BUILT DIFFERENT.

An old friend I knew from a network marketing company had gotten into life insurance and seemed to be doing well.

I watched an overview of the opportunity and one thing immediately grabbed my attention:

Uncapped earning potential.

For the first time in my life, someone was essentially telling me:

“If you’re willing to work harder, you can make more.”

That mattered to me.

Not because I had dreams of becoming rich.

Because if I could make enough money, my wife could come home.

So I decided to get my insurance license.

And immediately struggled.

I failed the licensing exam.

Then I failed it again.

Then a third time.

I finally passed on my fourth attempt.

And when I told friends, family and coworkers what I was planning to do, the response wasn’t exactly encouraging.

People laughed.

People mocked me.

I heard versions of:

“You can’t do that.”

“That’s not you.”

“You’ll be back.”

There’s something about being told I can’t do something that has always lit a fire inside of me.

So I started selling insurance while still working my appliance job.

And I went 0-for-10.

Ten appointments.

Zero sales.

I’d work all day, come home around 4:00 or 5:00, then drive as much as an hour to sit at someone’s kitchen table trying to sell life insurance.

And nothing was happening.

Then my wife said something I’ll never forget.

“You just need to quit your job and go all in.”

I thought she was crazy.

We’d just bought a house. We had two young children. My income was necessary to pay our bills.

And I’d literally proven nothing.

I was 0-for-10.

But we prayed about it.

And ultimately, we decided to bet on ourselves.

We even took a small loan against her 401(k) to give us some breathing room.

I put in my two weeks’ notice.

People at work literally made bets about how quickly I’d be back.

But my wife believed in me.

I’ve talked many times since then about the power of borrowed confidence.

Sometimes you don’t completely believe in yourself yet.

But somebody else does.

And you borrow their confidence until you’ve built enough of your own.

That’s what my wife gave me.

My first full week in insurance was Thanksgiving week of 2020.

Probably one of the worst weeks imaginable to start selling insurance.

But I had one goal.

I had to make a sale before Thanksgiving dinner.

I knew what everyone was going to ask me.

“Well…have you sold anything yet?”

And I desperately wanted to be able to say yes.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, it finally happened.

I drove to Hartsville, South Carolina and sold a couple a Mutual of Omaha accidental death policy.

My first insurance sale.

You would’ve thought I’d won the lottery.

I walked into Thanksgiving dinner the next day knowing when someone asked the question, I finally had an answer.

Yes. I sold something.

And then something crazy happened.

I finished my first 30 days in the life insurance business with approximately $26,000 in annual premium.

Suddenly, this wasn’t some crazy idea anymore.

It was working.

At the beginning of January 2021, I attended an insurance conference.

There was a panel of Hall of Fame producers.

Hall of Fame was the benchmark everyone wanted to reach: $400,000 of personal production in a calendar year.

I listened closely.

Someone asked them what it took.

The answer was remarkably simple.

Buy leads.

Book 30 appointments every week.

Run them.

So that’s what I did.

I wasn’t the agent sitting around watching training videos all day preparing to eventually become good.

I’ve always believed in active learning.

Get on the phone.

Make mistakes.

Get better.

Make another call.

Move fast. Break things. Learn. Keep moving.

I became obsessed with getting better on the phone, overcoming objections, running appointments and making sales.

And eventually, I became very good at it.

I worked 10, 12, sometimes 14-hour days.

I dialed Mondays and ran appointments Tuesday and Wednesday.

I dialed Thursdays and ran Friday and Saturday.

Six days a week.

Fifty to sixty-plus hours.

And I did it for nearly two years.

Within about seven months of starting, I accomplished the reason I entered the industry in the first place:

I brought my wife home from her job.

I’ll never forget that.

The business had changed our life.

I went on to achieve Hall of Fame, earning the red jacket that I had watched those producers wearing months earlier.

And because I couldn’t believe what this opportunity had done for me, I started telling everybody about it.

I posted constantly on social media.

Not because I wanted people to look at me.

I genuinely couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t doing this.

If I could do it, I believed anybody willing to work could do it.

Agents began reaching out.

I started making YouTube training videos. I shared my scripts, the leads I bought, how I handled objections, how I sold virtually—everything.

I didn’t care whether someone was in my downline.

If I knew something that could help them, I’d tell them.

Eventually I started recruiting and building a life insurance organization.

