FULL GUIDE To Selling IULs (Better Than Final Expense?) ft. Larry Mallek from F&G | Ep95

I was at the gym and I was booking appointments by text, just at the gym between sets, like while I was resting. I come from like paper apps and taking 2 to 3 weeks to get approvals and all this stuff. It's like that dude who got out of prison after a decade and saw internet and phones for the first time. That's how the industry is to me today, coming out of retirement and selling. I'm like mind blown that people are still frustrated by some of the things you're trying to defend. An approval in 2 days on an IUL? Like, what are we talking about? That used to take 3 months.

Yeah.

What's up, homie? How you doing, brother? I'm doing good. How are you? I'm just upstairs selling some damn insurance.

Thank you. I know, I've just seen your name on your leaderboard because I get that thing every week now.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. I, I just literally just sold, sold one. I was like waiting for— I had a talker.

Yeah, it took me a little longer than normal, but yeah, you had a talker, huh?

Oh boy. Yeah, she like— she was one of those, uh, former Primerica agents that never sold anything really. Yep. So she had 7,000 questions about variable life and universal life and whole lives and caps, just because she knows things about one of those— just knows things but don't know nothing, right? Holy guacamole. So I had to be nice. You had to be patient. I was being patient. And she was a Prime America one, and I sold her a whole life. And so, yeah, yeah, buddy. Yeah, so it was interesting. How are you, brother?

I'm doing great, man. Uh, excited to get into the holidays. I think this is my last scheduled event for anything like this on my calendar.

Yeah, so you can start drinking as soon as we're done.

I— yeah, I might.

Unless you already started, then—

no, I have not.

I love it. Well, I appreciate you getting on, dude. Uh, for those that, that don't know, uh, again, or haven't watched before, welcome to the Insurance Insiders Podcast. This is my buddy Larry Malik. He is a rep, been in the business for a long time. FNG doing some cool things over there. But I feel like, uh, I feel like I've known you for a long time. I don't remember when, but I know I've seen you at a lot of events over the years.

Yeah, CoreBridge was our first time I think we met. Yeah, um, yeah, wasn't it? Uh, it might have been at the one that you did at the Gaylord, um—

oh, Nashville, that's right, that might have been it. That's true, I forgot about that. Yeah, that was fun, that was a fun event. I like that place. Yeah, I think there was snow. Was that the snowstorm event? Is it snowing there?

It's definitely snow there.

Yeah, I remember I was doing 75 hard and I was outside running in the snow around that mall across across the street every day.

Yeah, the Opry Mills Mall.

Yeah, huge. Well, dude, uh, singer-songwriter, huh? I didn't know this.

That, uh, yeah, I mean, it's, it's just—

he gave me a note here, I just put it on here. He's like, singer-songwriter.

I'm like, oh shit, who knew? All my songs I've written were basically just for my wife, just like, you know, personal stuff with her.

Yeah, hell yeah.

I wrote our first— our wedding song that we danced to. That was my wedding gift to her, so I wrote and recorded a song, as it's called, The First Dance. And so, yeah, so she had never heard it until we stepped on the dance floor together as husband and wife. So that was pretty cool.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah. How long you been married?

25 years.

Congrats. That's a big one. It's a big one. Diamond or something. Who knows? I don't know what it is.

I don't know any of those things. It's silver. I mean, I guess you got to get to 50 to get the diamond or something.

Sheesh. I wish they only wanted silver before 25 years because I know— exactly.

I think Stephanie's got a lot more than silver.

I love it, dude. So been in the business 10 years, always, always in this type of position, or do you ever do anything else in the space, or always like—

no, I started, you know, it was kind of funny how I started. We moved from Florida to, uh, to Nashville to be closer to family, and we used to own tanning salons down there. And yeah, um, you know, I was— I had them running pretty much independently, so I didn't have to do too much down there. So I was always looking for some sales jobs down there as well to do on top of that. And I got into real estate and other things. And, and then my wife actually started selling health insurance through a company that was called First Family, which is very strange. Yeah. And so like the insurance thing was always kind of on my radar because those guys were making a killing doing that. And when we moved to Nashville, I, I basically had nothing to do. We had sold our businesses and I was just looking for something. I answered an ad inside sales, no cold calling. And it turned out to be AIG Direct, which was formerly Matrix Direct, if you guys remember that company. It's along the same lines as like a SelectQuote or, you know, those kind of companies, a multi-consumer type stuff. Yeah, basically it's what you guys are doing except all over the phone. And all my leads were just— I basically just sat on a dialer all day and, and, you know, the, the phone, the phone, that person would answer. And yeah, no kidding. And I, I started— that's how I learned the insurance business, uh, just selling for 2 and a half years that way. Um, but you know, the great thing about it is that, I mean, I didn't make a lot of money because like our contracts were really low because we paid for nothing. You know, it was basically a job. So I was at like a 30% contract maximum, which is awful. But, um, the great thing it did is it taught me repetition and taught me how to sell even better. And I definitely learned the industry inside and out. So that was a great experience.

