Work for Legacy, not Instant Gratification | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 323

Hello, everyone. This is Chad Owen with Seven Figure Annuity Sales Podcast. And as always, my sidekick, Caleb north, that is now totally infected and infested by pollen. And so if you look at him, hear him, the sniffles, you're gonna hear that it's just Texas. We're trying to get him to move to Colorado because we don't have the allergies like they do down there. Down there, they will literally kill you. There's this thing where you watch the trees spit out these big yellow clouds of pollen and it's all over your car and it is a mess.

Oh, yeah.

But, and, but Caleb is a proud man. He will not take medicine. So why? I don't know.

They say. What?

What did they say?

They say that if you, if you don't have allergies and you move to Texas, you'll get allergies. It's like you'll just, you'll develop them. And I've lived here for my whole life, so, yeah, I have allergies and spades.

It's. But you won't take medicine?

No, I don't like medicine.

And did you go to H E B and buy that allergy, the natural stuff that helps you build up an immune system to it?

No, I'm trying to build my immune system naturally.

Yeah, I see it's doing well. I mean, in your 16 years of life, we can see it still has not worked. I mean, come on, this. Hopefully someday you're going to figure this out.

Yeah, when I get to my seventh year of life.

Yeah, if you do make it that far. See, because you do some dumb things sometimes.

I keep the engine running on high.

Yeah, I agree. So, you know, last week was a short week because I actually went to an event with David Green. He's the founder, billionaire. On, man, I always get this. Well, no, I'm trying to say Philamp.

Philanthropist.

Yes. I can never say that word. But the guy, literally, the, their organization, hobby lobby, makes 8 billion a year. They give away half of the profit. Every single. They give away half of the profit.

8 billion is their profit?

No, that's what they make in sales. Per revenue is 8 billion. But I, I, I heard through the grapevine, they gave almost 700 million away last year.

Wow.

Which is just insane. And it's, it's really cool how they do this because they do it in a G1, G2, G3 type concept. So Generation 1 has their allotment of money that they have that they decide where they're going to give it away. Then the Kids have their allotment of money that they're going to decide where they give it away. And the grandkids have their allotment of money and they decide where they're going to give away. It is cool because you think about it generationally, what are you teaching your kids?

Right?

You know, he said something that just shook me to the core that was just, is so, so crazy because I believe in legacy. But. And I'm trying to look at what that was because it was. I wanted to word it just exactly how he put it, but I've always been about legacy. And legacy is just basically teaching future generations how to do things right and how to make sure they don't make the same mistakes we do. If they make mistakes, it's in an area that they're forging on their own. They're trying to plow the ground in an area that I haven't been to. But when he said this, he said legacy is not what you leave behind, it's what you set in motion. And I was just like, dang. Because if you think about it, how many times do our retirees or ourselves, money gets left behind and it's blowing. It's gone in a nanosecond. You know, somebody buys something, they do something with it, they spend it like crazy. There's nothing to leave behind. And. But what you set in motion is literally, what have you told your family that needs to continue once you're gone? And I know this isn't client specific, but we often talk about in our industry and one of the things we talk about in our organization is why we do what we do. In other words, why do we work the hours we do? Why do we spend the money we do on leads? Why do we. It's also so we can create a lifestyle and a legacy for our own family. And when we set these things in motion, literally. I've said this for a while and there's quite a few people that I've heard say this or a portion of this, but they'll say a legacy is not a legacy unless it's something that can't be completed by you. In other words, it's something you have to have for future generations. In other words, I want our family to be multi billionaires. And it's not about the money, it's about the impact the money can have. You know, now there is an old tale back in the day, and it's, I hear all the time is you can tell an old man who is driven by future generations, who plants A tree that he'll never sit in the shade that that tree produces.

Yeah.

