The Ugly Truth About IMO Partnerships (That No One Talks About)

Foreign.

Here we are. Another week.

Another week, another good one. Yeah, this was a crazy one.

Crazy one. Yeah.

It was just full. It just felt really full. I mean, it was our first week going fully remote. Right. As a team. And, man, it just. For some reason, you mentioned it. I felt it, too. It's like you start working from home, and then all of a sudden.

Your week is way longer than it was.

You do, because it's too easy. It's too easy to just keep going.

Right.

Right. It's like when you leave the office for the day, it's like, okay, well, that's short of somebody having a cell number, text you, call you, whatever. You're pretty much done. You take it home. Now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, I can. I'll spend another half hour on this. I'll come back and check this after dinner. Oh. You know, it's like. It just makes it too. It makes it too easy to start too right to where now in the mornings, it's almost inconvenient for me to make a good breakfast and have some slow morning time before I get into it, which I totally value. But it's like your brain instantly going into work mode, and it's just right there for you to go tap into. So it's actually created longer weeks, I think.

But my slow morning time is my eyes being like this, just closed. Relaxed. Probably looks way less graceful than that. But I haven't quite got myself to be able to value the morning time the way that you do, Caleb. But I can stay up late really.

Easy, and that's something that I cannot.

Do very easily, simultaneously. I mean, we also just had our. Our partners meetings. All that stuff that we talked about. We need to talk about our golf because we told the people that we would.

Whoop Chad and Jesse's tail and.

Pride cometh before a fall.

Yeah. You know, we've still got issues that you and I need to talk through with that because maybe this is going to become that episode for the people that are here.

Oh, man.

I don't know much. I like Caleb.

Basically what happened is that Caleb and I got smoked. We got whooped.

15 strokes.

15 strokes.

Yeah.

Wasn't the best.

No. It was so ugly. And the thing that frustrated me the most. Okay. And I hope Chad listens to this. I hope he hears this. Chad does not have the prettiest golf swing you've ever seen. Okay. In fact, I love Chad, but most people probably wouldn't even say it's pretty.

Golf swing, like any. It Just, it's.

It's unconventional, but for some reason, it just flat out works for him.

It's like. I don't know if any of you saw the first presidential debate, Joe Biden talking about how he got down to.

A six handicap while he was a VP under Barack Obama.

And there's, like, videos circulating about anyone who wants to know what a six handicap looks like. And there's a video of him trying.

To hit the golf ball. And. And it just is not pretty at.

All, but it probably goes where he's trying to get.

Yeah, supposedly.

I mean, that was the thing that happened with Chad is that Chad swinging the golf club. And it doesn't look very great, but it goes far and it goes straight. Yeah.

Pure.

Every time mine, I veer all the way left, I adjust my swing, and it still goes all the way right. It defies physics. I don't know how it happens.

It was one of the. I will say that coming out of that tee box was one of the craziest things I think I've ever seen. Okay. If you guys play golf and you can imagine you've got your. Your tee bo, you kind of line up to where you're going to try and pipe it down the fairway, Right. Well, Josh, knowing that he's got a pretty gnarly slice, angles his body and his club face to hit it basically about 45.

45 degrees the other way.

Yes.

So. So you're swinging righty, you angle, you know, 45 degrees, kind of cocked to the left, so to speak. And if you're watching this, you're thinking, oh, my gosh, he's about to send this golf ball into those houses.

Those windows are about to be done. Destroyed. Yeah.

Yes.

And the whole time actually, that you were. You were lining up for that, I was like, this is going to be.

The one time he just smokes it straight.

I thought the same thing.

Somehow, some way, he catches a slice so gnarly that it comes off the tee at that angle 45 degrees to the left, and then bends back around and ends up on the right side of the fairway. But not on the fairway like out in.

In the rough.

Yep.

On the right side.

It's really.

It's crazy.

The deepest level of skill.

It really is impressive.

Yeah.

Well, I did.

I've seen videos before where guys have gnarly slices, and they're like, oh, just play the slice. Just play the slice, I guess.

So for all the agents listening today, if you have tips for me on how to get my Slice fixed. Send them, please.

He's tried a lot. He's turned the club face in. He's. I mean, there's a whole bunch.

Get me in 150, though. 150. Getting on that green, I feel great. Pitching wedge. Yeah, that's my. That's my jam right there.

And that was. That was why I went into that. That game or that round of golf with so much confidence, was because the last time that Josh and I played golf together, it was just the two of us. I was coming out pure of the tee box. I mean, pretty much straight onto the fairway every time with that driver. And carrying good, like carrying probably.

250 roll into 275. 280, maybe. Some of you guys are probably, like.

All weak sauce or whatever, but it wasn't anything crazy.

But it was. It was going where I needed it to go, right? And then Josh, he would get. Get down there about 150 yards and in and working that pitching wedge and the nine iron and all those kinds of things, and he would just get it up to the green and then he putted well. And so I'm thinking, going into this round with Chad and Jesse, thinking, oh, man, if I can just come out of the tee box well, and Josh can just work those. Those wedges well, and we can, you know, carry each other's weight on the putting green, we're gonna be all right. We might be. We might beat Chad and Jesse by, you know, 10, 12 strokes. And then we go out there, and I can't come out of the tee box to save my life.

We. Neither one of us.

And I can't hit the irons.

Neither one of us could work the irons. And we both were 2, 2 and 3 putting on the green.

What do they say? Pride comes before the fall, right? So that was our fall that day.

And then I felt extra bad because I made a deal with Chad that we would pay $10 per stroke that. That they beat us by, and vice versa. They would pay US$10 for every stroke that we beat them by. Because I was so confident, I was like, yeah, Josh and I are about to walk away with a hundred dollar bill in our pockets. Each, like, no problem. Well, no, we ended up. We ended up a little bit poorer that day.

We did end up a little bit poor.

That are writing over 20 million a year in annuity premium.

Yeah, give us some sympathy, guys.

Come on.

They're not hurting for that 80 bucks. Oh, man.

