How To Sell Insurance From Home In 2026! (Cody Askins & Jessi Park)

What's changed? So like last time we talked about how to sell insurance from home in 2025. Yeah. We're in 2026 now. Yeah. What's changed? Has anything changed? The wonderful thing is that it's not changed. Cool. I think stability is wonderful. What's going on? Welcome back to the CA Power Player Podcast. I'm your host, Cody Askins. And not only do we have a special guest back in office today, which I'm incredibly excited about, I'm also gonna be asking her some additional questions for CA Studios behind the scenes. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Also, she's been on the podcast and the channel half a dozen, six, seven times over the course. I didn't do the six, seven thing on purpose, but it happened for over the course of years, right? However, she is a rock star. She is the founder of Inspired Insurance Solutions, does health insurance, has a free lead program, by the way, for agents. They're like, oh my gosh, you guys love that, which is cool. Work from home, remote. And there's a couple of cool topics we're gonna talk about today. If you're, she believes if you're still dialing after 10 years, you're doing something wrong and that you can compound your income. And so welcome back. Also the author of Soul Beneficiary. Thank you for having me, Cody. Thank you. Love to be back in Missouri. Yeah, it's awesome. Appreciate that. Easy Delta flight most of the time. Super easy. From Atlanta to Springfield. Yeah, it's cool. It's awesome. Well, you've been on a bunch of times, which we're grateful for. And we'll stick around and ask some extra questions for CA Studios in a few minutes. But one of the things you mentioned earlier was really intriguing. Is you said, if you are, you mentioned the topic. Actually, I'm gonna save the dialing one. You mentioned the topic compounding income. Yeah. For those that are maybe new to insurance or they've been doing this for a decade, but they don't feel like it's compounding. Right. What do you mean? So what I'm referring to is essentially whenever you're selling policies and you're building your book of business and you're building your clientele, every time they pay their premium, you still get a portion of that, right? So. Supposed to. Yeah. It starts off with just one client. Now, you know, a year later, you have a hundred clients. Now, two years later, you have 300 clients. Five years later, you have 600 clients, like however much you work, right? Sure. So that's why, you know, I said, if you're still dialing after 10 years, like you're obviously doing something wrong because it's not supposed to be a hamster in a wheel. This is supposed to be a way to build wealth and, you know, a way to accumulate wealth and familiar wealth and generational wealth. This is how some of the biggest names in the industry have grown rich and have investment and have money now is from compounding income. Yeah. Do you have an example of that? Like an agent example or yourself either way, where it's like, hey, they've done this, they wrote this many clients and now make this. Sure. So I'm just going to use any agent at all because it's the same formula with anything that we do. So if you write a policy and say, it's a private policy and you make $80 off of that per month, right? That is paid as earned. And you earn that every single month for the life of the policy. So if they keep that policy for 35 years, you are earning $80 on that client for 35 years. Every month. Every single month. Yes. So with that same client as well, like what we teach, we also teach you to sell like supplements, like dental vision, critical illness, cancer, heart attack, stroke policies. And for those you get an advance, you get a six month advance on those. And so you are building up your advance income, which I always tell agents, that's what you want to pay your bills with. And the residual income, that's what you want to build your wealth with. So after five years, after 10 years, right? You don't just have that one client paying $80 a month anymore. You have hundreds and hundreds of clients. And that $80 a month example, it's actually higher than that if it's a family versus an individual. So sometimes you're making $180 a month off a family policy. That's crazy. Right? So that's how year after year after year. Like I said, if you're still in the hamster wheel after five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 years, we got to get you onto some different products out there. Is that, do you think that's one of the under 65 private health insurance niche and not the Obamacare, ACA niche? Correct. Do you think that's one of the most underlooked but biggest potential niches? Absolutely. Because you know how many agents come to me and they're like, so we're going to be focusing on Obamacare. And I'm like, no, we're not. And then even though I say, no, we're not. This is what we do. They're still kind of like drawn to ACA because it's free and it's such an easy sell. And so it's like the path of least resistance is to sell a policy that doesn't cost the consumer anything. So you really don't even have to have any sales skills to get them to sign up. I just think that's a huge wasted potential. We do offer ACA. I call it jokingly, Cody, I call it the Lord's work. Got it. It feels like a charity. It does. So I will help. I will help clients