In other words, he's literally building or making a legacy that he will never be able to participate in, but he knows it will impact future generations. And I think that's what we get to do. Because if we help clients protect their money the way they should, they not only get to live a while, but if it's done right, they're going to have income for life and some money to pass on to their heirs when they die. And it's a sad thing when I think about it because you often hear people say, I don't care what's left when I die. When it's gone, it's gone. I want to. My dad used to say this. I want my last check to bounce when I die. It's like it says in the Bible, leave an inheritance to your children's children. And if we don't get in that mindset, this is why people can sit there and they can say, well, I'm dying at 80 years old. I don't care how much money I have to have after that. They don't have a long term mindset. It's a short term gratification. I want stock market gains now. I want income now. I want the lifestyle I want now. Well, that's all good and fine, but if you don't have that 15, 20 years from now and you live 25 or 30 years from now, I mean, someone retires at 60, they could easily live to 90.

Yeah.

So what happens is if you live beyond 80, when you say you're going to die, you know, what, what do you do there? You know, how do you get extra money? And that's where it comes into play. So we've, I think it's, it's such a tricky balance because then I heard another young lady as she's, man, what's her name? I'm drawing blank. She's drawn, she's so Duck Dynasty's daughter, Sadie Robertson. Sadie. Sadie. She said she was very, she had some anxiety about what happened in the past and she has anxiety about what's happening in the future. And she goes and talks to her 94 year old great grandmother and she asks these two questions, I guess all the time. I don't follow her much, but she asked these two questions and she says, what do you wish you would have changed and what do you see for the Future? And her 94 year old grandmother literally said, well, honey, I don't think much about the past because it's the past. And I don't think much about the future because I focus on what today is. And so there's that balance. Right. You have to focus on what today is. You have to focus on, I need this X number of dollars, X number of things, X number of lifestyle. I need this thing done today. But you also have to plan for the unknown. And the unknown is where's the stock market going to be five or ten years from now, let alone tomorrow? Or where's the how long are you going to live for? We don't know the answers to those questions. So I'm really processing this whole thing because I'm sitting going, okay, how do I get my clients to understand that perception? And it's so difficult because I still have clients now that they see the stock market what it's done the past year because it's up over the past year, but the year to date, it's down. So they're up about 30% approximately, depending on what index, what fund you're in past year, they're up about 16 to 30%. But if you take the average of how far they're down is 8% approximately for the year they get that mindset. Well, you know, it's always done good. It's always done well. And I think that's. I, I keep telling you about this, Caleb. It's like clients are a little different nowadays. They're harder to understand because it is the first generation, as you pointed out, you said, is the first generation that most people don't have pensions and so they don't have that guaranteed income. But it's also the first generation where literally since 2009, the stock markets went pretty much up.

Yep.

So 14 years, 15 years, 16 years, they've seen nothing but upside growth. So in their mind, it's never going to do a massive drop again.

Yep.

So, I mean, what have you found with agents? What do you, what do you see in that arena?

Well, aside from agents, I actually have a couple of thoughts from a client, from a client standpoint. I went out to California, golly, two months ago, three months ago, I don't even remember when that was this year, and got to speak to some retirees there. And one of the things that I mentioned in that conversation was that the best plan for dying is a good plan for living. And the idea there is you have to take care of the first things first. And that if you will take care of the first things first, then you know with certainty what you're going to actually be able to leave behind because you know with certainty that you're not going to have to dip into that to cover your living while you're still here. So if you want to make a good plan for dying, you need to first make a good plan for living. And I think that that's really important. And I agree 100%, Chad. I mean, the market over the last 14, 15 years has done pretty much nothing but go up with the exception of very, you know, a few years there where they weren't even consecutive. They were just kind of one off years of, of negative returns and not even very much negative. So it's, it's been a, it's been a gold mine. And I think trying to get people to see beyond that is, is a challenging thing, but a necessary and worthwhile thing. But yeah, that's, I mean, that's where my brain went was that was that concept of the best plan for dying is a good plan for living.

You know.

You writing that down?

Like. Yeah, I am writing that down. You know, sometimes you say things that shock me. I'm like, that's so good. I just don't have that high level expectation for you. So, yeah, we'll keep, we'll keep those.

Expectations low so that I can keep exceeding them.

