How to Make Yourself Rich (Sales Training - Chicago 8% Road Show)

He's known as the $100 million man. Around $200 million in life insurance premium this year. Amanda, is that fair?

He did $209 last year.

$209 last year?

Killing me, Cody.

Do not go backwards this year, John.

Do not.

Do not.

So please welcome from Atlanta, Georgia, Mr. John Wetmore.

Good morning. What's up, Chicago? How are y'all? All right. So the most important question I have is where should Amanda and I get pizza later? I wasn't kidding. I really want to know where. What's it called? Lou Malati's. Did I say that right? You got it. We've been like Googling it from Atlanta and everyone fights over what's legit, but go. I'm from Atlanta. I'm already here. Who? Silos. All right. There you go, girl. We got two. Cool. I'm glad to be here. I always enjoy doing these things with Cody. It's fun to help people. And I don't know how many people I know here or don't know here. So I'll give a very brief version of the story. I got started in— I actually attempted to get in the business in 2008. No, I want you to leave that for one second. Yep, I'm going to— yep. Thank you, though. I appreciate what you're doing. But I'm going to use it in a second. I attempted to get in the business, meaning I applied to an ad in 2008. It took me until 2010 to get my license. I picked up the phone, started calling. It took me to 2012 to write my first application because I quit after the first dial day because, quote unquote, the leads sucked, right? So I stopped dialing. I figured none of them booked anything and none of them answered. So I'm like, hell, why call anymore and just go do something else and be miserable and broke? And right, I just quit working. And then 2012, 2013, I was part-time, did okay. And 2014, super mediocre. And I was tired of being tired, the saying, right? And Arturo said— he mentioned the thing from Rome about change, right? I don't know how you worded it exactly. But there's a sign that hangs in my office. It's probably a play on his because I don't think it's quoted who says it. And I always want to get it right. But I see it all the time. And it says, are you so afraid of failing you're willing to change? Or are you so afraid of change you're willing to fail? Does that make sense? And it's like, dude, so many people are afraid of the change that they literally are sitting here right now failing. Like currently, you're currently in failure. Because people have told you what you need to do already. It's not like we're the first ones that have been like, hey, do this to be successful. Fair? Think of all the things you ain't done that you've been advised to do. Right? And we can get up here and say shit all day long. But if you continue the path that got you where you're at, you think it's going to help? Like that's who you are currently is what got you where you're at. Right? And so in 2014, I had to look at myself and make a decision. Did I want to continue to be who I was? Because who I was was a lazy agent who blamed everything and everyone else for my failing. I blamed leads. I blamed upline. I blamed company. I blamed the weather. I blamed the time of day people called. I had someone DM me yesterday and he was like, hey, should I work there? Blah, blah. And I'm like, you're asking if you should work here? Like, I work here. I mean, you think I'm going to tell you no? Like, what are you looking for, dude? He's like, I'm just trying to figure it out. And I was like, where are you from? Trying to figure out if I can get him to an event. He says, I'm in Utah. I was like, oh, cool. I used to fly out to Utah from Atlanta to sell. Been there a bunch of times. Love it. And he responds and he goes, so are you saying in Utah people value life insurance? I was like, bro, I think the whole planet people value life insurance because they love their family. Right? And he's like, he goes, "No, I think that some states value it more." I was like, "So you think you get to like a state line? Like they don't value it here and they do value it here?" Like, really? I'm like, I'm not trying to be an asshole, dude, but this is really poor thinking. Right? And everyone can relate to that. But then think of some of the things that you say for your reasons for not winning and all the shit you blame, right? It's like you're holding yourself back typically. And that's where I realized for me, I was like, yo, I'm done. I need to change everything I do. And what I want to do here, I'm going to change— what is this? Is this what you said to your sister? Is that the thing? So we're going to change it, bro. We're going to be, don't think, just do more. Okay? Because they are doing now and they ain't effing working. Right? You want to make more money this week? Present to more clients. It's not that deep. How do you present to more clients? You make more phone calls. You knock on more doors. You go to more networking events. You find more people. The people are where the money's at. Right? I don't know how Coach says it, but he's always talking about it. What does he say? You don't need more people, you need more money. You don't need more money, you need more people. You know, and there are people everywhere, and you're sitting around sulking you can't have success, and there's insurance companies in every city all over the planet with millionaires at every single one of them. Wherever you work, someone there's rich. Fair? Why the eff aren't you? I bet they're out working you. I bet. You know, and what drives me nuts on social, Arturo, when I talk about like doing more in activity, I'm a big, because that's what changed me, I'm a big activity, like let me just outwork you. And I love you all in here, but most of y'all aren't that hard to outwork. So that's my advantage, that's easy. I'm like, I can actually be worse, and I feel I am worse in a lot of sales environments. Than real salespeople. I like— I'm not formally sales trained. I can't give you 9 steps to sales. I'm not— I'm not that guy. I can work my face off and go see people who need coverage, see enough of them and present to enough of them that I write enough of them. And it changed my financial situation. Right. And I did it by literally just doing— again, 2008 to 2014, no success. 2000— March of 2015, I decided to change. And Arturo started talking about a lot of the numbers. And I just— I looked at what I was doing currently, how many people I was seeing, how many phone calls I was making, and what kind of money I was making. Really, everybody probably roughly knows that stuff about themselves. Now the question is, will you be honest with yourself about it or not? Right. And then I was like, all right, if I'm seeing this many people and making this and the amount of people like who's struggling in here right now, who's like struggling with money selling? Y'all's hands stayed low. You're lying. Who is struggling? Do y'all want help or not? Because I got Chick-fil-A back there. I'll go eat.