And from the outside…

Everything looked incredible.

But something was happening behind the scenes that almost nobody talked about.

Life insurance had changed my life.

But over time, I discovered something about the business model that I couldn’t ignore.

You never get to stop.

You buy leads.

You call leads.

You sell policies.

Then you wake up and do it again.

And again.

And again.

Take your foot off the gas and production slows.

Take a vacation and your pipeline suffers.

Stop buying leads and eventually the appointments stop.

Meanwhile, policies charge back.

I describe it as being stuck in the ocean.

I’d fight my way to the surface, finally get my mouth above the water and take a breath…

And it felt like somebody would immediately push my head back underwater.

That’s what the business had become.

And it wasn’t just happening to me.

I was recruiting agents and teaching them exactly what had worked for me.

Buy the leads. Make the calls. Run the appointments.

They were doing it.

And many still couldn’t get ahead.

They’d make money and pour it right back into leads.

Make more money.

Buy more leads.

Get chargebacks.

Buy more leads.

It became a vicious cycle.

And building an agency wasn’t necessarily the escape either.

Now there was another risk: roll-up debt.

Recruit 20 agents. They each write a few policies. Those policies charge back. Suddenly the hierarchy is absorbing thousands of dollars of debt.

I had done what the industry told me success looked like.

I had achieved Hall of Fame.

I had production.

I had recruited agents.

I had influence.

And at one point…

I was two months behind on my mortgage and carrying three separate loans of roughly $15,000–$20,000 each.

My wife was questioning whether she needed to go back to work.

I was exhausted.

I had worked harder than I had ever worked in my life.

And I felt trapped.

The business model was broken.

Ironically, around November of 2022—almost exactly two years after I started selling life insurance—I saw an advertisement about selling private health insurance.

The timing was interesting because I’d recently experienced the health insurance problem personally.

When my wife left her job, we lost her employer coverage.

Someone quoted our family around $1,200 per month with an $8,000 deductible.

I couldn’t believe it.

I’m healthy. I rarely go to the doctor.

You’re telling me I have to pay $1,200 every month and potentially another $8,000 before my insurance really starts helping?

I didn’t even believe in health insurance at that point.

Then I learned about private health insurance.

And I quietly decided to try selling it.

I didn’t tell my team.

I just went out for one week.

I wrote approximately $63,000 in health premium.

My mind was blown.

The conversations were easier.

People actually wanted to talk about health insurance.

Lead costs were dramatically lower.

The average premium was much larger.

Persistency was better.

And while the commission percentage was lower, the larger average sale meant I could earn roughly the same amount per client.

Then there was the piece that changed everything:

Renewals.

I remember looking at the economics and thinking:

“This is insane.”

Lower acquisition cost.

Better persistency.

Comparable upfront income.

And recurring renewal income.

For the first time, I could see an exit from the hamster wheel.

I started introducing health insurance to my team.

Eventually, the life insurance company I was with found out.

Despite being told we were independent agents, I was ultimately given a choice.

I chose health.

And people followed.

A lot of people.

Ultimately, more than 1,500 agents from that organization came over.

What surprised me most wasn’t the number.

It was realizing how many people had quietly been experiencing exactly what I had experienced.

They felt trapped too.

They just weren’t talking about it.

In 2023, we went on to produce approximately $32 million in health insurance premium.

We made money.

Agents became successful.

Clients stayed on the books.

And for the first time, I felt like we were actually building something.

Not just generating the next commission check.

By 2024, problems had developed with the ownership of the company we were partnered with.

And in the middle of that year, something happened that completely changed my career.

My upline took my hierarchy.

Agents I had personally recruited and an organization I had helped build were moved out from underneath me.

When I had originally joined, the organization had roughly nine agents.

Now the business I had spent years helping build was essentially taken away from me.

I was removed from the platform.

My agency was gone.

So I had two choices.

Quit.

Or rebuild.

I chose to rebuild.

In August 2024, I partnered with USA Benefits Group.

Rick Banville helped me navigate carrier releases and get contracts moved over.

Then I went to work.

For approximately six months, I recruited my agents back.

I rebuilt my leadership.

I rebuilt the organization.

And ultimately…

I built it bigger and better than it had been before.

I eventually became one of USA Benefits Group’s seven Division Leaders and today lead the AO Financial Division.

But something changed in me during that rebuilding process.