Hey, But I'll say, man, that was a great Time. I mean, the, the, the amount of stuff that we got to get done in those partner meetings were super great. And that's what I want to talk about today, Caleb. I want to talk about partnerships. Relationships. And something that you've been talking about a lot is massive action. And I think there's something that's so important about good strategic partnership. And so for, for you, for myself, for Chad, for Jesse, right. We're often on kind of more of the business side. You're working with agents directly, really doing a lot of the case design and planning for the agents that we're working with and the agency owners. But for me, it's more on the business side. So making sure operationally we're structured the right way, that we're scaling, that we're, you know, actually moving into the programs and the things that we need to be moving into. But for those guys, they're the mega producers, right? So Chad doing, you know, 25 to 35 million a year. Jesse, you know, cumulatively doing about 30 million a year between annuity and a. I mean, those guys are just crushing it. And so ultimately we found this team, right, this, this unit that we have where there's trust, there's rapport, you know, there's a lot of shared interest and there's a lot of great dialogue, right? And I think, you know, as we're talking to agents today, I want to talk about this idea of partnership because for many agents, they don't really know what it means. They don't know what it means to like, find a good partner. They don't know why it's necessary to, you know, step out of kind of solopreneurship into more of a business building mentality. So I want to spend a little bit of time just hearing your thoughts. Like, what do you, what have you seen to be a huge value of building strategic partnerships?

I think the first thing is character, ethics, morals, value, alignment. I mean, take anything else out of it from the start and if that's not there, just write it off from the beginning, I think. Because the driving forces and the motivation behind anything that gets done in that partnership will not be aligned. And that to me is more critical. I've said for a long, long, long, long time I would rather work with good people, good hearted people that tactically, you know, the way that they choose to do things sometimes or say things or operate is frustrating than to work with somebody who has an evil, manipulative heart. But tactically is really, really charismatic.

So I value the core, the heart the, the morals, the ethics, the values, the integrity. All of that above anything else when it comes to partnership. And the way I like to think about it too, is people. People will spend a lot of time dating and trying to find their. Their spouse. Right. Because the way things are structured legally, if that doesn't work out, it's. It's not pretty, it's inconvenient, it's not. It's not good situation.

Right.

There is a little bit less.

Financial, I would argue a little bit less financial, social, legal, repercussion in a business deal just not working out than that. But I think it should be approached with the same mentality because it is still incredibly inconvenient. It sets you back so much time, it sets you back so much money to have the wrong partnership structured at the beginning.

Right.

So I think you really focus on the morals, the values, the ethics, the integrity, the character alignment. And then you talk about all the other details around that of what. Of what you're doing. That's my personal stance.

Yeah. And when we talk about partnerships, too, I think there's two. There's two pillars of partnership. You've got, you know, internal partnerships, which is like within an organization, right? Within a business. Do you have partners that you're actually working with to build that business? Now, they might be direct partners, like the way that we are, the four of us and our team. And it might also be, you know, with key employees and things like that, and the way that you're actually, you know, structuring some of those key employee relationships. But the other pillar that you have is external partnerships. So entity to another entity to propel those two entities both forward within the industry. And I think one thing that's really interesting is, is sometimes those get lumped in the same bucket, right? The way that you form one of these partnerships over here internally to build your own organization is different than what you're going to do to actually form a mutually beneficial partnership between two entities. And so I want to hear your thoughts a little bit on the second. Right. So how do you actually form some of those external partnerships? And what are some of the pros and cons that you've seen there?

When you say external partnerships, you're thinking agent to imo relationship.

I'm talking agent to imo. I'm talking agency to agency in another line. I'm talking even within the same line that are, you know, working together, that maybe have different niches, you know, just different partnerships, external. So one entity to another that mutually can benefit both Yeah, I think that's the key.

The mutual benefit. If you go into a relationship like that expecting that you're largely the sole recipient and they are the sole contributor, that's probably going to be a failing relationship. It has to be symbiotic. It has to be mutually beneficial. And if everyone is not taken care of, then it gets to a point where it doesn't make sense for everyone to be a part of it. So, and I see this often with agents in IMOs.

It'S not a secret that IMOs make money when agents write business. And the reason they make money when agents write business is because the insurance company is thinking, we wouldn't have gotten that business if the IMO hadn't been there. Now the agent might be thinking, oh no, I could go close that deal by myself without anything my marketing organization did. Yeah, you probably could. A lot of the time there's some pretty sorry imo's out there, but that's not what the insurance company is looking at. The insurance company is looking at, why did this agent write us? And the reason that agent wrote that insurance company is because the marketing organization in the middle contracted them with that insurance company. And so in a roundabout way, even if the agent could have closed that deal on their own without any support or help from their marketing organization, the insurance company would not have received those funds unless that marketing organization did what they did. So what you have here, it creates a weird, kind of a weird relationship where a lot of times agents think that the only reason IMO's should make anything is if they actually were involved with that agent closing business. And alternatively they shouldn't be. But that's not who's paying the commissions.

Right?

The agent isn't the one paying the commissions. The agent isn't the one paying the overrides. That's the insurance company. So I would love to see agents look at the IMO agent relationship. Not, not like leaving their perspective off the table because I think that they're valid things there. But considering the insurance company's perspective, and when an agent considers the way the insurance company thinks about it, they recognize there is going to be business that I submit and that I write that my marketing organization doesn't have anything to do with that. They're going to be paid for. And that's okay. And here's the thing. The better the organization you're with, the better the imo, the better the fmo, the more you want that to happen. Why? Because if they are a good organization, everything they make is going back into their, their shareholders. Right. The, the people that are actually. Sure. You know, controlling the operations of that, the employees that are doing the operations of that and programs for that agent. So if you're an agent, you want four entities to be well taken care of on the basis of your sales, your clients, you, your IMO and the insurance company. And this is actually something I'm stealing from Chad. He's, he's said this for years, I've heard him say this, that all four entities have to be taken care of. And if all four entities are not taken care of, then it doesn't make sense for the, that model to exist. If the agent can't be taken care of but everybody else is, doesn't make sense for the agent to do it.

Right.

