How To Go From BROKE To $30k/Week in Insurance Sales

What advice would you tell somebody, like, if you started completely over? About what part? Holy shit. Like, I guess, like, I mean, it kind of leads into the next. If you could start over and eliminate, like, one common mistake, what mistake would that be? Inconsistency. This is the biggest thing people do wrong. Yeah, by far. It's not even close, right? Whether it's buying leads, making phone calls, running appointments, or the recruiting— any piece of it, being inconsistent in different pieces of the business. Yeah, it's so easy to do, you know. It's also so easy to not be, because none we do is really that deep. But think how frequently people don't buy leads when they should, you know what I mean? Or scramble for shit, or it's so simple to let a day go and then all of a sudden it's two, all of a sudden it's a week, right?

Yeah.

And that more than anything kills everyone I've ever seen in the industry. 14 years, it's like, damn, there's always been so many people with such potential. I can name 100 people off the top of my head that could sell better than me, but they never sold more, dude. It's fucking insane.

Hold on. Can I ask something else on that? What is your definition of consistency?

I think it starts with figuring out what you want. Relative to where you are. Meaning, like, when I was part-time, I didn't do that much. I was running 8 appointments a week, make 72 dials a week, but I did it every week for 52 straight weeks before I quit. This just was my schedule, you know. I did Sundays for 4 hours. I ran Monday and Tuesday night. After work. And then I would dial a little bit during lunch on Thursday and Friday and run like half a Saturday. Sometimes a couple, 2, 3 days, 2, 3 weekends a month, you know? And that, that was it. You know? So I think when it goes, cuz the, the hard part, or someone like when I'm, Giovanni will struggle with this, where 10 years ago I'd answer that question by going like, you run 30 of them a week.

I was gonna say.

Right. But that's not everybody wants that shit. Yeah. So I learned to make it start with, where are you at? Where do you want to go? Now I hear still to this day, every time I fucking ask someone, I'm here and I want to go there. And what are you willing to do? Anything. And that doesn't align almost ever consistently for almost anyone. I've like 99.9% of people I've ever spoken to. Don't align in consistency, even relative to what they say. Yeah. So I think it's a matter of really figuring out what you want out of the deal. Yeah. And everybody's space is different. Again, y'all are all young as shit. There's, there are some people that go live, live life in your 20s and enjoy the shit out of it. And then there's some that are like, work your face off and then 30s, 40s, like you just get to live so freely.

Relative.

Yeah. And if someone wants to be rockstar and party in their 20s and they go, I want to run 10 appointments a week, and they don't bitch and they're happy and they make an extra couple grand a month, amen. Where it used to bother me, you know, but I've learned to go like, he's happy, what do I give a shit? Now he starts complaining, now that's where I get annoyed. So I think it's— so for me, it's like figure out all that, and then the next step for me is like, all right, here's where I'm at, here's where I want to go, what the fuck do I got to do to accomplish that, right? So then I figure out what I have, literally what I have to do, whatever it is. Georgia, every so often run X amount of appointments, buy X amount of lead, with all the shit I got to put together, go to the office, you know, dial by X time, make so many phone calls, all the logistics. Right. And then I take all those things and I just put them on my calendar.

Yeah.

That's the magic.

Listen, block.

Yeah, that's it. You know, and all the other shit that people let get in their way, that stuff can be on the calendar too. The problem is it just, most, most of us tend to let the problems dictate our schedule. You know, or schedule it. I got a problem that comes up, it's like, I deal with that shit later. It just is what it is. It's not in the cards right now. Um, and most people struggle with that. It's like, all right, I got other shit I could be doing right now. Yeah, like not just be training, but like relative to running and selling and do, you know what I mean? But it's like And that was kind of what I'm doing. Like, all right, let me fucking forego the other shit and put this on my schedule. You know, it's a pain in the ass. This is fucking— my whole world is different than it was 4 weeks ago. Yeah, this is wild. It's like, okay, here's what I gotta do, here's why. Okay, move shit around. There it is. So my life shifts relative to like working out, maybe. When I eat and how I eat, you know what I mean? Like things changed in my schedule. So I'm sort of shifting around so I don't slack off on this. Cause I can also, which is making it even more difficult.

Yeah.

You know? So, but it comes back to, there's a reason why. All right, here's why, here's what I gotta do. Here's the schedule I need to make that happen.

Um, I have one more question on that. And then I'll let you ask your questions, Max.

I got a question after hers too.

Okay, here we go. So in terms of consistency, I feel like I've been relatively consistent, but I feel like over the past like month or so, I've been in like a slump of like numbers and like dollar signs to me. How do you recommend staying consistent and staying positive at the same time? Because I was a negative little brat for a couple weeks. He probably told you.

I didn't know that. That look was that I did his math. I was like, I'm halfway impressed. Yeah. I didn't know. Um, can you define why you've been negative? Clarify like the numbers or what's, what, what's making you unhappy specifically?

I think it's literally just like my, like cash flow and when my cash flow gets tight and my numbers are low, I start to stress. Okay, and then it's like, what do you mean by low when you're tight? And like, I like even buying leads sometimes, I'm like fucking moving money to try to make it work right now.

Okay, do you know what you're depositing a month?

Last month was like 11 something.

So you sell significantly more than that?

Yeah.

So what's the issue?

The Well, no, last month that it was a pretty rough month. I did like 20-something. And so with Direct Express and then 75%, sort of there. There might have been one or two that fell off.

Okay. What do you mean by Direct Express?

Like, they're Azzard.

Got it.

Yeah. So then it goes month to month.

Got it.

Yeah. Any credit card or debit card with me, a majority of carriers.

No shit. Any card, any carrier you use a card on is Amazing. Yeah, it's rare if it's—

yeah, so that's when I say like Direct Express or GI.

How much of that are you writing?

Not a lot, but like just that middle of like what it would be, 75% of the $20,000. So what, $15,000? Probably a couple thousand, maybe 2. Nothing crazy. And then maybe a GI here and there that kind of messes with the numbers. Okay, but follow-ups, I'm not really having issues with. Yeah, it's, it's a number, like it's sales and numbers.

So, so you're issuing around 20? Is that what it's been consistently, 20?

I mean, my issue babe? Yeah, probably. I would say so. I don't know, he knows that better.

Average?

Yeah, a little bit higher.

What's deposits going on? Do you have that?

I do. For last month, it was— and I think I also stare at this too, so I think—

yeah, that's part of my answer is going to be that.

Let's stop fucking staring at it.

Yeah.

Um, August was 15, September was 11, and October so far 6. So cool. And what's lead spend?

Is lead spend there too? No. Do you know that?

Yeah. So my— like, you wanted a profit?

Yeah, both. I mean, obviously you're gonna do the math.

Yeah. September or August profit was, um, $7,000. September, $3,000.

October, what was the lead spend on that? Give me August. August 6th, you spent $6,000. Yeah. And that month you made— what was it, $15,000? Do you remember?

Well, I profited.

Deposit was $15,000.

Deposit was $15,000.

Spent $6,000. Yeah.

Made $9,000. Okay, and then September? Yeah, September I switched over to mailers, which cost a little bit more.

Yeah.

Um, so spend was $8,000, deposit at $11,000.

That's the tough one. Okay. Yeah. And what is it going to catch up the next month because you switched to mail? Meaning the amount of lead flow?

What is the question?

I'm sorry, she dropped mail. You said you changed the mail. We dropped—

switched to mailers.

Yeah, meaning there's more to come in. Yeah, because you spend the money and you don't receive the leads till later.

No, no, those are—

that's actually— yeah, paper lead. Oh, so that's your spend for the actual leads? Yeah, that's what I was trying to figure out. If you're waiting, if there's a delay in timing. Yeah, because if it's mail drops, you spend $8 grand, whatever it is. Yeah, they all come in the next fucking month. Yeah, I follow. Okay. Got it.

Yeah. So switch to then, I—

that definitely was August, September, and then October. You're where so far? Yeah.

October is deposited $6,000, spent leads like $3,000. Not all specifically for me.

I think for me, $8,000 spend and only deposit $12,000 sucks.

Yeah.

You know? Yeah. But $8,000 spend should get you a shit ton more than $20,000 as you paid. And your skill level. So it's like, where's the, where's the gap? The next thing I would look at if I'm you is the quantity of leads for the entire month relative to how many appointments you're booking.

Okay.

Right? So it's like, how many, how many contact, how many attempts did $8,000 get you?

Yeah.

It's a fucking really good number to know.

It should be 50, 50, 50. So 200.

Okay.

200 leads.

So then, all right, then how many appointments did you run? In that month?

Probably like, you know, maybe 25, 25, 25.

Yeah, we'll just look. Yeah, so look at it. So it's like, all right, if I'm only booking 50%, can I, can I— all right, now what can I do to convert the rest? Correct. Is that, can I, can I do something in my schedule? Can I put more time in? Can I triple dial these ones? Can I, can I door knock better? Can I— what can I do to get more squeeze out of that, more juice out of that squeeze? You know what I'm saying?

And that was, those are my couple questions last week.

Yeah, the hard part with some of this, there's a balance, right? Because if you look at a week, don't— you're gonna fucking make yourself crack. Yeah, don't— like, so what I do to— let me start here first. I, I do this, I spend— and I'm still doing it this time because it just was my habit and I've talked about it for so long. Sunday night, 15 minutes, I take all the fucking— wherever I write all my shit down You know, I'm using the little dialers and tracking all that shit. I, I have a little system I use that I total things by day as I do 'em, but I don't look at shit day by day. I don't put anything into a sheet. I don't put anything into numbers. I don't do nothing. I just keep piling up paper. Sunday night I take 15 minutes, I grab all the papers, I total everything I want to know, like how many dials, how many pickups, how many appointments. Then at the bottom of my sheet throughout the week, if you grab it, you can look at it, but at the bottom, right at the beginning of the week, I write like, obviously the appointments and stuff like that, but then I write the outcome of the appointments. So I have a section for no-shows, reschedules, sad appointments or presentations, whatever, sales, missed sales, right? So in my schedule, like, and you see like this, when I'm done with it, I have lingo, I know if I sold it, missed it, didn't make it. So I write it down in the moment, but I just fucking move on with my day. At the end of the week, I look at it and I go, okay, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 no sales, 1, 2, 3, 4 missed sales, 1, 2, 3 reschedules, you know what I mean? So I put them there, and then obviously I do get to cheat. Amanda looks up deposits and shit like that. She helps with some of it now. But all the stuff I want to know, I just accumulate all my pieces of paper and my shit. I go into my little spreadsheet, I type it all in, I look at it for fucking 2 minutes. Yeah. I go, okay, and I move on. Yeah. I don't like analyze it. If I don't have like 3 months worth of shit, I ain't looking at nothing.

Yeah.

I won't look at— again, I'll see it because I want to make sure I don't spend 8 grand and make a dollar. Yeah. Like, I'm gonna look for something stupid. Yeah. Right. But I'm not, I'm not like analyzing it on Sundays, really, at all. It's a fucking quick glance, you know. I even know mine, just barely. I think I've deposited— because at first it was negative, right? Because I'm spending all the fucking money. Yeah. And then you have to wait not only for it to issue pay, I have to wait for fucking Integrity to pay me.

Yeah.

Because it goes to them first. So my shit's slow as fuck. So it was like negative $6,000 at first.

