Not many years after Kristen Stewart was launched into Superstardom, she dropped a few million on a glassy modern home in Malibu, which recently hit the market for almost double the price she paid. Aside from this home, which Kristen reportedly shares with her script supervisor mom, she's kept a main home in Los Feliz since 2012, as well as a multi-million dollar fixer upper loft in the Noho area of New York City. Today we'll take a look at three of Ms. Stewart's properties we even found the listing. In these videos we don't reveal any addresses and even though I've done a house tour of my own place, please do not show up at any private residences because it's not safe for anyone. Kristen Stewart is an actress and filmmaker who was the world's highest paid actress in both 2010 and 2012. She was born and raised in L.A. from the start to an American father and Australian mother, both of whom work show business. Kristen first gained notice at the young age of 12 when she played Jodie Foster's daughter in the thriller Panic Room, also earning her a young artist award nomination. She went on to appear in a handful of movies, but gained worldwide recognition when she played Bella Swan in the Twilight Saga film series from 2008 to 2012, which I'm sure you guys already know. These movies grossed over 3.3 billion dollars worldwide. After starring in Snow White and the Huntsman, Stewart began to select roles in independent productions over big budget films such as Still Alice, Equals and more. Kristen made her directorial debut in 2017 with the short film Come Swim and returned to mainstream Hollywood roles in recent action films like Charlie's Angels and Underwater. At the time of this recording, Kristen's estimated net worth is at 70 million dollars. Hey guys it's Kara the Vampire Slayer and today we're bringing you another house tour here on Famous Entertainment. We're always saying copycat channels popping up but we're the original house tour connoisseurs at a 95% if you watch it, aren't subscribed so hit that subscribe button and ring that bell. We post a new video daily. I'm still reading all your comments and I saw you guys requested this one so today we'll be taking a look at where Kristen Stewart calls home, including her homes in Los Feliz, Malibu and more. We've done house tours in the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Sarah Jessica Parker and we'll link to some at the end. Follow me on Instagram to chat and as usual let me know who's house tour is next in those comments down below. Now let's get into this video. In 2011, after Kristen had found mega success in the movie business, she dropped 4.8 million dollars on a glassy contemporary home in Malibu, designed by Lorcan O'Hara Heat Architects and recently put it back on the market and now it'll cost you 9.5 million. Tax records show the home is owned through a trust controlled by her mom and script supervisor Jules Mann Stewart and apparently they've sheared the ocean view hideaway over the years. Kristen's hillside estate spans about 5,800 square feet between the split level main house and the oval shaped two story guest house, offering 5 beds and 4.5 baths. The home is built atop a two car garage that looks perfect for a Malibu seaside lifestyle since it's decked out in surf forts. The home even looks like a classic Southern California lifeguard tower. An elevated and gated courtyard entry patio leads you into a spacious entrance hall featuring a vintage wooden surfboard on the wall and a collection of paintings and posters. The interior, spaces are decorated eclectic and casual, also with high ceilings and soaring glass walls and windows perfect for views of the ocean. There's a bit of a nautical theme especially in the combo living and dining area where there's an anchor hung over the fireplace, mermaid figureheads floating above the room and a tiny robot beside the couch to hold books. There are panels that slide open to an ocean facing balcony and the kitchen is behind a kerf wall off the dining room. The clean line kitchen has up to date stainless steel appliances and poured concrete countertops. Bedrooms are located throughout the home and including a roomy guest or staff suite and two others that share his and hers bathrooms. Of course there's also the master suite which is like a light filled penthouse made up of a private lounge, airy bedroom and stone tiled ensuite as well as a glass door leading to a spacious terrace. Outside you'll find exterior stairs in the hillside leading the main house of the guest house or if you're feeling brave you could also take the stairs in the master bedroom and across a suspension bridge. The vine covered guest house upper floor has a small lounge, kitchenette and bathroom and curved stairs lead down to a cozy cave style bedroom. The property also has terrace gardens and a hot tub with over-the-roof sunset views. Now let's move on to Kristen's main home. Back in August 2012 the Twilight star purchased a home in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Alley for about 2.1 million dollars and the sprawling property was full of indoor outdoor living spaces. She acquired the home after moving out of her previous place with ex Robert Pattinson following her cheating scandal. However her ranch style home is only 1.5 short miles away from her and Rob's old place so she didn't move too far at all. Kristen's house is in a much coveted gated enclave offering her all the privacy and seclusion a celebrity could want. Listing information from the time of purchase shows a two-level hillside house made up of southwestern and contemporary styles surrounded by tropical landscaping. Inside her home measures 3,361 square feet with four beds and 4.5 baths. Many building spaces have tile or wide plank wood floors while opening up to deep covered patios that really embrace the California vibe. Among the common rooms there's an Eden kitchen with country style rustic cabinets and high-grade stainless steel appliances. The back of Kristen's home opens on both floors to covered porches with panoramic over-the-tree views down to Hollywood. A backyard sun terrace is furnished with a stone fire pit and shows off sweeping views of the valley while the rest of the tropical landscape yard has more patio space to sunbathe and lounge.  More recently in 2017 it was reported that Kristen also bought some real estate in New York City. Located on a quiet cobblestone street between Broadway and Lafayette in the heart of downtown Manhattan her property is walking distance to almost everywhere from the East Village, West Village, Soho and more. Miss Stewart's apartment is in a six-floor building located on a street referred to as the Golden Street built in 1871 while the building itself was designated a New York City landmark in 1979. It features an ornate cast iron facade, mansard roof, one passenger elevator and one freight elevator. Her unit was a total fixer upper which she purchased for about $5.6 million but it's also the second largest pad in the whole building. The 3,000 square foot spread is on the second floor and it's divided into two distinct sections with a total of three beds and two baths throughout. The open loft has 12 foot ceilings, original windows that wrap around three sides and let in a ton of natural lights, an exposed brick wall with a non-working fireplace and an elevator room that can double as a safe room. At the south end of the apartment the three bedrooms crowd around an open lounge area with small windowless bath and laundry area. The northern wing of Kristen's apartment has one huge room stretching 60 feet long with original hardwood floors, floor to ceiling windows and a second windowless bathroom next to the tower floor kitchen. From what we can see about the state of the apartment, I'm sure Kristen jumped into renovations immediately. I just wish we could see what it looks like now. Either way it was a totally open loft style unit giving it that authentic artist work living space. Okay guys, now we've taken a look at three homes of Kristen Stewart including a place she's selling in Malibu, her main house in Los Feliz and her New York fixer up her loft. After checking them out, what did you guys think? I know the listing photos of her loft in Manhattan are nothing to go by but I'm sure by now the place looks like a sprawling, modern, celebrity loft. If you guys have seen the place, post rentals, be sure to let me know and go ahead and rate Ms. Stewart's homes as well. I would give the Malibu place a seven or maybe an eight strictly for this scenery and location and her Los Feliz place a 6.5. I'd love to get to know more of you guys so please like and subscribe to my personal channel if you haven't already, I post every Sunday and I reply to all my comments over there. We'll link you my latest video. So they married in 2015 and they met at her son's funeral and then there's a guy who is like 500 pounds and does erotic eating but I'm gonna get into all that. Thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram and I'll see you all in the next video. Bye.


