I Taught 10 Life Insurance Agents & Agencies How To Make $40k PER MONTH

He's known as the $100 Million Man. No fluff, no BS, but he does what he says he's gonna do and he shows up. And so for you guys, man, I hope y'all get a ton out of this. If y'all don't know his backstory, it's absolutely amazing, so he'll give you a little bit of that. And if you wanted to learn how to scale and grow a business the right way, and, um, you know, do some, some big stuff. My man, John Wetmore, let's give it up, y'all. Dude, appreciate it, bro. Um, who knows nothing? Because I don't really like telling the story 15,000 times, but if you know nothing about me, I'll give a little if you want. Or do y'all like nothing? Holy moly, right? But it's crazy. It's like no matter what you do, dude, there's always more people who can get the information. You know what I mean? It's like we do a lot of volume. Hell, fair amount of people in this room are in my group. They don't even know it. You know what I'm saying? It's like, but that's, it's just wild, dude. It's a funny dynamic as you start to grow. This thing can take a life of its own. You know, that whole elevated, everybody who mentioned elevated, that's, y'all are in my hierarchy somewhere. But they don't know. You know what I mean? It's like, and did I do anything to add? Nah. I got, but I got to start it. You know what I mean? Bosworth, all those guys, they didn't need me to do shit. They, this, this business was already rolling long before they got here. They were just part of depth that came in, you know what I mean, over the years. And I'm like, he did this shit on his own. But without the guy that I recruited, that recruited that guy, that recruited that guy, he ain't here. You know, and that's the way this business can take a life of its own. So I'll give a shorter version. Um, I, I got started in the business in— I attempted to get started in 2008. Um, I applied to an ad, mortgage protection ad, and I was an accountant at the time, making $40 grand a year as a, as a staff accountant, crunching numbers, bugging people for expense reports to send me their fucking receipts and stuff like that. Um, hated it. Had 5 kids, still have 5 kids. I always say it and people are like, what do you mean you had? What happened? I'm like, no, I had— I'm— it's I'm telling the story in the past, right? I have 5 children. But at the time, I was like, I had 5 kids and I was trying to figure out how to pay my bills. Had my first child at 16. So I grew up in the hood on welfare, single teenage mom, had my first kid as a teenager. So I was paying for daycare in high school. Worked at a restaurant for 4 years, went to a warehouse overnight for 4 years. And both times, I'm like, I want more out of life. So I went to college in my mid-20s, got an accounting degree. With— I put no thought into it whatsoever. Um, so I did accounting for like 10 years and making 30, 40 grand a year, and I was like, this sucks ass, you know? But when I was younger, I always had like a little— any of y'all have like just a hustle in you as long as you remember? Like selling shit at school and selling stuff, you mean? Like, I was one of those. And, uh, but never had any direction in terms of how to make money. I had no idea how to make money. I didn't know anybody making money. No one in my family made money. I didn't have friends that made money. I was like I just lived with and hung out with a bunch of broke-ass people, but I always had a vision for more. So I was trying things. I got into the mortgage industry in like '05. Um, some of y'all, a couple y'all old enough to already know what happened. Um, those of y'all that were in diapers at the time or whatever, it's like the whole world fell apart shortly after. Um, but I got it. That was the first taste of like commission sales I got. My uncle was a cop. And he would do mortgage. He did a lot of stuff on the side. He'd plow. He did like snow plowing up north. He'd do mortgages. He did all kinds of— he had all kinds of side hustles. And eventually he was like, dude, you should get into the mortgage industry. Here's what it pays. They make a couple grand every time we close a loan. I was like, shit, I work like 6 weeks to make a couple grand doing accounting. So I got into mortgages on the side and started refinancing coworkers. And at the time, interest rates were like 2%, 3%. So it was not difficult. It wasn't sales. It wasn't like I was any good at it. I was just like, hey, you need to refinance? And they were like, yeah. And I make 2, 3, 4 grand. So I quit accounting, started a mortgage company. And it sounds fancier than it is because in '05, you didn't have— there was no regulation whatsoever. You could roll out of bed and be a loan officer. You could just say, I'm a loan officer today. And you were one. There was literally just find a guy who had a mortgage company. You're like, I want to work for you. And he's like, okay, go sell a loan. And then to start the mortgage company, it was $80. And you just got a broker's license. There was no test. There was no regulate. There was no nothing. Yeah, it was nuts, dude. So I was like, well, if that dipshit can do it and he pays me 50%, I'll go do it myself and keep the money. And then I hired all the people that I did the— they put you through this little fake mortgage school. You got a little certificate he printed in like his bedroom and handed us. And I was like, well, if I go get the license he has for $80, I'll just hire all the people I was in the class with and pay them 75% instead of 50%. That's how I started the mortgage company. I had like 8 people with me, made like probably $100 grand that year, but I spent like $400, which was really bad. And then like I was talking about foreclosures and stuff over there, the reason I mentioned that, because I know what it's like, because I had 2 of them. So after you can't— I realized like I bought 2 houses, but really the bank bought them and they let me live there. And then when I couldn't pay the bill, they took them away. So I had 2 houses foreclosed on, had a car repoed, filed bankruptcy, and got divorced all in like a year and a half. It was great. And, uh, you know, that's when I, I went back to accounting and I did that for like 4 years. And, uh, that was that interim period to when I applied in '08. That was right at the time of the bankruptcy and all that stuff. I didn't actually get my license till March of 2010, so it's me a year and a half to get my license. And then, um, I didn't sell my first policy till August of 2012, so it took me 2 and a half years to sell a policy. Which is crazy given people that know me now. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, I took 4+ years from my time I applied to sell a policy. Um, you got your CE credits before you sold your own policy? Yeah, because— yeah, yeah, 100%. I actually let my license lapse in 20— uh, 2012, March of 2012, it lapsed. But it was close enough to where you could just pay a fee and keep it up, you know. So I did that. And, uh, so in Georgia, I always tell the story, it's a fine. They fine you for not renewing on time. So now every time we get contracted, still to this day, where it says, have you ever been fined by a state department of insurance, I have to say yes. Well, Amanda has to say yes. And then we have to send a letter of explanation on why I got fined. And I'm like, it's a $50 late fee and they call it a fine. It's really stupid, but it haunts me to this day. You know what I mean? It reminds me who I was as a person back then. Someone that just let their shit lapse and said they were going to do something and didn't do it and saw people winning and didn't. You know what I mean? It's like, just that's who I was at the time. So started selling part-time in 2012, long before FFL existed. I was in the business, started selling part-time under Andy Albright's deal, if any of y'all know him. And that's where Sean was previously. August of 2013, I went full-time. So I made like $60,000 selling part-time my first year, which was whatever. It was more than my accounting job. Some of y'all do that in a month now. But I was like, all right, I'm making a few bucks. So I moved over full-time. And then like 2 months later, Sean was like, we're bouncing, starting my own thing. And I didn't know left from right. And I'm like, okay, I was somewhere in the hierarchy, like 9 deep. And I'm like, okay. And so FFL started, you know, and I, I was full— I was brand new, full-time. We had no leads, we had nothing really figured out, no system, no company, no nothing. And, uh, first year of 2014 sold like 175 on what— I don't know if they still exist today, but it was Second Chance no image leads. Which basically is a fancy way to say I bought data. But I did $175 grand on that with literally no leads. So which respectable at the time, especially then, you know, the company, the norm wasn't what it is today. I think I was like number 12 in the company that year, which whatever. But, you know, you issue $175 grand, your advances, you know, $120, after chargebacks it's $90, and after leads it's $72. You know, so I was like, okay, I did okay. Um, but I was watching other people killing it in the space. Y'all see it. I mean, some of y'all are selling a lot, sure, but you're watching some of the guys building big teams and cash flowing and making multi-seven figures a year. And it's like, why, why are you watching it, not doing it? We hear the messages on what to do and we don't implement. Or we say things like, I don't know the systems, I don't know this, I don't know— you know what I mean? Like, but they share it. I'm coaching a guy now at another company And he goes, uh, and I'm talking about activity and leads and all this stuff, and he's like, I've been doing this a year and no one's ever told us, told us this. I'm like, dude, you think I believe that shit? Like, do you really think I believe no one's ever told you to run 30 appointments a week? Do you like— do y'all think I, I believe that no one's ever said if you don't build a business you'll sell forever? And even if you sell a lot, eventually you'll level up. Your lifestyle to that amount of sales eventually. You know, it's really easy to like live within your means for a little while, but sell for a couple years at a high level, you'll buy some nice shit. And then taking time off is different, you know. And I saw that at a distance. I was like aware of what was happening, but I wasn't changing anything yet, you know. And I just had some life stuff punch me in the face. And like everybody, nothing Nothing special, just normal everyday shit we all get. But for whatever reason at that time, it was like a— you ever had something trigger you in life that's like, fuck this, watch me change? I'm a little neurotic with stuff. And something just hit me wrong that day. And after I flipped a table and threw some shit over being mad, someone came to me. And I was mad over something, very nominal amount of money. And a dude comes up to me and he's like, you've been doing this for a long time now. Couple of years at the time, 2, 3 years. And he goes, he goes, are you really upset over what you could cover with one app a month? Get effing paid. Get effing paid. Get effing paid. Get effing paid. What up, guys? If you guys are looking to get to a new level in your career, you may have seen that we've been running some workshops in my office in Atlanta. I have them every quarter now. The last one sold out fully. It was a massive success. Couple different levels you can attend. Just a general ticket, get you in the door, listen to 2 days of training, interactive workshop style. We really dive into what you got going on and how to get to new levels. If you're looking to be in a new crowd, higher level up, I have a private mastermind. Last one was at my house. It was insane. All the value that everybody added to each other and we had a good time. And I heard it was way underpriced relative to what people got out of it. You can check out some of the testimonials here, I'm sure. But if you'd like to attend, click the link below. I do 'em every quarter. The date'll be around here somewhere. Look forward to seeing you there. If you are in the insurance industry and you're looking to scale and grow your business, I highly encourage you to check John Wetmore out. Probably honestly made the cost of the event back in like the first 2 hours of being here. If you want to win and you want to grow, I'd get around John as much as you can. John Wetmore is a beast. So much value in everything that I've learned here. Growing. About building, delegating. He's talking about systems and automating right now. It is worth the price of admission. Make sure you get to the next one, right? Because I was mad over $1,000. Just quite transparently, it was a $1,000 alimony bill that I had to deal with due to a divorce. That was, um, what do you call it when you delay something? I guess delay is the right word. But they, they made— instead of at the divorce, they were like, you don't have to worry about it for 5 years. You mean like they deferred it? The 5 years came up and I pretended I forgot about it, and then One day you get a letter in the mail and they're like, hey, dipshit, you're late. And I lost my mind. But that day was like, the dude said it to me so simply. Like, in my head, the problem was massive. And he's like, dude, it's one app. Like, get over yourself, go back to work. And he walked away. And I was like, well, he is rich as shit. I should probably, should probably listen, you know? And for whatever reason, that triggered me changing. There's that little moment in the awareness come leading up to that. And, you know, still selling a decent amount relative to most agents, but it wasn't life-changing. I still had to tell my kids no a lot. I still couldn't buy my wife a house. I still had the same, you know, 800-square-foot house. We had to still— I started to drive the beater, you know. I mean, if something went wrong, the brakes went wrong, and I had to buy leads, it was an issue that week. I didn't, I didn't love that. So I decided to change literally everything about who I was in a moment. And that year from— that was in March of 2015. And again, I'm 5 years licensed at this point. And from March till the end of the year, I issued $460 grand on my own pen. Yeah, it was like a quick change, you know. In today's world, that's— this is what it is. But then no one was doing that shit. There were only 4 of us in the whole company that did that at the time. It's 2015. Um, did it again in 2016, and by 2017 I was out of