Yeah.

I was spending the money, I have no deposits. Now it caught up. I think I'm at like I think just in 3 weeks, I think I've deposited $15 and spent like $6. Yeah, something like that. You know, I know, but I won't— and I briefly saw like how many hours it all calculated to. Mine was 39 last week. If you do like the dials, minute per dial, that bullshit. And then just because it was there, I saw $300 every booked appointment. Because that's exactly what it was when I ran 10 years ago. It was $3.07 or something, $3.02 or whatever per point. Just, it's 3 weeks worth of shit. Yeah, I looked at it. I'm not in, but per dial, you know, in the book it was like $17 a dial. Now it's fucking $6, right? And I'm like, but I'm not— I think nothing of it. I saw it, I understand. Okay, move on with my day. I'm gonna wait till I have 3 months to really go, all right, who am I? This piece of paper will tell you who the fuck you are in 3 months. It won't miss, you know. You'll know your close rate, you'll know your booking rate, you'll know how well— how many leads you contact. You should know, like, you can know your cost per lead. Certainly you can know what it costs per application. Does that make sense? Like, how much do you invest before you get a fucking application, right? You can start to learn that stuff over time. Where you get to this non-stress point is when you know who you are.

Yeah.

What's the stress? Because you just now know, what do I got to turn on the front to get what I want on the back, right? You're just not solid in who you are yet, right? So when you get the consistency with it and you use the numbers now, so where can I squeeze more out of it? Where's my skill set? How many sales am I missing? Oh shit, I'm closing third. Like, do you know your close ratio? You should. Right? At least understand, like, is it 80, is it 30? Yeah, I know you could ballpark it, but like, recently, gosh, yeah, again, I don't care what the week is, but you've been doing it for a hot minute. Yeah, it's like, I kind of should know somewhat where you're at. Yeah, you know, know if you're at— again, I knew mine early, it was 25%. I was like, all right, fuck it, 25%, and And I knew I was seeing like 2 out of 3 people would show up. So like a third would no-show me. That's how I came up with the 1,500 appointments booked. It's 30 a week, 120 a month, 1,500 for the year. Because my number from the year before said 1,000 would show up. That's just what it said. Now I only ran like 300 appointments the year before. Right. But I knew who I was numbers-wise. And I went, fuck it, I want to make $250 grand. To do that, I have to book 1,500, so 1,000 show up. I'm only closing 25%, that'll give me 250 apps for the year. Fuck it, let's go. That's just what I did for 2015. I done fucked up and wrote like 400 apps, 450 apps.

Yeah.

Um, and that relieved me of the stress. The year before, I wasn't making any money really, a little, a few bucks.

Yeah, nothing crazy.

So I just took all the data of who I was and I just turned up the fucking volume. And the part that's hard to feel for you especially is like the first $20 grand is what it is. There ain't much left. The second $20 grand is obnoxiously profitable. Yeah, because it comes from little shit you don't do right now, from finding more policies, from finding annuity stuff, from knocking out a few more dials, from learning how to close instead of at 40%, at 55%, from instead of having 85% persistency, you learn how to get up to 90%. You know what I mean? Like small little tweaks in all these little areas that you learn to know based on who you are and what you're doing. And you can just then look at— there's like, I was always taught there's different levers. So you can crank this one up over here, meaning lead flow. I can crank up over here. All right, maybe I can do more dials over here. Maybe I can fucking schedule this over here. You know what I mean? You just move shit around. When you don't know what to move around, every day you're trying to fix everything.

Yeah, it's too much. And I think everything's wrong. Yeah, at the same time too.

Yeah. So like, take— and if you have a bunch of things, just like, all right, what do I have? Fucking put them on paper and then prioritize, you know? And if you need to run that by someone, me, him, do it.

Yeah. You know what I mean?

It's like, but you should be working on parts of your craft specifically, right? Without losing your shit when it doesn't go perfect. You know what I mean? Um, yeah. I think also what should be mentioned too is, was that last September she did create a new schedule. Mm-hmm. So it also shouldn't take time to use her too, cuz she's trying to be like the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Thursday thing. Like, I— it's also— oh, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday running. Yeah, so like it changed too. So yeah, that's harder to manage. A 3-day, 3 run days in a row is harder.

I'm still so new, so I'm just psyching myself out on Wednesday afternoon when I'm at fucking what, 3K, and I'm like, shit, yeah, not hardly profitable. And then you just start— it spirals. And that's what my— yeah, that's as soon as it is a spiral.

So like And then there's also strategy towards how you approach your, your week and your schedule.

Yeah, right.

Like when you, when you, you have your— how do you do yours? Do you write it down what you're booking?

Yeah, like just on a notebook.

Oh, what you're booking? Like, oh, you put in a calendar? Put your fucking fancy— yeah, just in who knows. Yeah, yeah, so I can hit the address for the maps.

Yeah, so we can go. We'll show you that later too.

Type it all in or it's in the— because it pops.

It usually pops up like when you go to Google Maps or something.

No, I mean in the calendar you can type all the addresses and all that shit. Like those show like the freaking colors and shit. But hey, it's kind of the same shit. It's just on paper. Yeah. I love it.

Same thing as coding, like things, whatnot.

So like, and you might already be really good at this, but it's like as you're booking, one of the things you can start to do is get more efficient at booking your calendar out. You know, one, meaning if you're trying to run 3 days, you sure as shit should pay attention to when you're booking, especially early, to make sure that you leave dial time like, oh shit, dial time.

Yeah, you know what I mean?

Meaning my first appointment— I know you want early appointments. I sure as fuck wouldn't book my first appointment on a Tuesday at 8. Yeah, it'd be 11. Yeah, right. And then I would build around. I like to build in the middle and out. I want to start in the middle, so now I can go any area, right? Whereas if I pick, pick a city, Marietta, 8 AM, but now I'm there all day and I can't dial anymore that day.

Yeah, exactly, right?

And I have to stack before I go. Like, all right, let me book here, and now, like, I booked Dallas in the middle, right? My next booking, if it's Dallas, I stack it on it. If it's fucking Douglasville, dude, I put it down here. I ain't fucking— it ain't going nowhere near here, nowhere near it, you know. But I won't put it too late either because I'm like, correct, I don't want to be out late if I don't stack somewhere behind it. Yeah, I mean, I'm just paying attention to stuff like that. So for instance, say you just have— you do fucking $800 on Monday and you have a shitty day booking out Wednesday, Thursday, dude, if you don't leave that gap early in the morning Now where do you dial?

Exactly.

In your car, in a parking lot. It's just a different day. You're a little more stressed, you know what I mean? So to me, that's dialed back up first when I— and you can— if I wish I could watch, show how I filled in my schedule just doing it today. It just by default, that's how I do it, you know? Yeah, I ain't fucking booking 8 AM first.

Why?

Like, why? I want to stack the shit out of myself where I know I'm going to be out there, you know. Um, and some people do it different. Some people, they hear 7 AM, they take it right away. Oh, I'm mad at you. But 3 days booking, I know I need to build in potential backup dial time somewhere. I know I have to have it. And I, I'm not a fan of— if I had to pick, leave me 2 hours in the morning, 7 to 9 AM. Even if I have a 9 AM appointment and I gotta fucking drive there first and sit around the corner and dial for from 7 to 9 right near their house, I will.

Yeah.

You know, but I don't know, the other feeling is trying to get it in 20 minutes at a time, 5 minutes here, 3 minutes there, 10 minutes there. I don't— that feeling I don't prefer. I'll do it, but it's not my preference, right? And so I can ease my mind by just booking different. Now I'm not stressed. Again, I go 8 AM somewhere, I go, fuck, now I have to stack that area. Yeah, now I'm like, fuck, dude, if Douglasville just ain't picking up today and I got an 8 AM in Douglasville, I'm like, what the fuck, bro? And then I get all my other shit's in Marietta now. I'm like, I just mentally, it fucks my day up, you know? I feel better when I start in the middle. It just, it feels better for me. Um, so I stuck with that over the years, and I, I do it my work schedule, I do it my travel schedule. I'm just weird about it. Because it, it gives me that relief I need, um, which then lets me be more consistent and less stressed out about shit and just run a schedule. You mean, I feel like I'm just always just performing something that's already kind of pre-written out, and it doesn't feel as scrambly as it did when I was newer. For those of you followed that have followed me for a while, you know, I've, I've helped build this agency up to over $200 million in paid annual premium per year. We have over 5,000 agents a year that sell, and I am rebuilding. We're building a new base shop, helping people build big agencies, get to multi-seven figures in income, or producers that want to, that want to just sell and get to a multi-six-figure sales career. Hit me up. I'm hiring direct. I'm looking to train and mentor winners that want to work their ass off and build something dope. Click on the link below, or you can go to johnwetmore.com/join and put in your application. We'll see if I'd be interested in working with you. DM me. Hit me up, whatever you like.

Yeah, I feel like we book right now very top-heavy, or at least I do. Like, I'm filling up my Tuesday, like, top to bottom, and then my Wednesday will be full, but it may be like 1 or 2 appointments less, and then it just kind of trickles.

Yeah, so I think it's going to be like when I used to sell out Newtown, Ohio. That's how I would start on Sunday, and I would book up Monday, Tuesday, but I would start later Monday. I'd book from like noon till 9:00 PM and then I'd be booking Tuesday. So Monday afternoon and Tuesday I'd fill and I'd fly out there Sunday, finish dialing at night, fill it in. And then if I killed it, then I'd start booking from noon early, noon, 11, 10, and I'd still leave that 8 or 9 open. Yeah, and then especially when I was running the whole week up, right? So then I get up, I'd be on the phone 7 till whatever, right? Go to my first appointment, dial in there, and I'd be booking Tuesday, Wednesday. And same thing on Tuesday, and fill in that morning part first, filling up kind of inside out. Tuesday morning, if I have to, then I'm booking Wednesday, Thursday, right? So I'm always that next day and day out, you know what I mean?

Can't leave any time for it.

Yeah. Whereas if I don't, say I stack the shit out Tuesday and Wednesday's weak, now I run a whole day Tuesday, Wednesday morning I get up, I have 3 fucking appointments, I got nothing Thursday, I'm half fucking lazy, I'm tired from last night, it's really easy to put off. It's just, it's hard to get back into that dial grind, especially field sales. Dude, it feels really good to dial, grind the shit out of a dial day, not have to do it again until fucking a week. Yeah. You know? It does feel better that way. Dude, telesales on the phone every day is fucking brutal. And so when you turn field sales into everyday phone sales, the feeling sucks. It's way better to grind the shit out of the phones and then go grind the shit out of the field. Now, I don't mind little sprinkles of dials in between because that shit's easy. Pick up the phone, fucking 30 minutes, especially in the morning. I'm such a dick. I don't understand. All these years later, dude, I didn't even get on the phone that early. 75% of my appointments were booked before 8. It's so dumb that people don't do this more, you know. So for you, it's like, that's your— if you're gonna do that 3-day thing. Now, Kilomet used to run that same schedule, but he booked it all on Mondays. Yeah, he just got that skill set. He could just go Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. He knew if he booked it— and he didn't book that many. He wasn't a 10, 12 a day kind of guy. 7, you know, so he has his 20 appointments, 25 appointments over the course of 3 days. He'd book them up Monday, he'd be done. Yeah, maybe a little bit of phone work in between in the field, but so it's like first step is that way. But if you can crank it out, knock it out, you know, but leave yourself that security blanket so you're not stressing the fuck out at 3:51 on a Monday afternoon, like looking at Wednesday or Wednesday, Thursday already and going Yeah, correct. And you can fucking have a shit Tuesday, you know? So you just gotta account for, all right, if I'm gonna do this, dude, I gotta commit to like, what's your number of appointments in those 3 days? Do you have a number?

