How To Make Money in Insurance With $0 (The Easy Way) ft. The Rose Brothers | Ep13

It's a paradox. We told them to grow, we told them to learn, and we actually grew them out of here.

I've done that with staff, dude. You know, people follow me around and they hear me talk about going for your goals and dreams. And I've had people be like, after hearing you talk, I quit. And I'm like, nope.

What's up, guys?

John Wetmore back with another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Got my buddies Dan, Michael, Anthony, Rose, brothers from Diversified Companies, fellow Integrity Partners, and run a Dope business up in the Jersey area where my buddy Mark— close, y'all were pretty close.

Yeah, that close?

I didn't know you were that close.

2 and a half, man.

We, uh, we just— him and I recorded, I think, yesterday. And, uh, yeah, so it's neat y'all get to know him. Yeah, we've been buddies for a decade plus now.

And, uh, say again?

We were on his podcast. Yeah.

Yeah, I saw that. I saw the little preview. Yeah, he's, uh, he's got a lot of good things going on, and it's been cool getting to know you guys a little closer. I remember when you all became partners, you sent us all stuff, which was really cool. I was like, God, they're intentional. So we appreciate that, and getting, getting to know you guys through Cody's events and speaking and learning a lot about— and I got to hang out with your dad one day. I was somewhere. Where was I? We were like It was, uh, it was something with Cody for sure, and we were playing— it was like, uh, what's that game where you throw a little— yeah, yeah, it was like a little cornhole place. There was a bar.

That was the 1% event.

Yeah, it was the one, but I got to sit down and chat with him for a while. He's a cool dude too. Holy moly. Yeah, I love it, I love it. I like the jewelry. You know, he had some nice shoes on.

I'm like, man, he should have been a prop in The Sopranos because the way he's dressed, it's perfect.

Heck yeah, he looks like he could be a gangster for sure.

He likes it when you call him OG. Yeah, if you're ever in a conversation with him, you bring up the OG, I think he appreciates it.

So I will remember that one. I'll get— we need to get him on one day.

The first time someone called him an OG, it was a younger girl who worked in the office, and he came into the office and she says, you're like the OG. And he said, what did you just say? And he gave her a hard time because he thought that she was calling him the old guy.

I love it. I love it, man. I get people start calling me the old guy now, and I don't really like it either. Yeah, it starts, it starts shifting. I remember being the young dude around and now it's like, yeah, change a little bit.

100%.

Yeah, right.

At the end of the day, it's a good thing we have a lot of younger people around you because it means something's happening with the business. It's growing, not dying, for sure.

It's true. The young, the young ones are the ones running this thing now. Yeah, I just sit here and try to not mess it up now. So, well, cool. Well, I appreciate you guys getting on. Um, y'all can pick who— I would love for those that don't know you guys to, uh, just give a little background, what y'all sell, you know what I mean? Just give a little, little bit, a little bit of history. You want to each do a little bit? I'm fine. I know y'all all do this speaking thing together and have, have your routine down, so whatever y'all want to share just to let people get to know you guys some. And, you know, my goal with this podcast is to empower people in the business, learn cool things about those having success, and just pass that knowledge best, best we can. I know y'all believe the same thing, and You know, my goal is to help a bunch of people that none of us know.

So I'll, uh, I'll start then. Um, our, uh, our company is called Diversified. We were started in 1979 by our dad. Uh, he was— he actually started in the business working and creating mortgage leads and, um, selling, selling life insurance off of leads. Even then Then, then even before, even before final expense was a, was a big thing, he actually created his own.

I grew up on mortgage leads in the business.

Yeah, that's how I got started. No, yeah, it was, it was a long time ago. It was a long time ago. Uh, we, we grew into the health insurance brokerage marketplace. Um, yeah, we became big final expense writers and, uh, and we were working leads and all of us sold at one point or another. And we started in the Medicare business in 2004. We started a little company called Senior Financial Solutions with some other partners. That was before there was any compliance associated with Medicare, which was fantastic that we didn't— we really didn't have any rules. It was kind of the wild, wild west and worked leads that cost us a dollar each.

No way.

We were real successful in it. And the, the government then came in and said, you know, agents are making way too much money enrolling people in this free product. And they decided they were going to make a bunch of compliance. So we were a bunch of wusses and we ran. We kind of took our renewals and went home and continued with our final expense business. And then about 6 years ago or so, maybe a little more than 6 years ago, we got recruited back into the Medicare Advantage business. And it's been all, all uphill since then. We have, um, we don't run a brokerage operation with 10,000 agents or anything like that. We basically, uh, we basically go out, bring agents in, make them a part of the family, support the heck out of them, manage, train them, and do everything on the back end that an agent might need in order to be successful. And then about 2 and a half years ago, we were acquired by Integrity.

Yep.

And it's, uh, it's been fantastic. It's, it's been all, uh, rainbows and unicorns since then.

Cool journey.

That, that's kind of where we're at. We all came into the business at different times, uh, in our life.

Who's the one that fought it? One of y'all didn't want to do it. Who was that?

Stop it.

Yeah, are you serious?

For sure.

Who is the— who held out the longest?

I was the last one to join, but I think we all held out in different ways for different reasons, right? Yeah, we had our own little niche, right? Like Anthony was in New York City, he was a headhunter in New York City.