I'll go eat.

Who's struggling? Someone over here. You. What do you sell? We sell trucking insurance. Trucking insurance. I know absolutely nothing about that, but we're going to figure it out. How do you like talk to truckers?

Yeah, we talk to truckers.

Okay. Cool. You're— but you're struggling financially trying to succeed in it. I wouldn't say we're struggling. Well, ask who are struggling. You raise your hand. It's a— okay. Who's, who's really struggling? Like, who wants help getting more money? Someone?

You?

Everybody? And not everybody does. I disagree with you there. It's weird. Like, a lot of people say they want it, but a lot of people— most people aren't willing to do what it takes. Hence, again, Y'all have all been given advice, you know what I mean? So for me, it's like, are we going to be intentional with our day and are we going to make a decision to change shit? Absolutely. Because if you're not, what's the point? It got loud, didn't it? You talked to him, boom. What do you sell?

Uh, life insurance.

Sweet, that's my world. How much of it do you sell? Um, give me like a month. Perfect. How much do you make? I love it.

We've been stuck at like $100,000 a year.

Okay, we like We—

my agent, but my husband and I.

I think it's good.

Just me. I need to separate some points. Okay, uh, we're stuck in—

how long you been there? How long you been stuck there?

Um, the last 3 years.

All right. Do you sell?

I do.

Cool.

How many do you sell every week? Like regular? This is your full-time deal selling?

Yes.

And you're building a team?

Yes.

Cool. How many people did you present this week so far? 3. Okay. 3. All week?

So far this week. Okay.

Can I be super direct and you not like make him punch me in the face? Absolutely. No. Okay. So when you go—

That's the jiu-jitsu master over here.

When you go, huh?

That's the jiu-jitsu master.

I'm not confused. His staff was like, we got 2 in the room. I'm like, let me walk around and figure them out. I'm like, all right, I see one right away. So if you— if you do, you go in-home or telesales, what do you do?

Telesales.

All right. How long does one of them take? Presentation?

30 minutes.

Okay. 30 minutes. How many total minutes have you presented this week?

90 minutes.

I've peed longer than that this week.

That's why we're here.

100%.

That's why we're here.

Now I can give you some sales shit. Is it really going to help with 3 people?

No. Not at all.

Ain't gonna do shit. It doesn't matter. Does that make sense? You can bring Jim Rohn in here, magically bring him back and be like, here you go, present it. It's not going to change. You know what I mean? And you're looking to change. And if we track this out week by week, it's like, again, you 90 minutes in 4 days into a week presenting is the only way you make money is presenting, correct?

Correct. Well, and passive override.

Sure. But you're presenting, you're recruiting, you're making presentations, you're, you know what I mean? Like the money is in the presentation. Certainly phone calls can set up presentations. Phone calls can set up recruiting, which sets up passive. But the passive takes a while.

Yes.

Right. We were working with an agent in Atlanta this week. She's not here. Wasn't she supposed to be here? Didn't she say she was going to be here? No? You can leave it there. I might harass you more. We're working with this agent in Atlanta this week that was in my office. And she's getting sued by like a credit card company. Right? She's behind. Anybody have debt? No one has debt? Y'all don't need help? You don't have debt? You're not struggling with shit? Remember the part where Arturo said this is interactive? Can you tell them again, Arturo?

Shit!

Goddamn! This is crazy. What was the question?

It's about the debt, the credit card debt.

Okay, y'all heard me, that's good. Who has debt? That's not true, I don't have debt. I hear you. I had a shitload of debt and I was tired of the debt. This chick is being sued by a company, right? She owes X amount in debt. Everything was like $12,000 or $15,000. But she had to pay like $3,000 like in 12 days or she's going to court, like actually getting sued. And she's freaking out. She's like, how do I fix it? I have 12 days. I was like, shit, sounds like an attorney to me. She's like, what do you mean? Right? Like she hadn't figured out how to do it yet. Why? Why is 12 days to me seem like forever? I'm like, to make 3 G's in life insurance in 12 days? I'm sorry, like, do any of y'all think that's hard?

