Build & Scale Your Business w/ John Wetmore

I'm gonna do some, like, I'm also gonna put in some, like, open Q&A stuff as well. So if y'all have questions during, throughout, you can, you can type them in. I may probably wait till the end to, to answer them. And again, my goal is to, to add different things once a month, different topics. If you guys have things specifically you want me to go over, feel free to DM me, message me, whatever, and I can incorporate it. I literally tend to do things. Based on like things I'm going through or questions people ask me throughout the week. So that's kind of the premise of this. Amanda, will you put that thing up or do you want me to? If you can, that'd be dope. The premise of this one is just some stuff I was thinking about on the plane ride a few days ago, going over— I don't know, I just decided to come up with some topics on some things that I talked about in meetings and A lot of agents ask me a lot of questions. A lot of the questions are the same. I see, I see a lot of things on social and I think a lot of, a lot of people, myself included, overcomplicate this business. So I think I was in a meeting yesterday at Integrity's corporate office and a bunch of the partners were there and we got to spend some time with Brian Adams, who's CEO of Integrity, and just some of our partners internally. And someone was— someone brought up— there was a few of us meeting together and he had, he had said he was talking about some things that helped him throughout the years from my buddy Mark. He talked about what helped him there. And I always love when, when people say things that I've helped them with. Almost always it's that I've, I've, I've helped people simplify things and I don't overcomplicate it, which is a compliment for me because I can overcomplicate a lot of things. Sometimes I like way overthink things. And so I had to learn how to make this business really simple. And then I had to learn how to articulate it in a simple way because y'all overcomplicate it too. And this business is really easy. And how can I see it and see them? Amanda, I don't like that. I can't see everyone. I don't like just talking at a screen. I'm weird. And maybe we take it off, like just put it on, take it off. I don't know what I'm gonna do. But I do like to see people too. So you might have to come down here and fix it because I hate not seeing them. But anyway, so I'm going to go through monthly and just go through different things. And my goal is to help people make a— just being honest, make a fuck ton of money in the business, help a lot of people get paid. And I think the more I do that, like we have a chart on my office, in my office on the wall, and it's like, just help people get paid. Like, that's our goal. If I can help a bunch of people get paid, things have always worked out for me. And I think for you guys, if you're looking to build something, like, if that's the focus— like, Brian Adams was doing this presentation yesterday. Integrity has— he's created this, like, referral system. Legacy Safeguard is called, and it's a way to generate referrals. But the system itself, the way it works, is like when someone dies, there's this whole program he put in place that takes care of, like, setting up a funeral, like calling in and filing death claims with carriers. He did it in conjunction with all the different carriers. And there's all these things it does. It allows you to go in in advance and like put in all your personal information, your logins, like everything you can think of that when someone dies, all the stuff that people go through, he thought of and he put it in a system. And the reason he did it is because he wants to help people. And yes, it's a sales tool and yes, it gets referrals. But he's like, my approach is let me add value to them. Let me lead with value. And then in return, the like law of reciprocity, it tends to like, it tends to work out for me. And he does run Integrity. So I'm like, it probably worked out, you know, and he created this thing. Crazy enough, he crashed an airplane once and he legit thought he was going to die. And so then he started thinking about it and he's like, dude, I'm in the business now and everything planned out. Like my family wouldn't know everything to do. Like if I died, me, John Wetmore died, yo, Steph wouldn't know what to— she'd have to call Amanda. And I'm pointing upstairs because her office is above me, if you're wondering. I'd have to call them like she'd have to call Amanda to figure stuff out. And I'm like, it's crazy. Anyway, the point of it is like if he went out of his way to help people take care of their families when they died, the insurance part would come naturally, you know what I'm saying? And for me, when I first started in this business, my whole goal was for me to get paid. I started building because I wanted overrides, like I wanted to print money and I didn't do really well. I didn't print money and I didn't get many overrides. And when I changed the perspective to one, let me sell a lot, and then two, just help people make money, dude, the overrides came like literally by mistake. So the thing that y'all saw on the screen, that's kind of like step one, a system. And some people think system and they think like CRMs and the new fanciest automation and AI and all this shit. And I'm like, I don't know if Chase is on here. I know I see— I see you on, Alexis. But he did a post in a group today, or maybe it was yesterday, and I loved it because he was like, the newest this, the newest that, and the newest this thing. He goes, you don't need none of that shit to succeed in this business. And I think when people start, Y'all are hunting, or your agents are hunting for the newest tool, the newest trick, the newest thing, the newest script, the newest like magic pill to make, to have success in the business. And not that those things aren't important because they do help, but what I always say is like, you know, insurance has been around like 200 years, and prior to like 20 years ago, there was literally no technology, period. And the insurance industry has been a trillion-dollar industry before any of us started in it, you know, and they didn't need any of the fancy stuff to do. Again, not saying it doesn't help. All I'm saying is like people overcomplicate stuff. So for me, the system of like how to scale something is really simple. Like you learn the business and you can learn this thing in the most simple way. I was at a Cody Askins event this week and some lady there was like, There's 450 CRMs now. I, which one is the best one? And I'm like, you know, if you ask 100 people, you know, you're gonna get 100 different answers. There is real no best one. And I was like, dude, I made $500,000 with no CRM, writing people's name down on a piece of paper, like a blank, literally like a scrap blank piece of paper, writing down names and tally marks on how many phone calls I made. And I just wrote down like 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock. Bob has an appointment at 8. Steve has appointment at 9. Like, and I made $500,000 without any system, quote unquote. So it can't— again, not saying you shouldn't use one or don't use one. I'm saying sometimes people overcomplicate things and that causes them to make less money. So for me, again, the concept of scaling is learn how to do something yourself. Like if you want to have a bunch of people selling a shitload of insurance, you should probably sell a shitload of insurance. It's going to be really hard for you to teach people to be successful if you don't make no money, you know. Um, now it doesn't mean you can't recruit when you're not making money, but you shouldn't be the one training them. You should promote the person who's making a shitload of money, who's helping you, versus you trying to own everything. So it's like, you got to learn how to get to another— whatever level you want to get to. I want to make $100 grand, $250 grand, $500, $1 million bucks, whatever it is. Learn that, and learn it from someone who's doing it. Don't learn it from someone who's not. Don't post in those stupid insurance Facebook groups and ask them how to do it because you're just going to get into a keyboard fight with random people on the internet. Like, learn it from someone that's actually doing it. Someone added me to— I saw someone laughing. Like, someone added me to one of those groups this week because I hate— I'm in none of them. The only one I'm in is Joe Camper's because he controls it, the Insurance Syndicate. But someone tagged me in it and it added me to like the life insurance something group. and I was in it for 2 days, and it was the most negative information on my feed I've, I've seen in years. And I, I un— I removed myself from the group this morning because I couldn't handle the negativity. So it's like scaling is, again, real easy. Learn something, teach someone what you learned, meaning make them— help them make money. And then to really scale, like, you can grow a decent amount if you just teach a bunch of people how to sell insurance. But to really scale, you've got to be able to teach someone how to teach others, which is a trick in and of itself. So meaning if I teach Amanda to sell a bunch of insurance, cool, and then I can teach Bob and Tony and Joe and Sue, whoever, all good. But there's a limit because I can only talk to so many people in a day. I can only recruit so many more if I'm the only one teaching everybody. But if I then go and I teach Amanda to then teach Alexis how to do everything and she now knows how to teach it, I don't have to, like, mess in that group a lot or my— the burden for me is a lot less anyway. So I'm like, if I can duplicate myself, so I duplicate myself in sales and then I duplicate myself in the teaching of sales, in the teaching of making money. And that's how I've scaled this whole thing. So I got— I learned how to do stuff from someone else and then I taught handful, like I had like 30, 40 people direct to me selling. And then of those 30, 40 direct, maybe like 5, like really built something big. We have probably 50 that build to some level, but like 5 direct that were like, I want to do what you do. And I taught them to do everything, all the systems, all the process, all the way I buy leads, the way I teach agents, the way I teach phone script, the way I simplify things. And then I have 5 people literally doing, excuse me, what I do all day long. And that's, that's what blew us up. When I figured that out, our volume, like our team volume, we were in 20— let me think, 2017, I think we were doing like $400 grand a month roughly. And that was basically just me hiring, recruiting people. And then 2018, we got up to like 800 grand a month or something, which was decent. Um, and I, I just had some managers kind of hiring, but I wasn't really like teaching it at scale the way I just said. When I really figured this out, that I had to teach someone else how to teach instead of me being the answer guy and kind of trusting others to take on leadership roles and, and, and do trainings and just literally teach them the details, 20 2019, from $800 grand at the end of 2019, we were doing $2.5 million a month. Like, we tripled in 1 year from this concept. And I'm like, had I done that sooner, imagine where we could be today. You know, and then fast forward now, we're doing, hell, we do, we do more than a week now. I think we did like $4.5 million this week. So again, shit, again, learn it. Teach it, teach someone to teach it. Really simple concept. And as I start to do more of