No way.

Taking people out of high towers into the next high tower, you know, skyscrapers. Yeah. And then Mike was— is super into his faith, him and his wife, and they had their own ministry for a while in a lot of different ways and a lot of different things. And And I was in the basketball world, so I kind of ran basketball camps. And the three of us separately got kind of sold by our father. And, you know, our mother and father started the business forever ago. And the company, you heard his name, Diversified. And the reason why it was Diversified is because he always knew in his mind he was going to get all of us involved in some way, shape, or form and doing all kinds of different things, being diversified in all of our efforts. And we fought it like hell, but At the end of the day, here we are, right?

No kidding. Wild. If you're looking to transform your insurance sales game in just 12 weeks, this course I put together is for you. Go over 20 different topics, everything from sales to goal setting to lead plans and everything I've done in the last decade plus having multiple 6-figure sales success. I've helped hundreds and hundreds of agents get to multiple 6 figures all over the country, mentoring and speaking at all kinds of events. So I've Available now. Find the link in the description. Use the code LAUNCH for a discount code. So when y'all sold, were you selling for Dad's company? When you were selling it, like physically selling insurance, not sold the company, when you were selling insurance?

Yeah, I started with final expense. That was where I, uh, cut my teeth. Well, actually, Anthony did too. And, and then that was like 2003, 2004. And then Medicare Advantage came around. And when we were invited to get into Medicare Advantage, it was almost like, don't do that. Whatever we do, let's stay away from this business completely. We're not going into the health insurance arena already because we all remembered how our father had been on CNN and fighting like the whole healthcare reform back in the early '90s. So. It was like, no, no, this is not something that we want to be involved in at all. And, uh, turns out we were able to sell a zero premium product to the exact same client that we're selling final expense to. And all of a sudden we're like, we're even using the same leads. So we used to use these things called piggybacks where we'd put a final expense lead and a Medicare Advantage lead in the same envelope, DRC them to all over the place, and maybe come back at $2 a pop for each lead. And We'd win on both sides of it. So we're like, let's do both of these things. And we kept our agency sales forces completely separate, continued to crush it on the final expense side, but just kept building up the Medicare Advantage side. And as it started to grow, we all realized there's a lot more opportunity over here because of the renewal portion of it. Though we really enjoyed the benefits of being on the final expense side with the trips and the more comp upfront and all that type of stuff.

Yeah, wow. Y'all were selling, I assume, in houses, like going to kitchen table selling, right? Trailer homes, probably more. Yeah, down here it's all— yeah, trailer homes in the hood. And I have some videos, dude, that I share with people, and I would, I would record. I do it all the time. I take my cell phone and I just, I'd hit record and knock on there. And I remember this one, I go into this one house, there's a couple. One, I go in and it was a house, it wasn't a trailer. And he had a giant— think of like an old hardwood tree, like that's huge around. It was in his roof, like it fell and it was through the roof. And when you go in the house, he had part of his house sectioned off with like, uh, that clear film that's taped, because when it rained, it rained inside the former living room. And I'm like, yo, what happened? He's like, a storm, it fell through. I'm like, when? He's like, 3 years ago. Oh man, you had a tree in your house for 3 years? He's like, yeah, my, my family bought the house however long ago, had it paid for. When they died, they gave it to me and it didn't have insurance on it. So the tree, it didn't have— and he had no money. It was like a passed-down house. He had no money, had a tree in his house. And I, dude, I have the thing. One of the happiest people I've ever met though. And he bought two policy, him and his wife both bought a policy. They didn't have like the electricity in the whole house. It was wild, dude.

Well, you know, that guy believed in insurance after buying. Heck yeah, 100%.

100%. Yeah, I feel your pain. I was in a lot of— and heck, to be honest, that was a nicer house compared to some of them I was in.

Sure, there's so many anybody who's been out in the field working within this business, the final expense arena, yeah, they all have stories, and everyone thinks that their story is better than— than— it's always, well, if you got one, I got one that's even better.

I want to hear some.

Well, I mean, I'm talking about any agent that you—

yeah, I want to hear your— y'all's— y'all are the one on the podcast. I want to hear some good ones.

I remember— I remember— I'm sorry, I remember one house that I was in that the dog was chained— it was in the basement of the projects. And the dog was chained to the radiator. And the dog was barking through the whole presentation. And I was a little scared of this big dog barking. Yeah. At one point, I realized I was like, brushing the roaches off the table. And at one point, I remember looking over and seeing the reason the dog was barking was because a rat was eating his food. That was to me the most disgusting one. And I walked out and I couldn't— I remember sitting there and I was stomping my feet the whole time I was speaking and making the presentation. Because I wanted to make sure that the roaches stayed away and the rats stayed away. Just going like this as I'm doing it. I was so And I'm, I'm a little bit of a germaphobe, so no, no, no, no, like, yeah, he's a total utter germaphobe.

Yeah, he's a total germaphobe.

Not a little bit.

And can't let you have that one. Wow. But it was actually, John, we were talking about, we were talking about flying down and doing this one in person with you, but then he's like, I can't get on a plane, I can't, you know, it's that bad, bro.

Come on.

Oh Lord. Board.