That's neat.

That's cool. Yep. And then I got the wholesaling role at AIG on the IUL side., which was called Partners Group back then. So that's, that's what really got me into IULs. And then I was promoted to an outside sales thing when I met you for the Final Expense team. And I like— I mean, it was great being outside and getting to go to events and stuff, but the, the thing I truly missed the whole time I was there was, was teaching people about IULs because I'm just so passionate about that product. I think it's one of the greatest financial products out there. So, uh, the, the next chance I had to get back in there was to move companies to F&G. And so because It's so funny, half my sales team that was on that IUL sales team at AIG is at F&G right now. So, and then, yeah, so Jason Vest, Jeff Richardson, Alex Veloshin, they're all— we were all on the same team together and now we're all working together again. That's cool.

What makes you believe in IUL so much? I've— I was never like, you know, I grew up in this business with Shawn Mike, bro. Yeah, yeah. So I very recently— I didn't sell any ever. You know, the only ones I've ever sold— literally, I sold— I have 3 of my— I bought one, I have 3 of my kids have one, and my assistant has one. Those are the 5 IULs I've sold in my career.

Yep.

I've never sold one to a client.

And that should tell you something though, that like when you look at a product for yourself, where do you— where do you lead? Where do you go? You know, you don't want term, you don't want whole life, you want an IUL. Um, it just has— there's just so many boxes that it checks and so many things that, um, you know Insurance is there to remove risk from you and your family, right? So the more risk it can remove, I think the better the product is. And when you look at all the risks that an IUL removes, number 1, the index, right? Because you can never lose money on it. So whatever premiums are going towards cash accumulation, it doesn't matter what the market does, you're never going to lose. You're always going to go up every single year, year after year after year. And the earlier you start them, the more that multiplies itself. So that's number 1. It takes away that entire risk of market fluctuations, that kind of thing. And then, you know, the living benefits that are attached to it, that if anything happens with your health, you have that to tap into instead of tapping into savings or other forms of income that you have if anything happens. And then, you know, I mean, the death benefit, if anything happens to you, you still have that death benefit. So, you know, you're covered, your family's covered if something happens to you there too. So We have a new kind of a tool. It's called the benefit dial. It's your aspirations, which, like, what you want to do with that cash value that you grow, anything that you want to do with that, it's there available to you. Your legacy, which would be your death benefit, and then your living, which is your living benefits. So it kind of breaks it down, turn the dial to what's more important to you at the time when you get that policy.

It tells you how to basically fund it, right? Yeah, exactly.

And what product to use too.

Got it, got it, got it.

We only have— and the other group— you got 2? Everyone's like, when are you guys going to get this? When are you going to get that? I'm like, we have 2 products on the IUL side.

I love it.

And it's the Pathfinder and the Everlast, you know, cash accumulation, longevity, and death benefit focus. That's it. That's, that's all.

That's my kind of IUL, bro. I promise you.

I mean, we have the same 2 products on a different distribution channel called the Freedom and Gold, but they're the exact same thing. Same. So if everyone ever says, you guys have that Freedom and Gold, uh, it's the same as Pathfinder and Everlast.

Did they do that on purpose, Freedom and Gold?

FNG? They did. Yeah, I think they, you know, they started that way, um, because we have a distribution that actually FNG owns. So we have our own own thing that we don't kind of commingle those things. So they can't sell Pathfinder and we can't sell Gold. That's— so we kind of just keep it separate, like a separate entity.

Cool.

Yep, that's neat.

What is the deal with— I like— I don't do a ton of social media. I mean, I put out a ton of social media, but I don't consume a lot. I, I just— I'm not— it's not my favorite thing. But what gets me is TikTok. Because it's no one I know. It makes me laugh, you know what I mean? I can just check out from the world of normal social. So if I scroll anything, it's TikTok. Yeah, but when I scroll TikTok, dude, I always see these guys, and I never watch any of it because I want to poke my eyeballs out, but it's like, IULs are a scam, and they're just trying to pitch. Why do some people hate them, and what's, what's the, what's the deal out there?

