I Taught 10 Life Insurance Agents How to Make $40,000 Per Month

Take out the goals. There's a goal sheet. See that one? So a lot of this crosses over. Like, even for you, Tony, with the schedule, even with this thing, like, you may know your shit, but what this helps me with is the building side. One, it's really simple. I do it every time. Every time I meet with someone, every time I meet with a group, Every time someone's like, hey, what do I want to accomplish? And I'll be honest, Amanda made these look good because I never had a sheet. I just would like scribble it on a piece of paper. So it doesn't need to be crazy deep. Yeah, it's— and again, I think for some of you guys that are trying to figure out just how to get above water, it'll help. It obviously— goal setting helps no matter where you're at. Um, but this is one of the— I've done this exercise for 12 years with agents. And what I'm going to have, if y'all will, we're gonna— I'm gonna have you guys fill them out. I'll explain it, but also put your, your name, email, and cell number on it. And we're going to take a copy, which I thought of this on the drive, Amanda. And then every once in a while, we're gonna, we're gonna send it to you to remind you that you had shit. Yeah, I invented something new on the drive in while I was sitting at a damn red light that I I thought that was going to be broken. I said there were like 7 minutes. I'm going to have them put their name, email, cell on here. And we're going to take a copy after. So process of this thing is really simple. I mean, goals are what they are. Right? You fill them in, whatever they are. Keep it as simple or as long as you want. You can certainly add to it later if you think of things. But basics. For me, it was I wanted to early on We have them here. I have mine here. Thank you. So I do mine literally every year. Just for perspective, I always share these with people. My goals in 2013 were to go full-time in insurance. Like, that was early. Get to a 70% comp, have 5 riders, donate $2,000 to church, buy Steph a house. Write an annuity every month, read 12 books for the year, get referrals, win a free carrier trip, make 70 grand, plan a trip to the Bahamas, and hire an admin. That was my goals 11 years ago. Make 70 grand. Yeah. 14, but enjoy more moments with the famatics, volunteer to help more random people, read 2 books a month, earn enough to put Maddox in private school, issue $200 grand and $500 grand for the team for the year was the goal. We'll do $250 million this year. 10 years ago, my vision was $500 grand for the year for the whole team. Save $30 grand for a new house, donate $5 grand to church, hire a CPA, and get a mentor. 2015, it jumped up. Deposit $41,000 in a month. I heard Mark Mead do a call where he deposited $41,000 that month, and I'm like, I want that, that sounds dope, I want what Mark has. So that's why I wrote $41,000. It was a weird number, but he had made that the previous month on the training call. And then I put not happy with $8,000 to $10,000 a month at all, and I underlined it all. And then I felt bad, so I crossed out happy because I was fired up, because if you remember back here, it was make $70 grand for the year. So I was kind of like, why am I not happy? Because I was happy. I said I'd be happy here, but now I'm not happy. So I crossed it out. I put not satisfied. So literally my hand— like, I've kept these suckers for 10, 11 years. Yeah. So I put grow team to $1 million a year, stay on a board— that thing that doesn't exist anymore. 2015, deposit $20,000 to $25,000 every month issue $250,000 to $300,000, double every year, and make $1 million by 2017. So within 2 years, I went from making $70,000 as a vision to making $1 million. I mean, I didn't see $1 million, probably. I know that wasn't even on the radar. Set up retirement, be the number one writer in the team, and then I did the math on how to make the million a year, the team volume, and how much I had to do. And then I put pass more people and I listed their names on people I wanted to grow more than. And then do a million in annuities for the year. '16 was pay off debts and I listed my debts. I owed $21,000 on a truck, $20,000 on a car, $10,000 student loans, $20,000 in credit cards. Buy a new house, make over half a million bucks, team $3 million for the year, help 20 agents get to $20,000 a month, personal development. In 2018, I guess we skipped '17. $15 million a year agency, helped develop 4 direct— call them 140, like top-tier legs, top comp— add a secondary source of cash flow, um, help 2 people to get to a million plus in income, mentor 20 people over $250 grand, have no debt including my house. Pay off cars and pool in 2018. So, I don't know. That's where we ended at 2018. But it's like stuff like that. You know what I mean? And so for me, it's— this is an exercise I do every year with agents. Or especially when they were direct. We used to do them in my office. I'd be like, "Hey, who wants to do goals this year?" Around October, I'd start to do them. And then I'd sit down, I meet with everybody. And what I love about this is I only listed goals. But in my head and the way— what I learned is people list goals, it's like New Year's resolutions that sounds good for 3 and a half days and then everybody quits on it. So what I started doing was what are the things you need to add to hit those goals? So what do you need to add to your world? Me, I had to add like running X amount of appointments, right? I had to add certain lead flow. I had to add— for me was I want to start going to the gym just to get my mind right. I wanted to be the first one in the office every day. Like, you know what I mean? I had very specific things I had to add to my world in order to achieve those goals. And what I believe, some people understand that because you're like, oh, I need to— ah, Monday's my day. I saw a post today, no more 19-dot guy post, and I love you if you're watching. 19 dials isn't really dialing. Tomorrow I start killing it. And I'm like, he probably tells himself that every other fucking month, you know what I mean? Which I hate for people. But so for me, it was like, cool, add. I'm going to dial. But the best thing I ever did was the remove. So in order to add stuff, we all only got 24/7 in a day. If you're going to add stuff, you sure as shit better talk about what you're going to remove to add the stuff or it will not stick. So for me, I had to remove sleeping in. That was big for me. I was just, quite frankly, I was kind of a bum in the mornings. I could sleep till 9:00. I could still, if I wanted to today, I could still sleep till 10:00 or 11:00 AM if I wanted to. So I have to— I'd set an alarm every day to get up. I can't get up early without an alarm. But I don't want to be that dude that sleeps in. I had to give up TV. I was a junkie, like a junkie, especially sports. But I even watched crap TV. I mean, I would watch reality, all kinds of shit. Big Brothers, and my wife loved Housewives. I used to watch them all with her. All the like challenge type shows, All those things. The one where they travel around the world, whatever that is called. You know what I'm talking about? Where they get on a plane and they fly. Yeah, the race one. I used to watch that. Big Brother. And then there's another one. Anyway, I forget the name where they do challenges on the beach and shit. It's been around for like 100 years. Survivor. With Rogan, though. Yeah, Survivor. I used to watch— oh, Rogan. I used to watch that one too. A lot of people forget about that one. So I had to remove those things. And then for me, I put football because I was a junkie. I'd watch from Thursday night all the way to Monday night. And then I'd watch replays of everything. I watched live. I'd watch on SportsCenter 87 times. And then I used to play flag football. I played flag football every Sunday for like 15 years. And I was like, I want bigger things in life. Yeah. From the time I was 20 to 35, I played every Sunday. Like obsessed. I played on like 4 different teams. I'd triple in on 4-man. Team, a 7-man, I did a travel team. I flew to Dominican Republic and played on like a Team USA flag football tournament. I mean, I was like obsessed. I have an obsessive type personality. So I have to be careful and pay attention to where I put it. So now, today, it's like in my health and then in doing crazy shit, you know what I mean? So I just, I got to place it in the right spot or it's bad, you know? Now, I'm like, One of the things I'm working on mentally, and it's gotten really easy, is like I got to quit fucking drinking. Because I like drinking. You give me a fucking Lemon Drop Martini or vodka, I like— I enjoy having a nice drink. But I'm like, it slows me down. I'm slower the next day. I feel poor at the gym. You know what I mean? I eat like shit when I drink. I get a fat— you know what I mean? So I'm like, I got to work on cutting that out. So I'm just always like, what do I got to remove? And so I have goals. And the reason I love this exercise is because when I start doing the shit I say I'm going to give up, it ties directly to me that says you won't hit your goals if you keep doing this thing. You know what I mean? Like I have a lot of physical goals today. Just it helps me mentally, but I like— I do. I'm like trying to do certain physical challenges. So like if I want to drink, I'm like, I mean, you know, it feels good for a little while. But it's going to delay your physical goals you want to achieve. You know what I mean? So if I didn't— if I watched Survivor, it meant I couldn't put Maddox in private school. If I started watching football all weekend, it meant I couldn't buy the house for Steph. You know what I mean? And I just would always— I don't know if guilt to myself is the right way, but I just paid attention to the shit I verbally said I wanted to stop. Because that's the hardest thing for people. And I always say, we all know the shit we got to give up. We all know the dumb stuff we do. Everyone knows it. Fair? We all have our vices. We all have the stuff that we were addicted to. And we wish we didn't do them, but we do them. And so for me, having it written down, I'm a big— I do what I say I'm going to do. So sometimes I put stuff out there just to hold myself accountable because I hate being the guy that says I'm going to do X and then I don't do it. Tool. So I'm like super careful. I did something with Amanda yesterday which we aren't telling anyone yet, but I'm like, you better do it before I change my mind. I'm saying it out loud. You better— I'm telling you, you better do X before I change my mind because I said it, you know. Um, so I just— again, this exercise works phenomenal with agents, and if you want to help yourself get to another point, it certainly helps, but you got to be the one to hold yourself accountable. So it does help on both sides of things. So just take like 5, 10 minutes, fill it out, add what you want. We'll take copy again. Put your name, phone number, email on it, and we're going to come up with some kind of thing where— and if you all want to do one together, separate, pick your poison. It doesn't matter to me. Did you get it to them too?

Amanda, did you get it to me? Yeah. Okay.

And again, they— y'all can just write it on a piece of paper if you— if it looks like that. You can do it formal later. Goals, things you have to add, things you have to remove. Just get a scratch piece of paper, write it on the back. I pick things to like push me. If I'm not chasing something, I'm useless. I have to chase something. So not only in business, but personal stuff. So right now, like, I think as I've been probably— I think I'm going on— I think this is gonna be my 5th year, like, really working out. 2019, 2020, end of 2020, dude, I had a fucking gut. I was sloppy. Like, it was not fun. And I just didn't like it. And that was one of my things. Like, I got to stop. And I got to do the— you know what I mean? That was just one of my deals. And I had to get out of it. So I lost like 50 pounds. And then— but I had no like muscle. I wasn't really like moving weight. So I'm like, shit. Now I want to start moving weight and get like defined. You know what I mean? Doing things. I think like anything, after a while when you start working out, like you see a lot of progress right away. And this obviously applies to business stuff as well, but you start seeing a lot of progress because you make a change. And it's like, ooh, weight comes off, weight comes off, weight comes off. You start moving weight. It's like, oh shit, dude, I got shoulders. Oh my God, there's some— you know what I mean? A little ab poking out. Like you start to see progress. But after a while, bro, that progress stops. Like it's hard for me to see progress today. Just I work out every fucking day. Like how much more can I work out? How much better can I eat to go to the next level? Tough. So it gets— I get kind of bored working out same routine. Monday you do chest, Tuesday you do back, whatever it is. I'm not built for that. Um, so I do like, um, I did Orangetheory for a while where they tell you like you go in, it's like, all right, for an hour. And they— I don't know what I'm doing when I walk in. They just tell you do this, do 20 of these, do run for this long, put your thing up, put your thing down, row this many meters, and they just fucking yell at you with music. I like that type of shit. That's all it is. It's fucking amazing. And then you're competing, like I'm competing with the grandma next to me, because you know what I mean? Like, it's like, ah, she's running faster than me. What the hell? She's 62. What am I doing? You know? But after a while, like, I got, I got, I got in a groove with Orange Theory and I could kill it. I was always like done first, do the quick, and it just was like, all right, I need— so about maybe Memorial Day, whatever holidays before Memorial Day, a buddy of mine invited me to CrossFit. And I'm like, I haven't done that in like 15 years. I did that pre-insurance for a couple of years. And I liked it, but I was 30. And I'm like, yo, that's a lot of— you all know what CrossFit is? It's fucking crazy. So I had fear of it. So I'm like, heavy weight, Olympic lifting, I don't need to do none of that. I'm too old for that shit. And so me, Orange Theory was like a watered-down version. You know, they got like a 20-pound dumbbell. I'm like, oh yeah, I can do that. So anyway, he invites me and I'm like drinking. So then I say yes because I'm drinking and I'm like, well, now I can't not go because I said yes. So I go on this whatever holiday it was, I don't even remember. And he goes every day at 5:30 AM. I'm like, yo, I'm not a 5:30 AM workout kind of guy. That's not my jam. But he goes, holiday, they go at 7. So I'm like, all right, fine, I'll get up. We went to bed at midnight. I had like too many more, you know what I mean? I'm like, I'll get up. So I go, we do the workout. And I was like, I learned that day, I mean, and I was in deep, this was 6 months ago. I was like, not even, it was probably March or April. I don't know what holidays before, some kind of holiday that Aflac, he works for Aflac, they had off that like, so it was probably a fake holiday. Yeah, so I show up and this fool's moving weight, doing like crazy, just, I was spent, you know? And again, it's relatively easy stuff, but it's like they do the— what do they call these things? You basically have weight up here and you squat and then push it overhead. Thrusters. Thrusters. So we're doing those and they were doing just whatever, cleans and, you know, I mean, like pull-ups and stuff like this. And I'm like, yo, and he's a small dude, but he destroyed me at this workout, you know? It took him 35 minutes, it took me an hour and 10. I was like, oh my God. So I was like, God, I got to do something different. Then Labor Day, Memorial Day comes up and he does it again. And they have this workout called Murph. On holidays, they do like ones named after veterans or whatever. And it was like, I think it's— what are the numbers? It's something obnoxious. It's pull-ups, push-ups, squats. You run a mile. But they're in the hundreds. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's like, I think it's like 300 of each or something. Someone could probably Google it. I don't remember the exact number. Like Murphy's. Do you know the number? Yeah, I think it's 100 each. Yeah, it might have been like 100, 200, 300. I think it's 100 of one, 200 of the next, 300 of the next. It's something like that. And then you have to run— I think you run a mile before and after. So I'm like— he goes, we can go at 8. I'm like, bro, again, Memorial Day, we're definitely drinking at the club, you know what I mean? I'm like— he asked me 19 times. He's tipsy as hell. He keeps pushing me. He's like, I thought we were friends, you don't want to go? And I'm like, bro, Then Steph's like, you should go with them. I'm like, I'm trying to bail on this thing, woman. So finally I'm like, fine, I'm in. And he knows when I'm in, I'm in. And so then he goes, oh, and by the way, I go at 7, not 8, because he wants to go before the official class. He can get in before they open because he's a buddy with the dude, whatever. He's like, if we go at 7, it'll be just a few of us. If we go at 8, there's gonna be like 40 people there. It'll be a sweat fest. Like, fine.

So I get up at 7.

So again, same thing. He does it 42 minutes, which is beast mode. I did an hour and 15. But I finished. No, not terrible. I will finish stuff. I just won't— so I'm like, all right, next day I signed up to CrossFit. I'm like, I'm going to start going. But I go to a gym by my house because I'm not doing 5:30. So I go at 7:30 every day. So I start going. And what I'm getting through the hike, like maybe— I did a marathon in March. That I— and I'm not a runner by any means. I signed up in November, and I'm like, I can barely run 3 miles, like a 5K, barely do a 5K, but I signed up to a marathon. So I gave myself like— it was under 90 days. I'm like, I'm just going to figure it out. So I start running every day. I learn how to do it, finish the marathon slow, 7 hours, but I finished it. And I learned it was a trail marathon when I got there. No, I got to the marathon, I'm training on pavement, and I show up and it's gravel, rock, hilly, Oh bro, I was like, oh my God, I just might— because I didn't research, I just signed up. I'm like, I sign up, I'll figure it out later. I don't analyze a lot of stuff, I'm just like, go, you know. So anyway, during that time I also signed up for this thing, it's called 29029, which that many feet is the height of the peak of Mount Everest, 29,029 feet. No, no, no, no, not virtual. No, no, I'm not going to Mount Everest. There's an in-between. So Jesse Itzler, y'all familiar? It's a fucking beast. He owns an all-day running company, does this thing, Running Man in Rome, Georgia. He does all kinds of nutty stuff. He had Goggins come live with him. Y'all ever read any of his books? Itzler's books? His books are phenomenal.

Please don't say you're climbing Everest because that's his dream. His?