I know that type. You get the— at the front of the— he's got like the 5-mat one. Yeah, you get the mask and get all the hand stuff where you're wiping down everything.

He's got a holster with his, uh, his germaphobe, uh, man.

Hey, we can just do it with two of y'all.

Listen, I do not wear a mask on a plane. I do not wear a mask anywhere.

And when you're driving in your car by yourself, I don't know, myself with the windows up and a mask on. I'm shocked you went in. It reminded me of one— I caught fleas in a house. I was sitting down on my couch and they had an old nasty dog, and I left, and I was like, I looked down, fleas all over my jeans. I was like, oh my God. What's nuts is there's so much opportunity because most people won't do it. I made a shit ton of money selling in the hood.

Absolutely. It put me through college. Final expense put me through college. I sold all through college. It put me through college. Yeah, it was, it was, it was a little, it was a little nasty, but it's all good. There's a lot of money in it. There's a lot of money in it, a lot of growth opportunity.

You definitely, you definitely learned some stuff, that's for sure. I love it. Who's— so who's, who sold the most out of all of you? Who's the sales Guy, I think everyone's quiet.

Yeah, but we just sold the most.

I know, but I sold it. I think he was in it for the longest. Yeah, yeah.

Okay, did you sell the most just because you did it the longest? Yeah, not because you were the best.

We keep in mind, keep in mind that like any business, and I think Everyone needs to know this. Any business, as you grow, different opportunities and departments—

100%—

open up and start. So when I was in it, we were, we were a much smaller organization, and yeah, quite honestly, there was no possibility of a paycheck for me if I wasn't—

if you didn't sell.

Yeah, yeah, you know. And then as departments grew, we didn't really have much of a lead department. And then Mike came in and kind of started the lead department, if you— turned it into a real department as opposed to, you know, a shoebox of, of cards, you know. He turned into a real lead department. So there was that opportunity there. And then, and then Dan came in and grew from the inside sales perspective within the organization. But there was no money to do that in the beginning. So yeah, I remember, you know, our lifespan the opportunity to sell. There wasn't a choice. So that's why.

And at some points it cost you money to sell. I remember there was a stage where if I was selling, I made less money as a company.

Uh, yeah, yeah.

I mean, it took a while to get there, but I remember when it happened, when the shift happened, for sure, sure.

I mean, we tell, we tell everybody it means you can't actually close. Exactly.

Exactly.

We try to explain that to all the managers. When people say, I want to get into management, we say it's fantastic. But you need to be able to— how are you going to juggle this? Do it. It's going to be some, some cost to you, you know, when you do it. But, you know, every successful manager has given up their selling at some point and had to suffer for a little bit before they became successful.

Yeah, I remember it feeling weird too. Like coming out of sales and getting into just managing things. I was like, oh, this is— I don't know if y'all felt that, but it felt funny to me, that transition.

Yeah, yeah, it feels— it's different. It's like it's a different job.

That's one thing that we've like learned is having a business where there's 3 of us, every one of us have our own strengths and our weaknesses, right? There's areas that we are just going to crush it. And one person is going to do really well here, the other person is going to do really well here. And if we kind of stay in our lane a little bit and then work together and kind of report back to each other, figure out where we're at, we do so much better off than when we're trying to manage by committee, if you will.

Yeah, makes sense.

For example, in the field, this is probably not something that we should record, but whatever. You know, this was pre-CMS, right? So when I was in Medicare Advantage, I would go in and I do these big seminars. And, you know, sit there in an apartment complex, have 50, 60 people there. And okay, everybody, if you want a Medicare Advantage plan, come on down afterwards, and I'll fill out your application. And, you know, 30, 40 people would line up literally, like, fill them out. And I wouldn't sign it at that point. I wouldn't ask doctors, I wouldn't ask prescriptions, I wouldn't I would literally bring back apps with a person's signature on them and them saying yes, you know, they wanted this plan, and give them to one of the girls in the office and say, yeah, you know that I'm not the detail guy, you fill out the rest of the application.

Yeah.

And, and I guess I've always been that guy. I'm usually on the creative side, and, and Dan and Anthony fill that gap totally for me because I'm— I suck at the, the details portion of it. But, uh, You know, there's certain areas that we kind of fill in for each other on that with that regard.

So that was actually, that was Mike's transition out of the field because CMS had all these rules. As soon as they came out, I was like, get out, Mark.

I think that kind of leads to where we are now, right? Like we each have our seat at the table, we each have it at a different place, right? You know, Mike handles all of our marketing. If you're coming into this business and you have zero industry experience at all, you're being closed by Mike as to why insurance is for you. If you didn't make it another IMO or FMO, wherever you're coming in through Mike's marketing arm, being closed as to why Diversified is your answer to fit that bill, right?

Yeah.

And then Anthony handles all of our finances, right? I handle our inside sales training here and some of our inside operations here with this group. But we're all in training of our 1099s, our W-2s.

We're all in everything.

I think we all kind of share a part.