It's, there's a, there's a lot of different examples. Most of the people, most of those are like you were talking about a Primerica consumer, right? So a lot of those people will trash an IUL because their company doesn't sell one.

It's a great reason to do it.

I mean, it's really— it's their way of customer accumulation. They're trying to get that customer that might be thinking about an IUL to come to them so they can sell them their product, which is always inferior when you really compare and break them down. So And there are, you know, there are ways that you can structure an IUL so it's not beneficial for your clients. Like, you can do— you can sell it in a bad way, like underfunded. And, you know, some agents will do that so they can— they'll solve for target premiums so they can have the highest amount of target commission-based, you know, coming to them. So there are ways you can do it incorrectly.

What would be a reason why someone would use target? Like, when's a good time to use that?

I mean, the only time that you would— I never solve for target anyway because it really doesn't mean anything except commissionable premium, right? So it's this— I mean, term target and premium are always going to be exactly the same, right, for a term policy. But for IULs, target and premium are completely different.

Correct.

If you're doing a cash accumulation IUL and someone's younger, your target's going to be much lower than what the premium is. It should be about half. It should be if it's structured properly. You get into the older ages, though, on an Everlast product and someone that's like 50 or 45, 50, and they're just trying to say, I want $250,000. I actually just ran a scenario yesterday. I want $250,000. I want it to last me for the rest of my life, and I want the lowest premium, right? So you're on that product for a 45-year-old, $250,000. The target is almost $4,000, $3,999. And the premium is only $199 a month. So like $2,400 a year, right? So the target outshines the premium. The one thing that we do that's very cool at F&G, if you guys sell any of that kind of stuff where it's, I want X amount of dollars to last the rest of my life and at the lowest possible cost, you have all these— AmeriCo, you have Mutual of Omaha IUL, you have the new Transamerica one. I think, I think on all of those, like what I just— we got this competitive comparison and Trans was the lowest for that same scenario. Deal. I think they were $216 a month, but ours was $199 on the Everlast. Uh, better, better cash accumulation, you know, um, much better target. Because what we do on our targets is we roll the premium into the second year, so we have rolling targets on that. So as an agent, as an agent, if you sold the Transamerica product over ours, theirs is $216 a month. The most you're going to make on that, on that policy is $2,500. Right, because that's $216 times 12, $2,592. Sure. And that's all. That's, that's the max. It doesn't matter what the target is. You're only going to— because they only pay the first year. Same with AmeriCo. Same with Mutual of Omaha. They only pay for the first year. With the rolling target, our target on that product is $3,999. Like I said, you're going to make the full $4,000 with us because you'll, you'll make the first $2,400 of premium in the first year, and then we'll keep paying you $200 a month as earned. Until that full target is filled, is acquired.

So interesting.

If you don't sell us, you just lost $1,400 on that client. What? For every single time.

It still will guaranteed like last forever?

Legit? Yeah, absolutely. That's, that's, um, that it's a, it's a quick solve that we have, and it guarantees that premium will endow, uh, that policy. Like the— it'll— and it's still built.

It's a too big a word for me, but I, I can imply— I understand what you're implying.

Right, right, exactly. So yeah, it will absolutely make that policy last age 120, right?

I know when I was like in the field, field, like going to houses, dude, I would always pull out these IULs that were sold to them as whole life. They're like, I got whole life. And I pull it out and it's one of these companies that's on every freaking street corner and they sell to the public. And I would pull it out and I would literally just go to the guaranteed section. I go, look there.

Yeah.

And they would always go, that ain't what they told me. I'm like, read this word, guaranteed. Read non-guaranteed, go here. What's it say? It says zero at age whatever, 79, 62, whatever the age was, right? And they would lose their mind. And then I would sell them a real whole life policy. So I can't do that with yours, you're saying?

No. And it's good. That's an easy explanation though, because every—

I know, it's worst case scenario stuff.

Like, well, it's, it's, it's more than worst case scenario. It's the end of the world, basically. It's the— I call it the zombie apocalypse because, yeah, You would have to have the economy—

you would have to have a 0% return every single year for 30 straight years.

And obviously, if it's a 40-year policy, 40 years in a row of a zero-return economy— and you know the longest period ever in history? 3 years.

2 or 3 during the Great Depression. It wasn't a lot. The Great Depression.

3 years in a row. So that's how bad that has to be. If the Great Depression—

a lot of times even their projected one was trash, to be honest.

Oh, yeah, exactly, because a lot of times they're not— again, they're not designed correctly or they're underfunded. But if they're funded normally, and we even have a middle column, we have a guaranteed— we do have a guaranteed interest of 4.7% on one of our indexes. So, even on that, it's still—

it will pay you forever.

