How to 10X Your Insurance Sales! (SCALE YOUR AGENCY)

Appreciate y'all coming out. Cool. So we're going to get into, um, now this, this kind of building the foundation of your agency. Um, and again, if you— even if you talk, even if you're like, I'm just the— those of you that are just trying to figure out how to sell or just how to how to get started or get your feet off the ground from even a sales standpoint. If you pay attention to some of the things that we're talking about, like what we do and don't want in terms of how we want our structure to be or who we're looking for, it's really easy for you to go, I don't want to be that guy that they keep explaining that they're not looking for. Does that make sense? So even if I'm not directly talking about the sales stuff, it's going to help you identify the things that are going to help you stand out as an individual producer. And, you know, I'm gonna kind of get into mine first before I have y'all— what I'm gonna have y'all do. So you don't have to worry about if taking notes, writing it, coming up with any of this stuff now. I want you guys to just kind of think about, be in the moment with it, and then I'll have you guys probably group up for a little while, maybe 10 minutes, and hash it out a little bit together, and we'll go over a couple. I have till 10:30 on this, Amanda. She's not even there. Cool, thank you. Um, so for me, it's like getting started recruiting. Um, I, I knew from the beginning I want to build. For those trying to like figure out how do we start, people always ask like, when did you transition into recruiting from selling to recruiting? And I'm like, I didn't, I don't, I didn't do that. I was actually recruiting before I was selling because I was explained The model of the industry is what attracted me. It was not the sales part of the industry that attracted me at all. In fact, I turned that part away. For those that don't know the story, I haven't read about it, and for those that do, I'll give the short version. Um, I did this as a side gig to make extra money to like pay for my kids' fucking diapers. That's what this was for me. It was like a side thing. I just needed to make extra money. I hated my job. I worked for a bankrupt company. Literally, they were in bankruptcy for the 4 years I worked there. I was an accountant for a bankrupt company. So I had to fucking tell everyone no. I had to explain why every bill was late. I had to explain why we lied and told them we sent the check when we didn't send the check. I was that far— I hated my life. Um, I made $40 grand a year commuting to— who's from Milton? You're the dude from Milton? There you are. Milton, which is like how far from hell if we started Villarica? He's like, that's like an hour and a half. I'm like, yes, I did an hour and a half commute there Home was worse. Coming home from Atlanta, traffic was way worse than going. I had to hit 3 interstates to go. And so I got into the— into the business as a side hustle because someone was doing it. Um, and I, I first applied in 2008. It took me till March of 2010 to get my license, and I didn't sell my first policy till August of 2012. Okay, so that 4-year process for me to sell one app. So sometimes when people go, he's starting slow, like, you never fucking know, you know? Yeah, I did too. I was, I was insanely slow, um, and I picked up the phones and dialed once and quit. And that was in 2010, and I actually let my license expire in 2012 till a buddy hit me up, and, uh, that I knew from the mortgage industry. I tried the mortgage industry for the same reason. Just tried to get out of the accounting world. And timing was bad, and I wasn't— and I made a lot of mistakes, and I didn't really learn the industry well. So when it shifted in '08, the whole world changed, for those that don't remember it. And, uh, I didn't know the business well enough to stay in it, so I lost everything overnight. And I didn't really have that much, but a dude that I hired there, um, come full circle, reached out to me on social. He was like, hey, what are you up to? I got this thing, I think you'd be good at it. Normal pitch. And he says insurance. And I was like, nah, I tried that, I don't fucking like it. And leads suck, it's not my thing. Everyone told me to fuck off. I was that guy, right? And you're gonna get a lot of that. Hell, some of y'all remember that phase on your own. Um, and when, when he, when he told me that he wanted me to talk, to talk to me about insurance, he— I said no. The only thing that got me there was he was like, let's go to the bar and have a drink. And I was like, I'm fucking in for that. So I went and had, you know, probably too much vodka, OJ. And he literally, like the drawing on the napkin story, like I remember that piece of it. And he's just explaining the model. He was like, when I said I was picturing your group, whoever that was over there, he was literally just, I don't know if everyone's seen this because I don't see it a lot today, but you ever see the thing with the circles? You know what I mean? Where you draw, he did that thing for me. And, uh, I was like, no shit. But the mortgage industry works the same way. It's the same fucking thing. And so he was like, it's just like what we were trying to do back then, but it's insurance, but you can, you can make the money faster, right? The, the turnover rate in mortgage was pretty slow, and we had to— no offense if anyone's a realtor— but we had to wait on these dipshits to get a lot of the stuff moving before we got paid. We didn't control a lot of it. And so here he was like, you can control the pace at which you sell, you can get out of the fucking hole, you can get out of that shit hole company, and you can hire people and build. And here's how it works. He did the math and I was like, oh shit, why didn't that dipshit tell me this? It's right. It was the first time I had a like moment of like, dude, there's more to this business than I'm being told. Um, because I was just some guy that some random person reached out to on Craigslist originally, the original time I applied. I mean, he didn't explain shit about shit. He just sent me 800 scripts and was like, call these leads and let me be, you know what I mean? Like, there was nothing more there. Um, so when I saw it, for me, I was like, I'm in. And I had to go back and get my license re-established. I didn't have to retake the thing, but I had to pay a fee. In Georgia, it's a fine. So still today, when I do contracting, I have to answer that, like, have you ever been fined by the state? I have to say yes to that. Because they report it as $50 and they report it as a fine. So Amanda still has to explain it. And, um, I was like, I'm in. And I started recruiting. That was in like late mid-spring, something like that, when that happened. I didn't sell till August, but I was recruiting all summer as I was trying to figure out when to get started and my license to go through and all that shit. Um, And so for me, what I— the— where I see people struggle a lot when they're brand new— and so even those of you that are like, I'm ready, I'm already building, I want to know how to do more— part of scaling this thing is utilizing the time, energy, and skill set of other people to scale. You ain't doing this shit alone. You got no fucking shot, you know what I mean? Whether you build a big internal staff team to help you do stuff, or you have a pile of 1099 agents and a small staff, or both. You ain't getting out of this thing by doing it by yourself. So you're gonna have to get really fucking good at people, really good at— like, how many of y'all control freaks? Better get used to fucking giving up some control. It's hard, but if I don't give up control, like, I would be all in people's shit, like how everything runs, and then nothing happens, nothing moves, you know. So a lot of things I try to stay out of the way. The only thing I did in this building today was fucking move the Coke, Sprites, and Pepsis to the ice bucket. I was like, what do you do? I literally walked in, I said, do you need anything moved? She's like, what do you mean? I'm like, just labor. I'm here to be labor for you. Because if I started looking at like the setup and things, I'd have been like, hey, can you do it? She's like, I already got it. I could see it coming because I've done it before, you know what I mean? And I'm like, let me stay out of her fucking way and let her do her thing. I was watching, um, you should ever see those like the NFL Draft was just this week. Or I was watching coverage about the NFL Draft, um, the whole Shedeur Sanders shit. And, um, you know how they do those shows where they like follow a team around for the summer for work or whatever? Well, they did that for, um, the draft process where they had obviously a bunch of cameras following teams around. And someone shared— it was like all over the news yesterday. Someone might have seen it. I don't know a ton because I'm not super into sports, but I, I took the concept and liked it. Um, they were watching the draft stuff and they had a top pick. I don't know which— I don't even know which team it was, but they had like number 6, 7, or 8 pick, like early in the draft. And they were re— they were watching them negotiate what their pick was going to be because they had the potential to trade up or down. They had 2 teams that wanted to trade with them at their pick, so they could either move early in the draft or later in the draft. And depending on what the pick before them did, they had like 3 different strategies. Depending on what the other teams did. And so they have this whole thing fucking recorded, and they have these guys negotiating shit, making calls. Hey, we'll do this. Hey, we'll do that. Now he'll do this. And there you see the whole thing. And I pay nothing attention to it. I thought it was cool. I'm watching it, and the guys who run the— it's like one of those shows, like the podcasts that are out, The Pat McAfee Show, shit like that. It was one of those where the guys are talking about the video, and, uh, one guy goes, you know what I just saw there? And he calls out one dude who's like the— I don't— he's a big, a big dude at the team. I don't know if he's the president, the CEO, the owner. He was a fucking bigwig at the team. He goes, dude, during all that chaos, fucking CEO didn't say one word. He let his football coaches be football coaches, and he just let negotiating like one of the top picks, their entire future of their team. He didn't say fucking two words. He just let them do their thing and negotiate and stuff. He just stayed out of the way. And I And I was like, damn, that's a fuck of a skillset to just be able to trust your team in the future of your company. You know what I mean? But it's like, dude, that's at some point, if you're not already seeing that, you will come to a point where you will be like, fuck, I cannot do this by myself anymore. And me having to do that with Amanda was hard as shit to like, here, you can have, this is your job now. Like in the sense that I trust you fully to run it. You make the decisions. You decide what happens. You, you do it. That— I still work on it to this day, but I probably didn't start doing that for— I'm looking at her— several years probably before big stuff. I was like here and let her like make decisions, you know? Huh? It's probably 6, 6 years. I knew it was long. I didn't know it was that long. She hits 8 years next month. Next month, we're June now. Yeah, so July. So part of this building thing is you're going to have to learn as part of that, it's like identifying the right people to work with along the way. And unfortunately, some of the lessons you'll learn along the way, they're good lessons, but you will fall into like, these are my people, we're going to kill it together. This young crowd, it's like, ah, they're like, we're going to fucking build this machine together. Cool. I hope you all make it together. It's fucking fun when you do, but things change throughout time, you know what I mean? So it's like, you're gonna miss— you're gonna misread plenty, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna have— you're gonna deal with shit along the way. Um, but if you can identify some people that you can run with, whether from a running buddy type mentality, um, or people that are building— maybe you don't even have any financial interest in this together at all, but you're building something similar at a similar pace at a similar time. I've had those relationships along the way. Those are fun to have. And then it gets crazy when you find people internal to your team and it's like, yo, he's, he's wanting to do something. Like, this cat's fucking serious. And you can, you can identify those people and pour into them more, you know. Going into it, dude, I thought everyone was going to fucking kill it when they said they were going to kill it, straight up. I don't know if y'all, like, y'all still, when people tell you they're going to fucking work their ass off, you believe them, right? It's, it's hard not to. And so there's this balance of like, I, I want to give you a shot, and I know you got to learn it, and I got to give you grace. But at the same time, I gotta like have some sort of guardrails, or you can make my life go fucking off the deep end, you know. So it's this fine little balance, and everybody's different, so you're gonna have to define your own stuff. All I'm going to do during this process is share mine. Does that make sense? And so take the pieces that you go, I identify with that, I want to do it that way, or hey, I might want to tweak it a little bit. Amen. You know, one of my, my biggest mentors ever in this space, uh, his name is Mike, and he, um, he retired a couple years ago. And, um, we couldn't be more different. If I would not be here without him. And some of the things along the way, we just think about very differently, and they both worked, you know what I mean? They were just different. We complemented each other in a really good way. He was one of the most patient people ever. He'd hire literally fucking anyone. He was great with people. He had crazy empathy for people. He's patient as shit. You know what I mean? Simple by default, doesn't overthink nothing. I was like, bro, I overthink driving to work. I still like GPS to work 'cause I'm thinking about so many fucking things. And I go the wrong way many days. You know, there's 100, I don't know how many times a week I'm on the phone with Amanda, huh? Most days. Most