This Annuity Carrier Did WHAT?!

Warm up the larynx. Larynx a little bit.

Warm up that old. That old voice box you got down in there.

Warming up the voice box.

The old larynx.

Warming up the voice box.

I can't do it anymore.

You can do the falsetto.

I yelled at the dogs one time and they. Yeah, I lost my voice and never been able to falsetto since. Man, I used to be able to hold a candle to Whitney and Celine.

Oh, my goodness, Mariah.

All those greats. Christina, those of you that don't know that I am on a first name basis with Whitney Houston, Celine Dion. Yeah, Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera definitely are. Yeah, so they call me sometimes. Check in.

I try not to be saving all this for the actual episode.

Not to reach out to them much.

Because, you know, this is the episode already.

Little do I know this is already. We're already here and rolling.

Well, welcome back to the annuity fund, guys. Here we are, Caleb. Another cheers. Another week in the books.

Another week in the books.

Going down. We're still living, we're still breathing, still above ground. So that's a good thing.

This week was wild.

Still like each other. That's a good thing.

In spite of my inability to take direction.

Oh, yeah. Should I tell the story or. Yeah. So even just purely getting set up for this episode today, you know, I spend all the time making all these things to present our podcast to the world in the best way humanly possible. For what it is, it is good. And what does Caleb do? I say, caleb, can you come check your camera? Will you come just have a seat there for me real quick and let me check the lighting. Let me make sure that all is good. Can you just look where I'd be sitting? And then where does Caleb look? Everywhere but where I asked him to sit.

And then the chair.

I don't remember exactly what I said. It was something along the lines of, I have a hard time. I don't like being told what to do. It's been particularly challenging, you know, the last 28 years of life. It makes. Makes living in this world a little bit more difficult than it needs to.

Be when you have a hard time with instruction. I was a child growing up where.

Everything was super literal and everything was. Everything was up for debate.

In my mind. Not in reality.

Sure.

But in my mind like I would be.

I know that that is. That was not your reality.

No, it's not.

It was not the reality of existence, but it was the reality of kind of the construct that I created in My head. And so it created situations where even growing up, I would do something that totally warranted getting in trouble and then I would get myself into more trouble by trying to argue my way out of being in trouble. I was convinced, Josh, like, so convinced in my mind that, that I could make an argument and make my point great enough that it would show my parents that actually I was not in.

The wrong, that it was actually okay for me to have done or said whatever it was.

I was. I was gaslighting people at 4 years old.

See, you young, you young. Bucks use these terms like gaslighting. I still don't know really what that term means.

It would be like, I guess a good example of it would be, you and I, we have a. We have a disagreement about something. And then I start, wait, I think.

I just suddenly got it. It's what you do in every single one of our meetings where you try to convince me that I did something that is. Is not actually true.

But you particularly, like, prey on their lack of recollection. So, like, if you just.

Even my memory is perfect, you just didn't remember something.

And I was like, oh, yeah, man, you said xyz or you did. XYZ is like making it a definitive statement to try to convince you that that happened and preying on your lack of recollection. Like, that's the way I understand it. I don't know.

So piggybacking on our ethics talk last week. Don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. Don't be that guy.

Or girl. Yeah, it's, it's. Life is a lot different this side of. This side of Jesus than It was at 4, 5, 10, 15 years old. So anyways, different guy here now than I was 24 years ago.

But yeah, for sure. I didn't know you then, but I.

Would imagine, yeah, I don't know that you would have liked me then. We probably wouldn't have known that.

I like you now.

I'm kidding. I love you, man.

That's funny.

Hey.

Well, Caleb, we've had some crazy things happen this week. Two particular things. Yeah, that, that I want to highlight. Actually. There were two carrier things that happened this week. Now we talked slightly about one this last week with the whole contract thing. If you haven't heard that one, you can give a 15 second recap on that in a second. But basically what we're talking about is there, there are carrier decisions at some points that can be made.

Right.

And now we had two very opposing decisions that were made this week that affected agents very differently. And so I want to talk about, I don't want to say any carrier names. I actually love both of these carriers. They're great carriers, they have great products. But I want to actually highlight the things that agents can run into sometimes because there are times where something seems so obvious. It seems like, of course X company is going to side with this belief because the facts point to that.

Right.

But in reality, that doesn't always happen. And so highlight these two instances real quick and share with the people that happen.

I will highlight these two and I'll preface by saying that for me, what determines the quality of a boss, an individual, an employee, an insurance company we work with, an imo, any of those things is not their ability to operate without flaw or their ability to operate in perfection. It's not that at all. It's how they respond when they don't. So I have a buddy, had some struggles, whatever, and I was talking to him and I was like, man, what defines a good man is not him being a perfect man. Like a good man is not a perfect man. A good man is a man who, in his imperfections, responds to the imperfections the right way. Sure. And so because we're not perfect, we're humans. And carriers are human beings. They're companies comprised of human beings. IMO's are human human beings, companies comprised of human being. Agents, employees, bosses, we're all human. So we know going into any of these working relationships that there's going to be opportunity for shortfall. There's going to be opportunity for things not to be done the way that we want them to do. But the mark of being somewhere good, working with a good carrier, working with a good imo, good company, whatever, is how they respond to the things that they don't do. Right the first time, the things that they failed in. So I'll recap the first example that we talked a little bit about last week. It was contracting agent gets contracted loa to an imo. So that means the IMO gets all their commissions. Right. And then they have their own internal agreements for disseminating those commissions back to the agent at some kind of rate. Well, you get contracted, he decides he wants to move over to retirement. Realized financial. He wrote business recently. So typically that requires a release or waiting six months to actually write that carrier and move that contract. The IMO he was with before would not sign the release. It was something they were unwilling to do, which I think is wrong, personally, if you're, you know, an imo, and you're listening to the podcast, like really consider if you're having your contracting team, your marketers not signing release releases for your agents that want to move away, the question should not be, well, how do I try and retain this agent longer? It should be what did I need to do differently when I had them to have retained them without needing to force their hand. So anyways, that would be a thing I would encourage you to consider.

But I'll just interject real quick. That's a big one. That's like a really big one that I personally, through you, through relationships with other executives in this industry, you see that all the time where it's just not right. And we, we know this. I mean probably most of the people that are listening to this know that. But it's so easy to stand out for doing it. Right? Yeah. Just quick sidebar.

