The Importance of Your Why | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 114

Hello, everyone. Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach, owner of Retirement Realize Agents Academy and Retirement Realize Financial. Welcome to today's podcast. As you know, this is our second time. We're actually doing a little bit different of a format. We'll continue doing this on and on, but I'd highly encourage you to be sure and submit some questions because there are a lot of questions people are part of the academy that I'll actually answer and address during our week or, excuse me, our monthly webinars on. But there's some that I go, wow, you know what? There's a lot of people asking that question. And I'll create an entire podcast off of that question answer. So be sure and submit some questions. Whether it's wow, holy cow. See, even the best at talking still get tongue tied. It's okay, I haven't started talking yet. Well, I'll tie your tongue.

I'll pin it to your lip. Ear.

Oh, my gosh.

See, this isn't the best of me. Okay. Which is kind of what we're talking about today.

We're talking about.

So. See, you just set me up to fail. Way to go. Anyway, okay, go ahead. So what do you got?

Yeah. So we're going to talk about the industry. Obviously there's a bunch of different things agents can do to have success. And really there's a lot of things that should be in place to really expedite the success and then make sure it's sustainable. But what I want to talk about a little bit is how do I not fail? Like, what are some things that I can do that can prevent that?

You don't wear shirts like that.

Don't wear flannels.

We're in Texas and he's wearing a flannel long sleeve. What's going on?

Trying to embrace the fall. Thinking if I wear this enough, maybe the fall weather will come.

Yeah, I mean, what I found in this industry when I got started, it was really tough because I didn't have a lot of mentors. I mean, literally, I was on my own. Now there was a point to where I would think I was about three, three years into it maybe. And then I end up picking up some incredible mentors, just people that have been in the business for a long time. But man, when I cut my teeth when I was in the life insurance part of it, it was a mind boggling how many life insurance people tried to sell annuities and they had no business talking about life insurance, let alone annuities. So it's, it's surround yourself with people that really want to help and experts. I tell my kids this all the time. And anybody I mentor, I always say, you know, never listen to someone's opinion unless they're where you want to be in life. So, you know, if you have someone that says, hey, you need to be financially fiscal, yet third life is a mess. I mean, we say that all the time in our industry. You got people that are literally been doing this for a long time, 10, 20 years, but they're broke all the time. And it's like, they're not going to retire yet. They're in the retirement industry now. I get things happen where it's just blindsided. Financial things happen out of your control. But you know what? You got to dig out of stuff like that. And if you're going to be successful in this industry. I have that handout that I do to my agents that are in the academy that talk about what is it?

Oh, it's about why. How many? 25 reasons why.

25 reasons why agents fail?

Yeah. Why 92% of agents fail in the first two years. I believe it is. And that is a statistical fact. I mean, it's unbelievable how many people I talk to and then you talk to them two or three years later, just reaching back out. Oh, yeah, I'm not doing that anymore. And so it's consistency we talked about the previous podcast is consistency. But it's also just being absorbent, sponge for information and constantly staying on top of products, new products. I mean, when I got started in this industry, there were no income riders. It was just straight indexed into it. No age comment.

You're aging yourself there.

Okay. But you know, is reality. They're just straight indexed annuities. Then I think around 2005, they came out with the income riders that was revolutionary to our industry. But still to this day, there's a ton of agents that won't do income riders because they haven't taken the time to study about the benefit of income riders. Now, wait a second, that was what we're almost 16 or 16 years ago we came out with those and now people start doing it because they didn't take the time study when in all honesty, I would believe 100%. One of the major reasons why I do the business I do is because I help people solve the problem of guaranteed income.

Sure. So yeah, absolutely. I actually, I wrote something down the other day. It came to mind, actually. Got to do a little podcast where I talked about this briefly, but basically this idea of the success mindset and how that Goes into play in every aspect and part of the process. But what I wrote down was in, if you think you. I'm sorry. If you think you can't, you won't. If you think you can, you might. If you think you can and you work hard, you probably will. And this, this. This idea of man, you've got to have the mindset, right, that mindset in place of man. I'm going to accomplish this, but you've got to have the work ethic behind it to get. To get. To get it done. Put rubber on the road.