the field. I was making $150 grand a month. In overheads just from it. And at the beginning of 2015, I had no agents and no team, no system, no nothing. But I just decided to turn up to a new level, you know. I was texting with some friends. We have dinner tomorrow night, um, with a couple that we hang out with a good bit, another Integrity partner. And, uh, we're in this little text chain and I don't know what was happening. Someone was making fun of me for working out or something, so I text, uh My wife told me to shut— I made like a wise-ass comment back in a group text. And she goes, hey, shut up, go run a marathon or something, like being sarcastic. For those that don't know me, I work out a lot. I like challenging stuff. I hike crazy mountains. I do like obnoxious stuff that you just shouldn't do every day. And I don't know why, but I like the challenge of hard things. Like I'm doing in July, as an example, I have this event I'm hike— I'm doing, it's in the mountains, It's in Park City, Utah, and it's 3 marathons in 3 back-to-back days in the mountains. So it's like a mountain trail marathon, not just like out on the road marathon. So I'm doing Thursday, Friday, Saturday, all 3 days happen. So I'm training for it now. So my wife goes, you know, F you, go run a marathon or something, like stay out of the conversation. So I send a text of me dripping sweat running around— where was I this morning, man? Where did I run around? What was that thing called? Boardwalk at— what's that park? Yeah, but Epcot, right? So I ran around that this morning and the wife was like, you're on vacation? Because I'm in Epcot. She's like, you're on— you're on away for the day and you're already up working out this early? Like, like, it's expected to not— you know what I mean? In the normal world around you, you're expected to not build anything big. You're expected to be mediocre. You're expected to kind of like, you're already doing good. Like, why are you trying to do more? It's really hard to like do really big things if you listen to the noise around you. And this is someone really successful. You know what I mean? And it's like, it still tends to just be like, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why? I don't, what do you mean? Why am I doing? Like, why are you asking me why am I doing that? I find it weird. You know? And for me it was like, let's make some changes. Let's decide who I want to be. At that time it was in business. Now in today's world is in health and physical stuff. And it's like I make decisions and then I just go get them. And that's, that's who I've become in the last 10 years. It wasn't an easy change, but selling that much and starting to recruit and build that year, we did like a million for the year in premium as a team. I was $460,000 of it. So we did another $500,000. The year before we did $180,000 total. I was $175,000 of it. So we did $5,000 for the year. Last month, fast forward, and there's all kinds of shit in the middle. I'm going to give you the short version. We did $16 million for the month, you know, in 10 years from doing $175 grand for the year. Yeah, I mean, it's— it can jump, you know. And we went from like, we did $1.15 million, we did like $3 million, then we went to $6 million, then we went to $10 million, then we did $22 million, then $50 million, $100 million, $150 million, and We've done 200+ the last 2 years. That's kind of the progression of it. Now, someone in here said earlier, like, I onboarded a shitload of people and I'm trying to figure out how to not make them quit. Okay, stop trying to figure that out. Like, I get why you're saying it, so we're going to tweak it, but most people do try. It's like, it's like trying to get— yeah, it's like trying to get chargebacks to go away. Like, can you reduce them? Sure. Are they going away ever? Are they ever going to stop? Never. Or like, no show's going to go away ever. Or leads with the wrong phone number and Mickey Mouse is the name going to go away ever? Never in the history of time. But, but so many agents want that to happen, right? Someone else said something like, um, I heard it was over here somewhere, uh I forget the wording of it, like my show rate, close rate to be better, yada yada, which I ain't mad at, cool. But it's like, there's a ceiling on that. Like, how good can it be? And I'm like, fuck the show rate, give me more people. That's my mentality. I'm not saying it's wrong. I just didn't know how to stop the stuff. And everyone's always trying to stop the stuff. And I'm like, he referenced sports. Like, do strikeouts go away? Do getting hit by a pitch go away? Do injuries go away? Does rehab go away? Do you know what I mean? It's like, it's just part of the game. And so many people focused on— focus on the things they want to go away. And I'm like, why don't you just learn how to play the game? Like UFC, I mean, you get punched in the face. They ain't trying to make that go away. They learn how to deal with it. And they get fucked up. You know what I'm saying? It's like, in this business, like, I just learned how to get hit and keep moving, and it doesn't bother me anymore. You do learn to take it. Um, so we can go through detail. I want it to be super interactive for you guys. Um, I want to help where you need help. I can talk for 4 days straight, literally, with no prep. So we start with any flow management thing that we talk about all the Zoom. Let me just start with that. I know what you mean by cash flow management. What do we talk about on the Zoom specifically? It's all in one account and it's the last thing they're still doing that, you think? Yeah, let's start. Holy moly, I'm super new. So how, how new? Like, I'm sure, like November. When? November. Okay, you selling yet? Yeah, that's good. My last one, April, May. What'd you do? Don't be shy about it. I did 28 approved and 10 in underwriting. Okay, that's good. I love that in today's world, that's like, eh. So, so for perspective, it is, it is, and it should, it should, it should. Yeah, it should be. But I can't help but remember, like, the first time I wrote $5,000 in a week, dude, they threw a fucking parade like I won the Super Bowl. I remember like it was yesterday. Yeah, that's sick. They were like, oh my God, look what he did. I'm like, I wrote 4 apps. Like, why is that a thing? But it was. When we were trained new, we were taught to run 10 appointments a week. Like, that was the norm in the space. I'm like, what? Eventually, soon after, we started doing 10 a day. I'm like, 10 a week? But I bought into that. So I love that you're buying into better. You know, but be proud of what you're doing. 2 months into a business, like, I just feel like I have so much to learn. 100%, you do. I'm, but I'm, I'm 15 years in and I still have a lot to learn. You know, the learning doesn't ever stop. That's the either the beauty of it or the bad thing about it. Depends how you look at it. For me, I look at it as an upside because I'm like, yo, I feel like I still got a lot to learn and I fucking printed money in this space. I can't wait till I know what I'm doing. You know what I mean? And I, I'd be— I say it's somewhat sarcastic because at your stage, I do know every piece of it. And in today's world, I, I have a lot of people that reach out to me to, to coach them directly on how to get to that next step quicker. Um, once you do it, it's like, oh, it's actually not that deep. You know, I think, you know, if I— if you want me to start with the cash flow thing, I, I guess the, the question that I would have is like If we think about commissions that get deposited, how many of you deposit those commissions into the same bank account you pay your, like, electric bill out of? Just two? Everybody else? Three? No, y'all got them separate. I know you— if you still had it that way, bro, I was going to kick you out. Yeah, you got to go. So, like, I don't know, what's your favorite place to eat? Local to you? That's okay. If you could have dinner anywhere tonight, where would it be? Fat Boy Sushi. Cool. Okay, sounds freaking good just by the name. I like some sushi, but Fat Boy Sushi's exciting. Do you think that Fat Boy Sushi, when you go there for dinner and spend $182, do you think that goes into the account where he pays his personal electric bill out of, or does it go into like a business account? Sounds like common sense when I say it out loud, but so many people start out not doing that. And then if you're building, almost every agent's not doing it. It's like, why does that matter? I give you 400 reasons why it matters. One is kind of common sense, right? I think everyone learned in high school, like, when you commingle funds, the IRS gets pissed. One, like, there's, there's a thing there if you get too deep with it. But even at a basic level It's like if money's going into a personal account and you have to make a business decision, it's like imagine if there's a spouse or someone else, you know what I mean? Like agents where money gets deposited and we got to buy leads, and then the wife who isn't in the business, who doesn't understand it, doesn't come to trainings, like, yo, where'd that 2 grand, Arturo, what the hell is that? You know what I'm saying? It's like it creates like a rub. And it's like, you ever see— you ever deal with, like, you ever made this mistake where you make— we try to make a sale, especially in like a final expense world? I heard a couple y'all mention that, and you leave and they're like, they couldn't afford it, right? But they have money, right? They get deposited here. And why do we walk away saying they can't afford it? Lifestyle, sorry, too high. Okay, what else you think? Anything else? Huh? Not managing their expenses, overleveraging themselves. Could be. All right, the way I view it is you have their money here, $842 a month from Social Security, call it what it is, and then they got their rent, and then they got their whatever car payment, and then they go out to eat a few times a week, and then they got this expense and their cigarettes and the vodka bottle that you see on the table, and you know what I mean, like all the stuff. And then we as agents, we try to squeeze in the insurance at the bottom when there's nothing left, right? And I'm like, you mean to tell me after all this time you can't squeeze the insurance up here and knock something else off? Like, our skill set's so low we go in at the bottom. And that's what most agents do. We try to squeeze it in, right? What does this have to do with anything? Well, when you deposit your money into your personal account and then they're like, hey, it's time for leads. What do they, what do they say? I got no money. Why? Because they look at their, their deposits and their commissions. They go, commissions, and I got my mortgage, then I got my car payment, then we go out to eat, then we got vacation, then I gotta save money, then I got my kids' tuition, then, and then leads go down here, right? When you put your money in a business account, business account, business expenses, and then when it's left, it goes over here to the personal side. Now you're playing a different game. Just strategically, it's a totally different game, you know, and it gets people to look at the business differently. And if you're managing it right, you're managing the money over here. I get deposits, I then buy revenue, which is what we do. Like, if anyone's confused about— all you're doing is buying revenue with leads. It's not that deep. Correct. You know, but when we're building It's weird that most of y'all probably don't teach this to your agents. I'm like, why would you bring someone on and not teach them? Like, this is like kindergarten stuff, right? And then all the other stuff goes sideways after that and we get mad. And I'm like, to me, the foundation was shit. You're having— you know that they're going to put their money in here and then they're going to have this expense, that expense, this expense, that expense, this expense, that expense. Then they told you they want to get rich and they're going to listen to you. And they're gonna be looking at the money to invest at the very last thing they can spend. You know what I'm saying? I'm like, I'm gonna eliminate that objection, right? Those of y'all that sell a lot, we don't get really good at convincing them to go from 'I want to think about it' to 'Yes, I'll give you money.' We're really good at getting them to never fucking say that. It just doesn't come up, right? And so I've gotten really good at getting agents to understand that this order is more important than anything, so that 'I don't have money for leads' doesn't come up as often for me as it does for y'all. Why? Because I've set that foundation early. Because I dealt with that objection, if you will, umpteen zillion times. Right? No different than when we were talking about the roll-up stuff over there. I don't know how we got on that. I think you mentioned it briefly. It's like, dude, I'm talking about all that stuff is just principles of communication and sales. And you getting someone else to follow your lead based on what you're doing and get in this business. That is sales too. You're selling yourself to them to follow you, right? And then all— think of all anybody's hired agents that have quit and haven't made it and ghosted you, right? You've been around a block a couple times. It's like, how many reasons are there really? Like 3, maybe 2, correct? Right? There are a lot of reasons that the, the excuse the agent uses on why this doesn't work? Are there more than 2 or 3? Right? Sales side. Why do clients say— why do you not sell? How many reasons are there really? Why do you not book an appointment? How many reasons are there really? So it's the same over here as it is over here. How do we deal with it over here? We know there's 2 or 3 objections. How do we deal with them in general, high level? And what's the other piece of that? That's one piece. What'd you say? Address them right away. Yeah, deal with— there you go. It's like part of the game. I fucking struck out. All right, go back to the dugout, put your fucking hat on, get in the outfield and play. Keep fucking moving, you know what I mean? We're like— at my son's age, he's 13, some of the kids still go into the dugout and cry for 45 minutes. It's frustrating beyond belief. And I'm like, it's— and I feel bad because he's 13 and he thinks one day he's going to go out there and never strike out again. Still, like, there's this little— he golfs, and him and his friends somehow think that one day every time they hit the ball it's going to land