Episode 14: Scott Foster and Steve Cannon on Leadership, Team-Building and Life Insurance

It's got to be talked about with the leader. We set the tone for everything. So if I just take a group of young hirees and put them in a room and say, start dialing— unfortunately, that's where a lot of them are being trained, and they're not really being trained, they're just kind of thrown in there and say, start dialing and start calling and get as many as you can, as fast as you can, as you can, can, can. And it's not the model long term, and it's not going to be satisfactory in your later years. I promise you that you want to build a great foundation when you're building an agency. You want to build it slow, one family at a time, and build it quality.

Welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, where you will learn to grow your business, grow your leadership, and grow and develop your team. And now tune in to another great episode brought to you by your hosts, Bradley Hamner and Chris Ferretti. On today's episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, we have Scott Foster and Steve Cannon. Scott and Steve have been incredibly successful. They're so admired and respected throughout the entire insurance industry. Chris, a few of the things that we talk about in this episode, we certainly dive into their background. I learned a lot about them. We talk about the importance of ethics in business, especially today. We talk about training, what it means to actually train, not just on product training, but actually on professional sales training. We do get into some specifics with hiring and recruiting and the importance of that, how to go about doing that. And you can't talk to Scott Foster and Steve Cannon without talking to them about life insurance and just some of the things that they picked up over the years. We get into business insurance and so many other things. I mean, we went nearly an hour and 45 minutes on this podcast, a tremendous amount of knowledge. Chris, what are some of the things you picked up on?

Lots of business acumen, but on top of all the business information that I got from them, what really stuck with me were the philosophical lessons that they left us with. And one tip that I'm going to start utilizing for the rest of my life, which is the following one: when evaluating a business decision, always ask yourself the following 3 questions. Is it right for the customer? Is it right for the company? And is it right for me? And if it's not right for any of those, then you simply don't do the activity that you're contemplating on doing. So with that being said, let's get to it.

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Glad to be here today, Steve, and it's a pleasure to be here and certainly always a joy to talk to other professionals in our industry and share insights. We all learn from one another.

It's our pleasure. We're looking forward to this.

Well, so many of you out there listening to this podcast know Scott, know Steve, but for those that don't, Scott, why don't you just start and then Steve, you follow up. Give a little bit about your background of agency and how you got to where you are. And obviously you just celebrated your retirement, but just give a little bit of background about your career. And then Steve, why don't you follow up?

I came from fairly humble beginnings. I grew up in Columbus, Georgia. My father was a mitter and a hosiery mill, and then later on he was a barber. And I started getting interested in sales, started out as a paperboy when I was 7 years old, kept my paper route until I was a senior in high school. When I was 13 years old, I had an opportunity because there was an independent life agent that lived across the street from us. And there was a thing back then called the ELBA system, which basically was like a 12-minute film that showed the need for life insurance for someone from their family, the need for the breadwinner. And L.C. Hardy asked me if I would come to work for him. And basically all I did was turn on the video and play it for his prospects. Then after playing the video, he would meet with them and talk to them about their life insurance needs. So I guess I could go all the way back to that was my first exposure to the insurance business. And then, uh, I went on to go to the University of Georgia and majored in risk management and insurance. But at that point, I never intended to go into sales. Thought I'd be an actuary or underwriting or something like that. But between my junior and senior year in college, I had the opportunity to do an internship with The Equitable, which is now the AXA, and was exposed to some very good salespeople. A guy named Jim Killingsworth, he was such a good salesperson that he went by Killer. Even his clients called him Killer. That's pretty confident in it. And, um, I got to also see some people that did make it that summer. So after graduating, I didn't go with the Equitable. I went with MetLife. They recruited me and I went with MetLife in Atlanta, spent 4 years there. At the time, no-fault was coming into the state of Georgia in 1973. And so the multiple line agencies, the multiple line companies were adding a lot of agents because no-fault was requiring people to have— before then, they'd never been required to have auto insurance in the state of Georgia. So they had what they call the Financial Responsibility Act, which required them to have liability insurance. Four of the people that I had graduated from University of Georgia with had gone with State Farm, one of whom's father was a district manager for State Farm. And so after about 3 years of working 14, 16-hour days, going to people's homes and such, I started watching what they were doing in a multiple line opportunity and started conversations, which took about a year, conversations with the manager that hired me with State Farm. So it was a long route, but it was a great route and never looked back. Never looked back. Once I made that change, it was a great change, an opportunity to have your own agency, opportunity to have your own business. So I was very blessed to have that opportunity.

Steve, I'd love to hear your story.

Yeah. So for me, I grew up in Greenwood, South Carolina. Coincidental that my father was a barber as well for 55 years in a small town in South Carolina called Greenwood, South Carolina. So grew up in a really blue-collar family. Nobody ever went to college. I was the first one to go to college. I went to the Citadel, graduated from the Citadel, and after I graduated, I always knew I wanted to be in sales. And I got hired by a company called Park Davis Medical Sales, South Florida. Went down there and then worked there a couple of years and then went to work for Pfizer, sold hip and knee joints to ortho— called on orthopedic surgeons and did that for about 7 years. And then I decided I wanted to go in the insurance industry, did about a 6-month study and looked at about 10 different companies, interviewed with managers, agents, and studies, and tried to get hired. And State Farm wasn't hiring. And so I finally got hired in Georgia, decided to go with State Farm after doing the 6-month study. And they were just head and shoulders above every other company. Fortunately got hired to start a scratch agency in Marietta, Georgia in September of 1989. So got married in 1990, have 4 children, and it's been a wonderful ride and I'm still enjoying it. Still passionate about the business and it's still a lot of fun.

Steve, I didn't know that you and I both have a medical pharmaceutical sales background.

Yeah, it was a great start, really, to prepare me for doing what I'm doing today.

Well, we're going to cover— we have so much. I mean, this podcast could go on for 2 or 3 hours, but a few of the things that obviously I want to be able to speak about— we're certainly going to touch about our teams and culture and recruiting and hiring and developing. We're certainly going to talk about life insurance. I can't speak to either one of you without discussing life insurance. But I first want to talk about something, Steve, I know you're really passionate about, and it's something that maybe people just don't really speak about enough, as much as they really should, and that's the ethics of business. You spend a lot of time talking about the importance of ethics in business, especially in business today, and I'd love for you to speak about that.