I usually do at least 30. You're like, my goal is 30.

No, she just usually do like 20, 25.

Yeah, 20 or 25.

So that's where we're going to end up. That's part of the squeeze is 3 days, 20, 25. It's gonna be inconsistent. You're gonna see 10 to 15 max, especially final expense. It's gonna be 8 to 12 a lot. Yeah, just really, you know. But then what happens when you have a shitty week? Yeah, you know, it's just like, yeah, if I'm doing it, I'm 30 minimum. 36 is my number. It's 10 to 12 a day. Yeah, I'd be like, that's my— to feel good, that's my number. Now how do I get there, right? Maybe, maybe. But even it's like, well, you're out there, how good are you in downtime at— and I know, I know y'all do this some, whether it be door knocking or on the phones or rescheduling, kind of like pre-booking future ones or next week ones rolling in Monday morning. I I definitely always had 5, 6 appointments like in the bag.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? It's like, hey Joe, you there? We still good tomorrow at 2? Yep. All right, see you. And I'm done. You know, as you get, I didn't get to do that here, but as you're in the field working it, you should always be having shit like ready. Yeah. Ready to go. That's part of working your week really good is not forgetting about, I still have to get back at this, whether it's the upcoming Friday, Saturday, or the following Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever way you're manipulating it, you should always have some shit ready.

And then for my leads, since it is 50, it's been 50 a week and I'm— you're saying 36 appointments, like 50 leads a week.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, fuck you, dude. You have to be really fucking good on the phone.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I mean, to be real, dude, at my peak, okay, now on final expense, a little different. I'm telling you, when we were running it, I was running 20 in-home appointments a week and I was getting fucking 30 leads. But it was direct mail. They were brand new, they were mortgage, they were flowing like crazy. I still had inventory if I had to pick it up sometime, you know what I mean? But there were some weeks, dude, I'd make 62 dials and book 20 fucking appointments. Yeah, you know, it wasn't my entire crew, but there was a window where it was nice. When it's not, especially final expense, stuff, dude, I don't— you ain't getting 36 on 50.

My thing is like, I'll get that sweet spot of like 20, 25.

If it's me, I'm probably working 50 every— well, if you're doing the 2, I'd be 50 every fucking dial day, easy. Yeah, if I'm, if I'm banging Monday, Thursday dial days, you know.

But you're probably going to need some supplements somewhere. Yeah.

Now again, as you start to get inventory, it's easier to do.

Yeah, like as I started to get more mailer inventory, I have like—

but you're also not 50 leads that you ain't spending that much on 50 direct the way y'all get it. Oh, because they're— you're getting the mail. What are they around? 38. That's right, I was thinking more like 20. Yeah, interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

So, huh? Yeah, how much are FedEx mailers worth back when you remember? Yeah. No, no, no, no. Because I remember when I got on, it was like $35, $40 on the low end for a final expense fucking mailer. If it was $25, it was going to be like free Walmart gift card. This is fucking completely free. You don't even have to— shit's all free, sir. Just fill it out. It's free everything for life. And mortgage, a cheap one was $45, $50. Higher end was $70. Um, you know, yeah, that's always in there. Yeah, I remember I took over ours, it was like $20, and then they went up to $32, and I remember complaining, like, like that was a problem. So profitability's there for you, it'd be supplement with some inventory, some aged stuff, some gold 180. Get it back up.