There it is. It is. We talked about it a little bit last week. You just simply do the right thing and immediately you stand out amongst other professionals in your line. It's weird to me, it shouldn't be that way, but it is. So anyways, this IMO wouldn't release the agent's contract. They have internal agreements where the agent, if they were to write this carrier, all their commissions would be paid to that imo and that IMO would not pay the agent for the, for the contract. So we took all of that written evidence, I guess you could say, and gave that to the carrier, asked the carrier to make an exception to their six month rule where you typically have to wait six months of not writing that carrier products, any policies with them and now your contract is movable. And they said okay. It escalated, it went up into the ranks of the company and they came back and they opted not to make an exception for that particular agent, which is frustrating, but I don't believe that it was done out of a lack of empathy for the agent situation. I think it was done out of the fact that they enter agreements with IMOs. When IMOs get appointed and contracted with insurance companies, there are agreements that they have and that six month wait period combined with the release requirement, which I, I don't like that model, don't hear it as like, I'm an advocate for it. I don't like it. I think it's the carrier's best current attempt to show some kind of loyalty to an IMO that placed business with them. And so it's not, it's not good. It doesn't help an agent out. It's frustrating, but that Was the situation and you figure out a workaround and you try and go from there.

The other one was a carrier that we've done tons and tons of business with. One of the things that we always do with retirement realized financial is if we know an agent's going to be soliciting a piece of business, a new product, new carrier in a state, we'll reach out to the carrier and verify that that agent is in good order to actually sell that product in that state. Well, we email the carrier, ask specifically agent name writing number the product they're going to sell. The state they're going to sell in carrier emails back says yep, that agent is good to go to sell that product and that's the state.

I, I will add months.

Well months ago we submitted four contracting for that agent.

They evidently didn't process the contracting when we sent it in even though it was a pre appointment state. So they should have processed it. Then we asked about I go to status to sell are they in good order to sell this product or not in this state? We get an email back saying yes, they're in good order. Agent signs, submits the application, the carrier then comes back and says well wait a minute, this agent was not licensed to sell this product in this state. They weren't appointed until.

Today, effectively when they sent the email. And so now they're telling the agent the agent needs to go back and get the application resigned. So I get on the phone with the carrier and I'm thinking hey, we submitted contracting months ago, that was overlooked. Then when we double check to verify they're in good order, we get emailed that they are in good order. We write the piece of business and now the agent's getting told they're not in good order. We've got to get this remedied. This is two errors on yalls side just from overlooking email.

Conversations. And thankfully they did come back and they remedied it. And that's an example to me of a carrier messing up on one agent's contract in two different ways. That could have had massive implications. If you're an agent, you know, going and taking an application back to a client to have them resign. That is not a good fun conversation to have.

Especially when they start asking you questions about why, what was the issue before and why weren't you actually, you know, licensed in good order to sell in that state when you came and actually sold me this product? Like right, you just run into a whole bunch of things that you never want an agent to have to actually Do Exactly.

I mean, that situation alone, it either creates a lack of confidence in the carrier. If you tell the client exactly what happened, all the carrier overlooked my contracting and then overlooked an email that the, that we sent asking about their, you know, my status to sell. They just botched it in two ways. Well, now the client's lacking confidence in the carrier, or you're an agent, you try and spin it, kind of place a little bit on you a little bit, you know, try and play the, play the cards a little bit. And now it creates a lack of confidence in you. There's no good way to go about having that conversation that doesn't degrade from the confidence the client has in the situation. They have to go back and re sign paperwork. It's just, it's not a good thing. But that is an example of a carrier messing up twice. But then the quality of the carrier being exemplified in the way they handled their mess up.

Right?

And that to me is the mark of a good carrier. It's not the expectation that they operate in perfection because perfection is unattainable when you're dealing with human beings. But if they correct it and they correct it in an equitable and fair and right way, that's the mark of a good carrier, 100%. So even though it's frustrating to deal with, and that took half an hour of my day navigating that, getting on the phone, talking with agent Contracting, you know, the carrier, all this stuff, I'm proud to offer that carrier's products because I look at that, I'm like, they made it fair, they made it right, they made it equitable for all parties, and that's a good carrier. So.

Yeah, so you said the thing about operating in perfection, and I remember, you know, Caleb and I, for those of you who don't know us, we, we oversee a lot of the operational things within our set of companies. And so, you know, we were having a debate, I don't know if you recall this, talking about, man, I'm just like pulling, pulling all the things at you today. Got to keep that humility there.

Yeah, come on.

But, but anyways, we were talking about perfectionism, right? Perfectionism versus like a culture of excellence.

Right.

And how do you operate in a culture of excellence without getting into perfectionism? I think this is something that's like really, really important. Look, we're about to unpack it right now, but I think it's something that's really important to like distinguishing factor between those two things. I mean, you can, you can strive for Excellence. Right. And eventually you will hit a standard of excellence.

Sure.

That then you might raise the standard of excellence for what it will be to hit that next threshold. But that doesn't mean that you're now leaving the, the standard of excellence that you've set.

Right.

But perfection.

Yeah.

The thing about perfection is it's, it's only one thing. It's either perfect or it's not. And the reality is nobody can be perfect 100% of the time. Right. I can't. You can't. You know, my spouse can't, my kids can't, the carriers can't. I mean, nobody can. And so I think when, when you actually look at that standard of perfection and when you're building a business from that standpoint where you want your, you know, your imo, right. You want your case designer, your marketer, whoever you're working with on a daily basis to be perfect. You want them to respond to things that, you know, your beck and call. Right. It's just not the reality. People have work cues, People have other things in their lives. People have personal lives that affect their work lives. Like all of these things come into play. And so I think it's important, you know, as an entrepreneur, which all these agents that are listening to this are, right. They have their own personal businesses, whether they have a big downline or they are just a sole proprietor, you know, with an independent practice. You have to have that standard of operation in the right lens.

Right.

Or else you're going to be constantly disappointed. And that was the debate that you and I were having, was if you're striving for perfection, when you don't hit it, you're constantly disappointed.

Right?

You're constantly disappointed. So suddenly everything that you do becomes a failure except for those singular points, you know.

