Hi! My name is Jeromy Kovatana and my wife, Hope, and I are the founders of Leads Bakery. We have been successful running insurance leads for ourselves and other agencies since mid 2018. The Leads Bakery was created out of necessity.
Before Final Expense I was previously an accountant. I actually received a degree in Accounting and a degree in Finance with half a masters completed as well. However, I decided to leave it all behind and pursue the life of an insurance agent. Why you might ask? The reason my family and I decided to get into the life insurance business was:
1. To help families, and
2. To become our own bosses and be in control of our income.
We also desperately wanted location freedom and this definitely gave us that ability. It was exciting to know that we could get leads in any area where we wanted to raise our family.
We originally started running our final expense business in the Kansas City area. At that time the leads were PLENTIFUL in this area provided by the IMO that we were working with. We were working direct mail leads and had new leads coming in each and every week.
Fast forward a couple years later, we decided we wanted to move to Idaho! We took a work trip there and actually FELL IN LOVE with the Boise area. After speaking to my lead source through my IMO, we discovered that Boise was a wide open lead territory and there would be no issue getting leads to work there. SCORE! We were FIRED UP!
We began looking for a place to live… After a couple months of searching we finally found a place and began the process of our move. As soon as we put our deposit down on the house, I called my IMO and put a deposit down to reserve the counties we wanted leads in. That way we could begin sending mail to the areas we wanted to work. They then took our deposit and said they'd begin mailing the area. We were SO excited!
About two days later, I received a call, followed by an email, from the lead company... "...the counties you’ve requested ARE ALREADY TAKEN..." My heart sunk...
I can't begin to tell you how frightened I felt with the news. I was about to move my wife and young kids to the city of our dreams WITHOUT a valid or reliable source of leads. I immediately started calling ALL OVER the place trying to find a lead source. Eventually, I found a solution… BUT I had to move all my contracts, place more deposits, and get releases to even start any lead generation activities. I was crushed...
From that moment on, I decided that I would ALWAYS have a lead source that I could rely on and be independent from my IMO.
After TENS OF THOUSANDS of dollars in digital marketing training, and hours upon hours, I began the process of trial and error in generating MY OWN customized leads through the most engaging platforms currently out there. Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
What I found was SO rewarding! All my hard work finally paid off. It was WORKING! And not only “working”, but the leads were HOT and my business was THRIVING! Originally, I was going to keep this newly discovered lead generation all to myself. But, as the days and weeks went by, I realized that there may be other agents or families out there that were experiencing the exact thing I had experienced. Having such a heavy dependency on the sources my IMO had for leads, it just didn't feel right to keep this to myself...
Therefore, we collectively decided to open up these leads to other agents that are looking for a source they can trust and to help agents maintain their own independence.