But no, that's super helpful. Um, okay, well, like, when you start—

when you started making a lot of money, like consistently. How'd you keep your discipline, like, continue to push yourself, like, keep getting better instead of, like, just settling? That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like it's real easy, like, start making, I don't know, say, like, you know, $20,000, $30,000 a week, and they're like, you know, I'm chilling right here, instead of, like, trying to, like, keep growing. I put it— I, like, fuck with myself mentally a lot in a lot of ways. One, remember, the money for me went into a business account, like an actual business. I can look at it and make it not mine. I just can. Um, and so I paid myself a salary every week my entire career. So I, I was like, yeah, yourself first, right? Yeah, I paid myself every Monday direct deposit, 1099 still. Like, I didn't do— well, after a while I did W-2 because I had to. My CPA made me put myself on like $80,000 salary and some plus commission. Just get really nerdy and technical for taxes. But like, for most of it, it was, um, even when I was selling $40K a month, I was paying myself $1,500 a week. That got tripped. So all my money went into the business account, automatic transfer, $1,500 a week. I was doing it on Mondays because I was like still used to being broke. And if you pay yourself on Friday versus Monday, you keep more of it when you pay yourself on Monday. And I just— this just was my routine my whole career. Um, so every Monday when I started, I was paying myself I think like $500, whatever, $40 grand, oh, I guess $800 a week, whatever that is, $40 grand a year. And then as I got more and more volume, it went up to $1,500 a week, um, when I was selling. And then I was really good at taking money in the business account, and I had automatic transfer to a savings account every week in the business. That was for taxes, so that went every week. A percentage, right? Um, and then I— then, then I would, I would spend it, but not like I would go buy shit. Like, with time, first I would— again, taxes was first. Then I was like, all right, I'm gonna put money in this retirement over here. Then, then I started investing money in like this real online real estate fund. So I'd send $100 a week over here, and then I'd send $200 a week to this savings account over here. Then I would buy like— and then I set up an IRA and I'd send $500 a month over here. And then I set up a Roth IRA and set up $500 a month over here. Then I set up my own 401k. Then the business started matching it, right? So I'm putting money in all these different places. Then I started buying real estate. Then I started paying off all my credit cards. Then I was like, yo, I don't want to have this mortgage. I got to a point where I was paying $25 grand a month with my mortgage. I paid it off in like 2 and a half years. You know what I mean? I would just, I would place, I would, I would take something on what do I want to do with it? And I would deploy it. And even if I had to hide, I put my money in so many places just to like not have it in the account I use. I can, I can do like blinders. If I put it in all these places, to me it's like, just, it's not mine. You know? And I just increment. I've done that my whole life though. I can remember being hungry. Yeah. It's just, I remember being working at Little Caesars at 16, 17, 18 years old. Going, taking $10 a week into a savings account and eventually moving it up to $15 and then moving it to $20 and then moving it to $25. And I just— my whole life I've done that. I watched my mom do it. It's kind of how she saved money. And, you know, so as I made more and more, just more went to different places. And then I slowly paid myself a bigger salary. There was a point I was paying myself like $5,000 a week. You know, it was like, I live a little different now too. And all this other stuff is happening, and I'm paying off all the debts I had, you know what I mean? So then it just snowballed, and that process took a couple years, you know. So it was easy to stay head down, going aggressive, because I had big fucking things I was knocking out of my life. Now, you may not have the big things, you mean, but I had fucking kids and houses and cars and, you know, I mean, and fucking— then it got to be tuitions, and now they're fucking colleges, and it's crazy. Their cars now, not just my cars, you know. Hell, I'm paying for their rent. It's fucking nuts. So it's always like just deploying it and slowing it. I do little increments at a time. That stuff I would look at like monthly, see where I put my money, see what it looked like at the end. I'm like, all right, cool, can I afford another $100 a month in this thing? Can I put another little— and it was always to build something future. Well, you know, it kept me in my main account low, but I always knew mentally I was good over here, right? Right. You know what I'm saying? I kind of leave me the question I have over here too. Like, once you started making a lot of money, how did you— like, how would you recommend to grow that money rather than by spending it? Like, I know you get yourself— I'm still young, so I don't— you know, I just went to a financial person, dude. Okay, like Edward Jones? Well, I got— what's funny is when you start making money you start meeting other people that make money, and other people that make money know some fucking people. Yeah, yeah. And you just start falling into these little networks of people who do well with money, and you just— it starts coming together, dude. You'll be around each other making money, like, yo, what are you doing? That's how we did it. Yeah, yeah, you made 400. What the fuck do you do with it all? Hey, what about this tax thing? And they'd be like, yo, check this out, I bought these fucking buildings and you get this write-off. And like, we just learned along the way. You know what I mean? I didn't know how much I could fuck. There's so many cool things that you learn about taxes and shit as you get around people. That's what made me buy the buildings. I learned about all the fucking tax benefits, and I was like, wait, what? I can make money but somehow lose money on paper? And I don't know if you know, it's the wildest thing with real estate. You can literally profit, fucking make cash, but on paper, because of depreciation, the way it all works, you'd be like, nah, I lost money. They're like, but you kept $400 grand. I'm like, I know, but somehow I lost. So you don't pay taxes on shit. It's why— and I learned that from CPAs and financial people as I started to build it up. And all my buddies, we were making money together, you know what I mean? So y'all do this smart together, you ride up together, you start learning things differently and sharing. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I mean, I didn't come up by myself, you know what I mean? There was a gang of us learning how to get really good at this thing. So we were all learning fucking life together, and all different ages, from different areas. You know, and so it just sort of developed over time, dude, and we figured it out. So smart people, it's like, oh shit, I can put money in here, this pays you this, just doing nothing. So like what, like a person, like what percentage of your income do you think you put into investment? Dude, it's definitely changed over that. Beginning, it wasn't fucking shit. What I got to a point was I could max out everything that there was. I had the Roth, a regular IRA max, a Roth max, I had my 401k max. I had, you know what I mean, I had all these things maxed the fuck out. Um, and that's all, that's all you really can do. And then once all that was maxed out, that's when it went into real estate. Yeah, I like to— I don't like fucking stock stuff. It stresses me out. I can't control it. I don't know what the fuck it's gonna do. I don't know what any of it means. I know it's all fucking— it's not a scam. I'm not saying that. But these fuckers at the top know exactly how to move it and make it make money, and I don't. So for me, it's like sit there, watch it go up and down, hope like fuck one day it works, and it stresses me out. So I don't fuck with that. I fuck with stuff I can control. Yeah, it just feels better, and I probably don't make as much from that stuff as I should, but dude, I sleep good from it. You know what I mean? I just gamble. The stock market stresses me the fuck out. And I'm not good at it. I'm not smart enough to understand it, so I stay the fuck away from it. You know, you go, put it with a guy they know. Yeah, I did that. I lost a million dollars one year, so fuck him. I just— I don't like it, you know. It's not my favorite thing. I'm good if I just— I like simple. I'm just really asking a question. I mean, I know that you can't get to like where I want to be off just like one flow of You can get pretty fucking far, bro. Oh, I'm sure you can. I've heard the numbers in this game. Oh, I know, numbers are nuts. Here's what I've learned too, is like, make much money and then usually, usually the other flows of income don't come until you're making so much fucking money from the first one, it's stupid. Um, you know, the ones that try to do too many early usually don't. Just kind of comes usually opportunity. And then you learn how to make money, it's like, and then you're around other people who know how to make money and it's like, all right, what if we just do this shit together and you do this and I do this? And it's like, oh look, it does get easier for sure because then you can invest in, you know, I mean, it's like the early stage, like you're all trying to build. Imagine you could slap down enough money for an office and advertising and signage and as much leads as you want inbound, high perfect, high intent, you mean $100,000. If y'all had that, you would do it because it would expedite everything. Yeah, you just can't yet. So you gotta build this grind, invest back, and that continues, you know. You get into as high as you go, like that, that ride happens forever. Fucking these big-ass companies spend trillions on stuff. Why? To make however the fuck— whatever comes after that, you know. Um, but yeah, dude, that's what I think. Head down, consistency. Working on your craft, continuing to study it. Like if you're saying the same shit 3 months that you're saying now, be probably not great. Right. You know, just have a few tweaks. Yeah. It's like, where do you lose people? Oh fuck. I keep losing people here. I keep having to say this thing. Fuck. Now at the same time, except it ain't going away. You're never gonna have it perfect. Yeah. You know, but where do you feel good and it works the majority of the time and you don't want to kill someone at the end of the day. Feel good about what you do. So, and it piles up. I'm telling you, dude, there's so much money at the end. If you did 18 to 24 months of $40K a month, there's such a big pile of fucking cash that's just there. It's so stupid. It's just— I'm 18 to 24 months, $40K, whatever it takes. $40K a month, 18 to 24 months. I'm telling you, whatever the fuck it takes. Your whole life will change in 2 years. Next Tuesday is gonna suck. November is gonna suck. January is probably gonna suck. March is probably gonna suck. But are you straight? You got a fucking 18 months, 24 months of that shit. You look back and be like, what the fuck? It'll just— it'll change. I mean, he's— you're seeing him do it, you know. Me and a million others lived it. It's in the moment. I know you ain't even felt it yet. Yeah, because you, you haven't had the trickle effect yet of that second layer of people making the money, right? They start making it too. Now it's like a little vibe, and y'all can all be talking about it and teaching, and everybody's doing it. The fucking third layer, it's so easy for that next layer of people to come in and do it. The belief levels are so high. You know, y'all believing in him, he's one guy. You get a crew of 20 walking in watching 5 or 6 of y'all fucking sling it like that, dude, it's lights out. That's what, that's what helped us blow up. Again, it wasn't just me. I just got the ball rolling. I was just the first fucking dipshit out there in my group doing that. I was just someone else's dipshit copying them though. Yeah, I think we all were. But it's, that's kind of that magic window. I've never seen someone I've seen people do back-to-back Hall of Fame years and have a bunch of money but still live tight because they increase their lifestyle and they don't build. Yeah, that's a really shitty spot to be in, so don't do it that way. That's kind of why I was asking that. I didn't want to just start making— because I was saying my old job was like a 9-to-5. Yeah, $700,000. So part of my goal was to stack that business account too. Yeah, so remember I was doing all those things. But I wasn't going to do those things if that went backwards. The goal was keep growing this and be able to do more and more of this. So I always talk about having like a new zero, right? So whatever your account has in it today, right, whatever that number is, we're like, next month, hopefully at the end of the month, you look at it, it ain't backwards. Hopefully. That's the goal, you know what I mean? And so then when I got mine, I was like, all right, I need to be at $10K. Dude, I just, I fucking would feel a lot better if there was 10 grand in my account all the time. So that became kind of a new zero feeling, right? After a while, you start making a bunch of money, you get down to 10K, dude, you might throw up. It feels so bad. Like it feels like you're about to fucking go homeless. So then you go, all right, 25K, 50K, let me get 100K, let me get 250K. Dude, there's a point in life where you go, I got a million bucks, I feel like fucking shit's going bad. When you can reprogram what's a new zero to you, new low, you know. And so in, in combination with all that other stuff, I was trying to stretch that number, you know what I mean. That way when I saw this number, I work harder. I go, oh dang, I only got $52 grand in there. Fuck, dude, I better turn it up because it goes below 50, I'm fucked. To me, 50, zero. I got 49, dude, I'm negative. For me, I can, I can, I can do that to me. It's fucking not always good. Yeah, right, because I can be like panic mode. Yeah, yep, yep. That's not always healthy. But how do you like, how do you like balance that? So like, if you're, if you're kind of like, you know, being real hard on yourself and, you know, I struggle with it, dude. I just accept it. I just, I have a job to do. You think I really want to fucking do everything I do every day? I don't fucking— days, some days, want to do any of this shit, like at all, at all. But I just have to turn it on, dude. And I'll bitch. I bitched to her yesterday. She's like, cut the shit. I'm like, what the fuck? She goes, you said I can't tell you when you're being like that. I'm like, thank you. I just went back and did my stuff, you know what I mean? I go home and bitch to Steph. She's like, all right, what do you need? Nothing, I just want to bitch for a minute. I'm good now, you know. I don't know, dude, I don't— I'm not good at that. Yeah, yeah, I can fake it a little bit to some degree, you know, but I don't know. When I make shit happen, it feels better. I know that. Yeah, sure. So I tend to just go make shit happen somehow, and I just believe in myself that if I stay consistent, you know, there's a lot of what I'm doing now I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I don't know half the shit for underwriting or any of the fucking— yeah, I don't know shit. On half this. Thank God I know how to talk to people. There's a lot of this stuff I don't know, and I'm still fucking making money, you know? And I'm like, God, this is such an easy game, and I don't know what the fuck I'm doing relative to a telesales agent. But I know for sure, dude, I schedule 32 fucking appointments a week. Every week I'll keep tripping over fucking $5,000, $6,000, $8,000, $10,000 a week. I'll eventually figure out how to get really good at and do 15, 20. I ain't confused. That'll happen. Let's just see. You, you gain confidence in yourself when you have consistent streaks of wins, and it becomes so predictable, you know what I mean? You get all these assholes on the phone, but every once in a while one's easy as fuck. Just like, yeah, come over, right, dude? I've had that for 14 years. There's nothing in me that says I can't make more phone calls. Someone's gonna be like, yeah, come over, spend $200 a month like fucking nothing and gimme cookies to go home with. I know it's happening, you know? And so as you learn how to do that, all the other stuff, you have less like fears with it. It, it is more relieving to know like where y'all might be somewhat still uncertain. I'm right at your stage. I was still uncertain this fucking business was gonna work. I sure shit didn't know I was going to be insurance long term. It was just like make money right now kind of thing. Yeah, I saw no future necessarily. We kind of— you kind of picture like, what if? But you're not sure. What up, y'all? So YouTube memberships, we have one now. Right next to the subscribe button, there's a neon white join button. You can't miss it. Subscribe, whatever it says, click the link, get in there. I do a ton of coaching teaching people how to dial, corrections, working on their presentations, working on their mindset. I will coach on theory, but I like coaching real-world stuff. And if you join the membership section, you're going to see live coaching where I'm not only helping people, but every once in a while I get in there and dial myself. There's some cool videos coming out, tons of content. All the training videos will be directly on my YouTube channel that's available to members only, super easy to find. So join now if you're interested, click below. See you in there. Yeah, you think that's self-belief and like that confidence kind of just comes with like experience. Yeah, being around the right people. Situation. Yeah, for me it was all— it's all about being around the right people, dude. So true. Yeah, it was all that. I mean, I put myself around some fucking killers. I can be better at it now, to be honest. I fucking— yeah, after a while I guess I get tired of fucking traveling. Yeah, you've been doing it a long time, so now sometimes I'm like I'm like, I'm just stay the fuck home and chill. Even though I travel more than most people, but a lot of times when I travel, I don't do a lot. I go do the thing and I'm fucking out. I don't sometimes have the energy I had to do it. But yeah, I mean, the being around the people, doing the incentive, winning the incentive trips. I saw you sent that.

Mm-hmm.