And you insert any of the other three entities in that same position and the same thing arises. So if you're an agent, especially dealing with IMO's. Yes. Find an IMO that's going to do well by you. Find an IMO that's going to serve you and take care of you and actually earn the business. But recognize too that there are going to be cases and they're going to be policies that you submit very, very efficiently for that organization that maybe they never even knew, never even saw coming. And that is a. Okay. And that's actually good for, for you and for that marketing organization.

Yeah. And I think that's a key thing right there. It's the desire for both to, to benefit. And so when you approach a relationship in business as a relationship versus a transaction, that's where you actually start to see that mentality. Right. Where people are actually okay with other people profiting off of what they've done.

Right.

Because you know that that profit is then going to be turned around, put back into things to help make your business more efficient. Have, make your business have higher margin, make it so you can, you know, hire more employees, give you better training, all those different types of things and they have to work together in that symbiotic relationship or none of it works at all.

We spend thousands and thousands of dollars a year on tools to make agents lives easier and more efficient. Some of the tools directly go to help agents write more business. Some of those tools just save them time. But either of which, there should be some type of monetary return back to that agent. You have agents that go and write business and never even talk to me about it. And I love that. I think that's great. Why? Because that shows me that we've done a good enough job at equipping this agent to do their job without needing to be dependent on our workflows.

Right.

And there are a lot of IMO's out there that want to handcuff agents and want agents to be dependent upon them because if they're dependent on them now, they have all the control. From the way we train on marketing to the way that we raise agents up and help them develop and scale and grow, it positions us to have to earn the business because we're making agents good enough that they're the ones that have the control to stay or go because they're not latched in, hooked in by anything. We're raising them up to be independent producers that have control over their business. And now in that model, it puts pressure on the FMO to have to earn it. Right. And that's why I love what retirement realize does so much more. I don't like being controlled. You don't like being controlled. Nobody likes being controlled. And so agents may enter the industry in that type of position because it makes sense for them. They're getting a lot early on, but they're giving up a lot of autonomy and a lot of control. There's going to be a point for those agents where they don't want and they don't need that anymore. They transition out. And now the marketing organization that they left is having to do it all over again. And it's this endless cycle. Rather than do it the right way from the start with agents and then watch your churn be on the floor.

Right.

Our agent churn is I've told other marketers and IMOs about how many agents we've had churn our organization before. And it astonishes them that our retention rate is as high as it is.

And usually it's a lack of alignment. Right. So if there's not full alignment, that can lead to some agents leaving or it's unrealistic expectation of compensation.

Yeah.

And so, you know, because sometimes you see agents that, you know, believe writing a million or 2 million a year that they should get, you know, two levels above street. And that's not, that's not real. Some people do that, but that's usually all that those organizations provide to those types of agents is more comp. They're not really doing anything to actually help that agent be a better agent, better producer, have more, you know, high impact to their clients in the industry. And so I think that's one of the things that you have to hold in tandem is like if you approach every relationship as this is 50 and 50, but simultaneously, I am 100% responsible for the way that I participate in this relationship. Yeah, it, it changes your whole perspective.

Right.

Because suddenly you're willing to give more to retain that person. Right. It's not necessarily monetary, but you're willing to give more of yourself, more of your time, more of your, you know, resources, whatever, and vice versa. Right. The agent or the receiving entity is willing to give more of themselves. They're willing to, you know, take less in certain areas so that they can get more in other areas. And it's really this kind of give and take and it's this. I mean, not to make it all poetic, but it's like, it really is like a beautiful dance where the two go back and forth as you're actually, you know, doing something that's very productive and, and really impactful in the industry. And this is any industry, it's not just our industry, but it's so often, for some reason, I don't want to generalize it. So if you're an agent listening to this and you've got super successful partnerships like, don't take this as a correction, but so often agents don't approach many of the things that they do in business, in our field, like a business. They just.

Correct.

They're just somebody that's going and selling products and that's often what gets that black eye to be created in our industry that we're so, you know, fervently trying to actually remove.

Right.

But if you would actually just approach business as business.

Yeah.

Not just sales. Right. Suddenly it changes the whole dynamic of what you're doing and what you're building.

Yeah, it, it was interesting. I was talking with Jesse earlier. For those of you that, that don't know who he is, we've mentioned him before, but he's actually one of the four partners of retirement realized. And he's a producer as well, like Josh said, doing about 30 million a year combo between AUM and annuity production. And he was telling a story earlier about how when he was starting out, for him to continually take that action, for him to continually put in the effort because he's his own boss now. Right. That's the thing for a lot of these agents, they become their own boss. And now all of a sudden they don't have anybody peeking over their shoulder. They don't have anybody to report to or be accountable to for the work that they're doing, the time that they're spending, the effort that they're putting into it. And that creates often floundering for agents. Jesse when he was starting out, he imagined himself earning a $500,000 salary that somebody was paying. And he imagined that his manager was peeking over his shoulder during the workday. And he said imagining those two things affected the way that he approached taking action and work ethic and doing things. And you can tease your brain and do whatever you need to to be taking that action and making, making those steps toward the right direction. But I want to go back to one thing real quick. And we talk about partnership. I think that because we're in the marketing organization space, it can be easy to speak at it from our perspective to agents and like kind of the way that we want to see agents approach that partnership, that relationship. But I'll speak to anybody out there that is the, you know, CEO, manager, marketer for a marketing organization. And it's partnership the other way. Like marketing organizations need to look at the relationship that they have with their agents as partnership as well as. Now we can get into the numbers and we can see, okay, agents are making 70 to 80% of the total comp that gets paid on their production. So the marketing organization can't be 5050 on time. Otherwise it, it doesn't. The math doesn't math. You can't have somebody earning 70 to 80% of the total amount of comp. And I'm not, I'm so I'm not talking at street if you're shocked in.

Total comp including override everything that's on top of that, that everything. Sure.

You can't have an entity that's, that's earning fractional amounts of compensation on a sale doing.