But I always just say the non-guaranteed column, even though it says non-guaranteed, this is real world. This is what it's going to do. And then you show them a 25-year lookback of this is exactly how the index performed over the last 25 years. So moving forward 25 years, you're going to see similar results as that. And then the good thing that they did, I think since the time that you were selling in the field, is they have put some much more strict regulations on what we can illustrate as companies. So we can't overpromise anymore. Back in the day when universal life came out, they were showing 15%, 16%, 20%. Year over year, all this. And like, oh yeah, and so they were all underfunded. And then when reality struck, all those policies lapsed, and it did give the universal life a bad name for sure. But again, those are variable products too. So this is an index product, and if it was indexed back then, it would be a little different. But I think we've learned from our mistakes in the industry. There's still some companies that try to— like, just a couple years ago, they threw in all these bonus multipliers that made them look really, really good. And now, you know, they're getting sued. Kyle Busch is suing Pacific Life because of that.

Because that what his was. What happened? What was the deal with this? I want to know.

So he had bought into all the bonus multipliers, so he was paying— I don't know exactly how it was structured, but if you, if you bought into all of them, you were paying about 4 to 5% of your entire thing every year. And so if you had a 0% year, you would go down, you would actually go negative. Oh, so it kind of takes away all the benefits of what a universal life or IUL is supposed to do. You're supposed to be indexed. Zero's your hero. You're never supposed to go backwards. But those bonus multipliers, um, were— there was fees attached to those things. So, um, I'm sure that if, you know, I don't want to say that it would all eventually work out for him if he would have just left it alone, you know, because there is market fluctuations in theirs. But when they go up, they go up significantly, you know. So, um, and who knows the whole story there?

Yeah, naturally.

All I know is that he was— yeah, he was sold. And that's— and, you know, that was one of the reasons that they put in the AG-49B regulations as far as not being able to, um, over-illustrate these products.

So what up, insurance agents? If you're looking for a roadmap on how to win in this industry Check out the book I wrote about a year ago, Do More Now, Get Better Later. Check out the reviews here somewhere. My team's putting them on. I'm getting tons of great feedback about all the people it's helped. Appreciate those of y'all that have bought it. Appreciate all the reviews that are going out. If you're new to following me or the industry, check out the book and get it in your hands now.

One, I was thinking that one of the other reasons you see that TikTok and haters on TikTok is that there's a lot of financial planners out there. Um, they don't like IULs or annuities, and we do. We both know why, right? Because they want your money.

They want their fees, bro.

Yes, yes. So if you, if you slap $1 million into an annuity, they, they might get a one-time payment on it, you know, as they sell that annuity, uh, but they'll never see another dime out of it. And so they want assets under management. The same thing with an IUL. So you if you want to really max fund an IUL, it's going to take some money, and it's just more money that, that you're taking away from them. So yeah, there's always— and, and, you know, to me it's like, if you're— if you have a great product out there, there's always going to be people that are going to say something negative about it for their own personal reasons, you know. Yeah, uh, they're for their personal gain.

Yeah, our company has dealt with that for 13 years now.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Everyone trashes FFL.

I'm like, 100%, dude, it's simply the greatest I've ever seen, you know. Like, I don't Who's going out of their way to post shit on the internet? It's usually dipshits, to be clear.

And it always cracks me up, the people that want to leave FFL for something better. They, they didn't do anything here. What makes you think you're gonna do something over there? You're not gonna. And I've, I've tracked them because I've helped with, you know, transfers of people that request a transfer. And I've, you know, like, okay, has it been 6, 12 months or whatever the transfer rule is? And okay, go there. And then, you know, still zero production. I'm like, why did we even give you a contract. What's—

yeah, that's the deal. We, we always— I had a rule while I was building, eventually, because at the beginning, you know, you just believe people when you're building, you don't know any better. But because of that, we had this rule where if someone wanted to leave me, I always said yes, and if they wanted to transfer to me, I said no. Yeah, because I was like, dude, if you— if— again, now if I'm talking to a rock star who's just looking for— but I'm saying the average ding dong who sells nothing, I'm like, please leave. And if you go, I can't sell because Larry sucks, I want to work with you, I'm like, nah, I'm good. No, I'm good. If you can't figure it out with Larry, you ain't figuring out with John, I promise you that.

I'm worse than Larry.

All right, I'll take it, bro. It saved me a lot of headache over the years because I tried it a few times.

That's a great strategy, honestly, it is. You know, because everyone's like, oh, this guy is so sharp, blah blah blah. I'm like, well, what did he do before?