Sure.

Every so often that actually touch perfection.

Right? I agree, I agree. 100 perfection. Perfection is mostly unattainable. I think. Like you, you say you could maybe have points and moments of near perfection, but to have that without fail all the time, constantly, non stop, is not a possibility. I think the challenge that I have with the concept of excellence is that there's an inherent element of subjectivity to it. So now we have to individually define, well, what is excellence to me, and that becomes challenging because your idea of excellence may look different than my idea of excellence. So you say, well, I've done this thing excellently or whatever, and I'm looking at it thinking, well, no. Or vice versa, I do something, I'm like, man, that's excellent. And you look at it and you're like, oh, that's not very excellent at all. In the case of the carrier that we were just talking about, it was their lack of excellence in two areas that created the need for remedy, in essence, of the situation. That, granted, they handled that with excellence, but they only got to that point because of a lack of excellence along the way. And so my, I guess, question in that or thought in that would be.

If you do excellence, you obtain an excellent product and an excellent timeline.

With excellent ethics and integrity. And like, all those, like, you can have excellence in all these other things. And by the time the thing is completed, it'll look almost perfect because you've chosen to hit excellence in all these things. And I think where that concept of excellence can have a challenge is or be a challenge is if something is being done in a way that is claimed excellent.

But the definition of it is obscure because there's inherent level of subjectivity to it.

And that, to me, that right there, I think is totally solvable, though.

Okay.

And I think when you have good leadership in a company that you're part of, so whether, you know, an agent listening to this or somebody listening to this is an owner, maybe they, you know, maybe they're working loa. Maybe they're working just in someone's hierarchy as an independent. Right. If you have good leadership, then that leadership is setting a standard of excellence, Right?

Sure.

In theory, they should be. And I think that's. That's actually the big competitive advantage of firms and companies and, you know, entrepreneurs that actually do step into a realm of operating and excellence is they also stand out. Because when that. When that level is actually elevated, well, suddenly that becomes attractive because you're touching those points of like, man, that was almost perfect. That was almost perfect. You might even be hitting perfection. But then the bar gets raised. So then suddenly, you know, perfection, what would be perfection, is now elevated. Right. But you're still, like I said, you're operating in that realm of excellence. And I think that's where, you know, like, for me in retirement, realized, like, I have to operate at a standard of excellence that you do a great job of holding me accountable to. I. I submit, you know, mutually, as you do and just as we do to our other, you know, partners that we have.

Yeah.

And I think there's, you know, that's tying into that humility piece that we talked about last week. But ultimately, you know, my role, you know, as the president of our company is to establish what that is. Right. When you're Talking about our brand development, what our, you know, market positioning is, all of these different things. So there's plenty of times where I'll talk with you or I'll talk with, you know, another one of our partners. And like, I have to, like, course correct in a way that's collaborative. Right. It's not like domineering in any way. I mean, at least I try not to be. But like, I take that personal accountability to set that standard and to make sure that we don't waver from that standard.

Right.

But it's hard to do. I mean, it's. It that takes, you know, developing as a leader. It takes being willing to have complicated and difficult conversations. It's, you know, not avoiding conflict. It's all the things that, you know, that leadership would be.

But it's just doing them consistently, run them consistently and, and constantly getting everybody on your team to actually start to get to that level of excellence. And I'll say one thing, like, as we've, you know, had downline agents. Right. Often when we recruit an agent that's coming in and working with us, maybe they're directly with retirement realized financial, the level of excellence is not the same. That's true in a lot of cases. Now, sometimes it is. Sometimes there's agents that we bring in that they have a level of excellence in a specific thing that's maybe higher than, than what we've historically done because it's an area of emphasis that hasn't been a priority, which is great because it allows us to actually step into raising our level of excellence.

Yeah.

But I think it's interesting to see sometimes that you have agents that come in and they operate in a different paradigm. Right. So it's like when you're setting a culture in what you do, and especially when you're trying to transform an industry in that way. Right. By doing it with ethics, integrity, you know, always client centric. First.

Yeah.

I love the way that you talk about the, the setup between client and agent. And imo, I think that's a great thing. You should touch on that in a second. But ultimately, it's really cool to see that process happen where you're bringing people into your ecosystem and you're starting to see that level of excellence actually raise. Sure, it's awesome.

I think one of the interesting things to your point about perfection is that it places the immediate emphasis on the result of the thing that's being done with little consideration for how to handle it if it's not. Whereas excellence speaks to not just the way that things are done, but also the way they're handled if it's not attained. So you can have excellence in your culture that now all of a sudden meets.

Not having excellence with grace.

Like to a point.

That's true.

To a point, right. It's like. So you can't have somebody just, just consistently missing the mark and just continually. It's just constantly, okay, next time, next time, next time. Like, there's a point where it's like, okay, like we. This has got to get buttoned up. Right, Right. Because culturally we're striving for excellence. But to have those moments where it gets missed. If you've got a culture of excellence, then you would, you would expect that missing, that excellence would actually be met excellently.

Right.

With grace. Whereas perfection says you do the thing the right way the first time every single time without fail. And if that's the emphasis being placed and little consideration for what happens, if it's not, then the lack of that result is met with probably harshness, aggression.

Frustration, you know, all those types of things. So I agree, emphasizing the excellence, But I do 100% agree that there has to be able to be some type of measurement for it, some standard of excellence, not just the ethereal like we keep using the word excellence in a corporation, in a business. You can't just have that thrown about and expect that there's shared meaning because everybody would define it differently, even within the same role.

Especially because every single person in the world has different priorities in their life. So that means that what they consider what they need to actually get to an excellent, you know, posture in. It's going to be different for me to you.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I do, I think that that's 100. A necessary element to have. And I, I became a little bit on the perfectionist side after doing a bunch of shop classes in high school. I had a. I had a bit of a knack for welding in high school and got pretty. I mean, just candidly, pretty good. Did some competitions, won some competitions, like was. It was fun. I almost made a career out of it actually coming out of high school and glad, glad that ship was changed direction, but almost made a career out of it. And in doing that, it created this internal drive for perfection because the reality was I was the only one that was affecting the outcome of what I was doing. Nobody else is a part of it. When you're working on a project, you're welding whatever you've got, you've got a joint you're making, you've got Some pipes you're. You're joining together. There's nobody else involved in that unless you have a pipe fitter. But you're running a bead. You've got inclusions in that bead. You've got undercut, you've got splatter. You've got, like. It's just not joined well. That's on you and you alone. So the heightened emphasis in that environment on individual performance created a perfectionist mentality in me that I think is easy to then try and broadcast onto other people.