Well, we're more challenged today than we've ever been in the way of integrity and ethics. And the longer you live, I think the more you realize that your reputation and your name is more important. I mean, I live in Atlanta, so there's 350, 400 State Farm agents here, and there's no telling how many Allstate and independent agents. And one of my sayings I've always said to my staff and my family, my kids, is be different on purpose, that we want to be different on purpose. And And where it all starts, it all starts with a good reputation, a good name. You know, it talks about in scripture, good name is better than great riches. So what I've learned in life that is most important foundation in business really is our integrity, that everything is built on integrity. And we all have three names. The first name is the one that your parents gave you. The second one is the ones that others call you. And then the third name is the one that you make for yourself. So our name is important. When people say Steve Cannon, make sure you want them to say he's a man of integrity because that's really what people are buying. And George Mahurle, the founder of our company, he says, honesty is not the best policy, but it's the only policy. And I think that really that's for every company. When I was at the Citadel, the honor code in a military College, the honor code's huge. Says a lot. Cadet will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor tolerate those who do. So I've seen cadets get kicked out of the Citadel for toleration, just by knowing somebody cheated and didn't turn them in. So it is important, and our integrity is on the line daily. And what I have really found after studying this so much, that integrity is rooted in our private life. It's reflected in our personal life, and it's reinforced in our professional life. So it all starts really with our private life. And so I want my words and my deeds to match up. I am who I am no matter where I am or who I'm with. So I want to be the same man on Sunday and the same man on Monday. I want to be the same man in the home place, and I want to be the same man in the church place, and the same man in the business place, the marketplace. So I want to be consistent, and I don't want people to be confused about who I am. So it's always telling the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, where I always ask 3 questions when I'm dealing with people, and I train my team to do this. The first question Is it right for the customer? What we're doing today, is it right for the customer? Question number 2, is it right for my company? If the answer is yes, it's right for the customer and it's right for my company, then the third question, then it's right for me. But if the first question, is it right for the customer, and the answer is no, then you stop. If it's yes, you go to question number 2, is it right for my company? If the answer is no, then you stop. So you always got to have a check in what you're doing. And you always ask those 3 questions. And you just don't compromise because compromise is costly. It's very costly. You reap what you sow. You reap more than you sow. You reap later than you sow. Don't ever reap in the same season that you sow. So it's going to come back to you. If you think you're doing something, you're getting away and taking shortcuts. It is going to come back. So it's better to do it right the first time and stay with it. And there's a lot of pressures in the marketplace that causes people to do this. There's a lot of pressures that, that forces them to act, that compromise their integrity, because I don't think anybody out here wants to do the wrong thing. It's just that the peer pressures, the day-to-day workplace pressures, the pressure from management, The, all the pressures force us in to compromise and give in. And the problem is with compromise, you start to compromise a little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit, then all of a sudden comes the big fall. So it's better just to say, no, I'm not doing it. That's my name and my reputation. Always strive on that. Live it out, flesh it out every day as long as you work in the marketplace.

Wow.

That was a very profound answer. Thank you for sharing such a deep answer. I think I got a lot out of it. And when I was listening to it, I was thinking of a book that I'm reading right now, and it's called The Power of Self-Confidence by Brian Tracy.

Yeah.

I was realizing that oftentimes in the profession of selling, people can be very stressed at times because of different pressures that you have, like from management or from your family or from yourself. And this book compares confidence to peace of mind. and it says that you cannot have confidence, you cannot have peace of mind if you're not living within your values. If you say that you are an honest person, that you're a person who does not cheat, who does not lie, etc., and yet you're not actually living out those values, then you can't fool yourself and you are going to be stressed out. You're not going to have any peace of mind. So I just found it rather interesting that basically your words match exactly what I was reading in this book. And it just reinforces the message that this book has and also the level of professionalism that you carry out in all of your activities and your personal life as well. So thank you for sharing that. One question that I do have, because I feel like no conversation can be done without asking you about the actual professional aspect of sales training. So I did want to know what the difference was in your mind between professional sales training and product training. And this could go for either Scott Or Steve?

Well, fortunately, way back when I started in the insurance business, they emphasized professional sales training. In fact, we went through a school called PSS, Professional Selling Skills, and it was selling any product. It wasn't necessarily insurance. It was the ingredients or the systems, if you will. One of the authors that I remember at that time that was very strong on professional sales skills was Tom Hopkins. And he wrote a book about professional sales skills. And in it, it had all the things about showing the need, handling objections, all of those things. And I think as time has gone by, not just any one insurance company, but I think a lot of the insurance companies, or the majority of the insurance companies, have put less emphasis on professional sales skills and more emphasis, or too much emphasis, on just product knowledge. I think that they probably are seeing the need now. Years and years ago, every company had their selling school. I went through many weeks of sales school, both at MetLife and as well as when I came on with State Farm. And I'm very fortunate to have had that background because I feel like it gives you the basis, and I think it also gives an individual basis to know if that's really what they want to do in life. Is that really how they want to have a career in sales?

I think sales training is critical. It is far superior, far outweighs product knowledge. You can learn, you know, you're learning an outline. I even encourage my team to even when you're in front of somebody, just have the brochure with you. Nothing wrong with using a brochure, but the most important thing is learning personality types. Early in my career, I went through Counselor Selling, Wilson Learning, in 1985 and learned the different personalities and learned how to read people's personalities to know how to approach them based on how they keep their office, the words they say, the questions they ask. We are hired by the questions we ask. Not the answers we give. So you gotta know how to ask the questions when you're in training or selling. And it's so many of us, we just want to be peddlers. We want to just get on the phone and try to peddle stuff. Face-to-face technology is great, but it will never replace the face contact, the relationship that you build face-to-face. And that's done one-on-one, one family at a time, and building relationships. And it all starts with selling, to know how to approach people, to know how to sell. And I've just put my asthma through Sandler sales training. Sandler, S-A-N-D-L-E-R, Sandler sales training here in Atlanta. And there's all kinds of— we also are going through a book right now called The Only Sales Guide That You Will Ever Need. We're in chapter 3 tomorrow, as a matter of fact, with My Three Aspirants. So we are going through the book in sales training, and it's going to become more and more important in the days ahead. I think more important than ever before. Instead of just calling and slamming a bunch of quotes to people, we got to learn how to do it right. Nothing will ever replace it. I think sales training is critical for the future, and I think it's been overlooked unfortunately by our company and many other companies in the industry have just kind of taken sales training and kicked it to the curb. And I think that's a big, big, big mistake. And I think we've got to focus more on selling. I mean, it's a profession. You can get a degree in sales today at many of the universities. We've judged the sales competitions at University of Georgia, Kennesaw State University. Sales training is becoming a bigger, bigger picture than ever, ever before.

I want to ask Steve this question, and then Scott, I'd love for you to follow up on this. Do you think that the default whenever people talk about training and coaching, that they default to just product development, product training, and product knowledge for their team because that's what they know and they feel comfortable with, and they just don't have a system and a process for actually teaching the profession of selling. What do you think the reason is that we always just default to just the product training, the specifics of a universal life or a whole life product or a health product or something like that, as opposed to the way things are phrased and said in a sales conversation. Why do you think that is?

Well, first of all, a lot of them have not had any training. And Scott said they went through— he went through PSS training early on, but I never got that with State Farm. A lot of my training came from the medical sales days, and I still use a lot of that. But I got a book here called Selling to Serving by Lou Cassara. And Lou was a coach that I used. The Top of the Table, Million Dollar Roundtable, that I used for 4 years. And he's all about serving and selling, and he's a big proponent of that. But, but most people have not had the training, so they're just going to duplicate what they've learned. And like I said, I feel like sales training has just gotten sort of ignored and just kind of put to the side. And I just think that there's not enough people talking about— you mentioned Brian Tracy a while ago. I Listen to just about everything and read everything, just about. Hadn't read the book that he shared, but Psychology of Selling with Brian Tracy is some of the best stuff out there. But there's so many good books. What's the best book? Well, the best book is the one that you read. It's the best book that you go through. It's the one that you apply.