It's so true. Right? Because that. Dude, that is such a great saying. That's. Did you come up with that on your own?

That was in my PowerPoint slide that I made.

That's because you were sitting next to me for so many years in the office and you heard the, the, the WISD just leaks through the wall, right? I don't think so.

Dang, that's really good. Yeah, I did write that down. You know, that's another thing I find too is there's so much we can learn from each other. And this event that we went to with David Green, it was just. He's got to be in his early 80s, latter 70s. I mean, he's, he's got to be a little older, but he just still works five days a week. And you could tell he really loves what he does. And the president, which is his son, which is another interesting thing, he actually only has four of his family members working with him, but all of them are accomplishing major things, like they're all making a big impact in the world. And his son goes, you know what? You're obviously the CEO of Hobby Lobby. And he goes, there's got to be something on your mind right now, like, what's the biggest thing on your mind right now? And he Said baskets. And it sounds like what? Because baskets, we have five baskets that are almost the exact same size. Why are we carrying five baskets that are almost the exact same size? And he literally still has that much detail oriented mind. Because their whole thing is about they move one to two items per month in each category. So they, let's say they have 25 different candles. They only move one to two of those in each color or scent per month. And it's interesting because it's all about thinking. They said we don't want the cousin. And what he means by that is we don't want the basket that is the cousin to the other basket because it's too similar. So why would we carry two things on our shelves that are almost identical?

Yep.

And you know, it. The thought process, interesting because it made me really start to think deep about what are the duplicate things I'm thinking about, you know, when I'm trying to help people for retirement, what are the duplicate things I'm thinking about where I could really focus on one point and get that across.

Yep.

You know, it's, it's even in our training program. Right. You know, I don't want to have six different training videos that are almost identical. If you notice, most of our training videos are very specific and target driven. Now we do refer back to some of the videos because obviously you, when you're using a fact finder, it's tied into multiple aspects of your entire presentation. So we'll, we'll bring back the fact finder into things. But there's just like this weird reflection in time of life where I'm trying to figure out how are we going to get through this industry? Yeah. And, and then of course I've been reading a ton about AI. AI agents. You know, I think we're still quite a ways away from that because our generation that we work with generally is still a handshake type generation. But how do we get ahead of for future generations, the 30 year olds right now, the 35 year olds, you know, maybe even 40 even. But I was just. We had a family gathering yesterday and out of the entire group and it ranged from about 70, 75 years old down to, I think the youngest was five or six. But we had a conversation about AI and it was all over the place of what people believe or perceive about it. But as Zach went on that trip with me and I started talking about GPT and he's like, yeah, because he used to tease me all the time about GPT because every answer I would talk about it's like, hey, let's GPT it. Let's do that. And then he got a hold of it, and it is crazy what he's doing with it, what he's thinking, how. How his brain goes. So what happens when a client that is now 35 turns 55 and they sit there and they go, well, I don't know much about annuities. Let's go watch this program. And it's a fully automated AI bot that pulls from the web all the information you need. Looks like a real human. You can't decipher the difference. What happens there. And then what happens when it says, click on a link to buy the annuity that you want to buy. And literally the AI bot will be able to sit there and tell you, well, here's annuity insurance company A and company B. Here's the pros and cons of each. And then. Oh, let's go ahead. And which one do you want? Okay, you want this one? Okay, what's your name? What's your Social Security number? And it will literally fill out the application for you and give me a verbal authorization that it's okay to move forward, no signatures required. How do we get ahead of that?

Yeah, I think. I do think that the world's first, like, published trillionaire, that. I think there may already be some out there, but.

I think the world's first published trillionaire will come through AI. I've contended for some time, Chad, that a technology that can make your job easier can eventually replace you. And I don't say that to, like, instill fear, because there shouldn't be fear. And being replaced means there's advancement. You need to develop another skill. But I do think that because of where we're at, we can't stop developing skills. We have to continually be developing skills. Almost like sharks. If sharks. Isn't it sharks, if they stop swimming, they'll die.