He did nothing, correct? Yeah. Yeah, I always— I started to then go— I don't know why we're getting into this because I go sideways, but I'd have people and I'd go, hey, there's people over there that are rich, aren't there? They'd be like, yeah. I'm like, well, why aren't you one of them? Yeah. And they'd be like, uh, so anyway, some of these questions I ask because same as the only people who tend to post negative things on the internet are a lot of the people who post in the comments when I do things like this. Sometimes I just want you to answer them because I don't have the patience to, and I just, right, go like this because they love to leave comments that are just, what about this, what about that? So I try to get the gotcha questions out of the way so you can answer them and I don't have to.

That's perfect. I love this. Yeah, I love those questions, and I love when— I mean, to me it's just like, you know, there's something, there's something behind it, and there's people that'll even call FNG. Like, I heard there's, there's one guy out there that actually makes phone calls to the companies on behalf of the clients, and, and he only asks the questions that benefit him. Yeah, you know what I mean?

I've seen that guy on the internet.

He's awful. He's, he's under— yeah, he's, he's, he's getting sued by just about everybody, right?

Is he really?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. I sent him to our legal team because he's saying that FNG is screwing people with the way that the illustration was built. Like, we did it exactly correct, you know, we did it exactly how it was illustrated and the premiums.

And I'm pretty sure the government and all the licensing and regulation people, they follow the rules. Yeah, they'd have probably caught you by now.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, we're a publicly traded company, so we have— not only do we have the— yeah, right— insurance department, but we also have the SEC that we watch out for. Yeah, so, uh, We do do everything remarkably well. And I mean, we just, we just surpassed $72 billion of assets under management. And I mean, it's, it's just growing like a weed over here. So that's what I love to tell people is like, look, no one's, no one's— there's not a lot of growth stories in the insurance business right now as far as carriers go. And we have a growth story that's, that's over 15 years in a row. We've, we've grown consistently.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's insane. Yeah. And, you know, the word's getting out. People like you, like Shawn, Mike changed his mind on IUL. So the word is getting out. It's a, it's an easier product to sell now, I feel, just because more people know about it. It's not like a mystery anymore. Yeah. And, you know, when you see the advantages of it, I'm a big component of— component? I'm a big proponent of juvenile IULs because, like, you have them on your kids. I have one on my daughter, my granddaughter. I'm like, the, the $200 a month I put into it, it's nothing. Like, it's nothing. And, and the what it can turn into for them is just insane, you know. It's, it's absolutely insane. I have a trust ownership of that. And so, you know, you fund the trust, the trust funds the policy, and it's like hands-off, hands-off.

Smart, smart.

I love it.

So what else do you—

by the time my daughter's my age, she'll be a millionaire, multi-millionaire.

It's good life. Yeah, it's a good life. What else do you want people to know about your, your world, your product? Anything you want, dude, just— is your platform now. Share, share whatever the hell you want messaging out there.

And, you know, I think our biggest, our biggest issue in this— not issue, but our biggest, um, uh, problem is that we're not as fast as other people. You know, we, we're still a fully underwritten company, so every product that we put out the door is still fully underwritten. We're getting much, much faster, that's for sure. So I think if you take the entire time of of taking the application to putting it in force, we're right there with the instant approval companies. And, you know, that's our goal is to be, is to be fully underwritten but still have instant approval. Okay. So because we don't want to sacrifice performance of the product or pricing the product just to have that risk associated with not taking as many chances, you know, so that we want the customer to get the right product and we want the agents to be able to sell the right product in a really good timely manner. So like for example, Everlast, this year we came out with two new, um, uh, we call it the Uplift because we actually did three things to it that make it so much easier to sell. Like if it's, um, the vast majority of your products are under a half a million face, right, when it comes to IULs, because over a half a million it's usually pretty expensive and it just doesn't happen that much. So anything $500,000 and below, anything 60, 60 years old and below, it's going to be a 1 to 2 day approval. It could be instant, but it's usually 1 to 2 days. We'll never ask for a telephone interview. So there's— we take that out of the equation and we never ask for an APS report, which we all know if you ever get an APS, you can pretty, pretty much kiss it goodbye unless they're extremely patient. Right. That client. So we took, we took those two things away. And so once you fill out the application, the next communication between us and you is going to be approval or decline. And people are like, oh, well, you must be declining all of them. No, we're at 85% approval rating.

Stop it.