days. I literally drive the wrong way most days just because my mind is thinking about so many fucking things. That if I don't stay, you know what I mean? It's— and so I'm sure you guys can relate. But, you know, again, looking back at this thing, I would say early on I was, I was willing to hire whoever no matter what, because I— and I would pitch my stuff to people. So again, if you think about from this, from a sales standpoint, if you're going to sell whatever product you sell, is the way to do it to pitch, throw up on them about what you have to offer and why they should buy it. Not in the lead space world. Maybe in the friends, the family, it's got to be a pitch. Why, dude? You got to hit him in the head coming from left field without them see you coming. Does that make sense? You got to time it just right. You gotta— it's like, he's about to eat his hot dog. Do I do it now or do I wait? Do I set up a lunch meeting for coffee when I never do that with this guy, or do I not? You know what I mean? Like, the approach is funny. Fair. It's just different where you have a lead and you start trying to like Hey, so, you know, I do a little bit of insurance. What's your interest level? Dude, on a lead, that— you'll get eaten alive, you know. Um, so I, I think early on you just got to kind of make a mess of it, just being real. And no different than if you've ever tried to teach a brand new agent this thing. You ever like overtrain someone? In a sense, before they do shit. And then they go to do stuff and they don't know what to do because they're thinking about 700 fucking things, right? I'm going to give you a lot of information about building today. None of it means shit if you don't start, like, at all. It— and no different does the sales training not mean a ton if you aren't seeing a lot of people, right? Like, what do you do with sales training if you see 2 people a week? Like, who gives a shit? There's there's not much to set, there's not a lot of opportunity. And so the building side, the stats are worse. First off, they just are, you know what I mean? You get a group, they find 5 buddies and they come from something else to sell something else. Cool. That's hard to duplicate. Hence, we're trying to figure out how to scale the thing, you know. Um, so I think don't let this detail do to you what training information does to new agents, right? You don't have to know all this shit to start. So the goal is you guys are kind of doing it and you take something from today and you go, ah, fuck, I can tweak that over here because I understand what that means now. Let me tweak this piece, right? I'll do these every quarter. And obviously all the shit I put out there ongoing, even if you keep coming back to them, you might hear new information or you might hear the same information a new way because you've experienced new things. Right, so to those of you just trying to get it off the ground, just fucking start. You mean, if you think about at its core, what does it take to get someone paid, right? What are the basic level— we, y'all, and y'all, I want y'all to share here, like, what are the basic level steps? Someone brand new, like brand fucking new, dude, like what's the first literal thing they have to do? Okay. Can we teach someone how to get a license? Everyone can fucking do that. So you can start recruiting right now, and that's the only thing you have to know to start the process. You don't have to teach them how to buy leads yet because you have no one that's made it that far. Does that make sense? So, all right, get their license. What, what else do we have to teach them just to get a deposit in their account? Contract. We have to get them through contracting. Sure. It's a piece. Is that fucking difficult? Can everyone do that? Yeah. Okay. What else do we got to do? Product training. Product training. Okay. Josh Doyle. Okay. This is where we disagree a little. Does it make sense? Do we need product training yet? When do we need product training? When you try to sell. When you try to sell. What do you need to try to sell? A lead. So I'm like, yes, but not fucking yet. Does it make sense? Not for me. You're like, ah, I'm not there yet. So I— it's on my list, right? Because then what we're going to do is we're going to take all the stuff, we're going to prioritize it. Um, but you are right. How do you learn that the best? On the fucking job. It's on-the-job training, man. You know what I mean? So it's like, all right, do we want to establish that as the way we set expectations at the beginning, probably, right? So leads, she said, uh, product training. What else we got? Script, dial script, a little discrep— right? It's like, yes, what script did I get Brayden? So yes, but careful, you know what I mean? So it's like dialing script. Can we give them a script? Easy. Everybody can get access to a script, give 'em out. Everybody can teach someone how to pick up the phone, dial the numbers. Okay, everyone can point someone in the direction of getting leads. Can anyone not do that? Can you do that? I mean, you can do that at this point, even though, behind you, sorry. Yep, even the guy who doesn't do leads knows how to get someone leads. Is there anything else? Objections. What is it? Objections. Objections? Yeah. Sure, yep, that's a piece of it. Yeah. Now, you see 10 people this week, someone's handing you a fucking check with no objections. Right? Especially in the lead world. Oh my God. You see a handful of people quick, if you can get a sentence out of your mouth, you're gonna trip over a sale. Right? So really, that's it. 10 things maybe that we could teach in, If we cumulative put that together, we could do it two different ways now. We can get a fucking PhD in it, right? Or we can teach it like they're 3. I like this way, right? Why? Because they're going to overthink it already. I'm— I don't want to— I don't want to add complexity to it, right? They saw me interview when I— we yesterday If y'all saw, I posted like, hey, we're gonna go work out if anyone wants to come. So he was crazy enough to go, I'm in. He would have— his timing didn't come in, so 3 of us went yesterday and we hiked. If anyone's not familiar, it's Kennesaw Mountain up the street. It's a good-sized mountain. So we went and hiked for a few hours and we got there. I was interviewing a dude who reached out to me on Instagram and I only had like a little window to talk, so I started interviewing him in the car and we get out and, uh, our first was 20 minutes plus of the mountain. I was on an interview, I had on speaker so they could listen. And, uh, you remember the part about the overthinking shit? What did I say? What did I— how did I do that? Do you remember what I asked him? Um, it's being analytical or over-analytical beneficial or something. Oh yeah. So I said— so this guy was asking a lot of questions, right? Like, he follows me on social, he knows everything, he watches all the videos, does all the stuff. He works at a competitor who is a very different mentality type of company. It doesn't feed who he is. He's like, dude, I want to do that. I'm like, okay. And he starts asking questions. I'm like, hey, you can ask, right? What do you got? And I asked him some stuff. I kind of know the dude. I met him at an event a little bit, but barely know shit about him. So I have some basic questions. He starts— I let him ask a few because I wanted to— I wanted to get like an idea of who he was, right, before I make any— before I— I'm not pitching shit. I just want to hear him talk. And so he starts talking, and it's fucking like Bro, hey, when I get a new agent started, do you have any type of documentation that you can give them to get— help them get started and onboarded? I was like, hey bro, do you think I've created a way to get agents started already by now? He was like, well, yeah. I'm like, so why the question? He was like, I, I don't know, it just seemed like a good question. I'm like, but you already knew the answer to it. This was on the interview. He's like, yeah, good point. And then the next one was like, I'm trying to think what were some of the other questions. It was like, hey, do you have a contact at the office that will help me with contracting when I get to that point? And I said, dude, can I ask you a question? He's like, yeah. I said, does being over-analytical slow you down in other areas of your life as well? And he was like, he really had to fucking think about it. He took like 3 minutes to answer the fucking question. You know what I mean? Because he was like sideswiped by it. He's like, dude, I've been in the industry for 2 years. No one's ever fucking asked me that. But I wanted to know because I'm like, dude, he came to me to fucking come work here. And he's asking me like he's first day in the industry, like he doesn't even know what we do. You know what I mean? And so for me, I cut over analytical. And in my head, I'm like, I Most of the things he says as his reasoning for why he lacks success, I'm thinking he's probably overthinking during those stages, right? So it changed the way I started asking him questions. But to me, I like— you ever see, like, with clients, those of you that sell a lot, they start overthinking or they go off the deep end. Do you— are you really going to sit there and spend fucking 47 minutes answering basic level questions like that? Or gotcha questions? It's like they want to— what is the rating of the insurance company? You know what I mean? Are you really going to start getting into that conversation deep or be like, really? It's fucking Mutual of Omaha. You know what I mean? And again, some people do and I'm not saying it's wrong. I just, my style is like, seriously? Why are you fucking with me? But it helped him understand me. 'Cause that's what you're gonna get. I'm like, you come here, you gotta be ready to be pushed. Nobody reaches out to me to be mediocre at this stage. They're like, dude, I wanna fucking get here. I'm like, all right, well buckle up. I like to skip the bullshit at this stage. And we can get to know some things, but can we just get right to the pieces? And what I always tell people, the thing I like now, the thing I'm trying to do is like, you ever start working with an agent and you find out like 2, 3, 4 months in, who they really are, their tendencies, you know what I mean? And like the things who fucking drive you crazy that you're like, dude, I swear I explained this 19 times and they just still don't listen. You know what I mean? You get stuck. I'm like, I hate finding out in 90 days. I wanna know now, right? I just prefer to know now. And again, you don't have to make that same distinction. I just like to. If we go, and the analogy I always use is if we're like in the dating world, and we're trying to find— like, you got two different things. Hey, you're either just trying to have a good time or you're trying to find someone to spend some time with, right? Those are your options. Go have a good time, you don't need to know shit. Does it make sense? You're attractive, is it a good vibe? All right, cool. But like, you want to spend some time with someone, get to know someone, have a relationship, dude, wouldn't you rather know the red flags now? Or do you want to wait 90 fucking days, 120 days, 6 months to find out? I'm like, I don't know, I kind of want to know now, you know? And so I treat this side the same way as I'm doing this. So for me, I think I've learned what I'm looking for in people through my questions is how coachable will they be. That I had to learn from me, because what I did— what the piece I've learned that's super important about this is our mental capacity. Right? You ever have like a fucking something going on in your life that's emotionally draining and it fucks you up from being able to perform basic level tasks? You know what I mean? Like get out of bed sometimes. Dude, building an agency means you're communicating to a lot of people. And most of the people who enter the business are not in a good financial spot, quite frankly. Most humans aren't. So to find someone looking for an opportunity, which is what you're looking for— people looking for— because if they're already fucking printing money, it's going to be harder to get someone to do what we do. I mean, they're making $3 million over here, you're probably not going to convince them to go to a trailer home and sell some insurance. Probably not, right? So the type of people you're gonna— it's, it's, it's narrowed. Now, one day, can you? Yeah. Can you nail a big fish? Fuck yeah. But dude, you're not going to probably build your company that way. Right? So, hey guys, just created something really cool. And if you want to be part of it, join the Discord group I just created. The link is going to be in here. It's a dope environment. You can chat with others that are kind of in the community. You can see beyond the curtain of our agency, have access to all kinds of stuff that we got going on, events. And my staff is in there. We have agents in there selling, me helping agents. And sharing information. We're going to, as we build this thing out, share everything, um, out there with all of you guys. So again, follow the Discord if you want to be part of everything we got going on. Join it now. We'll see you in there. Hope to help you more. For me, what I learned is along the way there's things that would frustrate me. Different things are going to frustrate you. We don't have the same ticks. Right? So from a concept standpoint, there are things that irritate the shit. We probably have a lot that overlap, a lot of similarities. People that are attracted to me tend to be annoyed by the same things. I just tend to be someone that says it out loud a lot. You're like, I like that shit. I'm thinking it, but I don't say it. And so I think what I learned was how important that mental capacity, that mental energy is for me to be able to perform the amount of reps I have to perform to make a fucking company run. You have to talk to a lot of people. You got to do a lot of things. You got to solve a lot of problems. You got to deal— I was dealing with some fucking— I was a glorified HR fucking person last night at dinner because I was having to deal with something completely stupid. I'm like, why am I have to deal with it? Because I'm in charge. That's why. Does it make sense? So it's like sometimes I have to deal with shit, and I have to learn how to be able to deal with that dumb shit and then turn it off and then have a good dinner. That, that's hard to