That, those changed my life. Those incentive trips. Oh my God, dude. Those got me around people I never would've been able to be around. For a significant period of time. You people you see on leaderboards and on training calls and shit like that. Now I'm flying across the fucking world and spending 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 days with elite people in my industry and their families a lot of times, you know what I mean? You start spending that kind of time with people at a high level making that kind of jack, dude, you start building relationships, you start learning stuff and educating each other, and because you start cheating off each other You know what I mean? It, dude, it gets fucking so easy to do this. And just simple stuff like chasing those, I'd go on— I don't know, dude, we would have to turn them down. I had so many. I'm like, I can't go. Steph couldn't come. I went on fucking like 6 one year. Max is in school, she's at home, and she's like— at the time she was working, she worked. Well, she used to work when I was in the field. So there's sometimes I'd be going on these trips and it's just me and dudes who won. That's how I beat all the people I went on with. If you look at them now, funny enough, I could pull up our trip from 2015 in America. We had a trip up top of this big-ass fucking building overlooking fucking London. There's like 15 of us in the picture. Every one of them eventually became integrity partners. Yeah, it's just we were that core that were selling a bunch together, going on trips a bunch together, running opportunity meetings a bunch together, opening offices together, doing events together, you know what I mean? We just worked together to build this. And it's like, fuck, we just kept pushing together. And certainly some fell off, but there's just one unique picture, man. It's like, yo, how the fuck— who'd have thought that? Because in 2015, a lot of us were still just brand new to making money. This is the first year I made any money, you know? So I still felt broke. And you see the way we dress and what we're wearing, and you know your confidence level at that stage and what it felt like. And to see 10 years later, it's like, damn, look how far we all came, kind of running it together. And that's a piece a lot of people aren't really good at. You see a lot of these internal fucking bitch fests. I mean, y'all have seen it here when people get fucking— get— I mean, it's like, stop. Just— I don't know. So you got to find your people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was a big part of it. You're talking about like complainers, stuff like that? Yeah, I mean, just like when you said just cancers and people that are negative or want to— I don't know, dude. And even the good relationships I've had over the years, there's always times where it's like, yeah, you know what I mean? Nothing— none of them ever been perfect the entire time, but you can learn to find a lot of really fucking— where a majority of the relationship is really fucking good. Yeah, um, you can't have any kind of negativity. Just how— like, you can have it, it's just how do you handle it? Yeah, it's tough just sitting in this industry. Just, it'll, it'll eat away at you if you let it. So a lot, man. Please, sir. Excuse me. He's like scared as shit. You can tell. I'm just like, I'm just like, uh, I've asked him this a million times, but I still wouldn't like hear your approach on it. What's your approach in regard to building the why? And you sit down in an appointment and you're trying to build the why, you're trying to build value. What's like, what's your approach to that? It changes sometimes, dude. It kind of depends on my mood, bro. I'm kind of funny. Um, I can't be as like direct as he is. I don't know, it just, it's just, at least right now Yeah, I don't see him in home. He has a weird balance of like, hey dear, and fuck you in the same sentence. Yeah, hey dear, I don't give a fuck, I'm coming, dear. You gotta add a deer now, party. You gotta add it. Yeah. So I can only imagine how he builds a why. I don't know. I actually don't know. I've never seen his in-home, so I don't really know. You know, um, if I go final expense, I'm pretty fucking weak at it. I don't, I don't kill them. I don't— dude, a lot of them fucking know. I don't need a lot. I feel like I can read them really well. I feel like, you know, they're going to bullshit me, I'm annoyed. But if they tell me much past— like, some people don't need to say much past, dude, I just don't want to be a fucking burden to my kids. I don't necessarily need to get Grandma crying, dude, from— I just, I don't. Final expense, I, I played a lot more like a fucking numbers game, bro. Had a very simple fucking script, if you will. Very simple approach. I still do. I'm okay I just, they're not hard. I'll push a little bit, you know, but if they don't give me a why, I'm out the fucking door, bro. That's what he tells me. He's like, did he ever show? It's quick, dude. It's 3 minutes. Yeah, I know. Yeah. And my why is like, my whole presentation on final expense is like 6 fucking questions. It's literally, there's nothing to it. I'm trying to find someone that has no insurance and is ready to pull the fucking trigger, because that's gonna— half of them gonna have nothing, roughly, right? You can walk in, half gonna have nothing. Of those half, what are you gonna get? You're gonna be pissed, fucking broken, ain't buying. 25% of them, that 25% gonna be a complete fucking laydown. In the middle, you gotta work a little bit. You gotta find some policies, you gotta get them to, you know, fucking let you in the door. You gotta find a checking account and figure out how to open a fucking bank. Dude, I'm opening PNC bank accounts yesterday, dude. You know, just shit like there's this thing in the middle. There's a lot of money in that thing in the middle. So for me, I'm not going for like, I don't need fucking Pamela crying, dude. I just don't. Mortgage protection. Someone, middle-aged with 2 and a half fucking kids and a white picket fence, I'm gonna get some emotion out of someone. I'm, I'm there. I'm going to get her to tell me how bad it is when he dies. I'm definitely getting her to say it, and I can do it nicely. I can push. They're not going to be— she's not going to let him be too mean, you know what I'm saying? She's saying the words, not me, so I can't get in trouble. I'm fucking really good there. Give me someone your age, I don't need to do a lot. None. Zero. I don't even attempt. I don't give a fuck. You don't give a fuck. I just get to the fucking price. Here's the cash back. Do you want it or do you not? Literally, dude, 12 minutes with an app, 3 minutes without. That was my approach because I just didn't give a shit. I knew, like, for me, it's like some people are like, why? You miss sales. I'm like, you miss appointments. I'm— I miss his sale, yeah, but I can see 17 more of him this week than you can. You miss a potential— correct. I just don't give— and I don't give a fuck. It feels good for me. It was easy. I don't want to fight with you anyway, because in my head all you want to do was go get high. When I walk, you want me out so you can go get fucking high and play video games, right? That's what most of them— there's very few 23-year-olds that were like, yeah, I mean, just, you know, a lot of family. I just— there's very few, right? Especially if they're a guy. Yeah. And same thing when they're they're fucking 70, dude. They're just probably not gonna be like, boo-hoo, if they die. Everyone their age is fucking dying. They know they're dying. It's that middle breed that I'm the most emotional with. Outside of that, I don't do a lot of it, dude. I'm very presumptive. I'm very good at asking questions to get them to say the things I want them to say. I'm very good at controlling the mood. I'm very good at like the anger, the shift, you know what I mean? All the things. I'm really good at calling a carrier if I want. I'm really good at getting them to get a policy out. I'm really good at getting socials and banking and all that stuff. I got really good at that. That's where I can shine, controlling the whole thing. And you know what I mean? Kind of knowing what to do and how to get, dude, I can write fucking 3 companies with a client, never once tell them they've been declined and they'll fucking sign every one of them. I don't tell anyone they got declined. I've never told someone they get declined ever. I just fucking go to a new app and I'm like, all right, text me this code. I say nothing until the letter that gets mailed to them. Now I might tell them at the end, I'll be like, oh weird, something popped up. They need some— I gotta— they want me to do something else. All right, hang on. And I just fucking roll. I'm really fucking good at that stuff, you know? And it doesn't stress me out. I'm really good at getting a carrier on the phone and getting them to say exactly what I want them to say to the client. To get them to cancel the fucking thing and getting all— I know how to control all that. So I just shined where I'm good. I don't know how to close 90% of people by being emotional, bro. That's not my thing, you know. So I took my thing, I accepted who I was, and I played my game really well, you know. And it worked for me. And some people love it and shine with it. Fucking— he learned everything I do, and he even knows half of it was from me. Just through the hierarchy ended up in, you know, we shoot the shit and learn later. But it's like some people thrive in that world and then some people look at the way I approach it and they don't like it at all. And I'm like, touche, amen, back to you. I hate your way too. I don't dislike you, but that way is not for me. And I'm not offended. That was a big part of the growth in the building is understanding like, dude, I ain't everybody's cup of tea. Just like everybody ain't my cup of tea, you know. And so I just started to learn how to attract people that resonated more with me, you know. And I've told every agent ever, if you're learning from just me, you're making a mistake. I promise you, you're fucking up. I'm like, take the good piece. Dude, I got a lot of bad shit, a lot of bad habits. I got, you know, I mean, I ain't fucking perfect. So take what you like, shit you hate, okay, all good, move on. Don't take it. And I learned to do that from other people too. And that's something I've, I've seen a lot of other agents with, like, he sucks, I don't listen to him. Every— he does sell $480 grand a year, he's gonna be doing something right. He does have a half-million-dollar fucking team. I know he's a jackass, but he's doing something. So I would try to, like, take the good from people. Like, what can I learn that he does really well? He's good at that piece. And people go, what about all that? Dude, I don't give a shit about that. I'm learning that piece. You know, I think I did that better than most out there. I tried to anyway. I learned a lot of shit from people that others didn't really like, other groups and teams. And I like the guy. Yeah. Makes sense. I think overall, dude, just hearing you download, you're really all y'all. The approach is there. Doing it together is cool, you know what I mean? Like, understanding kind of the game of it. Y'all don't get too emotional. Every once in a while we all pop off a little bit. I've done it a few times. I've heard him do it, you know what I mean? I'm like, fuck, I do it and I'm on camera. I'm like, I know. Fuck, fuck, don't do that. You know, all this recording I'm doing, I'm putting all on YouTube. You know how many times I went, don't do that shit, I fucked up bad. You know what I mean? It just— so it's like, even for you guys along the way, like, if you ever— if you expect that this is going to feel like perfection ever, it just ain't. So you kind of learn to like accept the ugly and the bumpy of this business, you know. And it doesn't go away and it changes, it evolves, it becomes new fucking bumpy shit, new problems, and you just kind of become someone that learns how to deal with shit and solve fucking problems. You know, which can, I don't know, it's a fun ride. I don't wanna thank you too much. I'll just keep staying at it and bring more people in the mix a little at a time. Teach the pieces you do, because all the words you're saying are working. Things are working to push, you know, I mean, you're getting through them. Just try to push, push a limit every week until you hit this groove. You're like, ah. So when you kind of started in this, did you kind of like have a certain thing you were focusing on each week or each day, like each dial day? Like, I'm focusing on, you know, getting better at this right here. Yeah, I phase. I wouldn't say it was every single day there was a thing. There was like seasons of things. Yeah, you know, I remember going through the stage of learning how to sell the fucking over-60 mortgage protection, to really hone in on that, dude. That took me months, you know what I mean? I had to— I ran so many of those fucking appointments, and I was trying to overall get that under control, right? And so I would look at my approach, and then within it, then the little pieces of the appointment, then I would start to fine-tune each individual piece over time. Meaning the introduction became insanely important. Who I am, what I do, and why I'm here. That was a hook for the direction and the concept I was gonna sell later. And I would start to be able to tie the pieces together, tighten it up a little bit. So as I got more and more objection, you'll do a lot of this default. As I got more and more objections, I would tailor my presentation to avoid shit I kept running into. You know, you run into the same walls a lot. Fuck, why do I keep— why do I keep— I was, I was with Salem on Discord this weekend, and he was trying to sell some mortgage protection seniors, and it was like he kept getting— I remember getting it fucking every time. Where they would go, that's just not enough insurance for the money. That was the objection every time. That was that. And then the second worst one was I explained the buying time equity protection, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, whatever amount of coverage. And then when we got to the payment, the pricing, like $50, $100, $150, they would go, all right, so I only have to pay this $150 for 12 months They tied the 12 months of mortgage payment protection to 12 months of their monthly payments because my delivery, my explanation of it was confusing. So I had to learn how to explain it to a fucking old lady that you have to pay the bill forever and they get 12 months worth of mortgage payments. There was always fucking confusion in that part. When I learned how to perfect that, the confusion went away. I would not fucking go forward until they understood how the payments worked in concept before I gave pricing. If I had to re-explain the concept after, I was fucked. So I learned I had to make sure conceptually they understood what we were doing. We weren't gonna pay off $300,000 mortgage. We were gonna get a $20,000 check to go into a fucking savings account for Susan to take $1,200 a month out of and pay the bill so she could put it for savings. Sale sign out front, sell that bitch and get $200 grand worth of equity. They understood all of that before I got to pricing, because I used to show pricing, they'd be like, wait, what? So how's it work again? Because it was confusing to them, right? So Salem gets on, he fucking runs into the same fucking— I'm like, it's— and so as I started teaching it, the objections— this is 10 years later— his first 2 presentations, he got this exact same 2 objections I used to get in 2015. So I was like, hey, say this instead of that. This fucking next one, say it. It just, you know what I mean? It's like, it's so— it becomes so easy to tweak things because I, I'm like, I worked on that shit for fucking 9 months, you know? And so with final expense, I worked on it. My in-home is because I fucking hated the way I learned how to do it. The way I was taught how to do a final expense in-home presentation made me want to gag in my mouth. It was disgusting. I didn't feel good. It gave me the ick. It felt fake as shit. I don't— I didn't like it. Um, so I fucking changed it. And literally, I was fucking pissed off one day going into fucking appointments I didn't want to go into in a trailer home, and I'm like, I guess you need some fucking insurance. The guy was like, yeah, yeah, I've seen that. I was like, that's literally— it literally happened one day out of me just being pissed and being like, fuck it, I'm doing my own thing. Because it was all— it was this— have you You probably saw the same thing. If you're like most seniors, there's one of 3 reasons why senior citizens will fill out one of these forms. Number 1 is because— I'm like, fuck, dude, it felt just awful for me. Wait, you hate that? I hated it. Yes, I still hate it. I don't like it. It doesn't work for me. There's 3 reasons why anyone— I'm sitting with anyone. 1, they have no coverage, you know they need some. 2, they have some and know they need a little bit more. Yeah, I don't like it. You don't like that? Okay. I am not saying it doesn't work. Yeah, no, I agree. Because the guy who taught it to me killed it. I don't like it. It doesn't flow good for me. It's not natural for me. I don't know. I didn't like it. When I went, yo, guess you need some insurance, huh? They go, yeah, I already know the fucking answer to that. Does it make sense? Yeah, he needs more insurance. Got it. I know he needs more insurance before I get there because he filled out the fucking form right now. Your question is, you either got some, don't have enough, blah blah. I I go, got it. Do you have any yet or no? Yeah, I did the fucking same thing, bro. No, I have an answer. He says yes. No, your, your question answered multiple questions. I go, yes. All right, how much you got? 10 grand. All right, guess you need more. Yep. How much you thinking? 20? What do you pay for the 10? 70. When'd you get it? 4 years ago. All right, you know it's gonna be more than 70 now, right? Yup. All right. So you got another $100 or so in your budget? Yup. Hey, give me policies. That's my— they go, no, I don't got any. Oh, it's like a butter or a hot knife on butter. It's just, that's it. That's all that— that's the whole fucking game. You give me policies in hand and tell me yes, I got some and I need more. How do I fuck that up? Also, it's only like 30 minutes, 45 minutes. Yeah. Doing the whole thing. That process takes 3 minutes. Hold on. Right. So then I go down the other side and no, I don't have any. 'Cause that was the yes side. Now, no, I don't have any. Oh, why not? You been really sick or you just been putting it off? Almost everyone says, nah, I just been putting it off. Like, oh, what got you finally not wanting to put it off? Someone die or something? And then from there you start going, oh my gosh, you're into it. That's like— That's it. Every final expense, it's so much easier for me. It's a conversation, it's assumptive as fuck. So I've always heard of that, you need the church. And then like those follow-ups, now seeing your routes. Whoa, listen, that's just— it's simple for me. It's easy, dude. I don't know how people spend as long as they do on the phone. I don't understand it. I'm making— I'm fucking showing people numbers in 8 minutes on the phone. I'm like, what do you do for 47 minutes with someone? I don't know the answer. I see the scripts. I ain't fucking doing that. I'm just not. I don't need 40 minutes to find out if they need insurance or have insurance. I don't need 40 minutes to find out if they want to take care of their family or don't. Now, do some clients fall off and dislike how quick? Yes, yes, yes they do. But dude, I can talk to fucking 4 for an hour where you take an hour and 47 minutes with one. So I just— I'm looking for who I'm looking for. No different on the agent side. I'm looking for who I'm looking for. I'm not looking to spend— now, spend the time with someone if I have to do the work and find the policies and help help them out and they go. But I'm not spending an hour and a half fucking trying to twist someone's arm. I ain't fucking doing it. I don't like how it feels, you know. I just— I'm okay going after the fucking— I'm gonna get to more laydowns than you, right? Because you're gonna spend an hour and 47 minutes going through your 13-page fucking manual about how to overcome every fucking objection known to man. Meanwhile, I'm gonna see 17 fucking people. And get 4 laydowns. I was okay with that. I don't need to be that other dude. I'm happy for that guy. He's not wrong. Is he better at sales? Yes. Does he have a better closing percentage? Yes. Does he make more money? Probably not. Well, I mean, for me, yeah. And I just— I was— I'm okay with that, you know what I mean? Where some people are not. And then my closing ratio did go up, but it ain't You go in my folder there, I got, I got like told the fuck off folder, I got a miss sale folder, uh, and I got a sale folder. There's a stack of miss fucking sales in there, dude. But I've written a lot of insurance, you know, and I'm just— that's the whole concept of the book. Just didn't want to dip it. I just, I just— and it worked so good. I was like, this is fucking easy. You know, I don't know, dude. But especially if like someone like me who's newer, like, I'm not gonna mess up so many. Yeah, yeah. And again, it's not that I don't have a skill set, it's just, it's just different. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not gonna give you the fucking 7 steps to sales. 6, I don't know that. I have no fucking idea of that. But I know how to control. I know how to get yeses. I know how to find the people that are going to go through it and keep it. My shit stays on the books, you know what I mean? They're quick presentations, is easy. But again, I ain't forcing people, dude. Listen to me, book. They go, I ain't it. I had 2 people call me back today and yell because I hung up on them. They call me back because I hang up on them, dude. I— they, they're fucking giving me hard pushback. I don't push as hard as he does. I— maybe I used to early, right? But I'm just like, all right, let me just get the next fucking person. It's been 2 and a half fucking minutes pushing, but I'm— again, I'm okay losing some. I also know I'm going to take those leads and give them to one of y'all. Y'all gonna fucking book them and close them next month, right? I like the speed. Let me get through them. Give me 12 easy appointments, you know? And I know a couple are gonna fucking not be there, and a couple are gonna call and cancel, and who knows what will happen. But I don't know, dude, it eases my mind and it works and it's duplicatable as shit. I've taught it so many times to people who fear or don't have, quite frankly, the capacity to learn in-depth sales or psychology, or they don't have the time, they don't have the ability, they don't have the money, they don't have the— you know what I mean? That their dynamic in life doesn't allow for that shit. But to go, guess you need some insurance, huh? And say that 25 fucking times a week and pick up 3, 4, 5, 6 apps. It's so duplicatable and it's so profitable, you know, especially when you don't stress over it because you understand how it works. And then you start getting really good at it, you see what it turns into, you know. I'm gonna have to use that line. I use it for some families, like when I'm feeling that It's just, it's got to be you though. Yeah, it is. You saying it might sound corny as fuck. I don't know. It is. It has to be, you know, but it's like the right person, but it's just my personality and how you kind of like place it in any house. It doesn't matter what the personics are. And saying it like that just gets in front of everything. Super confident, right? Yeah. I've learned people like casual more than formal. You know, I don't know. I think if you show up more formal, it scares fucking the fucking country-ass bumpkins a little bit. You know, I feel like I got really good at letting people's guard down. I speak super informal. I feel like I relate to a lot of people better. I can be the other way. It's just, it's a lot of work and it's not my natural. And no different than you trying to go to informal, might not be as natural. My point is, that's not for everybody, but you can take those concepts and just apply them to who you are, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's more so understanding the psychology, but I don't know what you're doing too. Yeah, there's an overall approach to the game. That's why I keep saying the easy game when you know how to play it. Easy fucking game. And again, it's probably easy for the guy with the 90% close ratio thing too. I mean, I would love You think I wouldn't love to be a guy who can buy 15 leads a week and close 12 of them? That'd be dope. Now I don't know how the fuck you would teach that to an army because most of them never figured that out. You know what I mean? But it probably feels pretty good. It probably feels pretty good to be one of those people that knows how to get 17 fucking referrals from every client. That's probably— I don't know how to do that. I'm not that guy. But bro, I'm the guy who can find some fucking policies that ain't what they say they are and help the Client, fucker, fix that bitch. Most of my sales are replacements, bro. I love it. Yeah, those are, those are the easiest— not easiest, but those are the ones you want to go after. And if you can— and so some people say things like, well, those policies are written by people who just do a bunch of numbers and do the thing. And I'm like, nah, I can teach a skill set on how to keep a policy on the books. Remember, I fucking placed 90% of my shit. 90% of my shit stayed on the books. So it wasn't just doing it. It's not always just penny-pinching and saving a nick. Fuck, most agents don't do shit right. So it does become easy. And for me, it was about being profitable and, you know, teach people to make a bunch of money, and that's it. All the other noise, I don't give a fuck about it. You learn to become— and again, I don't know that it's a perfect thing, but you learn to become unemotional about some of it. Yeah, tell me to fuck off. I laugh now. I'm like, here we go again. I bought some guy fucking bitches today. Your fucking company's the worst. You keep calling. I was like, you remember the part where you initiated this, right? Another guy bitched the other day. It was 5 in the morning when he filled something out. I'm like, how the fuck you think I feel? You filled it out. I had to get up and work to call you. Now, I didn't close him, but I was okay with it. This is how I— it's how I deal with the dumb shit. I make it humorous to me. I'm not going to be a dick most of the time. I try, I try really well. I used to be really bad. Yeah, yeah, but I was infamous for— at a house, dude, you— I don't leave with a sale, I promise you to leave The lead is gonna end up crumbled up, thrown over my shoulder, onto your fucking porch as like a fuck you to— it's just— and I'm making you a fucking student wanna leave. But it wasn't healthy. So I had to get out of that because I sold more when my brain wasn't so mad all the time. Yeah, yeah. I recruited better when I wasn't so mad. So I learned how to just go, it's part of the game. It's part of the fucking game. You know what I mean? Sometimes some games you get punched in the face. It's part of it, you know. So when I got better at that, then it was like printing money, and I was not emotional either, and it was easy. So you just gotta find a way for you to make it unemotional. This is the way I did it. It's perfect, but it fucking worked for me. It worked for a lot of people. You know, you got other hormones I don't know how to explain or help you with, so good luck with that piece of the battle. But I don't know, hopefully that helps some. And again, if you want to review it every once in a while or look at them or send me the sheet or whatever, I don't mind getting your feedback and just looking at how I see it. Yeah, especially a quarter at a time, then you start comparing quarter to quarter. So what I would do, like, we're just obviously about to start quarter 4, right? So if I'm you, I'm looking at, uh, would it be July, August, September? That's what we just ended. Compared to April, May, June, right? I like doing stuff like that. Like, how many appointments did I run in quarter 2 versus how many did I run in quarter 3, right? Because it's a big chunk. Yeah. How many leads did I buy in quarter 2 versus how many leads did I buy in quarter 3? How many appointments did I run versus how many appointments did I run? How many apps? How many— I like comparing quarters to each other because then I can look at that and feel progress, right? It's like, again, easy examples. Like, we got, we got go on a fucking diet, get in shape, and you fucking stare at the scale every day. You don't see that bitch move ever. In fact, many days that bitch goes up. It's fucking infuriating, you know. But if you go back— if I go back and look at mine from fucking April, oh my God, dude, you know. So, and then I can compare each, each section. So then you can go, all right, here's what I did this quarter, here's what I did current quarter, I'm going into the last one, you know what it felt like, You know if you slacked or did good or did bad, you kind of have a feel. You know how much more you got in the tank. I think, all right, Q4, fuck it, here's how I beat that. Or you might go like, oh shit, I slacked that quarter, fuck.