in the hole. I'm like, dude, I don't want to like ruin your parade, but it's part of the game. You're gonna hit it in the bunker a lot. You're going to hit it— you mean you're going to strike out? That you've got to get used to that. I love that you're mad about it. I hate that you let it drag on. Does that make sense? Now what do we do? We put in work. We hit off tees. We take more ground balls. We go to practice. We get more coaching. We get— you know what I mean? Like, there's things we do to better our chances and better our odds, but we don't go like, I'm never gonna strike out again. That'd be weird. You know, and so on this business, same as the sales side, y'all understand that on the sales side it's like, all right, on to the next, let's keep it moving. Though an agent quits, you've been hiring, you've been building, or you're not hiring yet. Yeah, most people build, right? And they tend to kind of sort of— most people, because of the frustrations. And I'm like, one, did you get ahead of it? Probably not. It is also hard to get ahead of when you ain't done it a bunch. So there's this weird little like You just got to kind of take it for a little while. You know, I have one of these, one of a couple, man, I got a lot of people that I help, but like some people are going like, what CRM should I use? What dialer should I use? What this should I use to get from 10 to 40? And I'm like, that ain't the magic. It's just not the magic. Insurance has been sold for 200 years without CRMs and without leads, to be clear. You know what I mean? So it's— that's not exactly the magic. And so on the building side, all of it relates, you know. It's like, how do I get ahead of it so when it comes up, at the very least, it's not the first time we've had the conversation? Like, I want to think about it. I'm not saying stand up and walk out, but it's a whole lot better when you go, all right, Jerry, maybe I missed something, but didn't 5 minutes ago you just say ABC? It's a lot easier when we have that in our bag, right? So now when I get an agent that does XYZ dumb thing, it's a lot easier for me to go, hey dude, remember when I told you this? They start getting negative and sideways, it's easy for me to catch it and go like, uh-uh, this— we talked about this, bro. You got here because you didn't follow the steps of ABC. That's why you're here. You know, and so I see that stuff coming so clearly, no differently than y'all see I Wanna Think About It's Coming. Like, if you're in sales, you see that shit coming a mile away. Yeah, I mean, there's a million different ways to address it, right? But there's an approach. Whereas in the building side, the approach is usually like, what an idiot, or don't you know what you're doing? You know what I mean? Or we want to punch them in the face, or we want to hit it, we want to be aggressive with it. There's usually not as much skill or tact or intentionality with the agent when we're dealing with communication there. And we have it in the sales side, right? So it's like you have that ability, and yet when we go to building, it's like we go, eh, who needs that ability? I'm gonna hit them all this way, right? And most people, as you see, don't build anything big in this space. And if you've been— anybody have been doing this for like besides you for like a long time, like 5+ years? How many people have you seen build something and then disappear? Sell $40K, disappear. Get to $200,000, $300,000, you don't hear from again. The number 1 on the leaderboard, you're on all these calls doing all these trainings, and the next, the ghost. I did it myself. It's a different game, dude. It's a different game. One thing about John that you guys have never heard of like he keeps it so simple, right? It's not a complicated— so as, as, as we're building a new organization, we haven't had a chance to talk about it, but that's all I've done now. Like, I've heard God speak several times. Yeah. And I try to keep it so simple that it makes people feel stupid. So everything— I mean, one of the things he's always said is like, hey, I give him a task. I say, hey, so now I've created it. I'm like, hey, go watch this video. Yeah, right. Call me back tomorrow with 2 or 3 things. Or text me tomorrow with 2 or 3 things you took away from that video, and then we'll go to the next step. Yeah. And then I love his line, and I'm not going to steal it from you, but do it. Like, he literally say it. And I've said this to people out loud several times now. He's like, dude, I'm gonna quit you before you quit me. Like, and if you don't call me the next day, like, I'm not gonna waste an ounce of time on you anymore. I'm not even gonna think about it because I'm, I'm only going to be invested on folks that I know are doing what I'm telling to be successful. Right? So he keeps it so incredibly simple, even on the accounts thing, right? I used to overthink this. I'm like, well, we were talking about this earlier, I need to go create my LLC to do my escrow. I'm like, dude, stop. Create a separate account. Yeah, the free checking account. And then you can label it whatever you want on the app, and this is your business account, this is your personal account, and then have your little savings on the side. Like, later on as you start building and you start doing some like, cool shit, then, then worry about some of that. Yeah, but today, if you don't have that separated before you leave, go to your app, create a new account, and that's your new personal bills account. And then you have your business account. Like, don't, don't, don't be dumb and overthink this. Yeah, there's, there's, there's, you know, and it's again, it is reps, but right. Every time I look at a situation, it's like when I was in the sales side at the beginning, early, I missed a sale and I'm like, they were broke, they were an idiot. They don't love their family. And I— right, I said— we all said that stuff. But now you do it for a little while, you know that's not accurate. You know, in that moment you probably just sucked. Fair? Like, you messed up. Like, dude, no one hates their family that much that they want— and I know they say dumb stuff. I will just bury them in the backyard, we'll figure it out. Like, that's not real. And eventually you figure that out. Well, all the dumb shit agents say— and hell, quite frankly, Y'all probably say some of them. I don't— it's not real to me. It's just bullshit you make up in your head to validate what you're currently doing. So I'm not going to like buy into that stuff, the noise, dude. I know how to like deflect that stuff so easy because I used to engage with it. Then all it does is almost tell you you're right, you know what I mean? So I'm just not going to let people think quick. I'll give you a quick example. I had someone message me recently that, um, all right, so you know if you're building and you have multiple legs, right, you're helping someone build, what's the perceived downside of that? Sure, another one relative to your pay. I'm gonna give you a cheat. Yeah, okay, right. Yeah. So people get a little hung up on that. It's like, do I help him? Do I not? How much do I help him? Ah, I want to— I got to protect my money. Ah, you know what I mean? There's always this like weird rub with it. For me, I've learned if I continue to do what I'm doing and I'm building, if I'm building, ain't no one's going to catch me. Does that make sense? Even if I help him build it as big as he can get it to where he's even, I do it right, he ain't going to affect me, right? But this person had someone, and I don't remember the exact numbers, I think they were going to like, uh, They were getting a 5-point increase. I know that. I think the group was doing like $200 grand. And they're like, oh my God, 5 points. Oh my God, I'm gonna lose X amount of money. And they're doing the math, right? Y'all doing the math right now in your head, how much you're gonna lose, right? And I'm like, and they were frustrated. And so I sent a quick little voicemail back. And I'm like, have you ever thought about like, when they were doing $100 grand, you were making 10 points, so it's $10K, but now they're doing $200 grand and it's 5 points. How much is that? So did you lose money? And they were like, I never thought of that. It was over in 4 seconds. Like, I just learned how to deflect that. Like, now what did they not do? Well, $200 grand at 10 points would be like They didn't come back. They don't think that deep about it. You know what I mean? Because me, I'd have been like, nah, dummy, I'm talking about $200 grand at 10 points. I should be getting 20, not 10, if I really want to get deep. But it's like a— it's like a client who goes like, yeah, it's just, you know, I gotta check my lawyer. And you go, okay. Or they go like, yeah, I mean, I sure, I need some insurance, what's the price? And you give it to them. You're that surface level, and we don't go deeper. The reason we go deeper is because they don't think about Well, if they— if I say this, then they come back with this. They don't know where they're going to get trapped. That's why it works so well with clients that go deep, because they only think about how to get you out of their way, like one layer. Well, just tell them I got to talk to you the first— we don't do business the first time until we do this. That'll get them. Well, if you learn how to overcome that, they don't have no ammo for the next layer. Fair? Y'all are the same way. So y'all come at me with this. And I'm like, yo, I can go 2, 3, 4 layers deep and mess you up. Does it make sense? And all I want to do is get people to stop overthinking, stop being frustrated, stop trying to find the negative in it, stop trying to boohoo poor me way, right? I want to always shift people's mindset into the positive and what we can do to build and how thankful I am that he's part of the team. Hell, look at the money you're making because he's working. No offense, he's doing all the fucking work. All you did was hire a guy. You know, we're way overpaid for what we do. Relative. Now I like it and I take advantage of it, but I'm not blind to it. You know, and someone else has been dealing with this person. They're not even in my group. It's someone that reached out and they only reached out because the person they've initially went kept carrying on with that same thing. They've been battling this for like 2 months. And I'm like, dude, I overcame it like 14 seconds. With one comment. Why? Because I'm magic? No, because I'm intentional, right? You miss a sale, the smart ones go back and go, why did I miss it? Oh, I lost them here. Ah, they said this, man, I should have went this angle. Remember on that training, he told me to do it this way, I forgot to do it. Damn. Next time we come back in, like, oh, I got them that time. Well, when y'all call me for stuff and it's not tracking, or you quit, or you leave mad, or you're frustrated, or you didn't— like, we aren't on the same page, I go, damn, I left that conversation pissed. That did not work. How can I approach it better next time? And I started working on my craft. You know what I mean? I started working on the communication. I started working on the way to shift the way you think. I watched the way everybody's behaving and that, and I can go like, all right, let me adjust. Right? And I learned when we're building something, we tend to be like one-trick ponies. On the sales side, we're super dynamic. Sit me with a 22-year-old, sit me with grandma, sit me with a couple, sit me with a widow. I handle all of them very differently. Sit with someone who's from where I'm from, sit with someone that's from another country, we adapt, we adjust. But we go, agents, ah, fuck them, we handle them all one way. And that's just how we deal with agents. Anyone relate? That's how I did it. I've never heard someone go, nah, I'm super dynamic over here, you know. And I had to learn to take that skill set and apply the same relative common sense. I didn't have to know much other than I wasn't doing it. And then when I realized that, I was like, oh my God, I'm not intentional at all. So now when I deal with a situation about growth or getting an agent started or whatever it is, I'm like, all right, how do I attack this? Now, early on, I was already in. I had a bunch of agents. I was just messing it up. And I'm like, well, it's hard to put the toothpaste back in the tube. That's tough. You know what I mean? But going forward, now I can be like, all right, here's how I handle agents. And I just started watching it. And I started going, what makes agents move quick? How do I get people to stop overthinking? How do I get them to trust what I say is going to work? How do I get— you know, there's people that pay me and then go do this and they don't do it. And I'm like, ah, I don't understand it, right? So I've learned how to give people the best thing. That's the best thing I do is the thing you mentioned there. I give people one thing to do. That's it. You got one thing. And I what's the word I want to use— I put the burden of communication on you, not on me, right? And the way I look at it is like, it's a, it's always a funny example the way I use it, but it's like, how many things do you think a new agent needs to know to go from, like, truly, like, how many steps are there actually from, from getting started? Meaning I gotta register for the pre-license course, I gotta send a login, I gotta get my log, I gotta do X amount of hours, I gotta I gotta, you know, pass the pre-test thing. Then I gotta schedule the exam. Then I gotta take the exam. Then I gotta mail the thing. And then I got all these steps. There's like a million fucking steps along the way to go from I wanna do this to not only am I getting paid, but I'm profitable and I'm building. Think about all the steps in the middle, right? And I've seen a lot of people go like, here's your manual. Here's how you get started. Here's our bootcamp, 75 videos. Good luck. Here's the— you know what I mean? It's like this overwhelming amount of stuff. And for me, it's like, I think we all went through school, right? Imagine if in kindergarten they were like, here's everything you need to know from now to get your PhD. You mean, or even if you go back and go, here's everything for the first semester. How they do it. So what's the line then? Because obviously as a leader, you have to prioritize your time, you know, doing these one-on-ones, or, you know, watch this, like you say, watch this video, come back to me. Yeah. What's that line would you like to draw? When you say line, clarify. So obviously, we're getting with this, which is there's gonna be some interaction with that agent, some feedback loop that you're gonna create with them. But if I'm spending my entire day one-on-ones, then I might not be able to move the big needle in the business, or maybe write, or or whatever, you know, you confront what, you know, what makes you think I'm spending my entire day doing one-on-ones? That's what I'm saying. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So I guess where you're going with this, but I guess I'm just wondering where you draw that line. All right, so go back to the thing I told you earlier. Remember the big thing I told you to stop trying to figure out? Which— what was it? Yeah, like worrying about losing agents. Okay, right. So I'm 100% sure I'm going to lose them here. Okay. The difference is You have— you've recruited. Can you— how long you've been recruiting? Well, the new— with IE, uh, 7 months, but the last brokerage I was at, 5 years. Okay, so can you think of someone you've talked to, say, this week that you want to take their head and bash it against that wall right there? Half of them? Yeah. Okay, so the difference is my way, I don't have to speak to that dude anymore. Why? Because I go, do this, and when you're done with it, come back to me and I'll give you the next step. So if you don't do a step, you don't get step 2 ever. I just won't give it to you. You're overthinking and you're trying to— correct. 100%. Now think about it, I came from out of nowhere, right? Ty was a witness of everything. My upline didn't teach me anything. Yeah, nothing. And I'm number one. Yeah, some you get those. Yeah, yeah, but then again, but already are going to be able to figure out and survive. A hustler is going to figure it out. Yeah, solution-oriented versus you having to hold someone's hand. At that point, they're not even worth your time anymore. Now you got to delegate somebody else to maybe babysit them. Yeah, the first person you recruited handle the product feeders. So there's a balance, right? In the sense of that, it's like, so what's the mistake some people make? They only look for him. That ain't the key either. Because if you only look for him, how many of them are there? Like, we want people just like us. I've been looking for me. Careful what you ask for. I'm like, y'all are a pain in the ass. You want more of you? I can relate. Two of me in a room is not good. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, but then also, if they were perfect and did everything that you wanted, but that's what they need you for, right? So to me, it's like, all right, who do I manage? Because I want to manage people. I want to deal with hard stuff. Dealing with hard stuff and hard problems pays well. But what I don't want to do is confuse someone that says they're going to do something and doesn't, and I spend time there and miss him. Right? So for me, I pick— this is the way I visualize it. And I always feel weird saying it, but it always relates. Like, you've heard me talk about the fetch thing? All right. So I picture it like playing fetch. Little dog, little tennis ball. You got a drooly-ass mouth coming out of you, and you just want to play. You're wagging your tail. You're happy as shit when you're getting started. And all you want to do is play fetch all day. Right? And I just have a ball for everyone. And I go throw your ball over there. And I'm like, hey, go do this and bring it back when you're done. And I'll throw it again. And I go throw it over there, and I throw yours over there, and I throw yours over there, and I throw everybody's ball. And you're all at different stages. So I give you one thing to do. Go get it. Bring it back to me. How many are actually going to bring it back? Not a lot. So if you go lay over there in the sun, and you lay down, and you just start drooling, you lay on your back, and just— dude, I just let you be. I just leave you over there because you have very clear instructions to come back. But if you stay over there, dude, I'm still playing fetch over here. That makes sense, correct? I'm always bringing on more. I'm always bringing on more because I have unlimited tennis balls. Does it make sense? And I know statistically, if I do my job right and make it really clear for you to succeed, I know with a 100% certainty a really large percentage of people are full of shit and not going to do anything. I'm not confused by that. Does that make sense? Middle-income America, bro, look at your clients. Where do they end up at 65 years old? That's the average person. Does it make sense? I'm not confused by that, but I want to give them a shot. So go do this really simple. I just threw the ball to the front door. Go get it, bring it back to me. And we do it, and maybe I'll throw it in the pool later, and you got to dive in the water and get one. And then maybe one I'll throw into the grass, and maybe you have to jump over a couple fences to get it. It is what it is. Figure it out. Like, I can help you navigate that. The mistake that most people make is they throw the ball over there, he goes and gets it, and then they go, what's your name again? Ian. They go like, where's Ian? Shit, hold on, let me go look for Ian. And they go over here, yo, Ian! And you forget about all those dogs and balls over there, and the whole thing collapses. If you're in the insurance space and trying to build an agency, or you're trying to like break records in sales, just hit new levels, new heights, click the link below to apply to my consulting and coaching program that I have out there. I'm helping tons of people get to new levels, get to new income heights, help them build their teams, put systems in place, staffing stuff, recruiting processes, automations. I'm just teaching people how to get to a point where they're selling on their own pen 30, 40, 50 grand a month. And if they're building a team, teaching how to have an effective structure to your insurance agency for the most profitability you I can. There is an application process. I'm only looking to work with like high-end people who really want to make big things happen. A couple recent clients that we've had in the, in the coaching program, one dude as an individual went from selling like $8,000 a month, barely getting by, about to quit the industry, found the book, hit me up direct, started the coaching program, went to $35,000 his first month, has issued like $150,000 in the last 90 days, and has changed the trajectory of his career working with another agency Builder, very first month went from doing like $800 grand a month to almost $1.1 million. We added like 10 or 15% production in, in 30 days and continue to work on things there. So if you're interested, click the link, apply, and if you're a fit, I'll reach out. You're choosing to recruit over selling, and at one point you're going to have to sit there and tell people, if you want my time, you got to call me at 6 AM, and if they don't show up, they don't show up. And then you're gonna eventually start selling on from 4 to 8, and you don't deal with recruiting from 4 to 8. Yeah, it's like, think about this now, like they gotta play with your rules versus you're trying to cater to everybody. No, no, think, think about to his point what he's saying is like you're trying to teach people to be disciplined, but when they call you during prime time, you're like, fuck the discipline, I'm gonna answer your call. I'm like, yo, you mean to call me? I'm in the middle of dialing, bro. You're supposed to call me at 6 AM, correct? And that's where— now, where does the, where does the strategy technique come in? Hey, Ian, you said you want to kill it, dude, right? Yeah, you want to do whatever it takes, bro. I'm out selling— how much you selling a month? I'm out selling $50,000, $60,000 a month. I assume you'd like to do that. Okay, I want to help you, but if you're serious, dude, in order for me to help you You're going to have to call me before I get going. Any reason you can't call me tomorrow morning at 6 AM? All right, dude. Now, if you don't call me at 6 AM, dude, I don't know how to say this without being mean. I'm going to assume you quit. Is that okay? All right, dope. Talk to you at 6. Does it make— I can do— it's so easy to quote unquote manipulate. You're the bad chick. You're the hottest chick in the room. She plays— she makes— 100%. That's real. So for arbitrary things, let's say he doesn't call me. Did he— do you fire me? I don't fire. I like people. And the reason I start— I'll tell you why I started doing it better, more so, because everyone was quitting because of me. In their eyes, they were like, John's mean, John doesn't do this. Is that mine or yours? That's mine. Yours is right there. I've been drinking out the wrong fucking one. No, you said you came in with that one, so I wanted to move. I'm pretty sure you drank out of I'm pretty sure I drank out of both. He's very healthy right now. Yeah, you'll be all right. I actually do draw a lot of hard lines in the sand. Like Tony was saying, I only answer questions after 8 PM. Yeah. So I'm thinking to myself, you got to be careful though to not draw too hard a line, right? Right. Does it make sense? It's not all black and white for me, right? And so many people want black and white. Yeah. Now dude, he calls me in the middle of downtime, I'm like, yo, what up, you good? Different, different game. My kids call me right now, I'm picking up. Yeah, I don't go, I'm training. Does that make sense? They're the only ones that get through on the do not disturb. My wife, my kids, Amanda, no one else. How do you keep the standards? Let's say he doesn't play at 6 AM, you don't fire him. Okay, so for me, that standard, because now you just kind of went back on what you said. Yeah, so I made it really simple, and this is what I was saying is like, are we only looking for him? No, I want him to. We did $3 million last month from agents that issued under $5,000. Oh, shit. Small volume. $3 million. That's a lot of volume from agents that issued under $5,000. They don't do shit, dude. How many of you think called me? Zero. Exactly zero. Now, was that always true when I had 10 people? No. Does that make sense? It's not real. But for me, it's setting expectations. Hey Mary, here's who I am. Here's what we're going to do today. Here's how this goes. We're going to see if we can get you anything. If you can even get you approved, I'm going to ask you some health questions. Then we're going to pick a plan. You're going to find in your budget. We're going to get you insurance in like 10 or 15 minutes, whatever y'all say, right? There's a spiel. We set expectations. You go to the dentist. Hey dude, I'm gonna take you in the back. We're gonna put this thing over your thing. We're gonna stick the thing in your mouth. We're gonna take some x-rays and we're gonna send you in there and she's gonna clean your teeth. Like, they set expectations. So for me, I don't care if he wins or not, right? But what do I want? Why, why do most agents not win big? Okay, what? Okay, like functionally, like really at a simple core, why do they not win? Why don't they sell? Because you need to dial, you need the reps. Reps. Fair? Yeah. Almost every agent doesn't have enough reps. They don't make enough phone calls. They don't do anywhere near enough prospecting to get the presentations to be any good anyway. Is that fair? Again, does all the other stuff matter some? Sure. But the main reason— people don't work. So what I've learned is if I had 100 agents in here, what percentage of them are going to be mediocre at best? Cool. What percentage of them would say they're full-time? Okay. All right, so this is where strategy comes in. Who get— who defines full-time in that situation? Okay, what happens if I define it? Different game. No, I'm not fucking wrong. It's my rules when I hire them. Does that make sense? No different than when you go to a job out there. They define what your full-time hours are. They define your schedule. They define overtime or not. You just choose to do it or not. Does that make sense? You go to college, they define what's full-time. Who says 4 years is full-time? Who made that shit up? Someone literally made it up one day. And y'all believe it. Oh, that means you're a full-time student. Dude, my daughter's a full-time student. She goes to school like from 11 to 2, 3 days a week and sleeps in the rest of the week. I'm like, that is not full-time. Fair? Yeah. But it's defined as full-time. So I just took control of the definition. So for me, when we get started, I'm like, the short version is, yo, if you don't run 30 appointments, presentations a week, you're part-time. Is that fair? Yeah. Okay. If you have no money, I don't have money to invest in leads. Anyone ever dealt with that? You can't even be full-time if you wanted to be. You don't have the ability to call enough people to be full-time. So, I hope like hell you have another job. Because if I got $300, you physically can't do this full-time. It's impossible. Does that make sense? So, I define full-time. And I put people in a bucket. Can you really expound on that? Because I feel like— people are trying to help people, right, without the economics of the business and ignoring the facts because they want to try to get these people on, right? And it's really like some parameters. Like, again, any business, you can't beat bad economics, right? It just doesn't happen. You can change the market, you can do this. Trust me, I did it all last year. It doesn't work. So you have to have these foundational things, and if you don't have a couple key ingredients, you can't make a cake. Yeah, you try making it without an egg, baking powder, whatever the case may be, it doesn't work. So sometimes we're trying to, to get people in the business when they don't have a couple of the right ingredients, overlooking, oh, maybe it'll just work. Correct. And it's, you know, it's like some— who's dude? He was out there building a funnel on his, on the like hood of a car, right? And that's how I look at this business. So they come in, now who controls where they go? Right now they're dictating what path they go down. If this, they go that way. If that, they go this way, right? That's how those things work. It's not that deep. Funnels are really simple, right? I just chose to take control of it. So at the beginning, do they know what full-time is? I know they don't. I've been in the business long enough to know that they all are going to think they're full-time. Because why? Just like I said, I was in the mortgage industry. They're like, I'm a full-time insurance agent. No, no, no, let's reset. Because I know what am I trying to prevent? On the backside, his frustration. I'm trying to prevent— I'm trying to avoid that, but I know it way up here long before they do. I'm mind-fucking them from the beginning, dude. I'm not letting them go down this path ever. I don't want to go there. I want to go down that path, right? So I define full-time, part-time, right? And I look at schedule, I look at income, I look at your ability to work. Do you have a full-time job or not? Do you have kids or not? Is your spouse or not? Is she in or out? Y'all ever hire someone, this is the 47th shiny thing they've done, and the spouse is like, another one? Dude, I'm dealing with that up front. Does that make sense? They go, I go to church Wednesday and Sunday, and I don't believe in working weekends, and I have to make all my kids stuff. Hey, I'm dealing with that. I asked someone this weekend, they like, I want to learn how to get to $50K a month. And I'm like, cool, what do you got now? $22, whatever it was, $25, I don't remember his number. And I'm like, all right, what else do you got going on? 