So 85% of those clients are getting approved at some level because we go all the way up to Table 6. So they don't have to be super healthy to get that. You know, they can still have diabetes. They can still, you know, well-controlled. They can still have all sorts of conditions and stuff like that. But, and that's the product I was telling you, the Everlast, that has the rolling target premiums. So you make so much money on that product going into next year if you sell them consistently, you know, because it's easy to do the IUL or the Americo, you know, it's a one-call close. Ours is maybe a two-call close.

That's it.

Yeah. You know, I mean, if you get approved, I'll figure out which day you want it to bill on and on that date. That's it.

They're not doing like full blood and urine and stuff, right? They don't have to pull everything.

Yeah, never, never.

It's not even really— it's not old school fully underwritten. It's like the new version of fully underwritten.

Exactly. The only time we go old school is if the face amount is over $1,000,000. We're actually working on getting that to $3,000,000, but— and over age 60. So any— and I don't want to say that I'm saying this on a recorded podcast, but hopefully my bosses don't listen. Like if it's a client that, you know, it's not, it's not a massive case or they're not— if they're over age 60, most of the time that should be for death benefit protection, right? That's what that's for. They don't have time to accumulate cash value.

And someone 62, the lady, she was asking me, she was 62. I'm like, I mean, sweetie, you're going to have to put so much money in it. How much can you save in 6 years?

Yeah, you're not an IUL client for sure. So I was just like, I think there's probably better options out there for those individuals too. So really, if you stick to our target market, Middle America, Anyone under 60, under a million face amount, you'll never have an exam with us. That's the only time that you'll ever have an exam is if it's like HIV or something like that or something. It's less than 0.5% of all cases that ever get an exam. So we've been doing that for a while. So you never do that. You never have to do an exam with us. And then, you know, just like the PASS Center, we have instant approval on juvenile cases. So that's why I love to push those because that puts us in the same realm, one-call close, as America and Mutual of Omaha.

But, um, one cool thing though, so yeah, 85% of them though on the others, that's within a couple days.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, so if you wait, wait 2 days, you make an extra— on that one case, you make an extra $1,400 or something.

Me and, um, you know Jamie, you've seen me and Frankie's— so we were tech, we were in a group text this morning and I was laughing because I was at the gym and I was booking appointments by text, just at the gym between sets, like while I was resting, right? And I was— and I was texting in the group because, you know, agents find a way to complain about anything. And I sent a screenshot of 3 that I booked, like from the time I woke up at 6:30 till I got to the gym at 7:30. I took Maddox to school, got to the gym at 7:30, and I had 3 booked by text., and, um, I sent her a text and I laughed and I'm like, I don't understand how agents overcomplicate this industry still that we can communicate the way we do and as fast as we do. I go, I come from like paper apps and taking 2 to 3 weeks to get approvals and all this stuff. I was like, in today's world, I feel— I, I said, I literally said this to in the text, which made her laugh. I go, I haven't sold in so long. It's like that dude who got outta prison after a decade and saw internet and phones for the first time. That's how the industry is to me today. Coming out of retirement and selling, I'm like, mind blown that people are still frustrated by some of the things you're trying to defend. I'm like, you get an instant approval in two— even an approval in two days on an IUL. Like, what are we talking about? That used to take three months.

Yeah, I mean, I— when I started, even, even in 2016 when I first started selling term, it took an average of a week and a half to get an approval, at least.

Oh yeah, on a term policy, correct, on a basic. Yes. And I was like, hey, Buckle up if you want a checkbox on the piece of paper.

Yeah, that was—

holy moly. So I think it's funny, this, like, you may as well be instant, you know, at that exact speed. It's crazy.

And to me it's like, you know, I get it. You want to make the commission right now. You want to— want to have it show up in your bank account as soon as you— as soon as possible if you're new. But if you have any kind of established, you know, pipeline or whatever, Yeah, it's always coming. I kind of, you know, you're selling and especially for a juvenile, like you can, you can be making a million, several million dollar mistake if you go with another company over an F&G. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Even National Life has got a great product, but we absolutely destroy them when it comes to, when it comes to, you know, accumulation for a juvenile. We had one case where it was one of our integrity partners, Stephen Yi, He had a lady that was putting about $750 a month into her kids' IUL. She was pretty well off, you know, so she was— yeah. And so it was a big, big face amount, big policy. And, you know, at the end of the term, when her child was 65, they were able to take out $450,000 a year in cash. Right. Sounds wonderful for 25 years. It sounds so good, right? We ran the same scenario with our past setter. $1.2 million a year, 3 times the accumulation as the NLG policy. No kidding. So, I mean, we beat it by over $12 million over the— over the— I mean, it was just ridiculous how much we beat it by just because we, you know, we design ours the right way to, you know, especially the pass setter. We front load the charges on everyone because we want you to have more charges when you're younger and healthier. Than when cost of insurance eats into your premium, right? So we front-load our charges the first 9 years, and then it gets a lot cheaper than that after that. So on a child's policy, they have no cost of insurance anyway. Front-load that, and by the time that, you know, they're 18, 19, if you do it when they're born, I mean, they're just— everything's going to accumulation. It's so, it's so incredible. So I, you know, and the other thing with speed versus performance, like if you do, you want to buy a Ferrari ever? Like, it's the nicest, fastest car out there.