do and keep going and prep for this. And you know what I mean? Like, there was a lot going on this fucking last night. And so for me, the, the framework of who I'm looking for and all this stuff I'm talking about stems from all the things that frustrated me. So I tried to make that, but I learned just like sales, like, you see enough people, you get to lay down, right? You talk to enough people you will find someone who's more relatable to your style. You, you just will. The difference is you got to be willing to sacrifice the people who are not if you choose that route, or you take everyone and you have to adapt and change a lot. You have to now change a ton, and you have to change already when you find people are attracted to your type of personality, because we all have to grow. There's going to be self-development along the way. But if you have someone that doesn't relate to you and you have to grow, there's gonna be a lot more friction there, you know what I mean? Um, and so for me, what, what I learned that drives me crazy, one of the fucking most annoying things— I'm a question asker. I am, um, I overcomplicate the shit out of stuff. We were getting ready for the thing at the house tonight, and Steph had me moving a table from our back— we have this big back, uh, like screened-in porch, and there's a table there that she wanted by the pool, and it's screened in, so a little door. So I'm trying to get the fucking table out through the door, and it won't just fit through the door. It's too wide, the table's too wide. So you know you got to do that thing where you turn it on the side and wedge the legs out and do— right? But it's downstairs too, it's like 5 stairs to the pool area. And, uh, I'm like, which side do you want to do? Do you want to hold it up over here? And I'm trying to figure out how to fucking hold the thing and twist it and turn it. She's like, why don't you just take off the fucking legs? It's 2 screws. I was like, I just spent 30 fucking minutes trying to wedge this thing around the chimney. And she's like, just unscrew it, dipshit. It took me 30 seconds to unscrew and just walk it out the door, you know what I mean? So for those that over— I'm an overthinker by default, so I have to learn that. Um, and so I ask a lot of questions in our space because I really want to learn. I think there's some people that really learn our craft, really study the craft of what you do, and there's some people who just fucking wing it and they sell. You know, I mean, it's just a fucking job, dude. They come in, they try to sell, they make a few bucks, and they go home. They don't give a shit about the technicalities of the business, um, in the kind of intimate details. I'm one that likes to know the how and the why so I can figure out how to grow it and do more of it. And so I asked a lot of questions along the way. Just, it's who I am. Giovanni's like that a lot, whereas like there's some— who's someone back there? Oh, she was back. Tell me your name again, way in the back. Emerald. She was like— I told her she's newer, so I was like, don't be afraid to ask newbie questions if you have questions. And she said, I'm the type of person that just learns by kind of absorbing it and learning. Tyler's like that. They just kind of absorb first and questions come later. I'm the one that asks the questions. Like, you ever watch a movie with someone and you see like the person come into the kitchen and they don't— you don't know, they haven't defined who that person is, what their role is, what the thing is, you know what I mean? And you're like waiting for it, I'll be like, Steph, who's that? She's like, they haven't said yet. I'm like, why are they in the kitchen? Who are they? You know what I mean? I want to know all this detail. And she's like, will you just shut the fuck up and wait? So I'm that way. I just, I want to know now. And so I would ask everybody who was making money a ton of fucking questions, but that's not everybody. And then there are some people who ask questions because they hear you're supposed to ask questions, so they do it. So some people ask questions, they go implement, and they come back for more. Some people ask questions just to make it seem like they're fucking doing something, and they don't actually implement from the information that they're given. I learned that drives me more crazy than anything else ever. I don't understand it at all. I understand the question part. I don't understand why you keep asking the same questions. That you already have the answers to, right? How many leads do I need to buy? What do I say when they pick up? What do I— when they say, I want to think about it, what do I say? I'm like, motherfucker, you've heard that 800 times. Like, when are you going to get— like, it's, it's not deep. What do you mean, what do you say? It was on the first page of insurance agent training. You're here 6 months and you still don't know what to say when they say, I want to think about it. I find it weird. Now, if they're here for a week, I can't have that same thought. But when you're here for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and you don't know something about the product still, I'm like, bro, you— or you ever get one, you're like, hey, I know I asked you this last week, but what is metformin for again? I'm like, fuck, dude, right? It frustrates. And you all have that little piece to your space where someone just keeps— and so I've learned like some people ask just for different reasons, and to me they're not being coachable at all. I always— I first way I used to deliver it at first, I'm like, I remember one time I— this dude would always call. Um, he was always super emotional kid, good, good dude at heart, but very emotional on the negative side, the nos and the cancels and shit like that, like super emotional about it. And he would always call, and at one point I was like, dude, are you looking for a new answer to that question? And he was like— and it caught him off guard. And he was like, damn, I think I am, even though I know there isn't one. And it was kind of a light bulb moment for me in a sense, you know? And I always, I kind of wondered like, why do people ask questions and then they don't do it? Like, what's the point of the conversation? If you keep calling me for questions and you don't do what I suggest you do, I'm not offended that you don't follow, like believe in, you know what I mean? Like you think there's a better way. I just don't understand why you keep calling when you don't do it. It literally fucking confuses me, right? And so for me, I had to learn how to define that to people. And now if I go, I need you to be coachable, I'm in full fucking control of it, right? Because if you ask a question, then don't do it, I can be like, hey, remember the coachable thing? I can just put everything under coachable if I want to change it, right? So now I have a bucket they're in. And so when I'm frustrated now, or when I know something's going to frustrate me, typically it's about activity. That fucking drives me bonkers when people say I'm gonna do this much and they do this much. I just know it, it fucking sets me off sideways. I think that when people like make, and I've done all this stuff, I've been this person that I'm frustrated by, to be clear. Does it make sense? I was the least coachable person ever. My first couple years. When people are very— when they— it's like when they let the clients control their emotions at like a really high level, like they're almost offended by stuff, and you know what I mean? Like, and they go down this spiral of like conspiracy of leads and shit. That fucking person drives me insane, right? Fair. I don't know how to deal with the— I wanna— 'cause what— I was that way. If I could go back in life and see me that way, the way I would handle me, 'cause I'm me and I can put my hands on myself, I would take myself and bang my fucking head against the wall and tell me I'm overcomplicating it. But I can't do that to agents. But internally, it's how I would do it to myself because I— I miss such simple things sometimes in life. I can, I can be oblivious as shit to stuff, and this felt that way to me when I kind of learned how to run the business. So for me, I learned coachable is very important to me. It keeps my mental tank there. Go ahead. Is there ways that you like frame it in the beginning, like to newbies, to help avoid stuff like that? Yeah, dude, all the like Think about from a sales standpoint, when you try— what are the things we're trying to avoid in a sales presentation? Oh, like trust objections. Yep. And so your presentation includes what? What do you say in your presentation to deal with that shit later? Can you give me an example of one thing you say here to prevent something here? Yeah, like for example, um, to avoid like banking objection, we'll go like, yeah, this part's like the anti-money laundering verification, just like explain what the process is for. Yeah, cool. Have you ever had an agent come on board and it's time to buy leads and their spouse is pissed about it? Have you had that yet? Yeah, you have? Well, I guess not in my personal team, but yeah, you've seen— you've heard of it though? Yeah. That's common, especially the older the demographic. You're someone married with 3 kids, dude, there's stuff, you know what I'm saying? You got someone 22 with nothing going on in life, it's different stuff. So up front, I'm like, if I'm interviewing one of you guys, I'm like, hey dude, so family dynamic, is it like just you, you got do anything you want 24/7, or you got family stuff going on that could get in the way of this? What's yours? I don't actually know. If you— for you specifically, um, do you have family stuff or is it just you? No, single kid. You do whatever the fuck you want whenever you want. No one tells you what to do. So buying leads, you can buy as many as you want. Travel to travel to an event, you can go wherever you want. Get on a call anytime you want. Training anytime you want. No one's in the way. Got it. I do that, right? So I'm setting the stage for there's going to be shit. To deal with, right? If you're married and you got a spouse, I'm going, hey, um, question. So like, financially, does your wife know what's going on? Like, what you're getting into here? Like, how much do y'all know about insurance? Do you understand leads? Does she understand leads? And I want to know that shit. Why, dude? Because when he has a shit-ass week after putting $1,000 into leads and it's time to buy some more to go see some people Is he going to have to go ask his wife permission or the husband permission? Not in a weird possessive kind of way, but dude, fucking the wife should know something's going on. You know what I mean? Like there's got to be some type of conversation there. In my world, it was, dude, I'm going to do this thing. Steph didn't give a shit. She didn't care at all. She wasn't involved. She still to this day doesn't know one thing about anything money. She doesn't know where you bank. She doesn't know how much is in an account. She doesn't know. She knows her credit. She has her credit card. She would have to call Amanda to get anything. Amanda has access to all my finances. My wife does not have the logins to most of the shit, not because she just doesn't know or care. She doesn't give a shit, right? But that's not everybody. So I talk about stuff like that because a few things are going to come up. Schedule is going to come up depending on the relationship they got going on. Leads are going to come up depending on the relationship they got going on. Phone calls from recruiting is going to come up when they got life going on. They're on date night, they got a family trip away for the weekend, they're trying to build. I wonder who they— I want to understand that dynamic. Why, dude? You know how many times I've had an agent on the other end like, hey, I need this, that, or the other thing, and fucking Steve won't pick up his phone. I call Steve, I'm like, what's up? He's like, we're on the ski vacation and Susan's fucking pissed that I'm picking up the phone. I don't want to know that in month 4, you know what I'm saying? I want to know that on the fucking interview, right? What are some other things, like, other outside the spouse that you cover in advance like this? Yeah, I'll touch on them a lot. What I'll, what I'll tell you, I'll give you how I come up with it first, because I'll touch on a lot. I do a lot of it without thinking today, right? Just be purely reps. Does that make sense? I just, I can do it without literally just off the top of my fucking head, just the things that annoy. So What I would say is like part of the structure of this thing is going to be like, as you're building your agency, you also have to watch it, right? As you're learning how to sell, you also have to watch yourself. You are the one with yourself most of the time, so you have to also somehow come up with a way to judge what the fuck you're doing, right? A lot of us tend to think we're doing everything right. I'm trying to find like, where am I— where can I get better? Where am I weak? Right? And so as you're doing this thing, as you're bringing people on, start paying attention to the things today that fucking bother you. The thing like if someone has debt and they're confused, they get a chargeback and they're pissed off. You ever have that? They chargeback Susan fucking canceled, ah, my lead money, ah, this, that, the other. Anyone experience that? Why? How did they get into the space? Sell a policy, get on your trainings, go through your process, all the stuff we talked about, and they're confused about a chargeback and they're mad about it. But you did such a poor job, John, explaining that, that they are fucking frustrated with their first chargeback. I did that shitty a job explaining how this space works that they're confused. You know what I mean? Like, how did I let them in the door? Not understanding the basic dynamic of the industry. Bro, you sell 10, sure as fuck 3 are falling off when you're brand new. And if you only sell 3, I bet you those are the 3 that are going to fall off. So be careful. I've said it to you. Fair? I've said it to you. Why, dude? How often does that shit happen? All the time, right? Why? They're new and they suck. So all the amazing stuff you outline on how to fucking print money in the space, they can't regurgitate any of that shit. Fair? Not week 1, week 2, week 3. It's very rare if they do. It's very