How To Make Your First $100,000 in Insurance Sales ($0 to $100k)

Most agents call themselves full-time because this is the only job they have. That's the definition of full-time to most agents. It's not because they put in the hours to consider themselves full-time. Appreciate you having me on, dude. Had a, had a cool conversation with Michael the other night as well, and it's pretty neat getting to kind of watch what you guys are doing, certainly from a distance in some ways. But, you know, obviously I follow you closely and I love seeing the excitement that you have right now. And like, it looks like a great home for you and your personality and everything you're trying to do. And the conversations we've had, like the build of something, something new and exciting is obviously fun. So I appreciate you having me on. I'll certainly give a little background, which is, you know, what, what got me to write the book is I do love sharing the opportunity with people. That's available, um, because it's like I didn't come into this business killing it, you know. And I think a lot of people get into the business and they feel like they see opportunity but they don't quite know how to get there. Um, and I feel like I can relate to a lot of people because I struggled early on. I've been in the business now officially 12 years, that's what I say, but it's really been 15 plus. And I'll tell you the example, um, the full story for those that, that don't know, which I, I can see you'll have a couple Almost 300 people on now, which is cool. I actually got started. I applied to be in the business in 2008. Marty answered a Craigslist ad. It was a mortgage protection and final expense ad on Craigslist, and I answered it. And at the time I was an accountant, so I was a staff accountant working for a company, crunching numbers, doing books, accounts payable, things like that, tracking down salespeople for their expense reports, just like very tedious accounting work, making $40,000 a year. I have 5 kids total. My first I had at 16. So I grew up, I was a kid having kids. Grew up with a single mom on welfare. Had my first child as a teenager. So in high school I was paying for daycare. Went on to work in the restaurant business for 4 years. Worked in a warehouse business for, you know, in a warehouse for 4 years. I knew I wanted more out of life, but didn't know quite where to go. Don't have a sales background. Went to college in my mid-20s to get a degree, and I chose accounting, and I did that for about 10 years. And that— and in 2008, I applied to an ad because I was just trying to figure out how to pay my bills, dude, you know, pay for the kids to like have something, you know, be in a sport, you know. So I was tired of saying no to them for my entire basically adulthood. And, uh, you know, '08 You obviously met Stephanie, my, my wife. Um, we've been married since 2010, but at that time, dude, we were like, every Sunday we were clipping coupons, bro, to go grocery shopping. You know what I mean? I'd go to the grocery store with a calculator and the coupon book that she had worked out, and if you didn't like have the right coupons with the right sale and get the, get the item for free, we couldn't buy it. She was just like, you know, we had like an $80 budget for 5 kids at the time. And I was tired of that, dude. And, uh, thankfully I had, um, so I, I applied to this ad and, uh, I'm like, hey, send me the stuff, I wanna, I'm ready to kill it. And it took me until March of 2010 to get my license, so a year and a half before I did the pre-license course. And then it took me till August of 2012 to sell my first policy. So I spent 4 years kind of just like watching the industry, you know. Quite frankly, the very first time when I got my license, 2010, I picked up the phone, I called leads, I made about 30, 40 phone calls, got hung up on and yelled at a handful of times, and I quit. And I went back to accounting. And I sat on the sidelines for 2 more years. And looking back on it now, I'm like, man, that's what most people do. Especially when it comes to the lead side, right? Which is new for a lot of y'all. It's a very different business, but it's lucrative as all get out. But I think it's learning to have the right understanding of it. So I get into the business again, 2012. I come back in because I'm tired of the job. I was tired of the day-to-day. I hated my job. I had an hour and a half commute. I was working for someone I didn't wanna work for. I was tired of being told when to go to the bathroom and when I could take vacay. I was tired, dude. You know, and commuting 60 miles in Atlanta traffic every day for 4 years was— it was a lot to make $40 grand. And, um, yeah, 2012, I was tired, man. So I come into the business and I do it part-time for a year, working mainly final expense early on. And, um, I made like $60 grand my first year part-time, which was respectable, um, good money to a lot of people getting started. And, you know, investing in leads, I probably netted $40,000, but it was more than I was making on my accounting job. So I was like, damn, there's something to this. There's something here. I could like almost touch it, but it wasn't quite enough to like change my world, you know what I mean? It's like you make that kind of money, it's like, all right, I'm making $20,000 more a year. Great. I get a new car. Oh, and it's all gone. You know what I mean? It wasn't— there wasn't much there. And I messed around, man, in the business for like the next 2 years. All of 2013, I was full-time. Or half of 2013, I was full-time. All of 2014, I was full-time. And I was like, I don't know if any of y'all can relate. Been in the business for a little while and it's like you make a few bucks one week and then you don't make any money the next week, or a client cancels, you know what I mean? A chargeback happens the same week you're going on vacation, and it's like it all sort of hits at once, you know what I mean? It's like, ah, like, I don't—

everybody knows that.