I think they have tried to make it a numbers game, the property casualty, especially a commodity. You look at all of the advertising out there, all the advertising is over price, price, price. Not over is it proper coverage, is it doing the right thing for the family, is it going to be there to take care of the needs that they think it needs to be taken care of when they have a claim. It has gone so much towards the numbers of if you talk to enough people, you're going to get a certain percentage of them to say yes, rather than making sure that they're covered the way they need to be covered and spending the time, like Steve said, building the relationship and making sure that you're doing the right thing for the customer. I think that's evolved over time and I think the entire industry has evolved to that. I'm reading a book right now, a friend of mine that's a retired dentist, 10 Tips to the Top is the title of his book by Wayne Kerr, and he talks about a similar thing has happened in dentistry rather than training that hygienist all of the, as he calls, chair assist things that they need to do to be the best chair assist. And in his— my age, so 40 years ago, they spent a lot of time training that assistant. Today, it's almost a numbers game. How many can they get through there in a certain number of hours in a day? And unfortunately, that's taken away a lot of the professionalism of that industry as well as the insurance industry.

When I hear you speak, I often get reminded of my previous sales days. And when I was in sales, I used to consume a lot of information, especially from Grant Cardone, Jordan Belfort, and many others. What they recommended is exactly what you're recommending, which is train, train, train, train, train. But One thing that they pointed out that I never thought about, because people always tell you different advice, like train, it's a numbers game, et cetera. But when they say train, they don't mean simply speak to more customers and you are going to get better over time, but they mean role play with your team, role play with your manager, because when you're in front of a customer, that's basically game day. It's already too late to be practicing sales tactics with them. And maybe you can comment on this, but how do you actually become, as either a team member or as an agent, better at sales without using your customers as basically practice, you know, like people that you're practicing the different tactics with?

Well, I think it's like anything else that you're going to get good at. Nick Saban would not put his football team out there on the football field without having a lot of practice. And they practice every aspect of the game. All of that is done prior to getting in the game. And I think it's the same way in business, or it sure certainly should be the same way in business. Again, this Dennis talks about the game plan of even his hygienist assistant. They get in the room and they role play her handing him the proper tools and their interaction both between the doctor and the hygienist as well as their interaction with the patient. I think it's the same way in sales with insurance. Is that don't put that salesperson the first time without having sales training and repetitive training. Steve's talking about role-playing tomorrow. We did that. To me, that's just as important as product knowledge. And we not only role-played sales, we role-played service. I guess a number of years I assumed that they knew what good quality service should be like, and I guess I felt like it would just come about because they knew how important it was to me. But I think you need to spend time training and role-playing service as well.

Really, 80% of it is sales training, and product knowledge is so very little in the equation. And it's critical that you practice, practice, practice, practice. You just gotta do it over and over again. I got young aspirants in here and I've had 6, 5 now to become agents that are all doing well. And I drove it in them the whole time they were here about the sales part. It's got to be talked about with the leader. We set the tone for everything. So if I just take a group of young hirees and put them in a room and say, start dialing, unfortunately, that's where a lot of them are being trained, and they're not really being trained. They're just kind of thrown in there and say, start dialing and start calling and get as many as you can, as fast as you can, as you can, can, can. And it's not the model long term, and it's not going to be satisfactory in your later years. I promise you that you want to build a great foundation when you're building an agency. You want to build it slow, one family at a time, and build it with quality and have a low lapse when you get to be our age, that it's a lot more fun. If I had a 30% lapse right now versus my auto lapse at 11%, then it'd make it a lot more difficult. So it's all about sales. It's all about relationships. It's people skills. We in the people business. We're not in the insurance business. That's what people have to realize. We're in the people business first. Insurance is second. And a lot of people are in the insurance business, but it's about people. It's about relationships. It's about It's about trust. It's about being together long-term.

So I want to get real granular here and ask a question. We have agents that have been their first year, second year, all the way doing this for 25, 30 years. Steve, and then Scott, how many hours per week do you recommend that the business owner needs to sit with their team members and train both on sales? And then Scott, I thought you made a great point about role-playing service as well. How many hours per week should someone be spending at a minimum just to get started developing, training, and coaching their team on sales and also on service?

Obviously it takes a lot of effort from the leader, the agent. So I come in early, I meet, we have 2 meetings a week. So we usually together about at least 3 hours. So for 2 meetings a week, and usually goes really, most of the time it goes from 8 to 9:30 and sometimes even beyond that. Depends on how deep we're getting. Wednesdays are just sales only. Monday and Wednesday is for everyone. So we're constantly doing that. Now I tell aspirants when they come here, they're going to sit in on at least 50 appointments with me. So they're going to sit in on appointments with me and then I'm going to sit in on appointments with them. So we're constantly, constantly talking about it because it's what we do every day. Every phone call, everything is sales. ABC, always be closing. Everything's about closing. Always be closing. Everything sells. Every phone call is a sales call. We're selling all the time, and it's just part of what we do. The average person buys 8 to 10 policies from somebody, so we want as many of those 8 to 10 as we can get. And many of them, we only have 3, 5, 6, or 7, or 2. So, so many agents overlook their current customers. They just keep trying to bring on new blood all the time, and they don't go deeper with the people they already have, especially when it comes to life insurance.

I recommend the same thing, and it is difficult to carve that time out. It is important, and if something's that important, you've just got to carve the time out. And we did ours— I felt like the best time of day was in the morning. If we tried to do it in the afternoon Undoubtedly somebody was going to get tied up with a customer and miss a meeting. So we did it first thing in the morning, usually an hour. And very similar to Steve's, we had 1 hour sales training, 1 hour of service training, and an agency meeting that was to see where we were, how we were doing, what we needed to improve, and such as that. So ours was 3 days a week. I think it's as important to your team as the agent deems it important. If the agent doesn't do it and skips it, then the team members interpret that to be, well, it's not that important, but it is important. And it's a necessity if you're really going to train someone to be a professional.

So we started out talking about first the importance of having a strong foundation with the ethics of business. And then we pivoted and started talking about the importance of setting time aside in developing our team members, both in the sales and service and the profession of sales training. But we can't do that if we don't have a solid team. And so, Scott, I want to ask you just about the lessons you've learned over the years in hiring and recruiting the team that you've been able to have. So what are some of the basics that you used in your agency? And then, Steve, I want to talk to you because I know you've had a lot of success with aspirants in your agency.