Yeah, I did. Uh, Ranier. I don't know what that is. I'm not that smart. No shit. Cool. That's high as shit, I guess. Well, it's 14,400. When did you do it? In 2014. Got it. You trained for— It's 14,000, you said? Cool. So half of it. Yep. So what he does is he rents out different mountains. The one I'm doing is Whistler, Canada. So you fly to Whistler, Canada. The mountain is 4,000 feet, 4 miles. So 4 miles distance, 4,000 feet elevation. You have 36 hours. I have to hike it 8 times. 36 hours to do it. So when I went to, yeah. So when I went to CrossFit on Memorial Day, I was like, I have no fucking shot. I gotta, so I signed up to CrossFit because it's a, dude, it does legs, it's like full body crazy workouts. So I'm kind of prepping with CrossFit stuff and a lot of the hikes. So it's like 31 miles in distance to get to the 29,000 in elevation. And again, it's timed. You have 36 hours to do it. And if you do it, you win like a little red hat that says 29029. And if you don't do it, you don't get the red hat. Yeah, yeah. To be clear, it's 6 Gs to go. No, to climb. Plus I have to fly there and stay in a hotel. I mean, it's like a $15,000 trip. And, uh, but for me it's something to chase. Yeah, I'm definitely— I will finish. I will. They will have to drag me off in an ambulance to not finish. Like, this is my mentality. Everyone's like, what's your plan? To finish. How many, how many are you going to hike per hour? I have no idea. I've never fucking done it. I'm not even going to look. I don't research it. I don't— I'm just— I know I have to hike a lot. So I did Stone Mountain one day because the 29029 group met out there. So a bunch of them met and they were going to hike it. Stone Mountain's quick. I mean, you are up in 20 minutes. It was cake. And it's an hour away from here. And I live 3 minutes from Kennesaw Mountain. So I'm like, I was pissed I went out there. And Steph's— Amanda's like, you should go. I had a 5K scheduled the same day. And she's like, you did a marathon. Skip the 5K, go to the thing. And my wife's like— I'm like, I don't know if I want to go. She's like, you don't want to meet new people and talk to strangers, huh? I'm like, yes, that's the actual answer. I don't want to fucking go. So I show up and they're like, hey, it's good to see everybody. Mountain's right there. Have a good day. And they ended. And then we hiked by ourselves. I'm like, you motherfuckers. So I hike it twice just to say I hiked it. And then Sunday— that was Saturday, this past Saturday— Sunday I figured out Kennesaw Mountain. Any of y'all ever done that? Kennesaw Mountain. Yeah, so Kennesaw Mountain, there's a lot of different trails, but I, I start on one side. It's 1,800 to the peak. So the road I live on is a straight shot, 3 minutes to one of the small parking lot, and then there's a big like where everybody goes. So if you hike over it, it's 3.5 miles, like if you go over the whole thing to the other side. But my car is over here, so I hiked over it and then back, and then I did over it and back. So I did it 4 times on Saturday. So I did it for 7 hours on Sunday. My feet still hurt. Like, it's rocky, and the terrain's crazy. It was like a little over 14 miles. You can't wear tennis shoes. You got to wear— I wear like hiking-type shoes. They're like tennis shoes, but they're a little more padded. So I go to like some— what's that thing attached to Dick's, Amanda? What's the name of that place? We just tried to figure out where I went the other day. The REI. Is it REI? Maybe. No. Yep. It's not REI. It's something out. Yes. Public lands. It's literally attached there. So I went in there and I'm like, I'm hiking. Can you point me to shoes? And they're like, yeah, right here. So I try one on, I buy them, and I went and hiked 14 miles the next day. Yes. Brand new shoes. Yeah, yeah. I mean, how else do you break them in? You got to hike. So I hike. I blow my backpack up with water and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas. And I'm like, fuck it. I'm going to go hike a bunch because I got 31 miles coming up in 3 weeks. So I'm like, I better hike a lot. So I did 14 miles, got caught in the thunderstorm, the rain. But I did it. And I was like, I could have kept going if there was a red hat on the line. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I like— I'm chasing something. So now I'm like, all right, when I do that, now what's next? Do I have to really fly to Mount Everest and get found in this avalanche in 27 years? I don't want that. I'm scared of that one. Are you going to record it when you do it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It will be live on social. I'll do it. I won't do the whole thing live, but I'll do little increments. And then I'm sure when it's— I think they allow, um, like guests to come up on your last one to like see you cross. So I'll probably have Steph like put it live. I will fucking finish. And I'm kind of— I do like— I watch the videos, you know what I mean, where they're like, hey, come to our thing, and you see the little videos with like the promo videos, and I look at them like, if that lady can do it, I can probably figure it out, you know what I mean? I do kind of judge people in a sense. And I'm like, why not me? You know what I mean? And I'm a big like, why not me? If they did it, why can't I do it? You just said it to me. If I did $200 million, you can do $200 million. I fucking agree. Now, are you willing to do all the shit I did to get there? Don't know. Does it make sense? So for me, I go, if they can do it, I can do it. But if they did it, they probably worked their ass off to be able to do it. So I have to work my ass off to be able to do it. So I'm just hiking. So the goal then this weekend is like, all right, do I do it 6 times now? You know what I mean? And the reason I go over, because if I just go up and down, I can punk out. If I go over, I have to go back because my car is over there. So when I was prepping for the marathon, I would run. I had to do like 15 miles. I'm like, I'll run that way as far as possible because I have to come back. You know what I mean? So I put myself in environments where I'm forced because when I want to quit, dude, I'm human. I'm sore. I'm tired. It's about to rain, like literally. Steph text. She's like, yo, the rain, like thunder, like it— I could hear it in the distance. I'm like, what the hell was that? Sound like an explosion? Because it was sunny as shit, and I don't look at the weather, I don't pay attention to nothing, I plan nothing. I just like, I'm gonna hike, see you in 6 hours. And then all of a sudden I was like— and I just got to the other side, so it starts raining, and you know, here it comes, it just turns on. I'm 30 yards up the hill, start downpouring. Everyone for the next 30 minutes is coming down, running down, trying to get— I'm the only dipshit going up. But I'm like, I said I was gonna— I said I was gonna do 4 full time. I could have gone down and gone in the visitor center and sat under the thing and called Steph and be like, yo, come pick me up, get my car. I could have done that. It crossed my mind. But I'm like, no chance. No chance I'm doing that. Because hell, it might rain out there. It could snow out there. The temp there, it could be from 30 to 80 in the same day. It can be 30 in the morning, or obviously at the top it's colder. So it could be 30, it could be 80. Literally at the bottom, it could be sunny and 80. At the top, it could be 30 and fucking cold and rainy. I'm like, all right, I guess I got to prep. So for me, it's the same thing. So what he was saying, and I want to go over some of these. But what he was doing is he goes, I did it, which was cool because I'm going to steal his idea and eventually I'll give you credit for a long time. Yeah. So it's like he did it backwards. He was like, what did you say? You want to remove like doing your lawn because you want to have time with his wife on date nights. So he's like, oh, I need to get rid of this. He know, again, the shit we know we got to get rid of. So he added that first. He's like, if I get rid of that, then I can go on dates. And then I don't know what the goal was. I can probably imagine what it would have been at the end of the night. But his question was like, part of it was— and would you say— what's that word you used? Realism? Is that what you said? Yeah. Realism? Got it. So how do you balance being realistic with like a stretch goal? And I just— for me, I think— I don't think it's not realistic, first of all. I think that's the flaw, is even saying words like realistic goals, I think, is the mistake to start. You mean, and for me, I go like, yeah, we're doing $200 million. And I was— we were talking, I had a, like, a budgeting call yesterday with Integrity Corporate, and they're going over stuff and they want to tweak little things. I mean, like, what do you think you're going to do with AmeriCo? And what do you think you're doing? And they fine-tune, and I'm like, Dude, y'all do like $30 billion. My entire agency is a rounding error. You know what I mean? Like, why are we getting so granular? Like on what I'm going to pay Joe next month. It's $58. Who cares? You know what I mean? But it's like— Somebody's getting paid that. Correct. But so for me, people see $200 million and I'm like, all I see, not in a negative way, I'm like, it's a rounding error to someone. It's not that big a deal. And I get it is, but it's also my vision is like, dude, I'm not even close to what we want to accomplish, you know? And I do think crazy things are realistic. I don't believe others can do something I can't do. I just have to learn it or be taught it, or, you know what I mean? Maybe something physical. That's what I meant by that, is that I know— yeah, yeah, I'm saying this because he says it, and you're nothing special. Yeah, I agree fully. And the same thing with Sean. Yeah, I've watched Sean as and I told her, I was like, we used to sit in the same row at the same place and go talk on stage and, you know, put a billion-dollar company there. So I know it's possible.

Yeah.

So where is— that's where the question is. Where's the realistic— yeah. So if you go, I want to do $200 million, and you're currently today doing what, less than $50? I mean, that's a big fucking mountain.

Yeah.

Right? So it's like, how do we get there? It sure shit ain't going to be like a rocket ship. You know what I mean? It's going to be like over here. And you're going to have to go like this. It's going to look something fucking something like that. You know what I'm saying? Right? We had $1 million a month. And now we're doing $450,000. Buckle the fuck up. You know what I mean? So it's like, all right, how do I get here? Again, I hiked Kennesaw Mountain. I did it previously, I did it a month ago. I went over and back once, so 2 full. And this time I'm like, all right, why don't I do 4? So what do you think I'm gonna do next weekend? I'm gonna do 6, and then I'm gonna try to do 8 because 8's 30, almost 30 miles, you know what I'm saying? So it's like I don't go Day 1 prep for 29029, let me go hike 30 miles today. You know how it works. Get ready for the marathon, let me go, let me go run 26 miles today. No, no, I could learn how to run 3, you know what I mean? And I use the word run loosely. It's like, it's not a walk, my elbows are moving, but it's not— I don't run by any means. It was how long can I go without stopping. You know, so it's like, how do— how many agents you got doing— I mean, what's it, fucking 2 of y'all? 4 of y'all? How many is it really? I mean, I know what you said. I had 50 because I'm doing this side. You do the follow-up question. We did like 200. Oh, 50 is you? No, no, no, no, no. I'm not team. That's the team, right? I know. How many people did that take? Uh, 13, 12. What, maybe that many? Well, they're all not writing. How many writing agents?

Oh, 6.

Okay, and the bulk of that was actually 3, correct?

Yeah.

So it's like, how much did the 3 do out of 50? The big— the top 3? 30. Actually, I'm sorry, my numbers were wrong, 'cause one did 30. Just give me ballparks.

They did—

well, out of 50, they fucking like 40. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the numbers are what they are. Does that make sense? It's like I can look at this and go like, that's why I went like, what? Like, it doesn't make sense. You start to look at stuff every day, you start to figure this thing out. This whole industry is a formula, dude. It's not— this is not— this is never going to change. Does that make sense? Now, how much sales stuff do you really need to teach these people? Not zero, right? But sometimes we get into, this is who we talk to the most, which is It's not necessarily a bad thing, but are we talking to them about anything new and productive? Why the fuck do we talk to them? Right? This has been the struggle for me over the years. This is why some of the team doesn't like me still to this day. I'm like, what do you want to talk about? Sales? You fucking made $250 grand last year. What do you want me to teach you? Right? So I need to spend sales time with these three. That ain't selling shit and find out, do they really want to do more exercises, challenge them? You know what I mean? Like, I just want to figure it out. And if you don't, all good. I'm going to move on and find a new 3. Now these 3 I'm good talking to if it's for growth. I want to sell 40 instead of 20. Cool. Help you out. Only takes a week or 2. You don't need much. It's not that deep. How many appointments did you sit and run to make 20? How many leads did you buy to make 20? X and X. All right, pop quiz. How many do you think it's going to take to do 40? It's going to be double, right? Maybe. And now for me, typically you double, you'll end up probably doing triple the volume. So I can trick them into making more than they want. I'm not going to go use this magic script to get from 20 to 40. That's not me. I didn't get there that way and I don't believe you can. Where your struggle is In my opinion, this is a really shitty bell curve. Y'all understand this thing, right? And I don't know how many lines there are, but there's a few. But this little section is the people that close 9 out of 10. You're over there, and you're trying to tell these people that close 3 out of 10, this is really fucking simple. What did I tell him? I told him, great fucking job. Killing it, dude. Why don't we just close 6 out of 20? Right? And instead of taking a year to do that or 6 months, why don't we do this in a week? And keep being you. Yeah. I can't give him a skill set for 9 out of 10. You couldn't come up with right here right now. And teach him for the next 6 hours and him close 9 out of 10 tomorrow? Fair? Zero chance that's ever happening. Can I come up here and teach him how to run 20 appointments tomorrow? Why not do more of that? That hits this. So many people in the industry want to train on this shit. That's not average. Does it make sense? And I get not everyone wants to be average, but I have no— whoever invented this is way fucking smarter than me. I know I'm not going to shift this ever in the history of time. I'm never going to change the con— the 80/20 rule. I'm never going to shift that. I have no shot. Does it make sense? They've had billions of people of research that— I think it's like 68% Is that what that— those— well, some of you all can Google that. I think it's 34-34 is the percentages that do a majority of what we would call average in anywhere, you know. So I focus on this. That's who we serve as Middle Income America. Most people don't have insurance. That's who wants to do what we do, is everyday people who are just trying to figure out how to get by. And when we tell them you got to work 20 hours a week and close 9 out of 10, you can make $250 grand a year. They work 20 hours a week and they close fucking 0 out of 4, and they're pissed and they quit. Does that make sense? So you're— what I put over here, I think I wrote it down— selling the dream. I'm selling the hard fucking work it's going to take to get rich and challenging people to see if they're willing to do it. And if they hit the dream, bro, high five, love you, bro, keep doing what you're doing. But I ain't training on none of that shit and I stay out of your way. I ain't mad at you. Fucking home run, dude. Hawaiian shirts and flip-flops, 250 G's a year, fucking home run. But how many people have you met that do that? That make sense? Trying to build when all you want to do is find you is tough. Me with the Chick-fil-A thing. Oh, you— I was about to say it. It literally came to mind. Cannot hire other Chick-fil-A owners. Yeah, that's exactly what I was like. I know this. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? And that's what we want. We always want to hire ourselves, right? And I'm like, if you hire yourselves, you do things without me pushing you, really. Again, I'm going to push a little bit today, but you don't need me to get out of bed and make a living. Couple might, kinda, you know what I mean? But the overwhelming majority of people don't. And so if what you find is that, what the fuck do they need you for? And why do you deserve to get paid if they don't need you? You know what I'm saying? So it's like we ask for something that doesn't add value to anyone. You just want the easy way out. You wanna hire you so you don't have to work and get rich? Like, on what planet does that work? Does it work? Yes. It's over here again. Happens sometimes. We know those guys. They hire one, the team blows up, they get rich. They didn't do shit. Can we train on that? No, 'cause that's not normal. Does that make sense? So I'm sticking on— I like that ground. Now this guy over here that closes 0 out of 10, I can push him over here. You know what I'm saying? Like, that happens too. Does that make sense? But if I can teach him work ethic, I know that can't happen for the rest of time, you know? So it's like, how can I get him to see 2 out of 10, you know? And it's like, I was talking to a guy, I'm texting this guy, this dude hit me up. Um, so any of y'all read the book yet? Got the book yet? Have you read it? Did you say— was it you that said yes? I didn't know if it came— like, I heard it over here and I wasn't— we live in Florida. We have a house up here, but it came to Florida. So, dude, I'm getting crazy feedback I didn't expect. One, the biggest, which is nuts, the biggest— not the biggest, not the most common— the biggest surprise for me is how many people have hit me up and been like, Dude, I saw you wrote a book. I've always wanted to write a book. Now I know someone wrote a book, dude, I'm gonna go do mine. Like 15 times this week. Swear to God, dude. Like 15 fucking people have called me about it. They're like, I've always wanted to do it. I can't believe you did it. So impressive. I'm ready.

So I didn't call you, but I wrote a book last year. See?

It's awesome. I got you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's good, that's good.