these, we'll dive into even deeper things. There's only so much, only so deep I'm going to get on these basic level calls. A couple of things we are doing that I'm going to bring up. Amanda, are you— I can't see the chat thing at the same time. Here it is. I can see this. Are you going to— will you post the— we're going to do the next one of these that I'm going to do. Why don't I have 3/17? It must be 4/17, right? April 17th. Is that right, Amanda? Yes. April 17th. April 17th, 2 p.m. Same thing. She's going to post a link to register for it. If you want to get on, great. You want to share it? Great. You want to have your team on? Awesome. So there's another Zoom link there. It'll be on the website and stuff and things updated as well. And then I'm going to start doing some— and we used to do this in the office a lot and I kind of miss it. So we're going to start doing some in-office stuff to where you— now you have to come to my office like it is what it is. Come, there's no charge to get in. I don't— I'm not one of those deals. But May 2nd, we're going to start doing it once a month. So I'm going to do this once a month and in-office once a month. And then we're going to have like a— we're going to host a team once a month and they're going to be opposite weeks. So basically every week we'll do one thing. My office is in Atlanta. I say Atlanta, but if you're from Atlanta, I'm in Kennesaw. We're going to do that May 2nd. I don't know what day of the week that is, Amanda. If they can obviously figure it out, but I don't know, or I'd say, and we're going to do 9 to 3. So we're going to let people dial and do whatever you do and do whatever you got to do. We'll just be here. You'll be able to meet my staff. We got some time. Maybe we'll do— we're doing a staff meeting. We'll have— but we're going to have lunch, I think, at 12, and then I'm going to do like a 12:30 to 2:30, like in-depth like we're going to train on details and I'm going to do those once a month. So the next one, I lost the page. May 2nd, whatever day. What day is it? You just got me curious now, Amanda. It's Thursday. Thursday, May 2nd. Cool. I'm going to do the training 12:30 to 2:30. We're going to have lunch, probably catered something, sandwiches, something, something simple. And then give you all— I have some office space and some desks and things like that. If you got to like just get work done. Will be open at night. So we're going to keep doing stuff like that as well. Back to this thing. If you want to show another one, the next one, Amanda, if they want to take notes, you can. For me, number 2 would be emotions. You just write them down if you want to show it to them. Great. And like, man, when I was new in this business, anything negative whether— I mean, you know, y'all know the negative stuff. Leads tell you to fuck off, the phone number's wrong, you get a cancel, you wake up to a chargeback, whatever. You order leads and they don't come in, or you got the same lead today as you got last week, or all the, all the shit that makes all of us mad. One day I figured out, like, I don't know if it was one day exactly, but it was like over the course of a small window, I really figured out, like, how much money emotions was costing me. And I always say it like this. If, if I'm frustrated over whatever, think of any of the things you get frustrated over now, even in your personal life, this concept is the same. Fair to say everyone that you speak to knows your, your, your tonality is different when you're frustrated, right? So like, if I'm mad, you can tell I'm mad. And if I don't even have to know you, and if you're in a frustrated state, I can hear it in your voice and your tone and your emotion and your responses, right? So you get mad at Mary for saying whatever about a lead or hanging up on you, and then you call me, right? And you're upset. Do you not think the emotion that you're having in that moment— the— we do all have stuff, bro. The emotion you're having in the moment that changes your tonality or your body language if you're in an appointment or if you're on a recruiting or if you're in a meeting, your personality changes. And if you're— if you sound frustrated, do you not think it causes you to book less appointments or miss sales or miss out on opportunities? Because the other person— like, you don't vibe the same when you're in a negative emotional state, right? And then when it— when it comes to building, which is kind of the purpose of this, I, I kind of relate it to like kids. Like, Amanda has twins, and I— they're I'm going to mess it up. What are they, 19 months now? Amanda-ish. I know they're about a year and a half old. And like they, they started walking not crazy long ago, whatever it was, a few months ago, 6 months ago, whatever. And when babies like run around the house and they fall, almost always the first thing they do is they look up at their parents to see how they react before they react. You can take that down now, Amanda. They'll— they're good. They didn't write it down. All good. And, and agents are the same way. And your children and people like— meaning if you're overreacting on the phone or you're overreacting to a chargeback or you're overreacting to a cancellation, how do you think your agents are going to feel? Like you're, you're the example. Does that make sense? So like if I get a chargeback and it's 5 G's, Right. And I still have to buy leads today. And I'm like, eh, it's 2 sales. All good. Dude, you know how far that goes in the eyes of an agent? No different than when my kids fell over when they were running around and they bang themselves on the coffee table and fall over. I laughed because I thought it was funny. If they had blood coming from their face, I probably wouldn't have laughed. But for the most part, kids fall down. It's kind of funny. Dude, my kids always laughed when I laughed. They mimicked my response to them. And the agents are doing the same thing to y'all if you're trying to recruit, you know, and it's like, kill it. My Kilomet was like my biggest mentor in this business, and he taught me patience very like really well because I have by default none of it. And I would get frustrated by the craziest things. And he would always say, he would always tell me, like, if you want to get paid like a professional, you got to act like a professional. And I never forget that. And you can apply it in a lot of different situations. And I always think like, I'm not a big, like, theater guy, right? But I went and saw Hamilton a couple times, which is basically, if you haven't seen it, it's a play where they rap. They like literally rap the play, which I grew up in the hood listening to rap music. I'm like, I can do that. I wish they taught all my classes this way. Like, and I didn't realize I listened to the whole play. And it's like about American history. If you know the concept of Hamilton, like it tells a story and I'm like, that's how our country started. That's how the Declaration, like all this stuff. And my wife's looking at me like I'm an idiot. And I'm like, dude, I didn't pay attention at all in, in like 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th grade. I just, I skipped all those classes. I didn't pay attention at all. I'm like, but yo, if my teacher rapped American history, I'd know a lot more about it. Right? And so I say, as I'm watching these, I remember one day I was watching Hamilton, and I saw it in New York twice, which was cool to see it like on Broadway. And, uh, I remember one of them was in the news, like one of the main stars was in the news because they had shit going on in their life. Can you imagine if like live during the play we saw his shit come through during his performance? How bad that would be of a play. And then if you had to give a review on that play, how would you rate that performance? Right? I'd give it a negative review. I'm like, they sucked. They had a bad day. Their life— their wife did this, their kid did this, and they didn't even want to show up on the play today. They were miserable. They barely sang the words the right way, and they just had no emotion with it, and they were just foul on stage. That would suck. You know, and I started, and obviously the revenue from the play, Amanda will type the date, the revenue from the play would be hurt. They'd make less money, it'd be less popular, they wouldn't have gone on tour. And I started thinking like, you know, when I'm sitting with clients, aren't they kind of the same thing? Like, aren't I supposed to be somewhat performing in a sense? Aren't I supposed to be like an athlete? Or professional actor, or like, shouldn't I be on my game when I'm calling clients or recruiting or training or dealing with situations? Shouldn't I be on? And I never looked at the business the same after that. And every time I would start to get frustrated, I would think, imagine if I were on stage and I showed emotion like I'm so weak, I show emotion to everyone watching me, you know? And I had to learn that I had to have a different level of control. And so there's, these are kind of out of order, but they're all related. Intentionality is on there. And I started going like, how intentional do, do they have to be during the play to have— and they do it twice a day, two performances a day, every day of the week, which is mind-boggling that they perform and they stay on that often. And I think it's like a 3-hour play or something stupid. It's like obnoxiously long. Right? And so I'm like, well, that makes sense why that play made however many gajillion dollars it made. And so I started thinking like intentionality, and I'm like, all right, well, if I need to be intentional, like, how easy is it to not show emotion when I'm on the phone even if I'm mad? Like, it's not that complicated, you know what I'm saying? Like, you and I, Brian, have had these talks. And I'm like, because we're similar and you send me those voice memos sometimes of like what the clients say when you piss them off. You know what I'm saying? And I'm like, I used to be like that, but dude, you should have more control now because you know it don't work. Does that make sense? And when I'm building, dude, if I'm, if I'm showing that it's okay to be emotional, these agents are going to be a train wreck. You know, my kids would be a train wreck. And I am by default emotional. Like, come sit in my office and ask Amanda stories. We were talking about one today, funny enough. Was it about Amanda? What did I say? Oh, some payment, some bill didn't get paid today. Something, our Comcast internet bill. Like, I don't know what happened. It was like your payment didn't go through. So I sent it to her and she's like, yeah, something with the bank. I'm like, whatever, all good. And she goes, funny, a few years ago that wouldn't have been your response. I'm like, what the hell do you mean? She goes, you would have lost your shit on me. And I'm like, for the bank? Like something messing up with the draft? It's not like you forgot to pay and it got turned off. And she's— and she was like literally laughing at me this morning because I didn't believe how emotional I would have been a few years ago in such a simple situation. You know what I mean? But I, I'm like, shit, she's probably right. She probably could tell me the date I yelled at her over something as stupid as that. You know? And so for me, it was like, all right, well, I'm dealing with agents. What should be the goal? And I was taught this by Sean Mike is like to minimize and normalize stuff, meaning $5K chargeback. Okay. How many apps is that really? Think about for you and y'all want to type them in and do it like how many applications to make $5 grand? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, whatever the number is, right? I'm like, okay, now, all right, someone said 3, which I think is, you know, 5 G's or $1,500 each, whatever it is. It's okay. Now, how many appointments does it make— take? 4. We'll go with 4. We'll be more conservative. 4. How many appointments does it— or presentations does it take you to write 4 apps? You close half, it's 8. It's not that deep. If you close 40%, it's 10. Also not that deep. Now, how quickly can you have 10 appointments or 8 appointments, whatever your number is? Dude, I could do that tomorrow. Like, you could get on the phone now. Correct, Brian, I think you're saying today. Does it make sense? Like, it doesn't take 48 months to recover $5,000. And I know it hurts and I know it's emotional. But if we go like, if we had a— I heard Andy Elliott say this in a different React in a different example the other day. If there was a gun to your head, how quick could you book 10 appointments? And how quick could you pick up 4 apps? You know what I'm saying? And I know in the moment it's hard, but I'm like, imagine if your response is, eh, I know it sucks, but hell, I can make it up tomorrow. Now you have to believe that, so I don't know if you believe that. And I've done it. I've been in a bad state. I've been broke as shit and I've had a big chargeback and I had to buy leads and I had to pay for personal stuff and my mortgage was due and I didn't have a bunch of money in the bank, but I'm like, yeah, I could go run 15 appointments tomorrow and pick up 7 apps. I watched that. I watched chats all day long on different teams. Dude, there's people who wrote— I know I've watched people write 10 G's today already and it's like 2 o'clock. You know, and so for me, I was like, can I minimize and normalize things? Meaning $5,000 on, in a chargeback. All right. Happens sometimes. 3 people canceled today. Happens sometimes. It's part of the game. No different than in baseball. Sometimes the greatest player, think of your favorite athlete ever in baseball. I bet they went 0 for 12 over 3 games sometimes. I bet it happens several times a season. Probably several times a month to some, and they're still the most elite athletes on the planet, you know what I mean? But over the course of the year, that little window where they had a bad streak, it wasn't that big a deal unless they let it be a big deal and they drag it out. But I was playing— Maddox and I, uh, play golf. So for those that don't know, Maddox, my little 12-year-old, follow me on social, I post him and I golf a decent amount lately. We're both learning it probably the last 6 months. And, uh, if you haven't— I told the story the other day about how he, how he had got some new clubs. And I won't tell the whole story now because it'll take me like 10 minutes, but he gets these new fancy clubs recently and he suckered me into getting them because he's a really good sales guy at 12. And he uses like my techniques and words against me to get what he wants. He's like manipulative as shit in all the best ways. And, uh, we get these new clubs and I'm trying to teach him like, dude, I love you. But the clubs ain't going to make you like Tiger Woods yet. Like, you're 12, bro. Like, settle down. Like, I'm glad you get frustra— I'm glad he gets frustrated when he does bad because he wants to do better, but I hate that he gets so frustrated he drags it out. You know what I mean? There's like this weird balance because I don't want him to not— because there's some kids that do poorly and they giggle in the dugout after, and I'm like, you just struck out like 6 times today. How are you giggling? Like, you should be mad. So me and Maddox were playing the other day, gets his new clubs and he thinks he's going to hit them like 700 yards. And I'm like, do you want to warm up today? Like at the driving range first? And he's like, nah, we're good. Let's just go play. He goes, I'm still warm from 2 days ago. I'm like, what does that even mean? But okay, so we get on the course and we start playing and dude, he stinks it up like he's hitting. And Maddox can sometimes stroke the ball. He's tall, lefty, and he's got some power. And so he stinks it up and we're on like hole 6 and he's— his shoulders are shrugged, his head is down, and every shot he hits it and it doesn't go where he wants. He bangs the club off the ground and I'm like, bro, you have been mad for 6 holes now. Do you realize it's not helping yet? Have you figured it out? Like, it's not working, dude. Get over it. Like, I'm— and I tell him, I'm like, I'm so excited you're frustrated with your performance and you want to do better. What I dislike is that you've let it go on for 45 minutes and you're still sucking, bro. You're 12. We're supposed to be having fun out here. You will get better with reps. Relax, dude. It's okay to have a bad day. Watch ESPN. Some professional golfer this weekend at whatever that tour was they all played on sucked ass this weekend. Like, it happens. I'm like, can you just have fun? And he hits a ball. The next one, he hits it like crap. And I'm like, no, no. I took his club. I'm like, hit it. Get up there and just do— don't even think. Just go hit the ball. He's like, no, I'm driving to the next hole. So I take his club and I toss it up by the— where you hit the green, where you hit it, the whatever the hell it's called, the tee box. And so then he has to go get his— I'm like, we're not leaving this hole till you hit that ball with a smile on your face. So he walks up just to appease me, doesn't get ready, do the little wiggle golfers do. He just gets up there and he hits it, and dude, the ball goes up, he smokes it down the middle. And I'm like, no emotion, dude. Imagine that. Last 3 holes, dude, we have a blast. He hit— he makes a fucking eagle on one hole. Like, it's a par 5 and he, he gets it on the green within 4 feet of the cup in 2 shots. And I'm like, any place from the kitty tee, whatever, blue, whatever the hell tee it is, but nonetheless it's still for his age a par 5, you know what I mean? And I'm like, and I literally tell him, I'm like, dude, you hear me talk to agents all day long. This applies to you now and it applies to you as an adult. If you let emotions get you, it's a wrap, you know? And we're all smart enough to know when we're being emotional. You know, in the last— the other piece I'll talk to Chutz on is like this victim mentality. That's one of the most frustrating things to me about agents is like you blame all the other shit in the world for the reason you lack success. And I did it too. I blame lead vendors, I blame carriers, I blame product. Brian, you get mad when a carrier's e-app is down, you know what I mean? Like, dude, shit happens, bro. And I'm picking on you because I can only see 4 people on my screen and you're one of them. Just an FYI. You know, so soon it'll be someone else, and we have a relationship. I know you can handle it. So like, stop blaming the world for your lack of success, you know what I mean? Like, everything you do that doesn't turn out the way you want, imagine if you could just sit down and go, even if someone else or something else was at fault, you can't control that shit anyway. What could you have done to change the situation, either in advance or in the moment? You know what I mean? Like, what part of it do you control? And if you take ownership of getting yourself there— meaning, let's just say we have a bad batch of leads and you spent $500 this week and you didn't make any money and your bills are due and you're annoyed as shit at Bob the lead vendor. Well, dude, you did get yourself at a point where you are worried about $500 as an adult. Like, you got yourself there. Had you not done all the things that led up to that— do I have to fix something? If I— if, if you had not done a whole— are you gonna make it better for me? Fuck yeah, thank you. Amanda's bomb. She— oh, that's way better. Shit, thank you. She— now I can see like 20 of y'all. You're off the hook, Brian. I got others. Now I see— yeah, I see a bunch of people now. Um, but it's like, what could you have— why did you allow yourself to be in that situation? Maybe that's the real problem. Because I'm not trying to be an ass, if you made a million bucks this year, you wouldn't give a shit about that bad batch of leads. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, I know some of y'all are new and that's hard. Some of those things are hard to fathom. But I'm telling you, if you want to build something, you got to figure this shit out. What's up, Mendenhall? I see you now too. What's up, dude? I love that. I love that. I need to get some of that, my man. So like, just be careful of your words, you know? And then like, and when you're— when you— when you learn how to— like, I can banter like this with Brian because I was him. You know what I mean? And I'm like, yeah, Chase, go call your leads. Seriously, that could be the whole call. Go call your fucking leads. Call's over. And teach people to do that. Yeah. Um, but it's like, just don't get caught up on that stuff. And I see it so much. You know, most people in life blame someone else for their lack of whatever it is they think they deserve. And I'm like, can we just stop? You know what I'm saying? Just, just get over yourself, be a professional, and figure out how to control the things you can control. And again, keep in mind, others are watching, you know what I'm saying? And if you can't learn that level of control, everyone watching you is going to copy you. And they'll probably— if you sell a bunch, your agents are probably only going to sell half. It's the weirdest dynamic ever. And if you act like, for lack of a better word, if you act like a bitch at a level 5, bro, they're gonna probably be a level 10. Does it make sense? It's the wildest dynamic. So you have to be aware of that stuff every day. And I'm still imperfect in 9,000 different ways a day. But I've learned to catch it and move on. Just own it. You know, I probably apologize to a man. What does that say? Things that matter, things that I control, what I should focus on. I like that. I've seen that somewhere. Someone, that's someone's stuff. I don't, I don't remember who, but I've seen that. I like it a lot. But there are some days where I'm like, and thankfully, like Amanda or some other people around me, you should, you should allow people to tell you when you're being that way. You know, if you have someone that you can like, that you love and trust in your corner, in your world, in your personal life, in your business life, that's allowed to tell you. So Mike Kilimatt was allowed to tell me. Amanda is allowed to tell me. Stephanie is allowed to tell me. And I promise you, they do. You know what I mean? So if I'm acting like— she'll just— now Amanda will give me a dirty look, and I'm like, I'm doing it again, aren't I? She's like, yes. Sorry, apologize, my bad. And I'm— when we move on, you know what I mean? I don't let it— I don't let it linger like Maddox did for 6 holes of golf, and like y'all do for 3 days on the phone, you know what I mean? Or like, the funniest thing is like, I see some agents, y'all have a like bad dial session and then somehow you stop dialing because you think that's going to fix it. I'm like, wait, so you're trying to book appointments, you're not having success, and your plan now is to stop attempting to book them? Like, that's the game plan you came up with? You know what