But it's just to work better with like Dan, that they will work with me and someone will work with Anthony, like they'll hit it off in that way. So we've been benefited over— we benefited over the years to be able to kind of figure those relationships out and then just double down with them. And then that's what our tenure with our people. It's insane how many people are still with us. 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years. That's why, um, you know, we don't have that revolving door. We did at one point for sure, but we don't have that experience anymore because we're able to kind of meet them where they're at. And if that person doesn't really jive with me, then Dan's usually stepping in, or Anthony's stepping in, or, yeah, you know, we're always finding different ways to kind of meet them where they're at.

That's cool. Do y'all have— so is your structure like you— it sounded like you have people in the office, but do you have agents external, in the field, outside, or W-2, 1099? Like, what's the structure?

Yes, all and everything. We have agents who work strictly in the field, belly to belly, in-home. Uh, we have agents who work 100% from the phone as 1099s, both sides. And then we have agents that are 1099 that do both. And then we have, uh, W-2 salary agents who sell 100% over the phone. And then we have even a W-2 that literally goes belly to belly and sells out in the field. So any and everything in every way, shape, or form, no matter what the line is, no matter what the product is, just like the basic sales process of being with a client. When it comes to a recruit, find a need and fill it. And that's all we do all day. That's my first line of defense there with the recruiting process.

We used to have a model where you have to come in and you're going to be in the field and this is what CPL was. This is how much your contract was going to be. If you did this much production, then it's going to go to here. After that much production, it goes here. And, you know, we— that was the only way we worked. And after kind of losing our shirt a few times with that model, whether it was because another agency came in and said, well, I can give you this, or another, you know, and frankly not really quite owning that relationship, that, that model as well as we'd like to, we realized, you know what, number one thing we're going to do first when we bring an agent in is we're going to ask them, what matters to you? And we're going to tailor a partnership that's going to last throughout the time that makes sense for both sides. So, you know, if it doesn't work for you, then it's not going to work for us because we're going to lose you anyway. So we need to figure out something that's going to make sense along the partnership. And sometimes it's going to go a little upside down, so we're gonna have to sit back and figure it out again. But because of it, we don't lose people anymore because we, we set up those— we set up a relationship based on need as opposed to what we want them to fit. So that, that square peg in a round hole mentality is gone for us at this point.

So a lot of people trying to build this thing try to convince people to follow a certain way, and they sell them on the upside and shove it down their throat, and you know, all the rainbows and sunshine stuff. And then it gets real and it's like, oh dang, this ain't what I thought.

We, we told you, man, there's 3 of us. We each do our own thing a different way. That's not how you're supposed to be doing things.

Yeah, whoops. Yeah, let's see.

I, I love it.

What—

so what do y'all look for in an agent straight? Like, what are the kind of line of questioning? How do you know they're a good fit? How do you all know you're a good fit for each other specifically? You know, I mean, like, what's the process for you? Because I can think back to when I was new trying to recruit versus how I would do it today, and oh my God, it's a world difference, you know. So just kind of, how do you, how do you go about like kind of weeding out the wrong people, or what are you looking for in the right people? Maybe either way.

I don't— first off, I don't think that there is— if there was the perfect model of what an agent, of what type of agent was going to be successful, we'd all be following that. There's no such thing.

I mean, no, I agree.

We have, we have people that are in their 70s that are very successful. We have people that are 21 years old that are very successful. And everything in the middle. We have male, we have female, we have— we're diversified. We have every type of person that there possibly is. And some people want to make a lot of money. Not everybody wants to make a lot of money. Some people just don't want to work more than 20 hours a week. Yeah, you know, some people want a family to join, and the money's good too. Yeah, everybody, everybody has a different—

some people are cool with a 40-hour work week, getting a salary And, you know, those people, some of those people sometimes are the most successful, you know, ones. They just can't live without that paycheck. They, they can't be a 1099. Just won't fly with them. But they're more successful than 90% of the 1099s we have, even though they're only working 40 hours under our schedule. And, you know, obviously as a W-2, you're getting your salary, you know, versus, you know, full commission on a 1099 type opportunity. Yeah, it comes back to full circle where Mike was like, you we tailor that solution to whatever their problem is.

Yeah, makes sense. Like, for me, I know, like, I have some just core beliefs. For me to work with someone is, you know, just trying to find— which is hard to do up front because a lot of people will say yes— but looking for people that are going to be coachable. And for me, for people that do the things they say they're going to do, you know. And if they start to stray from those things, I'm like, why, why are you involving me anymore? You know what I mean? Like, if you're not going to listen and you're not going to do what you— I just— for me, those are the Those are things that would frustrate me when I had to learn that, you know. So I'm trying to identify those things and set those expectations early.

And I'm assuming one of the things we've learned about you is technique is fantastic, this is fantastic, every system's fantastic, everything's fantastic. But at the end of the day, we learned that you will say either go to work or get out. And if they're not going to go to work, you have no interest in them. End of story. You'll train anybody that you want, but if they're not going to go to work, why are they wasting your time?

Yeah, I'm not that good. Yeah, and again, yeah, work— now, to work, I let them define it. I used to be like, if you're not going to work like I did, you're out. That was bad. But then I learned some people only want to work 20 hours, or some people only want— now I might have to set different expectations, you know what I mean? If you're only going to work 10 or 20 hours, like, this thing's probably going to be rocky for a really long time. You know what I mean? It's gonna be inconsistent. So I can— I had to learn how to adapt and not put what I wanted on them and get them to verbalize what they wanted, you know what I mean? And then same method, kind of take it from there. So it's a— it's a— dealing with people is a wild journey. The thing about it is we're dealing with broken people, right?