Yeah, dude, it's like How do you get to that? How do you get over that hump? You know what I mean? And I just, for some reason, bro, I couldn't, I couldn't get it to click. And I was studying, I was learning the industry, I was, I was studying all these salespeople and sales training, and I followed some people that were like really high-end salespeople, and they had all this like NEPQ, High Level, 7 Steps, and acronyms to all these sales things, and I'm just I don't know, dude, I'm a regular guy who grew up in the hood. Like, I don't— and I'm not— I went to college, but I went to a community college, you know what I mean? And I don't have sales training. And I'm like, that ain't me. And I was trying to make— I was trying to be other people, you know? And I started looking at— and this is what the book comes in— where it clicked for me is I felt like I was pretty mediocre, Marty. And my result, again, $60 grand in a year, whatever it is.

May—

some people think it's good. Some people think it's bad. It, it, it wasn't life-changing. I'll tell you that. And I felt like I was not good, and I felt like I wasn't getting to a new level. I felt very stuck. You know what I mean? Like I had, like I had peaked. And I'm trying to figure it out, dude, but I'm watching people in the industry make $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 a year selling. And I'm like, what on earth saying? What leads are they getting? What area do they run in? Like, What time do they make phone calls? Like, what's the trick? And my accounting background came into play because I did track my numbers the entire time. Like, I, I kept track of like how many phone calls I made every week, how many appointments I had, how many sales I made. I did track stuff. Again, I am an accountant. I am pretty analytical. And I look back on it, man, and I look at my 2014 year and one of the chapters of the book which I'll show you. I have, I have a copy here. I don't know if y'all can see one of the chapters. I think it's chapter 4, is called 17. Uh, it is chapter 4, 17, or the number that changed my life. And what happened, dude, is I'm sitting down and I'm looking at my activity, right? And I was making, I don't know, 150, 200 phone calls a month. To leads, which is quite frankly pathetic looking back. It's a really, really low number. And when I was in the warehouse, man, one of the, one of the best things I learned from it is like I used to have to load, um, trucks for restaurants, right? So we'd have a little pallet jack, I would get an order, and when I, when I got the order, it'd have a bunch of stickers on it, and I would put in the order number into a computer, and the computer would tell me how long I had to to, to make that order, right? If Applebee's orders 75 things, it'd go, cool, you have 17 minutes and 22 seconds to fill this order. And I'd go up and down the aisles, think like a, like a Costco. It was kind of like a big Sam's Club or Costco or something, big warehouse style. And I'd go up and down the aisle and I'd put stuff on the pallet. And if you, if you didn't load it appropriately, sometimes things would fall off or you'd have to move things around to get 'em in the right order for the driver. Because it might be, he might have 15 stops. So I had to like load things the right way and kind of get it all in. And, you know, at the end I'd wrap it with the Saran Wrap, throw it on the truck, go pick up another order. And when you punch in the next order, the first one gives you a score and it would go, all right, you were supposed to do it in 17 minutes. It took you 23. You're at 75% efficiency, or it was supposed to take you 17 and you did it in 15. Great. You're at 120% efficiency, right? And it kind of tracked— it knew how many boxes I had to pick up per hour to be efficient for them. And when I got into— when I started looking at my numbers here, I started looking at it and going, all right, a phone call takes me a minute. So, right, if I'm making 150 of them a month, that's like 2.5 hours working the phones, right? And this business is all about prospecting and presenting. That's this whole business. You prospect and you present. If you don't do those two things a lot, you don't make a bunch of money. So I start looking at that. I'm making, dude, like I'm booking like 12 appointments a week at the time, and I'm probably presenting 6 or 8 times a week because you get no-shows and cancels and all this stuff, right? And I'm like, all right, so call it 8 a week. A presentation was max an hour. So I'm like, all right, I'm doing 8 hours presenting a week. I'm doing a couple hours of prospecting a week. And then I was doing some recruiting early on because I didn't know I want to build, but I was only talking to like a handful of people a week. And an interview takes 20 minutes, right? So if I did a handful a week, again, it's a couple hours. So I looked at it like I was at the warehouse, and I'm like, all right, I'm 8 hours presenting, I'm a couple hours on the phones, and a couple hours recruiting. Dude, I'm only putting like 12 hours a week into money-making activity, right? And I'm like, man, if I was at the warehouse and I only loaded 12 hours worth of boxes in a 40-hour week, they would have fired me, right? And I worked in a— I worked in a call center. I worked for AT&T, and I took inbound customer service calls. It was the same way. They had a tracker on this on the screen, and of the 8 hours, I had to be on the phone physically talking to someone over 90% of the 8 hours or I got fired. They could track it on the computer. So I started looking at this thing and I'm like, all right, that's not really good. I start looking at the numbers though, and I was making at the time like 4 grand, 4 or 5 grand a month. Like I said, 60 G's for the year, so call it 5 grand. And one day, Marty, I looked at the math and I went, all right, I'm making 5 grand and I'm making, you know, a couple hundred phone calls And one day I divided one by the other, right? And keep in mind, I'm frustrated. I hate chargebacks. I hate cancels. I hate when people hang up on me. I was super emotional. And I, when, when I got yelled at on the phone or whatever, I like would lose my mind. I couldn't, I mentally, I couldn't handle it. But one day I do the math and I'm like, $5,000, couple hundred phone calls. And the math came out to $17 a phone call is what I was depositing. Right, so we have the activity and we have our deposits. All the stuff in the middle is all the stuff everyone hates. That's, that's the headache. Do I make a sale? Do I not? Is it a big one? Is a little one? Do they cancel? Do they not? Does it stay on the books? Does it not? Does it— you mean, what's my precision? What's all the stuff? But your deposits account for all the stuff, and the activity is what gets you the deposit. So I looked at it and I'm like I'm not really good at having a crazy good result, but I'm making $17 every time I call someone. And that was regardless of the outcome. It didn't matter if they hung up or can't— it didn't matter. That was just kind of what the average worked out to. And I was like, yo, what if I do this for 40 hours? You know what I mean? Like, if you gave me $17 every time I called someone, dude, I'd call the phone book. I don't care. I wouldn't care. I'd call you 100 times a day. I just wouldn't care. You know what I mean? And when I, when I had that like epiphany that no matter what the activity is, that equals money, where most people in the industry only equate a sale to money and they equate a cancel or a chargeback to removing money. But to me, the activity equaled a net. And dude, I start looking at it and I'm like, all right, how do I get to 40 hours? And I just did basic math and I'm like, if I, if I do, if I, if I book, and again, I come from the days of in-home kitchen table sales, not today's world with all the technology and ability to, uh, um, yeah, you were literally driving to homes. Oh bro. Yeah. Or flying, dude. I used to fly to Utah to sell.