'Cause at its core, do you really not know how to— like, someone's at 30, do you really not know how to get to 50? Like, it's just— you're full of shit. I don't believe it at all. Does it make sense? I don't believe it at all. You're just choosing to not do it. Fair? So same thing for him. So I'm like, what else do you got going on? He's like, long story short, he goes, I got music. I do this thing, I'm into music, whatever. I said, what's more important, $50K or music? He said music. I was like, cool. Different route for him. Because initially I'm like, yo, why don't you just sell more? Well, that's— that wasn't on the card— in the cards for him. He's like, he prioritizes music over $50K. Does that make sense? Similar to in a sales situation where people are like, I want it all but budget. I'm like, how do you— so I'd be like, dude, what's more important to you? All of the coverage no matter what it costs? All of it, no matter what it costs, or your budget? Which one's more important? Yes. All of it, no matter what it costs, or budget? I need you to put them in order, 1 and 2. It ain't like, do you want it or do you not? And they pick budget. I— well, you, you said it. I was willing to give it all to you. Does that make sense? Versus go, you're so old and sick and and the max over here is $40K because of this. I ain't pitching that. I'm gonna get them to pick it. Does that make sense? So now I'm going to get you to pick full-time, part-time. Here's full-time: $1,000, $1,500 a week in leads. Maybe you suck, maybe you don't. I don't know how good you are. I don't know how hard you're going to work. I don't know how many trainings you're going to do. I don't know anything about you whatsoever. What's the average agent do? They quit. Do you want to be average? No, I hate that question. That's my answer to it. The average agent quits. Is that what you want? No. Okay. So for me, I need coachable, do the shit you say you're going to do. Those are my two. I had a third to be nice and I say, if you can't do two, communicate with me. But I can only handle so many threes. Meaning if you always communicate with me that you can't do what you said you— I'm out. That makes sense? So I'm really simple. Coachable, do what you say you're going to do. So now I can tie anything to coachable. I throw the ball in the pool, you're like, I don't really want to get wet. I'm like, you said you'd be coachable. Did you change your mind? You said you'd dial at 7:00 AM. Did you change your mind? Coachable? Remember that part? Hey, you said you do. I can always come back to, hey, remember when we talked about this? I can always bring it back to coachable, do what you say you're going to do. Coachable is easy because they said yes. Do what you say you're going to do is up to me to ask questions to get them to say they're going to do something. Yo, if I throw the ball in the pool, will you go get it? Yep. It's cold out, bro. I mean, you did say you'd do it. And if you don't want to do it, let me know. I'll find someone to go get it. Leverage. Does that make sense? So now I'm defining full-time, part-time, right? If you choose part-time, I'm like, there's two doors. You see that door? Beautiful pool. Everything's blue. Green grass. Trees blowing in the wind, beautiful. That door, part-time, is thorns, is rocky, you have to be barefoot. There's like lions and crocodiles. And what's the sign say? Like snakes and crocodiles avoid the water. That's out there. Which door do you want to go in? Bro, you pick that door. I ain't chasing you. It's crocodiles and snakes. I'm out. So I force you to pick. Now, if you pick that door, I'm not offended. This is— this is where— for y'all to write that— that is that hook. I don't want just him. I want $3 million a month and him. I go, you pick that door. And I know he's not, but in my fake story here, right? You pick that door. I'm not upset with you. I just have one rule. You can never complain to me. Is that fair? Yeah. Yeah. We shake hands, we move on. He comes back to me, yo, bro, my bill. Hey, did you mess up and call me to complain? Are you calling me looking for a solution? Because you're giving me complaining tone. I don't like it. Mess with my day, dude. It's one second I got him because I can go back to the expectations I set. I don't have to listen to him to carry on. It's not rude. I don't have to listen to the story. Yo dude, my mom, you ain't gonna believe— I'm like, yo, no complaining rule. It's just, if I got to give you a safe word, I'll give you a safe word. We've given them— I've given those words to agents. I'm like, yo, you— they don't stop. If I say this word, it means you're doing it again. I can't handle it. Why? Because I have like— we have only so much mental capacity, right? And when you deal with that agent that you want to bang their head against the wall for 5 years Dude, they drain. They take a chunk. You know what I'm saying? And then what happens is you get that down so low, now you're like, all right guys, I got to go over here. And you let your business— you leave it up to chance. And I'm just not willing to do that. And I learned if I spend so much time with him because I did a poor job setting expectations, or even if I want to blame him, and blame him for all the reasons why we're at this rub point. I miss all y'all. And I'll literally watch that fool drown in a pool if he chooses to jump in when I'm like, yo, don't jump in this. I ain't coming in. There's crocodiles in there. You're gonna drown. I'm telling you, you're gonna drown if you go in there. He goes in. I have no problem, dude. I'll take the remote, put my feet up, and watch TV. I just don't care that much. I do. But I know he impacts all the other people I gotta handle. So I'm not gonna let him let y'all drown. I'm willing to let him sacrifice himself, you know what I mean? And I had to learn how to do it with tact. I don't want to be a dick. I don't want to make people feel bad. I don't want— you know what I mean? It's not— the approach is important. I have to have a skill set there too. I want to make him feel empowered. I want to make him feel like I'm there for him, which I am. But if he ain't doing what it takes And I'm also honest and go, I have a hard time there. That when you say you're going to do it and then don't, I'm weak there. So if you can't do it, dude, I'd rather you just tell me you can't do it because I'll reset. I'll give you a different route. You know what I mean? Like, don't tell me you want to be here and do this work. I can't function properly with people that do that. I'm broken there. Does that make sense? So I just, I find my people. And if it doesn't work for him, amen. I like her better. Cool. Go work with her. High five. She's great. You know what I mean? And I've just gotten so good at that. I see your question. Give me one second. I've gotten so good at that process. Why? Raps. But I have so many raps, dude. I have so many raps, it's obnoxious. You know how many times I've done this? I didn't prep shit. I have no notes, no nothing. Why? This is what I do. It'd be weird if I needed— you ever see people get up on stage and they look at their phone with the notes? I'm like, oh my God. Like, this is what you do, and it's just reps, dude. I've interviewed so many people. I've messed up tons. I've lost people. I've had people quit on me thousands of times, you know what I mean? I've lost— it's just, it's part of it. But I always looked at it and went, how did I— what did I do there? How'd I mess that up? And I'm willing to own it. I just— I don't— I'm good. Like, all right, I messed up. It ain't the first time. It sure ain't gonna be the last time. I promise you that. But I, I really want people to win, and I know one way. I, I just tell you what I did. It's the beauty of it. I win. Do I have obstacles? Yes. Did people help me? Hell yes, lots of them. But I can give you the path, and I've helped a wide range of different people win at all different levels. So now I have a lot of reference points. No different than when you're sitting with clients and you're like, hey, every time I sit with someone like you, here's what we do. Well, you ain't gonna bring an agent to me that ain't dealt with that situation before. Like every time I get someone like this, here's what we do. And so many people want what we have now without the reps. Everybody mentioned system. I'm like, yo, we have the baddest system there is in terms of onboarding. Half the company uses it. Amanda's trained most of the staff at FFL. A lot of y'all's hierarchy got trained by the staff that she's trained. She's been with me 8 years. There's not anyone in the hierarchy that she didn't impact, even if she doesn't know them today, because we had a system in place to make this thing work really well. We have literally like— I'm a GoHighLevel funnel nerd. I have a badass onboarding and recruiting system that we use. Some people want to come in and like, I want it. I'm like, what do you do now? Nothing. I just want yours. I'm like, well, mine ain't going to work if you don't know what it's doing. You know what I mean? Like, go get in a rocket ship that Elon built and fly it to the moon. You probably don't know how. Yeah, I'm sorry, man. I know you had a question a few times. We've met. Remind me your name. I know you. How do I know you? You spoke somewhere. Where? We were on stage together somewhere. SWAT? No, somewhere else. We are Cody's. Remind me your name. That's it. I love it. I love it. Cool. I heard you keep saying Guys, right? So do you have women on your team? So I'm learning Spanish. Do you know Spanish? Poquito. Okay. Well, like in that language, they use like hijos means both genders. So that's what I mean. I mean everybody. So I know that I have lots of women in our group. Time and capacity for a male and time and capacity for a woman is completely different. Uh, 24 hours in a day for a man compared to a 24-hour— yeah, 100%. Fine gentlemen who are here today, I know there's probably a spouse that is holding home down. 100%. Yeah, she's like, yeah. So usually ladies like us, we are the spouse. Yeah. So how do you balance that conversation? Sure. As a leader who's leading other women and still keep in mind that she may not have— yeah, that's that, that's that, like, um, that being dynamic with different people. Not everybody's the same path. Does that make sense? So it's my job, no different than we go, um, how do we sell insurance to people? Like, we have a general structure, but like, we don't sell the same policy in the same face amount, in the same monthly payment to everyone. Right. How do we know what to sell? What'd you say? Yeah. How do we know their situation? Ask questions. Right. And then what do we do with that? Those questions? We give a recommendation based on what? Their desires. Right. What they want. So same concept, right? So I'm like, all right, who are you? Where are you at today? Where do you want to go? And what are you willing to sacrifice in the middle? And I figure that out with everybody, meaning I have a forever, like, grace with single moms. Like, you're just— they can do anything wrong and I'm in. Does that make sense? It's just I had— there's a spot for me for that. I was raised by one. It's like, you know what I mean? I just like— it's hard. I don't— and I don't know what it's like to be one. I'm like, I have no earthly idea what that's like. So what— I mean, I can at least somewhat guess if someone's like, I'm ready to kill it no matter what. My dude's at home, I can hit— you know what I mean? I'm not where like some, some, some have like that mom guilt. Some don't. Does it make sense? Some people know how to function with without worrying about that, and some like they crumble over it. I can handle both of them very differently, but at its core, to me, male, female, at the end of the day, it's human communication, right? It's like, who are you and what do you want and where do you want to go? And I help them bridge that gap, whatever that might be. I can also with time challenge them along the way. I also give people grace. Some people are like, I'm in 100%. Then they get in, they're like, ooh, scary. Nope, I got to back out. I'm like, all right, cool. Does that make sense? Now, early young me, I'd literally take them, bash their head against the wall and be like, ah, that's how you do it. But I had to learn how to articulate. Not everybody wants what I want, and that's okay. So my role is to help people get from where they're at now to where they want to be. And then I pay attention Like, I'm aware because some people will yes me for my attention because maybe they think it's what they want. There's all kinds of reasons why they do it. Some people like, yeah, I'm in, when they're not really in, like, in their heart. So I have to pay attention also, you know. And they want the desire you have. Sure. It's just sometimes their capacity level doesn't allow that. Sometimes the male upline Yeah, correct. She's going harder. Yeah, she's going harder a lot of times. Yeah. Yeah. I'll never— yeah, I'll never not know my entire life runs because I have two women in my life to handle everything. I get to think about nothing. Yeah. Yeah. It just is what it is. I mean, my wife handles everything at home. And Amanda handles everything else in my life. I literally about don't have to think. It's rare I get to do what I'm really good at. I'm not blind to that piece. Does that make sense? So I'm very fortunate