fucking rare, right? So all the things that I see that are friction— maybe they bother me, maybe they bother the agent, could be either one— but there's some kind of friction. I'm paying attention to that and going, how can I fix my presentation up front to deal with that earlier, no matter what the situation is, right? So you can name a situation, I can probably tell you where I put it in. That'd be better than me kind of going off the cuff. Does that make sense? So if you have one, certainly, certainly bring something up. So for me, all of it, dude. I'm getting deep. I, I was— how long was I on the phone, you think, with that kid? Probably 30, because I was in the— I wasn't— it was a 10-minute drive to mine. I was on the phone the whole drive. So 30 minutes in, 20 minutes in, perhaps a 30-minute interview. You mean a lot of people are like 6-minute interview and they're hired? I'm like, what? You don't know shit about them. No different than like we go sales standpoint, right? You have a couple strategies to sell. We can get a big deep fucking why, or we can assume the shit out of it and hope they pay. Fair. I know people that print money and they don't do shit for a deep why. They're just really good at reading if it's a laydown or not, and they take all the laydowns and they don't give a shit about the rest. Right? Some people are really good at diving deeper on the why, not going surface level, multi-layers deep. Again, they both work. I just know when I don't weed out the things that annoy me, the odds of me being annoyed with a human I don't know in our space, which statistically, how many don't make it? Fuck, basically all of them. Fair? Almost everyone who gets licensed doesn't work out. So my odds of being annoyed somewhere along the process with this human being is really fucking high, given my personality and the dynamic of the whole space. And when I'm annoyed, I'm really weak in a lot of ways. I fucking— I'm especially early in my career. I'm significantly better at it today. right, where I can be annoyed and hide the shit out of it. But early building, bro, I'd go off the fucking deep end in a second on people. I just would lose my mind. I didn't know how to articulate it and communicate. I've done it with— it's a problem with me, right? So it's like, you may not have that problem. Learn, learn something else along the way. Take the pieces you can. I struggle immensely when I'm frustrated, right? Staff meetings, meetings with teams, meetings with any— my wife, my kids, Madix is like not wanting to go to baseball and I think he should be practicing more. I— my tone sounds frustrated. He wanted to miss a day of baseball and I brought something. I started talking about it. He's like, sorry, never mind, sorry. I'm like, dude, why the fuck you start— why are you freaking out? He's like, you're mad. I'm like, dude, I'm not fucking mad at all. Sorry. And I'm like, I'm screaming at him that I'm not mad. Fuck. You know what I mean? Like, I have a fucking default. You all do too. It's like to own your shit. I know me. I'm going to try to improve my side because I think I'm— I have to be responsible to do that. But I ain't fucking perfect, and I'm not going to pretend that you don't know that because you're fucking imperfect too. And we got to figure out how to do this dance of making new money together. I was making money on my— what the big change for me was making money myself. Right? Because I make the money myself. Now I can define more clearly who I want to work with because I don't need anybody to make the money. I can make the money by myself, at least up to, I don't know, easy half million bucks selling. You know, if I want to make $2 million, I mean, you can do it selling. It's fucking very different path, and I didn't want to be that. So kind of that combination of, of being able to sell at a high level gives you the ability to have freedom in who you work with, right? Does anybody not work with 1099 people? Everyone 1099, right? They're 1099, so they shop around. Tell me about your company. Why should I work with you? My default answer is fuck you. Like, I just— internal, I want to be like, ah. But you have to get there. But what I learned is I don't have to do that part first. Why do I let them control the order of the conversation, right? Tell me about your company. Great fucking question. Hey, do you mind if I ask you some questions first so I can see if you're even a good fit? You know, the guy last night in the interview on the mountain, he texted me after, he's like, so if I decide— he literally— I'm gonna fucking read it. If you watch this on video, bro, I still do love you, but Where's his text? Who should I talk to regarding what paperwork is necessary to make the switch if I decide to do that? Contracting, your assistant, etc. So I said, if you have interest, we'll talk again for sure. You know, so I want to control the conversation. Sales, you know what I mean? And so for me, I always, I I just— you can be in— you can be more in control of things when you understand that you can make the money in your own pen. In this space, you make essentially as much as you want for the average person, and then you're equally 1099. So no different. They can go, tell me about your company, sir. Some guy wanted to do research. I was like, fucking great idea. Hey, can you send me the information on you so I can research you too? He was like, what? Oh, is that— it's only fair one way? You know what I mean? And then the guy yesterday was like, hey, if I Google your company, I see this. What I— what'd I say? Do you remember what I asked him? And do you remember what else I told him to Google? I said, have you ever Googled your religion? I was like, what do you think about the comments on that? He's like, I didn't think of that. I was like, oh, you mean you ignored them because people think different than you? And who tends to post the dumb shit? He was like, idiots. I'm like, okay, so do you really want my opinion on the idiots that posted about the company? He was like, no, I'm good. Okay, thanks. And we move faster. Right? Have you ever had someone that wanna know weird shit about your company or what this guy over there that works at your company did? I'm like, okay, was his name John Wetmore? Nope. So I don't fucking know. Do you want me to try to convince you right now that no dipshits work here and that we don't do anything wrong? Is that what you're looking for me to do? He was like, no. I'm like, okay, we're gonna fuck up. I'm imperfect. My guess is you are too, or you wouldn't be calling me, right? So we're going to be imperfect together. So I also want to know equally about the person, right? Because I have to pour a lot into them, and I don't fucking— it's more work on my end mentally. They quit in a second. But I learned I can too. I just have to do it in the right manner, because I learned the way I did it early was rude and disrespectful. And you know what I mean? It's unneeded. If you're an insurance agent and you feel like you're stuck, you've hit a wall, you're trying to figure out sales strategies, the scripts to use, how to get like off the ground and get to that top of the leaderboard type status, I have a course that I've put out, super affordable. I'm getting a ton of great feedback from people every day on the strategies they've learned and been able to implement, from goal setting to sales techniques to calendar scheduling, everything you would need to get your business off the ground and get running quickly. JW Course course.com. Click the link below and get in there today. And I learned to— just like the sales side, you know how you can do it with like tact or whatever? You can be like very intentional about the approach, right? You almost like turn on in a sense, right? Where you're probably not quite the same when you're, I don't know, hanging out at a barbecue with your buddies. You know what I mean? You're a little buttoned up. I, I can do that on the other side too. I would kind of like button up real good for the sales presentation and then leave the sales situation, get in the building side, and I was a fucking train wreck. I was emotional and I was yelling at people, you know what I mean? I was like, I wasn't intentional. I wasn't using wording to get answers the way I wanted the answers to set up later things. I wasn't doing any of that. I was just fucking talking to people, you know? And I learned the more I do do it with intention, the more I'm in control of the whole thing. And, um, it doesn't go perfect. It doesn't mean everybody works out, doesn't mean everybody becomes a top producer, doesn't mean a ton of people don't quit. It doesn't mean I don't get a lot of dumb questions. But if I have a 30-minute on the front end and I drive deep, it saves me hundreds of hours on the back end a lot of times, you know. And that's a big piece of scaling for me, is to make sure the conversations I have are very impactful in the moment, you know what I mean? Like, they, they accomplish something that generates them more money. And I've learned if I generate other people more money, it tends to fucking work out really good for me. Where I used to even get super over-analytical about that— I could tell you how much each agent override I got per agent, which agent, how much, what care— I knew all of that. But I just learned I like— I don't know, it fucked up, clouded my Thoughts, you know? So I stopped looking at that level of detail and I'm like, what do they think? So coachable for me became the first one and then do the shit you say you're gonna do, right? It's very similar, right? So coachable, listen. So that was step one and they're like, I'm listening, but then they weren't doing. So I'm like, fuck, that annoys the piss outta me. I'm gonna call, I'm gonna start calling at 8:00 AM and they forget. They're like, eh, I couldn't call today. You know what I mean? I'm gonna kill it this month. Eh, maybe next month. That yo-yo. But I also understand that 'cause I was that dude too. I just know it frustrates me. So I speak to that person about that thing where I did it wrong and I'm like, here's the way you need to do it right. You know, and I'd rather you tell me you're only gonna do a little bit. Don't, I don't, when I ask people questions about where they wanna be, I wanna make sure I'm, I want you to give your actual answer. I don't want them to give the answer they think I want. That happens a lot the more you do this, especially today for me. People will like, they see my shit coming and they're like, I can see him going like, all right, fuck, he's trying to catch me here. And they'll try to answer me. I'm like, dude, just tell me you're legit. 'Cause I don't care if you don't wanna make a million bucks anymore. It used to frustrate me. People didn't wanna achieve more in life financially. But I learned that's so, not everybody does. Dude, I talk— I reference a lot. I can tell you a bunch of agents that have been fucking amazing agents over the year, making 60, 80, 90 grand a year, and they're fired the fuck up. And they work 10 hours a week and go see their grandma whenever they want. That agent used to drive me insane. But if they just stay over there and hang out and do it a little bit, and they don't bother me, and they're not negative, and they're not like a cancer to the team, and they're not causing me a headache, and they're— what do I give a shit? Like, really? You know what I mean? So for me, I was like, all right, I stopped caring about where you want to be. I just want you to be honest about it. And if you say you want to be here, my default is going to be to teach you how to get there. And then if you don't do it, I'm going to be annoyed. Again, I know, I know that's going to happen. So I'm like, can you just do what you say you're going to do? And then everyone was like, yes. And that became more clear. So now when I'm dealing with stuff, it's easy to go like Hey, just like the sales side. Hey, Amanda, we need to do the same thing. Lock this one and just make it that one. The air thing will fucking mess me up today. What was I saying? Fuck. Hmm? Knowing what people wanted to do. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So like, again, if you say you're going to do the thing and then don't, So I could go back to people when they said, I'll do ABC, and then you're negative. I can be like, hey, didn't you say this? You would do this, and here's why. Your kids— that I can get the— just like sales. You didn't buy. Hey, didn't you say without our coverage, A, B, and C will happen? It's really easy to deal with an objection when you can use their words. So it's a lot easier for me to have these conversations when I'd be like, bro, you said X, right? And now sometimes I learn people have valid life issues. I'm like, oh, I should probably factor that in somewhere, you know what I mean? So I'm like, fuck, I should give people a little bit of grace just because one time— I mean, like, we all have shit we say we're gonna do, we don't, right? Maybe my threshold for doing that's higher, however you word it. Like, I tend to do more frequently the shit I say I will by default, um, but I ain't perfect either. So then for my third one, I, I realized if you can't do the second one Like the shit you say you're gonna do, communicate with me. Because if you say you're gonna kill it and then you go, hey John, I changed my mind, I don't want to kill it anymore, I just want to sit on the couch. Now if I know you well, I might try to have like an adult conversation with you, but if I don't know you at all, I'll be like, cool, thanks for the heads up, see you at the meeting. And it in my head lowers my expectation for them, and that makes me happy. I still don't understand why they don't want more in life. But I'm no longer frustrated by it, right? And so the less I'm frustrated, the better I am. John Wetmore frustrated is really fucking weak. So for me, that's, again, be coachable, do the shit you say you're going to do, and if you can't, communicate with me. But I have to tell people, if you communicate with me too much that you can't do the shit you say you're going to do, I'm gonna tap out. Like, Grandma can only die so many times before I get annoyed, right? Your dog can only have a problem so many times before I will get frustrated. So 3, that's me like learning to be more patient with people, throw in some grace. But I can only handle it so many times. And if you don't meet that criteria for me, the whole 10-99 thing again, the