And so a lot of people are hitting me up online that I don't know. People, a bunch of people bought it, their manager bought it, gave it to them, whatever. Now this guy hits me up, he's asking me all these questions. And I just go back and forth with him, answer his questions. He's like, just really weird, you don't— he goes, you don't know me from Sam and you're answering me. I'm like, yeah, I'm trying to fucking help, dude. And he's going through this phase where it's like he knows how to sell, but he gets frustrated at the losses, right? He sold $200 grand this year. Like, it's not terrible. I mean, he's doing decent. And He's like, I'm booking X amount of appointments and I get X amount of no-shows and I'm frustrated. How can I get more people to show up? Right. And he's, he's doing like, he's 5 days a week and he's doing 30 scheduled appointments. So it's 6 a day. Right. So I'm like, all right. So you have like a 9, a 12, a 2, a 4, a 6, and an 8 kind of day. Or are you like, I have an 8, an 8:30, a 9, a 9:30, a 10, a 10:30, and I'm done. Who are you? Just the question alone, he was like, wait, what? Gotcha. Right? Why? I'm getting him to think. Because he didn't see this as a possibility before. I'm like, yo, I do 6 a day, I'm home by lunch for sure. I might even catch brunch. You know what I mean? But he's like, this guy, I said, so if you miss your 9 and your 12 and your 2 no-show, you sit around for 7 hours fucking waiting for your 4 o'clock? I'm like, that life must suck. I've lived that. And that happens all the fucking time. So I was like, it sounds— he's like, yeah, but I take like an hour and a half for appointment presentations. And this guy's in the field. And he's like, I take like an hour and a half, plus I have to drive, da da da da da. I was like, cool, so you're scheduling like every one of them is going to be there. I said, on average, how many no-show you? He goes, 40-something percent. I said, so you know basically half the people aren't going to be there, and yet you schedule your day like they are going to be there. Isn't that the fucking problem? I said, why don't you schedule like they're not going to be there since you know half of them aren't going to be there, right? And I was like, why don't you schedule a 9 and a 10 and an 11, right? Kind of go that way. And he's like— and I go, I know your but is, what if they're there and I make it? I'm like, why don't you just ask each one for grace and go, can I have like 30 minutes on either side of it? Because I see a lot of people. And now you can go over this guy from 8:30 to 9:30, and you can do this guy from 9:30 to 10:30. So if they no-show you, you can go right to that one. And if they are there, you can still show up 30 minutes late to this one and you're still on time. You know what I mean? If you schedule your day like that. And he was just like, light bulb moment. Just never thought of something so simple. So, I'm like, now you can schedule. And we went through his calendar. And the exercise we're about to do in a minute. And he gave me his day, what he wants. And I'm like, "Dude, if you do this now, how many— If you do it this way, how many appointments can you book?" He's like, "Dude, I can do 15 in a day now." So he texts me yesterday, he's like, "5 no-shows already today." And I'm like, "Okay, it's fucking noon, bro, chill." Right? I'm like, "And it's one day, it's half of one day." By the end of the day, he goes, "10 no-shows. I talked to 5 people, wrote 2 apps." But he was kind of pissed. So I go 2 apps, 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year. All right? It's 500 apps. So if you're willing to have 50 bad weeks in your mind, you'll make $500,000 this year. What's the fucking problem? And do you really think you're going to have 50 straight bad weeks? He was like— be clear, we're talking about one quote-unquote bad day, you wrote 2 apps. I'm like, what about the days where you write 5 or 7? Like, those are going to come too. Maybe your 2 is over here, maybe it's somewhere over here, I don't know. But I'm like, even if you just did this all year, it's more money than you've ever seen in your life, fair? He was like, I didn't look at it that way. And I've always taught people, what I try to get people to understand is like, he's very upset. Most people are very upset with outcome. They judge outcome, right? I didn't make enough money. I didn't— I missed this sale. I didn't— this no-showed me, whatever, the chargeback, all the stuff, the negative outcome we're judging. And I just shift people's mindset and I'm like, if you'll judge your activity, this side, this side. Judge this with the same intensity that you're currently judging your results. Your entire world will change. So, meaning, if you don't book 15, be pissed. Stop being pissed that you wrote 2. Like, it makes no sense to me, you know what I mean? If you don't— and he came up with how many I want to do a month. It was like 200 whatever appointments a month. I'm like, if you don't hit that number, be pissed. You know what I'm saying? If you don't dial when you said you're going to dial, if you don't do what you said is on your goal sheet, if you don't do the thing you added, be as pissed there as you are about the people leaving you dead. It will change your entire fucking world, you know? But you have to actively choose to do that every day because it's not instinct, you know what I mean? And not in a way where you beat yourself up so bad, like you give yourself like negative self-image in a way. But it's like, I did say I was going to do this and I only did this. I punked out. You know what I mean? Like versus going, "I only made this this month." Why'd we only make this this month? Because we only did this instead of this. You know what I mean? And that's been the model this entire time. So, back to this. This is the same thing, dude. So, it's like, "All right. What do we got to do?" 6 is getting you 50. How do we get to 100? This is not that deep. 12. Okay, now what if— so these 3 are doing 40, so these 3 combined are doing 10, which means they're probably going to quit soon. So can you get them to 6? You don't got to get them to $250 grand. Get Anika to 6, she was fired the fuck up for a long time. She was fired the fuck up. I will never forget the day she snuck in my office whispering and took me out back to show me her little roll-up window Volkswagen. She was fired the fuck up that she bought this little car. It was a Volkswagen, wasn't it? Did it really have roll-up windows? Because that's how I tell the story. I still tell it. I still tell it to this day. I do. I ain't changing the story because in my head I rolled them bitches down. Yeah, but yeah, fired up out of her mind. But I can— I remember, dude, I remember when I bought my Kia, a little Kia Optima, and I had like whatever their top model version is. It looked kind of sporty. There was a $24,000 car and I was out of my mind excited. I— that's— y'all seen it. I used to run in it. That was my run car for years. Yeah, but so many people are trying to get them, bro. You can't get them all here. You can't get them 9 out of 10. It's never— it's never going to happen in the history of time. You will never have 100% of your agents doing that. You know, so it's like, can I, can I just help them out a little bit instead of wasting time over here talking about fucking nothing, bitching about agents, bitching about some underwriting thing that didn't get you paid the 3 grand you were going to get paid? Like, dude, they're making money, who cares? Again, can I, can I push them up? Yeah, but it's so— this is so easy. You know how easy it was to get fucking Zach to sell 40 grand? Easton to sell a bunch of insurance. And again, they did— I was a piece of it. They did the work. They learned from other people. But you know how easy that was? Why? They had the work ethic of this guy. It was so easy to make— get— help them make that kind of money, you know. So there wasn't— there wasn't long crazy conversations. The hard part was getting Anika to not quit, and all the people like her. We were stacked at that office, direct to me. I had an obnoxious amount of people direct to me. You know, remember how— shit, this room wouldn't look like this then. It's weird to me.

That room where we were was packed.

Packed.

All the time.

You couldn't even get in the room. No, they'd be sitting out on the couch out— yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, we'd have definitely got in trouble.

Yeah.

You know, but it was like, because I was helping people, it's 3 to 6, 6 to 9, 9 to 12. 9 to 12, 12 to 15. You know what I mean? I mean, again, if someone goes from— again, I turned it on quick. I went from doing 12 to 40. That's not the norm. You know, I changed everything one day. I was 8, 10, 12K guy for 2 and a half years, and one day I flipped the switch. That's so rare, and it's even more rare to stick with it. People always flip the switch and then they turn it off the next day. You know what I mean? I just— I literally was done. And again, you were— you know, you weren't quite here yet. You came, I think, right after. Maybe you were.

Yeah.

I don't know if you paid attention, but—

I told you part-time, I was going 3, you got me to 5, you got me to 10. Yeah.

And then— I remember we used to talk about how much was in your bank account.

Yeah. That's you guys.

Is that what you're talking about right now? The money?

Yeah.

It wasn't issued. It's cash. Yeah. I remember those conversations. Yeah, just calling. I got $5,000 in the bank. What do I do now? Well, let's get you to $10,000. How do you do it? Here's how you do it. Get to $10,000. Don't worry about $40,000 today. Let's get you $10,000, get you $20,000. Lots of conversations. You know how many conversations I had like that? It was every day, all day. Just incremental. Just, can I push you a little bit? Yeah. Down. There's only so much you can do on your own. It's like, yeah, like, and even if you, even if you hit top tier, sounds dope. I issue $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 a year. I'm making a bunch of money. What's the downside of it? What do y'all think? I mean, Yeah, how much can you do? You make $500 grand a year 2, 3 years in a row, you're gonna change your lifestyle? Most people do. Now what? Now you have to sell. Now you have to do it. It's like, oh, so what do I do with those people? I ain't selling the dream, dude, because it ain't a dream to have 3 fancy cars, a big-ass house, and a boat and have to go out and fucking one-call close people all day long. That ain't much of a fucking dream. Sounds dreamy, but ain't that big a dream when you're stuck in it. How many you know been with me, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 producers, still to this fucking day still have to sell, still out there grinding? Why? They refuse to build. So early on, I'm always like, you want to be a salesperson forever, or do you one day want to build a business? I ask everybody. And then when they get to that point where I no longer need to help them because they ain't selling, I'm like, I'm busy. I'm over here building a business. The relationship stops at a point. And that's a tough— that's tough. Because you build friendships with people as you start to connect with them and teach them how to make money. You get close to them. You're talking to them every day. You figure out family stuff. You're talking. But then over time, it's like, I'm still trying to build. Like, I mean, you see some of the people that were around. Decent amount of them won't even talk to me to this day. There's a gang of them. I can give you a fucking list. Name anyone that had an office next door. Name all the people that used to be down here in these trainings. You think any of them are going to watch this shit? You think any of them bought this book? They don't even fucking comment on my stuff. They don't like nothing. They don't follow nothing. They don't nothing. Why? Because I had to move on because I could only get them so far. They only wanted to go so far. I'm not stopping. You know what I mean? It's like, I just keep it moving. So again, that's a reality of business. You know what I'm saying? It's like as you start climbing the mountain, it's going to be different people.

As long as they don't hate.

Yeah.

I'm still here.

But our expectations are always right. Mine are right of hers. Hers are right of mine. We keep talking. You know what I mean? She never expect me to be on the phone with her for fucking 19 hours a week talking about nothing. She called me. It's a good question. Or we don't talk. You know what I mean? It's just like— so that's a piece. Again, part of your question is incrementally. You know what I mean? Again, can you go to 24 to get to 200? Okay, so now how do we get from 6 to 12? What are we doing there? That part answers the question for that part. The bell curve part. Yeah. Again, the combination, if you're adding people, cool, but if you're adding volume per person, now you double quicker. You can get to 200 with way less than 24. That's why I questioned when you said 50 with 12, I'm like, Are you not teaching anyone to make any money? You know what I'm saying? If you ain't $10K an average, average, you're probably missing the boat. I like my group being like $12K average per writer. I like that number better. Where you see some people doing, you know, a million a month and they got 242 writers. I'm like, eh. I just— I'm not a fan. I can get in there and go, all right, 242 riders, yo, we can get to $2.5 million. Let me work. Let me work. Why? Because otherwise I got a rotating door. I got to keep filling it. I don't want to— it doesn't end, but I can slow it down. You know what I mean? Help people make money. Help people get paid. That's our job. If I didn't already say it, I could have called Amanda in here and be like, what's our role? It's just to help people get paid. That's what we do. I keep it simple as can be. I help people get paid. Why? What am I going to help you all get paid? That's it. There's only so much can be done in one day. So I'm going to do my best here today. But it's like, how do we keep doing it? We'll figure that out. I'm trying to add that tomorrow. There's only so many people I can talk to. Now we're at a stage where I'm like, well, fuck, I can do it, but I got to charge people. I can't talk to fucking 400 people a day anymore, ever. It's impossible. And then for me, I'm like, you want to make $100 grand? Like, what? Don't you be a dick. Go watch YouTube. They'll teach you how to make $100 grand all day long in this business. Not— you don't need me for that. You want to make a million? A million a month? I'm in. Let's figure it out. You know what I mean? So now for me, I'm fine. I'm seeing new levels of things. It's like, all right, cool. Because I can help people do it. But I can't do it all day, every day for free. That don't make no sense. And I'm in a situation now where I'm growing outside the industry. There's people— hell, you didn't work with us. And that's a lot. I'll be honest. More people bought this sucker that don't work with us than have. By far. By far.

I saw on the call, my phone dropped a little bit. —acting crazy. I had issues with my phone. Yeah. Immediately hung up all of them. Yeah. Rochelle, Jamal, me, we was all—

Yeah. We all bought it and read it. I've had a lot of people read it. I've had crazy— I didn't know what to expect because this is like, it's just my story and the way I teach this thing. It's all about— all these principles are in here in depth. You know, I just talk about how I built this thing. It's not just like a feel-good story. There was like, I wanted to help people get paid. And I'm trying to expand it to the industry. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, again, for me, it's same. I'm doing the same thing. So I can look at this and go, all right, relative. Again, I packed this shit up 8 years ago. Why is it not now? Different perspective, different group, different following. I'm like, oh, shit, I got to create something. I got to build something different. So for me, it's like, all right, I'm here, sure, but if I go— outside of my organization, I guess 6 people. You know what I see? One day we'll be filling fucking arenas with stuff like this. Why? I see— other people are doing it. I see it. I can name a fucking dozen people that I know doing it, right?

That are—

agreed. Sorry. That's why I'm like, fuck it. They're doing it and they suck. I'm going. You know? And it's like, hell, one— we had one of these, one person was here. I was like, fuck. You didn't think for a second I told the man, I'm like, would it be mean if I just sent her home and fucking go back to sleep? Definitely crossed my mind. I'm like, it'd be a dope story one day. We have fucking 5,000 people in the room and be like, one day there was one person sitting in here. We're doing $250 million, I got one person in the room. All right, we got work to do. You know what I mean? We got work to do. So for me, I'm always looking like, how can I improve? There's different stages of this thing, you know what I mean? And again, part of the growth is some people are going to faint. You ain't always going to get support. It ain't always going to be love. You know what I mean? So it's like you really got to believe in what you do and really do it for the right reasons and be OK with the result not always being what you think it's going to be. And I always say it like this. This is Atlanta Airport. Y'all been? Anybody not been? Anybody been to Atlanta? And they go like— this is like baggage. And I think this is like international baggage, is I think how it goes. And it's A, B, C, D, E, F gate, whatever. Yeah, T's first, whatever. I don't even think you need to get on the train to get to T. You can just walk, right? But when you get here, what happens? Then what? People get on, people get off. Then what happens here? Yeah. And then what happens here? All right, so what do you think happened here? And what do you think happened here? And what do you think happens right here? They'll never change. But the train ain't fucking stopping. We can keep moving. You know what I'm saying? Y'all got on. Some other people got off. All good. I'm going to keep fucking going. You know what I'm saying? You have to accept this as part of business. It's just, you ain't gonna change that. You close people, tight people, gone. You know what I mean? People get mad, people get feelings, you know what I mean? Love Athena. Couldn't tell you last time I talked to her. Crazy. Love her. My favorite people. And it's not just her. It just happened, you know what I mean? But I can do that with a lot of people. Oh, sure. Absolutely. You know? And it's like, why? I don't know. Maybe I got to improve on things too. I don't know. You know what I mean? But we keep growing. I keep helping people. You know what I mean? It's like, it's a weird balance, dude. And none of this thing goes perfect. So I just try to do my best to keep improving on things. You know? And it's— so chunk it down and understand it is not going to be— it ain't going to be like this. That ain't how it's going to go. That I had realistic belief. That picture up there was like kind of hoping it would be more. When you do this thing, you know, when you do a production of it. We've been pretty lucky. We haven't lost any massive groups ever. We've lost small groups. But I was always like— I always sort of saw that coming in a sense, and I never wanted to get comfortable. I never wanted to rely on someone else to build my shit. Yeah. So I was always very cautious to keep people coming direct to me. I don't even love it today the way it is. We're structured where it's a lot of big volume and small groups now. It's kind of the way the whole thing evolved. I don't love it. I don't like the lack of control. I don't like that. So I always wanted— because I did that. I'm like, so-and-so is here because of what I did. I've said it. You know what I mean? I'm like, I don't want someone saying that about me. And I ain't confused at people's contribution to our growth. I appreciate all of it. But I don't want to be in a situation where anyone thinks I'm sitting around doing nothing and they were the reason we grew fully, you know. Um, so I was always competing. That thing sucks. Yeah, a little spray. So if it's me and I have however many groups— at one point when she was early, the times we were talking about at the old office, I had like 40 people direct to me. Really? Mm-hmm. Athena, when we were doing— we were doing like $800 grand a month. Athena was the biggest group and they were doing like $150. With like fucking 8 to 12 people. Yeah, we were doing like 800, and that was the biggest group. Yeah, yeah. So this group was doing 60, this was 30, and then I just had a fuck ton of manikas. Yeah, when I hired Amanda, we were at 40, 40, 50 agents, somewhere in that range. And again, it was like Athena, Luffels, Josh. There was pre-Zach. There was no one. You know what I mean? So like I was printing fucking money. I was printing money. And so what I was always doing is if these were the 3 groups, say, and this is what we call base shop, which is the call I did the other day in the industry. Who's direct to you outside of quote-unquote managers. I was always competing with these groups over here. Yeah, yeah, I always wanted this to be bigger than her. Now after a while that got out of control. It was hard when you hire some fucking machines and people got— you know, it's hard to keep my base shop doing fucking $4 million a month. I don't know, that's impossible. But building early so you avoid some of these pitfalls Mine wasn't too bad because I always kept this. So this person quit, didn't affect me a ton. You know what I mean? They got mad, it didn't do shit. I didn't have to be a dick. I didn't care because I always had more here than I did in any one of these. I didn't necessarily have more here than I did as this combined. Early on I did, but with time that was super hard for me to beat 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, people. But I was— and I did our leaderboards that way. I built the leaderboard where I removed VPs from the leaderboard. So I'd be like, their number— VP wouldn't count towards my number anymore. So it was me versus Athena. And Athena's number wasn't in my number. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I wanted to be in— I wanted to be in first place in that leaderboard. And then if Athena got a lead, like a Zach, I took Zach out of her and I put Zach— like Zach could have been here. Does that make sense? Yeah. What did that do for her? Challenger. Scale, growth, push people. You know what I mean? I built leaderboards this way. When I came on, if you remember, about 3 years ago, the conversation was, don't be greedy. Yeah, which got a lot of people's stock. Yeah, yeah, right there. I think it's on. I just think we did a port. It's on 68. You— oh, you want it hotter?