Half or majority of the work. It, it doesn't work out long term. So if you're an agent and you're wanting to build a good, long lasting relationship with a marketing organization, then be one of those agents that recognizes the way the comp is structured. In most instances, if you're contracted at street or even above, you're making the vast, vast, vast majority of the total amount of comp that's being paid out on your policies, right? So you're responsible because of the way that that's paid to make sure that that's done well and done right and gets done. And simultaneously, marketing organizations look at it not as an agent, as just a pawn on the board amongst many other pawns and pieces, as I think it often does. You've got your small producers, your pawns and your producers, your knights and bishops and your super producers, you know, your queens and kings, like that's not the way that it should be. It's a partnership and, and you should be bringing value to that. Otherwise you're not earning even the fractional amount that you're being paid on it.

Right.

So anyways, that's my, my spiel on comp. Yeah.

And I think that's really good, Caleb. I mean, I think it hits that entitlement thing that we've talked about before. And once again, it's both ways. Right. Often entities can be or can feel entitled to, you know, need to provide X amount and X amount only. And they're not going to go above and beyond for, you know, this kind of agent or this kind of agent. Like, I think what's really impactful is when you have a standard that you operate within. Now there, there are very real constraints. If you were spending time, you know, with agents that have never written annuities before, right. For the majority of your days, I'd be knocking at your door saying, Caleb, you've got to change what you're doing. This doesn't work within our organization. But as far as standards go, we build things to be able to support every single kind of agent. So we've got many things in place to be able to actually support those kinds of agents. We've got multiple podcasts that we have, we've got a full on training platform where they can actually get what is almost like this. And it's very, actually probably more effective and efficient than getting on a hour long phone call with you because they can get you for 30 hours. Right, right. A very like thoughtful and intentional walkthroughs of how to do certain things.

Right.

And so we build in standards, we build in parameters to actually be able to service every level of agent exactly where they are and help create, you know, on ramps for them to get to those next stages as quickly and as effectively as possible.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'll say that. And I tell agents this all the time, especially when they're newer agents. I tell newer agents, I say, listen.

New agents require more time and write less business than experienced agents.

So if you're a marketer, you're an imo and you have value on your time, the numerical return on the time spent with new producers is far, far, far less than what it would be if you were spending that time on an experienced producer that's writing good production.

Right.

That doesn't make the individual less valuable. The individuals are equally valuable. The humans are equally valuable. The challenge that I think a lot of IMO's marketers, agents. Everybody has in the situation is that you have to operate with your business in mind as well.

Right.

You're limited on time, you're limited on availability. So to your point, could I spend 30 hours a week only talking with brand new agents? Absolutely, Because I have that many brand new agents reaching out. But I can't afford to do that from a business perspective. So we create those methods, we create those tools, those programs and everything to make it worthwhile for everybody. Because we want to help new agents, we want to work with new agents. But there are methods and there are things that you can learn and grow in and develop that doesn't require a one on one conversation. Whereas a $10 million producer that's got a $2 million case that we're looking at, you know, multiple different policies and multiple different income thresholds and all these different things, RMDs and IRMA implications and all kinds of different stuff, just, you name it, it's a big case. That's not something that you can just put in a 30 minute video.

Right.

That is a one on one conversation that needs to happen. So the more specific things become, and things tend to become more specific as expertise and knowledge increases, that's where the time becomes a little bit more one on one. But early on, so much of that foundation can be distributed via videos and trainings and things like that that are already there and done. And that's exactly why we've built what we've built. You're exactly right. But partnership needs to be mutually beneficial. It needs to be symbiotic. And the mentality that I think makes a partnership a good one is how do I give to this partner the right way?

Right, Right.

So it's like if you go into it trying to figure out what you're going to get.

It'S not a bad thing. You need to know what's the consideration to you. But if that's your sole emphasis, with little consideration for what you're going to be bringing to the table yourself, that's probably going to be challenging for the other part, for the other part of the partnership to get on board with. But if you go into it knowing, hey, this is what I plan to bring to the table, this is what I plan to give. Now let's discuss how can we structure this to be beneficial for everybody involved. Now you've got a winning conversation because you've led with consideration for the partner.

Right.

And if both sides do that, you can have some really sweet deals get struck.

I would even make an argument, Caleb. And we're talking about sales, we're talking about salespeople, negotiation, all that kind of stuff. But look at your margin, right. As an agent, let's just say you're forming a partnership with somebody for, you know, access to more clients or access to more potential prospects, maybe somebody in a different line of business. Right. If you're thinking about it from that lens. Think about it from that lens. I'm going to talk about it purely from a business perspective real quick. If you're looking at your margin and, you know, okay, here's the max that I could give.

In exchange for this being worth it for me. Yes.

I would argue that the more that you start at that place and sure, you might dial it back a little bit. Yeah, you want to be. You want to be wise and you want to have, you know, good negotiation tactics, all that stuff. But the more that you are generous with what you're doing in a way that actually propels your business forward, the more that you're going to be adding a lot of value to another organization and the more that that organization and those kinds of organizations are going to want to work with you. So I would. I would almost argue in the way that I generally think is like, okay, what's the most that we could give in this scenario? Okay, do we feel comfortable giving that?

All right.

We might need to think about some considerations, potential hires, other things that we'll have to make down the road and factor that in so we dial it back to account for costs that we'll get over a couple year period, maybe two to five year period that, you know, we're not maybe considering right now. And then we start there and we just lay it on the table and we say, hey, we want to work with you. We want to work with you in partnership. Here's what we can do. Here's what we're going to provide you. We're not going to hold anything back. We're not going to, you know, let there be any veils that, you know, we're not being forthright on anything or, or forthcoming with any information, any kind of operational things. And then ultimately you either take it or you leave it. And if you leave it, then great. It's not. We're not aligned if you leave it.

Right.

Because that's the most that we can do. If you're trying to get more than that, and this isn't. You're trying to take more than you're trying to. To give.

Right.

And I, I would encourage any agent who is wanting to form any kind of business relationship, especially the external partnerships that we talked about before. So, like as you're forming, you know, relationships with CPAs or lawyers or any kind of other entity that could potentially get you business coming in, figure out those thresholds for yourself and be willing to do it. And then just lay those proposals out from the beginning and do it unashamedly and be bold with it. You're going to get much better partnerships that are much more sustaining and long term and that actually bring much more mutual benefit to both parties.

