing was boiling it down to the most simple things. How do we get momentum started in people? I believe the most important aspect of marketing is words. It's what you say. It's what people read. Those words elicit emotional responses that trigger responses in the brain that get them to either see there's a problem or get so fired up about wanting to solve the problem.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: We said, "Let's take this one step at a time." The very first thing we need to do — you sign up for our program — we need to hear your offer. We need to understand your offer. We need to understand your pitch. We need to boil that down. We have to perfect that. You can have the greatest ad on any platform. It could be the most well-designed. It could be the best expression of an ad. But if the words aren't good, your results are going to be poor. On the flip side, you can have the ugliest looking, gritty, ugly ad. But if the words elicit the right responses in people...
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: That's why I always say, in design, simple is always better. Simple, clean. There's nothing wrong with white space because it's the words and the message that are going to be the most important thing. Where we have to put the most amount of work with anybody is polishing the offer. We have to write the script. I don't care how you film it. I don't care if you film it in an office with fluorescent lights and no microphone. We need to make sure the offer is right. Because it's the offer that people hear or read that's going to give them buy-in. It's going to make them think, "Okay, this is going to solve a problem. I have this problem. I know I have this problem when it comes to protecting my family. I'm this exposed."
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: We dial that in. It's like that scene from *Star Wars: Episode IV*. Luke is shooting with the little blasters and puts a blindfold on. Finally, he can deflect the blasters and goes, "I finally did see something." And Obi-Wan goes, "Great. You've taken your first step into a much larger world." We have to get the ball rolling that way.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: If we can get people to understand their offer — and it's different for every insurance agent. Your value proposition is another way of thinking about your offer. What is your real value proposition? How do you actually solve internal struggles with your ideal customer? It could be with technology. It could be with ease of use. It could be with price. It could be with experience. You have a very unique value proposition that is the core of your offer. If we can figure that out and put it in the right structure and framework, then you can have great results.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Talking into a camera is a lot different. You're a lot less intimidated when you really understand and believe in the offer you're presenting and how it's going to change someone's life. That's where we start. First base is the offer. The batter's box we get lined up in is: What are we going to say? Why are we saying it this way? Why are we using these words? Why are we structuring it this way? Why are we delivering this value upon this value? When we understand that, then I don't care what you throw down, we're going to knock it out of the park.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: That's where we focus. I think that's where a lot of people get it wrong — their offer and how it's communicated. In insurance and financial services, it's a challenge because you're dealing with people who don't think this way. They're not programmed this way. That's fine. But insurance is very logical, very systematic. "You buy this product to protect against this." Really, insurance should be one of the most emotional buys there is. I hear people all the time talk about how it's hard to do this for insurance. No. Insurance is a very emotionally charged buying decision. If you can tap into that with your offer, with your words, you can really have something there.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: That's not the sexy part.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: No, that's not the sexy part. The sexy part is, "What is my lighting? What picture am I using?" The gimmicks, the smoke and mirrors. There's a place for that, but like most things in life, we minor on the majors and major on the minors. Successful advertisers in every vertical understand it's not about that. Agora Publishing sells well over a billion dollars of product a year through newsletters — long-form newsletters. In the copywriting world, they're like the wizard in *The Wizard of Oz*. They're not using Facebook ads. They're not using YouTube ads. They're using newsletters. Who cares about the medium? Who cares about the sexy stuff? Let's boil it down to why people make buying decisions.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I learned from Don Miller. I happened to be in Don Miller's mastermind from StoryBrand. One of the things he always talks about is nobody walks in the direction of a cloud. We always, even against our better judgment, walk in the direction of that which is made most clear to us. People always make decisions that solve internal problems. You and I don't make decisions on things that just solve external problems.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: If I let my grass grow to my waist and I haven't mowed it, if it was a real external problem, I would have solved it a long time ago. I would have gone out and got a lawnmower and mowed my grass. But I go out and buy the lawnmower because I'm tired of the way the neighbors look at me and how it makes me feel inside. I feel embarrassed. I feel like some schlep, some lazy bum who can't even mow the yard. Then I go buy the lawnmower. I'm solving an internal problem because I don't want to feel that way anymore.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that's something that if insurance agents — if anybody — can grasp that concept, when you're selling a non-tangible product like insurance, people are buying it because they want it to solve internal struggles. They'll tell you price. For a lot of people it is price. But why price? What is that cost savings going to do for them? How is that going to solve anything in their life? How is that going to make their life better? If you can go just a level deeper and ask why, why, why — why price? Why is saving money important? Why do you want to have more time with your family? Why? If you can solve for that, I feel like you can take most offers and make them really attractive to people.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think that's where a lot of people get lost because it's not sexy. People don't want to think about that stuff. They just want to know, "What words do I say? What's the copy and paste solution?" It's destructive, honestly. It's good for training wheels. It's good to know how to put reps in. But at the end of the day, you're going to have to figure that out for your audience.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Yeah.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I would like to think of myself as an empathetic person, but I don't know that I actually am because I have these Machiavellian thoughts about some of this stuff after having done this and talked about it for so long.