Like, yeah, there's not a single person that we come across that's not broken. And so it— there's a balance that we have to kind of find where this is a broken person, but we're broken. And other people we have are broken. So how do we kind of find that initially, they wouldn't be looking for a position with us in the first place, if they had it all together when they came to us, right? I mean, and if they do, those are usually the worst recruits, the person that has, has it all together, who has it figured out already, they know this business, and they want to sit there and just come to us basically for a contract. Generally speaking, that's not the person for us.

Yeah.

Generally speaking, that person is just going to create a mess on the other side of things. But if they're coming to us with a sense of like, yeah, I'm broken, and I need somebody else to help fix this right now, that person has a much better shot than the person who comes in and is like, I don't need you, I just need the contract. And I'll figure the rest of it out.

Which is cool. In your statement, it implies that you understand you've got to put in work and help guide people and get them towards what— like, you're going to be heavily involved in that process of getting where they want to go, you know, which is, as you know, not common for everybody building or recruiting.

When we started— when I started in the business, we had a guy who was with us working with my father for, I don't know, at that point probably 15 years, right? Anthony Jose. And he he had this mentality where it was always the agent's fault. And so you step into a conversation, we start talking through the agent, and it was always whatever the agent did wrong, it was— oh, it was absolutely just— the agent did this, right? Whatever the case was, it was always that agent's fault. And it became so abrasive for me to hear that because I'm like, maybe you didn't mean— maybe you didn't intend it, but I get what you're saying. Maybe you didn't intend it, maybe it was a mistake, maybe And all of a sudden, we— I think there was a shift within our business where, um, a lot of our employees started thinking the same way. We're like, the agent is being blamed, and no matter what, because it's got to be the agent's fault because of what this guy constantly thinking negative about him. And to me, it's like, the more you give them the expectation, they fail, okay, fine, there's going to be ones that are not going to live up to the expectation. But the more you recognize where they're at and you try to get them to the next step, and you understand that, yeah, people make mistakes sometimes, and it's our job to kind of walk alongside with them, the more they're going to trust you and the more they're going to work harder for you on the other side of that mistake to be able to go, to go back at it and say, this person actually helped me through it, as opposed to like everybody else just kind of threw me off on the side.

Yeah, I bet it's— it makes it easier to approach them if you have to approach them in something they did incorrect at time, because they have that— you've built that trust. The entire time leading up to that.

That's something we talk a lot about with our inside sales team. You know, like in the, um, in the early 2000s when, you know, you'd walk into the airport, as soon as you get to the airport, to be that big giant sign that says, if you see something, say something. Yeah, early 2000s, it was totally acceptable to say something about anything, whatever it is. Yeah, but early 2020s, now mid-2020s, it's like frowned upon. You have to keep your mouth shut. You can see the sign, but If you're wrong, how dare you, right? But like the one thing like our inside sales team like has as like their, their kind of one of their mantras is if you see something, say something. If something isn't right on a sales call, if something isn't going good and you see somebody screw it up, if you see something that isn't like, you know, there is no— you're not getting offended, you're not gonna be offending somebody, but say something because we're all on the same team, we're all running the same race. If you see something, say something. So super simple on our end.

Yes. Probably similar, probably you said basketball was your background, right?

Yeah.

Like, I'm sure.

And I really did that with kids from ages 3 to 15, no matter what the deal was. If I saw something, I said something. And that's something that we've definitely brought into here that our Insight Group like kind of runs with, right? Yeah. Even like guys that are, you know, maybe getting outproduced by the person next to them, they're still saying, hey, I heard you say this. Why'd you say this versus this? You know, you imagine on a corner.

Yeah, imagine a sports team where, you know, whatever, the guard doesn't tell the center when he did something incorrect.

They'd be— exactly. Accountability across all lines that you command, right? Yeah, top down, bottom up.

Yeah, so y'all probably pay a lot of attention to the culture.

For sure.

Culture is huge here. It's our, our slogan at Diversified is positive positively impacting lives. And it's something that we, we use in a sentence without even thinking about the fact that we're saving— saying it like, did you positively impact that person's life? And it's at a point where our team players and our agents that either have been with us a while, some not even that long, they'll actually say, I just had a great meeting with such and such, and I really positively impacted her life. You know, and it's— they, they really— they've adapted that culture of we're all in this together to try to positively impact as many people's lives as we can. Whether it's the agent, whether it's the spouse of the agent, or whether it's the client, whether it's our employee, whoever it is, believing that the goal is positively impacting lives, it works. It works. And when you go to bed at night, you can put your head on the pillow feeling a lot better about the fact that you really did help somebody today.

Yeah.

And that's the culture that a lot of our agents— so even before we were a part of Integrity, we believed in Integrity.

Yeah, yeah. Which makes— which is how you got there, for sure.

Yeah.

I mean, there's no way you brought that on after the fact. You wouldn't have built what y'all have built, right? Right. Which is neat. Um, how would you say, like, Obviously for us, we know there's a lot of agents, and you being involved in Cody and the whole 8% concept, there's a lot of people that get into this business and they aren't having the success they may be seeing others or that they want for themselves. What advice can you guys give each to, to those people, you know, that even as many as you've worked with, like commonalities? And you know, I mean, like, y'all been around long enough to know what I mean there.

