I Helped 10 Small Business Owners Make Their First $100,000 (Insurance Agencies)

Please welcome John Wetmore.

Always happy to be back. Um, before we start this little stuff I'm going to go through, I would like to know just super quick, like short as shit, like 30 seconds or less, what your biggest struggle is with growth. Super short.

Yeah.

Right now I'm trying to do everything myself from sales calls, set appointments to doing the admin, getting the apps through, underwriting and making sure money gets transferred.

Everything.

Been there. Do you have agents selling too?

No, it's me.

Just you.

Got it. Is this offshore?

And agent training? You have agents selling now? Do you sell also? Cool. How many agents selling?

5 agents.

Okay. What product do you sell? What do you sell? Life insurance. Life.

Medicare.

All of it. A little of all of it. Got it.

Agent engagement.

Agent engagement. What's that mean?

Meaning they get excited about it.

All about it. Getting agents having paid.

Getting agents to get—

Do you want engagement or do you want them to work?

Both. I want them to work. I want them to produce.

Got it. There we go. Now we're talking. I like it because engagement is very different.

Yeah.

You know, a lot of them will engage with you if you let them and then they won't do shit but engage with you. I don't know if you have that problem, but I had that. Free engagement. Correct. My biggest challenge to growth is my personal sales aren't at a level where I would even consider bringing an agent in. Why? Yeah, I switched over to—

I've always been an okay salesperson.

I switched over to telesales in May.

Okay. And, uh, it's a whole new thing, man.

I'm just trying to learn how to do it. Will you share how much you sell? Do you mind? Last month I think I did $7,000. In what product? Life product? What do you sell?

Life? Okay.

I can do 15 face-to-face. You can do or you chose to do?

Chose to do.

Thank you. Yeah, I can do 50. Why don't you? Why don't you? Yeah, I don't know, let other things get in the way. Okay, you work under like an umbrella? You under someone like an IMO or something like that, I assume? I don't know where you work. Just totally independent? Okay, got it. I mean, I said I don't know. No, I got you. I got you.

But the—

my— I'm stuck on a lot of people. No, I'm not stuck on it. What I'm continuing to think on is why you think your production matters. Meaning you don't need my production for you to sell, and I don't need your production for me to sell. I can sell without you, and you can sell without me. So agents can sell without you too.

Yes.

They don't need you, bro.

Exactly.

So you can still hire them and there's ways to do it. We'll talk about it. 100%. Good.

So what do you do?

Say again?

Doing everything once. Got it.

What do you sell? You said you're in a government job too, though. Did I mishear that earlier? No, you didn't. So you're currently on the job and insurance is on the side.

Cool.

What do you sell?

File and stamps.

Okay.

Cool.

Trying to do it all yourself. Makes sense. Okay. Well, I'm trying to now go from building agents to building agencies.

So that's—

How many agents do you have?

We have a little about 40 to 50 individual writing agents.

I'm glad you clarified it that way. They're actually selling. Thank you.

Some are.

Cool.

That monthly, monthly writers. Is that many?

Okay.

No, that's your monthly number. 40 to 50 monthly. What products? Life and everything. Okay. How much production are you getting out of that? How much production? Roughly. We did, uh, monthly. Give me that number.

Monthly. I don't know. I cannot tell you about monthly, but we did close about $15 million last month. Okay.

Why can't you tell me monthly?

I just haven't had it work with me right away.

I just assumed the position just last week.

As a district. I'm a regional, so I don't have that.

Okay, gotcha.

Same thing, kind of like a solo guy for a long time trying to figure out— So you're selling just yourself, not hiring at all? Was, yeah.

Now I'm trying to change that.

Was selling or was hiring? Sorry, I'm— Was selling. So you're not selling anymore either?

No, I am.

I am selling.

I'm trying to figure out how to do—

So you were only selling, now you're trying to do both?

And help others in growth.

Cool. Makes sense. Got it.

Demographics for me, I'm in a pretty rural area.

So for selling or you're— you have an agency, correct?

Yep.

Got State Farm agency.

Can you—

y'all are stuck in areas? I don't know that model.

I can sell across the state.

And you can recruit agents over there too?

Oh yeah, I can work.

Your whole agency can work those states?

Cool.

Okay, what is—

demographics, it's probably one thing that limits us the most.

I'd love to be in places like Nevada and Colorado, but you can't, you're not allowed to. Can you sell other stuff? Got it.

Okay, a little limited in that regard from an agency point of view. Yeah, we still do really well.

Is it demographic because of clients, or you're saying demographic because of limited agents in your head? It's a lot of people.

Yeah. Yeah, you're right.

How many agents do you have selling? I've got 10. Okay. Imagine if you just had 50. I know. Out of $500 grand, that's a very small percentage.

You're right.

All right, go ahead.

Send us some of the other— got 3 brand new agents coming on. Okay.

Okay, so you're selling currently still too? You're currently selling yourself also? You sell insurance on your own? A few agents coming on? Okay, got it.

Private, I have to speak for my husband because he's the one that started this.

So speak, speak for you. Where's he?

Everything. He was helping an agent this morning.

Got it.

So brand new agent.

No, where is he right now?

Where is he right now? He's still there.

Still helping the same agent. See, that's the thing they do. He's not paying attention anymore. But then I'm not. I'm not that fucking good. So he's just going to sleep. Correct. No engagement here. But he's stuck on the agent engagement over here and he just missed and he's missing the entire thing. It's fucking amazing.

Not at all.

It's just fucking awesome. I was watching like a comedy show on TikTok the other day. And they were like ragging on the person in the front row when this exact same thing was happening. It was fucking hilarious.

Delegating, because he wants to oversee everything.

Yeah. Watch it on video later. Someone tell him. At dinner. Sorry. I get— I'm not trying to be rude.

I just—

Can you start over? I didn't absorb any of it. I'll listen this time, I promise.

OK.

I don't know where he's at.

Your husband disappeared.

What's your biggest issue? So what do you do with the agency?

What's your— that I run the show in the office most of the time, but like he still wants to, and we do have some staff now, and we do have—

so you run it but he wants to? That said a lot. Y'all should have been a case study.

Like more than one.

So you use how many agents?

So I don't know, there's probably around 10.

Okay.

Um, so we are moving in the right direction, but it's almost like he loves to produce, so, and he knows it's going to be, you know, we want to grow, but he's not going to have a regular stint of that production.

Got it. And you're not frustrated by this at all?

Oh, how many plants do you have this year? How many what?

Clients? You know, between 1,500 and 2,000. That number's still, you know, fluctuating a little bit as we're— we just switched CRM, so like, yeah, we had to input a bunch more data that we, you know.

Okay. So what you got?

A little bit of that, a little bit of that, a little bit of this.

Give me your version. You can't steal theirs.

Oh, but I'm not gonna say— yeah, um, trying to do everything, trying to still delegate. Trying to create SOPs. I've stepped back from selling. I'm probably now selling like 10%, but that's still a work in progress because I'm trying to make my LOAs as great as me, but you know how that goes. Yeah. So yeah, just a little bit of that.

How many agents?

About 60.

Okay, y'all moving some volume. I like it. What product— what, what do you sell?

Medicare and ACA mostly.

Okay. Very cool.

Duplicating myself is the main thing. I'm trying to get better somehow. I like it.

Cool.