I'm saying? Like, meaning recruiting's not going well, so I'm gonna stop. Like, what? Like, wait, what? Imagine, like, again, we're in— I don't know, I don't know why I'm on Super Bowl still because it's long since over. Patrick Mahomes having a bad day and he's like, oh, someone mentioned— what's the dude, uh, what's the dude? Oh God, he went to— he went to Tampa and he walked off the field. Like, I gave that analogy. Can you imagine Patrick Mahomes being like, bad day, halftime, yo, I'm going home, F this. And then someone brought up, uh, what's this— someone will post it— what's the guy's name that did that? He walked out in the middle of the game, the dude. He, he got traded to, uh, hold on, see if someone types it in. Someone will know it. AB, that's who it was. Yes, sir. I was like, well, there was one idiot in the history of the game. Like, don't be the idiot. Don't be AB. How about that? That's going to be the slogan now. Don't be Antonio Brown in your business. Like, stick with it, you know. Um, all right, next thing I'm gonna get to, if you want to flash it, you can, Amanda. If you don't, because it'll mess us up, don't. They can write it down, I don't give a shit. Um, recruiting. I'm gonna give some ideas on recruiting. Um, and there's kind of some bullet points. What I always like, I think people think there's magic to this, and to be honest, like, selling is a lot of reps. To sell at a high level, it's a lot of reps. It's literally like attempting, making attempts to contact people and presenting. That's what y'all do. You try to get to people and you present to people. And if you do a lot of attempts, you'll get more presentations. If you do fewer attempts, you'll get less presentations. And obviously sales comes below that and it can't be above either of those two numbers, right? So if you attempt a bunch, You present a bunch, you're going to sell a bunch. If you attempt a little bit, you'll present even less and you'll sell even less. And the difference between agents killing it and the ones not isn't their CRM. I promise you it's not. And I always say, like, think Prime America. I always give this example. Prime America started by A.L. Williams, one of the biggest insurance companies on the planet. Worth billions and billions of dollars. He started that shit in like, I don't know, the '60s. Someone probably knows exactly when. It was a long time ago. And he was, I believe he was also a high school basketball coach. He built it recruiting high school basketball coaches, and they built a multi, multi-billion dollar insurance agency before cell phones, before the internet, before technology. I don't know when home phones are invented, but I imagine they probably didn't do a lot of that kind of calling. It was like in the— what do they call that thing where they used to go door-to-door to collect payments? The debit routes, you know what I'm saying? It's like, dude, he built a multi-billion dollar company before technology, and some of y'all letting your agents think they need to have this fancy CRM before they can sell insurance, you know what I'm saying? It's like, so just be careful. Um, And so recruiting for me is really simple. Um, it's a lot of— it's a lot more activity in the ratios. The attempts to call it presentations, interviews, to sales, call it an agent producing. Those ratios suck ass relative to sales. So if you can't handle the emotion of your sales to attempts, in selling, you should never recruit because it's nowhere near as good. Like, the ratios are very bad because most humans suck and most people don't have what it takes to do this every day. And I think those of us that do succeed, we are some kind of effed up to do this. But like, it's— you got to be messed up to do this business in some ways. So welcome to the club. Um, and I think it's a good thing But, you know, I think a lot of people think there's some magic to it and they think it costs a lot of money. That's, that's, that's what I see a lot is like agents hesitate because they think they need to be rich before they can recruit. I'm like, dude, I was recruiting before I did this for a living. Like, I was recruiting the day I started commuting to my accounting job. I didn't even know what I was doing in insurance. I remember when I, I remember being at my office doing accounting work and I was calling a client and I was so stupid. I used to try to get all the health stuff. Thank you, Amanda. I used to try to get all the health stuff in advance before the appointment because I thought if I looked up pricing before I got there, like it would somehow benefit me in the presentation. And this one lady told me she had diabetes on the call and I had to Google it because I didn't know what diabetes was. But I was already recruiting. Like, I did not know what diabetes was, period. Like, not like what it did for underwriting. I didn't know what it was like the sugar part. I had no idea. I'd never heard of it. And I was 35 and I'm like, what the fuck is diabetes? I sound stupid, but I remember sitting at my desk Googling it and I learned about like Type 1 and insulin and all this stuff. And I'm like, what the hell? I'm oblivious to a lot of stuff, including that. That's who I am, you know what I mean? Like, I'm okay with it, but I was recruiting already and I didn't know what diabetes was, much less if they could qualify with it. But on my commute to the office and back home from the office, I was recruiting because I was going, hey, this guy, Mike Kilometz, teaching me about insurance and he's looking to hire more people. Are you open to a conversation? And I would connect them with Mike. And then if you hired him, Mike would put him direct to me whenever I wanted it, whether it was right away or later, if they needed help with leads or not. Like, it just— it was my call. And then he slowly taught me how to do the piece he was doing for me, you know? And I wasn't— I didn't give a shit that I didn't know what I was doing. I'm like, yo, are you confused that insurance works or not? Like, you're in the business because you think you have opportunity, right? Or you wouldn't be doing this. Do you think you really need to be good at it? At all to give other people opportunity. Meaning the millions and millions and millions and millions of other successful insurance agents in the world didn't need you. Why do you think the next million need you? They don't at all. But you can be the conduit to getting them into the industry and get paid by promoting all the things that you're supposed to be doing. The places you're learning, the people you're talking to, the trainees you're getting on calls like this. Like, all you have to do is be a really good promoter of information and be like— and tell— it's almost easier when you're new or not good at it because they don't expect you to do anything. You can literally be like, dude, I'm brand new. I have no idea what I'm doing, but this industry sounds dope and so-and-so is teaching me how to make a bunch of money. You want to come for the ride with me? I have no clue what I'm doing. But they're making jack over there. That can be your recruiting pitch. You don't have to know nothing about nothing. And that's how I started building the thing at the beginning. So how do I get to those people? There's a few different ways, and I like to give people free ways before paid ways. Now, those interviews I was talking about was when Craigslist— if any of y'all that remember it, you young folks, I'm sorry, but there's many of y'all that do know Craigslist— it used to be free to post stuff. I haven't been on in years. I know it was paid for a while. I'm sure it still is now, but used to be able to post in the job section free. I'm sure something like it exists today, but I would post free stuff somewhere. You can do it on social media. I'm sure there's other websites out there you can find them. Heard of this thing Google? It'll help you. I'm sure there's ways to post shit free, right? So that's easy. Now, I posted something every night of the week. Every night of the week I posted an ad, which meant every single day I had at least one person to talk to on my commute. Every single day, no matter what, you know. Next thing I started doing was, um, I would DM people on, at the time, LinkedIn. Today we do it on a bunch of different social platforms. Um, and I would just send a message to people, be like, yo, I see you're in the industry. I help people get to X amount. Would you be open to a conver— are you happy with where you're at? And would you be open to a conversation? That was it. And after I sold a bunch, I could say, hey, I sold $460 grand this year. Are you happy with where you're at? Are you open to a conversation? And I would send 100 a day, every day of the week, and I would get 3 to 5 people a day to talk to, all free. You connect with them first, and then you— because LinkedIn is funny where there's a, like, you can only send so many DMs to people you don't know, but if you know them, you can send as many as you want. Same thing works on Instagram. You can do it today. We use a service today because time versus money. I don't personally send DMs anymore. I pay— we have a this direct agent recruiting platform we use. And, uh, they send the DMs, VAs send the DMs for the initial DM only. We don't, we don't let them go back and forth. I want to be the communicator going forward, but we have them find the people and send the DMs. And, uh, I think the simpler it is, the better. I talked to this with someone the other day and I'm like, like I don't, I don't know you, Franklin, so I don't— like, I wouldn't say that because I don't speak to people like that. If you speak to people like that, say that, you know what I'm saying? Like, be you. So me, I was me, and I talked about it with this dude, the guy that I referenced at DoorKnocks a bunch and makes a shitload of money doing it, Cold DoorKnocks. And, uh, I told him what I said, and then his admin changed it, and I read it, and I'm like, dude, do you speak like this? He's like, no. I'm like, why do you type like that then? He's like, what do you mean? I'm like, would you ever talk to a human the way it's typed? And I read it to him and I'm like, dude, that's complete spam. I would delete that in a second where mine would literally be like, yo, see, you're in the business. I issued $460K last year. Are you happy where you're at? Are you open to a conversation? Like I just spoke like I speak, you know what I mean? It was very informal. I am informal. It was informal. And if I sent 100 a day, I'd get 3 to 5 a day every day of the week. And I'd get probably an equal amount tell me to fuck off, and the other 90% would ignore me, you know what I mean? And then for me, when I was teaching agents how to do it, everything I do, again, I'm, I'm going to learn it, and then I'm going to teach it to a bunch of people, and I'm gonna get them to teach people, and then I'm gonna stop doing it and move on to something else. So when I was doing the DMs, my goal was not to— for me to build a massive agency from myself doing DMs. It was for me to talk to 3 to 5 people a week or day and then tell 40 people, 30 people, 20 people, 10 people, 5 people, however many agents I had at the time, yo, I'm talking to 3 to 5 people a day sending these DMs, bro. This is working a little bit, and I'm hiring 2 or 3 a week. And hell, 1 a week is getting contracted, and shit, 1 or 2 a month is issuing a policy. But then if I got 5 people doing it, now we're sending 500 DMs a day as a group. And now we're talking to 15 to 25 people a day as a