Oh yeah, freezing.

You're freezing? Oh shit, I'm sweating my face off. You want a hoodie? Yeah. You want one? Amanda has a blanket too. Yeah, I can have them get you one. You mind? It's like a blanket or something or hoodie or whatever. She probably has something. I think we have like an Integrity one in the room up there. Hey, Andres. Andres. See if there's an— tell them to look, see if there's Integrity. I feel like there's Integrity ones in there, in that room, that other office. Yeah, yeah. And it was like, build and recruit for them, build underneath them. It ended up— it doesn't work. No, not at all, because you got to keep producing to make any money. And people knew it didn't work. That— I didn't So I was like, no, no. And then you're dependent upon the bonus at that point. Yeah, which is no bueno. Yeah, I wanted to be in full control of everything. And again, the concept of building for people is a sticky situation. And we'll get into some sales stuff for you guys in a minute too. But if I'm here and this person here and I stack him, right, and I start giving them people, OK? And then say that's one of the people who wants to build. How does he grow? He wants this person to stack him because that's how he watched him grow. But he doesn't know how to build, so he can't stack. Somebody said he never built, he just received welfare. So he doesn't know how to generate anything to give out. Well, then so this stops at one generation. Yeah, correct. So I heard that, I'm like, uh-uh, zero chance. I remember listening to a call that you were on and you completely flipped the script because at that time, just to be frank, people were like, don't listen to what those guys are doing. I'm well aware of what— I was hated. Yeah. And then you got on a call and I was like This is what makes sense. Yeah, like this other crap. Yep, didn't make sense at all. Again, told you that roller coaster, bro. I ain't been loved every day along the way, bro, but I keep it real. Yeah, it's just amazing how— what— and you've seen it also evolve since. Yeah, you know what I mean? It's like Mark Mead taught me during that stage, he goes, he has a saying, the truth is undefeated. And when I was— I heard a recent quote that said the truth is like a lion, it can defend itself. I like that. Yeah, I like that. That's cool. Yeah, so again, this makes no sense. It sounds cool, and these people grew fast, but yeah, they ain't grown since. You don't hear about none of these people now except they're quitting. Yep. Because it don't work. Yep. I'm like, ah, buckle up, they'll be back. Or they complain that this and that and the other thing changed. So how do you do it? How? Direct. So you hire here and you start hiring people. You teach them how to get paid. And then every once in a while, someone over here, again, hey, do you want to be a salesperson forever or do you ever want to build a company? Hey, do you want to be a salesperson forever or do you want to ever build a company? Hey, do you want to be a salesperson forever? Do you ever want to build a company? Hey, do you want to be a salesperson forever? Do you ever want to build a company? Makes sense. Maybe they hear it, maybe they don't. You've heard it 26 times already today. One day you're gonna go, hey, that thing, that building thing, how do you do it? You help people get paid. Zach, I Athena, whatever. How do you do it? Add people. You know what I'm saying? It's just, there's— again, you can run job ads, you can talk to warm market, you can talk to friends and family, you can post stuff on social, you can ask every one of your clients. You heard a story there, she met it from a client, she came in from a client, you know what I mean? It's like, hey, do you know anybody else who can make some extra money? Some dipshit in Atlanta is teaching me to make money in insurance. You open, you just pull people in, you know what I'm saying? And you guide people towards information, you send them on the trainings, you get them on a Zoom like Anika is doing, you know what I mean? It's— this is not complicated, right? And then eventually someone will go like, oh, John has an office. Good. I'm sorry, John has an office. I guess that's part of building. Maybe I should open an office. Go open one. I mean, you can get an office for fucking $300 a month all over the country, anywhere you want. And then what? Invite people to it. And then what? Make phone calls with them. Teach them how to buy leads, teach them how to book appointments, let them watch you. You know, I had someone else message me this week and I challenged them to write. They were like, I'm gonna hopefully have a good day. I said, why don't you go write 5 apps today? And their answer was I'm training my agents today. I said, what better way to train your agents than them watch you write 5 apps? Cut the shit. Why don't we work? What are you training them to do when you sit down and train them? You're training them to not work. So remember my office? Remember how many people used to come in my office? Dude, they'd be watching me dial. Couldn't talk. When do you talk? When the phone's ringing. I'll cut you off in a second. You want to watch me dial? Cool. I got questions. All right. I got to work. Whatever the dial tone is, that's how much time you got. Maybe I'll answer it, maybe I won't. I don't care. You know what I mean? Like it's just, they're watching me work. And still to this day, people watch me work. Someone hit me up yesterday. Hey, man. I got extremely urgent. Can you have a few minutes for me? Can we talk? I'm like, I'm busy as fuck. What do you need? Not anyone I know, not anyone done anything, you know what I mean? It was like, he needed to borrow money. And I'm like, yo, bro, I'm not trying to be an ass, but you should have been out working. He's like, you're right. OK. No, I can't talk. I got to go. I got to work. I'm busy. It's always— you know what I mean? Again, you allocate time to the right people at the right time. But if they ain't working— I ain't that good. I ain't that good. It's like, am I that good? Yep, I'm pretty fucking good. But if you ain't working, I ain't magic. And I sure as shit ain't going to pretend I am. Yeah, but you go mess up a bunch, bring me mistakes, bring me problems, bring me issues, bring me objections, bring me people who quit, bring me roll-ups up, we can work. I got work to do now. I got stuff to play with, stuff to tweak and change, you know what I mean? And so as y'all are getting started, it's like activity is king. If you don't go see a bunch of people, you'll never get good at this. And if you happen to be the 1% who figures it out seeing fucking 6 people a week, high five, bro. I'll get you on camera. You can tell me I was wrong. You know how many times that's happened in 12 years? I'll be the first if I— hey man, he's here, I was wrong, he saw, he runs one appointment a week and writes $2.8 million a year. I'll fucking put you on the podcast and everything. Yeah, so it's like, don't get too caught up— again, we can get into sales stuff, But if I gave you every sales tip I had, all of them, I give you 20 closes, I give you how to handle all 6 objections you'll ever get in your career, I can teach you how to deal with every agent you're onboarding. But I gave you those 20 things, how to overcome every objection you're going to get, and you go run an appointment right now. Are you going to remember those 20 things? No, you're not. There's no— you have no shot, you know. And it's, it's crazy because I sometimes want to go like, I should sell the 8-step secret sales step system on the internet and I would blow up, but I feel like I'm lying. I feel awful about it because I'll give you the 6 sales tips and you're going to go out tomorrow and you ain't going to fucking remember none of them. You're going to stutter all over yourself. Why? Because you don't have reps. You know what I mean? You just can't do it without reps. Taxes, not that deep. First time, you probably sucked. I've done taxes. It's a shit show going through. The software guides you right through the damn thing. First time, someone's sitting there staring at you. And they ask a question about something, you're like, "Ugh!" That's life. Maddox, 12, playing baseball. Bunch of ground balls, what happens? Does he catch a majority of them or does he miss a majority of them at the beginning? He's going to miss most of them. He's like a first baseman and, you know, they like when they throw to first and they like have a shitty throw to first and they scoop it out of the dirt. Dude, he's been playing baseball since he was 3. He still can't do that. Does he get lucky sometimes and scoop one? Yeah, sure. Can he do it like Freddie Freeman? No. Why? He doesn't have enough reps. Can I show him Freddie Freeman film and go like, dude, Freddie does it just like this and he holds his toe like this and his elbow like this? What's gonna happen when Maddox gets out on the field and a fucking ball comes flying at him 80 miles an hour? He ain't gonna do it. Why? He needs the reps. You know? Now, reps combined with coaching, deadly. It's deadly. That's where it's at. But if you don't give me reps, I can't give you coaching. There's nothing to coach on. You know? So now the mistake a lot of people make is they do reps and they don't ask for help. Why don't they ask for help? It's client's fault. Lead's fault. Daughter's fault. Underwriting's fault. Carrier's fault. Oh yeah, that's easy. All day. Give me that. This is just for my own fun. Thank you. I like it. I like this. This is good. You know, so again, I do coaching stuff. But I'm like, most of the people that want it, I don't want to deal with them. Why? Because they don't work. And I just take people's money and— I can't teach them anything because they don't fucking see anyone. You know what I mean? And people always want the knowledge before they put in the effort. And it's learning how to teach it in a way, this all goes to all these growth questions you want, it's how do you teach it in a way where it comes across the right way? You give stupid analogies about Maddox and baseball and taxes and, you know what I mean? And he was like, they fumble the ball. You don't think next time he's out there thinking like, Oh, I'm just like Maddox today. It's all intentional. I mean, so I can do it and trick people into thinking different and tell you I'm tricking you into thinking different and no one's ever mad. So I'm just really open and honest about the whole thing the entire time. You know what I mean? And I've learned how to deliver it. So that takes— what do you think that takes to get really good at that? Fucking reps. You know how many of them I messed up? So when I start dealing with agents, And I try to give an example and I use a story or an analogy, I can pay attention to the way they receive it. And I'm like, ooh, they didn't like that one. They're still pissed at me. Let me work on it. So then I sit at home and what do I do? I go through, how can I deliver that better? How could I set it? And I just pay it like— I'll never forget, man, Sean, one of the coolest things he ever taught me, because he's really good at analogies and stories. And when he wants to tell you you're being an idiot, He's always going to line it up with a story every fucking time. And I'd watch him. I just watch people as they build. I like to watch people's like— when I'm learning to speak on stage, I watch people's like body language and the way they move their hands and the way they walk around. I just, I like watching how people maneuver. And I would watch him do things like this and it was always stories. And I'm like— and you see light bulb moment after light bulb moment after light bulb moment after light bulb moment after light bulb moment. I'm like, All right, that makes sense. So I call him one day and I'm like, bro, how do you do it? How do you come up with all those stories and analogies? And his answer was so simple. He was like, I just fucking pay attention to the world. There's stories and analogies in everything. And he's like, all right, I gotta go. And I'm like, what do I think? What a dick, he didn't even answer me. Right? Meanwhile, I'm sitting— I'll never forget where I was. I was sitting at— any of y'all know Paulding County? There's a— it's, I think it's Dallas Highway and 278. I think it's 278. That's where the hospital is in Paulding County. And you can turn left, and it brings you this side of town. You turn right, you go to the hospital. I was sitting right there. And it clicked. He would always do these stories about people that agents that are bitching they're having a bad day. And Sean would always go, "Hey, you got a hospital near you?" Everybody's like, "Yeah." He goes, "Go drive down there. Probably have a cancer ward. Why don't you walk in there and then call me back, tell me about your bad day?" And I happened to be there when he said just pay attention to the world. And I'm like, "Ah, that's what that sneaky motherfucker does." You know what I mean? You just start paying attention to stuff. And I'm like, "All right. How can I come up with more of these stories and examples. And you know, you're sitting in red light in traffic or whatever and someone wants to merge in front of you and you get pissed off, right? Or they get pissed off at you since you're the one that cut in front of them. You ever have that interaction, right? And you got grandma behind you flipping you off and honking the horn and stuff like that. But then you go to the grocery store, right? You ever walk out of like the cereal aisle going towards the register or maybe towards the back where the milk is and someone's about to turn in and you almost bump into each other? What do they say 100% of the time then? Excuse me, every fucking time. So when I wanted people to door knock clients that were mad at them on the phone, that's the story I gave to help them understand that in person people aren't assholes like they are behind a car or behind the phone. That's true. I told— I tell that story every fucking time someone's worried about going to knock on the door. "Well, they already, what if they're mad?" I'm like, "You ever been in the grocery store?" Every fucking time I tell that story. Why? Dude, one day I was in the grocery store and I'm fucking walking out and, "Sorry," and just, they like hit me like a ton of bricks one day. We almost bumped shopping carts. But had I been in the parking lot and we do the same thing with the same person, what are they gonna say now? It ain't gonna be, "Excuse me, sorry. Excuse me, sorry." Rare. You know what I mean? And I just like, "Oh my God. Teaching moment." You know what I mean? I start work— "Pneumatics and baseball." I'm like, "Ooh, teaching moments." And I just always— I just pay attention to the world just like you told me. And it slowly started developing. So, when I'm trying to teach an agent something, I'm like, "How can I tell a story or give an analogy to it that makes sense in their world?" I could give stories about T-Mobiles and things. You know what I mean? I could just— I get to know you for 3 minutes and I can tell stories. I can just I can relate things to this that are like that. You know what I'm saying? Again, you ever go to work and not do and have to do shit you don't want to do, but you show up to work every day because you got no more sick days or vacation days? Who ain't done that? You don't think like in this fucking industry you ain't going to want to show up every day? What happened if you didn't show up at T-Mobile? Okay, what happens if you don't show up here? Right? Can you hold yourself as accountable? Does that make sense? And most people won't do it. They let life's bullshit get in the way. Had a guy this week at 8% reach out to me. "Can you help me, John? I want to do it so bad. And I know you'll shoot me straight and I know you'll hold me accountable. And I know you'll tell me like it is. Can we talk?" I'm like, "Sure. Let's set up a call Tuesday. Bring these things with me." Wanted like his deposits, his appointments, his lead spend and I told him to bring me the schedule exercise that we hadn't done yet. So he's 15 times an 8%. Hey man, I'm already working on the stuff. I'm so excited for Tuesday. Next time I see him, I mean, I talked to my wife, I'm ready for Tuesday. 15 fucking times in the next 3 days he came up to me and told me that. In the airport, came up, told me that. Saw me in the airport, we were leaving. Hey man, dude, I'm almost done with it all. I got all the stuff for you. Tuesday comes. Do the call, blah, blah. He has all the stuff. I have him make a plan, do a schedule, which again, we'll go through in a little while. Gives me a schedule, go over it with his wife, give it to him. I'm like, "All right, when—" Long story short, he has to increase his point. He's selling $1,000 a month. That's it. He's making $1,000 a month. All right. So we go through. I'm like, "All right. Goals, did that exercise. Schedule, did that exercise. Prove it with your wife, checked off." Here's a schedule. Here's when I can start. Here's how many dials I can make. We go through it. I'm like, cool. Call me at this time. Send me a text. Let me know. We'll talk. Does it. And he's like, my goal was 150, but I only did— I was only able to do 50 because my mother-in-law had to have me come over for my dog, my kid, blah, blah. And I had to— and this thing came up. And it's like, OK, got it. It was emergency and face scraped, all this stuff. And I'm like, my mother-in-law would never call me if Maddox fell down and bumped his fucking knee. She would take care of him. She's raised kids. I have faith in her. Now, if he gets run over by a bus, fucking call me. But if he falls down and gets a boo-boo, I'm sure as shit not going to call it an emergency and go, you know what I mean? Like, and maybe his— well, I'm not saying his wasn't. I don't know. I don't know what's real, what's not anymore. So I just— In my head, I just go, okay, give people grace. Cool, all good. What's tomorrow look like? I'll make up for it tomorrow. What do you think happened tomorrow? Same fucking thing. Excuses. I'm like, bro, you remember the part where all fucking weekend you told me I was going to tell you like it is? Do you think maybe this is the reason you're broke as fuck? Who do you really want to be? Because you say you want to be this, But now you need family time every fucking night at 6 o'clock no matter what? Bro, there ain't no family time in my house if I'm making $1,000. But you do you. But I'm not mad anymore. You do you. But I just— right? So I said, all right, here's what I need you to do. He's having trouble booking, da da da. Cool. Do me a favor. Record 2 calls. Send them to me. I'll figure out what the problem is. Next day. That was last Wednesday going into Thursday. Not heard from him since. Did he quit on me or did he quit on himself? Quit on himself. What did I do? Gave him shit to do to hit the goals he said he wanted verbally. And let me know when you do it. One step at a time. Do this, let me know. Do that, let me know. Do this, text me. Do that, text me. You don't do it, what happens? They go away. They go away. Now if you don't go, hey, do this and call me back, do this and next, do this and next, what happens? They keep coming at you. One thing I learned from you a couple of years ago that you just reminded me of— when you give them those tasks, they call you when you say, if I don't hear from you, I'll assume you quit. Yep, 100%. That works so well, 100% of the time. And I tell them I'm doing it. I told him, this is how I'm like, yo, I'm going to be testing you. I'm going to give you shit to do, and I'm going to tell you to give it back to me solely as a test. And if you fail the test You and I no longer communicate. Now when I see you at the next event, bro, I'm gonna give you a high five, say what's up, but there ain't gonna be— I'm out. I will definitely quit you before you quit me. And I won't allow you to be negative around me, and I sure shit won't allow you to be negative around the team. You know what I'm saying? I will weed your ass out. If you don't put in the work, I will not help. Can you go call Bob at Bob's Insurance and him tell you how much I suck and how great his leads are and how magic they are? Yes, that will happen. You know what happened in 90 days? You'll still be broke. You know? And so I had to learn how to do it in a way where the separation wasn't like harsh. Like we didn't separate harsh. He stopped calling me. So if he chooses to change his mind in a few weeks, How do you think that phone call will go? What do you think we'll start out with more than likely?