So we're going to go through this scale roadmap. Y'all can see, and we made the bottom part up out there in the hallway, and it's really like the roadmap to success. Scale— this is a scale concept that I have, and what we're going to talk about is where you're really probably fucking it up. And be clear, like Cody talked about and Mike talked about and everybody that does anything of any substance or size, there's going to be a lot of mistakes along the way. Like I make them every effing day still. We were out there dealing with a mistake when we came in and out a couple of times. Like we had shit going on out there. Like things were going wrong in our world still today. So what I always try to help people understand is like the mistakes aren't going away, like ever. And they'll— I'll go through them each one by one, so you don't have to necessarily write them all down now. Um, you know, and I think part of this deal is being willing to make mistakes, and a lot of people don't want to make them, which causes people to not grow. And if you're coming to this to figure out how to like eliminate all your mistakes, like just go to dinner now because I don't know how— I don't know that anybody can do that. Like, we can try to give you some tips and advice and things to change, but even with them, if you want one to mess it up, like, that's just business, you know? It's sales. It's just part of it, you know? Like, we've been talking— shit, I don't know how long I've known you. 6, 7 years? I don't know when the first time we met at an event. When he was talking about the original lead company, that's when I met Cody. And, uh, Yeah, that was a hot minute ago. I think it was in Vegas maybe, or Phoenix or something, or somewhere out west. Yeah. Um, and the amount of mistakes and problems that we've talked about over the last 6, 7 years on both ends of our business has been crazy, you know. Now I think repeated mistakes are pretty stupid, and I think that's where a lot of people get stuck, is they keep making the same mistakes over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. So for me, in my office, in kind of one of the principles we have is like, I kind of encourage mistakes. You know, I think if you're not trying new things, you're not going to have mistakes. So I'm okay if they mess stuff up. Like, I don't care at all. But when we keep doing it, I like, I don't know how to control that very well. So I can, I can get a little frustrated. But some of the stuff, you know, I think if you're willing to make them cool, getting some feedback on from people that are better than you on what you need to change about those mistakes. And then most importantly, implementing them. You know, we have a lot of people that we go like, hey, do A, B, and C, and you got a whole list of stuff already today. And sometimes it's a little scary because you're like, I have to implement 1,500 things. So my advice is put them in a list, prioritize them, and just start with one. Like, just one at a time. You're not going to implement 52 things next week. There's no way. But implement stuff, you know. And that's— a lot of people get back to old habits and get back to continuing to do the things they were doing, and then they won't see progress. And if you look backwards to where you were 6 months ago, 12 months ago, 18 months ago, sometimes 5 years ago, if you feel like you're still in the same spot or stuck, it's because you're probably not making mistakes, tweaking them, and implementing new things to adjust along the way, you know. And so for us, I think, um, we're all about messing it up, but When we look backwards, we don't want to be in the same spot 6 months from now. I tell everybody, if I'm doing the same thing I'm doing today next year, I've messed up royally, you know, for me. But not everybody wants growth, and that's okay too. So you— part of obviously the last lesson is figuring out what you want out of life. That's an important piece of this thing, where you want to be, who you are, where you want to go. Not everybody has to want a zillion-dollar agency. You know, I like— I get bored if I don't keep growing and add new. I just— I don't know how to turn off, you know, I don't want to turn off. I'm useless if I don't. And I have a lot of free time and I— but I stay busy in my free time and I think about this thing nonstop. And it's, it's some of the stuff you were talking about earlier, Cody, resonates. It's like we're talking about the staffing thing, you know, and I think Some of that I'll bounce around a little bit because some of it's in the talk. Right now, I'm just sort of going off the cuff, things that I'm thinking of. We've struggled— everything that everybody said here, I struggled with. Some of it I still struggle with today. And some of it, like things you and I were talking about a minute ago, is like, y'all see levels. And there are levels to this thing. But when you get up to whatever you see as the next level, you're still going to have broken thoughts. You're still going to be scared. You're still going to not know what to do. You're still going to feel like you shouldn't be there. I mean, like those are pieces of that just don't go away. So what you're going through is natural. You know, you'll just find new shit down the road. So what I always try to help people understand is like encourage you to like embrace— it's how they say embrace the suck. Like it's okay where you're at. For me, it's not okay to stay there. You all got to decide if that's what you want, and I assume you aren't here to stay in the spot you're in. But as I start thinking about this thing, man, staff fucking issues, bro. I was doing— I was an accountant full-time commuting an hour and a half each way 12 years ago. Part-time in the insurance business at a— selling final expense product at a 40% comp. Okay, in 2012, I was making $40,000 a year as an accountant, and I was doing interviews every single day on my commute to hire agents. Why? Dude, the industry works. It's worked before me, it's going to work after me. Fuck's it need me for? Other than to be a conduit to bring people into it. Does that make sense? I don't feel like I have to be everything to everybody. I've never had that fear. Dude, I was interviewing before I wrote an app. Oh, bro. The period where I quit, because again, the '08, '10, '12, you've heard so many times, that period, there were stages I was recruiting. I definitely recruited more people than apps I wrote in the first few years. Because I believed in what I had my hands on. And I don't feel like I need to be great to sell something and promote something. You know what I mean? It's like, this is a weird analogy, but it makes sense, especially the older crew. Like Don King didn't need to be great at boxing to promote a great boxer. And you feel like you need to get in the ring and fight before you can promote a fighter. You know what I'm saying? It's a sticking point we all had. I just chose to not have it because someone else gave me the insight earlier. It's not because I was magic. Someone's like, dude, what do you got to wait for? You know? It's like, imagine if— I always talk the way I do it with agents is I'm like, I don't know, imagine Walmart paid $100 grand a year to do something in the back room. Load boxes. You know, wouldn't you tell everyone you knew if they were like, hey, I need to hire more people, it's $100 grand a year loading boxes in the back? Wouldn't you tell people then? Be like, yo, Walmart. Or would you feel like you had to train them first and learn how Walmart works?

Yeah, yeah.

So for me, that's the answer. That's the correct answer, but the true— I understand. Yeah, but you're just a sticking point, you know, to a degree that it depends on what the level of product is you're selling. If you're selling fixed index annuities, it's very much a selling job. Why? If you have a system— does everybody— does anyone here not have some kind of system or training access? I don't have— I've never sold a fixed index annuity. I've never sold it. I sold a couple annuities, IULs. I've never sold an IUL in my life. My team did $3 million worth of IULs last month. I've never sold one. I don't know how to sell one. We did $3 million last month in them. Actually, that's one product that I think is sold. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I'm not disagreeing with it. My point is I don't have to know anything to get the team to sell it. Does that make sense? I don't— I just don't— I don't limit myself there. And with— if you want to— amen. I just choose not to. And we're doing $200 million a year because of it.

Well, you're saying it's the system driving production.

Correct. I'm just one guy, dude.

I'm saying it's all of us.

Correct. I just think there's opportunity to go here. You know, I don't— and I think recruiting, what people do is they merge recruiting and training together. I separated them. I can recruit and not train. I can get you to recruit and train for you. If you're in my world, you can recruit. I'll train them. I don't want you training them, and neither does the new agent. Does that make sense? That doesn't mean you can't build a team. I know people who have massive real estate companies. They flip houses, 50 houses a month. They don't even know how to pick up and use a hammer. Fair?

Even if you don't know how to do it, but you know who can. Correct.

Correct. So that's— it's a— I'm just saying it's a possibility. I'm not saying you have to do it. That makes sense. So for me, I always try to identify how can I accomplish this? I'll get to it, I promise. Y'all made the slides, I know. No, that's not it.

Cool.

I was like, I swear I'll get to— they made— they like stayed up all night making these pretty slides and now I'm not using them yet. I thought you were ragging on me. Sorry. That happens a lot though. So funny enough, like, team staff stuff. When Cody was saying we've been through some staff, Amanda keeps a list. We have quite a few lists in our office. We keep track of stuff like we keep lists of people that we have. It's like a new cemetery list of people like we would like to be in the cemetery when we get frustrated with them. So we have a whiteboard and we do have— this is a real thing, but Amanda keeps a list of all the staff that we've had. Amanda's been with me 7 years. Does anyone not know Amanda? She's with me everywhere I go. So if you don't, you'd be weird. Whatever.

Yeah.

So Amanda, Amanda runs my entire operation. Yeah. Most people think she's my kid. Like, that happens everywhere we go. Sometimes they think we're married. That happens some. But, you know, like, she, like, runs my world. But I hired Amanda in 2017 to be my assistant's assistant because we were getting busy. It's when I was doing everything on my own and trying to figure this thing out. So Amanda was the second staff hire ever made. She's been with me over 7 years. 7 plus— July was 7. And since her, I think we're close. We're in the ballpark of 40 staff that I've hired since her. And I only— we have 5 total. 5 total. And for— from 2017 to 2021, it was just me and Amanda. So I went through 40 people to try to grow staff, and I've made a lot of mistakes with that stuff, and we'll get into some of the details. But it's like probably one of the— one of the best things I've done this year ever in my life. And now we have 5 in the office, it's been a year since we've had anyone leave or quit or get fired. We fired a lot of people because I'm a lot like— we're a lot alike. One of the best things I've done this year that's mentally relieved me from a lot of stress— I did a Friday staff meeting for 6 years. I quit my own staff meetings. I swear to God. I just one day I'm like, I quit. All I do is get frustrated with them. They're trying to work and do things. I have expectations maybe I shouldn't have. You know what I mean? It was just a frustrating spot. But I didn't remove myself from having goals and expectations of people. I just removed myself from the meetings. And I'm like, why would I do them? She fucking runs everything anyway. I'm just kind of in the way. Asking questions about shit I don't know or shouldn't know, or I get in the way or have— I don't type, push the buttons every day and type the letters like I don't do any of that stuff. I was like, y'all run them. And I literally quit them. I don't know when that was. Spring, maybe. You were here, I think. Still, I think you were in the first couple. And now they run them and I show up. I do. We do one like every 2 or 3 months. We didn't really have a schedule. It's like every 2 or 3 months I'm like, hey, can we get an update? And Amanda's started running them. We haven't had any staff leave, no one's quit, no one's got fired, and we're more productive than we've ever been. We're growing like crazy. My team's creative as shit. They come up with ideas I would have never thought of. They implement stuff, they execute stuff. It's fucking great. I walk into work every day and they're happy as shit because I was trying to do everything myself. I was trying to do everything. So there's this weird balance you have to make. You know what I mean? It's hard as shit, especially when you're a control freak, to give stuff up. Just go like, here, I trust you to do this. So we'll get into some of the stuff. I want to go through this deal here, this scale process. Number 1 is systems. Oh, you're hitting it before me.