Andrew Champagne here from the State Democratic Party. I'm on my live show here at 525. I'd like to thank my friends, Kevin and Daniel, for their help. They are producing the show today. I would like to thank Lauren Glendividian and Megan, and anyone who's helping on this. And I just want to say hello, and also to Jordan, who books the show for me. Now, I'm starting the show off with a mask to make a point. The point is that we see that the mask mandate has worked. We see that the Omicron variant has been going down. I always have to start this show, and hopefully it'll only be a few more months before I have to start this show, by saying that we cannot move forward as a society until virtually everyone is vaccinated. Okay, now we will never get 100%, but I want to reach out to those people, I especially have a couple of great friends that haven't been vaccinated. And I'd like to let them know, for example, I'd like to give a shout out. The vaccine is, you can get the shots over Community Health, and you can also get them right in this building where we are today on North Winooski Avenue. So, most of the people here that are watching the show are from Burlington. I know I'm going out to all the 13 towns in the county, so I thank you all for watching. I thank the support of CCTV Town Meeting Television. And, you know, we're really going to earn our name because we are exactly three weeks away from Town Meeting.  I can't comment too much about what's going on in South Burlington and other towns, but this show is definitely Burlington-centric. So, what I want to do, again, let me try to get over this point about the COVID, is I have to repeat this, we cannot move forward as a society until everyone is vaccinated. So, I would just like to let anyone know if you're watching the show and you have any kind of anxiety about getting the shots, the first shot is virtually pain-free. And when I got the shot, I didn't even know that I said to the nurse, I said, I don't think you got it. And she said, oh, yes, I did. There was no side effects, and that's 70% effective.  You can always give me a call. I will go with you to get vaccinated and we'll get lunch after. How does that sound?<PHONE_NUMBER> is my telephone number, and that's the easiest way to reach me,<PHONE_NUMBER>. Now, if you're having questions about where to get the vaccine, or perhaps you're not working or money's tight or there's not so much food in your pantry, the state has a great telephone number, just simply 211, okay? And that's like a social services number. Oh, there's a lot of people in Burlington and all through the county that are definitely eligible for the Three Squares Plan, which that name has been changed. That's basically, it was a food stamp program. It's now called Three Squares. And with the stimulus and with the work that President Biden has done, there is a lot of federal money here to help people with housing, with health costs, with Medicare applications and Medicaid applications. So, 211 is that number to call. Okay, let's talk, okay, I guess I have about 30 minutes. So, what we're going to do is talk about, we're going to take it from the top and bring it down. As always, I am a huge fan of President Biden. I was fortunate enough to be a delegate for him and I think he's doing a wonderful job. And what we've seen is the resistance, the Republicans' resistance. Now, we need to talk about their treasonous behavior, them basically condoning the insurrection of January 6, where people, for the first time in American history, broke into the Capitol, assaulted Capitol police, tried to kill them, did vandalism, desecration. People went to the bathroom in the Capitol, they went through with Confederate flags. And this is okay, and this is fine. Now, the Republican Party of my youth, I grew up in Connecticut, where there's a lot of Republicans where people like Dwight Eisenhower or Ronald Reagan or I'm just trying to think, moderate Republicans, they'd be horrified by this. And the fact that the Tea Party class of 2010 has been able to put this message that it was just civil discourse is wrong and it's treasonous. We think about the—I've been reading these special reports about the Capitol Hill police, how they have post-traumatic stress because American citizens were trying to kill police officers inside the Capitol. And for the Republicans, for Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise to say that this is okay, it's horrible. And history will be the judge. History will judge them very harshly. I've got to give credit, and I give very little credit to Republicans, but to Congresswoman Liz Cheney and I believe his name is Adam Kissinger in Illinois. They were too—not really moderate, they're very conservative, but at least they realized the illegality and the treason of this. Now, you know, I'm saying that word a lot, but I think it has to be reinforced that what happened there cannot be forgotten, and we are a country of laws, we are a country of democracy. Unfortunately, President Trump, because we had to use mail-in ballots, which are fantastic, they get so many people involved, he was able to kind of pursue this story or tale that the election was rigged. Now, we know that voter fraud is so, so rare, and I saw someone got six years in prison for voter fraud, so it's a very severe sentence. And virtually, we cannot find it. So what the Republicans do is try to scare the populace, maybe some people who aren't so politically cognizant of what's going on. And the fact was that President Biden won by several million votes, okay, and the election was fair. And unfortunately, you know, you can't have the Yankees without the Red Sox, you can't have the Democrats without the Republicans. This is really watering down the brand of the Republican Party. Now, the Republican Party was known for many years for economic conservatism, but liberal or progressive on civil rights, on voting issues, and now they've disparaged their own image. As we know, voting rights are on attack in America. For example, what happens like in nearby New Hampshire? I've repeated this before. If you don't have a New Hampshire driver's license, you can't register to vote. So those 10,000 kids at UNH and maybe half of them are out of state or 40%, they have to have something to perform in New Hampshire ID. Now, what we do in Burlington, or we do in Vermont, excuse me, is we can register you with the last four digits of your social security. So you don't have to give out your full social. And you don't have to have a driver's license. We have a one-day residency requirement in Vermont. Excuse me. I've got to remember this show is going out all over the place. So we want a registry to vote. We also have, which is amazing, as I said before, I was skeptical about it, but we also have same-day registration, which I thought, the only reason I was nervous about it was I thought that it would be too much paperwork and it would be too complicated. But what we do is we just have a person at the polling place where I am an inspector of elections, which is Ward 2. We just have someone there registering voters.  So it's amazing. So Vermont has some incredible laws. Same-day registration. One-day residency. You don't have to have a driver's license. I don't understand what driver's license has to do with voting. Absolutely nothing, okay? They didn't have a driver's license when the founding fathers rode their horses to Philadelphia for the Constitutional Convention. We also have up to 35 days of early voting, which is really incredible. So in Vermont, we want you to vote, but we see in a lot, a lot of other states that they really don't. And how these people look at themselves in the face, we are all, except if you're an Indigenous and American, God bless you, I hope you're watching the show, we are all immigrants. We all came here from somewhere. My grandfather came from Ireland with $50 in his pocket, and he knew one person in America. So the fact that we would have this prejudice against people with different languages or different countries of orange really shows that we've kind of strayed a little bit far from the shore, as Bob Dylan would say. What we've seen is all these laws meant, to example, stop early voting to limit drop-off boxes. To, for example, as a justice of the peace in Vermont, I'm allowed to pick up a ballot. People can pick up ballots for other people. In some states, they want to make that a felony. So it's ludicrous. But what is happening again, too, we're seeing gerrymandering. We're actually seeing gerrymandering on both sides. And somehow, because the congressional and the legislative districts, both nationally and statewide, work off the census, which is constitutionally mandated every 10 years, so we just finished our 2020 census. Now, so what is happening with this is that there is realignment of congressional districts. And honestly, we have seen it's really too bad, and I never knock Democrats, but I've got to be honest here. We've seen what they call gerrymandering, creating districts that are favorable to you and most unfavorable to your opponent. So in my humble opinion, I think we've got to take the politics out of the gerrymandering. I've saw some maps, including New York State, that made absolutely no sense, especially in New York City, cross boroughs, cross neighborhoods. And I think people have a lot of reason to be skeptical of politicians and political maneuvering. And one way to renew trust is to have some maps that make some sense. Okay, that's my two bits, and that's my one knock at the Democrats, but you've got to call them like you see them. So what we're also seeing here, oh, another thing in Vermont, I just want to reach out to anyone. If you are a felon, we want you to vote, okay? In, I believe, 27 states, felons cannot vote. So it seems like to me that's double jeopardy. You've done your time, you've paid for your crime. Why are you punished again? I think it's unconstitutional, but as we see, for example, an ounce bag of some grass in Louisiana in 1968, you're still not voting. It's insane. So what is behind a lot of this is deep, deep institutional racism, the fact that people that don't look like you or don't talk like you or you might find a little different or you might find their political views are different than yours. What we try to do is marginalize them. And, but this is not going to work. American democracy has weathered so many storms from, well, let's see, from the dog days of the Revolutionary War to the burning of the White House, to the Battle of Antietam in Gettysburg, to where the Confederates were so close they could see the Capitol Dome from Silver Spring, to the wars in World War I, the wars to end all wars over the trenches, to the dog days of Pearl Harbor in World War II, to the tragedies of Korea and Vietnam, Korea where my dad served as a 20-year-old young infantry guy, to our wars, to what happened on 9-11. Now, bin Laden said he'd never be able to beat America, he'd never be able to beat America militarily, but he could try to get them economically, and he almost did, to the dog days of our unfortunate forays in Iraq and our much too long 20 years in Afghanistan, now to the Omicron and now to the insurrection, the treasonous entry into the Capitol that people bent on murdering Capitol Hill police, vandalizing, coming in and sitting at the speaker's desk, doing all sorts of terrible things. You know, none of them massed. Who knows? What if someone had a suicide belt on, could have blown up the whole Capitol? So I can't forget about that. Now, the Republicans have this ploy where we can't talk about that. That is a top 20 event in American