Probably, you know, I know the last time I worked with you, you know, things didn't really work out.

It's going to be— it's going to start with apology. Yeah. I fucked up. 100% of the time. I fucked up. 100% of the time. If I do it the right way. Whereas if I'm like, which y'all have experienced, they go away, they blame me, they call Roger and they're like, John was an asshole, can I work over here? You know what I mean? And they never come back to me. But if I keep it real, but I do it like with finesse, like sales, you know what I mean? Start dealing with clients, this is a big correlation for me was like, you ever sit with clients who get under your skin? Never happened? Do you ever be like, what the fuck, you asshole? Do you want a plan or not? Does that work in sales? No, what happened? You get kicked out of the house. You say it, yeah, it does not. Right? So what do we do? We play a game. We put on salesman hat, right? We control our emotions. Just ask for permission to be honest. Correct. Correct. Could be a way to do it. Yeah, you got to ease the tension. You don't— you don't like— you do that, you get kicked out of houses like I used to. I used to get kicked out of a lot of houses too, right? And so in the, in the book, the whole— the O There's two. The second one is ownership, which to me means what that says up there, own your shit. Now I expect that of me, but I also expect it of you. You know what I'm saying? So I literally teach this. The book came from— crazy enough, the way this book happened is funny. So I've taught all this. I've been telling people to do more fucking work for the entire time either of you have known me. That's just who I am, right? And I've worked a lot my entire life. So it seems really simple. If I want to make more money, work more. That seems easy. I don't think I'm like the smartest person on Earth. I get a lot of compliments like I'm smart, so I don't think I'm stupid, but I don't think I'm a fucking genius either. So to me, like, 1 1 2. If I just do 2 of activity, wouldn't it equal 2 of deposits? And if I do 4 of activity, wouldn't it equal 4 of deposits? Like, it seems really simple to me. And I've learned it's not linear, and 4 of activity sometimes will equal 6 of deposits. It's fucking wild when you get better. Like, I missed that piece. But like, this is just all I've taught is like, do more of it. Just fucking do more. And now remember, I used to do the numbers. I used to bring everyone in, I'd look at their appointments, and I'd look at their deposits, and I go, hey, you make $152 per appointment. Who gives a shit if they say no? If you book the appointment, on average, you make $152. If I paid you $152 every time you booked an appointment and they all told you to fuck off, would you care if I gave you $152 every time? So why do we care when they tell us no now? Because there is an average. Why? We lack control of our emotions. We don't take ownership of stuff. We aren't being professional in our career. You lose your mind like you're 9. When you get in a pressure situation. How do I know? I fucking did it, right? And so I had to start teaching this stuff differently. And so for sure it was do more, but there was detail to it. So I'm going to this event, this is probably 2 and a half years ago. What is Amanda? No, she's not. Maybe 3 years ago, something like that. A few years ago, 2 or 3 years ago. It was event SWAT. Anybody know SWAT? You probably know him. So I'm flying to Nate's event, it's in Dallas, I'm speaking. And I don't typically prep when I speak, like I didn't prep. I just, I just, I— to Nate's point when he was on stage, why do you have to prep if it's what you do every day? That was a good point. And I laughed out loud, and that's when he knew where I was sitting, because I thought it was fucking hilarious. So I don't typically prep. For talks. Now, what I have learned is I'm better if I'm intentional. So I do my talk. The talk I did at 8%, I had done 15 times out loud already. I mean, I just pace. Some people saw me pacing out front earlier. They're like, what the fuck? You look like a crazy homeless guy that was bipolar. I'm like, yeah, I was doing my talk out there. I do it out loud with emotion. I literally do it out loud because I want to know how it feels and pace it and time it. I want to know what's going to— you know, man, I want to know what it— It sounds like. So anyway, I'm going to Nate's. And I'm starting to think— I'm starting to be at a stage where I'm like, I feel like I got to get better at speaking. I feel like I got to step it up a little bit. Again, I'm always trying to challenge myself. And I watch other speakers. And you hear some people speak, and it's like, whoa. They fucking knocked it out the park. And I've always got good feedback. But I wasn't getting like, you knocked it out the park feedback. So I'm like, how do I fucking change? Do more. How do I, how do I have finesse with it, right? And I'm literally on the plane to Dallas, short flight, a couple hours, hour and a half, whatever the flight is to Dallas. And I've written— I still have it on my phone to this day. And I write it out like, do more. I'm like, what does it actually mean to me? Because it is more than just do more. Like I did have to, there were pieces to it. And I'm like, what if I come up with a fucking acronym? I've seen some people doing acronyms. I'm like, that sounds cool as shit. So I started developing them. Like, what does it mean to me? And I was like, so I came up, I actually have them, I'm gonna tell you the words I came up with. Some of them I hit on the first try. Some of them took me a few words and I had to figure out. Let me see if I can find it. I'm a big Notepad. Y'all, y'all do— y'all use the Notepad? I use it for everything. I have like hundreds of them. Anything I'm thinking, any talk, like talks I do, trainings I do, I have notes in here. And as I'm just thinking of shit when I'm just out and about in the grocery store thinking of crazy stories, I think of something like, ooh, put that in the talk. I just put notes in there. 2 in the morning, you ever wake up like thinking shit? Weird times in the night, do I grab my phone? I put it on Notepad. No, I put it in notes. I do it all the time. We have a thing with staff. We have this thing called Trello. It's like a little app that we share that it's like a to-do list that the whole team can see. And for years when I needed— when I'd be thinking of business and I wanted to tell Amanda something instead of texting her because I kind of feel like a dick texting her at midnight, 11. You know, man, I would do it but I'm like, "Eh." So, we came up with Trello. I put it in Trello. I'd be like, "Hey, remind me this." Or, "Hey, let's work on this." Or, "Hey..." And and she'd get notified. And then when she does it, I get notified she does it. So as I think of things, work things, I just, I'm like, oh, I'll put it in Trello. Now we have a shared note because I'm simple, I like Notepad. So we have a shared Notepad. So when I think of, there's literally a checklist in here that says JW and AB. And we put in there, I put the little circle that you can click the button and it checks it. And so everything I ever think of that I want accomplished or want to do or want her to do or think, I put it in fucking Notepad and it notifies her that I updated Notepad. So she goes in there, she checks it off and it notifies me. It's— I'm like super— literally like our world is built in Notepad. So this Do-more thing. So I don't know if y'all can see. You see the— like it's literally typed. See like the Do-more and then there's words under it. Oh yeah. That's it. Lots of words. Yeah. See. So I was— I started thinking, and this seemed easy. It's the only word I came up with, is discipline. You gotta be pretty fucking disciplined to do well in anything in life. Athletes— think there's an undisciplined fucking professional athlete? Top-tier actor, actress, all the people you watch, you know, you start talking about one of the things like Olympics is out right now. They're pretty fucking disciplined people. You know what's crazy to me? Y'all watch Olympics? Anybody watch them? I was at the gym today and they were fucking quoting the height of this Olympic athlete, and then volleyball, this Susan and— I'm making up names, I don't know any of them. Susan did this and Bob did that, and gold— this, this thing is tonight, and this one went to Rockmart High School and did that, and they know all this stuff. And that happens with a lot of people. Maybe you know a lot about football. Maybe you know a lot about basketball. Maybe you know where your favorite actor grew up and went to— you know all these things. And I'm like, how many poems do you write? I have no idea. How many leads you get this week? Uh, let me check my CRM. How many apps you write last month? Uh, I don't know. How many hits did— I can't even name a name because I don't fucking watch them. Wherever your favorite athlete did, how many hits did they get last year off the fucking top of their head? Dude, it makes me disgusted that you know stats about grown fucking men who care nothing about you or your family, but you don't know how many fucking appointments you run. You don't know how much you make. You know how much you deposited this week? You know how much you deposited last month? Like, what? I find that weird. You don't know what your schedule is Tuesday? You don't know when you're gonna dial and when you're gonna fucking buy leads and when you're gonna call for recruits and you don't know this stuff? Like, what? What's your strategy when you run into someone that's 52 years old and lost their wife and they have work insurance? You don't know? Hey, what's— I'm gonna use Tom Brady. I know he doesn't play anymore. What's Tom Brady's strategy against the Steelers? Oh, he runs the nickel package, dime 4x 3-2-Z. Like, what? That's real life. So I talk about it, you know what I mean? And I'm like, so for me, one of the things that changed, I had to have discipline in my world. Everything, every part of it, not just my schedule when I run appointments. I had to be disciplined in my career. You know, then I— this one came easy to me too. This was just ownership. I eventually changed it to own your shit. But I have now what we call— I didn't name it, but some people that have requested it, like the church version. People ask for a church version of the bracelet so you can flip it over and see the do more instead of the get shit done side. It's like church mode. So again, it is what it is. Like, I had to own my flaws. You know, and someone after my talk with it was like, can't that be a bad thing where you just beat yourself up about all the things you're bad at? I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't look like bad to me. Like, I'd rather be open about it. Like, and I'd rather talk to Maddox about the things he's poor at, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, it is what it is. It's like, take ownership for stuff and stop blaming the rest of the fucking world for your failures. And that's what people do by instinct, is the blame. What do you, who do you think Maddox blames when he strikes out? Not me. Little baseball, little 12-year-old baseball players. Pitch outside corner of the plate. Always the umpire. Always the umpire. Why do the parents say their little Johnny lost the game? Bad calls from the umpire today. Now how much of kids didn't score enough fucking points? How about that? If they scored 19 points, they wouldn't have lost and that play wouldn't have mattered. Right? We get mad about chargebacks. If you wrote 10 apps a week, you wouldn't care about chargeback. Does that make sense? Where if Maddux hit the ball that was right down the middle instead of watching it go by, he wouldn't have cared about the outside called strike 3. You put yourself in that situation. You're worried about debt, you put yourself in that spot. You can't pay your bills and leads in the same week, you put yourself in that spot. Own it. Stop blaming other people. This was all from me. This wasn't like, how can I teach? This is like shit I had to change about me. So I started looking at like the things that I changed in my world. And this became like a mantra for who I was and who I was becoming and the changes I had to make. And then M, the first word I wrote was motivated. And I'm like, but then I wrote mistakes. I'm like, oh, I like that one. And the reason I do that is like, we've talked about it already, like how does Maddox learn how to take ground balls? He fucks up a bunch of them, right? And I think so many people, one, aren't willing to make mistakes. They won't put themselves out there. They're not willing to make phone calls till they know phone script. They're not willing to go see people, see clients until they know everything about underwriting and products and this, that, and the other. Why? They don't want— I'm a perfectionist. That's my least favorite word on planet Earth. I agree. Like, really? Right. So for me, it's like you have to be willing to make mistakes. You have to have a willingness to go make them. One, two. And I always say there's so much— there's so much golden mistakes that people won't allow to happen, you know what I mean? But so much can develop out of it. Two, you have to own you made the mistake. So willing to make it, sure. Now you go make it, but are you blaming someone else? Probably. Probably. Think of a relationship you have a bad taste in your mouth about. Whose fault is it? They were an asshole. They were this. They were that. What do you think they think? So did you mess something up there? I ain't saying they're perfect, but what role did you play in that? Because I can control that. You know what I'm saying? We'd have this conversation in staff all the time. It's like, so-and-so did X. All right, cool. How did we make a mistake that they let them go down that road? Agent didn't know how to charge back and quit. They were pissed. How did I mess up and not teach them how chargebacks work and how they have to fucking take care of it and how they have to sell enough insurance and buy enough leads? How did I let it get there? Rollup. Dickhead rolled up lead. How did I not see that coming? Dude, this shit don't roll for months and 47 emails and lots of conversations. You know what I mean? Like, how do I not see it? Agents are mad at Rollup now. I'm like, I think you fucked up somewhere along the line. You know what I'm saying? So I think, again, making them, owning you made it, again, kind of goes back to the ownership thing. Taking advice from someone who's better than you at whatever problem you're having. A lot of people don't want advice. They don't want to hear it. They don't want to take— y'all are here, so you obviously knew what you were walking in. Most of you knew. Maybe she didn't know exactly, but most of y'all knew what you're walking into. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then probably the hardest part is like then implementing the thing you were told to change. Yeah. And I always say like, can there be some light bulb moments today? Sure. Can you go to the next training and learn something? Sure. Are you telling me you ain't been told 900 fucking things to do to improve your situation already? I ain't got that much good stuff. That you haven't already done. I just don't believe that someone hasn't already told you you got to work more. I don't believe it. I don't believe that someone's not already told you you need to have a bunch of leads. I don't fucking believe it. I don't believe it. I think you're lying to me and you're lying to yourself. Yeah. You know, so it's like implement. And that's the sad part is, and I said it in the event there, we do these things and I'm like, most people won't implement this shit. Most won't, which sucks fucking ass. But I keep doing it because I know some will. You know what I mean? So it's like, again, so I start teaching that stuff. But then, oh, oh, it was tricky. I got 1, 2, 3, 5. Put output-focused. I don't even know what the fuck that means. Optimistic. I put ownership again. I had it twice, I guess. Overachiever. But then I put obsessive. That one was like, I'm that for sure. And people that are successful at high levels are obsessive. Name an athlete that ain't. You know? Again, I always go like, all the actors and actresses we all follow and love, they're pretty fucking obsessive. They have a movie role, dude, they want to learn how to speak like Italian. Bro, they go to fucking Italy and learn that shit. You know what I mean? They lose 87 pounds in 6 weeks to look the part for the role they want to play. Pretty fucking obsessive, you know? And it's like always trying to get better. I was watching— I don't watch a ton of TV, but I watched this show this week on Netflix. It's called like Quarterback— no, Wide Receiver. I think it was called the Wide Receiver version. I think it's called Receiver. And on Netflix, one of the like NFL shows, they follow around typically like 4 or 5 quarterbacks around the league and they mic them up and they follow them through the season. And they just show you like what they do to achieve what they do in their trainings and their coaches. They just follow the season and they make a cool little documentary about it. In this season, they did one where it's receivers. And so they had— normally, I think like Peyton Manning hosts it because it's quarterbacks. And this time, Randy Moss did. So it was a cool little intro. See, I like Randy Moss. I'm a fan of his. And so they follow around— these receivers and one of them was— what's his name? Plays on the Raiders. He's like one of the best receivers in the NFL. Deontay Adams, Davante Adams, something like that. He used to play for Green Bay and I'm learning them as I watch it. But he used to play with— what's the dude who just went to the Jets? Quarterback? Yes. So he used to play with him over there. And so they're following. So So you see some interactions with those two. Anyway, I think it's Davante, as I think that's how you say his name, Adams. And he's one of the best receivers in the league, apparently. I found out on the show he's been around for like over a decade. Anyway, so he's been in the league 12 years. Every week before the following upcoming game, he sits down with his iPad And he watches film of everyone that's on the opposing team. And he watches to see what their inclination is on every type of play. When there's a run play, what do they do? And then he watches every play to see on a run play if the opposing receiver— that's not— he watches other teams play against them. He's like, if so-and-so cuts to the inside, how does he react versus if he cuts to the outside? Versus if he goes straight at him? What if they run a blitz over here? Then how does he react? How does the linebacker react if this guy misses? How does the safety react if this guy does this? And he just— he— and he's— and he's— he's literally like controlling it on the iPad, and you see it rewind, fast forward, rewind, play, rewind, play. He's like, my wife hates it because she just wants to watch a play, right? And he's like, I watch each step. So he's watch it, rewind, watch it, rewind. And it— to get the whole— to get one whole play out, sometimes like 5 minutes. Just get a 9-second play out because he'll watch every fucking detail of every player on the field to see what they do in each situation, you know. And then you go, hey, you know who the top producers at all your companies are, right? They all do live dials, live phone calls, live one-call closes. How many of them you watched? In fact, who's the number 1 producer in your group? We go, I don't know. How long has he been selling insurance? I don't know. How long so-and-so been in the NFL? 7 and a half years. He came from Kentucky and went walk-on. But who's number 1 in what you do? I don't know. Hey, when he runs into a situation where someone says, I want to think about, what's he say? I don't know. What? Like, what? But you know stats about others, you know what I mean? So I'm like, are you obsessed as obsessive as the people you obsess over in other industries? And I had— I wasn't, so I had to become that. So I started studying people, started studying the way people speak. That's the literally the evolution of this. So this is not only teaching you how I developed in what I do for sales and building, how I'm developing speaking, and how I'm teaching people how to— you know what I mean? Like, this, this thing covers a lot of shit for me. So then R, I came— I had resourceful reps, and I came more resilient, and I realized that people let life shit get in the way every single motherfucking day. I'm like, do you think all the people you see winning— I've got every room I go in, literally, and we don't have to do it here because I already know the answer. I go, who has shit in life? Okay, if you don't raise your hand, you're lying. Every room I ever go in, 100% of people raise their hand. I've never had no one raise their hand except if they're being lazy and don't want to participate, and I call them out and they laugh and they go, yeah, me too. Right? So I'm like, so if you know other people have shit too and they're winning, why do you let your shit get in the way of you winning? Because you're weak here. You're weak mentally. That's why. You're making excuses. You're not owning stuff. You're placing blame in areas. Does that make sense? Like we got to be able to get through stuff. I can give a million stories. But why give them? Because you have stories too. None of us want to hear each other's stories unless we're like, what's that word where you're very like, that thing I'm not really good at, where you're empathetic. Like that's a struggle for me. 'Cause I'm like, I'm not trying to be a dick, but I don't care, let's keep moving. Does it make sense? So I've learned to like somewhat, like I can play the role, but I'm not good at it. And I don't want to share my stuff either because I don't want you to have to care about— you know what I mean? And again, I'm not saying that's the perfect way to live, but I'm poor at that. But again, at the end of the day, do we just want to exchange shit stories? That's confidential. Or do we want to go be successful? I'd rather be successful. You want to talk shit stories? Let's do it at fucking Four Seasons on the beach somewhere on an island. Let's do it then. You know what I mean? But now, when we're broke and struggling and trying to get by, like, I just, ah, I got shit to do. Like, let's move on. I got plenty of shit in my life. Can we just go? Who cares? You know?

