Laziness is the Biggest Killer of Dreams | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 317

Hello, everyone. Welcome to Seven Figure Annuity Sales. I am Chad Owen. And what are we going to call you today, Caleb?

I was wondering what. What my nickname would be today.

I don't know. Boy Wonder hasn't come around in a long time, though. But I don't really wonder anymore. And just go, oh, boy, I wonder. That's what happens now when I think of you. Yeah.

It'S not Boy Wonder anymore.

That's funny.

But, yeah, it's. You know what I love about these is none of these are scripted. You know, we just sit there. We just kind of like, okay, what are we going to talk about today? And we do that intentionally, though, because our businessman. I was. I was. Who was I talking to? It was just recently I was talking to my wife and I said, you know, people don't realize how lonely this business can be when you work for yourself and you're an independent agent. It's like, yeah, yay, I got a good sale.

Who's there to pat you on the back? Like, no one.

Just like, I'm going, okay, that was good. Oh, man, I really worked that situation really good, that, you know, deal a few weeks ago. This lady has been trying to get her money out of this variable annuity. She's had it in 2002 is when this variable annuity started. And since 2012, she's been trying to get her money out of there. She's met with multiple agents. Multiple. And nobody's been able to help her. And I got out of there within literally three minutes. I had the form emailed her, filled out all the. It was a little bit more than three minutes, probably about 10 minutes, because we were finding out the M and E fee, the fund fee, the account value, the surrender value. Obviously, an annuity that old had no surrender value, but she goes, I can't believe you just did what I've been trying to do since 2012. And. And you did in that time frame, it's like, I know what I'm doing, you know, but it makes me think of all those people. And fortunately, she had a big dip in 2020, and she has almost come back to where that was. So we almost got her back to where her high point was, but then the 6% bonus and the particular product you use for her situation put her over that. So that was really good. But I just think about, you know, what we get to do, and it's exciting when you get to figure something out that nobody else can. Yeah.

Can I? You know, the more that I watch agents and I See who has success and I see who doesn't have success.

And I think more and more there's a huge piece that comes down to this one statement, the willingness to call. And it might be the willingness to call leads again and again and again, or it might be the willingness to call the transferring company. Like you, you insert the insurance company. Like I feel like sometimes agents, they try to do the business on an island and it's like there are, you can call the insurance companies that you work with, call the, the transferring company you're trying to move money from, call the leads that you've gotten and you called yesterday, but you haven't gotten in contact with them. Like, the more willing you are to make the call, the more success you'll have.

When I talk about this, that the amount of effort it takes to do that from a physical standpoint is really small. But mentally it can be a challenge. Like, feels like a lot of deal. There's ice calling a company and.

I don't want to mention the name, so I'm not going to. But it's kind of killing me because their customer service. I'm one of the top agents in the United States and I'm still on hold for an hour trying to get money transferred. We've been working on this since the beginning of December.

Yep.

Trying to get this money moved over. And so, you know, when you think about it, you got to be willing to do what others want to get what others don't have. So in other words, you know, if I'm not willing to do what others won't, I'm not going to be any different. I'm going to be in the pool of everybody else. And I'm not saying that from a demeaning standpoint, but man, as you know, I make my own calls, I do my own appointments, I do my own follow up, I do my own pending business, I do my own policy deliveries. And when I think about it, you know, you have to pay for leads or find a way to get leads, get in front of someone. So now you get from. And now they're there when you show up and now they listen to what you have to say and then they decide they're actually going to go ahead and move forward with you. And then to sit there and go, okay, I'm not doing any follow up or any pending business. What do you, I mean, you just completed all this and you're willing to throw it away because you won't do some follow up.

Yep.

Or you don't want to Do a policy delivery, because I'll drive that hour and a half again to go deliver that policy. Now, granted, I always try and bunch it when I'm in, You know, when I'm in that area, but I still could easily just do e deliveries all day long. But I want to physically hand deliver that and see. What questions do you have? Highlight areas in the. In the actual policy so they can see it. You know, I want to do that. And I think laziness is by far the biggest killer of dreams. Yep. You know, when you're not willing to do these things that clients need help with.