history, and I'm not going to let the Republicans forget about that and the fact that they have almost used it as a battering ram. It's not going to happen. I think it's a terrible idea that Mr. Trump is the face of the Republican Party. First of all, I think he's 75 years old. He's in terrible health. And America, as we know, we always have to look to the future if we're stuck in the past. And I also think, hopefully, I'm pretty convinced of his guilt on a number, number of charges that the Attorney General Letitia James is bringing in New York and the prosecutors are bringing in the Southern District of Manhattan. And there's a strong chance that President Trump will have to plead guilty to a felony. I know a few years ago I read in a book he'd been sued over 500 times. So for them to put all their trust in such a marginal criminal figure is folly. That's like putting all your eggs in one basket. Unfortunately, the xenophobia, the racism, the hatred that the Republicans are working with a lot of their followers is going to come back to haunt them. What we've seen is, we've seen some great work by President Biden. Sure, I know people say, oh, you know, he didn't get all this stuff through. We did get a lot of the packages through. When the Senate is 50-50 and we have a couple moderate to conservative Democrats in very conservative states, we're in a tough spot. So I think actually what he's passed has been remarkable. The work of Senator Chuck Schumer and the work of Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Stoney Hayer and people like Peter Welch in Congress, we've brought some good things in. So don't let the negative news get you through. You know, unfortunately, America, we realize how incredibly wealthy we are because we're able to, by buying bonds from the Federal Reserve, we're able to kind of spend our way out of this crisis. And that is truly an amazing thing. So I think some of his appointments have been fantastic. I saw that Carolyn Kennedy was confirmed as Ambassador to Australia. Now, we see, with the South China Sea, we see Australia really comes into play here. So he's made some great appointments. I think Vice President Kamala Harris is doing an excellent job. You know, I see the prejudice and the chauvinism that is directed to her. She is working really hard, and especially on the border problems in Mexico, which are, it's a terrible tragedy and it's a crisis times 10.  It's funny, when times are good, we want immigration, and when times are bad, we come down against immigration. So that's a very touchy subject. We see that the mass mandate is working. Okay, we see that the vaccinations are working. We see that the social distancing is working. We've got to try to get through this winter. And I think we're going to be fine. But a million lives lost in America. Now, I blame a lot of that on the Trump administration. They kind of thought that it would go away. President Trump never wore a mask. He had events at the White House where he infected people. He had COVID himself. So we had extremely poor leadership. And the fact that Republicans are using this healthcare crisis, the worth healthcare crisis we had since the AIDS, the height of the AIDS epidemic, and the height of the opiate epidemic, using it as a political tool, it's just very sad. And I think that they will be judged harshly in history and I think by their voters in their states.  And unless you try to get a new coalition of new and young people, we see so many different people coming to the states, being born in the states. And if you're not helping them and with them and trying to help them, then you're falling behind. So that's my anti-Republican rant for today. So let's talk about some local and state races. We have, dear Senator Lehi, he's the best. He is retiring. He will have served, when he leaves in January, he will have served 48 years in the Senate chamber. Isn't that incredible? All the wonderful things he has done. I would just like to thank him for all the personal kindnesses. If anyone's watching this show, hi to Senator Lehi and Mrs. Lehi and all the staff, Carolyn Dwyer, John Tracy, they're retired, but still legendary John Goudreau. And I'd just like to thank them all. He, there is an extremely fine man that has represented his state with honor. Okay. We, to, to, to replace Senator Lehi, we have, we have our great congressman, Peter Welch, who's running. And I endorsed him on the last show. I'm going to endorse him again. We're going to talk about him every show in November. Fantastic, congressman. Former state senator, former president pro tem of the state Senate, which I think served him very well in the House. He has announced his run for U.S. Senate. He's been endorsed by Senator Lehi. He's been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders. And I think it's going to be smooth sailing for Peter. Peter is a part-time resident of Burlington for many, many years. And he's a personal friend. I think he's one of the top five congressmen in the country. He will be a great, great senator. I should say hi to his staff. Ryan McClaren, campaign chair. Thea Wurzberg. Ben Sarle. Let me think here. A couple other people. Excuse me. Skylar Nash. So he's got a great crew. So when the petitions come around, it takes 500 signatures to run for statewide office. Please sign those petitions for our Democratic candidates. Now, we do not, and this is tough, you've got to be real on this show, is Governor Scott is a formal opponent. He kind of uses the best traditions of the Republican Party. He's replacing a very small, peep-progressive governor, my friend Governor Shumlin.  And he never tries to be something that he's not. And he's enormously popular. Fortunately or unfortunately, you call it how you see it, we get a lot of Democrats that vote for him. He is going to be exceedingly tough to beat, and we all know that. We don't know about— we don't have a governor's candidate yet. I hope we find a good one. And the reason is, it might be very tough to beat Governor Scott. But at least we get a dialogue of issues. So, the—now, let's talk about some other things. The Lieutenant Governor's Race. We've got a few candidates in there. We have—let's see. My old buddy, former Lieutenant Governor Dave Zuckerman, I believe, is thrown his hat in the ring. He'll be a foreign old opponent, and he's probably the favorite. We also have State Rep from Windsor, Charlie Kimball. Okay, Charlie, good luck. We also have State Rep Kitty Toll, who has a great reputation. I'm sorry, I don't know Kitty and Charlie, but they work hard in Montpelier. I also heard rumors of former Lieutenant Governor Doug Racine getting in the race, who is an extremely fine man. And so, Doug, if you're watching this, go for it. So, also, I'm really glad to report— I could not report this a month ago— is that the House and Senate are back in session at Montpelier in the beautiful under the gold dome. For over a year—I don't know, maybe it was two years— it was all done virtually. And I think we miss the dialogue when someone from Canaan is interacting with someone from Bennington, someone from the islands is hanging out with someone from Rutland. And what's always very interesting about the legislature to me is the camaraderie of the members and the stuff that they do together. The socializing, they're having a drink, the talking, the telling stories. In the old days, the legislators would be in Montpelier from January to May. And it must have been very interesting. That building is inspirational. Every time I go in and I see that Abraham Lincoln statue, I'm always inspired. I go down there for meetings, excuse me, of the State Democratic Committee. Also, I want to say hello to Claire Cummings, the ED of the party. And also, I have to announce, unfortunately, the departure of one of EDP's top staffers, Asha Carroll, my friend from Tin Mith, is leaving the party. She's taking another job. The party is so many hours and it's such hard work. Asha, you've been wonderful. And Burlington, Tin Mith, hi to your husband, Andy. Claire and I and the whole crew will miss you. Also, I touched about it in the last episode. But we have a new Democratic chair. Bruce Olson stepped down. It was just too much time for him. And we have Ann Lisak from the Hill section of Burlington. Hey Ann, how are you? Great former Rutland Party chair, longtime political activist, husband of former state rep and health commissioner, Dr. Harry Chen. Dr., always good to see you. I hope you're watching the show. Ann has done a great job. We had our first full meeting with her as chair. It went really well. We have some new officers. We have some new executive committee. The state Democratic committee meetings are open to all. They've been virtual, but we're hopefully they're going to be in person soon. And they are held at the Capitol in Montpelier about every six weeks. And those are always open to the public. We are a party of inclusion rather than exclusion. And we are a party of openness rather than closure. So what we have, we're going to have, we have, I guess I've got to talk about the council right now. We have eight, there are 12 counselors, and eight of them are up for election. We have a couple of great races that I'm going to highlight. One of them is my friend and full disclosure, I'm working on his campaign, Ben Travers. And he is in the South End, an attorney, father of three, homeowner, great guy, chair of Burlington Parks and Rec. He's running a great campaign to succeed Chip Mason. Chip, something like 15 years in the council, my friend. God bless you. That's a lot of Monday nights. And as we know lately, some of the discourse that the council has been of a very uncivil nature, obscenities, yelling, screaming, flags, almost near fighting. Sometimes I think that people have to respect for the process. So another race that I really want to talk about for a few minutes is my great friend, Hannah King. Ms. Hannah King is running for city council in Ward 8, which is, it's the newest ward. It was formed about 10 years ago. It's basically from UVM down to Memorial Auditorium, and it votes at the library. Hannah is a UVM senior. She's taken a semester off to work on the campaign. She has done wonderful work for the Democratic Party. She is a member of the State Democratic Committee. She is also a member of the Burlington Democratic Committee. But Hannah brings, you know, even though she's a young person, she brings that commitment to social justice to voting for tenants' rights, for public safety, for climate control, for cleaning up and maintaining our jewel, the lake. Hannah has run a wonderful campaign. She's probably out canvassing now, so she's not watching this. But she told me she watches the show. I'd like to thank also her friends and people that are helping her, especially Chair of Burlington Dems, Adam Roof, who, boy, he's a hard worker and a great guy, and her two campaign managers, Aidan Doherty and Owen Doherty, my two great friends from Burlington Democratic Party. So Hannah, she's been working on this like crazy for two months. Now, for anyone who thinks that running for council is, you know, some easy thing, first of all, you've got to get 50 signatures. Then you have to be nominated by the party of your choice, even though you can, if you want, you can run as an independent. You can make up your own party. But for someone interested as, like, for Democratic Prague, you have to go in front of your caucus, get the nomination, and then hit the streets. You have to knock on doors. You've got to call people. You've got to write people. You have to do honking waves. You have to do, and I'm not even talking about social network