I don't mean to act so surprised when you say something wise. I'm sorry.

Yes. Feel free to. Feel free to write that.

I'll tattoo it on the inside of my arm. We'll do that.

And we have before we've talked about the why. The why behind the what, really, the driving force, the purpose behind it. How important is the why for you, Chad? And then two, when things get challenging and when things are kind of slow, how does the why keep you going forward?

Well, man, everything's about the why. I've heard the rah rah speakers say it's about the what. It's about the how. What do you mean, the what and the how? It's the why. You know, the what. What do you want? Well, I want to be rich. No, that's not a reason why I want to buy the car. No, that's not either the why. If you have that as your why, you are not going to last in this industry or you're going to end up in jail. One of the two. So I've seen people in this industry driven by the money behind it, and not one of them has ever lasted a long time. And I have seen some put in jail because they start to go, you know what, man? I could buy this car. I could do that. And not once do they think about what they're actually doing to the client. And that's just so wrong and so messed up because you're not the one that spent 20, 30 years saving this retirement. And they're the ones that pay the consequences. I use this saying all the time. When my brother was the first one I heard say this, what? But he said, whether you make a mistake on accident or on purpose, the results the same to the client. You know, if you intentionally mess someone over, yeah, that's more messed up in your heart. But if you accidentally mess up, you're still messing your client. Yeah, you're still messing with a retirement situation. So that's where the studying and the studying, the studying comes into play. But the reality is the why is, why do we do this? My why is 100%. Whether I'm helping agents, I'm helping clients, or whether I'm helping anybody, it's, can they do better than I am Where I was, you know, I made a comment the other day and it was hard to get out, but I said, you're where I would have wanted to be at that age. So, you know, you're 16 now, just barely.

That's how I hear that all the time from my agents. They go, how young is that guy? Well, he's actually been married to my daughter for over three years and they did get married at 13. But.

It'S, it's true. I, I look at where you are now and I go, where are you going to be when I'm, you're my age? You know, if you can live that.

Long, if I can get to the point of withdrawing all my annuities, no.

Grandkids will make you live a long time. That's it. But you know, I really honestly look at that. I go, I want everybody I meet with and go to, to do better than I was at any given age. I don't want people to struggle through the annuity business like I did and not have people help me and not want to share their little secrets. I mean, one of my mentors always used to say, dirty little secrets about this, dirty little secrets about that. And he would literally share every little secret about the industry because you, he still to this day wants one thing. He wants you to do well. And that's what I followed. And most of you guys might know him, his name is Bill broach. He owns annuity.com and it's just, it doesn't matter what marketing organization you're with, everybody knows who he is. And he just genuinely cares about the success of not only you as a person, but this industry. I mean, he is poor. So much time with no pay, no contracts. He just is a vlogger. He puts out information, but he's been like that ever since. I think it's 2007, I think is when we first met. So you could see, I mean 2000, the three years before that, I did all right. I mean I did a lot of life insurance. But man, once I really started dig into this and he really. I met someone for now, you know, there are some things I have to say. I met some really good, some of these old timers in the FMOs, IMO's that have been in this industry a long time. If you really get to talk to them, the ones that have been around a long time, they genuinely care about the industry. They just really pour it. So their why is to make sure they help other people. And I love seeing that. I mean, you see the flash in the pan IMOs come out, you all know who they are or they just. They have a reputation of, you know, the big rah rah, the cookie cutter. They just want your contracts. But, man, the people that really care about the business, they're living their why.

That's true.

Their why is what keeps you going when everything gets tough. Why do I do this? I want to help people. I don't feel like it doesn't matter. Your why overrides everything else.

Yeah, the why. And then, and then I think too, we can talk about just sheer willpower and not being willing to give up. I mean, if you're set on making it work, you believe you can and you put action to it, I mean, by golly, you ought to be able to do it. Now, I know that there's agents you.

Really like speaking English, by golly.

I mean, there's obviously.

This is why we did this format. This is a lot more fun.