It'S. Yeah, it's challenging.

Oh, I. I 100 agree, Chad. I. I look at it from this perspective. The further you go with a client, the more you've already invested, the more you should be willing to do to get the thing across the finish line. It's like, I don't. I don't. I'm not a gambler. But if slash. When I play blackjack, if I get dealt 11, I'm doubling every single time in hopes that I turn that 10, because there's more tens in the deck than anything else. I may turn up. I may turn up a 2, and bummer. I'm showing 13 at that point, and I'm probably going to lose, but it's like, I've already gotten to the 11. I'm doubling down. It's like, if you get them to the point of transferring funds, double down and get the stuff done.

Across the line.

Security swarming, you going, how this middle schooler get into our casino? And how's he playing?

Why does he have a glass of whiskey? Oh, no, it's apple juice. It's apple juice.

That's funny.

But, no, it's true. I mean, I think, you know, there's an old analogy, and granted, it's. It's kind of a metaphor. But, you know, they shows this guy digging, and he gives up, and literally, he's only two inches from gold. You know, now, granted, there are people that keep digging and they never find gold. I mean, I'm not saying that's the case. That's where information is really important. But I would rather push a little farther than most to get things that most people don't, because they won't push that other step. They won't take that. They won't go that extra mile. You know, it always amazes me at the Olympics. Every single year, world records are broken every single year. And I'm sitting there going, God, that was crazy fast. When the first world record was broken 50 years ago.

Right.

Like I couldn't even come close to that 50 years ago. Yeah, but every year. And why is that? Because that athlete is pushing harder and harder and harder than anybody before. Now granted, technology has helped a lot with that. You know, you think about. You remember back when you were like 2 or 3 years old and Rocky came out and Drago was like doing all the high tech thing and you know. Oh yeah, remember that, right, you know, yeah, the movie. I know, yeah. It's way, way, way before your time. Actually, out of curiosity though, what was that? 1985, I think.

When Rocky came out?

No, when the. I think Rocky 4.

Well, I was, I'm a 90s kid. I was born in 96.

Oh, well, so. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You weren't even there when Rocky came out.

No, but I've seen them.

I've loved those movies.

He had the high technology and everything.

Oh, yeah.

And, but the funny thing is, was what won that fight? Was it all the technological advances they had in his training, what won the fight?

Rocky's heart and his willingness to not stop. Yeah, exactly. He just, he just wouldn't be shut down.

I find it interesting though, he made a statement in a following movie and he said, drago shook things in me that should never have been shooken. And I'm still broken beyond repair now in my life I have. Jesus, I can get the repair. You know, it can be made brand new. But I do think of some of the things that, you know, I pushed too far and I'm going, dang, that one cost me like that. That, you know, staying up and working an 18 hour day at times or my longest day ever, I think, you know, this was a 20, 23 hour day. And you know, it's because I had an appointment that was eight hours away and I drove up there eight and a half hours away. I drove up there, drove back, but I had the appointment in the middle of it and I remembered, literally I'm like. That broke me like that took a couple days to recover from that. Yeah, but you know, and that was.

Before Zoom, just for those of you that.

No, this was an existing client and I thought I was going to really help them, but the. Unfortunately the guy was an arrogant schmuck and he just thought he could do better with his own money. But. And it turned out to not be a deal. That's one that I had a 2.5 million dollar deal, but I, they had some extra money that I thought, okay, I might be Able to really make a life changing decision here.

Well, right, but that was like you're talking about years ago, years ago.

But I'm saying that that was a crazy day like that, that was one that I. And you're gonna have that in this, in this business. But yeah, I say we definitely want to keep pushing. You want to keep, you know, our industry, we know this. Only 8% of people make it the first two years. 92% of agents fail in the first two years. 50. And you know, this is where our training comes into play. You know, the Annuity Architects is one of those just a phenomenal training programs where it's not just me anymore, it's you, it's Jesse, it's Josh. You know, we have you, you're talking about, you know, cows and chickens and you're trying to help people. And I'm actually talking about business and being in front of people. And Josh is telling about how to be a drummer, little drummer boy. And then Jesse's like, go avalanche, you know.