stuff. I'm not an expert on that, but you have to do Facebook, Instagram, all sorts of stuff. You have several debates. You have candidate forums. And let me tell you, canvassing, which is going door to door in February and January, is not a lot of fun. I remember I was out with Richard Dean once, and I almost fell off a porch. The ice was like a sheet of glass. And I mean, I've canvassed when it's blow zero. So Hannah and everybody out there, out there canvassing, all the Democrats, thanks for your good work. So I heartily endorse Hannah King, OK? We also have some other races. My friend Ali Zhang is running for re-election up in the New North End. He's running as an independent this time, but I am endorsing him. I think he's a great guy. He's my friend. He was also very pivotal to the new library up in the New North End, which is fantastic. I so worry about this pandemic is children losing those years from like third grade to fifth grade where you really learn how to read. So anybody watching this who's helping a kid out, bring them a library, bring them a book, read to them. Because of that skill, I know a couple of people that are adults that are unfortunately illiterate. And I've worked at the polls many times where older people, they were just passed by in school. And adult illiteracy is still a problem in America. So if you can ever help anyone with that, let's do it. So again, a couple other races. Rob Gutman, who I saw on Canvassing, is running a vigorous campaign against Soraya Hightower. I think that we have a very solid chance the Democrats are taking the council back. Unfortunately, we have a problem in our charter that we need to change. We have 12 counselors. So a vote can be 6-6, but the mayor does not have, in a case of a tie, does not have the tie-breaking vote. Now, we have a strong mayor system, and we also have a strong mayor, and Mayor Murrow Weinberger. So I think that he should have the opportunity to break a deadlock. I think that we're going to end up with 7-5. I think people are very skeptical of the progressives about the police. We have gone from 95 to 63 officers. We've seen a lot of disrespect to the police. I am a big fan of the police. I, in my neighborhood, I live in where the college kids live. God bless them. We love them. But sometimes we need them. I think it's an extremely difficult job. But what I must stress to all police officers is that everyone needs to be treated with ultimate respect and judging someone on the color of the skin or how they look or if they're different than you or speak a different language than you. We've got to have respect. Good neighbors. There's some people on Luma Street have this flag that says, Good neighbors make police obsolete. And I don't know if police will ever be obsolete. We see some very, very rough crimes. Committed bank robberies, assaults, robberies, murders over the terrible problem of opiate addiction. And I don't know how we're going to get a handle on that. We see how big pharma has turned millions and millions of Americans into junkies. And it's really sad. And the thing about dope is that you need it every day.  So these people, I don't think they would be doing these crazy crimes if they weren't doing this poison. There are no easy answers to that. So let's talk. I have three minutes left. Wow, that went by fast. So let's talk about voting. Town Meeting Day is Tuesday, March 1st. Coming up three weeks from today. You can register to vote at the polls. You can register to vote at City Hall. You can give me a ring,<PHONE_NUMBER> to register to vote. You can register yourself to vote. You can register online. With that, you can also in Burlington, and I think in most towns in Chinden, you can get a free library card, which is awesome. Our Burlington library is the best. So what's going to happen? We have a new law that was passed this summer, and thanks to Governor Scott for signing it, that everyone is going to get a ballot sent to them. Now, let's say you don't want to vote that way. Let's say your ballot is lost. You're thrown in the recycling. Eating by the dog, something happened, or you voted and you want to change your mind. What you can do is the polls will be open. Let's very quickly do all the polling places. Ward 1, Modern Christie School, next to Red Cross. Ward 2, Wheeler School. Ward 3, Barnes School. Ward 4, St. Mark's Church. Ward 5, the junior high on Main Street. Edmunds, sorry. Ward 6, Burlington Electric. That's where my friend Ben Travers will be. And then Ward 7, the senior center. And then Ward 8 with Hannah King is our wonderful Burlington Public Library.  We'll bring them along. We can register them at the polls. They can register and vote the same day. You can also, the ballots will be sent about Valentine's Day. This shows that airing February 8th, but the ballots will be sent out in about a week. You can also go to City Hall and register and vote right there. So we are down to one minute. So I'd like to thank my highly trained crew. They're fantastic. Kevin, Daniel, my favorite cameraman, Jordan, my executive producer, Megan, Lauren Glendavidian. I'd like to thank all the people that make Town Meeting TV, CCTV, available. This is being streamed on YouTube. Hopefully it goes all over the place.  And I think my sister watches it in the UK. So we're down to 30 seconds. I'd like to, like everyone, be well. Please vote on Town Meeting Day. Wear your mask. Please wear your mask. Please get your vaccine if you have not received it. I'll go with you to get the vaccine,<PHONE_NUMBER>. I'm looking forward to a fantastic turnout for Town Meeting. I think we're going to have some great candidates. I'd like to you all at a national level, please try to support President Biden. He's doing fantastic work. From our beautiful studios in the Old North End, I want to wish you good day, good afternoon, good luck. Go Dems!


Didn't he do like a million dollars of life insurance premium per year for like five years in a row on his own? Seven figures selling, and it wasn't just life insurance, it was Medicare supplements, long-term care, it was all of his products. One of the big things that we talk about with agents is, you know, you need to stop thinking of yourself as a product pusher and be a problem solver. There's a lot of agents that are like, I'm never going out to build again. It's easy to say that right now, but when all this is over in a month or two or whatever, and we're all hanging out in Vegas, you know, together, you can go back out, you know? You like that? What I don't like seeing are the people who are just like, now they're going to go on the virtual sales, right? They've kind of made that switch in their brain, ah, I'm never doing business the old way again, because you can't do as much over the phone. You can't do as much when you're sitting, as you can when you're sitting across from somebody. I think where we're going to see is after this is over, people are going to try and hit it super hard, and they're going to try and enable themselves to be able to do low in sales. Yeah, it's as often as possible, but I think trying to go either way, 100%, just doesn't make a lot of sense. You are listening to the 8% Nation Podcast, created to help you become a top producer in the insurance industry. Enjoy the show. Tony, welcome. We're back. 8% Nation Podcast. Dude, it has been way too long as COVID interrupted our flow. We had like three guests that we had to cancel because they're in person. It's true. So, but we have the man, Matt Coots with us, right? That's right, man, dude. I'm a big fan of Matt Coots, Jerry Smith, JLS, the whole JLS family of companies, you know? Yeah, you guys are ballers. Like just to give you a quick little resume, 1400 agents you were at the helm of, about $20 million a year in production. So we're honored to kind of pick your brain today. So really today's just going to be casual. Just kind of conversation. We want you to see if there's any wisdom you have. Also, you said that you've been in the business for 20 years, is that right? Shortly. So I'll be turning 38 in August and my work anniversary will be just a little bit after that. So 20 years, man, don't know where it went. That's crazy. That's insane, bro.  That ain't a bad track.   Where are you at now? We'd love to just hear a little bit about your story. Yeah, so I actually started off in the property and casualty world. I'm a second generation PNC agent. Took me a number of years to, you know, it's kind of one of those things everybody has to find where their specialty is, right, in the business. And sometimes it takes longer. Sometimes like you Cody, you knock it out of the park in the first, what, nine months and you know where you're at after that. For me, my journey was a little bit of a walk around the block, so to speak. Started in PNC, a family-owned agency and went from there to figuring out that I wanted to be in the life of financial services market, got into the senior market specifically, started building a marketing company, met Mr. Jerry Smith and the rest as they say is history from about six years ago. Nice man. Yeah, that's where we're at. The legend, the legend that is Jerry L, Jerry Lee Smith. Do you remember when we were in New Orleans and he called me and my phone says, and this was the day one that I met him. I put him in my phone as Jerry the legend in quotation marks, Smith. And so Cody saw it because he called me while we were on top of that building in New Orleans. Yeah, that's right, man, that's right. Dude, you know what's cool about you guys what I've always enjoyed is you and Jerry both will go out of your way to do something, help someone. I mean, I'm this young dude putting on this crazy event at 8% and in the East on Stadium in Nashville, spending $100,000 doing something insane. And Jerry really got behind the mission of 8% immediately. Like one of the first dudes, man. And not only did he get behind it, like, you know, he was basically behind it. He had put money behind it, but he actually had some of his friends come in and be a part of it as well, which was huge, man. You guys are two for two so far. Yeah. Foncers of 8%, so thank you. My pleasure. Which is amazing, man. Yeah, I think that first, the first 8%, I think we had five people that we brought with us. I think we had five booths there. I mean, it was a good time too. I still remember Ray Lewis and he blew me away. Yeah, he was good. He was good. Him and Grant, Grant and Grant was good too. Using his, what did he have? He had a paper plate that he said he wrote notes down on the plane ride there. Yeah, that was good, that was good stuff. Well, let's tell a funny story real quick. So you are one of the guys that I remember.  It's just like an in-person free flight training. Yeah. So we picked four cities a week and we hit four cities every week. We got in the suburban and drove from, and one of the cities was New Orleans, man. And you came in. The smallest turnout by far. Yeah, that was good. So you drove in from wherever, a couple hours away or whatever. I'm about an hour and 15, so right now during this wonderful lull that we've had, I've been down south, we have an office. So our main office is in Ohio as you guys know, which you guys still gotta come up there. So yeah, we wanna hear about it too. We've got that live event center now too, so we definitely need to get you guys in, do something. It's good. So a training event there. Oh yeah, I think we can fit about 30 people up there. So, and we've got facilities to stream and stuff too. So, but yeah, so I'm down south at our Southern office, we're having an apartment, and yeah, it's about an hour and 15 minutes away from New Orleans, so it's been a good amount of time there. Yeah, well, we're all hanging out at the event, and then you and Cody went off to go talk business, and this is in the very early stages. So me and Dylan, I think, was mad at the time, when had like a shrimp po-boy, and we're like, I hope Cody's okay, did he just get abducted by this random dude, like, they didn't know you were. They didn't know you were.  