with it. And so when I'm working with people, my job, no matter who they are, is I just— I have to figure out them. And I have to do my best to figure it out. But I also give myself grace to mess it up too, because I know I'm going to. You know what I mean? And I've messed that situation up a bunch of times, for sure. But I can say I've— I've quite frankly, I've not— certainly there's a bigger ratio guys to girls, but I've messed up dudes all kinds of ways, you know, early on. And I'm like, how do I get better? How do I study leadership? How do I study communication? How do I study psychology? How do I just do— huh? Yeah. That's where it's so important. Questions for me. Yeah. Because maybe John's not a good fit. Fit for everybody, right? Maybe his style is just not, not it, but his next style line or his next year is going to be a perfect fit for that, right? So 100% with these people, because that's what we're doing a lot now. I take a lot of time interviewing one-on-ones. Yeah. And if you are married and your spouse is not quite sure, bring the spouse in that meeting. Yeah, it's like selling, uh, you know, it is 100%. And so that's, that's what's really clicked for me every time I listen to John. Like, I'm like, hey, I can sell 50, 60, 70, whatever. That's it. That's not hard. Yeah, but why was I struggling? And all last year, really a big part of it, even 2023, I didn't want to recruit anybody. And I turned probably 250 people away, bro, from all these meetings and calls. And like, hey, I want to work with you. I'm like, no, not doing that. Yeah, right. Because I had a fear of them quitting, or I had a fear of roll-up, or I had a fear of this. And now I don't give a damn, because now we're building it structurally where I'm meeting with people like I had a great meeting with one of our great agents, Jamika, right? She's just figuring it out. Yeah, she's totally— Jamaica is totally different than Derek Tate. Yeah, I have to go like— I almost have to switch my outfit before I talk. Yeah, 100%, dude. Okay, what we're just talking about for 2 and a half hours yesterday was the same topic, but we did it polar opposite. So it doesn't always have to be the John Show or Jerry Show or anybody's show. Yeah, is you build people along your organization. Conversation, right? Hey, you know what, you're not going to be a great fit over here. Yeah. And in fact, I love you, we have a great talk, here's my number, call me whenever. Yeah. But I think where you're at, this is nothing but phenomenal fit. So just, just that's where being the leader really comes out too. It's true, right? So, and yeah, and I don't have to say yes to everybody. Yeah. Quite frankly. Yeah. I can, I can say no and be like, it's just not a fact. So someone yesterday, literally yesterday, it's not a fit. He was like, what? I'm like, dude, you're not a fit for me. Why, dude? Mentally draining. I'm like, I'm not— I don't mind the hard work, but like, just it didn't feel good. And I trust my gut a lot, quite frankly, and I, I trust hers a lot. And I looked at her and I didn't have to ask a question, and she shook her head. I'm like, all right, we're out, you know. Um, yeah, please. So I think I've noticed a pattern. Like I said, I did for about 5 years the last brokerage I was at was a captive agency, now I'm here, and I keep noticing the same pattern happening, which is I'm actually really good at building followers. People that will just, you know, do the thing, but they're not really— they're just waiting for Zach to innovate, waiting for me to lead from the front, whatever. Whereas I see some people, they figure out really quickly, or what perceives as really quickly, is they are able to find somebody who comes in and puts this gap, right? They're like, they find leaders kind of like a Tony or someone who's not just a top producer that also has a passion for coaching and leadership. And I'm wondering, do you build those? Do you train those? Do you find those? And if so, what percentage? Because I feel like that's the thing that's going to keep me from the next level, which is having this little bit of gap between me and all my direct downlines. Are you trying to get other people to build? Exactly. Yeah, but I want them to actually not just build, not just recruit, then go, hey, get trained by Zach, and then, you know, come underneath me and collect overrides. But like, why? Well, I mean, I'm actually better at it than this. No, no, why do you not want them to recruit and have you train them? And I think it's great. I think actually, I actually told them that's the model I want for now, but there's nobody— I think you're missing it. You're missing it. Yeah, okay. Yeah, but there's nobody— it sounds like a recruiting machine to me what you just said. Yeah, no, I am. I mean, literally. No, they— yeah, dude, to me I teach what you just tried to avoid. Meaning I want— I want to train. Meaning exactly what I want. Yeah, I just would— I would also like somebody to come in here with mentality of the buck stops with me. I feel like everybody is like, the buck stops with Zach. And I would just love it to have a couple guys that come in and go, yeah, I'll build my own thing. Takes time, dude. I'll tell you this, we had 6,000 agents last year. How many would not roll me debt today? I don't have 4. There's no way I have 4. That would not worry you? I do not have 4. Listen, wait, wait, wait, the question was, bro, I got 1, maybe 2. I'm thinking of your— oh bro, they roll me debt. If I name the names that roll me debt right now, y'all would shit yourselves. They're on Instagram, bro. I promise you, with all the cars and all the jewelry, all the glam, I'm like, again, motherfuckers rolling me. Dude, one asked to meet me while we were here. I'm like, yo, you can pay your $54 grand that just got rolled to me last week. How about that, bro? I literally DM'd him. He's like, hey, see you in Orlando, want to meet? I sent him a screenshot of the debt email. I'm like, I would love you to pay that. I'm curious if he answered, actually. Well, let's see if he answered. Nope. Nope. How do you tell if he read it? I ain't ready yet. It still says sent. He can. He answered me quick when I said that. Does that make sense? So Yeah, so for me, dude, um, I'm okay being that. Yeah, but I learned how to mitigate the risk better than try to get a bunch of people to come up and take it on like I would. Yeah, dude, I ain't like— I ain't rolling no one debt ever. And if it happens by mistake, we pay it now. Like, I don't— I ain't messing with that. You know, um, but that, but that's— go ahead, same topic. Yeah, yeah, pay attention. Yeah, yeah, you're looking at someone that could potentially be more debt later. I cut them off. I'll cut them off in a second. Do they do what they say they're going to do? Meaning if they get— let's just, let's walk through If I get— if I have a chargeback today, do you call me? Me? Yeah. Okay, then what do you tell me? If you're like my agent or my client? Yeah, agent. Oh, well, they— all my agents get them every single morning as well. It's set to do that, but I let them know, hey, you have this charge. You think they all look? No, they definitely don't. Yeah, you tell them what? They have a chargeback. I give them the policy number, the client info, the carrier that it's with, and then we'll talk to them and see what we can do, whether we need a lower the policy because they can't afford it, or just try and save something from it. Okay, ain't— I like that you reach out. So for me, then, then what? You hang up and then what? With like my agent, I follow up with them at the end of the day to ask if they've gotten taken care of, reached out to them, something they need to show me. You have anyone not answer you back? Oh, of course. Then what if they don't answer me back? I mean, I hit them the next day, but if they're not physically in my office, I mean, I can't really— hey, pick up your phone and answer I can. I wish I was there. Hey, cut them off. I had someone message me yesterday, yo, I got paid $57 on a policy. He ain't called me in 5 months. I threw the ball out there. Does that make sense? They playing with you. Yeah, yeah. So it's like, again, I'm already— I've already had the— I've already had the conversation. But for me, I want to teach them how to manage their money. If I teach them to manage their money, they won't mess with mine. Does that make sense? So I'm gonna go about it the right way. But I'm also— I always tell people this. One, I have the conversation when I'm interviewing people. Do you understand what advanced money is? No. I asked them on the interview. What percentage know? Literally zero. Okay, then let's take it another level. Here's what it works. They're loaning you the money. Explain the whole thing. Do you know what happens if you don't pay it? You ever ask someone that on an interview? I ask every person I interview, do you know what happens if you don't pay it? No, yo, they take it from me. So I have a question for you, are you the type of dude that takes care of your debt? Are you willing to leave debt to me if, if this thing doesn't work out for you? Now when they say it to me, do I believe them? No, but I want to be able to go, yo, remember the conversation? Does that make sense? Because I tell everybody, if you put me in a situation where I have to make a hard decision, it'll be the easiest decision I make. I'll make it like that. I don't give a shit. Because look what you did to me. You— what I did to you? Yo, doesn't make sense. But it's not first conversation for me, so I'm setting the stage early. Does that make sense? Now, how do I know if they're going to end up there? What are the signs that someone's going to end up with debt? Decline in the production. Sure. What else? What else? Okay, what's even first? They start writing hard. Even earlier. There we go. Stop buying leads. Regardless or not, buy them, not buy— you don't buy them, I know it's coming. I know it's coming. Hey dude, see you didn't pick up leads this week, you good? Hey man, don't forget, if you don't buy leads, the hamster wheel is going to catch up. Remember I told you 30% are falling off no matter who you are? You might suck, maybe half fall off, I don't know. But if you stop selling now, dude, you're gonna get whacked with the wave. Yeah, recruiting, are you— because there's a lot of expense— there's not, but there's expenses that come with even just getting into the industry as a whole. Yeah, a couple hundred bucks. Yeah, I guess. Yeah, so In the interviewing process, are you kind of explaining that, really breaking it down and seeing if it's the right fit? Yes, I am looking— when I interview people, I'm looking to find a reason to get off the phone now. All this stuff that I was talking about, all the stuff we deal with, I deal with the same stuff. Yes, yes, they're selling me that they're going to overcome. I'm going like, yo, thorns, woods, Alligators, snakes. There's a bunch of money there, but buckle up. You think they pay this well because it's easy? Like, it's simple in concept. I get it. But buckle up. You're going to get punched in the face. Are you the type of dude that can handle it? And then I watch, dude. I watch everyone and I watch for signs. You know what I'm saying? They ain't on a dial session, dude. I'm calling them now. Am I calling them 22 times? Never. You get one shot. Yo dude, you good? And it's probably a text, probably not even a call. Yo, you good? Ah, blah blah blah. Here we go. Hey, when can you get back on? Tomorrow. You sure? Yep. Hey dude, don't forget the rule, you know what I'm saying? I can always go back to conversations that we already had that they already agreed to. That's the magic of it all. There's nothing new ever because I've learned how to front load everything. You know, and so for me, the whole thing is I'm not trying to get rid of all the noise. I just want to know now. I don't want to know in 3 weeks, 4 weeks, 4 months, 6 months, 5 years. I want to know now. So I go, I tie people down with really good questions. Can you do this? When can you do it? And when, when will you confirm? So I lock people down to a minute. Hey, when can you start dialing? Monday. Cool. What time can you start? 9. Why so late? They're like, what? I'm like, no, why so late? Like, what are you doing before 9? Oh, I got my kids, take them to school. Got it, makes sense, all good. I don't know, I just, I mean, I'm just kind of doing my thing. What thing? I mean, just walking my dog and working out. And correct me if I'm wrong, dude, you said you're single and broke, right? And you told me yesterday you want to be rich. Are you messing with me right now? Does that make sense? Strategy to it. Again, dropping my kids off to school, who am I to argue? I ain't fighting that fight, you know what I'm saying? And so it's for me, all right, cool. Can you— are you willing to start earlier? You said you want to be rich. Yeah. Can you start at 7:30? Yeah. Dope. Start dialing at 7:30. Can you do— how many calls can you make before X amount of time? I can— I go noon. How many can you get in before noon? How many you think? If I'm sitting there with a gun to your head, how many can you get in before noon? 300. Cool. Do me a favor, text me at noon. Send me your numbers, dials, pickups, presentations, whatever, and then we'll analyze them for like 5 minutes. I'll give you some feedback. Now, if at noon, dude, if you text me with 32 dials, just don't even text me, okay? But then I'm gonna assume you ain't that serious. Is that fair? Of course. I want to know now. Can I give him grace? Yeah. What if he comes back in 4 months, he's like, dude, I've been watching you kill it, I'm ready now? Cool. Hey man, let's go, dude. I'm not gonna beat him over the head. But I have to have some, like, uh, what's the word? Like, not leverage, like where you keep, like, barriers in a sense. Boundaries. Yes. Like, I have to have a cool balance of that, you know what I mean? And so it's, it's always about how can I help people get where they want to go, yes, but how do I also help them not get in their own head? How do I help them not overthink? How about all the noise that they're getting from their family and their circle and their friends? Look, I'm trying to— I know all that's there. You know, so I'm trying to, I'm trying to deal with all that. So for me, the debt stuff, I see that shit coming. I see it coming up 5 miles away. It's so easy to see, but most people aren't willing to take the approach, or they approach it incorrectly, you know what I mean? And I do want them to stay because I've turned down people coming up to me, they're just like trying to get into the industry, they're at rock bottom. Hey, listen, don't job, don't have money to invest in myself. You need to go figure out your— Yeah, every single month and then start like— Yeah, for me, if you're broke and don't have a job, I'm out. Yeah. If you're broke and willing to work your face off like I was, I'm your guy. I don't care if you got 50 cents to your name. If you're willing to work, I'm your dude because I was that. So it makes sense. I can give you ways to go get clients and get paid today. I can get anyone paid today with no money. 