with it. But we always teach them to bundle. And then obviously if they're a good fit for the private market, that's really what we focus on. That's good. That's awesome. What's the difference if someone's like, hey, I'm trying to, I'm okay. I'm hearing you. It was amazing, you know, income available. Also, when you said 80 bucks a month, I was like, man, that must be a big policy. But you're like, yeah, but sometimes they're bigger. And I'm like, oh, maybe it's not. That's kind of what one of the smaller policies. Wow. Yeah. So who do we work with in your example? Are I like an ideal client? An ideal client is someone who's not on Medicaid, who makes too much money for a subsidy on ACA. And they just, they're relatively healthy. They don't even have to be in perfect health. There is underwriting, but they can even have type two diabetes and still get a policy. Okay. So it's not perfect health that you're looking for, but it's also like more of the financial thing, right? I always tell my agents, right? Imagine if you sold pies, would you go to somewhere where no one had money or would you go to a place where people had money and could afford your pies? Right. To come to my house is what you should do. Especially if they're homemade. Yeah. Lemon, peanut butter, strawberry. Are you talking about Lauren making pies? Yeah. She makes all those pies. No, no, no. But she should. Yeah. She should. Yeah. She does like to bake. Yeah. So we, uh, I tell agents just to focus on clients and healthy and wealthy. It's like, I think that's cliche. Cause that's not really, they don't have to be healthy and they don't have to be wealthy really at this point with how expensive ACA is a normal family. It's, you know, $2,000 a month where we have private health insurance for $800 a month. And this is where the, because the subsidies changed recently in a big way, which probably helped what you do. Yeah. Congratulations. Yeah. Even though agents are on ACA were like freaking out. They were. And I, I read all the boards and stuff and I just don't have the energy to reply, but yeah. I'm just like, Oh man. You know? Cause that's, that's, it's what we do and what I've always done since I've known you, by the way I've never been an ACA agent. Yeah. The private health insurance sector is really, uh, kind of an overlooked, you know, it's not touted as much. You don't have the life insurance bros out there talking about it or anything. And so that's really what I've always focused on. Do you feel like it's underserved too? Um. Or do you think it's served enough or similar to other? I mean, it's not well known about. So I would correlate that with probably being underserved because it's not talked about enough. And many consumers still, when you get them on the phone they think their only option is Obamacare. I still think that's incredible. Yeah. Huh? It goes to show that as much as you think something's talked about or promoted or. No. It's never enough to be mainstream. It's just not. That's crazy. Yeah. What's changed? So like last time we talked about how to sell insurance from home in 2025. Yeah. In 2026 now. Yeah. What's changed? Has anything changed? The wonderful thing is that it's not changed. Cool. I think stability is wonderful and maybe I'm boring or getting old, but I like no changes. I'm right there with you, by the way. I'm, I'm getting old too. I'm 35 now, you know, falling apart. Yeah. I met you when you were a strapping young 20 something. Yeah, that's true. It's been many years. Yeah. Kind of crazy. No, so it hasn't changed. We, in fact, still run the exact same program. We have the same virtual office. We have the same free leads. Wow. We have our same seven meetings a week virtually on Zoom. That way you feel like you're not alone. We even, well, something did change actually. Ah, something new. I like this. We, my husband and I, Milo. Yeah. We implemented a team retreat. So we did that this year. And we took, we had agents fly in three days. We did a restaurant. We did catered meals every single night. We took them out on a yacht on Lake Lanier. I had a slide. I had a bar. Like we just really want to show our agents a good time. And they had so much fun. And in fact, long story short, two people met on the boat, which one of them is my cousin. And they fell in love and they're getting married. No way. So. Look at you. Millionaire matchmaker. That's an old show by the way. Millionaire matchmaker. That's great. Super cool. I love the retreat piece. Like I think community and getting people together. Yeah. Spend time with one another while people are in isolation. Right. I think that's really, really cool. Yeah. That you do that. That's awesome. Yeah. And y'all just keep trying to find ways to improve and get better and help service people. You know? Yeah. Super cool to see. This year we're doing the same thing, but we're doing four days. And so one of the days we're doing a winery tour. Oh my gosh. There's beautiful wineries in North Georgia. And so we're doing a chef's dinner at a winery overlooking the mountains. I'm in. Sign me up. I'm showing up. You guys coming up with me, man? Yeah. Winery. I'm in. That's super cool. You're in. We went to Napa on one of our retreats and did a winery. Okay. Tour and tasting and all this stuff. Was it fun? That was amazing. We also did one in Italy last year, Lauren. That was super cool. That sounds