We had about a 5 or 6 step process. We would review the resumes. We would have a telephone interview, primarily to see what their phone voice was about, if they came across good on the phone, if they were alert and what their background was. Then we would have them come in and we generally would have about a 30-minute interview Then we would also, as the agency grew, we would let them spend about 30 minutes with a couple of my team members, basically looking for culture there to see if they fit our culture and if they felt like our culture fit for them. Always, always, always, we would check references. I learned the hard way if you skip that step, you skip a big step. I remember one time that the applicant, brought in a tight written signed recommendation from the former employer, just stellar recommendation. And I almost didn't check that reference. I thought, well, there's no need to check that reference if we've got such a great recommendation. And the reason for leaving was that prior employer had to cut back and they would rehire. All the things were in there. But when I checked the reference, the person had been fired because of integrity and had stolen the letterhead and typed it themselves. So had I not checked that reference, I would have had a bad hire. So I think there again, I had to learn over the years that you spend a lot of time on the front end. Once it said slow to hire and quick to fire. Well, you don't have to be quick to fire if you spend enough time on the the front end hiring. And, um, after the first 2 or 3 years in agency, when I realized that, I hired people that stayed with me 20, 25, 30 years. So I had very little turnover, but it was because of the many steps that I made myself go through because it's easy to skip a step. It's easy to say that's time-consuming. And some of the things it's easy to say, I'm gonna delegate to other people when in reality you're the best person because they're part of your team. Your team represents you all day long, what you stand for. Like Steve said, your integrity is represented through their integrity, and your service level is represented through their service level because they're the frontline people day in and day out. So it took me probably 3 or 4, 5 years to realize how important that was, but it's ultimately very important to the long run?

It's important. First of all, you never stop looking. You're always looking. As an owner agent of 30 years, my 31st year with State Farm is that you never stop looking because it will always be your number one challenge, hiring people and keeping people. I've retired 4 ladies in here and was with me for 25, 23, 19, and 17 years. So It's just hard to find good people. It's a challenge. Everybody I talk to in our industry have the same challenge. So what do you do? First thing I do when I get a resume, I look at it and I can almost predict by looking at how long they were on their job if they're going to work or not. They've jumped jobs and they've had a lot of jobs. It's just not a good indication. It's not a good indicator. There have been times in my past where I've overlooked that and it bit me later on. So That's important when you're looking at a resume and you never stop looking. So we always bring them in. We test them through Wonderlic, through CTS, COBE. We don't test everybody on COBE. We wait, but we do test everybody on Wonderlic and CTS. If they come in for an interview, my top 2 people interview them first. If they like them, if they pass muster, then I will talk to them and then we'll make sure they understand everything about our agency, about what we do, how we do, and so forth. So we always check references and all those things that Scott mentioned is critical. I'm amazed how many agents never call and check references. They never check the background where they do background checks. State Farm does that, but checking their previous bosses that they work for. And so it is a difficult challenge. It never stops. And you always got to be looking. You should always be a little bit overstaffed because if you lose people, then you're okay. It's always better to have one or two more than you really need because that's what makes the world go round. You gotta have the right people. You gotta have the right team around you. They either make you look good or they make you look bad. And they are an extension of us. They are an extension of what we do and say and our priorities and our goals in life and agency. It is critical that you have the people that represent you well. Yeah.

Steve, you mentioned a couple tools that you use. Scott, I would like to ask you, he mentioned that he uses Wunderlic. CTS, I know people are really familiar with that. We're big fans at Club Capital and Club Capital Coaching of Kolbe. Emily on our team is Kolbe certified. So we've certainly seen the value in that tool. Scott, what were some of the tools that you used in your recruiting process?

You just named them all. We did Wonderlic on the very front end just to see if they would pass muster on how quick they thought on their feet and such as that. The CTS. We found that that was very effective to get to the next step, and we always did COBE as a last step. COBE was more of a knockout than— we did not COBE everybody. We only COBE'd a very few when they got to the final stage.

One thing that you both mentioned is just the tenure that you've both had and how little turnover. I know, Steve, you mentioned this, You're around so many people, maybe you've had some aspirants that have gone on, had their agency, and you've seen the trouble that they've had with turnover. And turnover is so costly in small business, let alone an insurance agency. Let me ask you specifically, what do you think is a couple things as the reason why people are having so much turnover?

Well, if they're an aspirant, I don't know if you're asking about an aspirant or just a regular employee. But aspirants, there's just such a higher expectation. And when they come in here, they don't have the work ethic. They're not willing to put the hours in. They're not willing to make the calls. They're not willing because they— I tell them right out of the gate, you're going to be measured by sales. This is a sales job. And a lot of times they are not willing to put in the hours. I always say, it's okay if you work a couple of nights a week and a half of Saturdays once or twice a month. This is not a 9-to-5 job. So you got to do what you have to do starting out to to be successful early on. This is what I expect at 6 months. And after you've been here a year, what their expectations are. And so a lot of times they find out, I tell you, I shared earlier this morning, we had another call at 8 about, I had an aspirant said after 4 months, I just want to be in the life insurance business only. Well, I don't think he has a clue what he's doing, but have at it. I don't try to talk people into staying, leaving. If once they say they're leaving, I don't sit there and try to convince them to try to stay. I let them leave. They don't want to be here. I said, my job is to springboard you. I'm either going to springboard you into State Farm, I'm going to springboard you into something else. So it is critical that as far as regular customer service reps and people like that, I think the challenge there, of course, you got to have the right chemistry. You got to have the right culture for the right people. And if you bring in the wrong people, and I've done that, so you bring in the wrong people at the wrong time. And you let somebody, one of your top persons interview them, and your gut is saying, don't hire them, don't hire them. And then they're saying, hire them. And you end up hiring them and it goes against the grain and then bites you later. So you got to have the right chemistry. And the other thing, I think there's nowhere else to go. There's no promotion here. You're not going to move on. Now they get salaries and I have benefits with 401(k) and group life and group disability and all that, but there are benefits, but there's nowhere to go. And I think that that's the challenge of being an independent agency. You're not going to be promoted next year or 2 years unless you want to be an agent. And if somebody comes to me and says, I want to be an agent, I had one to do that after 2 years. And I said, well, I'm going to help you if that's what your heart's leading you to do. I'm not going to hold you back. So I'm going to do everything I can. And she starts June 1st and came here from Texas. And at first she just said, I don't want to be an agent. Now she's going to be an agent. She's going to be a good one too. So I'm excited for her.

Scott, what have you seen and Working with so many different insurance agents around the country, you've seen that they've struggled with turnover in their agencies. What do you think the primary culprit of that is?

Hiring too quick. Like Steve said, you should always be at least one, overstaffed. Two, I know it's expensive, but it may be more expensive to be understaffed. If you're understaffed and you lose someone, you're in dire need. And that's what happens so many times. I think agents get behind the 8-ball and dire need. And I've just got to have a warm body. I've got to have somebody to help answer this phone. I've got to have somebody to handle the customers. And I think it's just hiring too fast and we're all guilty of it.

So it's time to speak to two heavy hitters about life insurance. Can you please just elaborate on just every aspect of it from the business side to selling it, et cetera? Scott and Steve.