I see.

And I'm just— instead of going bullet point by bullet point, I'll pull them all up at the same time. Do you want to get effing paid? Attend the 2-day workshop I got coming up October 23rd, 24th. 2 tiers of tickets. Regular entry gives you a day and a half access to the event. VIP access is a private mastermind networking event at my house the evening of the 23rd. I'm going to be going over everything in terms of sales, agency building, team building, scaling systems, automations, everything we've done over the last 12+ years building not only this company, real estate. I've done some mortgage stuff. I'm going to be helping people get paid. Dates are October 23rd, 24th in Atlanta, Georgia. Click on the link below and see that most people either don't have any system or the system they have isn't very like advantageous or duplicatable. Right. And so you have to be careful. For me, if you want to scale again, you can have a system that you can do things yourself. or you can have something that is duplicatable over and over again. And I remember early on, like when I was recruiting by myself, that was, it worked. But like my system was like, I'm driving down the interstate and I'd interview someone and I forget their name by the end of the interview. And I got to scramble on the side seat to find the resume. And I'm trying to take notes on the resume while I'm driving down the interstate while it's on speakerphone. You know what I'm saying? And then I hire someone and I'm like, shit, what do I do? And you know what I mean? I'm like trying to figure it all out. And then I go to work and I do my job and I'm like, crap, I got to send them all the contracting stuff at night after work. I'm trying to do all that myself. Like, that was hard. And now when you sell a bunch, you can certainly pay people to take some of those things off your hands. But until you sell a bunch, it's really hard to afford that, you know? And as I started to grow this thing, I realized I could create some systems and we created some Over time, we have— and now today, if I fast forward today, with Amanda's help over the last 7 years, we've built a ridiculous onboarding and recruiting system that the entire country uses in our world. I have outside companies asking us to use it and pay for it. So we do sell it to people now. But that had to be built over time. And then I realized I'm really good with like automations and things like that and process internally. But what I learned is most agents and most people who want to build an agency aren't. So we have a system internally on things we run, but then we had to make something that was very duplicatable. And teaching someone automation isn't very duplicatable, but creating a form that every agent could fill something out on that could then come into my system and my staff manages that was very scalable and duplicatable because I could just give you all the form. But you don't need to know shit. Just fill out this form when you hire someone and all the magic happens in the back end, you know what I'm saying? So it's like if I tried to teach exactly what I did, they wouldn't have been able to run the whole thing. I'm like, here, take this little piece and y'all manage this. So I try to split it up and go, how can I make this insanely repeatable? You know? And my guess is most of y'all are looking at whatever system you have And it's like, can it be duplicated? Can it be copied very easily? Because with agents, they're a pain in the ass and that's not going to change. And the other side of it is we're all a pain in the ass too, and that's not going to change, you know what I'm saying? So for me, I always have to try to make everything as easy as possible. Um, probably the next, next big thing is if you're the only one building, it's going to go slow.

It's part of it.

You know, it's just a piece of it. And so for me, what I had to get really good at is getting other people to build but do it in a way where they didn't overthink it. And when I first got in the industry, I'd be like, hey, you want to come on and sell? Yeah. Oh, by the way, do you want to build a business? And here's how you do it. Here's the levels. And here's how spread works. And here's overrides. And I do all this shit. And I realized that would scare the hell out of them. And he thought like you and wasn't ready for it. You know what I mean? Like, and that all— that's okay. And then I started just changing the approach and going like, hey, so I'm hiring. Do you know anybody else that would need an opportunity? I can train them too. And I would just do that every time I interviewed someone. And then he'd go, of course he knows people, and he probably knows people who want opportunity. He's an opportunity seeker. He's trying to get out of a situation. He probably knows people like him. So why would I not ask him if he knows other people? And I didn't explain shit about building. And dude, that one people I had, like, early on, by 20— by the time I hired Amanda, I had 40 to 50 agents selling monthly direct to me. And every one of them was a recruiter in my mind. Maybe 3 of them were actually building in their mind because we had a very easy system to bring people on. There's no pressure. I didn't care. You build, you don't build, I don't give a shit. You know, one of the questions I would always ask somebody when I brought them on is, do you want to be a life insurance salesperson forever or do you one day want to build a team? 95% of people will be like, yeah, one day when I'm ready.

Good.

That's all I need. One day, right? And so I just plant it in the back of their mind. And then it was like, hey, who do you know? On the interview. Hey, who do you know? I once interviewed this person in Utah. I used to fly to Utah to sell, and this was in probably 2015. And, uh, his name was Jesse. Flew out, sold a bunch of insurance in Utah. I'd spend a week out there and I'd sell up in like, uh, Salt Lake City area, Utah— Salt Lake, Utah, Davis, and Weber counties. I'd sell Monday through Thursday, drive down to St. George, 4-hour south, sell on Friday. Drive to Vegas Friday night and take a red-eye home to Atlanta. I would do that. I did that like once a month for maybe 6 months. And I interviewed this dude Jesse out there. I had dinner with him. So I was trying to build a team out there. Had dinner with the dude, asked him who else he knew. He wasn't licensed, wanted to get involved in the industry. Explained everything, cool, decided to hire him, quote unquote. You know what happens when you send people, they're like, hey, get in class. What happens next? They ghost you, right? So on, on during dinner, I'm like, hey, who else do you know? He goes, oh, I know this dude. I always forget his name, Amanda. The dude in Texas, that Alan in Texas. He's like, oh, I know this guy Alan in Texas. Yeah, he's, he's in insurance. He's actually looking for a different deal. I'm like, cool. So I call Alan, ask Alan who else he knows. So he comes on, ask Alan who else he knows. He knows Jackie in Missouri. Weird enough. St. Louis side, though. Jackie, same question, knows James. James and Jackie get together, know a bunch of people. Their group within 6 months was doing $150 grand a month. Jesse never even got contracted, never sold an app, never got a license, never did shit. But he led me to people. That group to date's probably done $5, $6, $7 million in production. Small team. Again, that's over the course since 2015. So it's not a huge team, but $5, $6, $7 million in production from one question that I just keep asking every day.

Huh? Yes.

What do you do?

That's it, dude.

Who do you know? Look, you were looking for opportunity one day, right? That's why you're here. You were looking for opportunity one day, right? That's why you're here. We're all here for the same reason. Why would I make it any deeper? You can if you want. It's like, eh, I'll trick people into building. How about that? I trick people into making money. I never had a recruiter. I was the recruiter because I was trying to recruit, and I just taught other people to be recruiters who wanted to. And those that didn't want to be a recruiter, cool, just Just tell me who you know. It's not a recruiter now, right? If I just ask who you know, that's not recruiting, right? It's not building a team, right? It's the same thing though. Does that make sense? So I just made it really simple. Next, your people probably aren't getting paid, which is like really bad in this industry. There's a lot of writers. Like if I always look at my total volume and total writers and divide one by the other.

Total writers, total volume.

Writers. I don't give a shit about agents if they aren't writing, doesn't matter. Volume is from written agents. Does that make sense? So I take volume, I take writers, divide one by the other, that's your average per— right, your average monthly per writer. Mind building, still to this day, we had 6,000 writers last year. Our average was $8,000 a writer monthly with 6,000 people. When I had under 100, we're 12, 14 grand a writer because I was focused on getting people paid. You get paid or get the fuck out of the way. Does that make sense? Like, and we're creating something where people got paid. Otherwise, what's the— what are we doing? Who cares how many you hired? Who cares how many people you contracted this week?

Who cares?

There's leaderboards, dude, at companies on how many people damn got into class, how many people filled out contract. There's Some companies give you comp raises based on how many people fill out a contract. They don't even got to sell. They can just get contracted. I'm like, why is that the focus? I want to get people paid. And then I don't think anyone's confused that we all sort of suck at this one because I asked questions already about you probably aren't tracking or monitoring your business. It's wild to me that people don't know their numbers. I don't understand it. For me, it's so wildly important. It tells a story. And if you aren't tracking yours, that certainly means you're not teaching your agents to track theirs. And if they don't track theirs, what's going to happen when a chargeback or cancellation happens? Chargeback comes. And what happens if a chargeback comes if you ain't watching your business? What happens there? Then it rolls up. And then you complain about the business. It's like, but you aren't paying attention at all. You know, you go to like my son, we were at Dunkin' Donuts the other day. And by us, Dunkin' Donuts is in the same as— what's the ice cream joint that's in there, Amanda? Baskin-Robbins. It's got the double. And so it's like a little L-shaped. And we're saying he always gets both. He gets ice cream and donuts. And when we're ordering the donuts, cashing out, right there is the drive-through. And right above the drive-through is how many customers come in per day. And how many came in yesterday? I mean, it's like the person who rings up the donut order knows how many customers they had at Dunkin' Donuts. Y'all run your companies and probably don't know your numbers. Joey, who just got out of high school math class, knows how many donuts they sold. I go to the chiropractor, I go to Joint because it's— they have them everywhere. And every time I walk in, on the counter it has their revenue projection and to date. They do it by month, how many customers they need to hit that number, how many have come in. And they literally, every time someone checks in, they mark on this little piece of paper.