Fly into markets. You would fly into markets, buy leads in the market, stay there for a couple. Yep.

So I would, I would fly into Utah a lot. I'd make phone calls on Sundays in Atlanta. In the morning. I'd fly there in the evening. I'd spend Monday through Thursday in Salt Lake City area. There was 4 counties I ran up there— Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, Weber County. And I would run Monday through Thursday up there. Thursday night, I would drive down 4 hours to St. George, Utah, and I would run all day Friday there. Then I would— Friday night, I would drive to Vegas, and I'd take a red-eye home and come home on Saturdays. But I'd make like—

yeah, so when I see people buying 2 or 3 leads and not selling something, stop.

Yeah, like, I just, you know what I mean? So it's like, and I, and I'd pick up $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 in 5 days just working leads because that area had lead. Now in today's world, you can sit on your couch in your underwear and call the entire country, right? So I start, and I just want to give that clarity because in today's world with telesales you can get in so much more activity than I was able to due to just straight up commute and technology and resources and what was available in the industry, you know. And with that, I always also have to say, dude, this industry, people may been making money for a couple hundred years, you know. A.L. Williams built one of the biggest companies on the planet before there was technology, before there was leads, there was no phones, there was no nothing, and he built a multi-billion dollar company in this market with no tech, no CRM, no automation, nothing fancy, just seeing people. You know what I mean? So it's like, today what you can accomplish is bananas in, in today's world. And so many people take that for granted, dude. So I start looking at the numbers, and for me at the time, again, field sales, the numbers work very different today and you can get in more, but I'm just telling my story. I was like, if I want— if I see— if I present 20 times a week at an hour a pop, that's now 20 hours, right? If I make 600 phone calls a week at a minute a pop, 600 minutes, that's 10 additional hours. And if I interview 30 people a week and I— or 30— yeah, 30 people a week and I can do 3 an hour, that's 10 more hours. So I was going to spend 20 hours presenting, 10 hours on the phone prospecting, 10 hours on the phone recruiting. Right? That's how I was going to get to my 40 hours, as if I was in the warehouse. That one change alone, dude, that year I issued on my own pen $460 grand from a dude who'd been messing around in the industry for 5, 6 years.