Well, I think a multi-line agent, a lot of times I see they don't understand it. They haven't been trained. They don't know the product many times. And that's one of the reasons that we are doing the Life Matters conferences that we're doing is so many of them out there don't understand the products and don't understand the why of the products. I was very fortunate early years of my career. I qualified for the Million Dollar Roundtable and was very fortunate to attend a roundtable meeting. A guy named Ben Feldman, who at that time had led the New York Life for several years, had been number one in New York Life for probably 5 or 6 or 7 years. And I never will forget, I had a by chance opportunity to sit at the table with him one morning at breakfast. And I was 21, 22 years old. He looked across the table at me, and I was in awe that I'd read all these books, and I was just in awe to be sitting at the table with Mr. Feldman. And he looked across, and he knew I was in the insurance business, so he knew he wasn't going to sell anything. But he said, Scott, tell me, how much life insurance do you own on your life? And at that time, I was married, no children, 22 years old, and I had $100,000. And I thought, That's all I'll ever need. I thought that was a big number. And I told him, I said, I have $100,000. And he said, would you work for me for the rest of your life, not per year, but for the rest of your life for $100,000? I said, well, no, sir. And he said, well, if you died today, that's what you're asking your wife to do, is to live the rest of her life on $100,000. Well, what it showed me is it was a wake-up call that he really believed in what he was doing. First of all, I had the opportunity back in January to be around his son, and I told his son that story, and he said, I've heard that from so many agents. He believed in what he was doing. He believed in the product. He believed in what the product would do for the customer. And I think so many times that importance is skipped over again for the numbers game. You wouldn't believe how many, not only agents, but management people that don't understand the product and don't believe in the product. And I think that's the first step of any kind of sales. I wouldn't go buy a Toyota from somebody that was driving a Chevrolet. I think they need to believe in their product and know all about their product and what it would do for the customer. So I think that's probably an integral part of it being a career as opposed to being a job?

Yeah, so what I have found is that most agents, they don't sell life insurance for two reasons. One, they either don't know how to sell it, or they just don't have any kind of consistent system in place. So what do they do? They just try to add it to a monthly bill, to the auto policy, or something like that, and they don't know how to sell permanent life insurance. And they let the Susan Ormans of the world and the Clarks of the world and all these financial wizards that feel like they know more about life insurance than us people who's been doing it for 20 and 30 years— they let people water down and discourage them from trying to sell permanent life insurance and learning effectively how to sell it. The number one reason people don't buy permanent life insurance is because they don't understand it. If they understand it, then they would buy it. Now, why does the top executives in any major corporation— why is it that they have these executive bonuses that they do for the top-level guys, and they take life insurance and stuff a lot of money into them, and they allow them later to pull the money out tax-free? And it's a benefit, it's a golden handcuff that they do for these top-level management folks and corporations all around America, then why do banks go into FDIC.com and look at banks and look at 10, 15 to 30% of their reserves is invested in permanent life insurance? Now, why is that? If it wasn't a bad thing, then why do they do this? Well, it measures the financial strengths of banks based on their Tier 1 capital which is this money that's invested in these life insurance policies on officers of the company that makes it so. We have to understand and study this stuff and understand how good it is. And so if you learn how to do it and you do it with professionalism, representing, in my opinion, one of the best brands in the industry, it's fun. It's a lot of fun doing what we're doing. It's not just taking life insurance and adding it to a monthly bill. That is not the way you sell it. And that's why Scott and I both had low, low lapses. I mean, I got a 1-2% lapse. We're not interested in writing somebody if they're not going to keep it. This is a lifetime decision you're making today to buy this plan, and we go modify the plan over time. We're not selling policies. You can buy policies online, you can buy from other places, but we're going to give you a plan. And what is required in a plan? Their plan is we got to revisit that plan every 12 to 18 months to modify the plan as you grow in your life.

I really was excited to get to talk about this topic with both of you. So Scott, I'd love for you to take something and just for everybody that's listening to get something that they can go and implement today with their, in their agencies, with their team members. And so would you talk about either the difference in how you position the difference between term and permanent insurance, or how to just basically determine someone's life insurance need. And then whichever one, Scott, you take, I'd love for Steve, for you to come in and just give some real practical, tangible advice people can take away from this.

Well, I think one of the things that again has evolved is, like Steve said, a lot of agents are just selling term insurance, term insurance. And a lot of them don't understand, you know, the big benefits of permanent insurance doesn't really show up until years later, and the big drawback of term doesn't show up until years later. One of my closest and dearest friends just turned 71. 20 years ago, his brother was in the life insurance business, and 20 years ago, he bought a fairly large term product. The brother left the business. The friend got his 21st-year renewal from this company, and nobody had ever brought to his attention what was going to happen the 21st year. And at 71 years old is not a time to go out there and start buying life insurance, but he still needs it. He still has some debts at 71 and wants to be able to pay those debts off for the benefit of his wife when he dies, not if he dies, but when he dies, because we're all going to die. Well, Well, I think if you put term and permanent side by side and look out beyond that 20 years and beyond, or at least to life expectancy, then you see the difference. Then you see, okay, they're really going to put more into that term to life expectancy to get nothing back. But more likely, is it going to be like this friend of mine? His premium was going from $100 a month $300 a quarter to $1,200 a month, and he couldn't afford it. So that's not a good time to be looking for life insurance. Fortunately, hopefully he's insurable, but only a small percentage of 71-year-olds are going to be insurable as compared to a 51-year-old. So I think if you were to ask me one of the things I look back and I look at the permanent life insurance that I bought, largely because of somebody like Ben Feldman that showed me that at a young age. Because I remember coming back after that meeting and I told my wife Linda, I said, we're gonna buy some more life insurance. Well, we couldn't afford permanent, but I did afford permanent because I knew the benefit of permanent over term. And I look back 20, 30 years later and think, gosh, I wish I'd bought more. I wish I'd sacrificed a little bit more to buy more at 21, 22 years old rather than— and I bought some permanent at 58 years old, realizing that it still was better in the long run to have permanent than to what I call whistle your money away with term insurance. So I beat that drum and I beat it loudly and I beat it often. Many times it still falls on deaf ears because term's cheap on the front end, but as my friend Mike would tell you, term is expensive on the other end. And consequently, he may drop insurance altogether because he can't afford it at this point. Then what has he done? He's, as I said, whistled away 20 years of premium. It'd be like selling a homeowner's policy that only covered January through September. You're on your own after September. And that's pretty much what term insurance does. He's on his own now, and he's still not past life expectancy, but he's on his own and just has thrown that money away.

That's good. I like that analogy. Steve, I'd love for you to talk about something that somebody could take away today regarding life insurance.