better. It was amazing. I was still pretty good. Yeah. But it was, it was cool. It was amazing. I'm gonna interrupt the podcast to tell you about our Kaboom leads that are literally blowing up. If you would love to never get disconnected numbers or wrong numbers ever again, then you will love our leads at Kaboom leads. All of our lead types. We text the prospect a six digit security code. They go back in the funnel and put that in to verify that it is a real accurate cell phone number. And they've responded to a text message. We do this for all of our lead types. If you haven't tried Kaboom leads, you can use coupon code podcast to get 10% off of your very first order at C-A-Boom. Kaboom leads. Back to the show. So when we say, okay, you can, if you, if you build it right, you can stop dialing. What would you be doing? Are you still working? Yeah. Are you sitting and just getting paid? What's that look like? I mean, great question. Yes. You're still working. You have customer service that you have to do. You're you're I mean, once your clients learn how to use the insurance, they don't really have too many questions, but sometimes they'll lose their card. You got to call and get them another card. And then every year during open enrollment, I'm still working because I have clients on and off of ACA depends on the year on their life situation and things like that. And I'm not going to abandon a client because they need ACA. So every open enrollment for six weeks, I'm very busy. November 1st to December 15th. But the rest of the year, these days is pretty fun. So cool. Yeah. And speaking of compounding income, right. It's allowed you as you've built wealth and insurance to also take on some, some passions and hobbies that, you know, that you like doing now, which is awesome. Yeah. Do you want to hear about them? Yeah. I think it's awesome. Yeah. So, well, I, I own multiple properties, which I think that's always nice, but above and beyond that, uh, I I'm a creative person and I stifled my creativity for six years while I built my insurance and business. But then I went to perfumery school in Thailand and the summer of 24, I have my own perfume brand. You don't mess around. She's like, I'm going to do it. I'll do it. I'm going to do it. Um, Elysian is about to hit this year. I'm thinking probably March. Um, I'm thinking probably in the summer it'll hit 10,000 orders. Wow. I'll get a little plaque. Congratulations. Oh my gosh. She's got goosebumps. That's super cool. Yeah. I recently opened the Senate cottage and that opened in October. So that's been open for five months now and it's become like a premier. We have people flying in from all over the country to come, to come study with me and take perfume classes. And it's so much fun. What do you think you've learned as you've added some of these other things that can totally relate to what you're talking about? What do you think are some skills that maybe you didn't have that you've had to learn? Um, well, I got really great at phone sales, really great at, um, hearing the intonation in their voice when they were interested or when they were not interested. And I feel like I'm way better at reading people now, mostly like verbally, I can hear certain things they do and I'm like, Oh, you know? Um, so I think my sales skills dramatically improved, which helped my people skills. Yep. Um, what else? You say some of the marketing stuff now that with all the other stuff that you're doing, you know what I mean? Like well, so I've learned so much since my e-comm since starting those way more. So with insurance, this CRM kind of does everything for you. We have a custom built CRM. Cool. So when it came to marketing, I actually really didn't even have to think about it. It sends emails, it sends drip campaigns, it sends text messages for you. So when I opened my e-commerce business, I was like, wait, you don't have CRM. And the people I was working with, they were like, no, no, you have to use Clavio. You have to use a tenant. So now there's all these third party things that the e-commerce business uses. Um, we also run ads on Facebook, which I had never done with insurance before. Yeah. So I've learned a lot from e-comm, uh, where I guess like being babied in insurance and having, you know, free leads and the CRM kind of insulated me from that kind of stuff. Yeah. It's fair. It's interesting too, as, as, as the, I think people assume that like, you do really well in insurance and you just like make a bunch of money and stop learning. Where really? Yeah. No, no, there's new products all the time. Uh, there was a meeting today. I missed it cause I was coming here. Um, but no, I would have normally been on it. So of course, no, you don't just kick up your feet and stop working. I've had agents do that after like two years because they are making good money at that point. But you don't. What's like, what's like good money? What I think in their case, in their case, cause in your, in it for you, it's definitely probably not, but in their case, 200 grand. Okay. After two years and it's just like passive. Yeah. It's passive by that point, but then they just stop and they think it's going to last forever without customer servicing their customers. That's probably what I've learned the most. These last few years is the moment I take my foot off the gas. Right. Or I'm less focused. Yeah. It always goes