I wasn’t interested in simply rebuilding what we’d lost.

I wanted to fix everything I believed made this industry unnecessarily difficult.

That’s when AO really became AO.

I’m a creator.

When I see friction, confusion or inefficiency, my brain immediately asks:

“How do we make this easier?”

I don’t believe agents should struggle simply because that’s how agents before them had to learn.

I put in the sweat equity.

I spent thousands of hours dialing phones.

I drove hours to appointments.

I dug through underwriting guides.

I figured out contracting.

I wasted money learning marketing.

I made mistakes.

I experienced the confusion.

That doesn’t mean the next agent should have to.

Technology has completely changed what’s possible, and I believe it’s our responsibility to use it.

That’s why we’ve built an entire ecosystem around the AO agent.

AO University gives a brand-new agent the roadmap I never had.

AO University Live, led by John Osborn, takes that knowledge and turns it into real-world experience while agents actually work leads and develop the confidence to become self-sufficient.

AO Leads gives agents a complete done-for-you marketing system so they can focus on selling instead of trying to become digital marketers.

Alpha CRM uses technology, automation and AI to manage opportunities, follow-up and appointments.

Viktor, our underwriting tool inside Slack, gives agents access to product and underwriting guidance in seconds instead of digging through hundreds of carrier documents.

Our onboarding team, including Kate Brown, helps new agents navigate contracting, systems and setup because I remember how overwhelming all of that felt when I knew absolutely nothing about insurance.

And our leadership structure is designed so that by the time an agent reaches their professional upline mentor, they’ve already demonstrated that they’re willing to learn, work and build.

None of these things were created because they sounded cool.

They were created because I experienced the problem first.

I still believe life insurance is incredibly important.

We sell it.

We teach it.

Our clients need it.

But if someone asked me today whether I would build my career primarily around selling life insurance again?

I wouldn’t.

If someone had shown me the private health insurance opportunity that exists today when I entered the industry in 2020, I would have chosen it.

Because I don’t want agents to spend their careers on a hamster wheel.

I want them to build something.

With health insurance, every client has the potential to become part of a growing book of business.

You aren’t simply working for today’s commission.

You’re building tomorrow’s income.

I’ve watched agents inside AO build six-figure renewal income, many in remarkably short periods of time.

Think about how different that is.

Instead of waking up every January knowing you have to recreate last year’s income…

You can wake up with a book of clients already paying you.

Then you build on top of it.

Year one creates year two.

Year two strengthens year three.

Eventually, you’re no longer just selling insurance.

You’re building an asset.

That’s what I wish someone had shown me.

I’m proud of our production.

I’m proud of the recognition.

I’m proud of the agents we’ve developed.

But numbers aren’t what drive me anymore.

People do.

I care deeply about changing agents’ lives because this industry changed mine.

I know what it’s like to wonder if you’ll ever make enough money for your wife to stay home.

I know what it’s like to quit a secure job without knowing whether you’ll succeed.

I know what it’s like to fail.

I know what it’s like to work 60-hour weeks.

I know what it’s like to make great money.

And I know what it’s like to make great money and somehow still feel financially trapped.

I’ve had a business built.

I’ve had it taken away.

And I’ve built it again.

All of those experiences shaped what AO is today.

My goal isn’t to remove hard work from this business.

You still have to work.

You still have to make calls.

You still have to learn.

You still have to talk to people.

You still have to become good at what you do.

But I can eliminate unnecessary obstacles.

I can eliminate confusion.

I can shorten the learning curve.

I can give you better technology.

I can give you better training.

I can give you better marketing.

I can surround you with people who have already done what you’re trying to do.

And I can give you the opportunity to build something that doesn’t require you to run forever just to keep it alive.

Because ultimately, I don’t want agents to build businesses they eventually need to escape from.

I want them to build businesses that give them freedom.

Freedom to be with their spouse.

Freedom to be present with their children.

Freedom to take the vacation.

Freedom to coach the team.

Freedom to go to the school event.

Freedom to enjoy their friends.

Freedom to actually live the life they’re working so hard to create.

Insurance gave me the opportunity to bring my wife home and change my family’s life.

Private health showed me how to build something that could last.

And everything we’ve built at AO since then has been designed around one simple question:

How can we make the path easier for the next person?

That’s why AO exists.

And as long as there’s a better way to do something…

I’ll keep building it.