Well, the thing I would say is that when you're meeting with people, and the homeowner policy has always been our best way to pivot for off the homeowners two ways. One, when we write a new one, 30 days later we call them and we meet with them. So every homeowner that we write new— homeowners, not renters, homeowners— you can do renters the same way, doesn't matter. But the homeowners, 30 days later you call them, you get them in here, and that's one way we get them in here. I do 15 to 17 appointments a week myself. I have done it for my whole career. And then the second way is we've using this new homeowner policy the new homeowner policy with the new coverages. That's first time that policy has been changed in about 20 years. That's the best marketing homeowner policy that we've had. So you want to use the homeowner policy, and I have a word track for that, that you're getting in front of those people again. And that is another way that you're selling the life insurance. So you're doing it off the homeowners. It's the most effective way to do it. I've done it my whole career that way. And so you get with them first thing, you meet with them And after you've done all the P&C stuff, you spend 20 minutes on the P&C, you do all that, and then you go right into the life. And as you lead into the life, you always want to say, tell me what you have. You're probably going to know that on the front end before you meet with them. And then you're going to go into a, you know, always say, well, I'm not sure how much I want. I'm not sure how much. And then I always say, would you like me to help you kind of go through an exercise and share with you how how much life insurance you really need. Would you be open to that? And I always have the wife there and I say, what do you think? Are you good with this? I always get a yes. I'm trial closing on everything because I'm asking for their permission for everything. That's called trial closing. You're trial closing because I want a yes and a yes and a yes and a yes. And then at the end, I want a yes. So what I'm saying to them as I've taken them through the exercise, okay, we're going to go through this. And I go through their mortgage and I go through their final expenses and their loss of income and education. Those 4 things is what I cover. and then we come out with a need. They have money in the bank, you have group insurance, you have this life insurance, and I come up with a need, and then I get them to agree on a need. If I say, this looks like the husband needs a million and the wife, I wouldn't do a dime less than 750 on you. What do you think? Always look at the wife, say, what do you think? How do you feel about this? Is this too high? Is this too low. What do you think? Well, that's too high. Then I say, which one of these do you want to eliminate? So it doesn't matter to me if I sell a million a day or I walk away with $500,000, because it doesn't matter. You got to remember, the best plan is a plan. The worst plan is no plan. And if they walk away with no plan and you gave them a plan, it don't have to be. So we agree on the amount. So once we agree on an amount, then we agree on a budget. And that's when you go into the permanent term, like what Scott shared. I'm not going to repeat any of that, but you get into that because he did a great job with that. And you got to get to a budget and get to agree, because I don't want you to buy something you can't afford. Because if you buy it, you can't afford, you're going to call me in 90 days and drop it. And so you always do that, go through the needs analysis of some kind. I do it on a flip sheet of paper, notebook paper, just make it real simple. And I always get buy-in from the wife and the husband together. How do you feel? What do you think? We start here, 18 months, we're going to meet again and we can convert some of this to this. And I talk about long-term care, always implement that. It doesn't matter what old you are. It rains on the just and the unjust. Got a 29-year-old guy over here in the nursing home. So it doesn't matter. Talk about it. You mention it, educate them. It's an educational thing. So People don't know what they don't know, so you share that. So that's how I go right into it, and I do it with everybody. And thankfully, we make Exotic every year. I think we missed it once or twice during my career, and it's fun. You gotta like it. It's got to be passionate about it. So then we get into, do you have a will? You always ask them, do you have a current will with powers of attorney and healthcare? This is important, puts them in the frame of mind about mortality. That's why you want to talk about it. Who's going to be the guardian of your children? Something happened to both of you. You're talking about getting a wife squirming in her seat. You ask her that and they don't have a will. Who's going to be the guardian of your 3 children? And that gets them in the frame of mind about buying it. And then you have an attorney there too that you can send them to. That's going to go write them a will. This is all important when you're doing the big picture stuff.

And you guys are dropping some pearls of wisdom, obviously just years of wisdom and experience coming out. We're going to transition into E9 in just a second, but I really did want to ask this. Can you just give me like a 30-second, 1-minute tip? Steve, why don't you start and then Scott follow up, just on business life strategies. So for business owners and how to position life insurance for those business owners, because that's obviously where a lot of premium can come from for insurance agents. So just a couple things you want to comment on about that.

Well, a lot of business owners, they just ignore disability because one of 3 decisions they're going to make or what's going to happen in their life. Either they're going to leave the business by choice, sell it, exit the business, pass it to a family member. They could die while they're in business or they could become disabled. So you want to— we are so fortunate, State Farm agents, to have so many small business owners. So the first thing I would do is identify your top 25 business owners over the age of 50 that really want— A lot of them are confused. They don't know what to do or how to do. That's why you got to have that attorney in your hip pocket that's going to help you, that knows a lot about business planning with estate planning and with, uh, buy-sell agreements with partners in business and all that. You're going to talk about so many things to talk about with this, but it's business continuation planning, estate planning, uh, executive benefits. You have key employees. Do you have a buy-sell agreement? How many partners are involved? It's a questionnaire. I got a questionnaire. And that's what we do at Foster Cannon. I mean, you come to Foster Cannon seminar that Scott and I do, that I can load your wagon with all kinds of ideas about this. This is so much to get with this. But I think the first is start making a list of all your business owners and ask them about planning. What have you done? If you die too soon, live too long, want to exit the business, or you become disabled, have you done any planning at all with those three areas? That'll tell you a lot. Identify them, go after them.

Scott, anything you want to add there on business life insurance?

Well, I think the average agent, because they don't understand it, they think it's complicated. And yet they've got this great relationship because they've done the property and casualty. They've built a relationship, they've built rapport. And so many times the business owners are so busy running the business that they haven't stop to take the time to think about what would happen if one of them died or one of them became disabled. And I think as a State Farm agent has this great opportunity to, as Steve said, just ask some simple questions. And the solutions are simple. They're not complicated at all. I find so many business owners, if there's 2 or 3 partners, maybe it's a small corporation, maybe it's a small business entity, maybe verbally have talked about what would happen, but they've never really thought through what they needed to do to take care of that happening. Like if there are two partners, the other partner would buy the deceased or disabled partner out. Well, how they gonna fund it? And many times they're very open to having that conversation. And most of the time they think it's much more expensive to resolve than it is, not necessarily always using permanent insurance. You could use term at first just to make sure that if one of them died, that the funds are there to buy that partner's family out and not be in business with the family. Or if the spouse remarries, being in business with the new husband. So again, it's just asking a few questions and again letting them know that you want to be there to help them and that you have some solutions. And more times than not, the solutions are very affordable. Just pinning them down and taking time to talk to them about it.

You're right there, it can be intimidating about the business part of life insurance. And so I love the fact that you all get into that. So obviously at the end of the podcast, we're going to talk about the Foster Cannon Group and how you guys can help them with that and how you get into some of those specifics. But now let's turn our attention to the E9. Let's do some rapid-fire questions. You guys ready for this?

Yeah, we think.

Scott, what's the last book that you read?

Well, I just reread a book that I read a long time ago, Shackleton's Way, about Ernest Shackleton. And it's more— Shackleton went to Antarctica in the late 1800s, early 1900s. There was a book that one of his people that went with him on the ship Endurance, and the title of that book is Endurance. Endurance. This is more about leadership, and it's just amazing. They picked it out about in '89, early '90s. They started looking at his leadership abilities. It wasn't a successful tour of Antarctica. The success was that he brought all these men back alive, which is just amazing after being trapped down there for 2 years in Antarctica. But it's an easy and it was a neat read to go back and reread again some of the things that I missed the first time on leadership. I wish that I had read it when I was 21 years old, 'cause I would've done a lot of things differently.