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You're either empathetic or you're a sociopath.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Right.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: There's no right or wrong on that.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I've been teaching the basic branding of the "100 Insurance Questions Answered" thing that I talk about for more than a decade. Mike Crowley is the first person that ever completed it. He didn't even do it in a hundred days. It took him a couple of months. My point in saying that to you is — sometimes, and this probably sounds terrible — sometimes I just think to myself, "If you're really not..." Nick Ayers is a guy who has proven through both himself and multiple case studies — tens of case studies and probably hundreds of other people that have done it — that spending a little extra time on the words and coming up with the offer, that time that you're not going to tweet out, that time that no one's watching, just doing that work, if that's the thing you need to do to then have 10x the success down the road, and you're still not willing to do it, I feel like you deserve your struggles.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Does that make sense? I just sometimes feel like there's a lot of whining, or opining — opining is probably a better term — about the various things that have happened in the insurance industry and the insurtechs coming on. Yet so few people are willing to do the work. Then I see someone like you, or I see the success of Danny Kimball and what she's done at the O'Neill Group in the last few years. Her career has really come on. She's shown that consistent branded social media content over and over again drives growth in an organization like it has in hers. We just have the same case studies. I know there are more people out there who don't talk about it as much. But versus the number of people who operate in our space, the fact that there are just so few new case studies each year boggles my mind.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Is it really any different in the fitness niche? Between the people who get up and put in the extra mile — instead of taking selfies in the mirror saying they're at the gym, they're actually running the treadmill, doing crunches, doing chin-ups, putting in really hard work? You see that on every spectrum, whether it's physical or mental. I tell people, I am not the... There are lots of people I look to and think, "Man, I wish..." It's a developed skill. It's like having good biceps. You think you have decent biceps until you see a crew of people with much larger biceps. You think, "I need to put in more work. I need to figure this out more." That comes with time and reps. Time and reps.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Let me reposition my argument. My argument is not about the production of high-quality results. It's about putting the shield down and blocking the first shot. I feel like it surprises me how few people each year actually do the work of taking the first step onto the path. They still stand on the sidelines.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: That's the... And the first step — most people are sad. Illustrated, if you go to a football game or a basketball game, there are a lot more people in the grandstands than on the playing field. That's just the way of life. The first step is always hard. That's why I've tried to address it even with people I work with. "Let's take the first two or three steps." With me, we're going to do a series of one-on-one calls, not in a group setting. It's just going to be me and you, and we're doing offer. Then we'll get to the sexy stuff later on. We're dialing this in.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Taking that first step is the hardest part. I have to take control of their mouse and hit submit for them because it's a paralyzing thing. People prefer known hells versus unknown heavens. They know what they have if they just stay put. They are satisfied with that paralysis. We make those decisions in everything we do — the restaurants we choose, our career choices, how we raise our kids. We prefer what we're used to, even if it's to our own detriment. We don't want to take a step out because who knows what that is. We don't want to walk in the direction of the unknown or in the direction of a cloud. We'll always go in the direction of something that's clear, even if that means staying put.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: To your point, it's mind-boggling that not enough people... I wish you would see this. I know my mentors are thinking, "Nick, I wish you would see this." It comes with being involved with it. If I had to be dropped off in the middle of Mexico and I don't speak Spanish, I'm going to learn it really fast if I want to survive. That comes with time and practice.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: My hope for those listening — I don't mean this to be quite the indictment I probably made it sound earlier. Skill level doesn't bother me. Natural inclination doesn't bother me. My hope for my particular work, because I've always tried to be more of a connector than an educator — I'm not even in the same ballpark as you from copywriting, from offer building.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You're giving yourself enough credit.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: But my point is, that's not a level of expertise I would classify. What I've always wanted my work to be is: How do I get the people who want to take the first step in the world that you know best to you? I don't need them to work with me. I want them to work with the person who's... I just want the people listening to this to know that if you haven't taken that first step, there are people who will connect you with individuals who will hold your hand to that place. There is no thing you could possibly want to do in this space that there isn't someone who will help you wade into that pool.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I guess that's the message I want to get out to everyone listening. There is a range of things that you are the guy to take that person's hand and wade them down into the pool. For other things, there may be other people. My hope has always been that more people take the first step. I don't care about your level of proficiency because that comes with time and practice and patience and effort. That will happen. What I would love to see is more organizations and individuals within our industry starting to take that first step.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I think part of that comes from a general awareness that there are a lot of really high-quality professionals who know our space inside and out that can help them do that. If it's better utilizing your agency management system, there are people for that. If it's internal organizational process, there are people for that. If it's high-level branding, there are people for that. What I don't like to see is the complete paralysis and stagnation where it's just, "I'm going to hold tight."