Yeah, I mean, like, didn't talk to really anybody you knew, just, just purely—

no, I've never, I've never sold someone I know. My mom told me no, to be clear.

Yeah, John Wetmore.

So many of you have asked if there's an option for more access, more direct coaching. And so we've created a coaching platform called the Winner's Circle where you have a couple different options. There is a one-on-one option to where we can work directly with you on a regular basis. And then there's a small group setting, 4 to 6 people, really high achievers looking to get to just a new level in their career. We've had a ton of success in this already. First month, actually the first guy that joined deposited $7,500, worked with them back and forth one-on-one. The very next month, he deposited over $30 grand. So basically a 5x return on his income in 30 days. So if you're looking for something like that, you can click on the link below, get access to an application because I'm not taking everybody. I do wanna make sure it's a good fit for both of us. And if we feel like you'd be a good fit, we'll set up a one-on-one call directly with me, um, and kind of go through your struggles, what you need help with, and what I expect of people that are joining the coaching program. Um, so if you feel like it'd be a good fit for you and something you want more of, Click the link below and we'll see you on the other side. Welcome to the winner's circle.

Take people through because, because this is a very different muscle for us because our model is recruit, bring people in. They can either be a client, agent, or a builder. It's a very, very different model. Take people through like a typical week of, hey, and by the way, everybody, he's built agencies now, and I think you should talk to them about how you transition to that, John. But yeah, I think it'd be really helpful as folks get acclimated you know, they're in that thousand-pound phone moment right now these first few weeks. And so how did you go from, you know, it took you 4 years to have that epiphany, but, but, you know, what was a typical good week for you in terms of how much you invested, what your week looked like?

So I always go like, imagine me and Marty broke out a $20, and every time you dialed a lead, we gave you a $20 bill. How early would you start making phone calls? How late would you make phone calls until? How many days a week would you make phone calls? Like, if you just knew the money was there. Yeah, right. And that's how I built it, dude. I was like, I ain't mad at all the sales stuff, and I can teach sales, like I teach it at a high level. But what I learned, dude, is activity trumps skill set all day long. All day long. I've had insanely talented people melt mentally in this business. You know, so for me, what I love about it, dude, is it's so duplicatable, right? I think in the friends and family market, to me personally, it's— granted, y'all have built something massive, so it's clearly in some levels duplicatable, but I can take anyone, and if they don't have a circle or a warm market or the ability or people with money or whatever, like someone like me, dude, I didn't have a big circle. I have a very small family. We're not well connected. I moved to Atlanta. I don't know people. I'm not one of those guys that has like a circle. You know, so for me to have generated business the way y'all do it, I didn't— I don't, I don't know how to do that, quite frankly. You know, today in today's world, I have way more connections. You know, you start making some money, you get connections. But traditionally growing up, I didn't have a ton, you know. So what I loved about it is I could take someone who had desire to win and merge them with people who inquired for something. Right? And I think the problem with, with this space that I see a lot of agents make the mistake is they go like, that was a bad batch of leads, or those leads sucked, or those leads— and they, they judge the lead, right? I'm like, what? Define, define a lead. Like, why is it the lead that's bad? Maybe you're bad. Does it make sense? Like, at the beginning, I know it was me. I was bad. Does it make sense?

Yeah, so we're gonna use that as a response now, John.

Yeah, hey, I promise you it's, it's, it's more accurate than the other way. Yeah, you know, maybe the— again, is the approaching correct? I— and for me, what I do know is a lead is just a name and a number of someone who has a family, and you'll never convince me that that person doesn't love their family as much as you and I. You'll never convince me of that. Does that make sense? And I know that family doesn't want to leave their loved ones in a bad situation to where they have to do the GoFundMe or beg for, you know what I mean, beg for money or lose their house or whatever it is. And the overwhelming majority— there's a zillion stats out there, you know them all from all the big firms that talk about the percentage of people that have no insurance. Like half the people in the country have no insurance. And some obnoxious number uninsured, you know? And it's like, ask yourself this: have you ever met someone that's died and didn't have the appropriate coverage to take care of their family? I think everyone in every room I've ever been in can raise their hand.

Yep.

Does it make sense? So to me, a lead is, is someone just like me and you who loves their family. When the lead is supposed to be someone that you call once and you make a sale, That's where the disconnect is.