Is that customer-facing or did you ask them?

I can see it. It's, it's, it's a clipboard on her desk. When I check in, I'm like, hey, it's the clipboard upside. I see it right there every time I check in. Yeah. And so when I'm talking to my team, I'm like, everything we do, hey, what's the numbers? How many we got? Where are we at? What do we— I just, I don't understand how you control things without it. You don't know what levers to pull. You don't know where— what's working, what's not. I mean, you're kind of just guessing, and it's real easy to do. You know, there's a million— again, if you— if you're not that deep or complicated with it, I tell everyone, grab some napkins from here and some crayons from your kid's Crayola box and start writing numbers down. It doesn't have to be this in-depth craziness, you know. Good, Amanda. The C, communication. Thank you. Not minimizing and normalizing problems. This is like teaching people to recruit when they're new and not ready. What I did there is normalize that it's okay to do it. This whole— that whole setup. There's ways to do that in every piece of your business, right? And like, agents get frustrated over whatever piece of— think of what— think of what agents get the most frustrated over in your space. Another thing there is, they're always annoyed about, right? The more you can make that normal, the less frustrated they are, right? So Maddox plays baseball.

He's 12.

And like agents want to figure out how to make objections go away. It's pretty standard across everybody's thing. That's always like, how do I, how do I figure that out? And in baseball, Maddux wants to figure out how to make strikeouts go away. But what's the reality? When will strikeouts stop happening?

Barry Bonds has more strikeouts than anybody.

When they stop playing. Amen. But that's what everyone's trying to do. And then what happens next? We train them to say A, B, and C, and you'll stop getting objections. I'm like, careful the way you word that. Like, should you train them? Yes. Like, do I still train Maddox on how to hit the ball?

Yes.

Well, I don't. I hire a coach because I suck at it. But like, he still has to hit off a tee and he still has to do the stuff. But when he strikes out, I have to teach him to be careful about how mad he gets. I want him to be mad enough to practice more to get better, but I don't want him to be so mad that he gives up. And I don't want him to think they're going to— but at the same time, I don't want him to think they're going to go away. So I have to normalize, dude, strikeouts. I know you don't want them, bro. But it's okay. It's part of the game. Like, they're coming, you know what I mean? And then like agents blame leads, or they blame area, or they blame whatever they— whatever they blame. The weather, the fucking— who knows? To me, that's like when Maddux strikes out or loses a game. Who do all the parents and the players blame for the loss? Referee or the catcher.

Dumps.

In baseball, it's the umps every time. It's always the umps' fault, right? And that trickles down to the kids because that's normal outside the fences with the parents. It's normal to blame the ump. And I'm like, yo, why are we blaming? Nah, you ain't. It was a bad call, Dad. Let's pretend it was. You know, if you hit the ball before that pitch, you would've never got the bad— you wouldn't have been in the position to get the bad call. Does that make sense? So why are we putting yourself in a position to let someone's bad call make an impact on you? And in our space, you're mad about cancellations or agents quitting. Why? Because we don't sell enough, we don't have enough of a team. That's the only reason you're mad when someone cancels, because you ain't got enough money. Because if I dropped $10 million on the table right now and someone can't— any one of your clients cancel today, you wouldn't give a shit. Does that make sense? But we, we tend to put blame in different places, and then worse, we allow agents to do it, you know. And it's like, think about little kids, little babies. Amanda's got twin girls, 2-year-olds. Mine are— 12-year-old's the youngest now. I got 5, and the oldest is 30. But when they're little, I watch hers like try to climb out of their cribs and playpens and One tackled the other one yesterday and it's like, it's— I have so much fun watching her babies because mine are all grown assholes now. And like me, that's where they get it. I love them, but man. But I remember like when mine were babies and it happens with all of them. Anybody not have kids? Anybody have?

Cool.

Not have kids? Me.

You've been around them, huh?

Yeah.

You'll probably still get it. I mean, babies are babies. But if any kid runs down the hall and they bump into something and fall on their butt, when they're in their dirty diaper and it's hanging down to here, hanging down to their knees, and they're running down the hallway and they hit the thing and they fall, what's the first thing they do? Go get them.

Pick them up.

Do they cry first? First thing a baby— if a baby falls, typically, what's the first thing they do? They look. What are they looking for?

Where Mommy is.

If you freak out, what are they going to do? If you laugh, what are they going to do? Dude, we're ingrained with this shit. So when things happen in your business and the people around you are watching, you freak out. What are they gonna do? You get back when I go charge back. All right, who cares? Go sell more. All right, so we lost 47. Okay, someone quit. All right, $150,000 roll-up. All right, like, I don't love it, okay? Anybody want $150,000 roll-up? All right, what if I said if you take $150,000 roll-up, I'll get you $15 million in the next 5 years? We take it then? Why can't you have that in advance? Like, why do I got to give you the money first for you to be okay with it? Well, when the roll-up comes, it's now.

It's today.

I understand. But if you believe in what you do and you believe in the industry and you understand it's a cost of doing business sometimes, and the reason I got a $150,000 roll-up is why? How do you get that far? Oh yeah, why do you think it was that big? I wasn't paying attention. It was my fault. Yeah, who'd I want to blame? And in the tent, Samuel Hong. Still remember his name to this day. It was a 2017, '18, I don't know what year that was. I hated that. I was Livid. But dude, since that moment, we ain't had many at all. I had less last year with 6,000 agents than I— by far than that one dude. I mean, we don't get anywhere near that. We don't have— we have almost no debt now. We get some because natural cause of business, but the percentage, tiny, tiny, tiny. Why? I pay attention to my business now. And not to not see that coming. It means you're just being straight ignorant to your business. There's so much writing on the wall beforehand. But we get so excited and we get blinded. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, as you start going along the way, it's like, again, let's make things no big deal. Kind of got off on a little tangent on the roll-up stuff because it's later on. But as I've done this entire time, the next level is like stories and analogies. Deliver messages way better than just punching you in the face and be like, why are you being an idiot, dude? You know what I'm saying? It's like, you got to learn how to tell a story or create an analogy that people understand to get this to feel like that. You talk about like, I remember that I had this one agent. Who was struggling with sales and she was like overthinking it because she wasn't good yet and it was taking time. It's like a few weeks in, 6 weeks in, 2 months in, and they're freaking out because they're not amazing yet. You know, she was a nurse and I'm like, I remember the first few times you started, took blood from people, what that was like. You know, I mean, think about your first job ever. Or your first job that you were eventually became really good at. Like rewind to the first day and think about like the nerves, you know what I mean? And then how you became good at it. And so what I try to do is relate this industry to what— like if I figured out what your career, what you were good at somewhere else, I would just link the two, you know? And when you tell stories about like kids it's really easy, or sports or general items that most people understand. It's really easy for them to go like, oh, a chargeback is like, you know, again, you own a pizza shop and someone orders a pizza and doesn't show up for it. Do they freak out? When I was in Little Caesars, how many times people ordered pizza and didn't come pick it up? Happened all the time. Well, the employees would eat extra pizza on their break, you know what I mean, or not ring up their mom's pizza when they came in. Doesn't mean the Little Caesars didn't work. This is part of business. Walmart has billions in theft. Do they want it? No. What do they do? They put loss prevention in place and their prices mark them up, and then they keep it rolling, you know what I mean? Trucks fall over on the interstate probably every day out there. I had a buddy One of my buddies is actually building my house. We just were like right on the cusp of finishing our house that we've been working on for like 2 years. And I was pulling in the other day and he was leaving. So I pull over and talk to him. It was right after y'all saw all the storms in like Georgia, North Carolina, all that stuff. He has a farm in South Georgia. And I was like, hey, how the farm? He's like, hey, we were good. It went a little east, so it didn't hit me. And he goes, but my buddy, I just got off the phone with him. He had, I don't know how many acres, but he lost because of the storm $5 million worth of timber. Storm just knocked over. Uninsurable because of what it is. Someone in your world lost their mind over a client canceling a $40 app yesterday. Y'all lost your mind over something today, you know what I mean? Like, so when things like that— trust me, I lose my mind still, but what I try to not do is let it linger. I try to catch it quick and move on from it, take a lesson from it. Let's go. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, shitty day. I'm like, I didn't just lose $5 million worth of timber or lose my house or my life or my family or— you know what I mean? Like, you can always make things relative to other things. And that's been a big part of this thing. Communicating with a variety of people is very difficult for most people. We tend to only want to communicate with people who are just like ourselves. Cody earlier talked about the DiSC assessments. They're super valuable if you haven't done those types of things on yourselves. Nate, if y'all know him, he does the whole color thing if any of you been there, super beneficial stuff. I learned a lot from John Maxwell, big John Maxwell fan. One of my favorite books I ever read from him is his Five Levels of Leadership. And it teaches you about the way people view you, right? And I am clearly very direct type person, it's my mentality. I'm also like very oblivious to things, like I miss stuff. I'll miss cues. I'll miss, like, I'll misread body language. I'm better at it now, but just by default, if I'm frustrating someone, I don't see it or understand it or relate to it. I don't naturally have like a lot of empathy. You know what I mean? When people are sad about certain things in life, I don't relate really well. And so as I started building, I started communicating with people like I was communicating with myself. I was delivering messages the way I need messages sent to me. You know? And one of the things I had to learn and a really easy connection point that I've one day kind of figured out is like, if you think about when you're sitting with clients, if you sit with a 22-year-old dude who just got done smoking weed before you got there, or you sit with a 72-year-old widow, you're very naturally going to speak to those people very differently. There's no real, like, thought about it. But for me, when I had the 22-year-old agent or the 72-year-old agent, I spoke to them exactly the same. There was no varying. I didn't have the same— what's the word I always use? Damn, I always forget that word, Amanda. Like, damn. Like finesse, intentionality with a variety of people. Does that make sense? I was like a one-trick pony, so I had to learn, like, that's it. You know how many people call me an asshole and quit for the first 5 years? I did. So I had, I had really good— dude, I've always had really good people around me that I trust, that I allow to tell me the truth. Fair enough. And yeah, I had a mentor that was really good with me. And he used to say, he would tell me that I had no bedside manner. Now I grew up in Boston in the hood. I did not grow up in the South. The first time he said it, I was like, what does that mean? I didn't even understand the term. And he explained it, and I was like, is that your sweet way to tell me I'm an asshole? He was like, yeah, bro, that's what I'm saying. But he had— he saw my vision, and I had a lot of work ethic, and I actually care for people deep down, like, insanely more than what I think most people do. I actually give a shit a lot. I just don't want all the bullshit in the middle. I'm not good there. That's not my strength zone. If we can cut through all the bullshit, me and you, I'm good. Like, I actually want you to win more than you can imagine.