backwards. Right. So yeah, you still have to, I, you don't really have to be dialing as much, but you still, you're going to get referrals. You need to call them. Uh, you're going to be working on customer service. And to me, why would you stop at 200? If you prove to yourself that you can make 200,000 a year after just two years of work, why would you put up your feet and stop working? Like, why not? Why not compound that and keep going? Which is what I did. So yeah. Okay. So what's, what's good. What's good money to you then? Cody, you know, I don't like talking about this million bucks. Uh, I mean, it's, it's not anymore. See, we'll leave it there. Yeah. That's fine. I'm making her uncomfortable. Yeah. We first met, she had these, uh, she had some really cool, we'll just say really cool cars. And, uh, I used to talk about those all the time and she'd be like, stop, you're killing me. Yeah. Right. I like to keep that stuff private. Yeah. I feel like, okay, so, so why is that? Cause I feel like, um, you're right in the industry. It's like this bro culture of like, you've got to show the watches and the cars and the, and the whatever to, to, you know, attract people. Right. And I can kind of see that, but also. To a degree. To a degree, but I also think like lifestyle happiness and like joy in your work is more important to most people. A hundred percent. Right. And so like what I offer as an agency owner, free leads, number one, right there, no financial burden, you know, um, but also we treat our clients, right. So we always do what's best by them. And that's why I jokingly, if someone sells an ACA policy, I'm like, oh, you did the Lord's work, huh? But that minute was right for the client. Correct. Right. Which is good. And I think more people would want to go to bed knowing that they have a career that they can be proud of and that they're not, you know, twisting their morals just because they could also, you know, go somewhere else and make, I don't know, $10,000 a month or something. Sure. That's what I think anyways. Agreed. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And to, uh, you mentioned something that I love and I don't think, I don't think we think about enough in the industry. You mentioned like joy and happiness. I totally agree. And I think, I know at this point it is the, it is the best attractor for clients and for agents is the best attractor. If you are actually happy. Right. People can sense it. They can feel it. They can see it. They can also sense if you're proud or stand behind your product too. Yeah. Right. So when I first started in the industry, I got connected with a captive agency and that captive agency, Oh Lord, um, they, they had products that were, uh, very limited and what they could offer the client, but more. Okay. Then that's fine. If you agree to sell a limited product, then you agree, you know, but what the training was, was having you lie to your clients and prison it in a way that it was not. Uh, and I felt so icky. I felt, I remember going home. It was like three months there and I still couldn't make a sale going home and crying in bed because I felt like, why can't I just lie, you know, like, and just present it this way. Like they all do. Wow. And, um, I just couldn't, I couldn't do that. I couldn't do that. It didn't feel good. So what's an example you gave, you gave a mini example there, but like for those that are like, maybe can't, they don't know how to spot some of that. Right. And they don't, maybe they're so new. They don't even understand that they're lying. What's examples of like. Icky business. Um, telling someone that they have a, I don't know what it is these days, but a $3,000 deductible when, or, or even like that same company telling them that they have a no deductible because it's a fixed benefit plan. So a fixed benefit plan doesn't have a deductible because it doesn't work like that. So saying that they have no deductible is implying that it's the style of plan that does have a deductible when it's not, it's a fixed benefit plan. Same, same kind of concept. You're twisting it to make it seem like it's better than it is. Exactly. Yeah. Like they don't, they don't have, that's not that style of plan. So that doesn't pertain. It doesn't even apply to it. Interesting. Yeah. So you're talking about something that doesn't even apply to the plan. And most people, when they hear that, they're like, oh my gosh, $0 deductible, not knowing that you're lying about the style plan that it is. But if you're new, you don't know that you're, you're lying. True. You don't, you don't even. Understand the concept of that. You're actually misrepresenting the product. How does that happen in, in 2026, uh, with agencies around agents around the country, where they're just like trained in, in ways that they don't even. It's very, very prevalent in the insurance industry. I'm getting icky when you just say very prevalent. And I know this though, because we interview, uh, I don't know, I don't want to say hundreds. It's not hundreds, but at least like 50 agents a month that are coming from other companies. And they're telling me I've been hearing this thing now for 10 years. About this, you know, types of insurance and they tell you to say this and it's not really that. So like, I know it's still to this day, very prevalent. I feel like 10, if I'm wrong, I feel like it's prevalent in a lot of different lines of insurance, but I do feel like for whatever reason, health insurance, especially private health is typically more call center style. Yeah. If it's okay to say. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think there probably are call centers. I'm not familiar with, I've been approached by call centers though, you know? So like, I think you're right. I've never worked in a call center. I've known, you know, I'm not, I'm just talking about a couple other agencies that are very like shady and with their transactions and stuff, that same exact agency also said is someone answered the phone and you find out they have diabetes or anything, hang up on go to the next lead. What? Yeah. Hang up. They're wasting your time. Yeah. How does somebody feel okay with that? I, I don't know, but they, they are very successful. There's just, you know, they're red personalities. Yeah. They enjoy money and I guess nice cars and things like that over, over helping people. I'm a yellow. Remember like the fourth year in a row. Yeah. Well, and I'm, I'm still at red, but I don't want to do things the wrong way and I still want to help people. No, it doesn't feel good. And I don't think you'll be rewarded later in life. No, no. It always, uh, it's a short, short lived thing. Like if you're winning, but you're winning the wrong way. Well, it's, I like that you said short lived because all the people that I started in insurance with 10 years ago that I looked up to that were beasts that were selling so much, none of them are in insurance anymore at all. I mean, you can't build a business like that though. No, you can't. It's not sustainable. No, you, you can get in trouble and have, you know, I've never been in trouble, so I don't know, but I know you can have something happen to your license and things like that. So that kind of stuff happens all the time. Yeah. We hear crazy stories. Yeah. My, my fear is that like, yeah, somebody's buying, you know, doing lead your marketing with us and then they're like, you know, doing something wrong. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then you're connected to that now. Yeah. It's, uh, that's tough. Geez. If let's, let's, uh, I think we may jump into the book a little more heavily the next time you're here. Okay. Yeah, sure. Um, just because, uh, there's a lot of really good, like sales training and material in I've seen over the years that like you've, you know, you were building training videos along with the like workbooks and stuff and like incredible content. Yeah. Um, why the book talk about the book for, for a sec, just in general. Yeah, sure. So the book is kind of a, an expose of the insurance industry and because it is kind of growing me out there. It really is. And the book kind of shows you that you can build an incredible, an incredible business doing things the right way. Talking to people with respect, going through a script that has scripts in there. Um, I also talk about how I started in life, which, you know, I didn't start off with. It seems like it's a really long time ago now because I got into insurance 10 years ago, but prior to insurance, I was pretty broke, you know, I mean, I had a corporate job, but I think I made $47,000 a year. Um, how'd I live off that? I don't even know as a single mom. When I lost my job, I went on unemployment and food stamps and that's where I found insurance on unemployment and food stamps. And that's, so the book goes over my exact kind of how I did it from having nothing, no money for leads, no nothing. Um, the mindset that I had to get into, which the mindset is just as important as actually learning the product. Um, I'd say more important. Yeah. And then how I, what I said, how I changed my script, what I added, what I did, what I stopped doing. Uh, it goes through everything, but this is just a, it's a, has a companion book. The companion book is the mindset workbook for the ultimate entrepreneur. And I would say, I'd almost argue that that's more important than this book. Wow. This book has the, the ground, the blueprint of how I built my insurance business. But the mindset workbook goes over the mindset that you have to get into because it's most people fail. What's the number? 92%. I mean, maybe it's not still, it's not still the exact same, but that's what it was. Yeah. It's kind of crazy. Um, wow. There's so many things we could talk through. Uh, I want to ask some additional questions for studios, but they want to keep following you. Sure. What do they do and where do they go? Yeah. So they, I'm so boring on Instagram these days, Cody. What? You used to do so much content. I just, but you're building businesses and living your life. I know. So my Instagram is at it's Jesse park. You're not, I'm not an entertainer. You're not going to see much. Um, but if you are interested in learning more about joining the agency, you can go to www.joininspiredinsurance.com. Nice. Inspired insurance solutions. Very cool. Yeah. Well, we're so glad you are back. Yeah. You always do such an amazing job. We get such good feedback when you're on the podcast. Thank you. So thank you for being back in Springfield, Missouri. Thank you. See you soon. Yes. See you guys soon. Also hang on. We're about to jump to studios for some behind the scenes questions. If you haven't checked that out, you can go to castudios.tv. We'll see you next time.