--:-- Ryan Hanley: You talk to somebody who's been interested in or has sold an agency in the very near future, and they'll tell you that you were probably at peak EBITDA. Not that I'm saying you should sell, but allowing your valuation to slip today will only be multiplied as we go into the future. You have to be very aware of that. Stagnation is not holding up the fort.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Complacency is a real thing. It's just part of human nature.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: We're complacent. Complacency is just part of the human condition that you have to fight against. You have to jar it loose with certain things. That's where having a good offer comes into place. A good offer, good pinpointed copy, direct messaging, can jar that loose.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: But I think it's a human condition that we see everywhere.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Yeah. It is frustrating though. I totally hear your point. There's just so much out there, and I think a lot of people are taking it on. It goes back to your point earlier about empathy. You're more empathetic to people that you have an affinity with. That frustration is an emotion you feel, that anger even, because you're connected to this system, this community, these people. You know them personally, you know them professionally, and you desire for them to have more and want more. Whereas if it was CPAs, you might not feel the same way. So it goes back to one of your original points.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Just kidding. Love all my accounting brothers and sisters. I lived in that world for a while.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Dude, I appreciate you so much. This has been a great conversation. I want to be respectful of your time. I think we've covered a lot of stuff. Obviously, you're always welcome to come on. You've got an open invitation to the show.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: I want to close this out. I didn't just have you on here for the conversation. I do think what you're doing with Made You Look is an incredibly important facility within our industry. I've recommended your course to a ton of people. I've spent time in it myself. I think it's incredibly high quality, high value. Anyone who is interested in what you're doing, if they apply themselves, the results are there.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: So let everyone listening at home who may not be familiar know where they can find out more. Maybe even give the quick pitch.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: Yeah. So there are a few things you can do if you want to learn more about what we do. We have a 21-day onboarding process that I'll take you through one-on-one in a group setting. We're going to craft your offer, perfect your offer. We're going to help you launch your first ad. Then you're going to have me by your side in those 21 days to analyze your results and to tweak, prune, refine, optimize, scale, whatever we need to do.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You're going to implement. You're not going to join our program anymore if you don't implement. That's what we're after. We're after people that are action takers that want the results and do that.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: You can find out more about what we do in two areas. Number one, I would encourage everybody to subscribe to our YouTube channel, something we're promoting a lot now. Go to Made You Look Video Marketing or Made You Look Marketing on YouTube. Subscribe. I'm putting out a lot of free content. I'm releasing the Killing Geico series today, so you can watch that. Tactical tips, things that people would pay for, I'm giving it to you for free. Subscribe to our YouTube channel. Share that content with another insurance agency owner or community.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: If you want to learn more about our program and what we have to offer, go to our website, www.madeyoulookvideo.com. Schedule an appointment. Speak with our team. We'll see if it's a good fit for you. Again, we're only interested in those who say, "I want results and I'm prepared to take the action in order to get those results." We intentionally are not the least expensive. We don't believe that's going to be valuable to you. But we do believe that if you're in the family, we're going to do everything we can. We're going to beg, borrow, and steal to help you get the results that you're looking for.
--:-- Nicholas Ayers: So that's something you want to do. Look for you to join our website. You're the man, dude. Appreciate the time. Be good.
--:-- Ryan Hanley: Thanks, man. You too. Thank you.
--:-- [Announcer]: Close twice as many deals by this time next week. Sound impossible? It's not. With the One Call Close System, you'll stop chasing leads and start closing deals in one call. This is the exact method we use to close 1,200 clients in under three years during the pandemic. No fluff, no endless follow-ups, just results fast. Based in behavioral psychology and battle tested, the One Call Close System eliminates excuses and gets the prospect saying yes more than you ever thought possible. If you're ready to stop losing opportunities and start winning, visit masteroftheclose.com. That's masteroftheclose.com. Do it today.