Yeah, yeah, I was like, I'm not just gonna tell you who I am, you have to remember. I know, I felt that too. It was good, no, I mean, so, and we do some business together on the marketing side, and I just, I'm a big fan of what you guys are doing, which is really the point of this podcast. So I'd love to hear, you know, what are you guys doing? You know, the JLS family accompanies, what does that mean?  Right, well, with this girl over here, I mean, come on. There we go. I know the other thing I remember from that trip to New Orleans was that everybody was just tall. It's true. I'm six foot, so I don't feel like I'm short, but I'm staying in this room. I've got Cody, Landon, I think one of the other guys was like as tall as you were, I mean, it's just. Maybe do. Maybe do cruising. Yeah. I mean, it was just like, what did I just walk into a basketball team? I'm like, perfect's where I need to be then, but. We could play some basketball with the best of my best. That's true. We do. We thought about an impersonation, three-on-three basketball tournament. Okay. Be pretty sick with it. I haven't been playing a lot because I blew out my knee plan, but yeah, I'd be down, I'd be down. That get you out of retirement? Yeah, well, I mean, I had the whole ACL and meniscus surgeries about six, seven years ago now. So I'm in the clear. I've been sticking to tennis though, but yeah, no, I'm like, come on. I like to say in record ball. So catch us up on, okay, so 1400 agents that you're leading, marketing, all kinds of stuff, right? So walk us through sort of what you're doing, why you're doing it, why did you end up where you're at? Just kind of give us some insight on what you're doing. Yeah. So, you know, when we're working with agents, one of the things that, and this is going to be right up in your guys' alley with what's going on right now, is we try to diversify what they're doing a little bit.  And if you're not cross selling, then you're like the many agents, I'm sure that you guys have talked to over the last, you know, month, month and a half year that they're kind of spinning their wheels. They may be trying to, maybe trying to go out and just do the digital sales, the phone sales, stuff like that. And actually, Cody, I was on your podcast or webinar Saturday for a little bit, jumped on for a few minutes. So, you know, good stuff there. You know, just, they're trying to figure out how to do business in this new environment, right? And unfortunately for a lot of agents that are out there, if they hadn't been cross selling in the past, and especially if they're newer and they don't have a block of business that they can go back and work, you know, they're going to be struggling. And so it's just about working with whatever the agent or agency situation is trying to help them engage with different product lines. There's 11 courses in your market product verticals.  You name it, a dozen different life insurance companies that have something unique. But it's about finding out what works with what they're doing now. So, you know, we do a lot of partnering, a lot of listening, a lot of advice. But at the end of the day, it's how, you know, how do you go forward in your business and work as efficiently as possible in whatever the environment is. So. And those that don't know, I think a lot of people do know Jerry, you know, but maybe those that don't, didn't he do like a million dollars of life insurance premium per year for like five years in a row on his own? So, I'll tell Jerry's story. This is possibly one of my favorite stories, guys. So, Jerry gets into the business at 18 years old. Similar story, right? Similar story. Gets into the business at 18 by the time he's 32. And by the way, he got into the business at the tail end of the long-term care boom. So, keep in mind that, you know, what I always forget to tell people, and I remember this the other day when I was telling the story to somebody else, when he came into the business and started learning how to do everything, was when the long-term care sales were starting to go downhill. So, he learned long-term care. So, not only did he have to learn from the beginning, but he had to learn as the rest of the market was going down how to go up, right? He had to learn how to take that and flip the curve, right? So, Jerry gets in the business at 18, starts off doing long-term care. By the time he's 32, he is writing a million dollars a year in commission. 32 was his first seven figure year off of his own plan, not counting overrides from agents, any marketing company, training bonuses, anything like that. Just a million dollar seven figure year. Went on to do it for about 15 years. And then he had his first retiree moment. Decided to retire. I think it was late 40s for a little bit there. But got pulled back in and started the marketing company. Some carriers said that they wanted him to come in and do a deal and they'd put the people on this hierarchy if he trained them. So, that's how the marketing company started. Wow, that's awesome. That's insane to think about. Seven figure selling, and it wasn't just life insurance. It was Medicare supplements, long-term care. It was all of his products. One of the big things that we talk about with agents is you need to stop thinking of yourself as a product pusher and be a problem solver. Yes. Because when you make that switch, you're no longer affected by the fact that they don't want a final expense policy. They don't want a Medicare supplement. You're looking for the problems that you're able to solve. So, and that's kind of where the cross-selling comes into play is it's not so much about selling a product as it's about selling a concept. And the concept is the problems are getting solved. One of the things, I know you guys remember this or Cody you'll remember this, but when he was up on stage at the first 8%, he did that FAQ. And one of the things that he said was if I can get the quote right, was that when he experienced his biggest boom in sales was when he got fed up and he sided that he wasn't going to sell one or two products. He was going to sell everything on the first appointment and that was it. He said that's when he had the biggest boom in his sales career at the beginning was when he went from selling one product to selling all of them and just pitching a concept as opposed to a product. And for those that don't realize that, like that's a big thing to look, that was a big turning point in Jerry's career, right? Then it can be a big turning point and a lot of people do what they're watching right now. My dad used to call what he was before he started doing that was a, I think we always call it a policy peddler. Ah, okay. Order taker. So yeah, exactly, right? Same concept, you know? But I love that he just got a unique story, man. Like he, and you guys, you guys seem to be as close as anybody I know from a business relationship standpoint, friendship standpoint.   Your high integrity is that anything you say you're going to live up to and honor and do. And there's not a ton of people, there's not enough people like that at least, right? No, there isn't and it's kind of sad. One of the things also coming kind of different, but when you think about it, Jerry was younger, right? So he was in his early 30s and granted he had a very unique skill set, but you know, he was in his 30s and he was pitching these big products and things to people. So sometimes one of the things that I hear is, you know, well, I'm just not engaging clients at that level. Maybe it's because I'm younger.  And that's just, you know, I feel like the, in our business, there's this level of, you know, it's almost like for about a 10-year period, there weren't as many people coming into the business because I see a lot less people that are in their like 40s than I see people that are in their 30s, people that are in their 50s. And I think for the younger generation that's coming on, which I'm still going to consider myself a part of, just for a little bit longer, right? You know, I think that one of the things that they have to understand is, you know, they're the ones that limit what they can do because in this business, you can achieve any level of success you want from six figures a year to seven figures a year. And you can do it at any age. It's just a matter of what your strategy is, how successful you are at implementing that strategy because I've seen a ton of business models that work. I've seen a lot of them. And it's all about how you go to work, how much you're willing to put of yourself into that to make it happen, right? So, yeah. It's true, right on.  You talked about the 26, what was it, the 26? Oh, yeah, so the 26 scenarios is, that's what we call the system of selling that Jerry made. It's called the 26 scenario selling system. And it's based off of this concept that every time you go out and you meet with somebody that's turning 65, they're in one of 26 different scenarios, right? So, either they are somebody that is on original Medicare by itself, somebody that's on original Medicare with a med sub, somebody that is on a group plan, maybe like a try care for life if they're retiree from the military or it could be retiree benefits from like the shipyards. We have shipyards down here in Mississippi. It could be from mining, could be from the railroad, right? So any retiree retiree benefits would be group health. And then we've got people who are on Medicaid and Medicare Advantage, okay? So those five, somebody's made one of those five healthcare decisions, right? That's their situation. Then you're gonna have people that are healthy and unhealthy and all five of those. So now we're up to 10. Then we're gonna know because we know everybody's income level is different, right? So we're gonna have people that are low income, middle income and high income. So 10 times three right at 30, subtract the high and middle income Medicaid individuals because we know that that doesn't really exist, right? Subtract those four and we're at 26 scenarios. So when you take and we were, I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but we're really big on chess imagery. That might have something to do with the fact that Jerry was like middle school and high school champion and like all over the Midwest played everywhere. Look, right? Checkmate. Yeah, checkmate beat the mess. Yeah, in the game. So, but we're very big on our chess imagery. And when you think about it like that, the 26 scenarios are kind of like the chess board and the 11 core senior market products, the verticals are kind of like the chess pieces and how you move those pieces on that board in those different situations is gonna be kind of, whether you win or lose the game, if you make the sale or if you don't, what combination of moves, right? Because in chess, there's a lot of different opening strategies, right? There's a lot of different closing strategies, a lot of different opening strategies, but it's all about how you engage, how the opponent plays your moves and all of that. So, we look at a lot of the different opening strategies that we work with the agents and agencies on. We look at the closing strategies and just try and tweak them the best that we can and add in the products that we can. And that's how we've grown and seen the success that we have, for sure. Back when Jerry was 32 as well, what were some other things that like an agent watching right now can really learn from? You mentioned, right? He went from piloting policies, one at a time to, okay, I'm in here, I've got more of a selling system, I'm going after every available product at this point, right? Or whatever that may be. What are some of the things that are, you guys embody, they're a part of your beliefs and that other agents can learn from as well? Oh, man. So, when you start talking beliefs on me, I instantly hear Coach Bird.  