Yeah.

Or you might feel like you did bad and you're suddenly more profitable in that quarter. You go, damn, I thought I did like shit, I made 4 grand more. So I like doing it in chunks. As I got more and more, the reason we did those numbers with the slashes I kept track of all of that. And because nobody would ever fucking do this when I told them to, I started keeping track of it, which is why we have the submit active, but no one fucking does it. So I would put them in every week back in the day when I was running the team. But you gave us numbers. Amanda's job was to harass it. You gave Amanda your numbers every week. This is— everyone did. Um, and so I would put them together for people, and then once a quarter I I would have fucking 100 people. I'd be like, here's how many appointments you ran, here's how many they did, here's all the averages, top people, bottom people, here's what the good ones did, here's what the shitty— hey, you know Joe who can't get a fucking sentence out of his mouth? He issued fucking $93 grand this quarter because he ran 507 appointments and you ran 83. You know what I mean? You could start looking at crazy shit, and that stuff helped. It gave buy-in to the concept of what I was doing, you know, because then I started being able to show what was working for other people. That's where you'll get by. And if you start figuring out— if that's your thing, it was my thing. I was an accountant. I'm really good at it. If I look at numbers, dude, I start seeing shit people don't see. I don't even know how to explain it. I just look at a spreadsheet and that bitch tells me a story, you know. So I use that skill set to bring to agents. Or again, I might not have been able to teach the best sales. And again, I've taught some sales stuff, but I ain't fucking elite at it. But analyzing shit and looking at what you do over the course of 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and being able to steer you and adjust a few things and get your mind to believe in it and buy in and go for it— I got really fucking good at that, you know. So it became just like in-home stuff. I have a strategy, I have an approach, I have a delivery with agents about certain things. Because you— most, most of us fall into certain buckets. A few personality types, a few different, you know, work ethic types, a few different response types to fucking hard shit, easy stuff, you know what I mean? There's only so many scenarios. So you start learning how to deal with different agents, it fucking becomes really easy. 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 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. Oh, we're getting there. It's cooking, it's coming together. It's consistent as shit. Starting to get a little consistent group. That next layer, get people profitable. Yeah, get yourselves profitable if you're not, you know, like, get—

yeah. I'll show you that stuff.