And nobody knew. I never told anybody. It was a disaster. But my thing was, what am I going to do? I got people coming down here. I mean, what am I going to just mess everybody's trip up and have them worried about me? And I never mentioned it. They didn't even know what happened. But my damn house flooded.

Septic.

Yeah, you know that. So the mitigation team, and it happened, you know when it happened? The day before I was due to fly to Texas.

So what was that one back over Texas? Yeah, that's part of it, you know. So it's like, how do I, how do I get the, how do I get that point across to people? You give me someone who watches sports, I'm like, yo, remember what Michael Jordan did after his dad died? He He fucking played. I ain't saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying he did it. People tell the story a lot. How amazing, he made it. Remember the flu game? Dying. What'd he do? Played. You got a sore toe and you missed a week of fucking work? Your sister's second cousin's cat died and you can't come to the meeting?

Okay.

There's athletes all the time. You watch SportsCenter. Family, daughters, children, babies, die, literally die, and they show up on fucking Sunday and play. And I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying you see that and you respect it. Damn, they must have— that must have been hard. But he's going to provide a living for his family. So I'm not saying you got to be that, but bro, the flat tire excuse has got to stop. Like, it's not that life ain't that hard, you know. It's like, we got to get through shit, you know. I always tell— I tell Steph's story all the time. She got— she was diagnosed with cancer at age 40, first mammogram. She's fine now. I always lead in because people get worried. I'm like, she's fine now, been 6 years, almost 7. Um, at 40, she had surgery. They removed a little lump, not her whole thing, but a little spot. And then she had to do radiation for like— it was like— it was a minute. It was like 6 weeks or something. And she went to radiation on her lunch break at work. And went back to work every day. She didn't miss a day of work. You know what I mean? And read the book, just in there, our marriage wasn't perfect at that time either. So I'm like, all right, your kid's sick. I'm not trying to be a fucking asshole, but I don't care at all. You know what I mean? Like, I just, I don't, I don't understand. I don't, do you? Do. But just don't complain to me because I don't— I get through it just like plenty other people get through it. I'm not special. I just— and if you want that to be you, all good. Can't complain. You can't do it and complain about it. So if you're going to do it, accept the outcome that comes with it. I don't care that you do it. I care that you do it and bitch. Does that make sense? And so I always have that no complaining rule. If you don't do all these things, I used to care so bad, dude. I used to get so mad. I used to get pissed when people didn't do all the things I said. I used to get so fucking mad. Now I'm like, "All right." Right? Kind of leads into the last one, expectations. So my expectations changed a lot. Now, I'm really simple. Expect you to be coachable. Do the shit you say you're going to do. Now, how can I— huh?

And the third one, if you— yeah, if you not communicate that.

Yeah, if you— yeah, if you can't— so the— I really had the two, and I added the third to be nice. Be coachable. Do the shit you say you're going to do. And I said the third one is, if you can't do what you say you're going to do, communicate with me. But I only got about two of those in me before I give up. Grandma can only die twice and I'm out. I just can't, I can't do the constant communication. I can't do it. So I'm just honest about who I am. Do the shit you say you're gonna do and be coachable. And if you don't want to do it, don't say you're gonna fucking do it. Now, how can I trap people? What'd I do to y'all this morning? I made y'all fucking put it on paper. You said you were gonna— I didn't say shit. Y'all said you were gonna do the stuff, which at lunch I'm gonna get my team to make copies of it. Y'all said you were gonna do it. I didn't say nothing. I just asked questions. Can you do this? Yes, no. You do that? Yes, no. Can you do this and call me? Yes, no. Can you buy more leads? Yes or no. Can you start dialing at 7? Yes or no. Can you text me at noon? Yes or no. Can you record your call? Yes or no. Now what happens when they don't do it? They violated one of the rules. So what's that mean? I quit you before you quit me. You didn't do what you said you were going to do. So my expectations are you do what you say you're going to do, of you. My expectations of me are I'm going to fucking corner you into telling me the shit you're going to do, knowing full well you probably won't do it. So when you don't do it, it's your fault, not my fault. Changed my world. And what I learned about this is it's kind of the same thing I talked about a second ago. Think about someone you have a poor relationship with, someone you're mad at, someone you're frustrated with, someone you're annoyed with. I can't say anything less than 100% of the time is because of my expectations of whatever happened is why I'm frustrated. It's my expectations that caused me to be— I expected them not to roll debt. That's really why I'm mad. Does that make sense? Is it right that they rolled it? No, I'm not saying that. It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can be and. But I'm mad because of the expectation. I'm mad because they didn't run enough appointments. I'm mad because they don't keep buying leads. I'm That's— I'm mad because I expected stuff. So I had to reduce my level of expectations and put it on them. Be coachable, do the shit you say you're going to do. Otherwise what? You don't need me. I don't care if you don't do those things. Just leave me the fuck out of it. If you aren't going to do it, remove me from the situation and we're good. And I had to have a no complaining rule. So you don't do those, you can't complain. That's it. You want to be part-time, Anika? High five. Can't ever complain to me. Why? It's going to be inconsistent and probably suck a lot. It's the truth. You don't want to run a bunch of appointments? Cool. It's going to be inconsistent and fucking suck forever. You don't want to recruit? Cool. The business is probably going to eventually suck and be inconsistent forever. You don't want to adapt and learn and adjust and change who you are? It's probably going to be inconsistent and suck forever. You've been doing this a long time, bro. It's only so long, 250 grand in 25 hours a week is fun. You know what I'm saying? It's only so long in my eyes, for me, there's only so long that could be fun. What we got to do? We got to change. That's the sign that showed up in conference right there, that little one there. You know what I'm saying? It's like, do you hate to lose so much you want to change, or do you hate change so much you want to lose? And most people hate change so much, Anika, they want to lose. And I watch it all day, every day. So I challenge people to change. I get them to verbalize that they're going to do it, and then I sit there and I watch whether they're going to sink or swim. And if you start flapping around the water and water and in the ocean and water's going down your throat and you're choking and you're like, save me, I'm like, yo, I ain't jumping in. I gave you the way to fuck out. You chose to jump in without a life raft, bro. Wish you the best. I don't know, it's better you drown or get eaten by a shark, but either way, I'm gonna sit here and watch. I just can't jump in and rescue everybody. Why? There's a million people on the boat. It is draining. And so I had to learn how to control it in a better way. I had to learn how to articulate it and tell stories. Nobody's offended. I'm saying the same thing I've said 10 years ago. The message is no different. The deliveries were changed. You know what I'm saying? And that's how you have to learn how to adapt with things. And it happens with clients and agents. You have to learn how— you're mad at results of your sales? Change something. Change your delivery. Yeah, do all these things. Be disciplined in learning your craft. Take ownership of stuff. Learn from your mistakes. Don't just make them. Mistakes are awesome. You know what's not awesome? Repeated fucking mistakes. That's your fault. Keep making the same ones, that's your fault. New ones, fucking love them. My team, we fuck up all kinds of stuff. When does it drive me crazy? When we do it over and over and over again. I lose my mind. I just— it stresses me out. I'm like, can we— please, can we fix it? Please. I ain't mad at making it, dude. I'm a— we're talking about something when y'all were doing the thing. I went back there, I'm like, hey, we have a meeting later. I don't know what the fuck we're doing with it. Can we make something up by 4:30? Because it's something we have an opportunity to do and I don't know how to do it yet. I'm like, can we create something? Let's go make a fucking mess of it. Now in 3 months and we're still messing up, I'm gonna be pissed. I mean, because I do want to learn better and get, you know, I mean, get better from each of them and learn from them. But the willingness to make mistakes is key. Again, just getting through this stuff. So this whole thing came on the plane flying to Dallas to do SWAT and I'm like, I need to get better. I'm gonna come up with this. And so I came up with this literally on the plane because I started looking back at my journey and started seeing what changed. I started thinking a little bit deeper about things and how have I taught this thing. And what things do I look for? What qualities do I see in people that are successful? And where does this thing really matter? How can it be— because people like do more work. The opposite of my thing is work smarter, not harder. And my favorite line in the book when I bring that up, I say, first of all, fuck you. And so I didn't get— I didn't learn to make money that way. Do we figure out how to do things better with time? Sure. But people want to do smarter first. I'm like, why do we got to do it smart first? Can we just do a bunch of it first so we can get smarter at it because we get better at it? Think about anything. You build— this chair came in like 12 pieces. If I gave you one in a box right now and said build it, how long will it take? Make up a time. OK, if we built 27 of them, Tomorrow, how long will it take you to do your first one? You think? You don't think you're gonna learn how to build this fucking chair after building 27 of them? The first one tomorrow, meaning if we build 27 of these bitches today, do you not think tomorrow you're going to learn where the screws and the nuts and the bolts go? First one right now, 45 minutes, cool. 27, and we go first one tomorrow. 7 minutes. You don't even got to read, this is arm A, this is arm B, this is screw AA, this is washer C. You don't need any of that shit. You just fucking open the bag, you put it here, it's lined up, cool. This goes in there. I learned all the things you fucked up. You screw it together, it's built in no time. You know? Why is that any different with anything else?

'Cause when you bet on yourself, it's different than when you have to show up for somebody else. And for whatever reason, Arshel, she was going— that's one of her things that she says, you know, new ages all the time. You know, you go hard, you work somewhere for 20-something years, and then they let you go, and then back Why?

So why do you show up to a job every day when you don't want to? What do you think drives that? Fear of loss. You don't want to lose your paycheck. So for me, I'm like, you can't— are we that— and I don't want to offend anyone. But I'm going to. Are we that weak mentally that we can't create fear of loss if you don't go to work in this thing?

It's the same thing, you just work with yourself harder.

You're— and people go, I need— what are they saying? Like, um, what's the word? Um, like regular income. There's a word they use. Stability. Yeah, I need the stability and income. Like OK. You know if you sell a fucking policy every day, that's stability, right? Really? Self-employed, I can't do. You think because it's W-2 you ain't self-employed? No. Like you don't think on W-2 you have to perform every day? You're self-employed no matter how you get paid. Call it W-2, call it 1099, you're fucking self-employed. I mean, if you don't show up and you don't perform, they fire you. You better show up every day. I mean, I just— I think it's, again, the mentality for me. And I've been there. I get it. But I'm like, is it really that hard to control? I don't know. Can you not be like, my kids will fucking give up on me, my family, my wife, they'll lose this, they won't get that, I won't be able to achieve this, I can't have these things in life, the repo man comes. I mean, I can't eat the way— I just— that doesn't create fear. I wonder how I walked around in life like this for so long pretending that if I didn't work hard, things wouldn't go wrong in life. But I was blaming everything else. It was everyone else's fault. I come from a welfare system. You're taught to blame the fucking world for everything. It's everyone else's fault. It's rich people. Ugh. Yeah, I should get some of their shit. I grew up in that world. I'm like, I get how, but at the same time now it's so easy to change it, I also don't. Especially as much as people have get the messaging now and as much access to information as we all have. I'm just like, I don't know. So I challenge people a lot when they call me for stuff. I'm like, are you trying to use me to validate your stupid thinking? Because it ain't gonna happen right now. I ain't buying into that shit, and I'm sure as shit not gonna let you convince me to buy into the stuff you're selling yourself. I refuse to. I call people out in a second. This carrier is the reason why. Really, bro? You know that carrier didn't exist 100 years ago and the life insurance industry worked just fine? The leads, bro. You know Primerica was built with no leads or no technology, no phones, no nothing, right? Mutual of Omaha has existed for how many fucking years? For the people that know, I don't fucking— it's been a long fucking time. No technology, no leads. I like documentary type stuff. If I watch something, it usually has to be around that. I like seeing people win and sell stuff and grow stuff and build things. And I watched this one a couple of years ago and it's got me thinking. As I start thinking about analogies and examples, this is one I thought of recently. And I watched this one, it was like called like Building America or something like that. And it was like the Andrew Carnegies and Henry Fords and Rockefellers of the world. And they talk about how they built fucking railroads and chiseled through mountains to get across the country to fucking ship stuff. Like, think about— think about the things we take for granted. I'm like, can you imagine if like— I think Andrew Carnegie was steel, if I'm not mistaken. I think he's a steel guy. Can you imagine if that fool waited around for Zuckerberg to create Facebook so he could get leads to sell steel to? And every agent wants to— how do I get the best leads? What do you think he did? What do you think Henry Ford did to sell cars? Do you think he posted an ad? He called Arturo and Cody, was like, hey, can you run me an ad? I ain't mad at it. I love the stuff. But I'm like, they built the country by going out in the world and getting shit done. Fair? They went and found people. They used their voice. And they sold their stuff. And we have agents who sit around on their couch watching the Olympics, bitching that the world is unfair and leads are too expensive and they all suck. You know what I mean? And I'm like, what do we— Andrew Carnegie, Zuckerberg, I think they're like a couple hundred years apart. Like, he fucking figured it out. The shoe cobbler figured it out. A lady who churned butter figured it out. And we got no one to talk to about life insurance? You just go out the door, open that bitch up, take a right, Stilesboro Road. Bet 15,000 people go up and down that road every day, all day. Go talk to some of them. Stand in the parking lot. They park and they stop and they get out. Go talk to some. Houses. They're all over the place. There's a front door, you fucking knock on it, people open it and say hello. Dude, I interviewed someone on the podcast last week, old— and I'm not saying this has to be the only way, I'm just saying stop making excuses— the way he was brought into the industry, he was literally handed the fucking phone book and said— and they— he was told Don't come back Monday if you don't have 3 applications. Again, do you have to do it that way? Not if you got money to spend on leads, sure. Don't do it that way. But if you're sitting around in your underwear sulking, I'm like— I posted something yesterday, the thing. Y'all see the Like, I did my best. It was like, it's a word, something like, it's like one of the most overused fucking sayings on the planet. I did my best. Really? Really? And I can use crazy stuff and go off. Think of your favorite, most favorite loved one on Earth, person you do anything for, or that person that comes to mind. Anyone? Y'all think about it. You don't have to tell me whoever that person is. If you don't figure out how to go make 25 presentations this week, they die of cancer on Friday.

