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Agency Acceleration Lab is the podcast for insurance agents and agency owners who want to scale smarter, not harder.
Hosted by Alex Branning, each episode breaks down real growth strategies, marketing systems, and client retention frameworks that help you attract better clients, increase lifetime value, and build a more predictable agency.
If you're serious about building a high-performance insurance business, you're in the right place.
Episode Transcript
Agency Acceleration Lab – Episode 8
Stop Chasing Recruits: Troy’s Attraction System Explained
Alex Branning: Hey guys, I'm here with Troy, who has a brilliant strategy for attracting licensed agents into his world. Troy, tell me about the program that you've been running to attract these agents.
Troy: Yeah. So really where the idea came from was, I'm a Christian, and in Luke it says give, and it shall be given. I think a lot of times when we're in business, obviously the goal is revenue and how much money we can generate, but sometimes we lose sight of how to actually gain the revenue and get the money that we want in our business. So what we've done is we've created an academy where we actually give all of our training, all of our scripts, everything that we do inside our business. I built a Meta ads course that goes step by step on how to build your own ads, all the way through why I do certain things, and it's all free. Kind of the goal of the academy is because I feel like if I have that much value to give, and somebody's looking for value, number one, if an agent is looking for value elsewhere, they're probably not getting value where they're at. Because if somebody is signing up for an academy from an agency that they're not even a part of, their upline is probably not doing the greatest job of helping them and training them because they're looking elsewhere. That's number one. Number two, when you give that value through like we do with the academy, our PDFs, our courses, all that stuff, and people really start learning, they're like, well, what are some other things that they may have? And then we obviously use Agent CRM for the follow-up, the automations, the text, all that stuff. We have a separate recruiting account with you guys. Basically when that comes in, we just pick up the phone and we're like, hey, we noticed you signed up for the academy. And we don't really go into it as like, hey, how can I recruit you? It's more of, hey, what made you look into that? And then, is there anything that you would like to see in the academy that's not there that could be beneficial for you or for somebody else? So we actually get some ideas from agents to put stuff in the academy, but then we're having the conversation, and now they're in the pipeline. So yes, it's kind of like your giveaway funnel. Yeah, got to spend a little money up front to really start getting those agents to come into your ecosystem. But once they're there, now they're going to have this conversation. And it's warm conversations, because you've given them something. And I think that's the whole thing, that give and it shall be given mentality. And I think if you adopt that as an agency owner, you're going to get way more. Not just recruiting, just anything. Networking, personal relationships, it's all the same thing. I think as a society, we've decided that we're just going to take, take, take, take, take, where in fact we would actually get way more if we just gave, gave, gave. And that's kind of the idea behind what we do with the academy.
Alex Branning: So what gave you the idea for the academy? And then inside of there, how much content have you created?
Troy: Yeah, well, I can't say the idea was my idea. I'm a huge Alex Hormozi fan. So if anybody knows Alex or follows Alex, that's his entire model. That's what he's been doing since day one is I'm just going to give you the roadmap, the process, exactly what I do, and I'm going to gain a following from that. I mean, if anybody bought his book, he broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the most sold in I think it was a 24-hour period. It was unbelievable. So it works. Now, are you going to get those results like Alex did? Probably not. But the model itself works. So it's really cool. Inside of our academy, we really have three main courses. We have some other courses, but the three main ones are: the first one is final expense, because probably 50 to 70 percent of all agents do some form of final expense. There's not a ton in the advanced markets, so we have a final expense course. Not only do we have a final expense course, we have a mortgage protection course, which is a big hitter. People love the mortgage protection course because it's a different kind of sale. What's cool about it though is the way that we've structured it. We've structured it to where you can sell a term policy, but also if for some reason health-wise they don't qualify, we do equity protection with a final expense policy. So it's a really cool tiered step-down, and it goes from start to finish, from the time you pick up the phone and what you're going to say all the way to the close. And like I mentioned, the third one that I think is really beneficial is if you can learn how to market and get your own leads, that's going to completely change your business. You don't have to be reliant on third-party people. Now some people just do it for time, and that's awesome. If you're doing it for time and you're like, hey, I don't want to touch it because my time is more valuable. But specifically for people who are just starting, I think the ads course is a great fundamental thing for your business. Because leads are the lifeblood. And if you don't know how to market, I don't care how good your sales skills are. None of that matters. If you're not talking to people, you're not going to sell somebody. So we have that course from start to finish. Setting up the Facebook page, the Meta account, the ad accounts, the ad copy, the video ads, all that stuff, the integration into Agent CRM and how it goes in there, mapping the fields and all that stuff. So it's a really good course. And then we have a lot of other resources, just showing agents how to not have their phone spammed, which you guys do a great job of, and just a ton of different PDFs and resources inside of the academy as well. And then we're always adding to it.