I just—

do I have— why do I have to baby step it? I don't— I, I have a hard time there.

Um, that's an East Coast thing. People on the East Coast don't want to be kind to us.

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's more natural up there too.

When I've had somebody, uh, New Jersey, would connect, correct? Whereas I've lived in New Orleans since I'm Agreed.

But again, even within each demographic, there's certainly people in New England that are more like they need a pat on the back every day. Their natural personality. Does that make sense? Like, I don't need you to tell me every day I'm doing a good job when I'm doing a good job. I don't need that in my world. So with staff, I'm really bad at that. So I try to remember, and Amanda thankfully, just like I trust her implicitly. She can tell me like, dude, cut it the fuck out. Hey, remind this one. Hey, he did this. See, I'm like, got it. Right? And so for me, it was having a willingness to want to change because I wanted to expand. I wanted to get better. I didn't want that reputation. You know what I mean? I want a mentor. Another mentor once taught me like reputation is neither true or false. It's just what a bunch of people think. And I didn't like what the bunch of people thought. Because internally it wasn't true. They thought I didn't care for them, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, oh shit. And I swear, I don't know how to— I can't understand it to this today in today's world, but I truly thought that all of us thought the same. I didn't realize how wildly different we all were. And I'm 35 at that time, still thinking this way. I'm 47 now, and I still thought we just— everyone thought like me. And so I started studying and working on me, started doing a lot of self-development, started doing a lot of reading, started doing a lot of like— what's the word I want to use? Like self-development events and seminars and coaching and stuff. I just started working on me, dude. And instead of blaming the ump, I was like, yo, why are they all quitting? Who's the common denominator? Hey, that asshole's an idiot. He didn't know A, B, and C. Yeah, who hired him? Oh shit, it was me. He's a dumbass. You, yes, you have, you hired the dumbass. There's a problem with that, but you're blaming the dumbass still.

You looked at the dumbass and you're like, hey, that's the guy for me.

And then he started being a dumbass and you kept him. And then he kept doing dumbass things and you still kept him and you see potential in people. So you can't, you know what I mean? It's like, so I just had to, I had to work on me, dude, and decide again, like earlier what Mike was talking about. I was like, who do you want to be and where do you want to go? So I just had to start working on those things. Is that for me, Amanda? Sorry, I'm being like Cody today. I love you, bro. Who's next? You? All right, cool. I'll go a little faster.

Cool.

Accountability. I like all these things. You know, again— I say simultaneous. I'm not a big first thing. I'm not big like do this, then that kind of guy because I think you can do both. 100%, dude. Work on yourself is never going to end, hopefully. If it does, you're probably doing something wrong. Accountability, for me, I like to challenge people. I've done it a few times in here. It's just who I am. I certainly ask permission a lot now. I'm working with coaching. Some people that are outside my company. I have a lot of people reach out that want my help and I'm like working with people. And I had a guy who couldn't, fair to him, his mom passed away kind of unexpectedly. She wasn't the healthiest, but it kind of happened sooner than he thought. He's going through some stuff, had some delays in doing business, things like that. Next week started getting on and you're still doing a little tiny bit of work. And I'm on a coaching call with him and he was like, I'm having to make these calls and I'm on hold for 45 minutes here and I'm on hold for an hour there. I said, okay, cool. I said, do you— can I ask you a question? He's like, yeah. I said, do you want me to challenge you or do you want me to let you accept that reason for not winning this week? He was like, no, please challenge me. I go, dude, you said you're on hold for 45 minutes or an hour at that time. He's like, yeah. I'm like, why couldn't you be making phone calls then? What was his reasoning for not making the call? He's like, what if someone picked up? I'm like, that's it?

Who cares?

You're on hold for 45 minutes or an hour at a time, you're worried about the one person at the one second that picks up. Like, mentally, that's the block? Dude, hang up on one or the other.

Who cares?

Like, what do we—

hey, hold on.

Like, what?

But he went the whole week just over little objections like that, and he's like, shit.

You're right. I knew.

He goes, and I told myself when I was on hold that I should have been making phone calls right now, and I just didn't. So I said, you had this thought on your own, and you sold yourself and bought it. He was like, goddamn. That afternoon, right back on the phone. But I asked permission. Some people, you get to know them, maybe you don't have to ask permission quite the same. But ask them. I like to do it. I like to challenge people to get get them the roll-up thing we already talked about. Um, holding agents to high standards. I think, why shouldn't we? Especially if you ask them where they want to go. I've never had an agent be like, I want to be broke agent forever. They all tell me they want to win, right? So if they say they want to win, why would I not speak to them like they want to win, you know? And then delegation. I could talk about this for 19,000 hours. Again, I just talked to you guys about a little bit with my staff. I just, you know, now we have things in place like accountability methods, reporting, and they have to— they hold each other accountable in a lot of ways. My staff meets every— I think y'all meet every morning still. I don't say I don't even go in in the mornings. I just— I get in the way and I apologize. I don't know how many times a week for getting in the way. You know, I just want to do what I'm great at. And so we hire staff and I let them know, I just want to do what I'm great at and you do what you're great at. And everyone will win. And we have big vision. And the bigger vision we execute, the more y'all win. And so learning to trust people and delegate things to what their strength zones are is important. And that's hard sometimes. But you just trust. Dude, that's one of the best things I've ever done. Sometimes I'll get on and I'll start asking Amanda questions and I'll see it in her eyes where she's saying, please shut the fuck up. I see it. And I'm like— Do you want me to stop? So nod your head and I'll just walk out. And I just go. Or I'll start to say something, sometimes I'll just shut my mouth and just walk and just let them do their thing. You know what I mean? And it's been one of the most valuable things I've done in my career with managing people. It's just let them. And again, if she's going to disappear, she wouldn't do it. But it's like there are some levels that they just went MIA and didn't do their job. Obviously I can step in, but allowing the freedom and allowing— like, what I learned is when I get on people too much, then they're afraid to be creative, they're afraid to try things, they're afraid that everything they do is going to be poor. And I've made people— like, when I put pressure on people, I've learned most people crumble. They don't step up, you know. So I've had to learn a balance of it. And to be honest, Amanda does it. Like the whole dynamic in the office and who does what and gets what done. Like, I'm high-level idea guy, but the day-to-day, I just let her fucking do it, you know? And then each of them are starting to take on their own department, if you will. Oh, I'm gonna give you guys some free shit. So I don't have time to go into it all today. Some of y'all have seen me speak, you've seen me train on this stuff before, but this is one of the things that I use to help hold people accountable. There's 3 tools I use with every single agent I work with ever, and y'all can download them. There's— I'm not going to train on it today, but in the message, Amanda will make it work last night where you'll get a text and an email. You can download— there's a calendar I use to have people build out their schedule, a goal sheet, not quite as in-depth or as fancy as Dude went through, but it's a goals process. We kind of build out goals, and then an activity tracker where you track your stuff throughout the week. And in the email will be links to videos where I go through and train on it specifically, like how I use it, how I implement it. And I literally use this— I don't speak to an agent without them doing this stuff first. If I'm getting on the phone with an agent, they have this done before we talk, and I send them a video on how to use it. Um, so anyway, everybody good?