No.

No one does. Some people do, which I used to. 2012, 2013, 2014, I thought it was hard because I wasn't doing it. I wasn't making it. You know, my son Maddox has heard me speak to so many people that now if I like try to talk to him about money, like not spending it. He reminds me that I tell all of y'all you can make $1,000 in an hour. So he ranks everything there, right? So when he wants them, like he wanted to go to one of the Celtics games and he— so he looks up the pricing, he's like, it's only $74K for these two tickets right here. And we're sitting like the courts here and we're right, you know, I mean, like right there. And for him it's only $74K. But he hears me talk about being able to make that in a week. So he's like, I'm sorry, like, what's the big deal, Dad? It's a fucking week. So he gives me trash based on the conversations he hears, right? Which I like because I'm stretching his vision early, right? So we're talking to the girl in Atlanta and she struggled on the phone, whatever. I'm like, well, you get out of your comfort zone, right? And we did it. We tested the guy yesterday. I haven't heard back from him yet because we had a phone call on, on the right here, and I did it with another guy. And I do stuff all the time. I like to test people, right? And I go, if you're struggling with debt— hers was $12,000 or $15,000, she needed $3,000 like in a few days, in a couple weeks. And I'm like, all right, let's— here's what you're going to do. Do you, do you do anything besides make phone calls? Telesales. Do you call? Do you do anything else? Use that so they can hear.

I train my agents, so that's just my—

no, no, no, to, to sell for you, to sell. Meaning, here's the thing, You know what changed for me in 2015? I went from like barely getting by. I was still like $100 grand a year, which meant I netted well under $100 grand, right? Nobody's confused. Chargebacks and spending money on leads and investing and all the stuff. I netted $70 grand. In 2015, I made $460K. Like I didn't go up a little bit. I went up 3x. In one year. And then the year after that, it doubled. And then the year after that, it tripled. And Cody, I don't like going backwards, dude. Does that make sense? Like, it didn't go up a little. Remember, '15, that was '15, '16, '17. But from '08 to '14, it was the same. What did I change? Literally activity and the way I think about it. Because prior to that, I thought it was all the other stuff. So I was like, forget all the other stuff. Who cares? You can't get any better. You're not going to get so good that you're going to make $200 grand seeing 3 people. You can't get that good, right? But imagine if you saw 12 in 12 in 4 days, present 12 in 4 days. Would you make 4x the money? Okay. If I gave you one fancy sales tip, could you make 4x the money on 3 people? It's impossible. So who gives a shit about the sales stuff? Does it make sense? Is it important? Yes. Later. Who cares now? Hence the name of the book, by the way. I didn't do that on purpose right there. Do more now, get better later. That was my theory going into 2015. Forget getting better. I was an over-analytical, lazy agent. And I said, I'm tired. I'm just going to go do more, and I'll worry about all the getting better stuff later. Because I knew how many people I saw equaled X amount of money. Does that make sense? Whatever the number was here, it equaled money eventually. What do people hate in this business? Nothing. The thing in the middle of the number and the money. The nos, the work, the chargebacks, the cancels, the leads yelling at you, the agents quitting. The stuff in the middle is what people hate. But if I said just go bang on 52 doors around Chicago and I'd pay you $250 grand a year, but you had to bang on 52 doors a day, don't care what they say, I'll pay you $250 grand. Would you care about the middle anymore?

Absolutely not.

Okay. So now do you have enough control up here to not care when you're not making the money? That part, that's the catch. You do an activity, they say no, you go into depression. There's no money. So what do you do?

Let—

do now? You do less of it for some weird reason, right? Wait, like when leads don't answer, you know what the average agent does? Stop calling them. I'm like, they didn't answer. Why did you stop call— that mean you're supposed to call them more now? You call them again when they don't answer. Fair. Like you're in sales, right? So we take this chick in Atlanta and I say, we have a lunch break. And I'm like, all right, at lunch, we serve lunch there. I said, you're not allowed to eat lunch if you want to pay off your debt. If you don't give a shit, come eat lunch. So I say, go out into my office complex and bang on every building in the office complex. I guarantee you, you'll find an app. I go, just go, hey, I'm working over with John in Building 800. I sell life insurance. Do you need life insurance? That's all you have to say. She was sweating. 42 minutes later, she comes back. $25 a month. Small one for sure.

An app.