What would you do?

Would you wait for Cody's leads? Figure it out. Would you wait for Anika's free ones only? I'd stand in fucking traffic and stop the cars and ask everyone that goes up and down the street. You know who does that shit? Who stands next to the interstate in traffic and talks to every single fucking car that goes by? Homeless people. And you won't go talk to fucking strangers? The homeless guy does it, and you won't go talk to people about what you do for a living? 100%. 100%. When I was at Stone Mountain, the one thing, the very biggest thing I noticed that day, there were 4 dudes standing out. If you've ever been, there's like these little— it's not a gate, but there's like those little posts that they put in the ground so you can't drive a car through it, but you can walk through it. The little, you know, y'all know what I'm talking about. There's 4 of them, one standing at each one. Every single 100% of people that walk in got a flyer asking about if they got to know Jesus. They talk to thousands of people every day, and you won't go talk to people about insurance. This all goes into scaling. This is how I talk to people. All right, leads suck. Cool. Leads to me sounds like a really What's the word? Like if we're very fortunate to have it, like a privilege, yes. But leads, when I think leads, right? When I say leads, most people think something that comes to me that I should close easily. That's true. Fair? Yes. But if I go talk to a grandma in Kroger, ain't that a lead too? If I stand in front of Stone Mountain, I hand out flyers, ain't that a lead too? Andrew Carnegie talks to someone about needing steel or need to fucking get from wherever the hell he started to the other side of the country. It was a lead. You know what I mean? And we way overcomplicate this thing. You know? And it's like— Yeah. He is. I use this shit all the time, dude. Yeah, for those that don't know, cold knocks on doors, 100 doors a day is his goal. $350 grand last year, not one lead. In Houston? Yes. Yeah, he does an apartment complex. He goes enough, he will— he doesn't have— he's— you'll see if you follow him on social. He'll sometimes— his car broke down. He didn't make no excuse. What'd he do? Anyone else see that? His car broke down a couple weeks ago. He Ubered to apartment complexes. Uber drop him off. Uber drop him off at an apartment complex. He knocks on doors all day long. Call the Uber, go back home. He's like, it costs $6. People are like, what's the script? Hey, my name is Jorge. You need insurance? Ham whore ham here, talk about life insurance. He does it live on fucking TikTok. You wear a white t-shirt just to prove you don't need to dress up. Correct. You don't need shit. White t-shirt. Yep. Took his son with him one day. Yeah. And so then I go like, some of y'all making excuses, or maybe some of y'all aren't, but your agents are. And how are you talking to them? How are you delivering it? Are you positioning it in the right way to where they receive it? Zero of y'all are ever going to come to me and bitch about lead flow. I know that for sure. Why? I do this stuff on purpose. Now again, some of y'all don't need it. We're making money. But some of the purpose is how can I repurpose this stuff and use it in different ways. That's all I've done is every negative situation, frustrating situation, every piece of this business that we get stuck in and those roadblocks is a reason. And it's because you're not good at getting people to remove roadblocks from their life and walk around it. You just let people keep crashing into the roadblocks. And you think the answer is just hire more and the roadblocks are going to go away one day. The roadblocks ain't going away. Mental roadblocks, that's what got me really good at this, is figuring out that game. When I learned— and I learned it in sales first. If you sell anything, you know, you already have this, you know what I mean? You get people to see things different. You can maneuver situations. I— when I found out how well I could control things through questions and stories and analogies. Hey, my last client just blah blah blah blah blah, and you tell the story about the last client. Why? So there's more believability. They trust you more because you dealt with someone just like them. And all my clients in this situation, we do ABC. What does that do? It builds trust. It shows you're like, you've done some shit, you know I'm saying? It creates stuff. And so it's intentional. We deal with this. Here's how we navigate it. And then we get on this building side and we tend to like lose all that and just pound people. We treat them all the same. We take every agent, we give them all the same. Now, some of the stuff can be broad, the stories and analogies, they can all be broad. But I can't necessarily push you the same way I can push her. You know what I mean? She doesn't necessarily want the same things you want. Neither is right or wrong. I used to look at some being wrong. I don't know how the hell it survived. I mean, I'll be honest, it was just because she was really transparent about it. It was kind of a light bulb for me. Nobody ever come to me before and been like, I just want to be part-time and dick around every once in a while and make $60 grand. No one's ever said that to me. Everyone's like, I want to be rich. I'll do anything. So when she did it, I was like, oh, fuck. Not everybody wants to be rich. It was like confusing. You know what I mean? I was like, "Huh." And then I'm hearing all these other people, mentors, people I'm getting around that are better than me. I'm getting around, I'm paying attention and they're like, "Bro, you're just pushing too hard." And I'm like, "What do you— I don't even understand what you're saying." Like it didn't compute to me. And then one day I'm like, Dude, I put $70 grand on my paper. I can have memories of being little and being like, one day. I have those memories a little bit. But again, I was 35 years old writing $70 grand down on a piece of paper as my goal. So I was like, fuck, I can actually— not everybody changes at the pace I change. 'Not everybody sees,' you know what I mean? And I was like, 'All right, that's okay.' But what I've learned is everyone is where they are today. Everyone is where you are today. All of you. We're all here today. Whatever your thought process is, whatever your goals are, whatever your achievements are, you're all there. And everyone wants to go over here. Maybe that's across the street. Maybe it's the fucking another country. I don't know. You know what I mean? It's a million miles away. And everybody has to go down that road. And I don't know anyone that can go from here to here without sacrifice. I don't— I've never seen it. I sure as shit can't teach it. You know? So I started trying to ask people. Where you at now? And I don't ask it that way. It's like walking into a client's house, this dude I was talking about earlier, and going like, so, Anika, why did you fill this form out? That's a really shitty fucking question, given the form says fill this out if you want life insurance. You know, like, did you not read that fucking thing? Like, it's your form, and you're asking me why I filled out your form that says why I filled it out on the fucking form? But I used to ask that at the beginning. Poor question. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, where are people at? I don't know where you're at, bro. Ask fucking questions. I did it to all of y'all. How long you been in the business? How much money you want to make? Where you at now? What do you want to achieve out of this? What do you want today? I get you verbalizing stuff. All right? Where do we want to go? Goals. Y'all have them. I'm going to look at them. We've talked about them. Does that make sense? We're going to do the schedule one in a little while. I keep talking about it. Normally I do it already. I'm on a roll. Stuff you got to add and get rid of and put in your schedule. Sacrifices. It's not crazy deep, you know. Now, do you have to be good at remembering people? Yeah, sure. Some people want to use a fancy CRM to keep up with everything when they have no agents. I'm like, I don't understand that shit at all. Get a piece of paper, write it down, you know. I used to draw out my group when I did this. These little— I don't know if y'all know what any of this means, but I was taught to like circles. It's fucking MLM-y, like Amway stuff does this, but that's who kind of built our section of the industry is Amway guys. I used to draw it out every day for years. I'd literally put Athena, I put Josh, Zach, this one, and over here Bob, and I'd write names and I'd map them all out and I would just look at it and I knew everything that I need to know about every one of them. Where they were at, where they wanted to go, what their comp was, how much they sold, kids. You know, man, I would just learn stuff. After a while, it got out of control, but I started teaching others to do it. So now I don't have— she does it for them. I don't have to get on the phone with them to do it. She fucking knows all the stuff, you know what I mean? So I teach duplicatable stuff. So I just started looking at who's who. I literally map it out. How much did this one make? Oh dang, he only made $1,200 last month. Why did it take me a month to figure out he only made $1,200? I suck that bad I didn't look at my stuff? You don't find out till damn your company puts out a report how much your agents are making? How do I see it? Commission statements. They put them all on there and you write them down. You add them up and then you see that so-and-so didn't get on live dials. Hey dude, you good? I thought you said you wanted to go over here. I thought you said you were gonna Tuesdays you were gonna be dialing, didn't you? And then I'm asking, you good? You said Tuesday, I see your cat, it's Tuesday, bro, you ain't, everything okay? You know what I'm saying? You're gonna run 15 appointments, dude, I ain't seen you post nothing in the group chat yet. You all right? You know what I'm saying? I would just do that every day. How do I not get debt a lot? I'm looking at commission statements every day. Why does debt typically, aside from fraud, I mean, fraudulent is what it is. It's a little different game. But you know what I did learn, dude? Crooks have really good stories, but they do really dumb fucking things. We saw it, but it took a month and a half for AmeriCo to say, yeah, we'll stop everything. Yeah, I'll cut them off right away. I cut them off on that. You can terminate someone today. You can fucking terminate someone right now. We tried. Yeah, again, it won't happen ever again. Yeah, yeah, I get it. And I'm not saying y'all did a bad thing. I'm just talking very generically. You know what I mean? Again, if they didn't do it today, now what would you do? Keep fucking calling. Terminate them. Corporate, terminate them. Someone terminate them. Cut them off. Correct. You would change from it. You know what I mean? But again, in its simplest form, why does it happen? Typically, the overwhelming majority of roll-ups, not the dickhead, the overwhelming majority, we get them every day of the week. I get roll-ups. Correct. Okay, so lack of activity. So they get commission, they get paid, they don't do activity, it charges back, they're negative. Now when they sell, they don't get paid. So what? They quit. Okay, so how do we see that sooner? Yeah, how many leads are they buying? Fuck, if you don't buy enough leads, you can't have enough activity. So I start having those conversations. 100% of the time you see it coming. Yeah, yeah. Now the question is, how many layers can we teach it? Because it'll start to get out of your control again. Oh bro, it's tough. Now you gotta rely on— I gotta rely on Anika to teach this shit to her team, you know what I mean? So now I can run debt report on her team, but now I have to trust that if she has started to have a bunch of it, now I got to call her and go, hey, how you get 6 of them? Like, what's up, you missing this stuff? And now it's at a point now I have a hard time doing it. But we don't want anyone to be scared to where they don't want to grow. Then you normalize that it's okay. Imagine if Walmart didn't open locations because they didn't want theft. Exactly. Imagine if Pizza Hut didn't open locations because they didn't want 16-year-olds to steal their pizza and give their buddies a free fucking chicken wing and breadsticks. Let them slide out the door with the Coke. Like, do we want it? Nah, but we're going to put inventory in place. We're going to put cameras in the off building. We're going to— you know what I mean? Like, there's things we can do. You know what I'm saying? It's like— and so there's always— and again, it's not perfect, but you can mitigate a lot of it. And then it's teaching the same simple things. You can take it on for a certain period of time, but if you aren't teaching it in layers, You know what I'm saying? And I want to scare people. I want— I'm different, dude. I don't sell the dream. I sell the struggle. I want to see if you want to fucking go through it. Just like Jesse Itzler sells fucking me climbing a mountain 31 miles 8 times in 36 hours is going to be hard as shit, and he shows the pain and the sweat and all that. He's selling that. He ain't showing me a damn ski lift ride up the whole time. I'm walking into this thing knowing it's gonna be hard as fuck. You know what I'm saying? So I don't need to sell the dream. I'm not— I'm kind of the opposite of that. Agents coming in, I scare the shit out of them. I want to know if they're willing to go through the challenge. One of my first questions— you get— you call 30 people and they all tell you— you buy 30 leads and 100% of them tell you to fuck off, how are you gonna handle it? I want to know that. I want to know how you're gonna handle it if you spend $500 and 100% of them tell you to fuck off this week. What are you going to do? I hope that's the answer. So now what happens when she's first dial day and they all tell her to fuck off? What do I do? She's negative. Hey, didn't you say? Hey, told you this was coming. This is the moment. You said you'd be able to handle it and keep on dialing. Don't forget, you said the words. I just knew it was coming so I talk about it. Or if I don't talk about it, she gets hung up on 3 times, she's like, "Lead suck." Correct. We're getting started. What's your goal when you start picking up the phone? What's your goal when you first time you dial? What do you think it's going to be? First time you pick up the phone, what is your goal you think? Okay. I like that. Learn from it.

I'm not gonna say I'll close it. Yep.

So I'm assuming I may not close it, but I do want to learn from it. Yeah. It's a good start. I like it. Most people tell me book appointments or make sales. So I have to shift it and I go, all I want your goal to be is get people to pick up. That's your goal today. I actually need you to get objections. And if you can't get objections— you can't get objections if you don't get people to pick up. So your first day, I need you to go out and get me like 30 or 40 objections. And then you and I can start working on it. Is that fair? Now what? 30 or 40 objections. I leave it at that. So now what I do? Made that normal. Day 1 on the phone, what's she expecting? So she gets 5. What's she thinking? Got 25 more to go, 35 more to go. Not lead suck. Fuck, I didn't book any. I didn't one-call close this sucker. Man, this don't work. I ain't letting them think that. 30 people hang up on you the first day, tell you to fuck off. How you gonna handle it? I need you to go get me 30, 40 objections. Makes first day easy. Now what? I know day one if they're willing to put in the work. Hey, call me at noon. Start— can you start at 7? Yes, no, 8, whatever. Pick a time, don't fucking matter. Each phone call takes roughly about a minute. You know what I mean? Like if you call me right now and I don't pick up, how long does that process take before it goes to my voicemail? Not long. Most people aren't going to pick up. Fair. It's probably what the aim is. Again, hence, I need— the goal is to get people to pick up today. So if you can make a phone call in a minute, you start at 7, can you call me at noon? That's 5 hours. You ain't good at math? So If one a minute, how many is that an hour? Okay. So between 7:00 AM and noon, that's 5 hours. How many phone calls do you think we should be able to get in? Yeah, about 300 roughly. So call me at noon. We'll go over objections quick. Take 5-10 minutes. We'll go over them. You should have in the ballpark of 300 phone calls. If you call me at noon and you got 64, there's nothing I can do for you. Is that fair? So when do I know if they're gonna put in the work? Noon first day. So now I get an agent that comes to me and they're like, Tony, man, he's just fucking not putting the work. It's been— it's like a month, 3 still, bitch. I'm like, it took you 3 fucking months to figure out Tony ain't gonna work, bro? My bad, I must have messed up. I must not have taught this thing to you right. Let's talk about the 7 AM, noon thing. And I start, I go back. I talk about simple stuff because it's so easy. So then when I get an agent that misses and they get the chargeback and the person they hired doesn't do the things and they don't show up to the training, all the things that agents are mad at, right? You start recruiting, part of the thing is she starts recruiting, she's mad at her agents all the time. Fair? Why? Expectations. Right? So what did she do wrong? She didn't set the stage. That's why it took her 3 months to figure out if this so-and-so is going to do something. I want to know now. I don't give a rip if you're going to do it or not at all. I just want to know now. I want the answer now. If you're going to do what you say you're going to do, can you call us 7 AM? Can you call us 7 AM? Can you be on the phones at 7 AM or you got anything going on in life where you can't pick up the phone at 7 AM?