John, you said something to me the other day and you said, hey, I call every lead 9 times. I think you said 9. Yeah. And you said if somebody were to die, do that story. Like if somebody were to die and they had an opportunity for that 10th call, like, yeah, share that example. So it's really powerful.

Here's what I always say. Think about this and y'all can type this in. I love doing this little exercise, right? If, if— and I want you guys Yeah, I literally want you guys to type in a number for me. If, if Marty and I got the most popular salespeople on the planet, whoever's written the biggest, baddest sales books ever, and we asked them what is the average number of contacts it takes for a salesperson to make a sale, what do you think that number would be? The average number of contacts it takes for a person to make a sale. Yeah, look at all these crazy numbers.

That's crazy. We've got 107.

Yeah. Now my question to this— contacts. Now go— and I know the leads are new, so I don't know how, but I want you to keep in mind. Now think about the average number of attempts to contact you make towards your leads. And dude, when I have people put the two numbers, they don't even attempt to contact them anywhere near as many times as they know it takes on average contacts. Now, there is a little— like, it doesn't take this many contacts in the insurance world to make a sale. But what I do know is everyone knows what the averages are, and their attempts are typically significantly less.

Why?

Why do we attempt to call people so few times? Because we go, what if? And then negative words come out of our mouth.

That's so powerful.

What if they're mad? What if it's too early? What if they're at work? What if they're at dinner? What if it's too late? What if this? What if that? What if it's all this what-if stuff, right? And what I always ask people, man, is like, fair to say whatever comes out of your mouth after what if, it's 100% made up. It's not real. Does anyone disagree? What if, and you, something comes out, it's made up. So my thought is, if we're gonna make it up, why don't we make up some good stuff? Does that make sense? What if you stop that family from losing everything? What if they pick up and thank you for coming over? What if you pick it up and they give you 27 referrals? What if you pick it up and they not only buy final expense, but they have money in 401k, IRA, savings that they can convert into annuity? What if that, what if they become an agent? What, like, why not? What if good stuff, you know? And what I always do, dude, is like, imagine, let's just pretend for a second someone is mad. If you're doing it for the right reasons, What I do know with 100% certainty is if you're working, even if in your current book of contacts, even if you haven't bought a bunch of leads, there's someone that you've once attempted to contact that is now dead. That's happened for every person ever in this business, unless you've been in it for 4 days. Does that make sense? But if you've been working in the business for a hot minute, there's someone you have as a lead or a contact that is no longer alive.

I can think of the name right now.

Correct. Now it's worse, dude, when you let someone push you off, don't follow up, uh, let them reschedule or cancel, and then you call and they go, yeah, sorry, um, Marty's passed away. I've had that happen so many times. It's like when I was new, that bothered me. And what I always say to people is like, let's do this. Let's pretend we could be in some crazy AI movie, right? And we had the ability to see things differently than we see them. And a client dies. And think about the aftermath that happens to the— especially in the final expense market, right? Like, is anyone confused on what the average— what the average source of income is for someone in the final expense market? Like, what's— where's their income from?

Social Security, for sure, right?

What's the average number? It ain't high. Like, like, a big one is like $1,500 a month, you know what I'm saying? So we know that the majority of them are in a bad financial situation. So now if we think about what would happen if someone dies to their family, taking care of the funeral, paying the final expenses, the cable bill, the car payment, the credit cards, the rent, the mortgage, the— all the stuff, handling all the stuff, right? And let's just pretend that we have someone that passed away, and now they get to look down on their family and see all— see the, the shitstorm that happened in their life. And you had the ability to go to them And let's just say it's Marty. And I go, hey Marty, now that you see what's happened with no insurance, I had the opportunity to call you 9 times the Monday morning I got your inquiry, but I chose to call you only once because I was afraid you were going to be mad. Would Marty— and I go, do Do you— would you have preferred I kept calling you knowing what you know today? Would you prefer I kept calling? Are you okay that I didn't call because my emotions were in the way? Which path would you choose?

Yeah, it's so good.