No, but Jesse obviously is our virtual expert. Josh is our business expert. And your case design and helping agents. And I'm telling you, it, it now is you can get all this stuff. And it's like, I think about when I first started in the business, I didn't have that, man.

Yeah, nothing like that.

No. I mean, I had a good mentor, but still our styles were very different. Like, he was very grandfatherly, very, you know, he just had a different style. He had the 25 million page fact finder. And I'm just going like, I mean, front, back, five pages.

Oh, yeah, the, the Internet was in its infancy stages when you were getting started.

Well, there, there wasn't. If you, it would have been a lot funnier if you would have said the Internet didn't exist.

Yeah, that would have been a lot.

Funny that being said though, I do remember though, when I had a friend in church and, and he was trying to sell me domain names and he was trying to say, you know, this is kind of like a shopping mall, but it's on the computer. And I used to think this guy is a snake oil guy. Like this guy. This is not. I don't even know what the heck he's talking about now. I said, they're going, man, I wish I would have bought some domain names back then. You know, it's like you think about the amount of money you could have made off of some of those domain names. That would have been the trick back.

Then, would have been buying a bunch of acronyms. Because that's what, that's what's really affected, you know, know, abc.com, aaa.com like you know the acronyms. You could have. For sure, you could have crushed it for sure.

But you know, it is nice that we get to use technology in our industry. I mean, those who have followed me for a long time, I would say 99 of my apps now are all E apps, you know, and if you would have talked to me five years ago, I probably wouldn't even do anything less than that. Yeah, I wasn't doing it. I'd say probably even two or two and a half years ago, I still wasn't doing that many apps. But it's allowed us to streamline things and make business run a lot easier and pending follow up, not making mistakes. I mean, it's, it's just a lot better.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it's.

Well, it's. And it's. Yep. It, it's one of those things, Chad, that, I mean you've been in it for what, 20 something years?

Almost 21 years.

21 years. And you've been doing that at some of the highest level really for the last decade plus.

Yeah, probably last 12 years.

Yeah. And yet here we are and you're still refining and improving. And I think that guys, that's the key to continued growth. I mean, there was a crazy statistic I remember calculating, I don't remember how many years ago, but if you look at Chad's production year over year from the time he started to where he is now, he's beaten the S&P 500.

Like Chad's growth rate has exceeded the S P 500 quite a bit more.

And there will be no down year. There will be no crash period. There will not. But the point is, my S P 500 is a Caleb, Josh, Jesse 500. You know, that's, that's gonna continue even when I'm dead. It's going to continue paying out to my family. So I need to come up with my own. You have the nasdaq, so we have Caleb, Josh, Jesse. God, there's not even a good acronym you could do for that. So I need to figure it out. I'll create my own, my own trading platform.

Okay. But the point is he, he's been constantly improving and changing and growing and making tweaks when tweaks need to be made to continue the growth. And that's where you get the year over year improvement.

I'm doing tweaks, not twerks. Okay.

Let's, let's be nobody wants the tortoise from you.

Well, because to me, you never arrive. You know, you. You always got to be better. And when I'm training people and we're building platforms, you do the same thing. You're constantly out there learning new products, learning actuarial things. You know, how does an index work? I mean, you're doing the exact same thing. What software we can use to help our agents be able to do things quicker and better. I mean, Josh does the same thing. Jesse does the same thing. I mean, our team is stinking incredible. You know, I mean, you got Kristen, which is same thing. She takes care of a lot of our marketing and everything. And everybody is like, hey, I don't care what you were yesterday. It's what are you today? What are you tomorrow? And that's honestly what it takes for. For us to continue to succeed.

So encouragement there being, don't be one of those old dogs that can't learn new tricks, but be looking for new tricks to learn.

That old dog will be taken out to the back of the barn and shot. That's what they do in your neck.

Of the woods, man. Colt's going to be eight years old this year, Chad.

Dude, that's crazy.

Isn't that crazy?

I can't believe he hasn't taken you out to the back of the barn.

He's probably thought about it.

I guarantee you, if I'm a human and I've thought about it, I can guarantee you simpler my n. Well, I hope this helps you guys. You have a great day. And of course, happy selling.