way I just described it to be me is like, and if you don't do those things, I'm good, but I'll probably quit you before you quit me because I'm, I'm gonna give up. I don't want to fight if you never listen. And you're always negative and you're never doing the shit you say you're going to do and you never communicate, I'm fucking tapping out, you know. And so for me, that became my foundation of who I am based on me, right? I imagine you guys can relate to a lot of those things because they're pretty broad and overseeing, um, but you've got to learn how to articulate it the way you articulate it, you know. Some of you go, I promise you, I'll quit you before you quit me. It might not land right. I don't know, right? So you just— you always got to be you and be your personality. If you're more energetic and bubbly with people, be you, you know what I mean? If you're more encouraging to people, do you. Fucking amen. What's the flip side, dude? You encourage a guy who don't do shit ever, you know what I mean? You spend 4 months encouraging that guy, it's going to get annoying, you know what I mean? So you gotta— you still gotta define. You're like, I'll take more people, I can be more friendly than him, I'm not as irritated, I have more patience, cool. Don't be taken advantage of, because I bet that personality style is used to being taken advantage of more. I don't get taken advantage of quite as much, but I have people frustrated with me more. Does that make sense? It's like there's pros and cons to both styles, but regardless, we still have to have that framework of who we want to be, who we want, um, who we want to bring on. So on this, if you got— we have till 10:30. Yes, Reese. I'm like plenty ahead. Take like— when's the break? Not, not soon. Yeah, 11:30. Cool. Take like 10 minutes, either person next to you, person behind you, do whatever. Y'all do it together, mix it up. I don't know, if it's you, I'd mix it up, you know. But just get with someone, just one or two people together, or groups of two or three, and, uh, spend some time going through this yourself, right? Think about it. If you want to talk through it, we'll do like 10:10. I'll start again, so like 14 minutes. just take some time, run through it, and then we'll cover some of them and go through questions and stuff. There we go. I asked if anyone knows how to do the whistle. Anyone know how to do it? Someone usually does, and no one did. And he's like, I can scream. I was like, go for that, dig it. All right, so regardless how much you got done with this thing, it's going to evolve. You're gonna have to continue to work on it, you know. You have to mold this sucker as you grow and see things that you didn't think about, make changes. Um, but anybody want to start with kind of, did you, have you done anything with it yet? Like, because we talked about it on that last, you already have it all, you haven't changed. Cool. Who wants to start? Anybody that wants to share will probably ask questions. Go ahead. Yeah, go. Yeah, just what you kind of, where you, one, yes, where do you want to go? I don't want to ask too many questions. Yeah, what'd y'all come up with? Just in general, you don't have to read, just talk it up, just talk it out. Yeah, so for mine, I put reasons to work with me. Yeah, for one, I won't bullshit you. Yeah, I speak facts. Two, I've struggled and overcame shit in insurance. Struggled in insurance and post-payment. Yeah. Um, for who I'm looking for, I put coachable, don't complain, and communication. Yeah, it's easy to take those. Yeah, they're pretty foundational. And then the expectations I'm setting, I was talking about in the beginning, is literally everything that's hard in insurance. I set that expectation. Got it. Yeah, that's what they expect. So when I go for— if they don't like that, I kind of move on. Yeah, and see how they react. Makes sense. Does that mean you want to share? Yeah, yeah, go for it. I put reasons people should work with me: I care a lot about people, I'm pretty straightforward, um, I have a track record of success in working different sales and leadership programs, everything. Um, the community that we can build, and, um, I enjoy helping other people more than I'll enjoy like hitting crazy numbers myself. That's cool. Yeah, yeah. And then I put, what am I looking for? Um, people that are confident, goal-oriented, coachable, communicative. Hope like you would like them to have some sales experience. Experience before now, so I'm not teaching them everything I can. Yeah. Um, expectation though, I mean, pretty straightforward. Okay. Yeah, I love it. Cool. Anybody have anything like as an example of why you put something in? It's like, oh, this all makes sense. Fuck, I'm not doing this, and here's what we need to add. Is there anything like jump off the page? For anyone that you, you're definitely implementing to prevent something? Like, you gave the reference of the banking thing. Does it make sense? I do like the expectation, like chargebacks, buying leads and stuff. Okay, to avoid that. Yeah, I have to buy a lead or the fucking bullshit. Yeah. Okay, sure. He's talked about— talking about chargebacks, debt, things like that. I find a lot of, huh, roll-up debt. Yeah. Okay. Y'all, everyone do that yet? Debt, but not only debt, but how roll-up debt works, right? Huh? Anybody dealt with debt before? Like actual debt from someone else? Handful, a little bit. There's lots of ways to handle it. I found that a lot of people that want to build, and even if it's not you if it's the people that you get to build with you on your team. A lot of people handle it like this, straight up. They don't look at anyone's commit— like, do y'all look at your agent's commission statements? Does anybody not? It's okay if you don't. You look— everyone looks at every agent's commission statements? There's— right, some people look at me like, what? This is weird as fuck. Why? What's on there? What do you see on their commission statements that could be important? Huh? If they're getting fucking paid is pretty fucking important to know, right? I've worked with people before and they were out there in the field and buying leads and I didn't know if they were getting paid or not. I have no fucking idea. Like, do you know how much your new guy got paid this week? You know, I knew at noon when we started hiking Giovanni got paid 4 grand already yesterday. I know, but by dinner it was 5. Yeah, yeah. He told me he was up so late the night before, he saw what, 3 deposits come through before he went to sleep. You know, I think for me it just sets the stage if I need to deal with stuff. If they have a chargeback, I tend to find out their agent had a chargeback before they find out. Why? I'm looking at it. You mean I can see when someone gets their first override? I can see when someone gets the first time they get back-end money. I'm like, yo, how was that $312 today? I was wondering what that shit was from. I like, I like being able to do that type of stuff, you know. Um, so yeah, for me the debt thing is important. Again, not only how they set the stage for how they should handle it up front, but when it comes, here's, here's your options. You can have debt and you can freak the fuck out, or if you understand the way it works, the whole 10 people, 3 are going to fall off no matter what. What should we do? Sell more. And I'm looking for that. I ask, I try and— I used to tell, now I try to lead them there. And I want them to— I want that answer. He said we got to sell more. I'm looking for them to say that to me. No different than I'm looking for a client to say I'm looking for more insurance. Right? Somehow, some way, I want that to come up. And so I want them to understand, in this situation, here's what I need to think, not this. So if I set the tone for that and then they lose their shit, it's again really easy to go back and, hey, remember what I talked about? The— I know you had 3 chargebacks this week. Remember how many apps you wrote this week? Yep, it was 3. Remember what I told you? What happens when you only write 3? Those are gonna be the 3 that are gonna cancel. That's how I was taught the business. If you only write 3 apps, buckle up, those are the 3 that are gonna cancel this week. So the world's gonna fuck with you. It does in other areas of life. Fair? Like, the world fucks with you sometimes. You're like, God, why? Why me? Why now? I mean, that's going to continue to happen, right? Um, anything else that y'all put in, or questions about it, um, specifically anything at all you want to know here situationally? Yeah, please. Uh, do you want to maybe like just tell us a little bit more about your mindset on recruiting people into the business that maybe aren't like super top tier. I think I fall into the category of only wanting to work with just absolute killers, and I understand if you want to build something big, that's just not going to be the reality. Yeah. How do you kind of balance like— yeah, yeah. So I didn't start that way. I started with the I'll hire whoever's fucking breathing way, and then I changed to I only want superstars. And then I realized they're both the other extreme. They're both extremes, you know what I mean? And where I want to play, if you like, picture kind of bell curve, right? Old school. I assume they still teach that in like 4th grade. I don't really know. But you know the little shitty thing like that? And you got like on the far end, you got the people who suck ass, can't get a sentence out of their mouth. They're just like, they ain't fucking doing this. And then you got the people over here who are like the fucking unicorns. And they say 2 words and they sell every policy and no one ever cancels. I don't fuck with either one of those. I give this guy a high five and I just don't work with him. I stay out of his way, but I tell people I can't teach that. I know lots of these people. They sell $100 grand a month on fucking 7 leads that they self-generated. I mean, they all called them. I'm like, okay, I don't fucking know that world. I play here. Right, so for me, a couple thought process is if everyone was that elite version of the person you define, if we could go, what's the ideal person, the fucking superhero of insurance salespeople, right? Fuck they need you for, truly, like how much would they need you for? Right? The guy that's like, get the fuck out of my way, give me leads, give me the phone, script, fuck the script, give me the phone. What are you gonna do for that guy? Stay the fuck out of his way. How many of them are there? Dude, almost zero, right? And then how many are there that also have no ego and are gonna be good for you? And good for the team and good for the culture and not leave you debt and not be a scumbag. Fucking narrows down. I'm not fired up about that guy. The guy that comes into it killing it out the gates, I get nervous. I'm like, yo, watch this shit. Amanda, who the fuck's that? Did you get— you ever have someone on a leaderboard first time and they fucking issue some big number? Dude, everybody's usually excited. I got a guy, I got one! Yeah, dude, over, over here in my Amanda's fucking on the internet checking out their social media, where they used to work. We're figuring who they are because it's so rare. For me, I look at it a lot like my kid. Brayden's 17. I'm trying to teach him how to be an adult now. I'll be honest, I didn't teach him much of shit about life. Dude, he was a teenager. He was just trying to fucking live. His life was already complicated enough. You know what I mean? Divorces and different houses and fucking no money, some money. It's fucking chaos. But I look at it like one of my goals was to make sure early on when I wrote my goals, I wanted to put my kids in private school. I did not want my kids— I hated, um, what, what year did you switch? What grade? Fifth grade. Cool. So for first till fifth grade, he was in public school. Do you ever take— you took the bus? Bring your moms up there. I knew, I knew Shaili did, and T, because I— bro, the shit that happens on public school bus, I'm like, fuck that, I don't want my kids there. Does that make sense? Now you send them to a private school, you learn shit happens still, it's just a different breed of people. I'm like, all right, I'll take my chances at the private school, Christian, where they teach the stuff I'm really bad at teaching at. Do I spend time teaching him the Bible? Dude, I don't know shit about the Bible. I'm not good there. Do I believe in it? Yes, but I'm not— I'm sending them to school. That's what they do. I want him to live like this, but I didn't quite grow up perfect, you know what I mean? So I'm like, am I the best framework? Hey, I'm gonna tell you all the stuff I fucked up. The school is going to teach you all the good stuff. Combine the two, we'll be good, you know? And so for me, I always look at like, as the kids grow, I can teach them different things. I can't teach him when he's in 5th grade the shit he's gonna learn in high school. Unless he's like, I mean, my version, the old people joke is like he's a Doogie Howser. I don't know who the like young smart person on TV is in today's world, but you know, kid that can be a doctor, like he's gonna learn at a faster pace, but it's so rare, right? So I'm not gonna try to teach him algebra in 3rd grade. Like that comes later, dude, don't worry about that. You know what I'm saying? I'm afraid to do 2 2 because I know later there's fractions. I'm like, okay, we're about fractions later, dude. And so same here. So for me, what I've learned is like, if you try to run— pick a company, pick a concept, and try to run it with only top-tier people. Like, how well does Pizza Hut work if everyone wants to own the Pizza Hut? You can't even run one. You know what I mean? And then like, how dynamic are you? Like, I want to— it'd be dope to have it. And you can level up with time. Like, in today's world, I can level up different. Why? Track record. Different level of people come to me now. But early on, I couldn't do that, right? And so for me, I learned my— where I, where I make money is by pushing insurance. And I only need a little rip of not even that big a number to print money for me. So I don't need this, you know what I'm saying? I need lots of these. So that was my mindset first. So I'm like, can someone who doesn't want to be elite give these? Fuck yeah, dude. Will you pull up the leaderboard again, Amanda? I want to, I want to cover this thing again, the full month of