Alex Branning: I love that. So when you started, you have this idea, you see how Hormozi gives stuff away, you go I'm going to do something similar. What did the first iteration of the academy look like, and was that enough for you to get agents to reach out and then want to join your team?
Troy: Yeah. So just so everybody knows, because I want to obviously give this, the platform we use is Thinkific, so it's specifically built for building courses and building what we built the academy around. But the first iteration really had our entire team come to my studio and we built out the first course. The first course we built out was our mortgage protection course. And really, I think what happens a lot of times is people, specifically with the way AI is going and how quickly you can generate content, we've made sure that all of our content is from actual experience being on the phones producing. Like the conversations we had, not just hey ChatGPT, write me a script. So the one thing you have to make sure of when you're building it is you're making sure that the content is unique, and it actually is the process you're doing, not just something so you can try to get somebody to look at it. That's not even going to help. So it has to be valuable. But really, once we built that course, there really wasn't much of an issue. So what I did was from building the academy, I then pushed and built an ad, basically a video ad, stating: hey, I've got this free academy. It's free for life. I'm not asking you for anything. If you're a life insurance agent and you want to learn for free, hop in the academy. So there really wasn't much of an issue, because who doesn't want free? It was very easy to get people into the academy. And then obviously over time, we've just continued to build out and build out on it.
Alex Branning: So a first iteration gets launched. You have the mortgage protection course. You have agents signing up to get it. What was the cost per lead, rough estimate, and then was that enough to get people to join your team?
Troy: Yes. So the cost per lead was like five bucks. I mean, oh my gosh, yeah. And we set appointments for probably 20 to 25 bucks per appointment. Now, we have a VA that does a lot of that stuff. So hint guys, if you can, which I think everybody can afford a VA, if you're really wanting to recruit, your time needs to be spent either building out the content and then closing the recruits on the phone. Not picking up the phone and calling your appointments or trying to schedule the appointments. Because you have to remember, these are still people that just wanted to get some information. So it's a longer cycle to get them. So you definitely want somebody dialing for you. And if you're making content, you probably already have access to the resources, I would assume, to spend five, eight, ten bucks an hour on a dialer. So yeah, that's kind of what the acquisition costs look like.
Alex Branning: I love that. So for those of you listening right now, just to break this down. He spent some time making one single course. He put that course onto a platform that already exists for giving away this kind of content. He uses Thinkific. Then he made an ad that drives people to it and has a follow-up team that gets people on the appointment calendar. Anybody can do this. There's not a person who doesn't have knowledge that others want. So it's a matter of distilling the knowledge into a place where people can get it in mass without manual work. And then you get notified when a person comes in. Now you have an opportunity to reach out to them and call them. You mentioned that you have somebody reaching out and calling them to set an appointment. Is there any other backend systems or nets that you have? Do you do webinars? Do you have other ways to connect with the folks that are getting into your world?