So, one of the things that, one of our core beliefs is that every agent, you're gonna love this, Cody, and you can pillage it, but keep in mind, we get some accubation for that. One of our core beliefs is that every agent, every single agent has the opportunity to achieve seven figure wealth. Not necessarily seven figure income, but seven figure wealth. And that means multiple, multiple six figures a year in income, obviously. But that kind of wealth is something that every agent should have the ability to, to create for themselves. That's good. So that's one of our core beliefs. That's, that's one of the reasons why, you know, another, another one that we have is just that, you know, there's, if you've, I don't know if you've gotten a copy. Did we send you a copy of the book, Cody? I don't know if we, I thought we gave you one at the, Checkmate? Yeah, I thought we gave you one. Yeah, yeah, it's in my nightstand while I'm in. Okay, perfect. So, but literally, if you look at that, there's 10 myths in that book. And so those 10 myths are wrapped around pitfalls agents commonly run into. You know, whether it's cross-selling, whether it's, you know, it's difficult, whether it's closing the sales difficult, the generation is difficult. You know, all these different myths that an agent getting started, gets smacked in the face with, and then all of a sudden they're hitting a pitfall, they're falling down, they're not getting up. In the back wall. They're just, they're not rolling through it. And so those, avoiding those 10 myths is another core belief because if agents are struggling, usually it's because they're running into one of those. So. A lot of agents are struggling out there, man. You know, hence 8%. No, yeah. Oh, absolutely. And going in line with that too, we have something we call the six pillars of seven figure wealth. And that is six tools that we, six resources programs that we've identified that agents need to include in their business in order to achieve that seven figure wealth, right? So we've got a bunch of agents that make a lot of money every year, multiple hundred thousand dollars. I can't even tell you how many though. And a lot of them have gone through our training, but how we take them and say, okay, Cody Askins, you made 200,000 this year. How are you gonna make four? Yeah. How are you gonna make eight? How are you gonna beat Jerry and make 1.2? Right? Like how are you gonna do it? What's the game? Yeah, yeah. There's, in my opinion, there's two ways, right? I either got to see twice as many people and do the same thing, or I've got to sell twice as much in some way to the same amount of people. Right. And I hear that first one a lot. Now I hear that first one a lot. So let me ask you this. How many, you seem like you're, and I'm gonna role play with you for a second. Okay, I'm in.  I mean, judging from your Instagram posts that I, every time I go on, there's a new story every 10 minutes. I'm like, my goodness. I'm at least working hard on IG. How does he have the energy to do this? If I was gonna say, I'd say you're in one of the top tiers of people, how hard you work. So let me ask you this. Knowing how hard you work right now, if you wanted to double the amount of business that you wrote, and you were just saying you had to write more policies, see more people do that sort of thing, do you think you could honestly double the amount of working hours that you put into it? No. No. So doubling your business by just seeing more people kind of becomes a difficult strategy to implement, right? That's right. So now you can do it possibly if you're switching to more of a, call center type mentality, something like that, right? You could see more people that way. But as you do that, your lead jump costs go up because now instead of closing three out of 10, four out of 10, five out of 10, now all of a sudden you're closing two or three out of 10 max, right? Because your numbers go down. You need more leads to be able to generate that. You can hit more leads, but you're also losing more, right?  So if you're just trying to increase your income, if you wanna double your income, then you've gotta get more efficient. We've gotta have more of an opportunity to sell more face to face, right? So you gotta be able to sell more products to each person. You gotta be able to solve more problems. You gotta be able to create the need, uncover the need, you know, find out the purpose of the different policies they have now, find out why somebody has an annuity, find out why somebody has $50,000 sitting in a bank, take the extra step to find out what the purpose of that was. So like this, if you sell life insurance, nobody has ever bought a life insurance policy from you without a reason. Find out the purpose of that dollar value. What was that originally intended to do, right? So, yeah. Good. I like your chess and checkers, or chess example, because I talk about this in marketing all the time. It's like, I feel like people look at marketing sometimes as checkers instead of chess. What I mean is, is there's different levels of lead generation. There's different types of lead generation. I'll just talk to Medicare specifically, because I'm kinda hot on Medicare right now, because there's a lot of demand. You know, I was talking to my friend Justin Brock and these friends, everybody's been on the 8% stage. We all know Justin. And he said something that really clicked with me during this COVID-19 situation. He said, because we were talking to this prospect that was complaining about COVID. He was like, oh, I was doing seminars and now my business just stopped. I don't know what to do. And he's like kind of complaining or whatever. And Justin's like, let me ask you this. Are all the seniors still making the same transactions that they were before? Like they still have to have, they still have to have Medicare. They still have to be, all the transactions that they're making now still have to be made. So why aren't they doing it with you? Why are you looking at this as like a barrier? Because today we didn't have a concept of like this digital. What do you mean I can do business on the phone? I'm a face-to-face guy, you know? And it's like, look, man, we gotta evolve. And Justin's office hasn't slowed down at all. In fact, he's sped up. So to me, it's like checkers, a lot of people on their lead gen in marketing, they're just playing like checkers. They're just buying leads for whatever, 25 bucks or doing a direct mail drop and hoping for a 1% return or whatever it is. When really there's a more strategic way to accomplish your lead gen. A lot of people that are playing checkers, the crazy thing is, you can still make a lot of money playing checkers. But how you get to have figures is you gotta evolve that marketing thinking as well and invest in long-term lead strategies like your website SEO and also do your short-term stuff like your social media, direct mail, whatever it is. You know what I mean? So I can resonate with that. Checkers versus chess. In fact, I say that all the time on sales calls. If I start hearing people like, I wanna drop my lead cost by $1, what can we do? And I'm like, okay, okay, stop. The answer to this problem is not to drop the lead cost by a dollar. We're in the wrong ballpark here. Let's take a step back and let's start thinking about this strategically. You see what I'm saying? So I can resonate with that as well. Yeah, I run into this. So Jerry actually almost had a follow-up book that he was gonna title chess versus checkers. And he actually, he came up with a different book that he's writing right now. He, you know, one of the big things, you know, in this business, you gotta stay, you gotta stay on some sort of path to personal, not gonna use the word, well, I guess I'll use the word enlightenment just because you gotta keep moving forward. You gotta invest in yourself. You constantly gotta doing things. You know, people don't realize this but Jerry does coaching, personal coaching like he receives it. So he does coaching with Tim Story. So you guys know Tim this, right? He's a client of ours. Did you know that? I did not know that, no. Dude, that's awesome. And I love to hear that that like, someone as successful as Jerry. Right. JLS family of companies, not, you know, JLS company, companies, family of companies. They grew up to nine, yeah. Nine companies, super successful, ultra wealthy and he has a coach, like multiple coaches because he was at a coach for its launch too. Yeah. Well, he hasn't done a coaching packet with coach but he's gone.  I mean, he also went to the SLS meeting down in Florida. So that was when he decided he wanted a Porsche. And then his son went to that meeting at SLS that coach had and yeah, and he rented a Porsche and then he came back and bought one while he was in Amsterdam for two weeks on a boat on a river barge. He rented a river barge for two weeks. You know, had to get away, I guess, for a little bit. So anyways, where I was going with that is he, he's writing a book kind of based on some of the experiences he's had. I actually saw the first, a part of the first draft yesterday it was pretty, it's pretty interesting stuff. Yeah, the whole, we actually do that metaphor of chess versus checkers quite a bit. And where we do it is obviously not in the marketing with you, Landon, but obviously you've got to have a multi-tiered approach to marketing, just like you have to have a multi-tiered approach to any business you're in. And where we use that analogy is with, for instance, final expense producers.  They can move it a few different ways where they've got one real product, one product vertical. Now you're getting more and more people that are starting to pick up the easy sales on the Medicare side. You're getting more and more, I mean, the old thing that everybody used to do is they used to go from Medicare to the other sales. And that's still what we recommend because it's an easy way to get in the door. That's much better than what the Google searches are, by the way. What's that? That's where all the Google searches are also as Medicare. Well, nobody wants to Google final expense insurance.  There's no searches, but not near as many. Not near as many. You know, that's going back to the conceptual product that is for somebody else versus the healthcare product that they're gonna use day in, day out for the rest of their lives, right? They want the tangible product that they're gonna use versus spending time thinking about how that conceptual product, you know? So there may think about that, but it's not quite as much. But yeah, that's kind of one of the things is are they a monoline producer? Because if they're a monoline producer, then they're playing checkers. Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, they gotta expand their moves. Is that not it? What have you guys seen during this COVID situation? I mean, is production steady? Is production down? Are you, what's your general temperature? What's going on?  