April. Do we have— we don't probably don't have Maze yet, do we, from me her. Give me April's full one, just on the laptop, just the Excel sheet. And I want year to date, or maybe I'll do month. Just give me the month, April. So for me, I learned like, I want to help people kind of graduate through the process of this thing, right? And if you don't— it's probably a bad example with school in a sense, but like, if you don't want to go to college, Who the fuck am I to say you have to go to college in our space? So if you don't want to build a big team, what do I give a shit? But some people are going to want to, right? And so my goal is to help people through those phases more than anything. And if you can— and I always tell people, I can go way faster than you. You can't go faster than me at this stage. So as much as you can consume information, as much as you want to go, you just keep asking, I'll give you information. I'll feed you as fast as you want to go. Because I'm telling you I can go quick. I know the path already. I can go 100 miles an hour relative to your 5, no matter how good you— does it make sense? So what, for me, the, the biggest concept I was taught— I posted a video about, or Reese posted the video about it the other day— is the whole leadership is taken, not given. I don't know if any of y'all saw that video. Dude, leaders are going to take fucking charge on their own. You're not going to beat someone over the head and make them a leader. You can teach people to eventually get there. You can model it and people can want to copy you. But to go like— thank you— but to go like, hey bro, you're leg 2, you're my second guy, I need you to build a $500,000 team. It just doesn't kind of lay out that way. So I've learned that if I set that framework, right, and I have really simple steps for kindergarten, some of them are going to stand out and want to go to first grade, and I help them in first grade in the space wherever they're at. And then some are going to be like, dude, not only do I want to go to first grade, I'm willing to do homework at night too because I really want to learn this. Cool, I give them extra shit, right? I want to go to second grade, I want to go to third. Oh, you know what, dude, like when I would— when Shaili, my oldest, I should be 31 this year, She grad— when she graduated high school, she was 17, because in like preschool, she was born at that— she was born in October, and it's kind of close to that cutoff age, right? So she could either been the youngest or the oldest, depending which way we push her. She was smart as fuck. And so we were like, let her go ahead. And so she was all growing up, she was younger than everyone in her class, but she got herself— I didn't do shit. I don't know how she figured it out, but she got a full-ride academic scholarship to Ohio State. I didn't do that. Brayden wants to be a fucking doctor that does surgery on kids and shit, like fix their whole body. I'm like, I didn't give that to him. He has desires. He wants to go get it, fucking go get it, bro. I'm going to give you a path to help you make some money so you don't have to work at Taco Bell along along the way, I don't give a shit if he does insurance or not. But I'm like, where he worked at Chicken Salad Chick up the street serving chicken salad sandwiches, well, I got guys his age, or one year older than him, making fucking 20, 30 grand a month. And I'm like, I mean, I could probably teach you, bro. But I didn't force him, you know what I mean? He wants to go to the country club and swim later. I'm like, I do you, bro. But I'm going to lead by example and talk about it a lot. Um, so for me, dude, I'm trying to— I'm trying to like— I don't want to say create leaders because I don't believe I create them, but I think I can help mold people who naturally have it. So I'm looking to identify people. That's my ultimate goal, is bring this demographic in that I can handle, not lose my shit with, right? Help them get to a certain level, cool. But deep down, I'm looking for people who want to fucking move up the levels. But I can't do that without a foundation. If I have 3 people, I can— I'm like, oh fuck, one of y'all better make it, you know what I mean? Otherwise my whole agency's fucked. And so for me, I'm just like, let me help him get paid whatever he wants to get paid. Can I challenge him? Yep, I do it all the time. I fucking push people all the time. Was it dinner when I was saying you used to be a $40K producer? No, it was on a team call. It was on a team call? Yeah. He did like $38 grand this month. And I was like, hey, next stop's $40K, bro. He's like, I've written $40K. I said, you used to be a $40K writer? He's like, fuck you mean, dude, I did it last month. I said, yeah, you used to do it. You didn't do it this month. I'm going to fuck with him a little bit. Why? He can handle it. He wants to win. I know he's competitive as shit and he really wants to tell me to fuck off, but he's going to do it with like $62,000. And I get nothing. I don't gain anything massive out of it. He's going to make all the fucking money. You know what I mean? So for me, I'm trying to— I'll push him and I'll watch. I'm like, he's either going to step up or he ain't. And what's cool is I can fucking talk about it in front of him and tell him I'm doing it and it still works. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, I just wanted that transparency with me. If you're going to fuck with me, just tell me you're fucking with me. Sweet, you're gonna challenge me? I got it, I like it. Now, not everybody can be challenged the same way. Some people, if I do that to, they literally get offended, you know what I mean? Like, I've made some people mad sometimes. I'm like, oh, that one did not land well. Sometimes shit comes out of my mouth and I'm like, fuck, that one didn't go well. I try to watch the reaction of people, you know what I mean? It wasn't perfect. I'm like, oh, I would have scripted that different, you know? And I just try to do that. So for me, dude, it's more about put them, put them, put them in a position to where at a surface level they can get to the next step in their career. But I'm, I'm looking for different, dude, you know. How many people you have, agents? Uh, I just have one starting on Monday. Okay, cool. Yeah, it's hard to, it's hard to draw. Have you talked to a lot of people to try or not yet? Uh, Not like a ton of people, but— Got it. All right, you've been around the industry a little bit. You've been around the industry some. You've been around people in the space doing well, some doing shitty. Is it easy for you to identify anyone in the space yet that stands out different than everyone else? Yeah. Isn't that— is it so easy to see? Like, we didn't talk about what stands out, what detail, what— we didn't— I didn't give you anything to work with. He's like, yeah, I got it, I see it. It's really easy to see when people are different than the flow of the normal crowd. And it can be multiple different things. They could be good with people, they could be good at sales, they could be, they might suck at sales, but they're good at, I don't know, going up to strangers and talking to 'em with no fear. Does that make sense? Some people are good at spending money and not worrying about if they lose it or not. Dude, listen to his story. Bro, it was funny last night. Bro. He said some comment, and we're not gonna get into it, so calm the fuck down. We're not rehashing it. This would be like a fucking political debate if I let it. But he said something along the lines that he, Giovanni, heard that he had an easy time learning the business. And Giovanni literally lost his fucking shit at dinner about it. Was straight offense, like, fuck you, dude, I worked my ass off. He went, dude, it was a 15-minute thing. My wife kicking me under the table. You know, so it's like, watch it, watch the way you word things, bro. You can, you know, say— I don't know, man. For me, it's, it's just identify people that stand out. And if I go, who stands out in a crowd? It's the ones up front. They stand out more in my world than the ones in the back. Maybe some I don't know as well, that could be a factor. Does that make sense? But when I have people close to me, I'm like, dude, they stood out relative to the other people I'm talking to. That's all I'm looking for at the beginning is who stands out from the crowd. And I can— again, you do it for a long time, I can find lots of different ways that that applies. You know, I always use silly examples with stuff like this. When we do events like this, when I was new, the dude who would put on the events, I would help him like get ready for this and show up early. I'd like erase the whiteboard and I'd help him put shit out on the tables and just dumb stuff, just help him and run his company. Almost no one did that. You know, I remember we had, um, we had an event. I think it was that where Cody's— y'all know Cody? I forgot Cody. He was out there. Y'all know Cody Askins? He snuck in in the back. If y'all didn't see, he's here. He's going to talk later. Um, so welcome, Cody. Appreciate you coming out, dude. Um, I think it was at the event that you're having yours at. Early on in my career, Mike would put on, um, sales trainings like this more stage, like speak, less interactive, less workshop style, but we put on traditional, like, hey, come watch all the people killing it. And we'd go, and I would send all my agents there because all the people on the stage would fucking train them, you know what I mean? I'm like, shit, if I fill the room, they'll get more knowledge than if I didn't fill the room. So one of the things I look for is how well can someone fill a room. That's fucking important to me, you know. Did y'all cover that? Oh no, I thought you were talking about this. So some people on your team are going to be significantly better than that, dude. I'm going to let that dude shine, you know what I mean? Like, yo, help me market this thing. Fucking create the logo. Yeah, yeah. He built our Discord. We started a Discord group because we were trying to use like WhatsApp and some other shit. And he's like, hey, dipshit, that sucks. Use this. And I was like, I don't know that. He's like, I'll help. I gave him my fucking login, made him admin. I'm like, thank you. Him and fucking Reese. He started the whole thing. Him and Reese put the whole Discord together. Everything. Any of y'all in that? I didn't touch it. I don't know where the fucking buttons are. I don't know how to make anything work. I don't know any of the settings. He did that shit. He didn't have to. I sure as fuck noticed, you know what I mean? It's like, dope, appreciate it, fucking thank you, you know? So I'm looking for stuff like that on the team, dude, because again, keep in mind the core of this thing. You want to scale, you want You ain't doing this shit alone. He has a skill set. I'm gonna let him use it. Why? I add enough value to his life that I know he don't mind adding value to mine. You know? So it becomes a mutual relationship for me, and I try to find more of those in different areas. You know? Some people will share stories more. Some will post in the group more. Some will ask questions more. So there's all kinds of different things I like, but it's who's different. It's kind of the mindset of the whole thing. Make sense? I hope that helps, but you know, um, cool. Anything else? Questions, specifics, work on it, help adjusting anything for you? No? Go ahead. At what point did you start realizing that it was time to spend less of your efforts selling and more directed recruiting and managing? And how did you like— yeah, sure. I, um, dude, it was a weird— it was one of the weirdest times in my career, taking this thing from me controlling the money to all the money being dependent on other people. The feeling of it— remember I said like the control freak, dude? Have all your income not from your activity. Fucking, I don't know, anybody ever experienced that? All of it, not from you. It's a weird fucking feeling. I felt like lonely and I didn't know what to fucking do. I'm like, dude, I'm busting my ass in the field selling at a high level. And then one day I wasn't. It was like, fuck, right? So first of all, it was like, it's a weird transition. I think a lot of people make it too soon. I made it when I was literally losing money by selling insurance. It was costing me money to sit with a client and present. What can I make presenting? Typically, am I going to hit a big one every once in a while? Obviously. $1,000? I miss 5 agent calls that were in houses. That I got 30 points on. I'm like, dude, I can't keep up. I had so many inbound phone calls from agents seeking information. I physically couldn't die. And it's not like I'm kind of busy, but I had 40 agents selling every month. 