The one I'm reading now is "The Only Sales Guide That You'll Ever Need." So we're doing that right now with my team. And I order a lot of books, I give out books like I hand out business cards. So the other book that I read on leadership, "Leadership as an Identity," So I've done a lot of leadership stuff and my son is an officer in the Coast Guard and he's always sharing things with me as well. But I think the Sales Guide, I'm excited about that because it starts out with talking about that self-discipline is the number one thing in sales. It's the number one thing that we have to be self-disciplined. It all starts with that. It's me management, understanding how to manage yourself. You got to be able to manage yourself before you can lead somebody. And I learned that a long time ago with John Maxwell. I've read a lot of his books, Leaders Around You, Leaders Within You, and being an optimist and being positive, positive, positive, positive mental attitude. It's amazing how things, when people get to be pessimistic and negative in selling, and how that can take over and put you down in what I call stinking thinking, negative thinking. So it's all about self-discipline. And it all starts with that. It's just like exercising. You can say, I want to exercise, but if you don't have the discipline to do it, you have to do it over and over again. You got to make so many calls, you got to make so many appointments, you got to make so many quotes. It's a numbers game and you got to be focused. You got to do it and you got to practice what you preach. You got to understand the concept. But anyway, so I'm doing this with young 22-year-olds in the office right right now, and this is just good stuff.

What book would you two recommend the most to others?

I'll tell you one that I've recommended over and over that was very beneficial to me by Henry Cloud, Necessary Endings. You know, sometimes it's time to change gears, or maybe as he calls it, pruning. If you've got someone in your agency that's not a positive person that's sort of a negative nanny. And yet maybe they're a great producer, maybe they have a lot of positive qualities, but they're taking everybody else down. And it's very difficult to make that decision of pruning.

Well, Henry Cloud also wrote one called Boundaries. I like that one. I'd say Boundaries because you got to have boundaries with everybody. You got to have boundaries for leaders. He wrote another one called Boundaries for Leaders and Boundaries. So Boundaries is a book that everybody needs to read because so many times in life, a lot of times we don't learn how to say no to people. Sometimes you got to say no and you got to have boundaries. When you're a business owner, everybody wants to bite at you and everybody wants to see you. You got to have boundaries with really your team members. You got to have boundaries with your kids and you learn this kids as they become adult kids, because I have adult kids now. And you got to be able to say no, because when you say yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes to everything, that will hinder you and keep you from accomplishing all you need to accomplish in life, because you've got so many demands as a husband, as a father, as a business owner, as a deacon in the church, or whatever else you're doing in the community. And you got to learn to be able to have boundaries around with people.

Both of you have been truly inspiration for so many people around the country, especially within State Farm. But I'm curious, Scott, who is somebody that inspires and motivates you?

Well, I think the manager that hired me with State Farm was more like a father figure as well as a leader figure. So he was very inspirational and motivational to me in many ways and running my business and managing my life. My goals, my disciplines, and things like that.

I got lots of people, really. I tell people, you got to have 3 kinds of people in your life. You got to have Pauls. You got to have older men in your life that have been a great mentor and a challenger in your life that you respect. So I have lots of Pauls. You got to have Timothys in your life. You got to have younger men that you do the same with, that you mentor. And then you got to have Barnabas in your life. You got to have friends around your age that you talk to. You know, iron sharpens iron. As one brother, as one sister sharpens another. We all have to have people in our life that make us go and that you don't want to disappoint in life. The reason I am who I am today is because God's allowed me to have great men in my life.

So you both travel the country speaking and doing training. What's your favorite place been so far?

Well, they're all good because you meet different people there and It's the people makes the difference. It's not really the location, obviously. And the good thing about State Farm is that they have such great people. We've hired such great agents. And so we got lots of relationships around the country. So every part of the country is different, but at the end of the day, we're all selling the same thing. And I'm in a study group with a lot of agents around the country, and I got incredible men and women in that group that challenge me every time I go to the meeting, and they're mostly out west in Wyoming and Salt Lake City and California. And so it's good everywhere. It's just different. But it's the people who make it go. It's the agents that make it go and the relationships that you build along the way.

I'd have to echo that. As we've gone around, I think about— I've been to a great meeting in Maine one time, but it was the people. Spoke in Cooperstown, got to go to Cooperstown in Georgetown where the Baseball Hall of Fame. But again, it was just being around the people there. And then Steve and I spoke in Missouri last year at a great resort in Missouri. But all of them are good people and we enjoyed being around them, enjoyed getting to know them. So I'd say it goes back to the people as much as anything.

Is there anywhere in the world that you have not traveled to, Scott, that you would love to go to?

Well, I missed going to Australia when State Farm went to Australia several years ago because I had a torn retina about a week before and the doctor said couldn't fly. So State Farm's hopefully going to take us to Australia this year, but with the coronavirus, we may not get to go there. That was one of my bucket lists, but we've been on so many great trips and fantastic places because because of State Farm. Done a good bit of traveling on my own, but the majority of it has been because of State Farm and the great places they allow us to go. So, and all of them are great for their own reason. Again, to Switzerland, to Germany, been on some river cruises, the Danube, Rhine, such as that. All that's fun stuff. But this one still may not make it because of the coronavirus. That jury's still out. Whether we'll travel in September or not.

For me, the Holy Land, Israel. I've been a lot of places with State Farm and have not been there and had opportunity to go last year and we couldn't make it work with all our other trips that we had. So I want to go there soon, Lord willing, and I'd like to be able to take all 4 of my kids with me when we do it together. That's number 1 on the list.

What do you love to do in your free time?

Well, for me, my hobby is my wife and 4 kids. So we like to walk and hike and things like that. But I don't play golf. I'd like being with my kids. I'd rather be with them and my wife. I'm with my wife and 4 kids. It's a good day. And it doesn't matter what we're doing. You know, we've snowskied every year, just about. We missed the last couple, but We always do it together. And so for me, I love my wife. She's the wife of my youth. I have a great marriage of 30 years this year, this October coming, and I'd rather be with her. She looks better and better to me every day. So it's a great thing.

Well, I used to be a runner. Age took over from that. So I still enjoy walking, do a good bit of walking, hiking again, sort of like Steve. I enjoy spending time with the children, the grandchildren now. My grandchildren live, I was telling Steve this morning, about 2 football fields away from me. So we get to see them. In fact, my granddaughter just came in the door just as we were talking. So that's pretty much what I do with my spare time is enjoy being with them.

So what's one thing that people don't know about you, Scott?

I can't think of one. I had a 76 IQ when I took my IQ test in high school, so I guess I'm an overachiever. Junior year, I wasn't feeling good that day. And in fact, I was talking to some of my high school buddies recently and they said, "You got to take this test before you go home." I said, "I don't feel good. I got sick. I got to go home." "No, you got to go take this test." So I went and took the IQ test. I didn't know it was an IQ test. The test, you fill in the blanks. And so I went down and they said, "It doesn't count, doesn't count." I thought, "Well, if it doesn't count, I want to go home." I went down and just sort of decorated the Christmas tree with the dots on the page. Didn't know it was the IQ test until my senior year when I went to my guidance counselor to apply for scholarship. And I knew the guidance counselor. She pulled my transcript and started laughing. And I said, "What's so funny, Miss Gunner?" And she was laughing to the point of tears at this point. She said, "Your IQ." I said, "Well, what's so funny about my IQ?" And she said, "It's 76." Well, I didn't know if that was good or bad. I said, "Is that bad?" And she said, "It's imbecile." So it's still on my permanent record too. I found it on my permanent record not long ago. That I got through college and got it in college and out of college with a 76 IQ.