Yeah.

And it's not right. It's not fair.

But anyways, yeah, it's. There's almost an obsession over quality, I guess you could say.

I mean, I come from a musician background as well. Like, I. I did competitive percussion, right. Drumming and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, my story with my. With my wife and how we almost moved out to Nashville. Right. Most of my friends are still professional musicians, or many of them are at least professional musicians in some capacity. And so, you know, to leave that because we felt like we weren't supposed to pursue that lifestyle. I brought a lot of that with me moving forward.

Right.

So, like, the way that I operated was always, hey, you can't miss notes. Like, it's not an option, or else you don't get the gig or you don't win the competition or, you know, whatever else. The thing is that you're doing within that realm. But that was like, kind of a culture, especially in music school. And so I got a full red scholarship to UT in Austin and was doing music. And so, like, my lessons and, like, all these different things. Like, literally, it was all perfection. And I think what's interesting is it so easy for me to not be in a place of perfection. Now. It's similar to what you talked about, you know, last week. Like, Jesus totally set me free from, like, needing to be perfect, because I know that I'm not, and I know that I never will be. I know the products that we create never will be. I know that the carriers that we work with never will be. Because we're all imperfect people, and we're all trying to do the best that we can, except for the people that are just slime balls and they're not. But. But ultimately, like, one thing that I see so often is agents come in, and this is, like, a big thing that I actually see with newer agents, where they come in and they feel like they need to be perfect, and they get into analysis paralysis, and they feel like they have to know every single detail about every single product, which I'm not saying that you want to skimp on details or I'm not encouraging an agent to, like, skip on knowing their products. That's not what I'm saying.

Right.

But so often there are products in a general period of time that are generally competitive in certain types of scenarios. And so I think one thing that's really cool is when you start looking at, you know, affiliations. Right. So all these agents are affiliated with, I'm sure some of them, many, many great partnerships and networks and IMO's, FMOs, and whatever they might be associated with in the industry. Right. But when they're operating in excellence and that company they're affiliated with is operating in excellence, and the one they're affiliated with is operating in excellence, suddenly you're somehow attaining almost that level of perfection. But it's not because you're all actually perfect. It's because you're aligning with people that are actually operating in that same sphere of excellence.

Right.

I think that's kind of that magic zone where suddenly it's like, wow, everything almost feels perfect.

Yeah.

It's because everyone is just doing really, really great work.

Yep.

And they're helping each other and they're covering their weaknesses and all that kind of stuff. So I think it's super important for agents coming in to, like, shake that as fast as possible, because it's a killer for progress.

Right. I think that.

Confidence can stem from two different places. I think you can have confidence that is derived from ability and knowledge, and then you can have confidence that's derived from. From character and who you are and who you believe you are and who you're going to be for the people you're working with. And I think one of the challenges is that there are. There are types of individual. Well, and I guess you could say it come. There could be a third. And maybe that's like a place of arrogance where it's like you just think you're all that in a bag of chips, and that creates a confidence, but it's misplaced. Sure. So, like, true confidence stemming from character and integrity, ethics, and then true confidence stemming from ability and knowledge and whatnot. And then this, like, pseudo confidence that gets perceived that way stemming from arrogance and pride. And I think that you have agents that come into this industry that fit into one of those three lanes. There are agents, and I've talked to them before, that they're 100% riding on the coattails of their arrogance and pride. They closed a Snot out of deals. Salesmen. I mean, are you talking about salesmen and not that there's a problem with being a good salesperson, because I believe in the core of sales is solving somebody's problem. But there is an element in some types of sales, the way that sales gets approached sometimes where there's manipulation involved, and that's wrong.

That's when you get into that zone where you're, you know, when people start getting in that kind of murky area with. With selling to solve people's problems, sometimes they're selling to solve problems that aren't actually there.

Right.

And you see that all the time with specific types of. Of products being positioned in scenarios where they shouldn't be positioned.

Sure. Yeah, absolutely.

To interject.

Yeah. And then you have the agents that come in, and, man, they're not struggling with arrogance and pride. And what they don't necessarily also have is a ton of knowledge or a ton of skill and ability, but what they've got is character. They've got the character, they've got the ethics, they've got the integrity. And to those agents, I would say allow your interactions with clients to be confident, not out of arrogance and pride, not out of your skill and ability, but out of who you are as an individual, that if they ask a question you don't know, you're going to tell them, hey, I'm not sure that's a great question. I'll find out and I'll get back to you with the right answer. And the way that you approach that wholesale is just truthful, and it's rock solid, and it's based on your solid character and ethics and integrity. And then from that place, over time, grow your knowledge and your skill and your ability.

Now, what's really interesting is that the longer you operate in those two things, the easier it is to step into arrogance and pride. Because you learn more, you become smarter, you get better. You kind of view yourself as this moral, you know, pioneer. Yeah. And now all of a sudden, what started out as humility, but good character and integrity and ethics.

And lacking knowledge and skill, as those two things grew, if you don't keep a handle on it, it can easily morph into arrogance and pride. And that's the one thing I would caution you against. But come in and start and operate with your clients with confidence on the basis of your character and your ethics and your integrity and. And yes, there are certain things you need to know. You need to be able to explain how they work, the way they function, and you need to be able to do that in a way that is accurate, but to know the answer to every little possible question the client may ask starting out, there is no way, because you don't know what they're going to ask. To be able to ask somebody else who knows what the answer is to the thing that they're going to ask that you don't know they're going to ask. You can't be prepared for every single little thing. So you operate out of that place of confidence in your character and your ethics and your integrity, and you grow in knowledge and skill, mentorship training, like, be involved in those things and then be very, very, very conscientious that you're not allowing those. Those two. Your character and your ethics and your integrity and your skill and your knowledge growing over time to then morph into this weird place of arrogance and pride.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm just letting it sink in.

Yeah. It's.