Totally. I would argue as well that before. And this goes either direction, okay. Both. Both partners. All three partners. Four or five, however many it is agent to. Imo. IMO to agent. I don't really care what the partnership is. Before there is a. A publicized response of frustration based on how something is going or how things are progressed or, you know, what's being done or said or whatever.

Think about.

What have I done to bring to the table in exchange for the expectation that I have that they're not meeting.

Yeah.

And just think about it, right? Because it can be really, really easy for agents to get frustrated with a marketing organization over responses or timeliness or, you know, whatever. And.

That agent is sitting there having really just been the recipient the whole time, having never actually written any business, never. But the expectation is great and it can go the other way. And I've seen it go the other way where you can have a marketing organization, you can have a marketer get frustrated over what's being requested.

But that agent is well within their grounds to be requesting that based on what they've brought to the table. So before the response is openly frustration. And obviously, guys, we're going to respond out of typically what happens and how that makes us feel. Think in the moment. Take that and process that on your own before you go back to that person that you're in partnership with in frustration and ask yourself, have I brought to the table what makes it worthwhile for them to be in this thing? And if the answer is no.

Then probably not grounds for frustration over what they're doing. Or if the answer is yes, then it's probably worth having a legitimate conversation about it.

I'll say this, Caleb. How many meetings? This is going to be an obvious answer for you, but. But how many meetings do we have with our four partners within retirement realized where I bring something up and everybody agrees on that thing every single time?

Very, very few.

Like almost never. Yeah. And there's this element that we talk about of the iron Sharpening iron. Right. And the more that you get good, bright people into a room, the more that those good, bright people that have great ideas, great thoughts, great concepts, different experiences, different perspectives, the more that they're going to bring those things to the table.

Yeah.

And so, you know, we, we talk about these things and we, I mean, look at even our team, right? Me on kind of primarily the business side, Chad bringing tons of, of experience on the production side, a lot of face to face. Right. He's done a lot of virtual now that Jesse's come to the table. But even he and Jesse, when they first started, right, Chad was reluctant to go fully virtual. He's been one of the, one of the dinosaurs. I say that I hope you're listening, Chad, but he's been one dinosaurs that was hesitant to go fully virtual. We bring in a partner. We've, you know, we form great relationship with Jesse. Bring him in. Jesse does 99 virtual except for when he wants to get out of his house. Right, Right. Yeah. Works with people in the same town and they still do it virtually.

Yeah. They can be five minutes away and it'll be over.

It's just the way that it works. And suddenly you're seeing now Chad being open, right. Being receptive, and suddenly he's able to do more and less time. He's able to now spend more time with his wife, with his family, and he already spent a ton of time with his wife and with his family, but he's even been able to scale back his hours to where he's doing. He's got, we're right now at the time of recording this, he's probably well over 20 million that he's written for the year.

He's at 19, but just over 19 million.

And when we're recording this is at the beginning of July, so we're a couple, couple of weeks behind. When you're listening to this, he's pacing.

For his best month ever in less time than he's ever worked or his best year ever in less time than he's ever worked.

Yeah. Which is incredible. And so the more that you get people in a room that have those different perspectives, the more that suddenly if you've got the right team together, you've got the right alignment, you've got the right humility on, on board, suddenly you can have those conversations in a way that's way more productive and that actually propels your entity forward. So whether you're, you know, an agency owner listening to this, whether you're, you know, a solopreneur that's like looking to just, you know, build a couple people on your team. Or maybe you're just a solo person right now completely. You're just starting out in the industry. That's perfectly fine. It's really good to know what you actually want to be stepping into before you get to those places. And that's what we talk about often with our team is what do we want to do? What. What are our individual aspirations in business, in life, you know, within this industry? Okay, great. Where's the overlap in what we're building organizationally?

Right.

How can we lend, you know, our organizational.

I don't even know what you would call it, but how can we shape that within the, the mold of what we're building organizationally to where people are actually being propelled in what their desires are simultaneously.

Yeah.

And it becomes less about, you know, me as an individual versus my role in my entity. It's like the two go hand in hand and the two both propel the organization and me as an individual forward.

Yeah.

And so as you're structuring, you know, your teams, as you're thinking about all those kinds of things, like, think about that. What do you want to be building for your future employees?

Yeah.

You know, if you're doing this business, if you're in this business, let's say you're, you're a million or less right now. You're probably not even thinking about employees. Dream about employees, Make a dream board. Right. Those things like where you're actually visualizing what you want to be stepping into in the future. Think about it. Maybe your team's going to be five people, maybe it's going to be 10. Maybe you want to eventually build an agency. Maybe you want to get to a, you know, eight figure business.

Right.

Think about it. It's never too early to start thinking about those things. And the more that you can think about it now, the better success you're going to be set up for in the future.

Right. Yeah. I'll, I'll say we had a situation earlier this week where. Well, let me preface with a couple one liners, actually. One one liner. I'm gonna start with one and then I'll come back to the second.

And now I forgot it. What was it? Oh my gosh. I literally had it and then.

It must have not been that good.

No, it was super good.

You said we had a situation arise this week.

Oh my gosh. I am completely spacing what I wanted to say. The second one liner that I wanted to get to Was this idea that the lens of appreciation creates joy, the lens of entitlement creates frustration. And I wanted to talk about a situation earlier this week where is actually the same day, within a matter of hours with each other where we had an agent that was part of our agency marketing suite that got frustrated based on. I remember what it is, it's that perception often shapes reality. Perception often shapes reality. So this ties into what this agent was experiencing. They got frustrated because they felt like they weren't getting responses. Well, their perception was that they were reaching out to the right individual and that that individual, which was you, which.

Was me, which is not the right individual to be reaching out to. Josh is the president of retirement realized and his day to day responsibility is.

Not to be emailing back and forth and phone calling back and forth with agents, but the agent had Josh's email and that perception was that, oh well, I'm just going to email Josh and call Josh and expect that I'm going to get some super fast response. That was the perception. It created an expectation of reality. That's not the case. So there was frustration created as a result of that and.

Changed the situation completely. A totally different agent. Well, actually, I want to go back to that real quick. Sorry, I'm not piecing this together.