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. And I had no staff yet. Tried 40 agents selling, and I— it was just me. I was doing contracting, I was doing all the ads, I was doing all the resumes, I was doing all the interviews, I was getting them. So I did every piece of it. So I was running, you know, 30 appointments a week. My interviews was always 30 weeks, so I tried to do 30 appointments. And I come from field sales, in-home, kitchen table, right? So I was trying to see 30 people a week, certainly got no-shows, and interview 30 a week. Week. So I created like this little 30/30 club. If you want to sell and build, you had 30/30 club, or you ain't serious, right? This is one of those frameworks for me, because how many people say they want to build? Fucking everybody. How many talk to more than 2 people a week? Almost nobody. What's— how much are you going to build? What's the actual answer? You ain't— you ain't building shit. Can we just say it? Right? So I'm like, dude, if you don't talk to enough people, you have no shot other than being on the far end, hiring a guy, getting lucky, and he builds something big for you. Which, that ain't good either. It's fucking cash cow at the beginning, but you don't learn how to build outside of that, that's going to fucking bleed dry. They'll eventually catch you and comp pass you, quit you, go somewhere else. That'll fucking dry up, right? Um. So as you start to— as you start to do this thing, I don't know, man, the structure is going to be a big important part of it, you know, as you build it out. Um, trying to think, I was gonna touch on something else there. I don't remember, I don't know if I answered the fucking question. Oh, the— yeah, so I would say, dude, um, trying to think if I want to touch on something else there. Before I get too deep. I might touch on it. Did that help at all? Anyway, go ahead. What was your main recruiting process? So early on, dude, I certainly tried to do the friends and family thing. I didn't have a big warm market. You know, I paid for ads right off the rip because that was the only way for me to get to people is to pay for ads. Nah, dude, I mean, again, it's a question of what was I doing then or what would I do today? What would you do today? Yeah, because they're very different, you know. The world is a different place today. I think if you're not on social media showing what you do, you don't stand out a lot, you know what I mean? You, you, you give up access to millions of people seeing your information. Like, if you're not posting regular online, you're choosing to not have as many people see you. Fair? So it's just a choice. Like, do we know it would help? If more people see you, will it help build your company? So should you put out more content or less content? My strategy: post every day on every platform. That's it. What do you post? I don't fucking know. Every day on every platform. Today, again, I get to cheat today because I have help. You know, Giovanni's sitting in his fucking room editing videos that he— he has the glasses. Do you have them with you? Yeah. Surprised you didn't wear them here. Yeah, honestly. So he's got these, uh, you all seen the— what are they, Meta? And they video. So he takes these out in the field, he records while he's out there knocking on doors and getting no-showed and sitting with clients and presenting, and it gets the view, his perspective, right? POV, whatever the fuck y'all cool kids call it. And he sits back and he chops them up and edits them and puts them out. You've been doing that how long? Days? Anything on social, period. Let's start there. After your event? After the last event? Yeah, so probably like 2, 3 months. Okay. And I only have like 25 videos up. Okay. How many people you think you've talked to just from that, roughly, ballpark it? Yeah, 40 or 50 he wouldn't have got, and he's just started super recent. How long you been doing the glasses? Had like 2 weeks, right? You know, get 40, 50 people he wouldn't have got otherwise. He don't really have a social. He has like 6 posts, and now more. He had 3 posts at my last event. Yeah, 3 posts ever on his Instagram. You know what I mean? Like, he's getting 40, 50 people from it in, in 2 months, 3 months. So I think today, man, it'd be like the concept— I like the concept of document, don't create. I didn't create that concept, I stole it from other people, but document versus create social. I like to document it more than I like to go, all right, I'm gonna turn the camera on in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go, create social. I don't like that, you know what I mean? I'm not gonna sit in a parking lot and do 4 takes, and I just— I'm like, fucking record all my stuff, that will give you enough, you know. Early on, what I will tell you, the way my social started, this whole snowball of marketing that got everyone here to know— for the most part, everyone knows me through something social, whether my stuff, Cody's stuff, combination of both, whatever it is, that all started out of me learning how to scale by taking the repetitive stuff I had to do over and over again, right? The, the, the questions that agents were asking me non-stop relative to typically technique, sales stuff, scripts, situational stuff. Instead of having to have a 20, 30, 40-minute conversation about the proper way to sell someone who's 72 with a big mortgage and they had cancer 3 years ago, right? If you sell— if you're in the mortgage protection space, you deal with that. Final expense space, answering questions about how do you sell these broke people in a trailer home that have no money, like, how do you deal with that, right? All these questions I was getting, I decided I'm going to record my answer because I was sick of fucking saying it all the time. But it worked. I was saying the things and people were like Fuck, I never thought of that. Let me try this and go try it and come back and it was working. And some of the content, if you've seen any of my old, old sales training, it's kind of unconventional because it's me being me, like really direct and fuck the small talk and can we just get to business stuff. So I started recording it. So when people asked, I realized I was bad at that framework of who I wanted to hire. And I didn't do that well. So people weren't studying on their own. They weren't staying up late at night taking notes. Does that make sense? They weren't learning the craft. I didn't set that groundwork very well for new people coming in. I just let them fucking wing it. I didn't talk to getting the skill. Like now, this is the dude's question earlier. One of the examples I use a lot now is if you were trying to make a team for football and you were trying to be the starting quarterback on Sunday, and bro, and the coach hands you a playbook Do you need fucking the coach to come up to you every day and beg you to learn the plays? You want to start fucking Sunday for the Atlanta Falcons. I have to tell you to study your craft? That's weird to me. So here, when you come in, I don't know if you're going to be the weirdo who thinks they don't have to study this, or you're going to be the guy that fucking kills it and studies every night. I don't know who you are, but I've learned the guys that study it like crazy every night tend to do better. So as you come on board with me, that's what I'm looking for. If I find out you don't know the plays on Sunday and we put you on the field and you like don't know what run left means, what do you think coach is going to do? He's going to cut you. Now I'm not your coach, but like I'm going to kind of want to fucking quit you if you aren't learning, right? So if we go back to some of the things I do early, that's one of them I talk about every time. So I started— I couldn't keep up with the people though, right? So to his question, like, how did you know when to go? I was talking to so many fucking people about making money in this thing, I couldn't— I was literally losing money to sell. And so I start looking at it, I'm like, dude, I was making like, bro, $80 grand a month when I quit selling, and probably $60 of it was override at that point, you know, maybe $15 Cash, new business, maybe 5 to 10 renewal backend type money, you know. And I'm like, fuck, I, I can make more money doing what I'm doing, scaling it, because I had a good foundation, you know what I mean. So if I take, I don't know, 6 less appointments today and maybe make 3 grand today, bro, I can get fucking 5 people started. And I do that day in, day out. Problem is people do that too soon and they have no money to support credit, and they can't. I had fucking— I stopped selling, I had $60 grand a month coming in, and I was only living on fucking— I was paying myself $1,500 a week. Does that make sense? So I, I was stacking cash, dude. I was fucking putting mad money away. So I had nothing in my life, and then the first time I made money in the mortgage industry, I thought I had made it, and I spent it faster than it came in. And when, when it went away, I got whacked. So as I started building this, I was scared. So I was stacking cash, dude. I didn't need to live good. I was used to living off $40 grand a year, $1,500 a week, tax— no taxes yet. I can pay the taxes later. I was fucking rich, you know what I mean? So for me, it was time because of the busyness. I was so busy training people and it was working. People were getting fucking paid. And I'm like, yo, I got to do something else one day. I just— I saw it coming, but I was nervous to get out. No one was really doing it, especially if you're in FFL. I was here early. I was the second person at FFL ever to get out of the field from the foundation, the people who sell them built, that built. And my mentor was first, and it was only like 30 days, 60 days prior. So we got out of the field in 20— beginning of 2017, I stopped selling. And FFL only started in 2014. So it was 3 years really in the field, and my first year was mediocre as shit. It's 2 years I killed it, but I was recruiting at a high level, doing all these things. Part of it was I'm killing it on the sales part. People want to know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't have time to have 45-minute conversations all day, every day. So I started creating content, not for the purpose of social media. It was, quite frankly, to be more effective and somewhat lazy in a sense. Like, why have a 45-minute conversation when I don't have to? You know what I mean? For statistically someone who's not going to work here long anyway. Now you start to learn how to deliver things. I used to be like, hey, dipshit, did you not see the video? We sent it to you in an email in your welcome package. That shit don't work. Does that make sense? But that's what it was at first. Then I learned to go, hey dude, fucking great question, bro. I'm running to a meeting. Hey, I put this video together on that exact topic. I'm gonna send you the link. Go watch it. It's like 45 minutes. Watch it, take notes. Any questions you have after, call me back, let me know, we'll discuss it. Cool. And that became how I train people. Go watch the information, consume it, take notes, call me back, then we discuss. And now I can just discuss bullet points and I can force them to consume what I want them to consume. And then I started putting it on my YouTube, and that's how my YouTube caught, right? Then fucking random people. So then someone— it worked, right? And then like, oh, go see this video. They start hiring, dude. He starts hiring. Hell, he, he trained on my videos, knew in the industry, didn't know me from a hole in the wall. And he's like, I remember the red shirt. And I'm like, oh, I had long hair at the time too. I think I tried to pull that off and it didn't work really well. But, you know, for me, what happened is then as those people started coming on board, they started sharing it with others. They hire an agent, they learned how to sell on the video I made. Why would they not share that fucking video? That's how they learned the business, right? And that became like a fucking waterfall. Of information. I was like, holy shit, I did not plan this the way it played out. That was not in the vision for me to have any kind of online presence because I fucking hate social media. I don't enjoy it at all. But I also learned there I can control what I consume, right? So all the stuff I dislike about social, I no longer consume. I unfollow almost everyone. I don't follow shit. I don't pay attention. I almost follow nobody back. Rare. 'Cause I'm like, I just, what do I need to consume all that for, right? But I was missing the piece of the business to where people consume my shit, right? And I don't want you to consume my boo-hoo shit, what I had for lunch, even though I post that sometimes, 'cause weird enough, people are intrigued. Dude, I've had 3 people ask me about cottage cheese today. I'm like, what the fuck is happening? For those that don't understand, follow me a little closer, you'll learn. You know, um, so social came out of that, man, out of a need to try to get more information in more people's hands. And I would literally sit on my back deck. There was no lighting, there was no little fucking circle thing, we didn't have any of that. It was like literally fucking flip the camera around, hit record, and do the training, upload it to YouTube. And one day I looked up, dude, and all of a sudden we had like fucking hundreds of people following me. I'm like, what the hell? Then we hit 1,000 subscribers. I'm like, Dude, I have like 100 agents. How the fuck do I have a thousand? And I find out this agency over here is sharing it, this guy over here is sharing it, and it just snowballed, dude. And with time, the whole like do more now, get better later— at the beginning was do a bunch of it, just upload shit. I didn't care about the camera, the darkness, the light, what I was wearing, hat back. I didn't care because it was to get an agent information. That was it. And then with time, it was like, oh damn, there's something here. Right, then I connect with Cody a few years ago and I'm like, hey, I want to help in the industry, can we connect, whatever. I tell them what I'm trying to do, I learned what he's trying to do. We knew each other a little, we'd met at a couple events, um, early, earlier, a few years earlier. And I was like, dude, I want to help. And I start paying attention to what he's doing and like, Cody sold a little bit of insurance, but he ain't on his social media going, I'm the best insurance sales guy on the fucking planet, I'll outsell any— that's not thing. He's a marketing fucking machine though. And I'm like, I'm watching what he's built on social relative to what I've built, and it was like this. But I'm looking at how much insurance we do relative, right? And I'm like, he's a fucking wizard in that spot. What if I start doing some of that more intentionally over here? And now instead of just shit to get info, I was like, oh, I can tighten it up, I can fine-tune it, and We started hiring people, you know, after many fucking mess-ups hiring people. I don't know how many social media people I've had in the last 4 years, but it's been a lot. Cody's probably met 6 different ones that I've brought to events. But Reece has been with me now a year and a half, and he, he runs the whole— he makes all the decisions. All I do is show up and talk. Everything else that goes out of my content, Reece picks. Maybe he gets with Amanda now, maybe they talk about a little bit together in a meeting, I don't fucking know. I do none of it today, but early on I was uploading stupid videos about how to close an old lady who had a $300,000 mortgage and her husband died last year and she didn't want $10,000 because it's not enough insurance for the money, you know what I mean? Like ballpark, how many hours does your social media person work and what do you pay them? How many hours do you work, bro? Endless. Endless. Yeah. What do you pay, what? What do I pay you? I don't know how much he wants to admit. Here's what I'll tell you. I'm trying to get him to 6 figures this year. Gotcha. And he ain't— I'd be fucked up if he doesn't make it this year. Like we did something wrong if he's not like right on, right, he'll be in that ballpark. I want all my staff making 6 figures. Do you pay more on like a commission style structure or just straight up? No. Well, I'm funny, dude. I don't like— I don't have a pay plan. I don't really have like— y'all know what SOPs are? I don't have those. Like Amanda's creating them now. Like I just— my pay is like when I found Amanda, I think she got started fucking like $25,000 or something, probably $30,000. I think it was $30,000. $30,000? $50,000. 