Troy: So I don't run webinars. I do like the idea. I've tested it out a couple times. I've just found that we either have the recruiting ad for the academy, and then we have another ad that's a video ad basically saying, hey, if you're looking for an opportunity. So we have a couple different ads from a couple different angles. So yes, the ad comes in from the academy, but our recruiting also comes in from hey, do you want to come work with us? And then when it comes in, it comes in through Agent CRM. We get internal notifications immediately when the lead form is put in. And then that internal notification inside of Agent CRM, you're able to add who your dialer is, and you can put them on a round robin schedule. So what we do is when that lead flows in, it round robins to our dialer, and then the dialer sees it. Their goal is they have to call them within five minutes. So the lead comes in, they pick up the phone and call them. And it's all automated until obviously you hop on the call for the scheduled appointment to try to close the recruit, which there's no way to automate that. That's the biggest thing that I will say. People want to buy from me, they want to buy from Alex, they want to buy from John. So you need to make sure that's who they're buying from. Not just oh well let me throw you in a funnel and then you get put in here. What I've noticed is every person I talk to, they want that connection with somebody. They don't just want to be another number sitting in a pool of people and never get a connection with their upline. So that's a big deal. We get a lot of people because of the non-connection with their uplines.
Alex Branning: That is so cool. I love this strategy because you're going against the grain. There's so many people that recruit based on an ad creating hype, showing best case scenarios. What you're doing is you're finding the agents, you're giving them content, you're giving them value, you're reaching out in a very human relational way. And then you're saying, hey, if you want to talk to Troy, you have an opportunity to. But that call sounds like you really set it up to be a decision on whether or not you want to join Troy's team. So then what you're doing Troy is you have appointments booked, but these are folks that have already consumed my content, they've talked to a person already, and now they want to talk to me about joining my team. This is a decision-making phone call. How many agents would you say you talk to in a given month? And what is the conversion, for lack of a better term, for those people to join your team?
Troy: Yeah, so I've scaled it up a little further than that. So now that we've scaled up, I don't take recruiting calls at all, but my leaders do take recruiting calls. We're normally booked out probably 10 to 12 calls a day. We're putting about 20 people per month in the training class. Now that is butts in seats. So when I say butts in seats, we may onboard 30 to 35, but you will find out very quickly that people love the insurance business and want to be in the insurance business, but they don't want to do the things it takes to be successful in the insurance business. So we were basically closing about 30%. And then of the 30%, about 60% we would get them into the actual training class, contracted, all those things, ready to roll. And we were getting those leads for less than ten bucks. So here's what I would say: find the pain points. The ad that we did that did the best was: did your upline get you contracted and then in two weeks you never heard from them again? And that ad hit so hard because agents are like, that's exactly what happened to me. I got signed up, and then all of a sudden I can't even get a hold of my upline. So there's a little tidbit. Use that one. That's a good one. And do a video ad so they can see your face. That helps a lot more than the still image.
Alex Branning: I love it. This is so good. So inside of the playbook that we're going to be creating with this episode, I'm going to drop a link so y'all can check out the academy, see what Troy's built out. You can sign up for it, and as soon as you sign up, his team is going to be calling you.
Troy: No, I'll leave you alone guys, I'll leave you alone.
Alex Branning: You'll be able to see the full experience. But the one thing I want people to take away from this is that there is nothing holding you back from creating your own version of this academy. It does not need to be as big as Troy's. You don't need to have as many people come in. But what Troy is doing, he heard an idea from Alex Hormozi. He took action. He created a single course. Then he started telling people about it. And then from there, he created a system to turn those new leads into interviews where they could join the team. And now he scaled it up so much that he has leaders taking these calls of the leads coming in from this content to then join the team. So this is a duplicatable, repeatable system. You just got to do the work. So congratulations, by the way, Troy, on just an absolutely brilliant attraction system. This is incredible. For those of you listening, I was driving Troy, we ran into each other at the airport. We're both going to the same event. And he was sharing, and I'm like, man, I have got to make a mental note of this, because the idea is just such a good idea, and nobody else is doing it like this that I'm seeing. So just phenomenal job, Troy. Love the creativity. So grab the playbook guys. AgencyAcceleration.ai Meet Troy, go check out his academy, hang out in his world, and get to meet him and just watch what he does as he continues to build a really cool organization. So thank you for joining the podcast, Troy. Appreciate you.
Troy: Man, awesome. Thank you, Alex.