Does it make sense? And no agent in the history of time, dude, has ever argued that point. Yeah, because they— in the moment, dude, we put ourselves in the wrong situation and we put ourselves in this like sales situation, you know what I mean? Or like, dude, I've heard people go like, like, my first year in the business, I made phone calls on Sundays because I was working. So I'd make phone calls on Sundays and I'd book appointments for Monday and Tuesday evenings. And I get agents that are sometimes like, work on Sunday? I mean, who would work on a Sunday? And I'm like, what do you do on Sunday? I mean, I watch the NFL and I watch golf. And I— you mean all the grown adults that are working on a Sunday, you watch them work? Like, you, you're okay that Applebee's is open to serve you. You're okay that Kroger and Publix and Stop and Shop or wherever you shop is open, the gas stations. You're okay with other people working to serve us, but somehow we get ourselves in a mind— like, we just, we get ourselves in the wrong mindset, dude. And I think, again, if we can approach the lead from a standpoint of we're We're here to prevent chaos. And I wonder what the what-if would be if they don't have this coverage. And are you willing to own that it's your fault if someone dies without it? And I just wasn't willing to allow that, dude. So I started to go at this thing very differently. And that didn't stop people from any of the stuff. Heck, you sell a bunch more, you know, you get more cancels and you get more chargebacks and you get no-showed more, like you deal with more stuff. So if you, if you can't get your mindset right when you're doing minimal effort, it's going to be brutal when you start having a lot of effort if you can't keep your head right, you know. And dude, that one change, man, for me, between the activity and the mindset and looking at this thing and choosing to control how I looked at things, right? And then challenging agents when I speak to them through questions and, and, and giving clarity on understanding, bro, we started creating an army of people who just started going out and finding clients, i.e., families who wanted to help their family, and just helping them discover and identify problems and situations and solving it, dude. And the lead, the lead way allows you to get to so many people so fast because you can get unlimited leads, dude. I can get as many leads as I want tomorrow. I can literally get unlimited, you know what I mean? So it's like, if you want to make a real good living and you want to help family and be clear, we do help families, but I'm going to be real, dude. That is not what motivated me at first. Like, I enjoy that piece of it today. It's cool what we've done. And, you know, I mean, I could only help call it 30, 40, 50 families a month selling. But now today, with thousands of agents, we're doing I mean, we did like, I don't know, we're doing like 12,000 applications a month now. You know what I mean? Like, I couldn't have that impact if I just kept to myself, you know? And so I started teaching this strategy of activity and averages and numbers. And what I've learned, dude, is there's a lot of people out there who have very mediocre or low effort that are actually really good when you look at their averages. They just don't put in as much work as the people at the top, almost across the board, you know. And so, dude, when I started looking at this thing that way, man, it started attracting a lot of people. I started teaching people how to, you know, net $250+ on their own pen, and it was everyday people like me, bro. And it just started becoming very attractive, you know. And, and, and I enjoyed teaching it, and I enjoyed challenging people, and I didn't have to be the— again, what I love about the like, do more now, get better later. My strategy was like, I know I'm making $17 a call. I've spent 3 years trying to get really good to somehow have a 90% closing ratio and be able to sell 4 apps in every house and get 22 referrals. I was trying, I was trying to like keep the activity and get my skill set so high my income doubled or tripled. And I just made a mental decision, Marty, to go, what if I just scrap that for right now? What if I just do more of what I am? I am who I am, dude. Y'all are who you are in the current moment. And I, I always challenge people with this, bro. I could give you some sales stuff, but what are the chances that I can make someone triple, 3x, in as good a salesperson by tomorrow? I can 3x scale set sales skill set in one day. What are the odds of that? Versus can you make 3 times as many phone calls tomorrow? I can do one with a near 100% accuracy, and the other is just really low. And You know, for me, man, in teaching the thing, I have to have like mistakes and objections and issues to be able to tweak someone. You miss like Maddox, dude, he plays base, he's 12, he plays baseball and golf. If he doesn't go out there and take a bunch of swings at the golf ball or the baseball, all the training in the world about what to do with his elbow is useless. But if he goes out and takes a bunch of swings and we practice a lot, now I can slowly tweak things. And then as a businessman, if you give me 40 objections on the phone tomorrow, bro, I can, I can tweak some stuff. If you give me 20 presentations this week and you miss a bunch, I can tweak some stuff. If you give me 2, I'm like, ah, I just, I'm, I'm not gonna pretend I'm that good. You know? And I just, dude, I feel like if I train on that stuff with low activity, I feel like I'm lying to people. In telling people that the words I'm saying are so good that if you just say these magic words, you'll be rich. And I just don't believe that, dude. I think I'm completely lying to people if I do. You know what I mean? So it's like we need the combo. We need high activity and we need coaching and consult. Like, we need both.

You get— you get the skill comes with repetitions, right? Correct. That's what I was talking about. What I love about what you're saying here, John, and I think everybody's probably getting this, but I'm going to say it anyway. Is what he's talking about is relatable to all of life, right?

Correct.