I'm not used to Texanese. I'm getting. I've been here for eight years now, but.

Okay, sorry. Well, you hang around long enough, we'll.

Get you trained up. Say it again. Yeah.

Bye.

Golly.

But I mean, there are. I mean, just like in anything, there are. There are people who are naturally just better fits in it. And I mean, there's no two ways around it. There are going to be people that naturally, they just fit right into this industry and others that have to work a little bit harder.

Yeah. But even all the ones that are successful have a rooted one.

And that's the key.

That is. I mean, you may not be the best at communicating with people, but if they see, wow, this person's really driven to help me. Oh, absolutely. They'll do very well.

Yeah, that's good. And I know a story you've shared with me, a story before about. Pretty wild story that involved a sailboat and a trip from Washington to a little island called Hawaii.

Maui. Oh, yeah.

I guess Maui is the island. Hawaii is the state.

Texas. Education. No, I'm totally joking. Totally joking.

Hey, we have our own history.

I know you do. So does Hawaii. It's so funny because I went to school. Let's see, it was seventh, eighth grade and then all high school and a little bit of college in Hawaii and I know a ton about Hawaiian history. They did not teach that much about world history or American history. And I'm like, wow. So I had to really study on that. But yeah, I mean, my dad was a successful business person and then just through some weird circumstances, had to close everything down, Ended up selling his plane, buying a boat, and he said, we want to live on Maui. So because of his vast experience of sailing in a river, he thought we could cross an ocean.

We found every sandbar in that river. But yeah, we could cross ocean, why not? No sandbars. We got it. We're good. But it was, I mean, we were putting the fire right away in the water. Sorry. Because we literally, we were a day out. We got caught in a hurricane and we had 40 foot seas, 80 knot winds. We got knocked down where the mast went into the water. The boat was flipped on its side, it popped back up. We broke three out of four sails. Our main engine was gone. Our only engine was gone. We literally were called the coast guard. And the coast guard says we're not coming out to get you. That weather's too bad. So we were on our own like a bobber in the middle of the ocean going 12 knots, which the haul speed was 10 knots, which simply if you exceed the hull speed in a sailboat, you'll do a pitch pull. But because we were surfing so much on the waves, we had one little sail and little sail, but it was double reefed, which means it was taken down to its smallest capacity. We were going 12 knots and it's because the wind was so strong. But finally, I think we're in that storm for two days. And then the coast guard finally came and towed us back in. And you know what, Most people at that time would go, yeah, almost killed me and my whole family. But we're not going to do this again. What does he do? Gets us back on the boat. We go back out. And that taught me, because you know what, I love traveling. And the reality is there's a lot of times I've traveled to beautiful destinations that have turbulence along the way. It doesn't change the fact you're going to paradise. If I'm flying to Hawaii, that's paradise to me. You know, but just because you have turbulence on the way doesn't mean you turn around. Now. We've been in some turbulence. I wanted to go and knock on the door, go, hey guys, can we put the shocks on that? But you know, it doesn't change. You don't turn around you know, you continue to move forward. Why? You have the destination of where you want to go. So it doesn't matter what turbulence you hit along the way. But to tell you what I mean, that's still, to this day probably one of the top 10. I have one, two, three, four kids, married. Okay. Yeah, that's in the top 10 best experiences of my life. You got 10 kids? Yeah. Top 10. Which one's out? You take a pick. But it's the top 10. And it was so phenomenal because after we went through that hurricane, we used to run into squalls that had 20 foot seas and it was nothing to us. We're like, yeah, we saw 40 foot seas. We had an 80 foot wave hit us from the side. What's a 20 foot wave? No big deal. So we already went through a storm in the beginning where it's a lot easier. And I could also say, you know, I went through my storm in this industry. I went through $150,000 of credit card debt. Having major medical issues in my family come up. I mean, catastrophic medical issues come up. And you know what? We went through that storm. And now other storms seem a lot smaller now.

That's true.

You know what? You don't give up. You keep going.

That's really good, Chad. That's really good. Well, definitely hope this encourages them today. I think it will.

I hope it does. And as always, happy selling.