There are a few carriers that production's gone up on if they've had more of a virtual platform already in play where they had agents already contracted that were already utilizing it. It's just been kind of a natural expansion of the way that they've already been doing business. I don't think that shift is going to last for forever because I think most of the carriers, you know, most of the Medicare carriers already have some sort of digital enrollment in place. Most of them do, I would say nine out of 10. Whether it's phone apps or it's E-apps or whatever most do. Final expense carriers, they've been doing phone apps for a while. They've been doing E-apps for a while. It's more about the signature process versus the application process on the final expense side than it is on the Medicare side. So, you know, I think that business has gone down, not crazy, but it's gone down, obviously. And I think for most people, it's, you know, they're trying to figure out how to survive. They're trying to switch and try different things.  And I'm sure, well, so Cody, how old are you now? 29, I'm getting old. And you got in at? 19. 19, so you're about 10 years now, right? Going on 11, right, there we go. Decade, it's a decade. I can just send you a decade cake for your insurance business. Oh, man, I'm in. There we go. So the crazy thing is that, you know, when you look back at like when Obama was president, we had something just like this. We had something just like this. We had the Swine Flu come through. It wasn't as bad, it wasn't as publicized, but we had something just like it. So if we had something, because what was that? I think that was like 12 years ago. 11, 12 years ago was when Swine Flu was around, H191, right? Now, so that's two administrations in a row that have had a significant health crisis. We've got these, I mean, Puerto Rico has been hit by how many hurricanes in the last three years. Texas has been hit by how many hurricanes. Florida has been hit by how many hurricanes. You know, California gets hit by forest fires and earthquakes all the time, right? So the reality is in this new world that we're in, we're able to do so much more digitally, but we need to figure out how we're gonna disaster-proof our businesses. Part of that's being able to work digitally. Part of that is building residual incomes through the use of different products. There's not one-size-solution for everybody. It's gonna be some sort of combination of all of the above. It's the ability, because here's what I don't like. What I don't like seeing are the people who are just like, now they're going to go only virtual sales, right? They've kind of made that switch in their brain, ah, I'm never doing business the old way again, because you can't do as much over the phone. You can't do as much when you're sitting, as you can when you're sitting across from somebody. Every transactional sales, like your Medicare sales, like final expense sales, final expense, I mean, final expense sales can be tough if you're not working at current block of business, because your persistency is not as good. You have to have really strong systems, processes, and you have to be able to weather any charge backs. So the final expense side is a little bit harder, even though it's more of a transactional sale if you're doing burial insurance, than the Medicare side. The Medicare side is more transactional, right? So it's not just about doing transactional only that way. It's about, because remember those transactional sales are how agents oftentimes should be getting into the house to sell the other products, right? So I think that if people are just trying to do the transactional sales, they'll be fine. But if they start trying to do everything over the phone, it's going to be tough. I think where we're going to see is after this is over, people are going to try and hit it super hard and they're going to try and enable themselves to be able to do phone sales, e-apps as often as possible. But I think trying to go either way, 100%, just doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah, there's a lot of agents that are like, I'm never going out to build again. It's like they built their business, right out in the field. So it's easy to say that right now, but when all this is over in a month or two or whatever, and we're all hanging out in Vegas together, you can go back out, you know? You like that? Well, what's some other, as we wrap this up over the next several minutes, what's some ideas, what's some strategies?  We've got 10 myths and pitfalls. We've got six pillars of resources. We believe every agent has the opportunity to achieve seven figure wealth. We've got a $20 million. We've got nine companies and 14, I mean like, I don't know how you don't, at least Google you guys, you know what I mean? That's crazy. And I have to give coaches props though, because that we believe statement, that's straight out of his training, and that's straight out of it. That's something that we really looked at, was where, you know, and we had done it in the past, but I think personally for us, our process was, you know, we want clarity as to what we're doing, right? You have a very strong mission statement. You want to help every agent in the world, right? I see that all the time in my email at least three times a day. Definitely want to help, I mean, that's strong, that's strong, but you have a clarity of purpose. You have a mission, land in, what would you say your mission is? Is it the same or is it slightly different? I really believe that security and marketing is a conduit to also help every instrumentation in the world, but my big mission is really just to remove the lack of clarity and lack of transparency in the lead development world. Like some of the weirdest things are happening right now. I know IMOs right now that are like telling their agents to do things that are absolutely horrible for them, because they make a profit on the lead field. And it's like, I don't know, like I don't know if that's really what's the right thing to do. Maybe his is to help every consumer in the world buy insurance from an agent. There we go, there we go, that's a good one. Well, I like the, where I thought he was going there for a split second was removing the obstacles that keep agents from succeeding from an advertising standpoint, you know? I kind of like that, yeah. Let's talk about that real quick, because you brought something up and it kind of lit something. So I don't know, I'm sure you guys have seen this, but what's your take on the fact that right now our marketplace is dominated by, I'd say, two companies? Because you've got integrity marketing, you've got Amerilife, those are two gigantic entities. Two biggest ones before. You've just been swallowing up all the other smaller marketing companies.  I would not consider us anything more than a mid-sized FMO. Yeah, I wouldn't. I mean, we're barely a mid-sized, I'd say. Mid-high, whatever. Yeah, I mean, I'm not doing, yeah. But I'm a little partial myself on this. You know, here's what I'm going with this, is all of the large FMOs, they're now mid-sized. Because the two large IMOs are the, you know, they're the Amerilife's and the integrity's of the world. So to your point, Landon, what happens in our marketplace when a big IMO, FMO pushes on a certain strategy if the agents don't know any better? Yeah, yeah, absolutely true. That's good, that's good. I mean, and I'm not saying that their strategies are bad. I'm seeing a lot of them going into a digital platform, which is great. But if they're pushing digital, digital, digital, that's how everything's working, that's how everything's going. It's gonna make that shift, at least in my mind, that shift back to doing face-to-face sales, more delayed too. I mean, we may get out of this and find that there's a huge opportunity for face-to-face agents versus the phone agents because everybody's shifted. Kind of like when everything changes in the digital marketing world, like on Facebook, and Landon calls me up and goes, yo, we gotta shift this because this isn't working anymore, we gotta shift to another strategy. You know, he knows ahead of the curve because he sees so much business, right? Yeah, the spaces get crowded, but when it gets crowded, it increases the cost. Well, think about Facebook advertising in general three to four years ago. Oh yeah. Dude, it was a ghost town. Think about, no, think about- We're grabbing every 90-cent lead, I could. Yeah, think about internet marketing like six, seven, eight years ago.  I mean, I think at one point I spent probably like $30,000, $40,000 on internet marketing and the results were pitiful, pitiful. I mean, it was just, so then social media came around, social media marketing came around, right? And I was, I mean, I'll just be real, I was hesitant because I had spent, I mean, insurance agents are always looking for that latest, greatest- Best thing, bro. Special marketing plan, right? Nobody's using it, that's where we're mass marketing it. Bing, bing, bing! Object, objection-free leads. Right. Objection-free from a lead founder on Facebook. Guaranteed sales. What? What is that? Objection-free leads? Okay, cool. I'll take 10. Oh my God. But yeah, I mean, it's just crazy how things have changed. And so I guess, you know, one of my things that I talked to agents about is all running to agents that have contracts with like some of these companies and they don't wanna move their contracts away. And I'll say, well, you know, here's the thing, I'm not trying to take your contracts away. I'm just trying to show you how that, how you can make additional money in addition to what you're doing now with some niche products that you don't have right now and you don't know how to sell. Honestly, that's one of the things that has really helped us over the last year is it's the same thing as when you're talking to a consumer. It's about finding where the needs are and helping them succeed, right? So, yeah. That's good. Right on, man. Well, that's good. I mean, I'm good, man. I appreciate you joining us. We covered a bunch today, bro. Thank you very much. Yeah, I kind of bounced around. We didn't really, we just wanted to hang out.  We need to do a live trading at their spot. Done. Yeah, I guess. It's gonna be August 17th, so. Oh, my birthday is the 23rd, so that's perfect timing. All right, let's see. All right, let's see. Right on, well, I mean, anything else, Cody? I'm a big fan of you and Jerry, Matt, so thank you, buddy. Appreciate the friendship of everything you guys do and anybody watching, I don't put dirtbags on here. I must be good dudes, you know? Yeah, you can trust these dudes. I always say you never know people until you do business with them. Yeah.  Well, as soon as you start sending TikTok videos to somebody to work with, like a buddy, you know it's real. I won't be sending you some of mine now. There we go. There we go. Landon said that Leadbender was objection-free. This podcast is jerk-free. There we go. Jerk-free. I like it. I like it, guys, it's good. All right, Matt, thanks for joining us, man. All right, thanks for having me on. See you guys soon. See you guys down in Vegas. Hey, try and get to Springfield or Branson this summer and we can go to the lake or something. Yeah, for sure. It'd be a good time. All right, see you guys. Thank you, buddy. Hey, if you liked this video, which I know you did with my buddy Landon and I, and you want to learn how to sell final expense over the phone, I got an amazing video for you guys right here. Click on that and we'll see you there. For your story, either way, one of my good buddies here in the office, Dallas, he loves to drive. We used to drive all over the state together, door knocking everywhere.