Cool.

Leadership, some of the stuff we've sort of touched on a little bit, but like, what kind of culture are you building? Is it the one you want? Are you intentional about it? You got to decide. Mine was a culture of winning. Mine was a culture of selling insurance. Mine was a culture of challenging people. Mine was a culture of like learning how to get through the hard times. We certainly— and we kind of have two different worlds because I have my staff culture and we have agents culture. And early on, I tried to build my staff in a culture like I had the agency, and they were very wildly different. 1099, I kill what I eat type people, staff, it's just they're very different, you know. So I had to learn how to manage both sides. Someone asked about culture in my office the other day, and I let them answer. I'm like, ask them. And I was fucking like, holy shit, I like what their answer was, you know what I mean? Because I only see it from my perspective. And at the end of the day, the office really is theirs, you know? It's like a staff meeting. I'm like, well, shit, they're the staff, they should meet, you know? And so it's like, be really aware of who you are and what you want it to be, you know? We're pretty lax. Like, we have, we have a high expectation of production, of accomplishing things, of growing, but we're super chill. Like I roll in in sweatpants and shorts every day. Like I don't, we don't dress up. I don't, it'd be weird if you did. Amanda wears those, what are those things called? Like slack, what are those fucking tight pants called? Leggings every day. I mean, like we're just not, we're super chill. Like they're like walking through no shoes on in the office with heaters and blankets and just, but we're productive as shit. You know, people come in and interview with us, and if I forget to warn them to not dress up, they feel really uncomfortable when they come in my office. But I don't care. It's just like, I don't— I don't— I don't— I'm definitely not doing the suit and tie thing. But if that's you, that's you. I don't— it doesn't matter. Just decide what you want it to be and be okay with it. And I just want to be authentic to us and authentic to me, you know. And that's, that's what we've built. And I need people around me that understand me and understand my vibe. And, you know, Reese is like super creative and he's working on a social and he'll do stuff now where he'll put like some of the stuff he's made will, if you'll see it, will have like graffiti on it. Because like I grew up in the hood and I like graffiti, and he's like, oh, that's what you want? I'm like, or get effing paid workshop. You know how many people are like offended? I'm like, I don't care, it's who I am. Some people are, dude. I get comment, this one didn't, this one said the whole word. We picked, he made two, he's made that you're probably effing up, and that you're probably fucking up. And I'm like, I would definitely say the full word. Let's just put that up there. But one of the most common— it's not often, but the negative stuff I get on YouTube is about how much I cuss and that it's unprofessional and I'm going to hell and Jesus thinks this about— it's all kinds of weird shit, dude. But I'm like, okay, you're not my people, all good, you know what I mean? I don't need everybody. So it's just— but it's comfortable for me. So just pay attention to who you are and what you want it to be. I think recognition is hugely important for people. You know, if your agents, if you aren't recognizing them, or if you are, they're going to be two wildly different people. I still to this day remember 2012 when I was an accountant selling part-time, the dude that ran the IMO I worked for that most of you probably know. He brought me on stage and gave me and a bunch of other people and gave me a pin with some label and name on it. For issuing $2,500 for the month. Swear, dude. Andy. Andy. $2,500 for the month. I got brought on stage, given a pin. 12 years later, I'm still fucking talking about it. When I was a part-time accountant, bro, the $2,500 that month meant a lot to me. Paid all my bills. I was excited. Dude recognized me. I was fired up. You know? Now, sometimes you can fall into a rut and be like, dude, if you ain't issuing $100,000 a month, I don't even talk to you. I've gone there. Again, staff, they like to be recognized. I try to treat mine well and take them on cool trips and feed them and do— you know what I mean? I try to let them enjoy some of their time best I can. It's not my strength zone by any means. But I allow them to— especially Amanda's good at it. It's like, hey, give them something. I'll sometimes be like, hey, just give them something. She's like, what? I'm like, I don't know. I think I should do— just give them something. And she'll figure it out. I don't even know what they get, but I know something sometimes, you know. Um, and then I think, again, we talked about earlier, promoting stuff is wildly important. A true leader doesn't need to take on everything, you know what I mean? It's like, promote people, promote other people in your world that are doing well. It's a big part of it. And just press— that's like the pressure of this thing. I've watched so many people crumble in this industry because it gets quote unquote hard. I'm like, buckle up. Y'all think the money is going to make it not be hard? Like, I hope that's not what you think. One day when I make $40 grand, $30 grand, $80 grand, $100 grand, whatever the number, whatever the number is, one day I hope I make insert your number. Pressure ain't going away. The hard shit ain't going away. Expensive mistakes just get more expensive. So it's like, if you can't learn to handle the pressure where you're at now, do you really think you deserve to get to that next level? You know what I mean? So last one, and I'll be done here in a minute, Cody. Expectations. What do you expect of new agents? Pick what you want. I know what I want. For me, I expect people to be coachable and do the shit they say they're going to do. And if you don't do those things, I'll quit you before I— before you quit me. So if you're not coachable and you're not doing what you say you're going to do, I don't understand why you involve me. I've never understood that. You're not coachable and you don't do the things, and then you call me. I'm like, are you looking for a different answer? It's always my question. I'm like, do you want a different answer than I gave you the first time? But you got to decide who you want to be. And for me, I set expectations of this thing being hard and having to get a lot of nos and striking out. And I relate it to baseball and Maddux and becoming a doctor and you have to go to school for 12 years and to make whatever, you know what I mean? Like, I set expectation.

I don't—

I'm not the guy that's like, I know this dude Cody and he has the best leads ever, I love you dude, and you're going to make $8 million your first week and you're going to get ready and you're going to build it. I'm not that guy. I'm not. I just— I'm not. It's going to be hard. You're going to get cancels. When I interview people, I'm like, hey dude, first week you send Cody $1,000. And this is not a thing on Cody, I do this any lead period, and you get 30 people to pick up the phone and they all tell you to fuck off, how are you going to handle it? That's one of the questions on my interview with agents. And if they go, can that happen? I'm like, no, no, it's going to happen. I just want to know how you're going to handle it. That's on the interview. Why, dude? I want them coming into it that they're gonna have to fight. There's going to be a grind. You're going to have to invest. You're— this is— you're learning something new, you know. Everybody wants it easy. I'm like, you understand supply and demand. If this thing were easy, meaning if every lead Cody made booked on their own, had the checkbook ready, and bought insurance on their own, do you know what he could sell that lead for? Supply and demand. It's like, be careful what you ask for.

Right?

The people that do well at this get through the hard part, and the competition isn't really that hard if you just outlast that stage. It's just really not. Most people are weak, you know? So if I had any strength, it was just continuing to go through it. And trust me, I have quit a couple times, but I wanted to quit. Shit, sometimes still 5 days a week. But I like the challenge, and I want people to understand that early on. Certainly questions to create lightbulb moments. I've done that a few times here. I like to get people to discover things versus tell them things. If I can get them to go like, oh shit, that's what he means. There's so much power in that versus me going, hey, you should do this because of that. If I can think of what I want to say to someone and the point I want to get across and then bite my tongue and think of a question that helps them discover that on their own. Magic in that. It's magic in it, dude. And then expectations of yourself, I think, are super important. Well, we talk about that forever, but I see a lot of people getting frustrated at agents or, I don't know, your favorite football player for not knowing their plays. And you don't know your numbers. You may not find it weird. Or you get mad at the chef at the steakhouse that cooked your steak well done when you ordered it medium rare. And you get livid. And you didn't perform basic things in your business this week. I mean, I find it weird how many— how much expectations we put on other people, but we have very few of ourselves. None of us are perfect, but I try to just be cognizant of that stuff best I can and go like, what can I put on? What can I own? 'Cause if I own it, I can change it. If it's always the ump or the chef or the agent or the play, it's like I can't— I have no control over that stuff and I feel very limited and stuck all the time. Last part, if you have any interest, we created this like— the way I've taught this thing for 12 years, this is— I talked a lot about the mistakes on this stuff. And implementing and doing things the right way doesn't happen overnight. It takes time. I've been doing this 12 years. There's still people I work with to this day that when you've grown an agency, like teaching people how to sell, after like 60 days, there's nothing to teach. Like you're either going to do it or you're not. It doesn't get that deep. It doesn't get any more complicated. Building a team, that shit changes every day forever. There's always challenges. You know what I mean? And as you got 5 agents or 10 or 20, or she has 60 over 20, it's very wildly different at each stage. Um, so this roadmap I've been teaching for 12 years, we've had, I don't know, probably 6 or 7 people in our agents. I sold my agency, got acquired 5 years ago or so. I've had probably, I think, 6 in our agency also sell theirs for multi-seven figures. We have, I don't know, a handful of 7-figure annual writers on their own pen. We probably have 500 writers doing over half a million bucks on their own pen and countless 6 figures. Probably have 150 team builders in our agency. And this is the stuff I teach. If you have any interest in looking at your stuff, it's free, you know. But I do only want to chat with people who are looking for something kind of longer term, really make some changes. If you want, you scan that, it's a little link to the calendar that you can jump on next week. I think we opened up a couple days. And on that, I don't know if you want me to do questions or you want to wrap. Okay, I don't know what the timing is, but I've used this like 6 times already.