For a vast majority of sharks, there are some, like the nurse shark, It. It doesn't need to keep moving, but there's a couple that don't need to move.

So same concept. If we stop developing skills and. And this goes to the agents, like, you need to not just sit there and oppose AI as somebody who has alternative concerns with the concept. It's here whether we want it to be or not, and it's propelling whether we think it should or shouldn't. So you have to be able to understand it and be able to use it if you're going to be relevant in the future seasons of. Of Life in this world, I mean it's like the Internet. Like we all use the Internet now. And there was a time when that was absolutely crazy.

So that was the devil. That was the devil. I, I was watching this movie, this TV show and I don't knock me for I love it and I don't care if you gave me a hard time, but called Downton Abbey and I remember there's the head butler sitting there going, they were talking about putting electric, electricity into the kitchen. Like we don't need electricity. Why would you ever need electricity in the kitchen? And then there's another episode where the cars were just getting around. They got their first car and one of the older ladies goes, why would anybody ever need to move that fast? There's no reason to get around that fast. And nowadays we sit there and we go, okay, we're going 75, 80 miles an hour. If you're in Texas, 105 miles an hour down the highway and we're still sitting there going, we're not getting there quick enough. And so the acceleration of where we get is increasing immensely.

Yep.

And I do think, you know, our industry, it is, it's one of the slower, I would say the annuity life insurance industry is the turtle of the financial world. It just moves really slow into things. It's hard to get get into that. But what happens if we start to embrace that and we become one of the leads in this? And this is where retirement realized financial is really starting to do. A lot of focus is in that AI arena. How do we help not to replace agents, but how do we help agents get more information quicker to be able to help their clients?

Well, the good thing about the agent IMO insurance company model is that there are some layers of liability buffer for the insurance companies. So the agent messes up, the agent is liable, the IMO messes up, the IMO is liable. And there's kind of this, this buffered protection to the insurance company. If the insurance company were to, you know, roll out in mass artificial intelligence and now that's their thing that they're putting out there and they have people buying their products because of this AI you, you eliminate a lot of that liability coverage now, I'm sure they're going to figure out other ways to cover that. But point is, I don't think we're on the brink of that happening, but I do think that, that that technology is going to be here in, in less time than we think. And since we're talking about, yeah, five.

To ten years mark My word.

And since we're talking about tech advances, one of the things that I actually thought about earlier when you were talking about clients and, and living plan, dying plan, all that stuff, and I'll, I'll end with this and wrap it up, but was the idea of Henry Ford. It's like, what was so revolutionary about Henry Ford? It was the assembly line. It was the fact that he had people that they knew what their job was and they were excellent at that job. That one specific thing. Well, you create way more efficiency when you have this person doing this and this person doing that and this person doing this. Way more efficiency. Well, what clients are trying to do right now is they're trying to get all of their money to do all of the jobs at the same time. What we are able to come in and help them structure is the assembly line effect, where it's like, this is my income money. This is my death plan money. This is my, you know, emergency funds and savings. We're creating efficiency in the entirety of their finances by giving each bucket of money, each chunk of money, its job and its purpose and using the vehicle, the vessel, the product, whatever you want to call it. That is an expert at that one thing.

I'm writing that down, too.

And as a Ford guy, you probably really appreciate the reference.

Well, of course, because we know the assembly line for the Chevy. Poor little guys, they start falling to pieces. It's like, like they don't even know how to put a screw on all the way. And all of a sudden you're driving along the road and your tire falls off.

What can you do, you know?

Yeah, what can you do? But no, that. Dang, Caleb, really good stuff today. I. I would say your input is better than mine today. No, you definitely. I would say you did some. You had some really good things. Take the compliment when I give it to you because it's, you know, it's not that often. Okay.

All right.

Okay. Well, I hope this helps you guys. And of course, if you have any questions, reach out to us. If you want to be part of our fmo, reach out to us. If you want to get involved in our training program or go high level that we've created specifically geared towards annuities, reach out to us. I hope this helps you. Have a great day and happy selling.

Sam.