group. And now we're getting 10 to 15 started every week as a group. And then we're getting 3 to 4 paid every month as a group. And I always look at it as what can I get out as a group? But let me prove it first. Let me, let me walk the walk. Talk the talk. Let me do that. And then work, do it a little bit because I couldn't have built this agency if I was the only one doing it. If I just sent 100 DMs a day by myself, I would have built nothing. So it's, can I get it? Can I get more people to do it also? You know? So that's a really simple way. Social media, if you're not doing social media today, you're missing out big time because it's where everything's at. It's where people look for everything. It's— if you are like— when someone even applies here, Amanda stalks their social media instantly. We find them on Instagram. We find them on Facebook. We find them on LinkedIn. I mean, like, your clients are looking you up. Recruits are looking you up. The second you talk to someone or you DM someone, bro, they're going to your profile. If your profile's negative, whiny, victim, and there's nothing about your business on it, zero chance they're working with you. You know what I mean? You're one of those ones sharing that dumb shit people share on social media just to get people riled up and, you know what I mean? Like, it's not helping. And there's a lot of people that do that. Those are the ones I unfollow every day. Unfollow. The little three dots. Unfollow. But it's like, Now, a lot of fear is I don't know what to post on social. Cool. I'm gonna make it really easy for you. You talk to clients most days of the week. You should be most every day, but you're talking to clients at least several days a week. Every client has a question of you. Every single client asks you something. Fair? I imagine there's not a client that doesn't ask you a question. Imagine if you just wrote down one question a day and and recorded a short video on that question. You can now have content every day for the rest of your life. And you want to talk about business scaling, building— you have recruits, they ask you questions. Tony, say you're talking outside of Cody's thing for 4 and a half hours with a couple. Do they— they must have been asking you questions. You could have got 6 months worth of content if you just wrote down those questions and make little 5, 10, 2 4, 3, 30-second, 30-minute videos on all those questions. Like, don't overthink this. Write down questions, make videos. Hey, I was sitting with an agent today, they asked me this, here's the answer. I was sitting with a client today, they asked me, what happens if, I don't know, my beneficiary dies before me? What do I do? Fucking make a video on it, you know what I'm saying? Like, this is really simple stuff. And then now when you start recruiting and they go to your profile and you're loaded with valuable information, It's going to be a different— it's going to be a different game. And then you go, all right, we got 65 people on here, right? Let's pretend everyone's in my group, right? Which they're not. And I don't— I'm good with it either way. I'm just— I'm gonna— I'm gonna make noise in this industry long term. And— but let's pretend now I get 65 people making a piece of content every day in my group. And then I get 65 people send 100 DMs a day. We're going to make some noise as a group. You know what I'm saying? We're going to, we're going to see some action. It's going to change. And that's, that's, that's like the— it's like compounding of activity when you can get others to do the same thing. So really simple there. Warm Market, you can certainly post. You can ask, hey, you look for extra money? Hey, like me, I'm doing that, you know what I mean? And again, You don't have to be like weird about it. Hey Steve, at our family barbecue, are you open to business opportunities this week? Like, hey dude, this jackass John taught me how to make $800 this week on a Saturday morning, bro. I know you were struggling last month paying your bills. You open to talk to him? Like, keep it simple, you know? And if you don't want to do Walmart, all good. But again, if you— I wasn't a big like— I didn't tell any of my family or friends. Some friends ish, but I didn't really do it with my family just because I felt weird. But I didn't know the approach at the beginning because no one had these conversations with me. But I did always have stuff on social, so I have had people come to me that way. But I really built through cold market. And I'll tell you the last cold market thing, and then I'll tell you the approach that I really did. So again, we all, we all talk to clients, right? Let's say you're seeing I should say 30 a week because that's how many you should be seeing. But I would say on average, probably in this group, I bet 5 or 5, maybe 10 people a week y'all are seeing on average. Imagine if all 5 or 10 clients you saw— I know, Tony, me too, bro. But it's the reality. Imagine if all the clients you see every week, you're like, hey, now that we're done with this, FYI, my company's hiring. Do you know anybody looking to make extra money doing what I just did for you? They're hiring and training. That's all you have to say. Some will go, can I do it? My cousin just got her license. Can you talk to her? My neighbor's like just lost her job. She's open. Can I connect you? Versus going, all right, so in insurance we have all these levels and you can be at an 80% comp if you issue 3.2, da da da da, and the override works like this and charge chargebacks. Like, you don't just need to do any of that stuff. Like, settle down, keep it simple, you know what I mean? Hey, my company's hiring. My company's hiring. Do you know anybody else that would be— that could do what I just did for you? Anybody looking to make extra money? Simple as shit. But again, you say it 10, 20, 30 times a week over the course of the year, a few hundred people. You're not thinking if you say it to a few hundred people, you're gonna get a couple? You know what I mean? Even if, even if you only get a couple who only issue, call it, $20 grand a month combined out of a few people, and you're making 10 points, do this, $2 G's a month. That's most y'all's mortgage payment and plus some extra, you know what I'm saying? It's like, we don't have to, we don't have to have 500 agents today to make an impact in our life and give other people opportunity. Imagine if you teach a couple, a couple people to make an extra $1,000 a month. You know what I'm saying? If I walked around the street and I was like, yo, will $1,000 a month help you? And I said that to 100 people a day, how many of the 100 would say yes? So how many people a day you saying that to? How easy is it to make $1,000 a month in this industry? Like, it's laughable, you know what I mean? So imagine you get 100 people that just want to make $1,000. Doing some volume now, you know what I'm saying? Like, by mistake. So really, for me, that was the way I was recruiting. And then I got into paid stuff later. Again, I did paid LinkedIn, but that was no money. I mean, uh, uh, what's that stupid thing? Uh, Craigslist, when it changed to paid, it was like $10 or whatever it changed to. That was the first paid thing I did when they changed the rules. And but then after a couple years, I was like, oh dang, we're bringing in some money. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put fuel on the fire and start paying for ads and start paying— like, there is a way to do it. Um, you know, for me, what I always looked at too was like, everybody I said that to— let's just say all those different ways I just gave you to talk to people, let's just say you get a handful a week that say, yes, I'm open, dude. The very first thing I do is go, hey, do you know anybody else that would be open to make money? Meaning, Tony, if I hire you today Bro, you know, in my head, you're a— you are a recruiter for me today, day one. You're a free recruiter for me. I don't bully you, I don't push it, I don't talk to you about building an agency, I don't talk to you about making a zillion dollars, I don't talk to you about shit. I'm just like, hey dude, I'm gonna give you this opportunity and teach you how to make money selling insurance. Do you know anybody else that wants to make money like you? Because I'll train them also. That was my pitch. Now if Tony goes, yeah, how do I get paid? Dude, I have a deeper conversation. I heard about this. What's— can you explain it? Overhead? Sure. But I don't bring that shit up unless he asks, you know what I'm saying? I might be like, again, FYI, every time they sell a policy, you'll make a couple bucks. That's about as deep as I get. Unless they want more information. Again, I think we overcomplicate this thing and you think you have to give a dissertation on insurance overrides to ask people to recruit. I'm like, nah, I'm gonna trick your ass into being a recruiter in all positive ways because you're going to make a few bucks and I'm going to build an agency and I'm going to help people get paid. And the psych— the intentionality of it was really high because I knew if I went over all the business stuff, you're like, your eyes gloss over and you're like, I can't do all that. So for me, all I need you to do is be another voice for me. That's it. Hey, who else do you know? Hey, who else do you know? Hey, you know how many people we have now a day asking, who else do you know? Huh? We got some people, which means I don't have to do it anymore. Recruits call, they call me now. Like, I just get calls all the time and I text them to Brian and other people. I'm like, yo, call this guy. Hey, call this one. Hey, I get DMs. Hey, call this guy. You know what I mean? But immediately, as soon as someone comes in, they're a recruiter. And I have a, I have a group. I did this. I went to, um, I used to fly to Utah to sell. It was in big, it was obviously in-home days, um, direct mail mortgage leads. And at the time our company was newer and we didn't have a lot of lead vendors. And, uh, these 4 counties in Utah opened up and I could get like 120 mortgage leads a month in like 4 counties that touched each other. And to me, that meant like $40,000 a month. I'm like, yo, I'll fly to, I'll fly further than Utah for $40,000 a month. I don't give a shit. You know, there's people that fly across the country and fight wars to make $80,000 a year. I'm like, I'll fly to Utah all day long. So I start going out there. So while I'm out there, I start running ads and putting on Craigslist things and on all the DMs. I would find people in Utah. So I'd go to LinkedIn, I'd search and go Utah, and I'd send them messages. Yo, I'm flying from Atlanta to sell a bunch of insurance in your backyard. You open a conversation about making money. And I'd meet people at dinner or at the hotel, uh, after selling. And I remember I met this one dude. I met one guy. I would try to do it in groups, but at the time I couldn't attract a ton of people. So I meet this one dude. I don't know him at all. We sit down to dinner. I go over the whole thing. And at the time, again, paper applications, and I used to have to collect the void check. And I attach it to the application. I fax it in or scan it in or whatever that night. And I'd keep it in a bag. Like, some of us used to go in the field and have a little briefcase and shit like that. So at the end of selling, I'd meet them at night because I could pull out 3, 4, 5 applications with checks attached and be like, dude, I just flew across the country. And, and I'd add up all the checks and I'd be like, I made $3,200 today in your neighborhood. I'm from Atlanta and you're eating a dope steak dinner with me that was paid for by these clients today. And so that was my recruiting, like, That's the way I did it. So I hired this guy, he comes on board and I'm like, hey, who else do you know? He goes, oh, he was in insurance, but he just wasn't really doing anything. He goes, I just left this company you would all know, their meeting, and I met so-and-so in Dallas. They're really cool. I can get you on the phone with them. So they connect me with this chick in Dallas, Texas, and I, I, I'm, I don't know why I'm gonna say this, but there's a Dallas— I live, I used to live in Dallas, Georgia, which is why I said Texas after. I assume you probably all knew Texas. Anyway, sidetracked. So they refer me to this person in Dallas. So I get on the phone with this chick in Dallas and hire her. She then, I do the same thing. Hey, who else do you know? She's like, well, I got this little group that works with me already. They don't really know what they're doing. We're not making any money, but I can introduce you. And so that she introduced me like 3 or 4 more people. Long story short, the first dude, his name was Jesse. He never got contracted. Never got contracted. Introduced me to Jackie. Jackie's team ended up doing like $200 grand a month. They've been with us. They have people on the team that have been with us for— this was probably 8 years ago. I bet it's— dude, I bet it's $5 million plus in production total. From a guy who never worked here that referred me to him. You know what I'm saying? I'm at like 10 points that I had more than on, but 10 points of 5 million, like $5 million, $500 grand. I bet I've made— I bet I've made, dude, I bet well over a million dollars from that one dude who never worked here that I looked at as a recruiter for me. And he never got contracted, you know what I mean? It's like— and imagine if I got frustrated because every time I— you know how many times I did those meetings that it didn't work out and they didn't refer me someone? Way more often. But the one made me 7 figures. And there's multiple stories like that, but just one, you know what I'm saying? But y'all won't do it because it doesn't lead to immediate success. They don't issue something right away, or you're afraid to ask them who else do they know because you know they're going to go, I want to wait till I'm good. And you don't know how to overcome that one simple objection because you're not intentional about it like I was at the beginning. You know what Jesse was doing before you? What's that? Oh, uh, he had just got to start. He was like network marketing guy. He had just gotten his insurance license. So, shit, I lost the screen. Anyway, so for me, the concept of the recruiting was cold market, but let me get the warm market of the cold market since I wasn't hiring my own warm market. Does that make sense? I built the entire business cold. Let me find your warm market. My entire agency is built from that. Literally, who do you know? And I just connected dots. And we had a lot of people doing that because it was simple. And then again, you get an agent to sell $1,000, you know, uh, Jess had— Jesse got contracted, which he didn't. Jackie sells $1,000, he makes $100. Who's mad at $100 showing up when I do all the work? I trained him, I get him contracted, I teach him phone script, I teach him in-home, I do all the stuff, you know what I'm saying? So for me, it was like I just looked at this thing differently. Um, last thing I'm gonna touch on I have a show tomorrow night who to focus on. And then if you have any questions, you can, you can put them out. I'm not going to take crazy long on this one, I don't think. But I was taught this phrase and I think about it every day of my life. Leadership is taken, not given. And if you're trying to recruit at all, most people go like, hey, he's going to be my next group. I'm going to, I'm going to make him my next manager. I mean, and you look at, and you look at someone and you try to like make them your next leader. You can take it off, man, I'm good. Um, and I, I know for sure you'll never be able to like bop someone on the head with like a magic wand and make them your next big group. It will never happen. And I used to think I could control that a lot, you know, because a lot of people said they want to build and recruit. I'd be like, dope, I'm gonna make you my next guy. You're my right-hand girl. You're, you're the one. And the more I tried that, the less it worked, you know? And I started looking for— it's a really simple concept to me. Let's say you have however many agents you have, if you have any. Um, and if you don't have any direct agents, think about agents in your in your agency, cross-line, someone else, like just agents you know. Think about either your directs that you have in your group, or for the purpose of this exercise, just agents you know in general in the business. Okay? And then go, of those people you're thinking of, who stands out the most? I bet everyone has someone come to mind right away. Like, you don't have to think. And I didn't even say, well, who stands out the most in what? I just asked a really generic question and almost everyone has someone come right to mind. And you tend to— that person tends to come right to mind because they on their own show leadership qualities. They show like, maybe more discipline than most. You don't have to get them up. Maybe they're more positive. Like they do more of the right things whether or not you do shit. They just have it naturally. And when I started focusing on who stands out from a crowd, and then I went like, yo, come over here. Hey, I got questions. And I just start talking to them, get to know them a little bit more, build a relationship with them a little bit, challenge them a little bit more. You know what I mean? Like, see if there's something there. See if they want more out of life. See what they can handle. Maybe they can run a call. Maybe they can run a training. Maybe they— maybe, hey, how about those agents that are helping other agents that aren't even in their group and they're not getting paid on? That fucker stands out to me. I'm like, yo, come over here, you know what I mean? I want to help that person. And the more I started paying attention to who stands out, man, this thing got easy because I didn't have to beg anybody to like do— now there are limits. People hit ceilings. Maybe they stand out today, but in 6 months or a year, they're done. They can't go any further. That happens too. You know, I always, I always relate it to like, I just left, I just got into the office from, uh, the airport and I'm bougie, so I skipped the airport today and I pay for this little service that I don't have to go in the airport. It's really dope. But when I do go in the airport in Atlanta, there's this annoying train that's packed like fucking sardines. If you've ever been in the Atlanta airport and it takes you from all the gates. And it's— I can't stand it. When me and Amanda do go in, we walk from whatever gate we're in to baggage claim because I don't want to get on the train with all the people. And, uh, but I always think about that train and it stops. Like, if we get on at whatever, it goes T gate, A, B, C, D, E, international baggage claim. That's the— and then it goes backwards. It's all day long and it makes stops everywhere. And at every stop, what happens? The train doors open, right? And a bunch of people get off and a bunch more people get on. And then the doors close and it goes to B gate and a bunch of people get off and a bunch more get on. The doors close, goes the next gate. Now I'm on the whole way because I'm going to baggage claim. I ain't getting off. And I, I, I, I, I relate that to this business, right? And the business is like that train. I'm going the entire distance. And I'm not going to stop. I'm going all day long from end to end. I am not stopping. But at every stop— and there's different stops in the business— agents get off my train and new ones get on. As long as I'm recruiting, does that make sense? Or teaching people to recruit. I love you, Brian, but if you get off the train today, Brian, stopping— I don't give a shit. If you don't give a shit, I don't. Why do I? If you don't care about your family enough to do this, what do I give a shit? You know what I'm saying? I'm not gonna drag you down the train to get to the bags. We all know the bags are there, and the bag is here in this business too. There's a big-ass bag if you do this right, waiting for all of you, you know? And for me, it was— it's like, I just understand some are going to get off and new ones are going to get on all the time. And the ones that I think are going to stay on the train, weird, dude, those are the ones that get off a lot. It's wild. And then all of a sudden, some fucking kid out of nowhere gets on, is like What's up, dude? And that's my guy. And I never saw it coming, but I was paying attention to who stood out. And at the time, the dude I thought was going to be the guy didn't stand out anymore. He got off the train and some new dude stands out and he starts doing things more like leadership style. And I can, I can, and it can be simple stuff, dude. Every meeting I go to now, no matter where I go, if there's a meeting in a room with a bunch of agents, And there's chairs. Think of someone sitting in front of a room and a whiteboard teaching, and you get all these agents in chairs learning. 100% of meetings you go to that you— and I hope you all pay attention to the next one because it's fun. It's a fun exercise for me. The agents will make a fucking mess of the room. The chairs will be all out of order. The potato chip bags will be on the floor. The sweet tea cups will be on the floor like your shit's everywhere. Nobody ever like erases the whiteboard. It's really weird. Like if you go to a training, you tend to like— I'm the trainer. I'm like, oh shit, I have to erase the last person's stuff. Stuff. It's really wild if you watch, like, the dynamic of people. And at the end of every meeting, I, I'll wait a second and I watch, and there's always someone, always, who stays behind and helps the person who organized the meeting clean up. Every fucking time there's someone. And most people take their shit and they leave, but there's always one or two that stay behind like, hey, can I, can I help? Can I watch this? Can I do the dishes? I'm thinking one that they have a kitchen in there. See, like, last one I was there, some, some agent, she was like, hey, can I— I'll do all the dishes, you know what I mean? And someone else was like— and I go erase the whiteboard because it irks me that people don't. I'm a weird— I'm a weirdo, so I do that. But I just watched that and I'm like, those— that stands out to me. Little things like that, I would take that agent aside and be like, hey— and I wouldn't like make a big deal, but I would, I would get to know that person a little bit more. They take— they're taking the lead. No one had to ask them to clean up y'all's shit. They just do it, you know what I'm saying? And simple stuff like that, it can be, you know. And for me, I learned that that helped people. So my world with Kilimanjaro, I would do that for him because I noticed after the meeting he was always the one having to stay late and clean everything up. So I started staying late and cleaning up with him. You know what that got me? One-on-one time with a dude making millions of dollars because I was cleaning up bags of chips and cups and organizing chairs because