Hey, it's important for us as leaders, though, as well, in the industry, maybe even more so. Right. Because it's easy to get to a place where you feel like you've reached a level of attainability or you've reached a level of, you know, accolades, whatever, that suddenly you can start to let off the break or off the gas a little bit, when in reality it's like, well, that's the time that you actually start to dig in more.

Right.

Especially into, like, developing your leadership. Right. Developing the way that you steward people because you reach a certain threshold, you know, whether you're, whether you're in our position right now or whether you're an agent who eventually, you know, has a support staff. Right. They might just be two, three people administratively or, you know, working on pending business, whatever it is for them. Right. Maybe a, maybe a personal assistant. But ultimately, eventually, if you're having a level of success in the industry, there's going to be people that are looking towards you as some level of influence or leader. And so I think it's. It's important the more successful you are, that you go deeper in humility, that you go deeper in trying to just go low. Right. We talked about it last time. The. The servant leadership.

Right.

How do you actually serve the people that you're working with rather than expecting them to serve you?

Yeah.

And that seems obvious. I think most people that are. That are listening to this probably would say, like, I would never work with somebody who, who treats me like that.

Right.

But I would also go as far to say that most of them probably have at some point and Some of them probably still are, sure. Because in our minds we don't ever want to be in that place. But the reality is sometimes we just let little things go because it's like, oh, that's just that person's quirks, like when reality. Let's call each other higher in the things that we're doing. So we actually elevate that standard of operation.

Right. I think there is very, very, very few things more attractive to anybody in their field or industry or whatever than the top of that industry, whoever the peak of that industry is operating the right way with character, ethics, integrity, and paired with humility. When you see the elite of the elite in your field and they're not slime balls and they're not arrogant and prideful, but they're actually humble and they have good character, it is so magnetic because there's immediate. You immediately trust them because of the perceived character and ethics and integrity and the humility. So you can, you can have ethics, integrity and character and all those things that we talk about. But if that's paired with arrogance, I actually would argue that there's a disconnect there. Right. Because part of that character and ethics and integrity is actually having humility.

So I don't know. But I will say I think it's one of the most attractive, most. One of the most attractive things you can have in a professional. When I say attractive, I'm talking about magnetic. I'm talking about it's captivating, it draws people in, it makes people want to, to be a part of what you're a part of. It's engaging and it's inspiring and you gain influence that way. And if you're perceived arrogantly or lacking integrity and ethics, you can be the best in the world. And good luck getting people to actually lend you their ears, you know?

Yeah. And if they do, eventually they're going to wise up to it in most cases, and eventually they won't.

Yeah.

And I made a piece of content. I don't actually, I'm not sure if I've posted it yet, to be totally honest, but I made a piece of content here recently that was talking specifically about when you operate in a certain way, eventually if you're not doing it the right way, it's going to dry up.

Right.

Right. If an IMO or an FMO or an agent is doing something unethically, they might have tons of success, but eventually it's going to run out.

Yeah.

And I've, you know, being someone who, who follows Jesus, like, I believe in, in Justice.

Yep.

And I believe that justice does happen.

Right.

And I'm not saying that I, I'm not by any means wishing for people to have any kind of ill will. Right. But it's like that eventually my prayer is that that conviction hits them and they stop doing it.

Right.

And they turn what they've done into something that's really, really good for people.

Yeah.

And so I, I don't know, it's just one of those things that, you know, if, if we can just get more people operating from that place of like, genuine desire to help clients.

Right.

Secure their retirements, that's the ultimate win, win, win for everybody. The client, the agent, the imo, the fmo, you know, the training partners. Right. The, the software providers, the lead vendors, everybody that's involved in this ecosystem of, of business. This whole industry operates better.

Right.

They operate on higher margins, they operate with more people that are eager to get these types of products because they're being displayed and shown and pitched and offered and, and just brought to the table.

Yeah.

In a way that's like so real, so true, so authentic, and they're willing to actually take those solutions off the table if they're not. Right.

And they should be. Yeah, I mean, that's. We're a help industry. I, on my LinkedIn, I think my bio says something along the lines of, you know, the insurance is a help industry. At least it should be. Right. When you're insuring somebody for whatever it is, like it should be a helpful financial tool.

To sell an annuity or any other type of product. As if it's the analogy I always use is a bunch of bananas. If I were trying to sell you a bunch of a bananas, how would I approach that? How would I try and do that? Like, what is that really going to do for you? Do you have a need for bananas? I don't know, maybe not. But I'm going to try and sell it to you. It's the same concept. It's like if you just try and sell it as if it's some commodity that they're just purchasing and just, you know, and that needs. Right. It's like you're missing it. It's a help industry.

Right.

You've probably heard the term. I'm sure everybody has. Birds of a feather flock together. And I find it interesting in our industry the way that IMOs tend to attract agents that align with their core values and beliefs and vice versa, agents tend to attract IMOs that align with theirs. And what I mean by that is I don't have phone calls with agents reaching out to contract with us looking for comp. Obviously fair comp is necessary. That's a, that's a huge element. Doing the right thing for somebody is paying them properly.

Don't even get us going down the road of the amount of agents that you talk to that think they're getting street comp and they're not.

Yeah. With other IMO's, that's a very real thing.

But I don't have agents calling me up and the first thing on their mind is hey, I need to get, you know, X percent comp on XYZ product or whatever. And why? Because we don't try to recruit agents on the basis of comp. We're a development organization. What does that mean? We develop agents, agencies, advisors, and help them grow their production. If you're an agent, would you rather get an extra 1% on your few million dollars a year or turn that few million dollars a year into a bunch of million dollars a year in production at Street Comp?

Exactly.

I'd rather 7% of 6 million than 8% of 3.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah.

And that's the retirement realized way. That's what we do. We help agents grow and scale their production. We're not just trying to be a contract house for what they're currently writing anyways. It's a whole thing. But, but because of that, I don't have agents reaching out to me asking about that. I have agents reaching out asking about the tools that we offer and the ways that we support. Right. All those types of things that have become competitive advantages of retirement realized. But you know What? There are IMO's out there that try to recruit agents on the basis of comp. And you know what kind of agents come knocking on their door? Agents that are asking about hey, I need to get overstreet comm, I need XYZ comm. And obviously there's a threshold for that. Right. There are super producers out there that should be getting over street. That's all fine and good. I'm just talking about the general producer, the average agent.