I've got—

huh? I said I've used this 6 times.

I've spent 3 hours.

I keep, I keep give— I keep giving you free coupons. It's like Chuck E. Cheese over here. Anyway, appreciate y'all. If you, if you need anything, I'll be around. Love it.

Let's do this. Let's do a group discussion about John's talk, but let's do it standing for a few minutes. Takeaways from John's talk so far. Takeaways. That's one, mistakes aren't going away, but if you repeat mistakes, you're stupid. Get feedback from people who are better than you. Yeah, and tracking is important. Doesn't have to be in depth, but you gotta know your hunt. Do what you're great at. That's a big thing.

I like, uh, Winston-Salem's notification.

Good, good. I was over there. He mentioned this sort of when he was talking, but he looked at me. I was, I was invited to speak at the GAG, uh, Go High Level Conference this year. They have 5 million users, 3 million businesses that use their product. They are a 9-figure company, shoot, maybe worth 10 figures before long, I don't know.

Yeah.

But they have some huge names. I'm talking to people who collect millions of dollars around the world speaking. So you look through the list and you've got like This guy, this guy, this lady, this lady, this guy, and we'll meet you over there. I'm like, John, I feel like I went to an early— I don't want to be here to speak. I'm like, it's like you were the Wetmore baby kid. Like, why am I speaking, right? We all do that. Y'all do it when it comes to hiring people, recruiting, all that good stuff. Yeah, I do it when I'm like invited to a big stage. And what's funny is I reach out to you because we have like a Slack that we all have on this team. Because we're affiliated with them. And they came to us like a year ago and said, a year, a little over a year ago, and said, hey, we want more market share in the insurance industry. We would like to hire you to be like the brand ambassadors. I'm like, that's cool. I'm like, what does that mean? They're like, well, it's kind of like a professional athlete signing, like, I'm like, I still don't know what that means, but it sounds nice.

Right?

That's gonna go right to me. I'm in!

You get your own set of shoes?

Yeah.

Yeah, cool. I can sell them.

They shoot you. And I think you're paid. Like, I think that's good too. Go high-level, shoot you. But I, um, I reached out to them the other day and was like, hey, a couple things I had questions about. This was on Slack. And one of the questions was, what do you guys think I should speak about? Very first answer, um, your special sauce. Doesn't tell me at all, but that's great. But I get it. Like, if I look back over the last 8 and a half, almost 9 years, people see us as building a brand to help instruct students. And I do think we've— to John's point earlier, I do think we've done that as well as anybody at building a brand. I'm like, you know what, that's what we teach. So now Slack, Dylan, everybody, like, dude, I need help with this, like, branding talk, because normally I do all my PowerPoints and I hate doing PowerPoints. So I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna bring Dylan in and have him help me with this. And it's— I'm already, like, multiple weights, like, lifted because I'm getting feedback and then I'm also delegating, right? Which helps so much. So I think my favorite thing you said, though, like, during your entire talk which I struggled with for so long, was setting proper expectations. So if I want someone to do something, like, I need to tell them exactly what I want to do. Um, or when I hire new sales reps— I used to do this, but I don't do this anymore.

The team does it.

If I'm in an interview, or their very first day when they sit— they are sitting in our sales meeting, or I mean that I will tell them that. I will tell them, I don't care what you know. I want you to learn the way we do things. You were successful selling cars? Good for you. You're not selling cars anymore. You're selling Koyasis. I need someone who's gonna show up even when you got a little tummy ache. I need someone who is coachable and will listen to a to do exactly what I say and do exactly what I say. And I need someone who's going to show up and stay focused and work when they're here. If you think you can handle that, great, I'll help you make 6 figures. But if you get confused about any of that, this is not going to work and I'm going to get rid of you really quick. And that talk seems to work now because I get people's attention really quick. I can do it without being a jerk, totally. However, I have to set proper expectations because what I used to do is I would interview somebody and I'd be like, dude, oh my gosh, you make $160 grand selling cars, that's amazing, wow, we're so lucky to have you. And then they would come in on day one, I'd be like, man, this cat, like in front of the whole sales team, I'd be like, hey, that dude made $16 grand, that's a lot of selling cars, but he left that to be here, like Amazing, dude. Like, won't you talk and share? It's like, this is his first day, he shouldn't speak at all, really, you know what I mean? Like, but I'm, I'm like, instead of me setting proper expectations and setting what's going to happen, I'm like so thrilled that some random person that was successful with Carver's wants to come sell for us, right? And then I end up delegating, or I immediately do, or like crazy Immediately, with no proof or reason for praise yet, of complimenting like crazy when they haven't done anything. Um, that is a mistake. People need to earn their spot on the team, and I don't care how good they did somewhere else. I only care how good they do here. That right there has changed my ability to be like brutally honest and myself when I'm talking to staff. So much easier. And over the years, I've had a bunch of staff where I felt like I could not be honest with them, or I like, just like, I don't want to offend them because they're really good. I don't want them to leave, but if they leave, we're freaking screwed, you know? No, no, like, I'm gonna be me. I'm gonna treat people well. Like, Laura's gonna talk tomorrow about things we do for our people, how much we love, want, and care. But also, to John's point too, I'm the individual that I am going to kick butt whether someone ever recognizes or tells me I'm doing a good job. Period. I don't need it. Do I like hearing it from my wife? Yes. Do I need it?

No.

However, I, because of that, I've been terrible at stopping and saying, dude, Keith, you freaking crushed it on the Ultimate Agent. Like, oh my gosh, amazing. Like, I love this, I love this, I love this. And there's been weeks where he's spent hours producing a show and I didn't say anything. Now, have I gotten better at that over the years? Yes, because the team still needs to hear how good of a job they're doing along the way, especially as they earn it over time. And so now when I get back from a trip, I go and greet everyone in the entire office. Check them all out with a fist bump. Like, I take literally 10, 15 minutes to go speak to literally everyone in the office. Is that my personality? No, I'm like, I'm ready to get back to work, right? Ready to do something, sell something. However, even if they're on a call, I at least like dap them up. And those little things make such a difference because it is not my style, but it, but it does. And need them to still— like, uh, a sales rep used to work with me named Derek. He made 6 figures. He was making like 6 bucks an hour booking haircuts, then came here and he made 6 figures like several years in a row. And he always said that he enjoyed being here when he was connected to the power source, and he viewed me as the power source. Your team is going to view you as the power source. When that's the case, what are we doing to make sure they stay connected to the power source? Am I always available? No. Am I traveling crazy? Yes. Am I great at sitting down and small talking for 6 minutes on how someone's dog is doing? Not a chance. But I'm trying to get better at that because it is still valuable. It is still important. I don't like pets, like, let's be honest. But some people do, right? Most people do, actually. I could live without ever seeing another pet in my entire— or animal in my entire life. Most people cannot relate to that at all. It's true. It's a good catch. What's funny is he's like, you're gonna say anything about the problem?

And then 10 minutes.

Hey Cody, something I was going to say that I think is probably important for all of us, and John touched on, is the importance of having mentors. Like, he's really strong because he had mentors that told him something that he needed to hear, and he had people around him he could trust. And he had fostered a kind of an environment where they could speak, uh, candidly, and that was really valuable. And think about that, obviously we all need mentors along the way, but in order to influence the people that we lead, we can be a boss and tell people what to do, or we can become a mentor where they trust what we give them. I think there's a difference between being a mentor and a boss, and And so that's one thing we really need to think about. If you want to influence people, you need to become that mentor. And you can't assign yourself, hey, I'm going to be your mentor. Those people will select you. And so part of it's the relationship to become— obviously, like, I can tell, you know, he's got a huge heart, great intentions. And sometimes we just have to be mindful of how we come across so that we can really get the attention piece out. That's where we then finally become better mentors. Anyway, that was my big, big aha.

That part's easy for me.

I have a lot of empathy, so that's— I love connecting with people.

I've coached college basketball, middle school principal, and then one thing I did every day, I was the sales manager at a Chevrolet dealership. Even there, everyone was I talk to everybody, every employee, every day. I walk through the shop, talk to them, talk to the parts guys.

It just builds that more of a relationship.

When you got to go to them and have a hard discussion, they know you're not just being an asshole.

They know you like them, you love them, you care for them.

But they're a little smart, they're smart enough to say, all right, I messed up.

You can, you can be an asshole hole if you are meant to. You can tell people exactly what they need to hear because they still trust you, right?