That's okay.

That agent, you responded to that agent eventually with an email of understanding and then pointing them in the right direction for the right channel. So point I'll make on that is in your partnerships, if you get a frustration come at you respond with grace and respond with the assumption that it's just simply an incorrect understanding of what they should be doing or where they should be going or how that should be looking right. For you to respond to frustration that was created out of just not understanding the right channel and the right person to go to just makes that whole thing worse. You responding with grace and understanding and direction, clearly defined direction toward, hey, this is actually where you'll get that. Now there's, there's no reason for that to escalate.

Right.

It's actually now diffused and the service is great and everything's right.

That is kind of synonymous with that idea that a lens of entitlement creates frustration. When you're expecting to receive, receive, receive in some way and you don't, it creates frustration. But ask yourself, am I sure that the way I'm expecting to receive is actually the way I'm, I should be receiving?

Yeah.

So I love to ask the question of hey, I'll state what I'm experiencing And then I'll ask, am I missing something on this? Or should I be, you know, trying to get this from someone else or, you know, whatever? And it. It kind of reduces that tension a little bit, and it makes people more receptive to it rather than coming at somebody with frustration. Now, a lot of times a wall goes up, guard goes up, defense happens, and now there's head clashing. Finish with that story. I had another agent that.

This is within hours.

Within. Yeah, literally hours. Who.

It was a whole kind of weird debacle with his. His account and was having a hard time accessing it or whatever. It ended up being some migration thing that we got. We got resolved. But I was going to give him, you know, a month of our Annuity Architects program for free and told him, hey, use this code. He goes in, ends up not plugging in the code pays for it. It's like 197 bucks a month. And I see that, and I'm like, oh, man. Okay. So I call him because I want to get this corrected. I want to get it righted, right? So I'm calling him, like, going to help this guy get refunded his197 and get the thing. So now I'm going out of my.

Way and taking more of my time to try to get this done correctly for him.

And he picks up the phone and he goes, caleb, this is tremendous. This is tremendous. I feel like. And literally he'd been in there for like an hour. I feel like I've already gotten $197 worth of value out of this thing. He goes, don't worry about refunding anything. I'll just. Just leave it how it is. It's well. Well more than worth it.

That's incredible.

And literally right after that, I talked with you about your encounter, and that's where that idea of man, a lens of entitlement creates frustration, but a lens of appreciation creates joy. And it's like, man, if we can just lead with appreciation for people, even when they're wrong, even when they do something we don't like, it's like you're not still working with somebody that is wrong 100% of the time. You would. You wouldn't be working with them if they were sure you're working with them, because there are things about them that you do appreciate, that you do value. So if you can lead those conversations with the appreciation, the value, the gratitude that you have, even in the midst of something being frustrating, it will create an outlook of joy on the situation and allow for Progress to actually be made rather than, I'm not getting, I'm not getting, I should be, you know, whatever it's like now, that's going to create frustration, right? And you work with people that are bent the same way and now all of a sudden you've got butting of heads and it just creates a rabbit hole of issues.

Well, and going back to even the initial statements that we made, right. When you're talking about partnership and alignment, as soon as you don't have alignment, that's going to happen because they're not approaching, I mean, an individual is not approaching it the same way with another individual.

Right.

So you're going to, it's inevitable. And so often, especially in the imo, FMO space and even, you know, I mean, we've, We've, you know, been in the process of helping empower many people to start other training platforms and things like, similar to what we do, and it's fantastic. We're not concerned by other people doing what we do because there's plenty of people to go around. If not, we'll go get people to come into the industry because we can help people start from zero and get to 15, 20 million a year. Right. We, we pride ourselves on that.

The pool is not shallow.

It's not shallow. It's, it's limited to the amount of people that live in our country at this point in time. Right. That are of working age. So. But when you start thinking about that so often in our industry, people don't really think about alignment, they think about numbers. And I made a post on LinkedIn and it was, relationships are greater than money.

Yep.

Relationships are always greater than money. And you have to have good relationships before you think about what you're going to gain monetarily.

Yeah.

This is a lucrative industry, so it doesn't matter who you're working with. You can make a lot of money in this industry if you're worth your, you know, worth your weight. But yeah, if you don't have good relationships, it's going to be miserable for you. You're not going to like it, you're not going to, you're going to burn out, most likely. And ultimately you're going to probably end up leaving the industry or you're going to become bitter or you're going to start just succumbing to not doing it the right way and chasing the money.

Right.

And all of those things are avoidable. If you think about aligning with people that are in alignment with you from the outset, then suddenly that Shapes where you're going, who you're affiliating with, who you're associating with. The money will be there. The money will be there. Enjoy the money. Because you're doing it with the right people first and foremost. And that's sustainable 100%.

It's the only way to do it. And, and I'll say what I said earlier one more time because I don't know, I haven't thought about this in a while, but in these kinds of conversations, you know, it definitely is relevant and it comes to mind. But I would much, much, much, much, much rather work with somebody who has a good heart and good intentions and the right ethics and morals and values and maybe the way they do things is frustrating.

Than you can just say me and Chad, you know, feel free then to.

Work with somebody who is evil in their character or twisted or manipulative in their character, but charismatic to the core, man, they can put on a face. I. Oh, that I would so much rather authenticity and real and people being who they are and them having a good heart, a good character behind it. Yeah, just 10 out of 10 times, man. And it's not even questionable to me. And there are, I'm going to say this, and if you're a marketer at a marketing organization, probably don't go tell your, your vp, you know, or your president this or whatever. If you've done the same thing. I'm going to say it because I'm a partner of retirement, realized I've, I've said no go to agents that were good enough producers just on the basis of there was not alignment in character and morals, values and ethics.

Well, it creates liability. Right. So if there's any question about ethical intent, if there's any question about the way that they're going to operate, if it could ever question being below board. Right, right. It's a no go.

Right.

So you don't even have to be ashamed to say that here with me because that's a pat on the back for me. Way to go.

It's. We are limited. The greatest thing we're limited on is our time. We all have the same amount of time in a day. And it is all of our greatest limiting factor. The amount of money in circulation is so vast. It like it's, it's darn near. You can scoop it with a butterfly net if you're willing to learn how to swing a butterfly net. Okay.