For this final expense beta test that we're trying, but all of recruiting, getting ICAs, getting friends in the business, getting every area of your life, you can deploy what John's talking about and become better. And I just love it. I think about athletics and like fitness and every, you know, all the areas of your life. If you, if you put in more reps, you get better.

You will.

You become more natural at it. Speaking, you know, you know, calls, everything. And I think if you break down what we're talking about here today, and I think for this group team, we've got to get more people back to Michael's opening comment. We've got to get more people buying hundreds of leads, not a handful of leads. Yeah, so that you can get more at-bats, so you can get better at this.

Correct.

To John's point, because that's, that's when you'll truly know. Now, no, this is not us stopping, to John's point, what we've done and how we've built a $100 million-plus business. This is augmenting it and adding to it, uh, so that we become the most rounded distribution organization out there. But this is absolute gold, John. I appreciate this.

You know what's funny, dude, is a lot of agents hesitate to buy leads because they're afraid of the risk, right? That's a fear. I'm risking my money. And again, I don't have a clue what pricing— I know the business, so I'll ballpark it. But like, I don't know, let's say you buy 10 leads.

We've asked people to buy $1,000 in a month to be in this beta.

Cute.

I do. I said it because I wanted you to hear it. Cute.

So here's the thing, dude. If we measured activity and tried to— if I had a timer on everybody who buys leads and I literally hit the time, it's like chess. You always see people play chess and they hit the little button when it's their turn and they turn it off and they play that little game where the timer goes. If you had a timer on when you were making phone calls and when you were making presentations and you only spent— and if you want me to be completely transparent, dude, I will. If you spend $1,000 a month, your timer will never in the history of time get to 40 hours a week. You don't— it doesn't give you the ability to be full-time. And what I've learned, dude, is one of the biggest mistakes I see in this industry, bro, I walk into rooms all over this country and speak and I go, how many think— again, how many people are full-time insurance agents? Y'all can type full-time if you're full-time. I'd love to see it. But it's like, how many of y'all are full-time insurance agents? Right? And then I go, how many of y'all present 30 times a week? So, yeah. Right? Like how many of y'all present? And if I do the math and I take your presentations and your phone calls and I add it up, dude, every room I'm in, the average is like 8 hours. I even in one room, dude, I had like 500 people and I took, I found who in the room ran the most appointments for the week. I found a different person who made the most phone calls for the week. They weren't the same person. And then a third person who had the most recruiting interviews for that week. And I combined all of them and the hours came up to 32. You know what I mean? And what I've learned, dude, is most people call them full-time. Some— they— most agents call themselves full-time because this is the only job they have. That's the definition of full-time to most agents. It's not because they put in the hours to consider themselves full-time, you know. And dude, so if you— I always tell agents, man, if you don't have the ability to get in again in telesales, the average, the average presentation, especially in this demographic, is 30 minutes. And hell, some you'll be done with in 4 minutes because it doesn't go anywhere and it's not an actual presentation. But I'm saying presentation with a sale, 30, 45 minutes max. So our top guys are doing 30, 40, 50 presentations a week, you know, make real money. And you just physically can't do that on limited lead spend, right? You just— and so what I tell people, dude, is if you don't put in the effort, the time, the investment, and again, if you have a way to prospect without it, amen, keep doing it. But if you aren't presenting enough, I'm not mad at it. I used to be frustrated by it. But now I just, I let people know, bro, this incons— this, this business will be inconsistent and suck forever if you don't have high activity. It will be inconsistent and suck forever unless you're one of the far-end anomalies. You mean if you're a guy that can present 5, 10 times a week and make a million? Amen, keep doing you. But I know that's not insanely duplicatable, so I don't train on it, bro. What I was saying about the lead thing, man, is, is people do it for risk, right? Right? So call it $250 a week. And I don't know what leads cost. Let's just say they're $25. That gets you 10.

I mean, maybe they're a little less, maybe they're a little more, whatever the number. Those are our, those are our most expensive leads. So perfect. So yeah, yeah, we got good lead.