And so anyways, I think the inverse to that is agents. If you're an agent and that's what you're all about, you're going to attract an IMO that's willing to give it to you. But you know what? An IMO that's willing to give it to you, you know what they're all about too comp. So what do you think? Or at least margins. So what do you think they're going to do for you in exchange for your higher comp?

Nothing?

Yeah, probably very, very, very little.

Right?

So go get your higher comp and work with somebody that's trying to maximize the margins that they get on your production for giving it to you and giving very little support for it. And so it's you, you attract your kind, in essence. So you know what I do get calls about? I get calls from agents all the time, man. I listen to the podcast. I love the way you guys operate. I love the character. Like, we're aligned. I want to, I want to work with you guys. And I'm like, well, let's, let's talk through this, right? Like, let's make sure it's a good fit all the way around.

You know, I want to talk to you about the things we do and how we operate and all those types of things, and great, get them recruited and we're off to the races. But I don't know, that's just a big one for me. It's just you attract your kind, the way you are, the way you choose to operate, you'll probably end up being surrounded by that to some degree, at some capacity. I do think that starting out, there's an inherent degree of ignorance that.

When you're dealing with salespeople and recruiters and marketers and IMO's and all that kind of stuff, it's very easy to get enamored by their shiny objects and this, that and the other. And they're salespeople too. Right? And if you're starting out and there's a level of ignorance, there's. Yeah, you may end up taking a few, A few goes with IMOs that are no go, no good, but you live and you learn and eventually you end up finding somewhere that's like, wow, this is a good fit.

Gives a total different meaning to Nigo.

You might encounter IMOs that are Nigo IMOs. They are not in good order. Stay away, danger.

And to be fair, to play the. The other side of the coin here, there are some really good ones out there. We had a conversation yesterday, or I think it was yesterday, with an agent going over our agency marketing suite. We're demoing this. This tool that we've got, our software and this agent was telling us about his marketing organization and how he's been with this marketer for something like 12 years.

Super.

Yeah. Like, they visit, he comes down and visits them. This agent pays his own way to go visit this marketer. That's fantastic. I'M not trying to weasel my way into the middle of a good working relationship like that. I want to enhance what they've got.

Right.

So I affirmed it. I'm like, man, that is. That is so rare. But they are out there. And so to those marketers, those organizations, the agents that have found them, man, props to you. That's a rarity.

And that goes back to the competition piece that we talked about last. Last episode right there. That is our competitor, technically. Right. When we're on the phone with an agent and they like, one of our tools or something that we offer for us to be ethical enough to be like, stay with that individual. Like, we're not trying to uproot your business unless you feel like it's the right thing for you to be with us. We're not trying to change that because we want more good people.

Right.

So we want the good people to keep doing great work. That's how the industry actually gets transformed. So there are plenty of people to go around. It's that whole. That whole concept of. Of scarcity. Right. Some people thrive off of scarcity marketing.

Yeah.

Not saying that sometimes there isn't true scarcity, because I think that. That there is a reality that it is more scarce to find people that do it like that.

Yeah.

But when you find them, stick with them.

Yeah.

You know, go deep with them.

This is an interesting concept, Josh, and it's something I've never really considered, even as a partner of retirement realized.

I don't. I don't need retirement realized to have 100% of the market share, but I individually want to influence 100% of the market share to do the thing the right way. And what's interesting is the greater percentage of the market share in the IMO world that will do the thing the right way. Inevitably.

Our piece may not grow as big as it could otherwise. In a sense, the worse off the other IMOs are, the larger we'll probably get. Just being real. If we're talking real life.

Sure.

The better they operate, the better they get. Well, they're gonna end up with agents for 12 years.

Right.

That they've got. And they're talking to. And their agents are fine. And that's just the reality of it. I don't care about having 100% of the market share, but I want to influence 100% of the market share to do the thing. Sure. The right stinking way.

Well, and, Caleb, that's. For me, you know, when we're talking about kind of our methodology. Right. And once again, this is not a commercial for what we do. But. But this. This is important. This is why we do podcasts like this. That's why we started this thing. Right. We want to be able to influence a community of agents to enjoy the industry that we're in.

Yeah.

To realize that everyone goes through issues. To realize that, you know, there's plenty of funny stuff that happens. There's plenty of, you know, big, you know, whiffs inside of appointments, and even the best people screw up, you know, in appointments, and they fumble things at times. It's just the reality. But ultimately, if we're not actually trying to help the industry, then it's all selfish gain at that point.

Yeah.

And so for us, we do the podcast where we give this away for free. We're not trying to recruit people. We're not trying to, you know, sell our products, our training, our software, whatever, you know, all the tools that we have. That's not the point of this. Now. Will some people buy those things because they look us up and do their own research on us after this? Maybe, but that's not the point. The point is let's connect people. Let's. Let's actually show people how you can do it the right way.

Right.

And that's why things like our training can help people, regardless of what I am over with.

Yeah.

Training, software, all those things can be used by anybody. In fact, we've white labeled entire platforms for people before and helped launch some of the biggest competitors that we have in the industry.

Yeah, it's true.

And I'm like, great.

Yeah.

You know why?

Because we want to see the industry.

Changed and it sharpens us to be better.

Yeah.

And if we suddenly start to monopolize things that we're doing or things that we at one point, you know, had first mover advantage on, all those kind of things.

Eventually you reach that point where you get comfortable.

Right.

Because you're just dominating something now. We've had individuals come with us that we've. That have, you know, paid us lots of money to help them begin certain programs, and then we've, like, fully released those things, no strings attached. And we still are great friends with those people.

Right.

We still work with those people. We still love seeing them succeed. And we know that sometimes we lose people to what they're doing, and sometimes they probably lose people to what we're doing, and that's okay because ultimately we're all doing something that's better in the industry.

Yeah. Yeah. It's true, man.

You're getting me on My, my soapbox here.

It's the name of the game. It's. I mean, talk a little bit about personal life here.

I recently entered a cattle venture with my brother. Okay.

I was your first investor.

One of the things.