How you track yourself. I'll show you. And if, again, if you want to use some version that's easy for you to use, use something. I always tell everyone, if it's complicated, don't, don't use it. Yeah, just make something easy. I'm fucking used to always joke, and I still say it, but it's like, fucking get a napkin and some crayons if you need to, because I've given plenty of people those spreadsheets and it fucking makes their price card. Makes their life miserable, you know. I'm like, don't do it. You're telling me you can't keep track of— you've got to be able to keep track of stuff somehow. Come up with your own fucking way, you know. Hell, in today's world, you can just tell ChatGPT to keep track of everything for you. I mean, there's got to be— yeah, this can't be that difficult. There's got to be some tech out there that's easier now, who knows. But again, for me, 15-20 minutes on Sunday Plug it all in, quick peek, get ready for the next day. Let's go again because I'm executing a schedule for the month, you know what I mean? And I'm just trying to hit a plan. My plan is X number of appointments, X number of dials. Let me, let me— all right, all right, how am I on track? Oh, slacked off this week. I'll pick it up. Where am I gonna make it up? All right, extra appointment a day. Nope, I'm over this week. Dope. Let me fucking put— maybe I push this month. Maybe instead, maybe instead of 120, I hit 150. I can analyze like that. Let's fucking move on. It just fucking plugs away. Earlier in this conversation, you said something interesting to his first question. What advice would you give yourself if you were to start all over again? And you said consistency. And it's, it's easy for somebody to not to not have it, and it's easy for someone to have it. What were some of the habits? Is it like scheduling? It seemed like it was that mine— a lot of mine had to do two things. One, um, I was very fortunate that Steph took care of everything in my life that had nothing to do with insurance. I still to this day don't have to do shit. I don't know what happens in my fucking world. I don't know kids' schedules. I don't know what classes they're in. I don't know their fucking teachers. I don't know what day I didn't I found out today Max didn't have school at fucking 9:30 when I started— before I came here, you know what I mean? I just— I don't know what we buy for groceries, I don't know where we buy them, I don't fucking know much of anything. I'm kind of quite the dipshit with most of our household. So for me, I got to just focus. That was an added benefit. Yeah, you know, I, I would prep everything I could in advance. I'm really good at that kind of stuff. Stuff. Little stuff, dude. I'm weird. Like in the mornings coming to the office, I would rather already have my backpack on the edge of the counter with my computer in it, zipped up with my keys next to it. Yeah. Ready to, so I can just grab it and walk in my car. Even though I still at night or in the morning have to unplug everything, fold it up, get the folders put, I still have to do it either way. But mentally, my brain works better if I do it last night versus in the morning. I do as much of that shit as I can. Yeah, iron my clothes, dude. Now, if at home, I'll be honest, that fucking gets my shit most days, you know. But if I'm traveling or doing anything, just my habit is, dude, I'll get to a hotel, iron all my shit, it's ready for the next— I don't like to wake up and have to iron. I don't like to have to wake up and— I don't like have to wake up and think, quite frankly. I like to do all the thinking in advance so I can wake up and execute, you know. So having leads ready, having my schedule mapped out, having whatever the stuff I have to do for the next day, I'd rather have the majority of it done, you know. Um, and that, that made, that made a lot of it easier, you know. That made me think less, maybe less panicked. You ever get in the car and you're like, fuck, any gas? I hate that fucking feeling. I hate that shit, you know? So I, I remember being in fucking 2015, dude. Hey, where the cars didn't have the fucking Apple Play, or you had to have that fucking third-party fucking GPS thing. Yeah, I'd go out there and I'd program it in the fucking car the night before just so— because it wasn't— it was in the fucking dash, those shitty-ass ones that are still in the rental cars, you know? So I would do simple things like like I'd have everything in my car the way I wanted it. I have the gas filled up. I'd have the— you know, man, just it's who I want. It's just I've learned to do that in a lot of ways. Yeah, yeah, it's just weird. My shoes fucking ready on the floor, my bag where I want it to go, my fucking, you know, the pieces to the lunch that I was gonna pack. If I just— we still do stuff like that. Maddox has baseball on Sunday, dude. Saturday night I'm fucking putting all in the truck and putting the fucking cooler in. I just— it's easier for me mentally. Thank you. Because when you wake up panicky, or you sleep in and don't wake up at all, and you run out the house, it's a fucking panicky feeling. When I have a panicky feeling and then I have a frustrated client immediately after, we clash. Yeah, yeah, that fucking makes a shitty day. Then I'm sitting in a parking lot and have two no-shows. Now I'm pissed the fuck off too. That makes the rest of my day suck. Now a new agent calls me and I gotta tell him to fuck off because he fucking made me even more mad. You know what I mean? It's just, I'm like, dude, I'd rather just put up with Jesus the night before. It's just so much fucking easier. You know what I mean? I just don't function well when I'm like that. Some people fucking thrive in it, I guess. I don't fucking know. I know I don't. So you have to drive an hour and a half, and 40 minutes into that drive you realize you forgot something because you didn't fucking prep for it. Yeah, so I think looking back, the inconsistency and me being super— I'm so— I'm still emotional, but I was so bad. I was so fucking bad early on. I was worse than him. Oh dude, he said really? Yeah, keep in mind, think about this. I had his attitude at a 35, 36, 37-year-old. I was fucking salty, bro. I couldn't imagine being like your attitude right now. Yeah, I've been through some shit in life. Like, you know, man, it's just, I was salty. And so when things didn't go well, I was fucking emotional and I would get pissed off at people and they wouldn't know it. Like really bad. And then I'd drive like an asshole in traffic, and then I'd be stressed out fucking— you know what I mean? It just— I would— ah! And so I thank God I'm a fucking numbers nerd. It literally is like— I don't even know how to explain it. It just— when I understood that it was just straight fucking numbers, I just stopped giving a shit what anyone said. I just don't care. I try to make it not happen, so it's not like I don't care and I don't try to fix it. It's just I know I can't fix all of them. I just got it when I got rid of the emotion, dude. This whole thing got really easy, and I wish I wasn't— I don't know, because it taught me a lot. Yeah, I mean, all the dumb shit I did, at the same time I wouldn't have the lesson, so I don't know that I regret it. Maybe I wish I learned a lesson sooner, paid attention a little sooner so I didn't drag it out. I wasn't stubborn, but all the dumb shit I did, it did fucking teach me some stuff. Is that up to you right now? Yeah. Um, so that's, that's the big stuff, man. Being a student, I did really good at that naturally. Just being curious, knowing if these fucking dipshits could do it, I could. I, I had that really well. Just looking around. That's why I like being around others and watching others and paying attention to calls and trainings. And you ever see these people fucking killing it, top producers, and they, they need fucking notes to train? They can't get 6 sentences out of their mouth. Like, they don't know, you know what I mean? I'm like, you sell how much? If you follow Fairly First Life and look at the Hall of Fame producers, I know that shit. I'm like, God bless them. I'm like, fuck. Yeah. And I ain't perfect, but sometimes I'm like I can definitely figure this shit out. And I hope people look at me and think the same thing, quite frankly, you know what I mean? I'm all about being someone's fucking dipshit. Like, hey man, I'm a fucking— I'm a mental case that figured it out. I hope it gives you hope, you know? So being around what I do for a living, the industry, the vibe, the family, the culture of what it is I was really good at being around that kind of shit and finding the ones. I didn't get lost in the noise. I went, yo, who's making the money? And I'll be— remember talking about that last night, the culture, just being around like Giovanni and like, yeah, just seeing like how he works and like how he dials. He's gonna dial 12 hours whether he has the appointments or not, you know what I mean? That's what I was telling him last night. I was like, just like the culture of of everything, you know, just being around the right people, like you said. Yeah, it's about, dude, you know, when y'all start expanding it. There was a point in time early, it was hard to be 40 people in— it was an old office, and it wasn't built for that. It was an old fucking, like, doctor's lab or something. And there was just people everywhere, on every corner, on the floor, in in a closet, fucking just dialing everywhere. Cause we were doing it. It was just, hey, I wanna learn. All right, come learn. That's why she was half mad at me today. I'm like, the dialing will be the fucking training for whoever shows up. Yeah. Don't you wanna do a training? Yeah, we're gonna train 'em how to make money. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so for me it was a, a big part of it was like, yo, just come get around it. If I can get people around it, you know, you start interviewing people and things like that. I'm like, just come to the office Monday, dude. I can sell you, I can pitch you, I can do whatever. You can pitch me. We can play this fucking game back and forth. You want to work here, I want you, we don't, we do. Do you want to come and see what we do? It's either for you or it ain't. You see, you can see me get yelled at, you can see me get cussed out, you see me fucking book appointments. Now you ain't coming in the fucking car with me, but you can come watch what I do. Yeah, and that's, that's a lot how we built it. Yeah, I got questions. Cool. Show up to the fucking office. Yeah, that you can see that still. I have trickles of that still to this day because it worked so well. You just show people how to make the money. It's like, come do it or don't. Guy wanted to fucking DM me the other day, need to change my life, dying to get into insurance. I was like, hey, we're doing this thing on Thursday. His response was, I work. Nope. My reply said, okay, you obviously ain't dying for it. Not like, hey, I have to work, can we schedule something out? Can we— it was, I work. Okay. Then he hearted it and we both moved on with our day.

You never heard from him again.