Hey fellow reading warriors and welcome back to another video and welcome to a new year So I have decided that to start off this year. I'm gonna talk a little bit about some of my 2021 reading goals More sit down and let's talk about this upcoming year and just reading in general and not really very many Specific books I may mention a few but not enough to give summaries or pull them off of my shelf or anything like that So this is also coming off of having an entire year where every month I planned out pretty much every book I was gonna read I had a little bit of flexibility like I knew this month I was gonna read this genre and I had these books that were of the genre if I had time I was going to read more or if I wasn't feeling it I could switch them out But for the most part it was incredibly scheduled and while I am a very scheduled person and I love having schedule and being organized That's not something I want to continue in the future with my reading. It was great I'm really proud of myself for reading a different genre every month for the past year But this year is gonna be a little more what I normally do in terms of reading So for example, that's going to include setting a very loose TBR maybe at the beginning of the month or kind of at the beginning of a season even depending on how school is in School ends up being super busy for me in the fall. It might just be a fall TBR rather than specifically August September October But also because I am switching to an English major Surprise surprise shocker who would have thought that another booktuber was gonna be an English major Initially, I was an Arabic major and while I still love the language. I still love Arabic I have made a different career choice and thus rendering me to change my major So I will also be talking a little bit more about books that I will read per my curriculum But I'm still hoping that this channel will mostly remain in my free enjoyment reading rather than school-required Reading because I'll get plenty of talking about that in class And that's also not what you guys are necessarily here to see if you do want to see videos like that I'd be more than willing to do them. All you have to do is comment down below Let me know or send me an email or contact me over Some sort of social media that I have in the description every video. So just keep that in mind But yeah, so it is gonna be a lot looser of a TBR. I am very much a mood reader I read whatever I feel like or whatever I recently got or whatever You know, I'm very much a mood reader. So I will not be near a schedule I'll still try to be a little bit Just to make sure that I actually do read all the books on myself But I'm not making as many promises as I did last year. In terms of Goodreads goals I do enjoy setting them this past year. I set it at 50 and I Definitely I overcame that by quite a bit. However, not enough to quite put it at 100 although my Goal goal is to have my Goodreads goal be a hundred books and to complete it. However, like I said just with school COVID working multiple jobs I I don't want to pressure myself so that it's more about reading a number of books rather than the actual books that I am reading in the Content. So again, my Goodreads goal will be 50 books. However, I very much expect to surpass that Hopefully more than I did this past year Because I went through quite a few reading slumps last year due to my Overscheduled over organized year So hopefully I won't go into as many slumps that I can like Way read way more than 50 books, but I'm also just trying to keep the pressure on myself very light So I'm not setting too many things in stone The whole point of last year was to branch out and read new genres and try new things and I Found out slash I kind of knew it, but I never acted on it that I love historical fiction I do I I like realistic historical fiction But I also like fantasy historical fiction, you know anything that is fiction and is not taken modern times I actually quite enjoy so one goal I am gonna set for the entire year It's just flat out read more historical fiction and I recently started buying some more historical fiction So that I can do that for example I have the prisoner's wife or I have my climate in Jane And I have a couple other historical fiction that I want to read that are on my shelf that I maybe started So I'm gonna be reading more historical fiction, hopefully as well as continuing to read fantasy as I love fantasy I've always known that I've always been a huge fantasy reader. That's not gonna change But I am hoping to add on some historical fiction I want I have a hard time with contemporary because There are certain contemporary books that I like and certain ones that I don't like at all So I am still open to reading contemporary if you guys have any good suggestions for me But I cannot promise that that would be a prominent genre in this channel or in my reading life Considering this channel is my reading life So so this channel is gonna continue to be more of a historical fiction slash fantasy channel But I am always open to whatever books that you guys find interesting and want me to read So even if you have a book that you love and want to talk about if it's not one of those genres I still feel free to put it down and I may read it anyway And then of course, you know, there's Halloween when I'm gonna be reading all kinds of horror and thriller because I I will be buying them so far ahead of time that no matter what happens with sending it will come If you don't know what I'm talking about just look at one of the videos Here's this iron look at one of the videos that I released during that time Specifically my Halloween vlog and you'll understand why I'm so frustrated with ordering books online Yeah, so I want to read more historical fiction But I really also want to read a lot of fantasy that I have missed out on this past year so many wonderful fantasy books and series have been released in the past year and I Just did not let myself read them because of my stupid schedule And so I will also be playing quite a bit of catch-up of some of those books I was like, oh, I really want to read them, but I can't because you know this month is mysteries or this month is You know, whatever and so I will also be catching up on a lot of those So if you see me reading older books in future videos Sorry, but that's what it's gonna be. I am also hoping to participate in read-a-thons again. So I love Read-a-thons. I think they are so creative. They are so fun They're so interesting to participate in and talk with other people about and I love vlogging for a lot of them And so I'm kind of doing a loose like I know that this read-a-thon is coming up this year And I want to make sure I do it But I also want to plan a little further ahead than what I had this past year So I know that there's probably going to be if the newts happen if G Does the newts again? I want to participate in those if she doesn't I might want to find some Materials from newts last year and do it because I understand if she doesn't due to JK Rowling is a horrible human being But I still want to go through the challenge and the fun of that. I will also be doing the reading rush I'm gonna do that every year that was like again like the third or fourth video. I ever post I think like The second or third video I ever posted was a reading rush Announcement video like that. I was going to do it now that I'm part of reading rush But yeah, so I want to do that read-a-thon if the Olympic Games read-a-thon happens again this year I want to do that and the hashtag make your myth taker was one that I watched the announcement video for thought Oh, I'm gonna do this and then didn't do it at all And so those are some read-a-thons. I definitely throughout the year as more read-a-thons pop up I want to do them So I want to be a little more prepared and open to just kind of doing a read-a-thon on a whim Rather than like last year being like, oh, no, I can't do this read-a-thon because it's hard to find books in the genre I'm supposed to be reading for it So I definitely want to participate in more read-a-thons, which also leads me into more video related Contents I want to be doing more vlogs because vlogs are fun and vlogs kind of allow me to Read a book or two and talk about them more in-depth. I feel like with my recent read videos or wrap-up videos I have a bit of a time limit just with the old technology that I'm using aka. I use my phone for videos Which also is how I take like Personal pictures and videos of other things like going to the zoo or something And so I don't always have the most amount of storage on my phone And then I also use my one and only laptop for editing and uploading Which is the same laptop that I use for school And so I also don't have a lot of storage on that device either So I feel like my wrap-ups and my recent reads always have to be super rushed And I have to get through it get to the point of things so that I can make sure that I can actually upload the video But if I do more vlogs I think I'll be more open to talking about the book for longer or do a more in-depth review Especially if I like stop after being like a third of the way through or halfway through or almost done And obviously all of my reviews will not have spoilers in them I and if they do have a spoiler, I will most likely put it either in the title or as you watch the video I like to put up a screen and say spoiler coming or something like that so that You don't get spoiled because that is one of the worst things in the world So most of my reviews will be spoiler-free But if they are not I will make it very obvious that it's not Because I would love to talk about the books and I feel like a better way to do that would be through vlogs Plus vlogs are fun. Vlogs are very interesting. I think yeah, and then also in terms of video content I want to make more creative videos I had some ideas for some creative videos I was gonna do that aren't like That are kind of creative aren't super popular about the same time not like 100% original, you know But again with storage on my phone storage on my computer and also figuring out an uploading schedule I had to very much tailor to what my school schedule was each semester And what my work schedule was over the summer in order for me to figure out when it's even possible to record and upload a video But now it's a little more set in stone I will be uploading every Thursdays and I have been for quite a while and that is going to continue But I want to be doing some more creative more interesting content And so I'm going to kind of challenge myself But then also use some of the ideas that I have last year in terms of making more creative content So I don't feel that I'm getting stuck in a repetitive pattern of TBR vlog Recent reads wrap up move on. I want to make sure I'm uploading like more interesting and creative videos than that so If you have any ideas again, like if you have ideas on anything Just comment them down below and I will love to read through them and work with them. Sorry I'm like losing my voice a little bit But yeah, so though those are kind of what I'm thinking of for this upcoming year I'm gonna be a little more loser a little more happier with what I am reading and I want to be a little more Have a little more fun with these videos not that making these videos isn't fun No, I'm having so much fun sitting here and talking about books But I do want to do some more creative content So I think those are kind of all my reading goals for this upcoming year Thanks for sitting and down and having a little chat with me Let me know what kind of goals you have whether it's certain books you want to read certain genres you want to read certain things you want to do Certain books you want to buy, you know, it's just kind of whatever I would love to hear from you down below Like I said earlier, I upload on Thursday So hit the subscribe and then hit the bell so that you can get notified when on Thursdays I upload and feel free to give this video a thumbs up if you liked it If you enjoyed it or if you want to have more just casual sit-down talks like this rather than super prepared like this book of this and then this book of that so Yeah, and I hope you guys are having a wonderful year so far Hopefully it's a lot better than how last year started out and so with that I'm gonna wish you guys all the way until my next video next week a happy reading