Oh, that's great.

For me, I think people think I'm just wired all the time in business and they don't realize that when I get home, I'm the same guy, but I just kind of, it's like I set down, I got an on-off switch on my back of my rear end. So when I hit the chair, I'm off. And when I've had some other things I get my farm agents to go on trips with me and they say, man, you like a different guy. I don't know you. I say, well, I just, when I'm not in the office, I don't make decisions. We all want to go eat. Y'all go eat wherever you want to go eat, where you want to go tour, just do whatever. And I just kind of follow the lead. And so everybody thinks that I'm intense all the time. And it's just, when I get in here, I'm on the game. And when I'm not in the office, I kind of just wind down and Enjoy life.

What's the legacy you hope to leave behind and what's next for you?

Well, for me, it's a pretty loaded question. I mean, we only remember how we finish, how we finish the race. I want to finish well. I want to finish well. I want to have my name intact, my integrity intact. I don't want to disappoint because the thing about integrity— I didn't say this earlier— you spend your lifetime building it. You can lose it in about 15 seconds. And once you lose it, you probably won't live long enough to regain what you have. So I want to finish well. I want to leave a legacy. I don't want to be known that Steve Cannon was a great sales guy. I want to be known that Steve Cannon cared about people. He loved people, and he really made a difference in our life and the way he gave and the way he ministered. To us. And so I want to spend my life, the rest of my life, making an impact and giving and blessing others. It's not about all these trophies in here, because all these trophies one day will be in the garbage can. And my real trophies are my kids and my friends and the people that are going to cry at my funeral. Those are the people that are most important, and those are the people I want to leave. And you want to leave a legacy with everybody you can when you meet them. And so I think we're only different because of the books we read, places we've been, and the people we met. And we want to make sure that we leave a legacy, a lasting legacy. As my pastor said, you want to be missed when you're gone. You want to be missed.

I don't think I could top that one or even match that one. I think that's well said, much better said than I could say it. So I want to play it forward. Like Steve said, not be remembered for being the number one agent this time or that time or whatever, but the whole person concept, more than just being a good State Farm agent or a good business person, but what I can do to pay it forward for others. So I think that would probably sum it up for me.

Guys, you have been an absolute pleasure, a treasure trove of just knowledge and years of experience. Thank you for taking the time to come on the Club Capital Leadership Podcast and sharing so much about life insurance. We talked about recruiting and training. Creating, developing our team members, the ethics of business. So thank you so much. If people want to know more about what you're doing with the Foster Cannon Group, what's the best way for them to be able to get in touch with you? What are you guys doing? What's upcoming for you with the Foster Cannon Group this year?

Well, fostercannon.com, you go under that. Right now we did one or two at the beginning of the year, and usually it's a full day where we get together and just We go at it hard for a full day on life insurance and all aspects of life insurance and hiring. And Scott does a great job with hiring. He had 22 or 23 staff members when he retired. So I don't think no one but has done it better than he has. Scott's the most disciplined guy I know, and I've learned a ton from him over the years and more than he can ever count. More than any of us can ever count. So he does a great job with doing that and gets into life insurance. I get into the business life insurance and we go at it all day long and we can go anywhere, anytime we run. We don't want to have more than 50, 60 agents in there at a time so we can get down and get dirty. We need to, and about something. And sometimes we just go into a different area. We go into a different focus. If somebody wants us to go this way and talk about this, we're open because we want to make a difference. We want to invest, we want to help others. We don't want to just come show up and you pay a fee and you walk in and walk out with nothing. We want you to be loaded. We want you to be better than you were when you got there. And quite honestly, we all share together, so everybody shares together, and it's a full day, and we continue to make it better. We do a questionnaire at the end, how can we make it better next time. We don't want to take anything for granted. We don't have all the answers, but we try to give you our best. We're just going to continue to modify it over time and Yeah, make it better and better.

One other thing we are in the process of doing also is because of the coronavirus, all the meetings have shut down for a while. We're working on some virtual training that can be done either on demand or they could subscribe to it and play it for their team members, work with their team members. So we're working on that to hopefully have it ready by July, August at the earliest, so that it can be presented in another way. And like I said, on demand at their timing, rather than— it wouldn't be just once a month at 8 AM on a third Tuesday of each month. It could be where they could play it for their team anytime. We feel like that's probably a way of a future, both because of the coronavirus as well as there's just not that Many people, people's time is important, and that way they can work it into their time rather than being on our time.

Yeah, I think that's fantastic. We'll make sure that we're going to put a link in the show notes and in the email that we send out to everybody. Gentlemen, it's been absolutely fantastic having you on the show. We hope to have you back on.

Thank you.

Thank you. Enjoyed being with you.

Thank you so much for your time. Bradley, what a great podcast that was, speaking to two heavy hitters in the world of insurance, what really stuck with me the most is seeing how they play for the long run with everything they do. Nowadays, we have many people who want to just jump into business and be successful right away, and sometimes to do that, they cut corners and maybe give people coverages that they're not supposed to receive. And what I really enjoy about speaking to Scott and Steve is simply seeing how, once again, everything they do is for the long run, especially when selling life insurance. When they're selling life insurance, they get the buying from both parties, if they're married, they make sure they have the right coverage and they also make sure that the coverage fits within their budget as well. So that's something that really, really stuck with me. And I would advise people to start applying that to their businesses as well. What's something that you took away from this?

Well, I could say a lot of things that I took away. Number one, so many books were referenced and we're going to link a lot of those books. So leaders are readers. I mean, you can tell how much they pour into themselves and their own development by how much they both read. Just by how many books they talked about. Number 2, I definitely totally agree with you just at the very beginning of the podcast whenever Steve was really talking about the importance of ethics and being different on purpose, being different on purpose. I love that. And I loved how he talked about the importance of his name and having a good name in business. I really love the tangible takeaways that Steve talked about whenever they're going to pivot off of homeowners with life insurance specifically. I loved how he discusses trial closing, so he's going to ask for people to get a yes so that he can get them to say yes later on. I also really feel like that the story Scott talked about whenever he met Ben Feldman, who's arguably the greatest life insurance salesman ever— and we're going to put a link in the show notes to his book, The Feldman Method— but the story that Scott told about meeting Ben at the Million Dollar Roundtable and how that impacted his life I've heard Scott tell that story before. I thought that was really impactful. We could probably have had them on for 4 or 5 hours. Obviously, that's why they have the Foster Cannon Group. Go to their website, check them out. If you go to— we'll put a link in this, but fostercannongroup.com, fostercannongroup.com. They can help you out. Obviously, years of experience. Check them out on their website. As Scott mentioned, they've got some virtual training that's going to be coming out, some on-demand. So whenever that comes out, we'll make sure that we let you all know about it. Hey, by the way, this episode, like all of our episodes, is sponsored by our friends DirectClicks. Matt, Maddie Jones, they're just great people. Go to directclicksinc.com. DirectClicksinc.com. Man, this was an awesome one. Chris, until next episode, lead well.

And stay classy.