Yeah. You want to start with that one?

Yeah, I started this one. This one I, I I was at, you know, a seminar recently, and person gets up there, and in their 20 minutes, probably they went through their 15 things to success or whatever the heck it was. And, you know, number, number like 13 or 14 was stop training, right? So stop training for me was like, after you said all these things, stop training, I'm like, all right, you totally lost me. I'm hearing nothing more that you're saying. And here's why, right? So person gets up there, had good intent, talked about about all the successes they had in this business, and then they talked about all the success that they had in their second and third and fourth and fifth and sixth business, and then they forgot how to do what got them on that stage in this business. Yeah, they stopped training, right? And I kind of took that and I run with that. So if you're listening to this, if you're looking for it, you're in the right place. You are still continuing to be training, right? That constant and never-ending improvement is so important. When you quit and you hang up a podcast, you turn off a podcast, you, you end the audiobook without finishing it, whatever it may be, you know, you're probably gonna be a name that no one ever hears of before. And I'll give you a perfect example. I use this example with our sales team. Can you imagine, on, you know, after Tom Brady was drafted at 199th, if he decided, you know, I'm an NFL player now, I don't need to practice today, I don't need to watch film, I'm gonna stop training, which is that what that person told a group of people who are trying to make it in this business. Stop training? What do you mean stop training? We wouldn't have known Tom Brady's name if he stopped training. I'll give you another one, and I love this one, all right? This one's probably a little excessive, but I'm a North Jersey guy. I talk 100 miles an hour. Everything I do—

you're in the right spot, bro.

I'll give you another one, okay? Can you imagine, right, it's May of 2024, imagine May of 2011, the day before SEAL Team 6 is going after Osama bin Laden. Imagine they took off that day and said, we're good, right? And we don't successfully raid Osama bin Laden's house, go after it. They— SEAL Team 6 took the day off, time for beers, hanging around the fire.

Yeah, right.

Imagine that day starts off, we could be talking— again, I'm talking to excess here— we could have been talking about a different world in 2011. 100%.

It'd be totally— it would be very different.

September 15, 2001, all over again, just because of they stopped training. So the first thing I would say is always want more for yourself. Never stop the training in what you're doing, you know, whether it's a podcast, whether it's a book, whether it's a seminar that you can't afford, buck up and get to it to make sure that you are continuing on to that next level. So that's my answer there, man. Sorry, that's my tangent. I'm allowed one a day now. Mike and Anthony only let me one a day, but that's my one You can have 2 around me.

I, uh, I think I would say for me it's— yeah, I think you guys, what you're doing and the numbers that you talk about are frankly insane. It's pretty awesome. It's amazing. And I remember it had to be like around 2011 or '12, we took all of our managers and our final expense team away and we went on a manager meeting. We sat down and our father said, hey guys, I have this vision. We're going to write $100 million in a year, and we're going to write $100 million of final expense business. And this is going to be a— like, it's going to be awesome. We're going to do it. Let's figure out a date that we can get to that point. And at that point, you know, I think probably our top year was maybe $8-9 million, right? So it was like this insane number, big number. And we all looked at each other and said, he's nuts. Like, he's, he's literally certifiable at this point. He's lost his mind. It's not gonna happen. And he— we, we said, how about let's talk about $50 million? And we— I, I'm telling you right now, we looked around at each other, and this, this was with our top people. These are people that we shared life with. These are people we traveled the whole world with. Like, these are people that they were family, right? And most of them are still with us. Um, we look around the circle, we can't even hit 50. They're like, that's not, that's not gonna happen, right? Like, we just did not believe it. And when, um, I kind of dragged that through, and, and, you know, we did some amazing things in this business, fantastic things in this business. Top, top agency with many, many, many carriers on the life and outside So I'm not sitting there saying that we haven't done crazy things. But at the end of the day, we never thought that big. And I remember when the day that we had our letter of intent with Bryan Adams, he looked at us and said, boys, you need to start thinking big, like really, really big. It's about to go down. And I don't know, I think, I think if I, in response to your question, that's where my heart goes is we got to think big. We have to start really expecting amazing things out of this business. We are in the best business in the country. This is the best thing that we could be possibly doing. We have an opportunity to serve people on a level like no— never before. We are— we have the ability to change people's lives, to alleviate their emotional and financial burdens, as well as the burdens that are associated with what matters to them most, and that's their health. We just got to step up and think big enough so that when we do it it's on a level like never before. Because when we do, we're not only going to affect the lives of our children, but we're going to affect the lives of our children's children and their children. Because this business can provide that. And how often are we— how often are people in businesses that they can actually say that and mean it? We believe that. And anybody that's listening to this call right now needs to understand that that's what this insurance business represents, is the opportunity to make lifelong legacy changes for not only your children, that you chose was chosen.