You know what? That's a good way for that. Steph had a friend post something looking for something. Steph likes to pitch this like insurance thing to a lot. Sometimes she'd be like, I got one for you. So she's like, will you text him? Will you call him? I'm like, just tell him, give him my number, just tell him to call. She didn't shoot anyway. So long story short, she tells me we tell this couple. Somehow Amanda's husband's fucking related to the guy, somehow to— they're all connected. And I'm like, just bring them to the office. So they showed up Friday and, you know, we just get to the night. We invited them here, they could come said she has a job. Same thing. I'm like, oh, you can't come? Get in Zoom and get in Discord and watch. Yeah, I mean, is this for you? I don't know. I don't fucking know you. That's my answer every time. Can, can I make this work? I don't even fucking know you. I don't know. I know millions of people figure it out. Come here, watch, see if it's for you. So do you see like characteristics in a person that this could be good for, or do you ever do that or play that game? But I've seen all types fucking make it and fail. Action certainly is a big piece of it. Um, depends if you see make it as a producer or building, because I've— they're most, most big producers don't know how to build worth a shit, to be honest. Um, yeah, I think that People that do ethical business tend to make it a lot longer. I've seen fucking scumbags sell a lot of insurance and be out of this really quick on a dime because it catches up one day and it's like, oh shit, oop, it's gone. Um, I think people that are like students and curious and that type of personality where they like to educate themselves and learn and study, they tend to do well. People have backgrounds in something could consistent tend to do better. Sports, military, though sometimes they crumble on the fucking phone, you know what I mean? That could be different. I've seen fucking elite people at— I mean, the twins at the thing, fucking jacked, work out 17 times a week, they can't stay consistent on the phone, you know what I mean? So sometimes the shine is like, oh, that's one. Nah, they fucking suck over here. But again, I think those are some of the basic characteristics. I think people that are more of the grateful type of humans tend to do better, quite frankly. Cocky fucking douchebags tend to eventually phase out often. And long term, it's like, you gotta help other people win. They kind of give back personalities. I mean, they help people they don't have to help, they do shit they don't have to do, kind of go out of their way to help someone. You start seeing people helping others closing deals of agents that aren't theirs, and you kind of see those little things in people, it's like they usually tend to do really well. Whereas you get this, some guys are like, oh, he ain't mine, I ain't fucking helping him. You know, there's some people won't help an agent because they don't get override. You know what I mean? It's like, it's weird. They just, or, or some people won't answer their own agent's calls because it's inconvenient timing. Or, you mean, they just, I don't know, some people are fucking douchebags. What tends to catch out? Yeah, you've definitely it at all. You're definitely gonna have to buckle up and deal with some hard shit along the way, so you better have some thick-ass fucking skin. You better have some thick-ass skin along the way because it gets harder. I promise you. I promise you. Feels like it's not moving right now. It will feel like that for the rest of time. I still feel like that. I just— you just made me feel a lot better. No, I still feel that every day. This, I feel like we move slower now than ever before. I ask Amanda, shit, like, fucking it, I want to poke my eyeballs out every day. I don't know how to make that feeling go away. Yeah, but I can look backwards and go, fuck, that happened quick. Mm-hmm. You know, but going through it, during it, fuck, it's excruciatingly slow. It's awful. It's awful. I mean, even if I think just building this little direct-to-base shop, I'm like, goddamn, can we go any slower? You think you feel like you're going slow? What the fuck do you think I feel? I can see the vision clear as day for you, and I'm like, oh my God, will you please walk through the fucking door? You know, it's just like, I'll clean up in a second. There's some fucking towels out there. If you get it, it's right in the kitchen. Yeah, there's a big, big one. All right. You know, so yeah, I— it's fucking excruciatingly slow watching over here, sitting fucking watching. Y'all go like, oh my God. So that's killing me. Granted, it's his question. I should probably fucking wait for him. He would— he always told me like It's like be patient for the result, but be impatient on like input side.

Expectation.

Yeah, yeah. And so as you push there, you can move fast on one side. It's going to be a shit time. Thank you, buddy. Um, it wasn't that bad. I thought it was way bigger puddle. Oh yeah, it is. Slow, steady grind. Well, it changed pretty quick if you stay consistent. I mean, especially if you ain't got a ton of bills and shit going on, you stay crazy consistent. It's that $40K mark. After a few months of that straight, starts to level out. You get 3 or 4 months of that shit straight, a year comes up quick. Once you hit a year of it, all this back-end money starts coming. It gets really easy. You start seeing all these deposits. It's like, yo, the back end money becomes like small upfront policies. You know, you write them fucking $37 final expense apps and make fucking $217. Next year you start getting fucking $283 on the $350 a month app you wrote, replacing 4 policies and shit. You know, you start seeing these big fucking— you have a shitty ass Tuesday and you make $1,200 from last year. It's like, whoa. Oh, what the fuck? That starts happening on the daily, you know, it gets— then the stress, the relief of it goes on, then the belief level in it all kicks in, and you'll eventually realize y'all have made a lot more money and she's more profitable than her spreadsheet says because she's got all this back-end money stacked that the carrier she ain't factoring in.

Yeah, yeah, I keep forgetting, and it's not far. 12 years.

Oh dude, wait till 13 to fucking 24. Yeah, because then you're getting 3 back— 3 months of back-end money every month. Yeah, like 10's cool. Month 10's cool, ain't bad, ain't mad at it. Month 11, now you're getting upfront plus 2. Month 12, you're getting upfront plus 3. So that's how you do this for a year. That second year, you're still selling policy, getting that advance, then you're off. Yeah, and then you're getting 3— you're getting back-end money from like, you know, whatever. What are we, October now? So you're getting month fucking 10 of January, month 11 of December, month 12 of November. Fucking carrier bonus, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, 100%. I just know that you get the fucking America bonus in December, then you get FFL. FFL has a producer bonus if you hit the right numbers. You start getting a little bit of that, then you start kicking. It's like, oh shit, now all of a sudden it's fucking June, you get another big bonus from the carrier, you're getting all these trips, you're getting I mean, it starts to stack. Yeah, it's fucking nuts, you know. But it's really easy to go— I mean, how much insurance you sold, issued in the last 4 months? I mean, gotta be somewhere in the ballpark of $100 grand. Yeah, I mean, somewhere in there now for sure. So what do you get, $20 G's stacked up over there? Oh yes, you know what I mean? Like, throw that into your fucking calculation when you're feeling like shit. You're just going to the deposit section, put $20 grand because it's there. Yeah, it's no different than when I sent money at the IRAs and the 401s and the real estate and the stuff. Yours just sitting at the carrier, and you know you're gonna have fucking at least 75% of your shit stick. So if you got $20,000 in back-end money, you know you got $15,000 coming to you at bare minimum. So it's like, plug that shit in and see what it looks like, because you got a gang of it. Yeah. Next year around this time. Oh dude, then you sell $40K a month, dude. You're putting in $5,000, $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 a month from last year. Yeah, it covers your whole lead bill and then some. It gives you this fucking feeling of like, holy shit. Yeah, that is— I've never— yeah, I knew that, but I never really like just thought about it. Meaning it's like execute a plan, right? If you're playing in the first— remember, months, when I said the magic starts happening month 13, your first 12 months ain't good. That first 9 months where you're building all to get the 10, 11, 12, your first 9 months sucks. So is your fucking backend money next year gonna suck. You're inconsistent up here this year. One month you do 40, next month you do 17, then you do 12, then you do 6, then you're 32. Yo, next month, one month you get $5,000, you're like, needs covered. Follow month, you get $300. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it can— what you do now affects later a lot. 25%. Not only do you get the impact today, you get a 25% hit tomorrow. It's going to come around the corner and punch you in the face again. Yeah, you know, so that's why the importance of, yo, I'm, I'm building more than just right now. I'm building my future fucking life. Future cash flow. So that shit became crazy important when you start understanding it. Then I started chasing that. Not that, it was that consistent for sure. Yeah, so it's like you start watching your deposits and you start seeing your frequency, right? Y'all, y'all don't get paid every day right now, I assume. I bet he does. You get paid every day? So deposit every single day now? Yeah, that's a different feeling. Yeah. The next feeling is getting paid every day from every carrier. I bet you don't have that yet. That shit would be nice. $101 going through 289. I, I, that's not for my policy. Yeah, right. So it's like now I'm building towards that in the future too. That becomes a lot easier when you sell policies consistently. Consistently now, you get back-end money consistently later. It's a lot easier to get paid every day when you fucking work every day now. Put your head down for 10 years. Now money just keeps dropping in all the fucking time, dude. I now see fucking commission statements of clients that I remember writing in fucking 2013. I'm like, holy shit. I just, the names, I can't remember the house and the fam. I still etched it and they're still fucking, they're still on statements to this day. Like shit. So yeah, so yeah, once there's— it's worth playing the game differently when you look at it differently, you know. And I, I very fortunately understood that early. I was older, I was in business before, I owned, I owned a company before, I was fucking doing account— like, I understood business and operations and money. Someone just had to explain it to me in insurance. And when they explained it, dude, I, I could probably still find it somewhere. And that's how— you seen the thing that we got, this little numbers thing, the projections, the— what's $100 million? Yeah, I fucking had printed for you. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Y'all seen that?

Yeah.

Him and I were talking about that at y'all stage. Even your stage, I had that mapped out at your stage already. Because I understood the numbers. I was like, what would it look like? How would my income get where I wanted to be? First year, I want to make $80,000, and it went up to whatever. And I remember going, all right, to get it— if I knew my comp, so I was like, all right, I'm at a $70,000 comp. If I sell this many policies, here's the math, back-end money will be this. Next January, if I do X— and I remember mapping out early I mapped it out all the way to make a million, million bucks, and I knew what I had to do numbers-wise to get there. Because you just, again, you take your fucking issue paid, your 75% advance times your comp, right? Then back, then I do the math out a year. I can do, I can calculate 10, 20, throw it in a fucking sheet, in 2 seconds we'll do it, you know? And I mapped it out and I'm like, all right, what if I do this? What's that number look like then? You know, and then I went, all right, if I hire people and I get 10 people that do X amount per month, $5,000 a month, 10 people, $50,000 a month. If I have 20 points, that's $10,000, 75% advance, that's $7,500. Did I make fucking $5,000, $6,000, $7,000 hiring 10 fucking people? Holy shit. I was like, motherfucker. Then I combined that with me selling $40K, and I can do over here. I just, I mapped Fucking had— I did it, I did it in Notepad on my phone. I just fucking type up the math, grab the calculator, fucking put it in there, and I mapped out how to make the money that year. That shit sat on my phone forever. Then I was like, oh, this is fucking easy. It became like fucking Monopoly. It was like playing Monopoly with my family, just fucking moving the pieces around the board. When you get this, you buy it, and then you charge this much rent. You know, after a certain— they're gonna let so many are gonna land on this fucking color, eventually you win. That's how you win a Monopoly. You buy everything you land All right, it is what it is. And this became like that. And then you get to teach it and go, look. And if you go back and watch some of my old, old content from stages, almost all of the early ones, I showed my fucking numbers. I showed— I still have it, all the spreadsheets. I knew how many— I still have fucking back to 2012. I pull up every fucking year how how many appointments, how many interviews, how many fucking sales, how many leads spent for my entire career. Yeah. And so as I started doing that, I started teaching it. And then in— there's a— one of the first bigger talks I did, I think it was in like 2018 or '19, was for Grady out in his team. And I mapped out my whole journey from 2012 to 2018, and I went month by month, kind of section of my career by section I was like, look at appointments. This is why I was making like 4 grand a month. And then I did this, and this turned into 10 grand a month. And you watched it grow. The video's still out there. It's one of the most popular ones I have had on there. It's like John Wetmore by the numbers or something. Yeah. And I just mapped it out. I literally fucking projected my Excel sheet on the screen and walked through it. That's how I used to teach the business to people. And that's how— that's how, like, that video, I went and found it. That's how you have your— yes, it's still there. It's fucking good. Yeah, a lot of people share that one, and it's just— it was very— it was, it was, it was all of my deposits, my spend, my overrides, how many agents we had, our team volume, literally month by month. It just lets you know where you're at. Yeah, and I just walk people through. And again, I got to look backwards and know, hey, in 2013 I was here, here's what happened, here's why. Then I changed this, and here's what happened. Look look at the numbers. Because I did this, here's what happened. And you see here, I started recruiting more. Look, I started spending more money here. Then our team volume— 6 months later, look at our team volume because I spent more here. And I could, I could visually show everyone the play I ran. Yeah, I was like, all right, copy this. You can copy that to a million dollars. Still to this day, the concept still works. And then the proof was in the pudding. So it's like, all right, go run the numbers I ran up. You'll be in the ballpark, cuz I wasn't that good, you know. So I just, I just keep doing it. It's on your YouTube? Yeah, I shared it to the group chat. Like a text group chat? Mhm. Oh, I see. I literally just got it too. That's weird. How many you got booked up today? Uh, like 9. All right, get after it. I got some work to do. Not bad, could be worse. Could be. We've been dialing the same, like, we've been doing all that, like, we heard switch leads. Ah, I was going to say, I got some in there if you, y'all want to mix it up a little.