That's the key right there.

Yeah. You learn a new skill, you can go like it's Just that simple. But your time is your most limited resource. For me, if I know I'm going to spend the amount of time that I spend in retirement realized working with agents, I want to be selective about who those agents are because that will bring so much more fulfillment and joy when there's value alignment.

Right.

In that partnership than if there's not. Right. The production might look the same, the time spent might look the exact same, but the joy of doing that work is so much greater when there's alignment.

Yeah. Which is why we talk about, you know, which obviously we work with a lot of agents, we work with a lot of agents, a lot of agency owners. You know, we have different niches, even sub niches within what we do.

Yeah.

So when we say we could take an agent from nothing to 15, 20 million a year, we believe that.

Right.

We 100% believe that we've got the things to be able to do that. That's not the question. Right. We're going to have all those, like I said earlier, all the on ramps for people to be able to, to, you know, come on board one of our primary types of agents that we're looking to target. We want 50, 20 million dollar producers. That's our goal. Right. That's a goal that we talk about as partners because we are cultivating a community of elite agents to then be able to pour back into agents who are just getting into the industry.

Yeah.

So when you create something that can actually be self sustaining, suddenly it doesn't become about, okay, we're just chasing the $20 million producers just like all the other big organizations are. No, we're creating an ecosystem that can duplicate itself because we're raising up and partnering with agents who are really, really successful doing it at the highest levels possible that then have the right character, the right ethics, the right integrity to pour into the next generation, to raise them up to $20 million producers that can then pour back into that next generation. And suddenly we're creating an ecosystem that is now transforming, it's transforming the industry.

Yeah.

And so, you know, that might seem like a bold thing to say, but that's what we're going after. Right. We, we want our core of 50, $20 million producers that can actually help this ecosystem come forward and, and actually move the needle in the industry in a very profound way. And I have no doubt that we'll be able to achieve that with the team that we have a hundred percent.

We've got numerous 20 million plus producers already. We've got numerous other agents. Well, on their way to be that. And, and I would, I would say, you know, with that, Josh.

That doesn't mean we're just looking for people that are already right in $20 million in production.

Exactly.

Because every IMO out there will be more than happy to be a contract house for your $20 million. There's not an IMO that wouldn't be okay to be a contract house for your production. What we're looking for is for people that want to grow, want to scale, are writing good business and that we have the capacity to help do that. There could be somebody listening that a million dollar producer, two million dollar producer, five million dollar producer. And they're like, man, I would love to get to 20. We've got the roadmap to do it.

Right.

If you've got the work ethic to get there kind of a thing.

Right. And I say that and like there are agents that we have right now that haven't even written a million dollars. That we saw something in the person totally. That we've brought on board that I, I know that, I know that. I know that those agents will get to 20.

Yeah.

Right. I have no doubt in my mind about it. And so even for agents listening to this, it doesn't matter what imo FMO you're with, it doesn't matter. Find somebody that you're aligned with. And I'm talking about our alignment here, right? That's what we're trying to build as an. Or as an organization, Right. And we've found people, we found kind of our tribe, right. For. To use the buzzword, you know, the community that we're building is people that have elite agent mindset. They might not be there yet, many of them are, but you don't have to be to work with us. And so if you're an agent listening to this, like, find that organization for you, whether it's an imo, whether it's a partner, whether it's somebody in a different line that you want to form some kind of symbiotic relationship with. Find a group that is in alignment with what you're going after and go all in with working with that group.

Yeah. 100% retirement realize or otherwise.

Yeah, I know.

That's one thing. We started this podcast out. We're like, hey, we don't want these episodes to come across as sales pitches for what we're doing. And we believe in what we do. And so we. And we do what we do. So that's our frame of mind when we come into these is On a Friday after. After a week of work in doing what we're doing. So inherently we're going to talk about it, but a hundred percent, if you can find an organization that is aligned with you in what you're trying to build and what you're doing, and you can create that partnership the way that we've described it today, you've got a. You've got a winner. You've got a winner deal there. Go for it.

Absolutely. Well, real quick, Caleb and I don't want to drag on for too long, but I want to hit this idea because we run into this, you know, over the course of this week, massive action, and we've transitioned to fully remote with our. With our team. We're trialing it, Right?

Yeah.

We've. We've been in this land where we were actually all in Hawaii. Our whole team was in Hawaii whenever Covid and all the lockdowns and all that stuff started. So we've never actually been remote at all.

Right.

But with the way that we're connecting with our partners and we're doing more, you know, remote travel with different people within key people within our entity that are in different areas, we have a core team that we know that we trust, and we're establishing a culture of trust and. And hard work. Right. Determination to actually get things done.

Yeah.

And so we're trialing this thing. With that comes a lot of massive action. Mm. Right. So talk to me real quick about, you know, even just being remote, because a lot of these agents right here, they're. Most of them are not captive. Most of them are not working in an office where they go in to a local agency every single day, and they have a dedicated workspace. They're working at their homes. So what are the things that you've seen, even in one week and even in communicating with agents in the past that you've seen as being, like, really, really pivotal and key things for agents to actually, you know, pay attention to doing that.

Yeah. The term self motivated, I think, gets thrown around too frequently. Motivation is great. But here's my. Here's my quote on motivation. Discipline takes over when motivation runs thin. And if you are low in discipline, you will be reliant upon the moments that you feel motivated. But if you are high in discipline, then you will continue to execute even when motivation ebbs and flows. So from my perspective, forget self motivation. Let's talk about holding yourself accountable. Let's talk about discipline. There are going to be times when you have to choose to do the thing that you don't feel like doing that you don't want to do because you need to do it. And I may be preaching to the choir.