Yeah, I love it, dude. I remember when I got started, my vision was $70 grand a year. That's all I could see at the time, you know what I mean? And like, now sure, we do big numbers and people always say things, and I always, I always use the example of Brian, and I'm like, yeah, cool, but I ain't done nothing relative. Like, I'm a rounding error to him. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, it's insane, dude, how Like, the more we do, the real— the more I realize how little we do. It's, it's wild. And so I agree, the opportunity for people getting started, dude, and there's so many people that are changing their world in this business, and that's never going to end whether you do something or not. So I, I love the idea of, you know, why not, why not you? Think big, dream big. We all thought that one day, like, hell, why not me?

Why not?

You know, so I love it, dude.

It's almost a paradox in this business, right, where we take somebody in who has nothing, doesn't really know how to, how to aspire for more. And then we teach them more, we teach them more, we give them more, and then they want more, right? It's almost like a paradox that we have here, right? Like when you go through the process of hiring an agent who has nothing, you help them get licensed. I think you and I talked about Noah last week. I think you were in our, in our, in our speech at Cody's event where we talked about a guy who, you know, really didn't know anything about this business, but we actually got him so sold on this business that he thinks he— like, more is somewhere else, right? Like, we actually— it's a paradox. We've taught him more, we've taught him to grow, we told him to learn, and we actually grew him out of here, right, to go do something else. But whatever.

I've done that with staff, dude. Like, sometimes, you know, people follow me around and they hear me talk about going for your goals and dreams, uh, and I've had people be like, after hearing you talk, I quit. And I'm like, go. But I am happy for them at the same time, you know what I mean? It's like, it's weird.

Yeah, I feel your pain. We had, um, when we first started, right? So yeah, when we first started Senior Financial Solutions, we had a— we had two partners that were in Pennsylvania, and, um, we had employees in, in both locations. We had probably about 50 employees here in Jersey and, uh, 20, 25 employees in Pennsylvania. And the, the lottery had come out with a you know, mega million. It was a stupid number. It was like a billion dollars or something like that. And, um, when they wanted to do a pool in the office, he said, I won't allow a pool in the office unless I'm allowed to be a part of it personally. And I said, what are you talking about? He said, dude, if they win, they're all quitting and I will have to fuck with whoever. And the more I thought about it, I'm like, it's right. He's absolutely right. He will have zero employees there, and he— and they will all have more money than he will.

Every single one of them.

So it— I mean, you want to grow with people. You don't want to grow them away from you. Sometimes it's better for them, obviously. Sometimes there is a better opportunity.

A lot of times it is more along the grassy greener type of shiny object.

Yeah, yeah, but in the same token, we don't want to hold back. You know, we had, we had an agent that was with us, I guess I'm probably going back almost 20 years ago, and, um, he was a young kid and we, we taught him sales from day one. We taught him sales and he, um, he ended up leaving us probably after 3, 4 years, had a real successful team himself, and he left because he always wanted to be a police officer. And he finally got the call to be a state trooper. And he went for it. And he did it. We saw him years later. And he said, I have to tell you, the training that I got at Diversified— he's a, he's a negotiator of some sort. I don't know if it's a hostage negotiator or something like that. But he said the training that I got at Diversified has taught me how to deal with people and has made me better and made me grow in this job. We got tons of stories of people like that, but this one specifically stands out because he said, I wouldn't be where I am right now had I not learned all the things I learned with you, even though I was never— I was never going to be an insurance agent my whole life. There was— that wasn't what my big dream was. We're not mad about that. It's, you know, we're happy for it.

It's a win.

It's absolutely a win.

That's the paradox. That's what I'm saying. It's a paradox. You grow somebody so much that they— you actually grow them onto something else, right? But at the end of the day, we learned a long time ago, you're never gonna get what you want unless you help every single other person else get what they want, right?

100%.

At the end, I think if you aren't helping people get to where they don't need you, you probably aren't giving them everything you got, correct? You know, right now it is weird, but I— there's obvious— we're the size we are because of the other people. It's not because of me. I got it started, sure, but dude, it's all the people that took the basics that we gave them and they ran with it. I have guys in my group now that I learned from. I'm like, yo, this dude's smart as shit. Like, hey, I have questions.

Yeah, for sure, for sure.

And you treat people good, they stay and, you know, stay as part of your journey a lot of times.

So, yeah, and the ones, the ones that leave that have been family member of yours for so long, and they have to go because they have to move on to the next phase of life. It hurts. It really burns when that happens. But sometimes it, it's just what needs to happen. But that's certainly not our goal. Our goal is create partnerships, you know, that— and as soon as the people that work under us work— are working alongside of us as our partners, there's that mutual respect And, and everybody grows together.

I love it.

I love it. I've got a, a cool thing going on. It's neat to watch how different you each are, but without each other, there's no way y'all would be where you're at. It's really cool to see.

And we never fight.

I mean, we never, we never agree on anything. We agree on every single thing that there is.

Yeah, never.

I know you don't agree on what kind of wine you all like. We talked about that offline before.

Actually, that's probably one of the areas that we're, we're pretty, we're pretty good.

Cali Cab, I think you were not there. I did hear that, but then we nailed down and I'm like, what kind? I'm a Caymus guy, right?

Okay, right.

And I, I know I got one of you there, but the other—

I'm like, yeah, we're all, we all understand Caymus, but we got to show you some real, some good stuff.

Like, yeah, some real wine, huh? I'm not, I'm not that, I'm not that well versed in wine. I do like— but it's like, it's better, huh?