15 bucks an hour. Yeah, Brayden dials for someone else in a different agency. They pay him, and I pay him what I pay, you know what I mean? I just, I like to, I like to pay people to accomplish things because in the long term it's going to be an investment for them and me. And I want her to do well. I want them to do well in life, you know. Um, so I want all my staff making six figures. They don't all at the beginning And today, but I don't think anyone walks in the door under 50, 60, probably 60 now. I walk into the door, minimum 60 today to work with me in any capacity. I do salary, but it's like, I'm me. So I'm like, if you want to clock in at 8 and leave at 5, do you. But when you stay till 5:30, do you think I'm going to fucking notice? Yeah. "When you walk out the door at 5:01, am I gonna notice?" "Yes." "Am I gonna judge you?" Dude, I'm not perfect. If all your shit's done, I don't care. Like Amanda's schedule's fucking great. She works a lot, but she has a lot of flexibility today. The others, not as much flexibility. They only been here for a little while. She's been here 8 years, dude. She helped me build this fucking thing. She's like, "My kids are sick. Can I come in late?" I'm like, "Can you stop asking me? Do you, girl. You run the fucking company." Well, they think— I don't care, you run the company. Tell they to fuck off. Tell they to give me 8 years. Help me make millions and millions of dollars. You'll be fucking well paid. She makes multiple 6 figures. Why? Dude, she's helped me make 8. You know what I mean? So my goal is for people around me to win too. At the beginning, quite frankly, when I learned she had a skill set, I was like, I should probably pay her more so she don't quit, because I'm kind of a fucking asshole and I'm sort of neurotic and I get frustrated early on. She met me 2017. I was a fucking shit show then. So part of my strategy early on was overpay so they can't quit when they want to, right? You pay someone 50 G's when they can only usually make 35. There ain't a lot of people who I got to compete with now. So kind of that was the strategy, to stick with me. Like, I know I'm fucked up, but I promise I mean well, and I promise you'll get paid. And she did, you know. And she gets to live a dope lifestyle, so she makes that. But she also travels every— excuse me, most places I go, I pay for that. We stay in the Four Seasons a lot. I pay for that. We rent dope cars, I pay for that. We eat dope dinners, I pay for that. Like, I like them to live, dude, you know? So the more you help me grow, the more I'm gonna help you. I'm— I ain't the only one that's gonna eat. Am I gonna eat better? Yeah, it is mine. Does that make sense? Like, it is what it is. Um, so yeah, I like people getting paid, dude. Go ahead. So you don't we, as we've spoken about prior, our agency, we sell a lot of things— ACA, Medicare, life. Yep. A lot of our agents are 20 agents, they're kind of stuck in the ACA, Medicare residual. Sure. If they, they make 50, 60, 70, it's easy for them. Yeah. When we come to talk about let's raise your sales, let's sell more supplemental, let's sell more life, they look at me like it's a, it's hard. Yeah. So they kind take the easy route and they just live off the comfort residual. Do you think we're like beating a dead horse? Yes, it depends how you do it. So if you try to— like you said, and I don't know if you did it on purpose, you said like when we try to tell them ABC. For me, the only tweak I would make is I would ask them a lot of questions that help them discover why they're doing so little. Because you just— maybe you know, maybe you don't know. But quite frankly, dude, some people deep down are like, I just don't give a fuck. I just want to go home and watch the new Netflix and make $80 grand. They just don't care, you know? So I do it through questions. I found that's more powerful. Meaning, hey, can I— you— can I ask you a question? Like I did with her last night. I'll give you a real life instead of making shit up. She, uh, we were talking. Kyla, she's first— there was a first full month or second full month? First full month. May, we're in June. Yeah, May, May was your first full month, 30-something grand submitted. I don't know what the issue paid came out to yet. And she started talking about wanting to do more. So I'm like, what does that look like? Do you know how to do more? She's like, yeah, you reverse engineer it. Again, this was kind of like the— I asked a poor question, she kind of gave me the answer that she knew I probably wanted to hear a little bit. And like, it's common sense. Fuck him back into the number, she basically told me. And I'm like, yeah, no, I mean like literally, do you actually have written out what the plan is to hit this number? And she said like appointments or money or like whatever you have. Do you have anything? Like what's the goal to attack this new number? And she said, um, and correct me if I get any numbers wrong, I said, you know how many appointments you ran last month to get to the 30-something? She said 110. Is that the right number? I said, cool, what's the goal for June? She said 120. I was like, okay, let me start talking. And she asked me a question like, I don't remember how you worded it, but it was like, hey, do you think there's anything else I should like consider? I forget how you worded it. And I said, yeah, I think you should question whether or not 120 appointments when you already knew how to do 110 is pushing yourself a lot or not. It wasn't. What would be pushing yourself? Probably like trying to throw in another week, so it's like 30 more, maybe even more than that, like 150. Okay, can you create a schedule, a structure to do 150 in June now? That's it. Fucking 2 questions. Does that make sense for First, you know, if you were in 150 appointments, you could— I could— I used to do that a lot, but now it's like, hey, let me, let me get her wheels turning, you know what I mean? And it's not offensive. I just want you to think about— is push going from here to here? Is that really pushing the way you want to push? If she said yes, I'd have been like, dope, you figure out how you're going to do it yet? It'd been the same. I'd have ended the same way, right? The guy that we interviewed yesterday, you laughed, Anthony. I think it was you. When he said, uh, he said something like, I either want to make or I did make $200 grand. What'd he say? And I responded, I said, a month? Yeah, yeah, his goal was $200 grand. Yeah. Oh, that's right. Yep. I told him to define a lot, right? He said he did. He said, I want to make a lot. I said, can you define a lot? He said, $200 grand. I said, a month? I knew what he meant. I was 100% certain on he meant a year. And I said, do you mean a month? He fucking stuttered. I mean, that would be fucking nice one day, but dude, I'd take $200 grand a year right now. I was like, okay, well, it's just a little stretch. It's just a little stretch. You think he ain't gonna fucking think about that all night, right? And I just watch. But I like to do lots of little things like that when I'm in that situation, you know what I mean? I'm going to sit down and have a conversation. Now, if they're a Cancer, I'm going to handle it different. But if they're ho-hum, maybe even sometimes a little negative— especially on the negative, I'm going to question the shit out of the negative guy. It's going to be a different tonality. But where he struggles is the tone with it, right? When you start questioning people, they— he said, fuck yeah. Right? Why do the people that work with him stick? They can handle it. But people that don't have thick skin, when he's like, how many phone calls did you make? Dude, they feel like they're being interrogated by the fucking CIA. Yeah. What did he say? What call? Yes. I can relate. Agreed. So it's learning how to phrase it. You know what I mean? And who your people are. You get a guy like Brian on our call the other day, I can be like, yo, how the fuck you do $3,500, bro, on booking no appointments. Are you fucking lying? I just straight at him because I have a different relationship with him. If it's with someone else, I can be like, hey, hey, do me a favor. I really want to help you understand your own numbers, right? Because I feel for me, when I see numbers and I can understand like what it takes to achieve this, it gives me clarity. And I want you to really start looking at— can you— do you happen to know off the top of your head like how many phone calls you make a day? I want to help you with Some math, I don't care the number, but can you give me an idea? And I position it just different. It's just a little different delivery. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, we do this many. Got it, cool, dope. Somebody texted me yesterday, talked to 12 people, booked 5. I was like, fucking great job, dude. He was mad, he was frustrated. I'm like, hey, fucking great job. 5 out of 12, pretty good fucking job. Hey, question, why only 12 on the phone? What happened? I mean, I just did dial day, didn't go the way I wanted it to. Ah, okay, so you did great, you just fucked up and didn't do it all day, is that what you're saying? He's like, yep. Got it. I'm not gonna let him go off the deep end because he didn't do what he had to do. Two questions, you know what I mean? How, dude? You know how many times I've had to go through the bullshit to get there? And I'm like, I just spent 45 fucking minutes to find that is the problem, right? So you learn, you— it's a skill set you acquire how to kind of get to it fast. I cut dude off 6 times yesterday on the call. He wanted to start talking. So when I asked him what he sold— that's how it started— when I asked him how much he sold, he was like, all right, well, you know, so the last month or so, man, my lead flow— I was like, bro, I just want to know what you sold. Yeah, I mean, I mean, normally, like last year when I was really killing it and I was really consistent, like, bro, Can you just tell me what you sold in fucking May? I mean, I'm gonna get there, but no, no, no, can I— bro, I'm on a hike. Can you just tell me what you sold in May, dude? I don't need the why. Like, you're, you're prepping me for this landing. I know you don't do as much as you want to or we wouldn't be talking. Can you just tell me the fucking number, dude? And finally, after 4 times, he gave it to me, right? He does that, bro's hanging up on him. Fair. He's getting hung up on today. It's a little bit of like, again, he did reach out, he does follow my shit, he kind of knows what he's looking for, but I also don't give a fuck if he works here. He felt that, and I was, me, I was trying to figure out if he's a fit. So I was like, and he knew I had limited time, and he would, this is the guy that overthinks shit, right? So it's just another situation where I'm like, hey, question. Hence the analytical question came right after that conversation about I wanna make $200 grand. You know, does that help? So yeah, sit down, question. I always tell people this, and this is what I've been telling him especially, the— especially this first piece. When I, when I think about something I want to say to someone, sometimes I want to tell them something, I want to inform them about something, I want them to grasp, especially if it's in a conversation, it's in a conversation live, the, the training is bite your fucking tongue like as hard as possible, bro, like to where you cry. And think of a question that helps them discover what you really want to say, right? I've done it a couple times here where it— where I pause and I'm like, ah, do I want to go there? You might think I'm losing my train of thought, and I'm like, fuck, I don't want to say— now if I go down this road, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fucking go somewhere I don't want to go. I'm okay with the awkward pause. I might come back. I came back to his thing a little bit because I didn't like where I was going to go with. I'm like, yeah, let me just fucking— I'm okay with that. I don't have to— not where I used to feel like I had to get something out of my mouth, you know what I mean? I'm like, nah, let's make this fucking intentional, you know? But the bite my tongue, I had to bite my tongue because I was the same way, dude. I defend the shit out of people. People felt like I was treating them poorly and, you know, I mean, and I learned like the way you make people feel is really important. Whether or not I believe it, whether or not they're right or wrong. I don't want to have that argument, you know. Um, my mentor Mike taught me— he used to always say when I was learning this stuff, he'd always be like, you want to be right or you want to be rich? I'm like, I definitely want the rich one. He's like, then you can't always be right, you know what I mean? It's like, people don't necessarily see shit the same way you see it, so Maybe you're not right, but can you put questions out there that help them challenge themselves or see things different? And sometimes it takes time. Sometimes you do it. I've had it to where I've done it with someone in a spot, and then fucking 3 years later they'd be like, yo, that meeting, you asked me this question there and I never fucking forgot it, and that made me 3 years later do this. I get people fucking thinking best I can. You know, because when people do it to me, it works. I mean, someone starts fucking gets me questioning stuff, I'm like, motherfucker, are they right? Do they see this? Holy shit, am I missing this? It happened to me yesterday. I fucking called Amanda last night and vented about some shit we were dealing with yesterday. I'm like, what am I fucking missing over here? You know? Hi guys, hope you enjoyed the video. If you did not attend the previous one, I have them every quarter now. If you want to make it to that one, you can use the coupon code YouTube for 15% off. JohnWetmore.com/workshop. You can always register for the next one. See you guys there.