I was like, all right, cool. Do you believe? She's like, it worked. We have it all on video. My whole team recorded the whole thing. It was really cool. Eventually we'll put it out. And so I go, all right, now when you're out there this week with clients, you all have leads, right? So what most— you don't have leads? You don't have potential clients?

We work a warm market.

So those are leads. Leads are leads. Lead. Did you buy the lead? Did you create the lead? Did you knock on a door? Did you stop traffic? Did you hold up a sign like Chase? A lead's a lead. Leads are human beings who need help. Period. Lead is not defined by paid Cody $50 for a piece of paper. All he did was go find the person because you weren't willing to. Fair? It ain't magic. He just finds the people you're too lazy to go find and makes a shit ton of money doing it. Now, is he helping you?

Sure.

Yes. Right? But I go like, so with her, I go, all right, this week take all your leads, anyone you've ever had. So I had a rule, you had to tell me no on the phone and tell me no in person. So if you told me no on the phone, you also had to tell me no to my face. Man, I was going to show up at your house and knock on the door. Hey John, my office sent me out to make sure the phone number is right. They said they haven't been able to get a hold of you. Is this you? 99% go, yeah, number's right. Cool, you probably don't call numbers that you You don't— you probably don't answer numbers you don't know, huh? They'll go, "Yeah, no." I go, "Yeah, me either. So anyway, I'm the guy that's going to get you the information. Do you got 10 minutes now?" If you did that with all your leads, you'd make money this week. So, I challenged her to do it. And then I said, "Map it out." There's a little Road Warrior app. You map it out. Here's all the leads. Here's where I go. And I said, "In every house you go to..." She goes, "It's a long time because it's 30 minutes between houses." I go, "Cool. Every house, they all have neighbors, right?" She's like, "Yeah." I said, "Alright. Knock on 4 doors at every house." Just try it for a week. Let me know how it goes. What do I say? I was just working with your neighbor with life insurance. Want to know if you need any. That's it. She's like, what if I didn't close them? I'm like, who cares? You're working with them. There's the lead. You're working with them. You made it in. I didn't say you closed them. You're working with them, right? Simple. Like, don't overthink this thing. Just do part. Knock on 4 neighbor doors. That was our event was Thursday. Saturday morning, she texts me. The lead told her to fuck off. Literally. First neighbor she knocked on, $3,400 mortgage protection, paid off the debt. 2 days.

She pulled that on the phone?

Huh? No, in person. Yes, in person. Knocking on the door because I wanted to make her uncomfortable because she said she wants to get rich. If you don't want to get rich, do whatever you're doing now. Who cares? But getting out of your comfort zone is part of getting rich. Doing hard things is part of it. If you aren't doing hard things and being uncomfortable, you ain't growing. Cody's doing hard shit that makes him uncomfortable. I do hard shit that makes me uncomfortable. If we're not— if we're like— if things are easy in my office, I'm pissed because it means we're not doing anything. If we're not making mistakes and effing things up and being yelled at and being told no and being told we suck at this, that, or the other, we're not doing anything. So I encourage it and I love it. I love the mistake part because it gives us opportunity to grow and learn. And the problem is most of y'all aren't willing to go through that phase of growth and the phase of being told no and the phase of learning how to overcome it, right? You want the magic to skip all the BS. The BS is where the money's at. You know what I'm saying? So it's like figure out, it's not deep, see more people. There are people everywhere and you don't need any money to do— to do this. You can literally go bang on doors cold. We have an agent that knocks on doors exclusively and issued $350,000 last year. He doesn't buy one lead. He goes to apartment complexes and knocks on 100 doors a day. I'm not saying you have to do that shit forever, but if you're broke and you have debt and you say you want to change, go do something. There's plenty of money out there. You just have to go pick it up. And if you won't, somebody else is going to do it. So y'all have the decisions to make. Does that make sense? Appreciate you guys. QR code to go to the website and all our crap if you want to get it.

Enjoy John, man. Give me some feedback. What were a couple of key takeaways from John's talk?

Just his brutal honesty and transparency. Like, get out of your own way. I know, sorry, love you. Um, she's talking to me. Get out of your own way. We had this conversation a couple days ago.

Yes.

Stop avoiding the activities that are preventing you from being successful. Yeah. Just get out there and do it. If you love helping people, then go out and help the people. You're not helping them by staying still, so.

Do you think he was holding back or do you think he was— Yeah, we only said it after.

Yeah, there you go.

That's true.

That's true.

Thank you, John. Uh, let's give Elise one more. Who else? Yes, sir, please.

Do more calls, networking, connection, sales. A lead is a human being that needs help. Uh, doing hard things is part of getting rich. And some dude made $50K by not going to Yeah, yeah, 350K, right?

Yeah, yeah.