Yeah.

What's your favorite one? What should I try? Give me one.

You like Hemus, let's say. Yeah, I would, I would be looking towards like, you're like the fruit-forward kind of flavor with that signature kind of like vanilla kind of thing going on. So I'd probably be looking to I don't know, Alpha Omega guys.

Alpha Omega, huh?

I don't think, uh, I was actually thinking Coruscant.

What is it?

Coruscant.

I don't know that word.

Coruscant, huh?

All right, I would be— let's see, you know what I've learned is if Mark Mead likes it, I like it. He's my guy. When we go out to eat, I'm like, whatever Mark orders, I'm in for. Yeah, he's, he's got some cool stuff.

John, you know what we need to do? We, we need to, we need to set up a trip out to Napa and figure out how to do a podcast sitting on a patio of one of the vineyards. Okay, we're actually tasting different wine.

Let's do it.

I, I mean, it's a great idea.

Can we bring Mark too?

Cody to go too? We do.

We, we, we, yeah, Cody's a wine guy too. Yeah.

Yeah, he's starting to figure out how to do it. Like, he— yeah, we did Monday night, we placed— we, we brought him on to a new one, which he was pretty excited about.

Um, how he liked it. Him and Cody and I exchanged wine texts frequently.

This, this is a really, really good idea. I agree.

Let's set it up. I'll go in a second. The figure that you said, figure out how to figure out how to record, that's the easy part. I, we can handle that. The where to go and the kind, that's— I'll just follow and drink. I do like to drink.

Take care of that part. Yeah, we'll figure out where we go. Between the three of us, we're, we're members at probably, you know, 30 or 40 different vineyards that we can get us all into. And, and if we don't have a membership, then we have, uh, connections to be able to go try it out. So we'll get you something.

Vineyards had memberships.

That's how—

oh yeah, little I know.

Yeah, that's, that's I would— another one I would be looking at is Darius. D-A-R-I-O-S. Look at that one. Look at ZD. You're, you're, you're an accountant in the back, in the past, right? So ZD is like more of like a— they have this, how should I put it, business mentality kind of thing going on. That's pretty interesting that they kind of serve a different clientele, I guess.

Um, it's a little more economic than the other ones.

It's the cheap shit.

That's how we were taught, uh, wine up, right? We were taught wine, you know, on value. You could get a $75 bottle of wine and a $60 bottle of wine, and that doesn't mean that the $15 was that much. Yeah, so the same thing with leads, right? In this business, you could pay $100 per lead or $90 for a lead, but that doesn't mean that you're gonna get you know, that much more quality. And it's the same type of thing with wines, man. That's what we learned a long time ago.

We're at dinner—

it's not cheap shit.

It's just—

yeah, no, I get what you're saying.

We're at— we're at dinner with some friends a few weeks ago, and, uh, this couple, the wife is from Greece and she's into wine a lot. And again, I don't— I, I like it, but I don't know anything about anything really. And, uh, she ordered this thing, Chianti or something like that. You know that, am I saying it right? It's like, it's like $15, $20 at the country club, so I'm sure it's way less at the store, you know what I mean? It's like $20 at the club versus— dude, it was good. I was like, holy smokes, this sucker.

I liked it. All right, forget the trip to Napa.

I mean, relative. Now I've tried like 16 wines in my whole life. You know what I mean?

It's not—

I'm not that, I'm not that deep. But relative to a $250 bottle of Caymus, it wasn't— I wasn't like spitting it out.

At the $250, you're drinking the really good one too. So just so that helps us kind of direct too, because with the $250 bottle of Caymus is probably the Special Selection, right? Yeah, that bottle is fantastic.

Nobody's gonna mess with that.

That bottle's delicious.

But it is good, especially when you get the big one. What do they call the big—

I like Magnum.

I got— wait, one more to add to the list.

Go for it.

Quintessa.

Quintessa, huh?

Q-U-I-N-T-E-S-S-A.

All right, we're gonna, we're gonna make y'all enough money that you can become wine snobs too. That's our goal of this podcast.

Absolutely.

And, and then we need a part 2. We should, we should definitely plan it. Let me know when y'all are going. And we'll coordinate.

It sounds fine. In September, when they open the bottle, when they take all the grapes off the vine and put in the bottle.

Is that the best time?

Fall?

Yeah.

What?

Okay.

All right, I'm in. Let me know. All right, bring it. Bring the wife and the— I don't know if y'all— who goes, but Steph is dying to go too, so make it a family affair. If y'all are down, we'll make it work. Cool. Well, I appreciate, appreciate you guys a ton. Do you, um, do y'all do anything you want to share in terms of like social or website, any, any of the personal stuff? If you want to put it out, you certainly can. We'll link it and do all that.

But if you want—

sure, yeah, if you want to go to thediv.com, if you're looking for an opportunity to kind of work with us, partner with us, or even just ask us some questions about how our business works out, uh, thediv.com, you can contact us through there, set up a Calendly with me and I'll be able to talk through anything you want to talk about and see how we can help.

Love it.

Dig it. Well, I appreciate you guys' time and enjoyed it, and, uh, look forward to hanging out with you guys some more.

We'll see you guys.

Have a great day.