Yeah, true. One of the things that inspired me to get into that was hearing a statistic from a cattle rancher in South Dakota. In South Dakota, I heard that these cattle ranchers are able to stock their property, one animal unit, which is the equivalent of one cow calf pair, one mama cow, one baby cow calf, that one animal unit on between three and five acres. And then they're able to go and sell what they call five weights, which would be your 500 pound marketable steers or heifers at the auction ring for 350 to $4 a pound. So when you can stock that heavily and you can make that much per pound, your financial opportunity is immense. In Texas, to give you concept.

We'Re stocking approximately an Animal unit to 15 to 20, depending on where in Texas you are. 15 to 20 acres. There's some parts of Texas where you can get down into the high single digits, you know, one animal unit. Right. Overall, way fewer cattle per property. And then when you go look at the market reports and whatnot, we're not bringing $3.50 to $4 a pound because the types, the breeds of cattle that they're able to run up north compared to what we're able to run down here from a hardiness perspective are vastly different. I saw the discrepancy and how much more difficult it is for Texas ranchers to actually be able to turn some good financial returns. I mean, it's a, often a losing financial battle for a lot of these guys down here. And it inspired me to train. Eventually we just got into it, but eventually I want to create something that can compete with the northern guys. I want to create a whole new breed of cattle.

Now you're pitching your cattle so we don't sell our stuff, but you're selling your cattle.

I'm just telling the story of what's the point of doing it if you're not going to have impact. Like I told my brother early on, I'm not interested in just buying cows and having some cows run out, you know, run around out there on the, on the ranch and, you know, they're all just commercial cows that we're going to just take the auction, whatever, if there's not going to be impact in it, it's a waste of time to me, and I love working with him. We would have a blast doing it, but it's like we're going to have that regardless of the product. So let's make the product have impact. And it's the same way in retirement realized, you and I, we're going to have fun working together, whatever it is. Right. But if we're going to do it and we're going to do it in the IMO world, we're going to do it with agents, then let's think and have impact. I mean, we're going to spend the time either way. And agents, you're going to spend the time with the clients, you know, IMO marketers, you're going to spend the time with the agents. If you're going to spend the time anyways, then do it in a way that has impact and is done the right way. I mean, I don't know, it just doesn't feel like a hard concept. But here we are two weeks in.

A row talking about it because evidently.

We'Re seeing it the opposite.

Right.

On a week by week basis.

Right.

So.

Well, I want to ask you, Caleb, any funny stories this week that you've encountered?

Funny stories.

Golly funny.

I don't recall any real funny ones, if I'm being honest. I know some historically funny stories that's.

Let's jump into one funny story. We're going to get this rolling where agents are starting to send in, send in their own stories and their own blunders and all that kind of stuff. But let's get them started. Something funny that you've heard in the industry.

Well, should we, can I, can I name drop the agent? He's part of our organization.

Sure.

Chad who you guys know, if you've ever watched Seven Figure Annuity Sales podcast, you know, Chad and I, we love to banter, we love to tease. Chad is in, in the field, just like you agents. He's doing 25 to 30 million a year. Super producer type guy. Well, he's in Colorado now. He used to live in Texas and we used to work out of the office together. And I remember one day.

Don't be too specific.

He, he, he left the office and running an appointment.

And I think this appointment was, I don't remember exactly where it was. I was obviously in Texas somewhere. It was an in person appointment. Most of what he was doing at the time was in person. And, and he shows up and it's a nudist colony. He got a lead.

It's a nude ranch.

Nude dude ranch or something like that. Yeah. And so he got a Lead. Made a phone call, booked an appointment, shows up to the appointment, had no idea. Yeah. Never came up in conversation. And there are signs for, like, basically.

Beware, you know, beyond this point, of what you might see, in essence. And he drives in there and he does the appointment. And it's funny, you're thinking. You're probably like, oh, you know, it was crazy.

Some crazy thing.

Let me tell this. Oh, you stole my.

Well, you go for it.

You stole my punchline.

What were you gonna say?

Gonna build it up. I'm gonna say he got all the way to the door, and suddenly he opened the door and it was just a normal guy.

Yeah. It was phasing out of that era, of its existence.

It was somebody that was just a dude living in his house. Not a nudist guy.

No. But you never know what you're going to see, never know what you're going to come across.

Yeah. And the thing for us is, Caleb and I are here in the office and, you know, steering the ship and running the thing, and all of a sudden we just get a text from Chad and it's the. No response. Yeah, that's it. That said nude ranch. And then suddenly, just no response for a long period of time. And we're like, longer than a normal appointment should be. I think he actually said, send help.

Yeah, that he did.

He sent a photo of the sign help. And so we're like texting back.

We're like, hey, you good, man?

No answer the phone. No texts. And we're down here thinking, Chad's been.

Attacked by these people.

Luckily, luckily, Chad encountered no nude men or women. That's true.

That's true. That is one.

Close the deal. I think he did as well.

He did. He did. That's one of many crazy stories that Chad. You know what? We ought to have Chad.

We need to have him one time.

Yeah. Chime in with us one. One time. And share some of his crazy stories, because he has some wild ones.

When you've been in the industry for that long, I mean, you're just. You're bound to have crazy stories.

Well, and. And even more so because he was for so long explicitly face to face.

Right.

I mean, only recently as he started doing things virtually, but historically, he's been face to face. And so when you're running those kinds of appointments and you're going to people's homes, not just face to face in the sense of they're coming office. No, Chad was going to these people's environments. And you want to talk about seeing some Interesting environments. He could probably write a book on.

All the crazy appointments he's had.

Life as an annuity agent, we ought.

To just have him on and talk about that sometime.

It would be. That would be a funny. That would be a funny episode.

Yep, for sure. But my goal, I mean, I. We've talked about this for any of you agents listening, like send in funny stories. I mean, we want this to be something, obviously we're, we're laying foundation and we're letting y' all get to know who we are and talking about the way that we operate and all that kind of stuff a lot right now. But ultimately, like, we want this to be something where we can be real, we can go deep, we can simultaneously laugh, be light hearted, you know, and everything in between.

Right.

And so we want this to be kind of that casual listening for you as you're, you know, driving home from work or you're sitting on your back porch enjoying a beverage like we are here. I mean, that's why we joke about like having a glass of whiskey. Right. That is decompression for us as we're just ending out the week talking about what we, what we experienced this week as a couple of guys that are, that are working in this industry at a high level. So. Yeah, that's great. Anything else that you want to add today, Caleb?