And I hope that's the case, but that is, if there is one thing I can say, that's the thing, because that will continue. We talk about massive action. Massive action isn't necessarily about doing one giant thing. It could be doing a lot of small things. We talked today on our weekly mentorship call, and we have every Friday morning about this concept of. Well, I'll just tell the story. I met a guy, he's in the construction world, and he said that his business thrives on a 99% rejection rate, which means that 1% of their bids, 1% of the opportunity that they have, actually gets accepted. And they were thriving on 1%. And we were talking about ways to try to generate free leads and free opportunities. And Jesse mentioned that he knew a life insurance agent that just made it a point where they were going to make 15 conversations a day. They're out and about. They meet, you know, somebody at the, at the coffee shop, somebody at the grocery store, somebody at, you know, the kids pick up line, whatever it is. Just 15 conversations with 15 different people every day about life insurance. And they were going to be a. Okay with whatever rejection came their way. They ended up basing their whole business, that marketing in air quotes, methodology.

And they were doing over 400,000 a year in revenue.

Yes.

As just an individual. Right.

That's a bunch of small things. There's nothing really that massive about it. But all of those things, those conversations added up, created massive.

Right.

And there was massive action because it was a lot of those small things. So when you think about massive action, it's not necessarily, oh, you got to go get that $2 million deal closed. Although that is fantastic. It's about, well, what is the $200,000 deal look like? What is the, the $150,000 deal like? What are the conversations that are going to lead to those opportunities look like?

What's the consistency on the phones looking like? All those, all those kinds of things.

Yeah. And for me, all of those things come back to not a self motivation, but a self accountability and a self discipline.

And I would even argue it's direction. Right. What is your, what is your direction that you're trying to go as a, as a human?

Yeah.

Because your direction that you're trying to go. Right. Whether it's, let's just say you want to have a certain level of freedom for your family, maybe financially, maybe Time wise, whatever it is, that's your direction. That's your kind of guidepost there. Right. Without getting into things like, you know, bigger, more existential things like faith and all that kind of stuff. We're talking on the individual basis. If you don't have that direction, well, then you can't actually develop the discipline that then spurs the motivation.

Correct.

So, you know, not that I'm going to start to give a spiel about, like, you have to start with your why. Everybody knows that you have to have a why for what you do, what you do. But you have to have the direction in order to actually be able to formulate the points of discipline and the self discipline within that can sustain you when motivation lacks.

Right.

Because like you said, there's plenty of times where I'm tired, where I'd rather be playing with my young kids. And I do. Right. I don't, I don't ever sacrifice my family. Let me, let me.

Yeah.

Let me balance that by saying, like, I, I've set clear boundaries with what we're building and it's actually allowed me and our company to be able to thrive and also organizationally begin to set boundaries so that we can actually enjoy what we're doing. And I've stood on that hill for a long time being like, there's got to be a way that we can do more and less time so that we can spend more time with the people that we love.

The reason we're doing it.

Yeah. Whether you're single or whether you have a family of 10 kids. Right. It doesn't matter. Whatever that direction is for you that you want to go. Yeah, you got to go. You have to go there and you have to be unwavering from that point. That's the only way you're going to reach it.

Yeah. Continued, consistent, focused effort.

I'm giving myself the rah rah right now.

Yeah.

Actually feel it. And I feel a little bit inspired.

I love it.

I'm glad. Yeah, I'm inspired.

Massive action. I mean, when you take massive action, I think it goes a step further because you have to take massive action on the right things. So some people that take massive action, they're like, man, I'm spending 80 hours a week and I'm working and I am, I'm not moving forward. Right. It's probably because you don't have a direction, which means that you're taking massive action on things that are just basically throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and hoping that something sticks.

Right.

You got to know where you're going. So you know what kinds of actions that you actually need to be taking.

Yeah, yeah. I like to say action breeds results. You know, pushback on that would say. Well, no, you could, you could have action and it be the, you know, do the wrong thing. It's like. Yeah, but it's a scientific law. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. So if you take action, there will be results of some kind.

Right.

But you take the right action now you're getting the right results. So that's key.

Yeah.

Because action does breed results.

I made a note, don't know. I made a note of that. What kind of results you're going to get recently. Yeah, it's in my notes right now.

I love.

I was going to make a video on it. I was going to cite you though. Don't worry.

Maybe one day I'll just read a bunch of my one liners.

You should.

I love.

It's called YouTube shorts. If you're watching this on YouTube shorts, that's where it came from. There you inspired. Right in this Fired.

Cool, man.

Well, Caleb, you have anything else today?

No, I think that was really good. Yeah, it was great. Great topic for you to bring up for us to talk about.

Yeah, we've just hit it a lot this week. We've hit partnerships, you know, we've hit partnerships coming on, we've hit partnerships going off and, and there's been a lot of, of us, you know, going through that as a team. And I think it's just important to talk about because people often don't, don't actually understand the, the importance.

Right.

Of good partnerships. And I'll go back to that, that quote I said earlier, that thing that I posted. It was relationships are always greater than money.

Yeah.

And so, you know, agents listening to this, you know, doesn't matter where you're at in your journey. You could be literally, you just got licensed or you're considering getting licensed or you just stumbled across this on YouTube, whatever. Right. It doesn't matter where you're at.

Right.

Okay. Know what you want. Know where you're trying to go. Formulate the relationships with people that can help you get there and that you can help get where they're trying to go as well. That's a key part. You have to be willing to help them get to where they're trying to go as well.

Yep. We're all going up the mountain together.

And the money will come.

Yep.

And with that, I'll say cheers to another great week.

I'll add one last thing before you're going to do the thing. This is starting to become a it.

Was me last time character trait. Let's see if you end more gracefully than I did on the last one.

It can be really, really easy for agents to come into this thing with the mindset of a solopreneur, but my encouragement would be that after today's episode, I hope that you start looking at the relationships that you create as partnerships, that you look at the IMO relationship as a partnership, and hopefully it's with an IMO that looks at it the other way as well. But look at your leads and marketing programs as partnerships. Look at, you know, you bringing on a staff member, you know, an admin or something as a partnership, and the more and more and more you'll start to look at the relationships you have in the industry as a partnership, the less you'll be stuck in that mentality of solopreneur feeling like you're on an island. It's a lonely enough industry as is, so if you can cause your mind to look at those things as partnerships, it'll bring you way more joy and enjoyment along the way.

Absolutely.

So, cheers.

Cheers.

Another great week.