he had another meeting coming up the next week or the next day or whatever it was. That stood out to him. You know what I mean? We had a meeting one time. Like, think like, I'm like Cody's event, right? We had similar for our company. So our agency. So we'd pay for a hotel and we'd pay for maybe lunch and we'd pay for whatever and the water in the back and the sweet tea. Dude, if you don't go to a hotel and you buy like the sweet tea, dude, it's like $25 a gallon for shit like that at a hotel. It's obnoxious what they charge. A whiteboard at a hotel is like $500. For the day. It's stupid what they charge. So we're starting to do these events. Kilomet's running them. I'm not in charge of nothing, but I'm recruiting, going, hey, Kilomet's teaching me. You open a conversation and people are coming in and I'm sending them. I'm getting agents to go to these trainings and he sets the agenda. He brings everybody in town. He puts who's talking about what. He organizes the mics and the speakers and all the stuff and the sweet tea and the waters in the back. He's doing, he takes care of everything. We just show up. And learn how to make money. So one day I show up and I'm probably a couple of years into the business at this point, have a few agents, nothing major, handful maybe. And we go to this event hotel and I show up and I bring him a check for $1,000. And he's like, what the fuck is this for? I went, I'm sure this isn't free. He went, but I've been doing this like at this point, I think he'd been doing it like 4 or 5 years. He goes, dude, I'm 4 or 5 years into this business. You're the first person that's ever brought me a check. I was like, cool. I walked away. Stood out. I became his right-hand guy, and I wouldn't be here on this Zoom without that dude. You know what I'm saying? Something simple as that. That $1,000 check made me millions and millions and millions of dollars because it got me access to someone who saw me doing things different than everyone else. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, I just— I challenge you to not only do it but to look for it, you know? Um, any questions before we wrap? I can talk all day. If y'all got shit to do, you can go, but I don't mind answering a couple questions. I don't want to take too long, but certainly, certainly happy to answer any if you have. Why is this question— can you make this come back, Amanda? Mine's like— there it is. I think I got it. Yeah, if y'all have anything, um, again, we're going to do, for those that missed it, um, April 17th. Will you put the link in again, Amanda, please? And I assume they can go to the website. I'm going to guess you can go to JohnWetmore.com under events, I would guess. And if not, Amanda will make it work, um, but she'll put out a link and then we'll, we'll message it out too, um, for that. And then the office is 5 May 2nd, Thursday, May 2nd. Again, we'll do— we'll be here by 9, or y'all will be allowed in by 9, and I'll train probably 12:30 to 2:30. And then again, in person will be a lot of fun because I like the interactive stuff. Again, if y'all have— anyone has a question, please post it. I think I can see them all. Yeah, I see all the thank yous. Dope. So I'm trying to multitask. Hey, John, I just got to say thank you. You know, I love you. Thank you so much. You're very welcome. Um, I'm one of those that get in that bad space, and I know it takes me sooner to get out than it used to, but how do I get out of it sooner? Out of a bad space? Yeah. Like mental? Mm-hmm. Stop thinking it's any more complicated than just stopping. I mean, it's— you gotta, you gotta want to not be that way, you know what I mean? And I'm weak, dude. I talk to myself like— you remember, you remember back in the day, those cartoons? Maybe it's still this way, I don't know, but the cartoons that had like the thing on each shoulder, it's like the little devil. Remember that? Yeah, but it was all one person. Like, it was still me, but it's my bad side, my good side. You just gotta like smack the shit out of that bad side, you know what I mean? Like, I talk— I yell at myself. I'm weird. Like, so when I'm thinking stupid, I'm like, dude, stop being a fucking asshole, cut it out. I'm negative by default. I wait— my default thought is typically negative. I want to fucking kill people. I get frustrated. I think people did something to me on purpose. Like, I'm— my default is be mad. This takes control, girl. But I don't want to be that way as a human. I don't like that about me. I hate it. Does it make sense? I don't like that default. So now y'all would probably know that about me, but internally, dude, it's been— if I'm 40, I'll be 47 in, I don't know, a week or two, whatever it is, the 28th. There's a battle every day, dude. I want to sleep in a lot. I want to not go to the gym. Last night I was at dinner and, uh, with a couple, couple buddies that are in the business, and, um, we eat good. And then, then we ordered like dessert. Like, you ever— like, I was full from the bread, like full. And then we got a bunch of wine, which fills you up a bunch more. And then we got appetizers, like 4 of them, because we couldn't decide what we wanted, so we're like, fuck it, get them all. And then a salad came out, and then we like, we shared 3 entrees because we all wanted something different. We're like, eff it, we'll just share them. So we got like this fish and we got this pork chop and we got some steak. And then it was like, do you want dessert? And I'm like, can I be honest? I just want to be fat. Yes, I want dessert. Can I just be fat for the day? I just really want to be fat and lazy. And so we got cheesecake and we got carrot cake and we got this like, uh, shit, some hazelnut chocolate cake. And they were big-ass fucking pieces. I woke up this morning, I think I text Amanda, I don't know if I text you or said it to you, or I thought it, I don't even know if it was you. I was like, I feel pregnant this morning. Like, I felt like shit. I was like, all right, cut it out, dude. You can't do that again. No more. Stop it. You're going to the gym later. You got like, you know what I mean? Like, it was cute for a couple hours, but I can't do that every day, you know? But I want to. I just won't let myself. I can't do it, you know what I mean? And I also want to like yell at people and be mad and frustrated all the time, but it doesn't help me. It doesn't help my purpose, you know what I'm saying? So I have to be And here's what I learned. When you, when you do that, fair to say it doesn't help you, right? Yeah, definitely. You're smart enough to know it doesn't help you. Yes. Right. So who does that mean you're losing to? Me and my family. Doesn't it suck to lose to yourself? Yes. I'm like, yo, if I lose to someone better than me, Like, I'm mad, but I'm like, bro, he's good. But to lose to me, I was like— one day I woke up, I'm like, this is pretty stupid. Like, if you think about it, just common sense, it's really dumb to lose to yourself because you're allowing it, you know what I mean? You allow yourself to throw a temper tantrum. You allow yourself to be lazy. You allow yourself to not be successful. You allow yourself to believe that you can't win in this business when there's millions of people just like you winning. You know what I mean? It's like, why don't you control that? Is that— is that— it's literally that easy. I ain't saying it's gonna go away because it ain't, but it is as easy as just stopping. You know what I mean? Thank you. You got it. How do I see? I saw more. Oh, there we go. I see him now. I have crazy carb loaded pump at the— I hope I do. I need a carb pump. I've been a little lazy the last couple of weeks. I say that I just, I've gone to the gym like every other day instead of twice a day because I don't know, I've been, I've been a little bummed. You've only been here, you're new, aren't you? Yeah. Oh, someone needs to mute, or can you mute them? Uh, let's see. What do you do when you're in debt with every carrier and you don't have enough money for leads? Um, who is that? Can you fix that, Amanda, or do I need to like— see, I want to get like angry right now. That's wrong. I, by my default, but I'm, I'm not. I'm controlling it because he probably didn't mean it on purpose. Does that make sense? It's the second time he did. First time it was okay. Second time, get him. I love it. Um, so one, how to, how to get out of debt, or how to deal with— I mean, if you have debt with every carrier, to me that says when you have debt, instead of writing your debt off, you're jumping to another carrier just so you can get paid and pretend you don't have debt. So you got to stop running the business that way. Because you have debt, take care of your debt. You mean like if you have debt with AmeriCo, write AmeriCo, clear your debt that day and write more business. You know, playing the shell game and pretending it's not there isn't going to help any. I think that a lot of people tend to think that chargebacks are going to go away. They're never going away, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever going. Never are they going away. And in fact, when you write more business, you know what happens? And men and all, if I go from 10 G's a month to 60 G's a month like you, do I get more snacks, bro? You're gonna have more. Like, it's not— I was gonna ask you a real quick question, real quick. I gotta run. I'm on my birthday vacation. But listen, sorry, how often is this, man? Is it weekly? I'm doing this particular one right now, I'm gonna do monthly. I'm also going to do an in-person monthly, that's a different week. And then I'm gonna do an agency monthly. That's a different week. So every week I'm gonna have something. It's just not gonna be this style. I'm gonna mix it up because I get bored. So please make sure I get it. I got a random text. I'm like, let me jump on this. That's because you're a lead now, bro. Hey man, I'm glad I'm a lead. I appreciate you, man. Keep me in the loop. I want to be on all of them. All right, I got you. Hey, I ain't forgot about our call last week. Let's connect. All right, man, we will talk to you. Um, back to— so the thing with the carrier, you are in the hole now, right? So it's like, change what you're doing going forward. Like, stop riding with 27 carriers, or 3, or 5, or however many, unless necessary. But to get out of the hole that you're in— so we have an agent, Jorge. Um, Amanda, can you— I don't know if you have it— can you share? I would love— I'm gonna— I'm, I'm going to get this dude like more followers on social because I love him. Um, I think it's like— it's— it's— do you have it or do you need me to tell you what it is? I know roughly what it is. You're talking about his TikTok? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll post it. Yeah, put it in. So this dude Jorge is in our group. I go to a meeting one day in— I think we're in Austin. Is that where we were, Amanda, when I met him? San Antonio? I don't remember. Somewhere in Texas, I think. Houston. Houston. Perfect. I was close. We go to Houston and I meet this dude and, uh, he asked me some questions. We start going back and forth. I'll spare the story. And I find out he's afraid. He's afraid to invest in leads. Like, literally, like, he's scared. He doesn't believe in himself enough to make phone calls, book appointments, and sell clients that he can make money on leads, even though he watches his group. He's one of our biggest group. The guy, the group he's in is one of our biggest groups in our company, and they print fucking money. On leads. Like the average guy in this group's like the average— there's an obnoxious amount of $50K a month producers and there's— they have 10 dudes doing over $100 grand a month personal production in this group. So he sees it, but for whatever reason doesn't believe in himself. So I'm like, I don't understand. So what's your— what do you do? We start talking and then he tells— I said, how much are you issuing? He's like, I don't know. This was in October. He goes, I'm at about $350,000 for the year. I'm like, wait, what? Like, you're afraid to have $350,000? How did you get the $350,000 if you're afraid, right? So I'm like lost. I'm confused. it out. He's like, and his question was, can I start door knocking before 11 AM? That was his question. I didn't know how to answer it because I had more questions first. So we get down this road of $350,000 a month. And I'm like, wait, what's your schedule, dude? Like leads? He's like, I don't do leads. And we start going. I'm like, what do you do? He's like, I just cold door knock. I'm like, wait, what do you mean cold door knock? He's like, no, I cold. I'm like, without leads, like people that didn't fill something out? He's like, yeah, I just go around neighborhoods and he goes apartment complexes and knocks on doors and says like, hey, I'm the insurance. I want, I wish I could like mimic him, but I couldn't do it because I'm, he's, he's Spanish and I can't do a Spanish accent and he's the greatest dude and But he doesn't have like, if I had to rate his script on a scale of 1 to 10, it's nowhere near a 10. But his work ethic is like a 40. And he does it live on TikTok. He door knocks live on TikTok all the time. And I coach him once a month, one-on-one. I don't do one-on-ones with almost anyone, but this fucking kid wants it so bad. He's willing to cold door knock 100 doors a day. To take care of his family, and he issued over $350 grand in 2023 with zero leads. None. And he streams it on TikTok for you to go watch and see how simple it is. He talks fast, he mumbles, he's hard to understand, he has a decent accent, like there's a lot of disadvantages to on his side, you would think. But dude, he just outworks it, and he's so nice. And when people tell him no, which is 99% of people, he just doesn't give a shit. Doesn't care at all, you know? So I keep coaching him on how to like do— like he used to door knock and he would like his— he was afraid to show his phone, so it would like only see his shoes. So he'd be walking on TikTok and you'd only see his shoes. I'm like, Yo, can you like show us what the hell you're doing? Like, we want to see you knocking on the door and see you with clients. So I'm just trying to tweak what he does. But it's like, did you post it? I mean, it's like 18. He used to be a truck driver. That's why I was thinking, oh, he changed it. That's his thing now. Fuck yeah. I like it. He listens. He's a good listener. It used to be like 18 wheel or something because he was a truck driver before and he got into insurance, afraid to buy leads and he just bangs on doors. $350,000, no leads. So yeah. Jorge. Yes, Joe, if you know him, he's a boss. I— he does stuff, he shares it to his Instagram, but his main is TikTok. So I think sometimes he shares his TikTok to his Instagram, but follow him on TikTok and like give him some love. And when he does it live, like he goes live streams to where you can interact, and he'll have like me and 2 people watching him. I'm like, yo, I'm going to get this kid with like 100,000 followers. I just want to help him, you know what I mean? And I love what he's doing. And for me, when I learned that story, I brought him up on stage to the front of the room, and we— I told him, like, I showed everybody what he was doing. I had him do a script and go through it. And for me, I was like, dude, for the rest of time, bro, anytime an agent complains they're broke, I'm using your story. There's no excuses in this business. You can make money doing anything at any company, in any style, with any lead, with any carrier. You know, so my advice would be now, I think it was a girl that said that, I think, and it's like freaking a million dollars if he learns how to get on the phone and set appointments. Holy crap, man, he will, and he'll get there, you know what I mean? Like, that's one of those ones that stands out, and I'll continue to challenge him and I'll push him a little bit more. Now what I'm telling him is he wants to build, and I'm like, yo, you're gonna try to build, what are you going to tell your agents when they say they're afraid to buy leads? Like, bro, you better buckle the fuck up and learn to buy some leads, dude. Like, it's time to step up your game. You know what I mean? That was the conversation this week. But for me, I don't know your situation, Lindsay. You might be a single mom with 3 kids. Like, I don't know. I don't, I don't know the dynamics. So don't take, I don't, you know what I mean? Like, I have a lot of like respect for single moms because I grew up with one. And again, I don't know your situation, but you're going to have to find a way to get out. You like, there's no other answer than either get a job to make some money, which probably sounds like a shitty idea, or get out there and find clients. You can hold a sign up like Chase. Instead of saying call your effing leads, you can say I sell insurance. If you're interested, pull over. I'll wash your car for insurance or so. I don't— come up with something. When I was in the mortgage industry, I had a— I had— I wish I had a picture of it. I didn't take a picture because I didn't like social media at all then. I really don't know how, but I do it. I had a, I had a, um, I had a truck, like a Tahoe or something. This was like in 2006, so it's been a minute. But I, um, I saw a, um, I saw a billboard one day that said like, it was like an apartment complex, and it said like, honk if you're looking for a new home or something. It was corny billboard. And, uh, I thought, I'm in the mortgage industry, fuck, honk if you need a mortgage would be cool as shit. So I put bright yellow letters on the back of my truck that said honk if you need a mortgage, and I had my cell phone number. I got calls every day. I got honked at nonstop, but I got calls all the time. You know what I mean? I would do something crazy like that. I would go door knock. I would hold signs out. I would do something to get clients. There's clients everywhere. You can post on social media. I would do the videos that I talked about earlier. I would just be really open, like, hey, I work in the life insurance industry. If you want me to look at your stuff, let me know. I would post something every day. You can post it in Facebook groups. You can post in county, like so-and-so county. What's that thing Amanda called where we found Andres? What do you call that? Like a community? What's the right word? How do I say what that is? Maybe they all know what I mean because it's called Cherokee Connect here in Georgia, but it's like where the Every county has like this group of people, um, and they just talk to each other and they post jobs, they post like events. They, yeah, every county has one, I think. I'm most, I would guess, you know what I mean? It's like just be active. Activity will do you wonders. Activity will trump all, and you don't have to do it forever, but you can get out of your hole really quick if you do it heavy and fast. You know, let's see, someone sent me— it's funny, someone sent me a direct one. If I do— this is funny, I get this asked a lot lately. Someone asked if I do like coaching programs and I don't have any officially ever. Like I just do this, but I've, I've had a lot of people ask and I hate— I had a buddy that was a coach once and he would do these like one-on-ones. And he would have like 30-minute increments in his calendar, be all day long. Bob, 30 minutes. Joe, 30 minutes. Susan, 30 minutes. But all day long, 30-minute or hour, whatever client he had. The thought of doing that makes me want to hang myself. I couldn't do it. But I really want to help a lot of people. So I'm considering— I do this, I get coached. I do this thing with Patrick Bet-David. If you don't know him, he's a fucking beast. In the insurance space and value attainment. So I pay him like a shit ton of money and I do coaching with him. Not that I get on a Zoom and listen to him talk like he— we actually interact. I pay for this. It's— and he does it group style, which I like, and he'll have like 6 of us on max. So I have 6 people on and we each get like 15 minutes with them and we get to go through a business problem and he gets on and he diagnoses it and he goes through all the issues and like I get to like interact with what's what's going on, and he recommends a book every month based on my problem, and I read it, and I come back the next month and we discuss it again, or new problems. I'm considering doing something like that because I can help— like, I actually want to help some people, but I don't want to spend like all day every day doing it. And most people I help tend to not be in my group now, and I sure as shit ain't doing it all for free every day. So I'm considering it, but I would only do it if like I get some really good people that are like, you should really do it. So if you have interest, let me know. I have nothing I don't have like a link to go sign up to. That's not— but I get asked a lot and I'm like, maybe if enough good people want it and are willing to do what it takes to win, because I can help people win. And I've always been like weird. I'm like, I'm just going to do it for free. But I've learned for free shit, like I think 150 people registered for this and there's 40 y'all on now. You know what I mean? Like people show up if they damn pay. So I may do something. So if you're interested, send me a DM or something. I don't have anything official, but if enough people do it, I might put together like a little group thing. I'm always— no, parts will be in this apartment right here. Okay. For a little bit. By the counter. Thank you. Like, you ever like me talk on the phone and hit the mute button by mistake? Maybe that's what's happening. Maybe he's like accidentally hitting like unmute. I don't know. I think that's all the questions. I need your help growing. I'm in Toronto. Please and thank me. Send me a DM. Is it Jennifer? I like that. Jennifer. So yeah, hit me up. I'm not hard to find. I'm on Instagram. Maybe she can post my link. Most of y'all know it because you got here and you're all leads, so we'll keep texting you. But register for the next one. Share it out with people you know, because I would love to grow this and help you grow and help other people grow. And just— I just— we're going to do some cool things for the industry. And if you haven't already, I have on the website you can register for it. The newsletter we send out. Alexis is on her and her team help with that. My team does some stuff with it. And with it you get the— I didn't talk anything about it at all, but y'all, if y'all have heard me train at all, I'm always about activity and tracking numbers. I'll send you out a free activity tracker where you can put in all your stuff and keep track of your numbers and send it to your team. And again, it's free. And if you hate the newsletter, just unsubscribe. You can keep the news, the thing for free. I don't care at all. But I appreciate you guys getting on. And if I can help with anything, let me know, shoot me a message, and, uh, we'll see you at the next one. Later. Thank you so much. Looking forward. Appreciate you, sir. Thank you.