I'll add one last thing.

You always do.

Cheers to another great week.

Cheers for the annuity. Fun, guys.

Warm up the old larynx. Larynx a little bit.

Warm up that old, that old voice box you got down in there.

Warming up the voice box.

The old larynx.

Warming up the voice box.

I can't do it anymore.

You can do the falsetto.

I yelled at the dogs one time and they. Yeah, I lost my voice and never been able to falsetto since. Man, I used to be able to hold a candle to Whitney and Celine and oh my goodness, Mariah.

All those greats. Christina. Those of you that don't know that I am on a first name basis with Whitney Houston, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey and Christina Aguilera definitely are. Yeah, so they call me sometimes. Check in.

I try not to be saving all this for the actual episode.

Try not to reach out to them much because, you know, little do you.

Know, this is the episode already.

Little do I know this is already. We're already here and rolling.

Well, welcome back to the annuity fund, guys. Here we are, Caleb. Another cheers. Another week in the books.

Another week in the books.

Going down. We're still living we're still breathing, still above ground. So that's a good thing. This week was still like each other. That's a good thing.

In spite of my inability to take direction.

Oh, yeah. Should I tell this story or. Yeah. So even just purely getting set up for this episode today, you know, I spend all the time making all these things to present our podcast to the world in the best way humanly possible. For what it is, it is good. And what does Caleb do? I say, caleb, can you come check your camera? You come just have a seat there for me real quick and let me check the lighting. Let me make sure that all is good. Can you just look where I'd be sitting? And then where does Caleb look? Everywhere but where I asked him to.

Sit and then tell the people.

You. I don't remember exactly what I said. It was something along the lines of, I have a hard time. I don't like being told what to do. It's been particularly challenging, you know, the last 28 years of life. It makes living in this world a little bit more difficult than it needs.

To be when you have a hard time with instruction. I was a child growing up where.

Everything was super literal and everything was.

Everything was up for debate in my mind, not in reality, but in my mind, like, I would do something.

I know that that is. That was not your reality.

No, it's not. It was.

It was not the reality of existence, but it was the reality of kind of the construct that I created in my head. And so it created situations where even growing up, I would do something that totally warranted getting in trouble, and then I would get myself into more trouble by trying to argue my way out of being in trouble. I was convinced, Josh, like, so convinced in my mind that I could make an argument and make my point great enough that it would show my parents that actually I was not in the.

Wrong, that it was actually okay for me to have done or said whatever it was.

I was. I was gaslighting people at 4 years old.

See, you young. You young bucks use these terms like gaslighting. I still don't know really what that term means.

It would be like. I guess a good example of it would be, you and I, we have a. We have a disagreement about something. And then I start, wait.

I think I just suddenly got it. It's what you do in every single one of our meetings, where you try to convince me that I did something that is. Is not actually true.

But you particularly, like, prey on their lack of recollection. So, like, if you Just my memory is perfect.

You just didn't remember something.

And I was like, oh, yeah, man, you said XYZ or you did. XYZ is like making it a definitive statement to try to convince you that that happened and preying on your lack of recollection. Like, that's the way I understand it. I don't know.

So piggybacking on our ethics talk last week. Don't do that. Don't.

Don't do that.

Don't be that guy.

Yeah, it's, it's. Life is a lot different this side of. This side of Jesus than It was at 4, 5, 10, 15 years old. So anyways, different guy here now than I was 24 years ago.

But yeah, for sure. I didn't know you then, but I.

Would imagine, yeah, I don't know that you would have liked me then. We probably wouldn't have been. I know that I like you now.

I'm kidding. I love you, man.

Oh, that's funny.

Hey.

Well, Caleb, we've had some crazy things happen this week. Two particular things. Yeah, that, that I want to highlight. Actually. There were two carrier things that happened this week. Now we talked slightly about one this last week with the whole contract thing. If you haven't heard that one, you can give a 15 second recap on that in a second. But basically what we're talking about is there, there are carrier decisions at some points that can be made.

Right.

And now we had two very opposing decisions that were made this week that affected agents very differently. And so I want to talk about, I don't want to say any carrier names. I actually love both of these carriers. They're great carriers, they have great products. But I want to actually highlight the things that agents can run into sometimes because there are times where something seems so obvious. It seems like, of course X company is going to side with this belief because the facts point to that.

Right.

But in reality, that doesn't always happen. And so highlight these two instances real quick and share with the people that happen.

I will highlight these two and I'll preface by saying that for me, what determines the quality of a boss, an individual, an employee, an insurance company we work with an imo, Any of those things is not their ability to operate without flawless or their ability to operate in perfection. It's not that at all. It's how they respond when they don't. So I have a buddy, had some struggles, whatever, and I was talking to him and I was like, man, what defines a good man is not him being a perfect man. Like, a good man is not a perfect man. A good man is a man who, in his imperfections, responds to the imperfections the right way. Sure. And so, because we're not perfect, we're humans. And carriers are human beings. They're. They're companies comprised of human beings. IMOs are human beings, companies comprised of human being. Agents, employees, bosses, we're all human. So we know going into any of these working relationships that there's going to be opportunity for shortfall. There's going to be opportunity for things not to be done the way that we want them to do. But the mark of being somewhere good, working with a good carrier, working with a good imo, good company, whatever, is how they respond to the things that they don't do. Right the first time, the things that they failed in. So I'll recap the first example that we talked a little bit about last week. It was, contracting agent gets contracted LOA to an imo. So that means the IMO gets all their commissions, right? And then they have their own internal agreements for disseminating those commissions back to the agent, some kind of rate. Well, you get contracted, he decides he wants to move over to retirement. Realized financial. He wrote Business recently. So typically that requires a release or waiting six months to actually write that carrier and move that contract. The IMO he was with before would not sign the release. That was something they were unwilling to do, which I think is wrong, personally. If you're, you know, an IMO and you're listening to the podcast, like, really consider if you're having your contracting team, your marketers not signing releases for your agents that want to move away, the question should not be, well, how do I try and retain this agent longer? It should be, what did I need to do differently when I had them to have retained them without needing to force them.