Yeah, so call it, call it 10. Again, you can take the concept and adjust the numbers. 10 leads can't get you 20 presentations unless you're a machine at referrals. But I'm saying direct presentations. It doesn't give you the ability. So from the leads, not only do you have to cover your lead cost, you have to cover your bills. Right. And so I go, like, if, if, if I don't know, again, 10 leads, maybe you sell 2 to make your money back and pay your bills. So it's like, would you rather have to sell 2 out of 10 Or if you buy— in my world, dude, I don't hire people if they're not spending $1,000 a week. I won't bring them on as full-time. And in that case, now instead of 10, you get 40 leads, right? But it's $1,000. So maybe you got to make 2 sales to cover your lead bill and another 2 sales to cover your bills. So I go, would— what odds are— would you rather face? Close— having to close 2 out of 10 to barely barely scrape by, or would you rather only have to close 4 out of 40? Like, statistically, which one has the better odds, 10 shots or 40 shots? You know what I mean? And dude, most people are putting themselves at the most high-risk position because they don't want risk. But I'm like, it's actually significantly more risky to get less leads because your break-even point is so hard to hit. With limited effort. It's just, it's really hard to convert 10 leads into profit. You mean, again, maybe it's they're cheaper and you get 15 or 20. The point is you have so few at-bats, man, that we see when agents go all in on leads and they front-load their expense. First of all, you know how quick you can get paid in this industry, especially in this market. It's not an IUL, it's not an annuity, dude. These don't take long. You sell an app today, get an e-app, get instant— you can get paid next day, 2 days, whatever it is with most carriers. So if you front load it and you spend a higher number, you can see people and start turning apps like this. And people always get wild with me, dude, and they go, $1,000 a week, oh my God, that's $52,000 a year in leads. And I'm like, Here's how I think about it, dude. Like, if I went to Vegas and I took $1,000 and I played blackjack and I won a few bucks, right? I win $3,000, and then I take the $3,000 and I go play poker, and I put $1,000 down and I win another $3,000. Did I really spend $2,000? I really only went with the first $1,000. I just reinvested. I just took that same $1,000, put it on blackjack, made the profit, took the same $1,000, put it on the next table, and made the profit. And so many agents get so caught up in the lead spend total, and I'm like, you know, if you spend the $1,000 and you make $2,000, $3,000, $4,000— which, be clear, the ROI on that is obnoxious when you annualize it, and y'all are smart enough and you're in the IUL annuity world, you can figure out the math. If you make the 2, 3, 4 grand back after spending $1,000 and you put the $1,000 back into leads, is it really spending more money or is it just putting the same $1,000 back in? Right? And so for me, I just taught people to take the $1,000, turn it into cash, and put the $1,000 back in faster. So y'all are doing it over the course of a month. I'm like, why are we taking a month to do it? Why don't we do it in 2 days? It's the same $1,000. Why drag it out 30 days? Why not knock that process out in 4 days, 5 days, 6 days, 7 days? And it's just flipping the same $1,000 over and over and over again. You know, again, no different than if I go buy a house, I flip it, I sell it, I make the profit, I take the money, I put it into a new house. I didn't spend double. I spent the same money twice. You know what I mean? And if people could grasp those couple concepts, man, this thing is wildly profitable.

Yeah, it's really— I mean, John could obviously— he could— and we probably will have you back, John. I mean, this is just absolute gold for our team. I hope everybody extracted incredible value from my dear friend John today, just about business in general. I mean, I, you know, even beyond the purchasing of leads and how to do that effectively. I think what John taught us is what it takes to have the right mindset to be successful in business and life. And for that, I think the lessons today were invaluable. And I do, I do want to encourage everybody to give John's book a look. I've personally read it. He sent me an autographed copy of it, and I read it the week he gave it to me. And so it's a great, it's great testament to his his professional career and everything he's done to build something from literally nothing. A wonderful industry-changing example of that. So I want to thank you, John, on behalf of the whole company for being here today.

You got it, dude. And if they get it on the website, JohnWetmore.com, I see a few people bought it. I don't know where you bought it, but if you go to JohnWetmore.com, you'll get it signed too. My team, they're literally— my team distributes them from upstairs and we put it out with a signed personalized copy. Yeah, just go down, click on book.

Yeah.

And it come— it'll come I literally sign every one of them.

John speaks all over the country. He does the 8% Nation with Cody. He does obviously a ton with his own agency. He's just a great industry ambassador and a great guy.

Yeah, I appreciate it, dude. If y'all, if I can help with anything else, please let me know. Again, you can follow me on there on Instagram, all that stuff. I love to hear the stories. So if y'all have something cool and get something out of it, tag me for sure. And we have a—

yeah, if you don't throw your Instagram handle on there, John, it's just @johnwetmore.

Someone— Melody typed the website. I'm pretty simple, just W-E-T, @johnwetmore. And, uh, I have a little school community too with a ton of free trainings, johnwetmore.com/school, if you want to follow anything I do. Would love it. Whatever I can do to help you guys, dude. I know I'll, uh, I'll be visiting with you soon and, and look forward to more, dude, if I can help at all, or Can answer any questions, just let me know, bro.

Awesome, brother. Appreciate you.