It's a sacrifice. Why? In what way? Because I have to be up at 7.

I'm already up at 3. Why can't you be up at 7 then? No, I can. But you said it's a sacrifice. What does that mean? I mean, it's a sacrifice.

I mean, I can get up at 7.

No problems or is it a problem? I mean— I'm just trying to understand the sacrifice part. What are you sacrificing to be on the phone at 7? I ain't mad if there's one, I just want to understand it. I guess am I bothering people or something? Ah. Now, how many of y'all would have given up? I'm keep going, I'm digging. I know what I'm looking for, a mental block. It's not really a sacrifice, it's just full of shit. I love you. Mental block. Are you afraid? Why would you think you're bothering people at 7? It's because it's early? You ever been outside at 7 AM on the interstate? Is it empty or busy? Yeah, a lot of people up at 7 AM, huh? Okay, why would you think you're bothering them at 7 versus noon? Hmm. Change it in a second. Who's not up at 7? Have you ever called people before for anything? Have you ever called someone at 4 in the afternoon and they're mad at you for something? Every day. So why, why we worried about 7 a.m. and not 4 p.m.? Sounds like you have a mental block. Now, if the, if the client died at 8 AM and you were afraid to call them and they got a chance to like converse with you somehow in some spiritual way, would they have been mad that you called them at 7 if you could have saved that? All right. So we going at this the right way or not?

I get your point.

Makes sense? I can change it in a minute. But we stop surface level. It's like dealing with clients. "Ah, just looking for pricing." Or, "Ah, you know, why do you need this? What happens?" "You know, we'd be tough, man. We'd have a hard time getting by." "All right, here's the price." "Ah, that ain't how we do it." We keep going. You know what I'm saying? And I know that's a problem because why? I've done this 19 million fucking times. Everyone says the same thing. You think the only one that hasn't given me pushback at 7:00 AM because it's quote-unquote too early? Everyone says that shit. And this is just like the sales side of things where how many objections are there really? Not many. So with the agent side, there's not a ton either. So I just dig in there and I'm going to shift perspective early. Does that make sense? So expectation is dial a lot, get a bunch of objections, you're going to get told to fuck off, and we're going to start early. And you're not going to be worried about it because if they die, it's your fault that you didn't call them early enough. I'm a guilter-ass into calling earlier. Why? Because I know it works really fucking well. You will book a shit ton of appointments early before people get into their day and they're all pissed off about this, that, and the other thing. Maybe 7 AM, quiet. People are up, quiet. People answer, they're less stressed out, you know what I mean? I would book when I went back into the field. 2019, Facebook leads came out. I was out of the field. We were making a ton of money at this time. And we used to live like 45 minutes away and bring Maddox to school, 45 minutes to over here. We got to live over here now, but the kids go to Mount Perrin. And I get back in the field because Facebook leads were brand new and agents were telling me that they were hard to book. And I'm like, seriously? And I'm trying to change people's perspective. And I wasn't amazing at it quite yet. Someone popped off and they're like, you don't know, you don't call them. Yeah. I was like, bro, they're people. Next time, bitches again. I'm like, come on. He's like, boy, you ain't done this. You ain't been out of the field for 2 years. I was like, I hung up, I said, get me fucking leads. And I went in the field the next day. Facebook leads from the same fucking vendor he bought them from. Fucking start booking 15 appointments a day. I'm booking 8, 8:30, 9. I'm cranking out appointments. I'm home for dinner. I write $20 grand in like 2 and a half weeks. And I'm like, hey, how them Facebook leads now? Right, right. Our team went from $800 grand a month in January to $2.5 million a month in December from that one move. Because no one ever again was allowed to bitch about Facebook leads. So I'm like, watch me, you know what I'm saying? And so that at that time was a way to shift perspective. It's just the way I had to do it then, the size of the group, the 5 levels of leadership. I didn't have the buy-in that I have today, you know. I mean, it was different. People would still pop off stupid things to me, and I still to this day know who it is. And some of y'all know, and I was like, thank you for helping my team triple that year. That's right. Yeah. I'm a big "F you, watch me" kind of guy. So, you know, again, you'll have to learn a lot of stuff, but you will be challenged and you will get— you will mentally—

I would love for you to dial.

A lot of people would. A lot of people would. Would you say that's going to cost you? Yes. Hey, how about you dial for me? I'd love to see that. That's the person that needs the money. Yeah, no, go ahead, dude. Do you? Um, y'all want to eat lunch? Did we get lunch, man? Are we good? Cool, cool. So she got lunch out there for you. I heard him. I heard him. I used to have armies of people around me, darling. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's quick and simple. It's quick and simple. Maybe one day, maybe one day I'll pop off. You're gonna have to push my buttons the right way. Maybe I'll pop off on you one day. Maybe one day. Cool. All right, we have lunch out there. If I can help with anything along the way, dude, that's what we got. Chick-fil-A, I think. I think we got Chick-fil-A for you guys, and we'll get started in like 30 minutes. What I wanted to do was like build an ideal schedule, right? Like what I— in the perfect world, here's what I do day in and day out. And so for me, what I put in first is the things I didn't want to move, preferred not to. I was willing to, but the things that if I could in the ideal world, I didn't have to move certain things. And really the only things, the main things for, for that was my kids. So I would get my kids for dinner Thursday nights every week. So ideally I didn't work there, right? Prior to this, some days I'd work, some days I didn't. Some days I dial, some days I didn't. Day, you know what I mean? It's like some days I did it at 9, some days I did it at 2, some days I did it at 6, some day it just was like whatever the hell happened that day happened. Prior to that, I made like $60K first year in insurance. My second year, I might have grossed $100K, I probably netted like $70K. This year I was This was the first year I was full-time, but after 5 kids and all the bills, it wasn't a ton of money. When I— after I did this, I went to $460K from literally this one change. Same carrier, same product, same lead, same IMO, same people, same— everything was the same minus this piece. So I said, all right, I get my kids here. Remember, the 4 were from previous marriage. So I would get them every other weekend. So I'd have the kids here, and then it'd wrap over this Sunday. And then I would get the kids here, kids there, and it would wrap, which would really be this Sunday the 1st. Yeah, I mean, wrap over the first week. So I would have had them this Friday, Saturday prior to, you know what I'm saying, if this were the first week. So it's kind of how it would work, and I'd have the kids here. Um, then that left me— obviously you can see what's left, right? I preferred not to work here, was the idea. When I was part-time this year I used to dial every Sunday. So I'm a big believer in you can make money on Sundays. There's plenty of people willing to do business on Sundays. We did church still. I just did it after. If you don't want to work Sundays, don't work Sundays. If you want to, you can. It's definitely wide open to be able to. But in the ideal world, let's have day off, right? So this is kind of what I was left with. So And now keep in mind, I, when I did the sales side, I was direct mail, all in-home. I didn't do anything virtual, I didn't do telesales, I didn't do any of that stuff. So I'm just going to give you what I did, apply the concept to what y'all do today. Does that make sense? So for me, I had dial base. I didn't like do one-call closes, and you know, I mean, I wasn't in that world, the technology wasn't there yet. So I decided I was going to dial every Monday, and I was going to start no later than 7:30 AM. That was just what I was going to do, right? I'm just going to put like run business. So that meant I could every— and you can take a picture of mine and copy it. What I really want you to do is yaws when you do them. So I decided I was going to run business those days. Okay, then I would run business every other Friday when I didn't have the kids, and that left 2 Saturdays. Also, I decided one I was going to be off and the other I would run business. So here I was with all the kids Here I'd be just Stephanie and Maddox because there's the one kid we had together, and then they always gonna run business, right? So we got 1, 2, 3 days that week I'm selling clients. That makes sense? And we got 2 days that week, it's 4 and 5, 6, 7, 8. I did 4 days that week and 2 days that week. So for me, that was only 11 days a month, right? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 days a month I sold insurance, and I sold $460K. I ain't won, I was pretty good. And I didn't sell IULs, I didn't sell— I sold final expense, mortgage protection, the most basic shit you can sell. 11 days a month, that was it. For me, the way I went about it, and there was an exercise to this for me as well, you're kind of too new to know both to the life side to understand your numbers in depth. But what I knew My goal is— what I wanted that year. And I didn't— I don't think I was an amazing, like, high-level closer. I was going to work hard, and I knew I was making like $1,000 an app, roughly. So I knew, I knew I needed to have 250 applications that year. Does that make sense? I thought if I sit with 1,000 people and close 25% of them only, which is really low, I could get my $250K. But to sit with 1,000, I probably had to schedule 1,500 because they were going to no-show me and cancel and all the shit. Does that make sense? So I kind of backed into everything. So when I want to make $250K, $1,000 bucks a pop, 250 apps. I need to sit, make 1,000 presentations that year. To do that, I had to schedule 1,500 people. Does that make sense? That was, that was the goal going in. So if I need to do 1,500 appointments in a year, right? If you divide that by 12, it's 120 a month. Makes sense? So I had to figure out how to schedule 120 people a month for my math to work. Okay? Now, I have 11 days to do that. So I had to schedule 11 a day. That was it. So I just put 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, 11. That was my goal. Every day I ran 11 appointments. So I spent all day Monday— like this week, I would spend all day booking Tuesday and Wednesday. Then when I ran that Friday, I would dial this morning. That makes sense. Same thing, 7:30. Now here, to book 2 days, I might have to dial all night. Who the fuck knows? I got really good eventually. I was done by lunch, but that took That took some time. Then when I book— when I run this week, I had to really get it in because I was getting my kids at 3:00 from school, but I still had to book 2 days up, you know what I mean? Oops, I put Thursday. So I would dial here also if I had to. When I was in the field here, I would finish booking Saturday in between appointments if I had to, just because I only had a half a dial day really here. Because I wanted to get my kids, you know what I mean? And they— I picked them up at school at 3, so I had to leave the office by like 2, 2:30. Does that make sense? So I'd go 7:30, let's call it 2:30. And here I'd go 7:30 AM till whenever the hell I was done. Again, some days I was done at noon, some days I was done at 10 PM. It just is what it is. And so my entire family knew the schedule. Does that make sense? And no one could— I would like, dude, am I allowed to work 11 days a month? Because on my accounting job, when I was making $40K, when did I have to work? Monday through Friday. And I had to work 7 to 4. So I had to leave my house at 5:30 to get there at 7 to 4. And I would get home at like 6:00 because it was like an hour and a half there, and it was like 2 hours home. So I had to do that Monday through Friday as my alternative. And a lot of times I've had 2 jobs just to pay the bills because $40K definitely didn't cut it with the kid. You know what I mean? So then I'm like, sometimes I have to work nights. Maybe I'd have to work weekends. You mean like I had to look at my alternative. And I sure as shit didn't want that. So when I sat down and said, started looking at— again, the goal was $250K. What could that do for me and my family? I'm like, dude, that'd be everything I'd ever need in life. Now it's funny, you make it and you go like— you figure out how to spend it, I promise. But remember, six figures used to be like, yes, I'm gonna make six figures! And yeah, oh, I would— yeah, I mean, yeah. It goes fast. I couldn't function on it today, which is insane to say out loud because here I'd have been fired up out of my fucking mind to make 70. You know what I mean? So it's like, now, long-term goal for me is I didn't want to sell forever. I knew that here. I knew I didn't want to sell for a living. Does that make sense? For me, selling was getting out of my current situation. So this was going to be short-term for me. If this— if your vision is to sell insurance forever, I don't know, I'm probably not the best guy for advice, you know what I mean? Because it's— I think selling anything— like, I have friends that are in real estate and they do really well, but anytime we spend time with them, they have to take 900 client calls. They've been doing like 15 years and they still have to take the same amount of calls. They still have to do showings on Saturdays and Sundays and at night, and you know what I mean? Like Why don't you build a team? They're like, it's a pain in the ass, it's inconvenient. I'm like, you're leaving dinner to go for a showing that statistically they're not gonna buy that house. Isn't that a pain in the ass and inconvenient too? I mean, and that, that happens in the sales side. So for me, I know if I did this like a maniac— and it's, again, when you say it out loud, 11 days a month, it's not really made— but again, I was all day dialing mentally Mentally, I was gone from my family completely. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, it was like I wasn't married or had kids. I was gone. You know, again, to get— start dialing at the office. I didn't dial them at my house. I'm not, I'm not a fan of that still to this day. I think about that as well, because I think that was a mindset.

I think I could take my computer—

100%. It will change your world. I just— there's too many distractions, you know what I mean? So for me, I was going to an office, and I couldn't afford an office then, and I went to an office. You know, I still to this day can't stay home. I go home and I'm like, I gotta go. You know, both sides. Hell, they don't want me there either in many ways because it's like interrupting, you know what I mean? Like, we all understand our schedule. So Everyone agreed to this, my wife, the kids, and that's really all that mattered, you know. And so they knew on Tuesdays and Wednesdays there was no movies, there was no dinner, there was no, we got to go to Aunt Susie's, there was no, can you take the kids to school, can you go shopping, can we do, can we go on, no, the, it was, this was non-negotiable for me. And as a family, we understood that because there was a mission to it. Now, could I have some flexibility in life? Sure. If we want to go on vacation, Christmas— like Christmas week, I would take off. But then what I would have to do is I'd have to adjust, and I'd be like, all right, if you want me off this week, that means here I have to run instead. Does that make sense? Like, I'll do it, but I'm replacing it here. I'm not just going to get rid of this and not fill it in somewhere else. Thanksgiving, I'd have to front load it. So I'd be like, all right, maybe I dial on Sunday this week, I run Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Or if a holiday was on Tuesday, I didn't get that extra day off. Does that make sense? Maybe I'd run more appointments on Wednesday, Thursday that week, stack it. I'd run 14 instead of 11, you know what I mean? Like, I, I was hitting the 120 a month no matter what. That was happening no matter what, because I couldn't hit that number if I didn't do that number. You know what I mean? And I can't hit that number if I don't do that number. So I broke it down into very micro, really simple everyday actions. And I just— simple as like, I remember when there were a bunch of people in the office, Donnelly, at the time. Time, there'd be 20, 30 people dialing. And everyone would go to lunch, a lot of them together. If I wasn't booked, I'm like, I'm eating the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I'll go to lunch. I mean, I just— I wouldn't do it. And everyone knew. And they would ask, you coming in this week? Nope, I'm out. I didn't care. Now, I wanted to go to lunch because there was a dude I wanted to learn from there. And I ain't mad at a little bit of social stuff, but I can live without any of that too. I don't give two shits. But I wanted to get there to learn from the dude whose office it was. And so I was like, all right, as I got better, my goal was to be, if not fully done, done enough that I knew if I went to lunch with him, I could finish booking no problem when I got back. You mean if I'm 80% of the way there and it's noon. I'm like, all right, I've knocked it out. I can adjust a little bit, you know what I mean? So I allowed myself a little bit of flexibility and grace. But this is where you got to decide, like, when you don't feel like it, you're gonna get the fuck out of bed. You know what I mean? Like, you have to figure that out. So that's all I did. It's a relatively easy exercise, you know. Maybe you got different things in life, but start with the things you can't move. Some— there's a book, I don't remember the name of it, but they call them like big rocks, like big rocks. And then they— it's like there's this whole concept of like filling a jar and you fill it with big rocks and they go, is it full? And people go, yeah. And then they put little rocks in it and it's like it fills more. Like, is it full now? Oh yeah. And then they put sand in it and it fills more. And then they put water— you know what I mean? So like the concept to start with the big shit you don't want to or can't move. And everybody's is different. So I'll just give an example of mine. That's how we made it work. And I started this in probably like March of 2015. And I ran it till March of 2017. That's when I got out of the field. I started selling full-time. In like March of '14, in that period I sold $1.2 million.