Isn't that what Hayden just got?

Huh? What?

I think that's what Hayden just got, isn't it?

He just got a Ferrari. Yeah, it took him a year to get it.

Did it really?

You can't just walk into the dealership and buy one unless it's a used one. But if you want to buy a brand new Ferrari, you have to get on a waiting list. Yeah, because they don't make them fast enough, right? And so I kind of equate an FNG like the past that are to a Ferrari because You can go in off the street and go buy a Toyota right now. And even a Lexus you can go buy right now off the street. But if you want something pretty good, going to be good and it's going to actually appreciate in value, you go away and you wait in line and you spend your money on your Ferrari.

That's true. That's true. That is a good example. I like it. I like the analogy. Yeah. Those of you that have followed me for a while, you know, I've, I've helped build this agency up to over $200 million in paid annual premium per year. We have over 5,000 agents a year that sell, and I am rebuilding. We're building a new base shop, helping people build big agencies, get to multi-seven figures in income, or producers that want to, that want to just sell and get to a multi-six-figure sales, um, career. Hit me up. I'm hiring direct. I'm looking to train and mentor winners that want to work their ass off and build something dope. Click on the link below, or you can go to johnwetmore.com/join and put in your application. We'll see if I'd be interested in working with you, DM me, hit me up, whatever you like. Good shit, man.

That's exciting. And, you know, I think it works out for agents in the long run because there is not one person that could come behind you and sell, sell your client a better product than what we have out there. So we outperform everybody that you guys sell. Um, there might be a few companies out there that really illustrate well, uh, they just don't have our track record. Um, we have a very cool track record when it comes to, uh cap rates and par rates and things like that. Like, we've never— we have never moved a cap rate below 0.5%. So our S&P is 12 right now. I guarantee that will not go under 11.5 ever, ever. Easy. It's— and yeah, it's the— nobody does that. Nobody does that. But we have some really good actuaries and we price our products so that we know if we do a 12% cap that we don't ever have to move it. It's still profitable for us no matter what. Um, that's cool. One of the other cool things about F&G is that if you ever heard of this company called, uh, Blackstone—

yeah, yeah, I think everyone has the largest—

largest money manager in the world, right? Yeah, several trillion dollars of assets. Um, so there's BlackRock and Blackstone. We have an index with BlackRock But Blackstone is who takes care of most of our investments. So all the premiums that we come in, we work with Blackstone. We are the only company in their entire portfolio that they work with that they don't own a piece of.

No kidding.

So that, that tells you something about how they value our company and how we— they value our relationship. Yeah, they don't own a penny of us. They might own some common stock, but they don't own anything like they worked with CoreBridge when I was at CoreBridge. Blackstone invests with them, but they also own 20% of CoreBridge.

Sheesh.

So I got it. But yeah, so I was like, wow, that's pretty impressive because they can work with anyone. Everyone wants to work with them because they're the best at what they do. There's no question. Uh, the strategies that they use are absolutely unbelievable. But, um, so that, you know, that's a really nice thing. And when we had that partnership start a few years back, like, our ratings went from B to A and everything, because everyone understands how valuable that is. So, um, you know, you're talking about a product's got to be around for 40, 50 years before you sometimes even use it. You want to be secure that the company knows what they're doing and they're working with people that know what they're doing, for sure. I love it.

I love it. It's good stuff, dude. It's good stuff. A lot of cool things going on.

Yeah, absolutely.

If people need to reach out, obviously if they want to work with us, they know how to get a hold of me. If they need you, what's, what's your preferred method? How do you, how do where people learn more? What's— what do you— what do you like?

Uh, we have a really good, um, agent site. Uh, it's success.fglife.com, but it's, um, it's a really good portal. Everyone that has a contract with us, if they go into their sales link, they can— they link right to that portal. As we have some really good videos like how to design the illustration properly for juveniles, for adults, that kind of thing, for cash accumulation, also for death benefit. Um, I, I take text messages all the time. I love— I actually love text versus phone calls. I think it's a more—

yeah, get to the point.