My goal was to never be a boss. It was or it is? Was.

I never want to be called boss.

Leader, mentor, epic.

Anyway. Sir.

Yeah, that's good. Good feedback, man. Very good feedback, man. Um, maybe think about something else for a second there. I can add on to what you were just saying a second ago about, uh, getting animals or dogs. You've been shouting me out a lot this week, and like my girlfriend knows that you've been shouting me out loud this week, and my kids know that you've been shouting me out this week because I go home, I talk about it, it comes up in conversations. Yeah. So heads up on that. That's awesome. That's cool. And that's a fact in English too. Like here's an example of that, right? You maybe think what's A lot of companies, when they do gatherings for the team, they have like dinners, Christmas parties, whatever, right? They don't want them— a lot of, a lot of times they just want it to be the staff. They don't want to bring their significant other, their spouse, or their family. When we do things like that, we always encourage them to at least bring their spouse, and that has made a big difference too. Because Keith and I get along great, right? But if his spouse is like, hey, I don't like— because that's an example. If Keith goes home and complains about something that Cody did, which it definitely happened, I'm sure. Um, if I don't have a relationship— we have no relationship with her at all. She doesn't know Cody or understand Cody. If he does enough of that, she's gonna start to doubt whether he should work with us at all.

Yeah, loses support.

Totally. Like you guys, like as an example, um, most agents, they go, they, they go, they're struggling early, they go home and they complain to their significant other, and then they wonder why their spouse stops believing in them and stops saying that, and starts saying that they should go find a real job and "Are you sure that— honey, are you sure this is the career for you?" But we train them to do that whether we believe it or not. Same thing with set. Same thing with team. We are training them what we want to happen. Same thing with getting to know the spouse, right? It's such a big piece that, again— I'll also, too, like, I've never been good with— I've never been good with names. Now, I can just keep saying in Turkish, "Dentre, I'm getting better," right? Now, once I have a relationship with somebody, then I remember their name forever. But until they start coming around, dude, I struggle with names. Like, literally, my team gives me a list of everybody that's coming to the event, because they're like, "Dude, unless Cody hangs out with them, he's just not gonna know what their name is." And it's true, but I can blame it on, "Well, I met a bunch of men." Or I need to just get better at that because calling somebody by their name and getting to know them is valuable. Like, one of the biggest reasons why I felt like we've— as we've grown and helped a lot of people, some people eventually slip away from the brand. That happens to every brand, right? I used to go to Cardone events, 10x for years. I haven't been for a few years. I've slipped away from the brand. I rarely consume Cardone content. Well, a lot of times, and I felt this, I felt like he was there for a time frame when I needed his text. I feel like agency owners sometimes are like, Cody was there and helped me in the time frame when I needed it, which is great. However, if I'm not traveling and getting to know Sean and Shannon and like getting to know their families, like spending spending time with them, like trying to build a relationship, then they are going to slip— they're all— everybody's going to slip away at some point, most likely, but they may slip away sooner than they could have if I hadn't tried. Same thing with— same thing with agents, right? Same thing. I guarantee you John knows a, a, a bunch about a lot of his top leaders and he spent a bunch of time with the top producers and all those things. Not my style, but man, I've tried to make a concerted effort. Like, as an example, um, and this is part of the team, right? I'm sitting here this morning, I'm finalizing some notes and some slides, people are coming in at 8:30, I still need to greet everyone. I still need to say hello. I still need to work the room, right? I still need to like share stories and like hang out for a few minutes. Yeah, I know you're busy. You may be here for a workshop, but you flew to Springfield, Missouri. You know, like, a lot of people don't want to do that. So that's like all the little things that are intangibles or things that we don't think of. That not necessarily— like, I'm not necessarily good at personality-wise, but they matter so much, so much. Setup.

You're way better than the average person. A couple add-ons that I got, you know, from John.

I think that subliminally you did this, but I think it's a key thing.

Number one, you know, I picked up on, you know, who else do you know, whatnot.

You gotta meet somebody who's still out there winning, you know. That's a key thing, you know. You want to be on the winning team. Do you want to succeed?

That kind of thing.

The other thing you got to be willing to do is you have to be willing to create FOMO, fear of missing out, right? So what, you know, what I do, I don't— I should teach and train agents how to show people how to get out of debt. When I say, you know, right away, let's Cody, let me ask you a question just to make sure this is a good fit for you because it's not for everybody. That's what I like to do. I took away a little bit, right? I say, do you think 10 people that need to take the right 'Yeah, we can help you out with that. We love the product.' And what's everybody gonna say? Well, yeah, because they want to be on the winning team, right? So I'd say, 'Great, do that, and do 6 of those in 90 days. I'll pay for your software.' But I've taken the objection off the table. I made Phil a winner. But I also said, 'Hey, if it's not for you, I kind of didn't want to do this.' Yeah. Some people too, uh, to that point, some people want to— some people need, like, some people on my team, like, um, okay, Joey on our sales team, super relational dude. He just wants to talk to me all the time, right? I love Joey, he's awesome, he's crushing it. I don't want to talk to Joey all the time. However, ever since I started giving Joey, like, Hey, that is crazy to say, but it's true. When we bought the marketing company, I called Joey by the wrong name for 6 months. I called him Keith. I got 2 of the worst producers on the team mixed up. Yeah, not this Keith, a different Keith.

So much earlier and so much—

Yeah, worst producer. I called Joey Keefe for like 6 months, drove him freaking crazy. And I'm like, well dude, you're not selling, so like it's really easy to, you know, let you go, forget who you are. And but guess what? Then I started calling by the right name, spending more time with him, helping him. He writes, he puts up $20,000 to $40,000 at minimum every month now. And he was terrible for a year. He was our worst salesperson. He had success in car sales and whatever else. Most car salesmen are freaking lazy as can be and they'd never be one with me. However, he did good at car sales. He sucked for a year with us. And I was like, and I was hard on him the entire time. Like, this dude is never gonna make it. And he's freaking— but what happened too is he found his home, he found his place. Here's an example. We started the Ultimate Agent Academy, $49 a month, and we do a group coaching call once a week, a couple other things, but that's pretty much it. And they get some courses and they get access to the school community, whatever else. And I hate managing a community, being in Facebook groups and like talk to them and chat, like sitting there, all this stuff, right? He loves this, loves it. So he was like, hey, I'll manage this community for you, and I'll like, you know, get to know everybody, and I'll be really active, and I'll kick off the calls for you, and I'll invite other guest speakers to be on the calls, and I'll even do an onboarding with every member. Like, what do you mean I don't want to? He's like, I don't care, I'll I'll onboard them all. While I'm on there, I'll backline and find other money and deals. And I'm like, hey, now he leads our community and manages the community piece, and he is killing it, and he's crazy happy because he found something with some responsibility, something that lit him up, something he's happy about. Well, but for a year He slapped.

Now?

Dude, he would literally run through a wall for me. He's so happy now, it's amazing. Brett, who manages all of our tech stuff and our engineering and leads and adds, he started out on the sales team. And my wife noticed that, hey, he's going to school for coding, he probably don't want to be on the sales team forever. Like, he's going to school for something else. Right, because he was going back to school for that. So we moved him over. Freaking amazing move. Um, who else? We've got a few other people that like started with different positions, right? Cassidy started out as a social media manager. Now she's running the entire operation. So a lot of times we hire someone for one thing and they actually end up being a better fit somewhere else. I was thinking about something this morning where— where I've been kind of—

here's one example.

I get frustrated, as you've heard, I get frustrated with staff really easily. Really easily. And there's one staff member specifically, actually probably three, but let's stick with one, that you can just tell something's What's going on? Not as happy, not as productive, we're all over the place, like something. And so what we do now versus just like getting upset and attacking them and getting pissed off and firing them and all this stuff, right? Because that's the normal response of the entrepreneur business owner. Now we go meet with them one-on-one and we say We love you, you're amazing, but we can tell something is going on because you're not the same. What's up? And then we listen. All 3 of them were going through something personally. One of them— now we're not getting specifics for sure— but one of them, um, please won't mention names, their parents were going through a divorce. After being married for decades. Another one, their father was just diagnosed with cancer. Another one, they were getting heat from their spouse because they were traveling with me a lot. Right? All valid stuff. All those personal things was affecting them in the office. Anytime someone ever gets disconnected or disengaged, it is almost entirely personal and nothing that we are actually doing at the office. That's something that never gets talked about, it never gets brought up. But that piece right there, if you look at all those team members that have been here 3, 4, 5, 6 years, right, half the office, that's why. Because instead of me getting frustrated and upset and sending them packing, I just sit down and ask and Lauren's way better at that than me, Cassie's better at that than me. However, if they matter, you've invested a bunch of time and money into them, it is worth checking on them and seeing what is going on. Okay, a bunch of the stuff I've never read, I'm sharing. It happens when you get these workshops and you get all these ideas of things that have happened. Um, so hopefully that's helped. Okay, but those are things again that made a huge difference. Huge difference.