Oh yeah, it's more— yeah, it's a get to the point. I love it when people like leave me a message and they're like, I have a question for you on the voicemail, and then call me back.

I'm like, I, I don't do those. I won't do it. I just won't do it, bro.

You could have just said— you could have asked the cap rate on the S&P. Oh yeah, 12%, and it would be done like that, right? No, I gotta listen to your voicemail. I gotta call back. I can wait for you to answer if you don't answer, and then, uh, you got to call me back, and then you ask me that question. I'm like, man, that could have been— you ever— that meme where like, this meeting could have been an email, right? Yes. Well, that phone call could have been a text message.

100%, dude. I trust me, I get them. Yeah, I'm like, stop it, please stop it.

But I give out my phone number, it's, uh, 239-770-1979.

Uh, do all the other stuff first.

Yeah, do all the other stuff first. Research. Yeah, and get to know the product. We have some really cool, uh, brochures we just came out with a new IUL 101, you know, for just basic stuff, but it's really well structured out and everything. Yeah, if you want to show your clients something like that. And we try to do everything digital as well, so we don't cut a lot of trees down.

That's cool. I love it, dude. But yeah, appreciate your time, brother. It's been fun learning a little bit more. I love to nerd out sometimes with stuff, so I appreciate your time. Any final words? Anything? I should have asked that, didn't, or anything you want to leave them with, you're welcome to.

I don't know, man, if you haven't read this book, I, I would read it. Have you already read it? Of course, it was good. I read it in like a day and a half.

Yeah, it's meant for people who don't read really big words. I, it was like I was in 6th grade and trying to cheat because I had a certain number of pages to meet, so made the words bigger. And it's just, it is me.

Very, very, very, very, very, very nice job.

I appreciate it. I wanted it to be easy and to the point and be me.

Yeah, I honestly, I really liked it. I thought, you know, I've read, I've read a few books like Sean's and everyone else's. This is still, this is my favorite so far, my man. You're winning, you're winning the game right now.

Say that again, I'm gonna clip that out, Reese.

You'll play it to Sean then.

Ah, I just, we just, you already said it, it's already clipped. I'm gonna put a replay. Yeah, I'll tell you, shit, I ain't dumb enough to do that, bro. Yeah, I'll take, I'll take it private and keep it moving.

That's awesome.

I'll take it in private.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to, uh, January, uh, convention. It's gonna be awesome. We got some great speakers you can learn from. Um, we may have some announcements. I'm not sure if there's anything super, super impressive. I know one thing that's really cool that we're doing, that we're going to start doing, is that on the contracting side, because you guys get contracted in so many states, right?

Yeah.

Um, we're gonna go to just-in-time. So it's like if you get a You know, if you're in Florida as your home state and you get a license to sell in Georgia, but you don't have an appointment with FNG in Georgia, we're still going to let you go through the entire app and get you appointed at that point. Still, yeah, we won't stop you. Still.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So right now we stop you and say you got to get your Georgia appointment. Takes 2 to 3 days for that to go through, which is a nightmare because I get calls and texts all the time.

Some states are terrible.

Yeah. And some states, yeah. I think the only one that still is going to be terrible is Pennsylvania. Cause they have a different process that'll take a couple days. But if you know, if you know Pennsylvania, yeah, you understand.

I had to get mine in Washington state last month, bro. It took like 2 and a half weeks, dude. Yeah. I was like, what the heck?

Yeah. So, um, but, but as soon as you're appointed in that state, you can fill out an application with us now. Um, I think it's going into effect right away. Um, but we're going to probably announce it to the field soon. Yeah, so that's really exciting to me.

Yeah, it's cool. It helps on our end too, paperwork and contract, you know what I mean? It helps in admins a ton.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that takes up a lot of time. That's for sure.

Yeah, it's a big deal in our world.

We can onboard more people now, so that's great.

I love it, my man. Well, I appreciate you taking time out of your day and sharing. We will put it out there for the world to see, and if I can, uh, certainly help with anything on your end, you let me know anytime, brother.

Absolutely, man. Great talking to you, John.

All right, brother, have a great day.

Take care.

Later, guys. Hey guys, if you've enjoyed the podcast or any of the previous episodes, if you're on Spotify or any of the other Apple Podcast platforms, would love if you'd go in and leave a review for us. Um, if you're, if you're watching on YouTube, comment, like, subscribe, share, do all the things. We'd greatly appreciate it. Helps get the word out to everybody. Appreciate you, and we'll see you on the next one.