100%. I have zero question if I can do that. Will they do the work though? How soon can I know? Today. I can know today. I'll be like, yo, I've done it in my office in a meeting. I'm like, yo, go. I took a chick— we have it on YouTube. Tell me when to stop, Arturo, by the way. I have no idea. I'll talk all day. Um, we took a chick and I was like, she was complaining about money. She had $5,000 due before something got taken away and she had like 3 weeks. I'm like, I'm like, shit, sounds like you got a big-ass runway. Like, what are you worried about? We can make that by this weekend. She's like, I got no money. I said, dude, we're going on lunch break. It was like this. It was a meeting like this. We're going on lunch break. You can't go on lunch break though. If you want to win, I can tell you how to win. Will you listen? Will you do it? It's going to be uncomfortable as shit. Your probably instinct's going to be like, I don't know if it's going to work, but I promise you it'll work. You're going to be uncomfortable though. Will you do it? She said, yeah. Are you sure? Because I don't want to tell you to do something that's going to be— if you want to tell me no, tell me no. And she's selling me. I'm in. I'll do it, whatever it takes. I go, cool. Walk outside. And our office is in like a complex. How many buildings? There's like 12 buildings maybe, like a little office complex. I said, cool. When you leave here, I want you to leave here at lunch, go outside. I want you to bang on every door in the office complex. Tell them John sent you from the 800 building. To see if anyone in here needs life insurance. And you can't come back till someone says yes. Before lunch break was over, someone said yes. And then I taught her to do that in neighborhoods. She made like $3,000 the next day. And I'm like, this isn't deep. She had no money. They were literally going to take stuff from her. I'm like, you just go out there, open the front door. It's 300 million leads out there. Go get them. So to me, I can find ways— it's one of my most popular videos we got going on right now. I've created a video because we, we, we have a lot of funnels going on now, and we like, uh, we ask people questions coming in, and one of them's like, what's your biggest struggle? And I think we have like, I'm broke, leads, uh, mentorship and accountability, and then systems and recruiting or something like that, or the 4. And every— depending on what they answer, they get different stuff from me. So if I answer broke, they get this. So I made a video like, if I'm broke, what do I do? We made like a 45-minute video. Dude, it's popped in the last— we made it like a month ago. It's becoming one of the most popular ones because most people are broke. And I'm like, well, here's the path. Now, how many really go do it? Not many because they don't really want it. So to me, that's a little bit of a boundary. Like, I'll give you the path. So for me, I can work with anyone, dude, if they're willing. So, I'm looking for willingness more than anything. I don't need you to have money. Because again, I don't— It's not— And it's not like a weird like— Do you know how much money has been made in this industry over the last 100 years? With no phones, no technology, no leads, no system, no automations, no instant approvals. Literally nothing but human communication. Primera. Was built before most of us existed, and they had nothing for technology. I'm like, why is that the point where you can't get past? Like, I don't, I don't understand, you know. Question, John, what would be the few things that you would say credited your, your massive growth from— I think it was 2010 to the following? Yeah, '10 to '15, we grew nothing. 15 to 17 was big. 19 was huge. We went from $800 grand to $2.5 million at the end of that year. 17, we went from— trying to think what we were doing in '17— like a couple hundred grand at the beginning of the year to like $600,000, $700,000, $800,000 at the end of the year, something like that. '18, flat. '19, we blew up again. And then 20, 21, we blew up like 4 straight years. Um, I got a lot of help. I hired staff. Amanda started helping me do a ton of the stuff. I stopped trying to be everything to everybody. I started implementing some of the stuff we're talking about now. Right? This was very gradual change. All the stuff I know, it's not like I rolled out of bed one day and knew it all. I just started working on it all. I started working on me. As intensely as I'm working on getting ready for that event this summer, I work on me every day, dude. Every day. I study, dude. I read, I listen to podcasts. I don't watch anything on social that's negative. I probably don't follow anyone in this room on social. Arturo is the only person I follow. I do— if you put anything negative or what my opinion is stupid, I unfollow. When people friend me on Facebook, you know, the very first step, you hit accept. No. I don't scroll. Fuck scroll. That sounds like it takes too long. Remember, now I want to know now. So you know what I assume? That I don't want to follow them. So I hit accept, I hit the three little dots, and I hit unfollow. Every friend request I take, I hit unfollow. Why? I don't want to see your shit. I don't— I don't want to see it. I bet I don't follow you. I've never seen you post. That's very rude. Yeah, now I don't know why. I post mostly me and my daughter playing. I don't want to see it. Yeah, I ain't mad that you do it. I don't give a shit. It doesn't help my mission. I don't follow anybody with anything. I don't know nothing. I don't know when people's birthdays are. I don't know when their weddings are. I don't know when they play with their kid. I don't know anything. I don't care because it messes with my mental tank. I get frustrated, I get annoyed. I'm like, why is he posting that shit? Trump, Biden, school, this. Ah, I don't want to see any of it. Literally accept, unfollow. You know, that's one of the biggest things I would say as an entrepreneur, especially as far as delegation. Yeah, so it's hard, you know, when you— it's hard, dude. Trust is hard, bro. So it's like delegate, but like people have like fancy words for it. But I gotta like watch her shit. Now today, bro, she could wire X amount of money right now. She has full access. The bank calls her. I have to wire money, I have to call Amanda. I'm like, yo, I gotta send money, can you do it? Like, fair. I literally don't— could I figure— am I smart enough to figure it out? Yeah, I could Google the bank and call the number and be like, yo, I have an account, but I have no earthly idea how to send money from my account. 8 years. How long did it take me to give you access? 4 years to touch my money. She's the only staff? No, not anymore. So her and I, it was— so I had no staff till I had— I had— I didn't hire her till we were doing like $400 grand a month. I had 40 agents selling direct to me with no staff. I did all their contracting, I did all their onboarding, I did all their training, I did all the recruiting, I did— I did every— I did all of it. My upline, Kilomet, his girl, when I sent her the contracting, she would forward it to corporate. But I was responsible for everything else. I had 40 selling agents before I hired anyone. Do I recommend it? No, but I did it. So those of y'all that can't figure out the balance, I'm like, I don't give a shit. I do it with paper apps and paper contracting. So there's time. Was I busy? Yep. Was it a pain in the ass? Yep. Do I wish I hired her sooner? Yeah, but she was in middle school. I couldn't. Does it make sense? So then I hired a second— she was actually the second hire. I had a first staff right before her, hired her to be the assistant to my assistant. And then she literally took over. And this goes to leadership thing, right? So I watch. And leadership is taken, not given. And most of us try to give it. And they go, you're going to be my next team. You'll be leg 2. You'll be leg 3. It don't work like that. So I just watch for leadership stuff, and it's really easy to see. If you take anyone who you work with now and go, who stands out from the rest? Everyone has a name right now. I spend more time with that person. It's not that deep. If I go remove that person, do I have a second one? Who stands out from the rest, exclude that guy, girl? Love you. I'll work on it, I promise. Right? That's who I give focus to now. So that's the simplest rule ever. You can watch it here, right? All this mess, someone's going to help Arturo clean it up. Now I'm going to mind trick you all. You're all going to be like, I'm gonna do it so I stand out. But just quite naturally, fair, when you do these events, most people leave their shit everywhere. And there's always someone though that helps you clean up. Yes. To me, that stands out from the rest. I go like, oh, come over here. So she did that for me. I pay attention to agents. Who stands out from that? Who helps agents when they don't have to? Do they only pick them up when they're direct to them and they get the override, or they help me? If I'm getting a meeting ready, do they help organize all the stuff, help set up the cameras, erase the whiteboard, get me— like, I'm just watching, dude, for who stands out from the rest. And then I give them a little more attention, and I try to move them along and teach them how I got from where they're at to the next level. I try to relate to them, and I'm like, dude, I was there once. Here's how I got here. Are you interested? I feel them out and I watch. And I just gave people a pathway to the new levels as I want, because I didn't want to be here either. I want to do more, but I can't do more without help. So I seek help here and then I go, cool, thanks guys, let me go do this. Then I seek help here and a few more step up. I might have 50 here. Next level, dude, probably only 20 are coming with me. Next level, I might get 5. Next level, I got one, you know what I'm saying? Now how do I get more? They recruit or I recruit, and I'm just aware and I just try to build up, dude. So everything I'm doing now in terms of marketing and all this branding and all the stuff we got going on— hell, I wrote a book last year, that thing's popping. Like, people are— it's crazy what's happening in the personal— I wish I paid more attention to the stuff years earlier, but we get— I get 100+ people a day come into our funnel that I don't know. I don't know how they get there. People are buying books, they're signing up to stuff. I don't even know how— I don't even know how it's happening anymore. I've literally lost control of it, right? It's gotten— huh? Yeah, 100%. It's me doing the work, right? Her managing the back end, and now we got Reese handling— like, all this shit will be online like magic. I don't have to do anything. I don't even know what he does. I just know it makes me look good on the internet, and I'm like, fucking high five. So I bring him with me and it keeps working, you know what I mean? I'm like, do your thing, dude. Now, I had struggled though with— huh? Yeah. But I used to struggle when he came in, dude. I'd been through— how many, how many social media people we've been through, Amanda? Ballpark, roughly, in the last 2, 3 years. Okay. How many staff we've been through in the last 4 or 5 years? 40. Like, I'm doing my best. It ain't a fit. You got to go. Now, one of the best things I did I managed everybody. That was my role. I managed everybody, dealt with everything. She was like in charge, but like I stepped all over her stuff. I mean, I was like, dude, I got it. Let me deal with him. He's an idiot. Fire him. Fuck him. Hey, fire him at lunch. And I'd leave and make her fire him, and then I'd come back. Fair? I would do it literally. I'm like, I ain't— you fire him. This year— last year, actually, maybe a year and a half ago, I was like, you're in charge. I don't hire anymore. I'm not— I've quit hiring. I literally quit. I'm like, here's what we need, you do it. Now what happens if she don't do it? Now her and I have an issue, but she takes care of me, so I put her in charge. So she started hiring people. Now we've had— we've had two are at a year. Reese is almost at a year, and then we got two more right behind it. One more right behind it. One more right behind her. How many do we have hit a year before that besides you? We never had one. One person. Who? Yeah, so we have one person in 8 years hit a year with me. I put her in charge, we'll have 3 since I've done that. I'm like, she's better at it, why am I doing it? Here's what I want done, here's the vision, I'm good at that. I stay the fuck out of the way. I quit staff meetings this year. Staff meeting every Friday for 8 years. It was the most stressful time of my life. I hated them. I hated them. I literally— I don't know what month I did it, April, last spring, coming up on a year. I literally— I'm like, I quit staff meetings. It doesn't mean I quit having expectations. Y'all are the staff. Why don't y'all meet? What do you need me for? Y'all do it. You know what I need. You know who I am. You got questions, you have my number, call me. Now we have— you have this stuff to do. Like, we got things we got to accomplish. Does it make sense? But day in, day out, y'all figure it out. Letting go, bro, it's about the best thing I've ever done. Hire people who are good at shit, and if you mess up, hire someone else. There you go, Zach. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you brought up around 2017, '18, '19, you started exploding. Do you think that any of that had to do with not just hiring executive staff and all that, but— Yeah, because it was just me. So me and Amanda, it was just me and Amanda. We went from $800 grand, which we already had for the year, previous year and a half, went to $2.5 million in 12 months with one staff. Was there any part of that at all, is what kind of what we've been talking about, which is kind of there's a leader or two that kind of came in and go, yeah, that's— All right, the way it worked, yeah, at that point we had probably 12 managers that were doing some kind of recruiting. I signed with Integrity. We closed in 2020. That— and honestly, from that point in 2018, or call it 2019, is when we made the change, began 2019, till quite frankly today. Of those 12 managers I had, I bet at least 8 are still here. Yeah, that's the impressive part. Yeah, at least 8 are still here. So what changed? None of them have grown. Since 2017, 2018. Not one. Except I found people in depth that really wanted it more than the people I thought did. And I was raised in this business to treat everybody like they were direct to me. Because if someone else didn't have that mindset, I ain't found. I was 5 in depth to do to help me. And I stood out on purpose because I was like, he's rich, I want that. And so I taught that. So those people, 12 did nothing. And I spent the previous 2 years trying to drag them to the next level, trying to drag them to the pool, drag them to the golf course, drag— I was trying to drag everybody there versus look for people who showed leadership abilities on their own. I started looking, and so they became recruiting for me. Every agent I've ever hired to me is a recruiter. You work with me, you're a recruiter for me, and you don't even know it, bro. I will find who you know. I'll psychologically find it, and I won't even talk to you about building a business. I will find your people, and I'll find your people, and I'll find your people, and I'll find all y'all's people. I will find the people. So to me, they were a conduit to others, and then I took care of everything from there. I trained them, I took care of them, and then, and then I found people who were like, yo, I'm gonna do what you're doing. Hey, you helped me pass— as they would say, my upline's a dipshit, can you help me? I'm like, yeah, I got you, dude, all good, they're fine. Just if you don't— just call me anytime, but no negative though, dude, it's all good. Let me help. If I can help, let me know. Spread, no spread, I didn't give a Help them. And every one of the leaders that y'all know today, if you know— again, half y'all just found out you're in our damn group— but every one of them came from depth. Every person who's anything in my agency today came from depth. I didn't hire one of them, literally not one. But I identified things and I taught them, and then those people taught all the names that y'all know now. I actually had no involvement whatsoever in that group. But I birthed the foundation, the foundation of it. Started with Nick Aiello. I don't know if any of y'all know, maybe you don't. That's how big this thing gets. The dude who started that leg, y'all don't even know. And we hired him in 2017 probably. And then he found Frank DeSanna and he found this Chris Foda dude and he found Allison and he found, there's a ton of them. That all then found that layer, which is now elevated, and he's taking a run with it, and all y'all doing stuff, you know. So it became in-depth. And then let me just teach duplication, dude. Instead of trying to drag people in, I just found who wanted to win. I started working with them more closely, and I nicely just moved away from— not mean, but it's like, after a while, dude, it's like you keep saying the same thing to the same people. I'm like, I That kind of gets old. It's— and that's a hard phase of this business, is to take people that you help, that helped you build something to a certain point, and then they hit a ceiling, to move on from them. Dude becomes emotional. Those are hard conversations. People get their feelings hurt, and they get like— that was hard. Most people can't deal with that. That was a very hard stage to move on from, people who wanted to stay behind. That was tough. That was the toughest stage by far in my career here. Some people I helped develop, I recruited, I trained them personally, you know what I mean? And then I had to be like, you're like, you keep asking me the same stuff. Why do we talk? You don't listen though. So I have a really hard time mentally upstairs going, why do we keep— what do we— why do we talk? Why do you call me? I don't understand why you call me if you don't listen. Like, I truly didn't understand it. And at one point I just had to be like— and it wasn't like all 12, I'm like, fuck you all one day, but like, I'm like Dude, I don't know how to say this and not be mean, bro. You're not doing anything. You don't listen to me. Maybe you should listen to her. I don't know how to help you, dude. I'm failing. But I'm still building. So if you decide you want to build something big one day, please call me. But I can't keep taking these calls, dude. I just can't do it. It's exhausting. I've had to have those conversations. Now it's deep into relationships. You know what I mean? But again, that all came— all the growth, the big growth came from me leading. Here's what I want to do and finding people who want to follow. I'm going. You want to come along for the ride? I'll teach you everything I got. If you don't, we're going to leave you back here. You know, speaking of, we're going to go grab a dog, Sebastian, to feed you. Love it. Yeah, if y'all want. I mean, I'll be around for a little while. I know y'all probably got lunch and stuff going on. If I can help in any way. I mean, I'm on social. I'm not hard to find. You can register for any of my shit and get in the funnel. I have meetings and events and trainings. I have stuff at my office. I do stuff nonstop to help the industry, not only people in the group or the company, but quite frankly, it's getting to be crazy where it's like other companies are reaching out for help. And, you know, Atlanta. Yeah. Yeah. Well, y'all see why I brought him here, right? Wait, look, can we give it up for John? What up, insurance agents? If you're looking for a roadmap on how to win in this industry, check out the book I wrote about a year ago, Do More Now, Get Better Later. Check out the reviews here somewhere. My team's putting them on. I'm getting tons of great feedback about all the people it's helped. Appreciate those of y'all that have bought it. Appreciate all the reviews that are going out. If you're new to following me or the industry, check out the book and get it in your hands. Hands now. But at one point, dude, I had to peak. I was probably 40 wide. And if you really— I mean, if you want to, if you really would have wanted— because obviously I understand that, like, your, your bandwidth at 40 wide is so compressed, you can't handle 41, 42, 43. You're like, all right, here, look, I'll give up the spread for someone else to make manage it. For sure. No different than I give up income to have staff do shit. For sure. The same fucking bill. Ideal number is what, huh? What do you think the ideal number is? Why direct? Yeah, I don't know that there's an ideal number. I think it's what do you want to get out of it? What kind of income do you want to produce out of it? I think there's 20 people doing— I think if you don't have at least a handful direct to you, you're not going to build anything significant. Yeah, you're going to be in danger a lot. Be fine. Yeah, sure. It's crazy what people will listen to me, right? I was like, that math don't math, bro. I ain't doing that shit. 5%? Like, on purpose? I didn't know math at the time. Not on purpose, dude. It works for certain people, you know. But for me, it's like, again, if you don't have a little squad direct to you— so until you have leaders I'm going as wide as I can because I, I am the one managing everything. So it's like, I don't know, you run a fucking plumbing store. How many employees do you hire? What's the ideal number of employees to hire at a plumbing store? How many people buying? Yeah, how much, how much, how much plumbing is going out? Correct. Work is being done. Yeah. How big do you want it to be? Do you want to have more locations? Do you want to be nationwide? You want to find like your first like 5 to 10, really, really your first 5 guys that you— and the trust has to be super high, bro. You're gonna— people are gonna always be trying to take them away from you and get more comp or do this, that, and the third. You know, people get paid, dude. You know, people get paid. Yeah, it's rare they leave. Yeah, you know, I've had people not like me and stay with me because we helped them get paid. Yeah, I mean, it's like, this is what it is. But I, I was taught to build like your starting 5. Right, but it's hard to go, let me hire 5 and those be my starting 5. The way I always explain it is like, let's take like maybe baseball, right? Like how many are on— I know I just said starting 5, but I'm going to change it to baseball. We'll go 9, right? There's 9 on the field. To get 9 professional athletes, I don't know who plays here in Tampa. Devil Rays? Who's close to here? Devil Rays? Yeah, Tampa, Orlando. We'll say the Braves because I'm in Atlanta, right? You want to start the Braves of insurance. You want 9 professionals on the field, right? In order to start 9, how many they have on the team? 15? I don't know. I don't know baseball. Baseball got at least had 1 backup for each one and that extra 3, right? 21. Sure, 21. That makes sense. All right, so to get there starting, you got the minors. So get this, right? So to get the starting 9, you got to have 25 on the roster. Yeah, but then what do they have? They have AA, AAA, A-ball, right? Yeah. So now they got 3 layers of minor league ball. Yes. Each team maybe has 25, 30, I don't fucking know. So there's 100 right there in the minor league system. Where do they fill the minor league people from? College. College. How many are in college baseball? Yeah, you know, how many people play? How many play college-level baseball? A lot, right? Where do we get— where do colleges get their players from? High school. High school. How many of them are there? Even more, right? How do you get the high school ball? Jesus. Little League. How many of those suckers are there? Yeah, there's a crazy number with, uh, basketball. There's only like 4,000 NBA players in history, right? Right. Yeah, I think there's like 400 right now, like at any given time there's like 400. Yeah, 300 jobs, 396 jobs or something like that. So like everyone wants to have the equivalent of, I want to have the Braves. All right, cool, go find 9 guys to play baseball. Yeah, yeah, dude, it don't work like that, you know what I mean? You know, then you gotta start working with them in their Little League. Like the Braves literally let Maddox go to a camp to learn baseball at 10. The Braves have a camp, they're scouting early, dude. They're paying attention who goes to high school, they're paying attention to that stuff so early. You know what I'm saying? Golf. Like, he's— he played golf, dude. I don't know golf really well, but I know people were watching him early. He went some fancy golf, some— you know what I mean? Like, young. John Wetmore. At what point do you think, like, a builder should stop producing personal, if ever? Income's replaced. Barry says if you start making $50K a month. Is that true? I'm mad at that number. Um, for me, I think you'll know when it's time because you'll figure out that selling is actually more expensive, right? Yeah. Wow. I'm kind of there now, and I'm like, I lose money, okay, a month. Right now you're losing money to mentor, right? Losing— I could. Yeah, right now for us, we— oh, he's losing— they're losing money right now. So you say you had silver in my head? I mean, without you selling, you know, there are ways, like, to— like, their point, I, I'll get paid on this somehow, some way. Why? It's gonna get social, we'll get out there, build the brand, you know what I mean? Like, it's intangible. Yeah, for sure. You know, I put in the work, I always get paid. But like, there was a point when I was selling, it's all different. Yeah, for me to make $1,000, call it, I'd miss fucking 8 phone calls from agents. Yeah. In the house is trying to sell. Like, not dipshits, like I want to— like people like, yo, I'm sitting with Bob and I'm stuck, you know what I'm saying? And I'm like, all right, well, if I take the leads and give them to you when I got 40 points, that means I'm only getting 60 cents on the dollar when I sell it. But then if I do that and I work with 2 more people, now I'm break even. Like, to me it was a no-brainer. I was bringing in like— Jack, I was selling like $30 grand a month. When I start— when I knew it was coming, and I was probably making $80,000, right? And I'm like, well, I can make up another $30,000 if I just shift a few things around, you know what I mean? I give the leads away, that's going to get me $20,000 more by heart, you know what I mean? I didn't— and I'm like, and within fucking 6 months, dude, I was making $150,000 without selling. So you're at $50,000 and over right now. After the second leg, like, what's the— what's the combat? Because obviously the first one's your spread and their spread. What is it after that? What do you mean? Like, you, you set them up whatever you want. That's the concept. No, no. So, so you— so let's say you mean in depth, right? Let's say, let's say I'm at 85, whatever you're at, whatever you're at, and then I recruited him. Yeah. And then, I don't know, maybe I bumped to 95, he's at 85. Sure. How much do you make off of him? The same. It all goes through you. So you get the 10 points, I still get the difference between you and me. Yeah, yeah, so, so what's— whatever I bring in. Yeah, right, you get whatever I bring in. So he's counted— yeah, his 10%. So if you get 100— if you bring in 100 grand and I got 20 points, I get 20 Jeeps. It don't matter if you— if you sell the 100 grand, if he sells it, it don't matter. So you get the gap between you and— no, you're always going to get the gap. He's saying you're always going to get the gap between you and direct leg. Okay, so it'll never get watered down. If he brings on a downline and they bring on a downline, right, bring on the downline, you're always going to have your— right. Let's say I'm bringing in a million. Yeah, the downside of it is if he builds it big enough, he's gonna earn— he's gonna, he's gonna squeeze your comp because there's a ceiling, right? The insurance companies only pay out so much. Does that make sense? Every company on the planet, technically, could— it could happen that way. It could. Depends on— yes. That can't happen. People can— like, I passed people. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? I was hired by people that don't do shit, and I smoked them. Keep working. Yeah. And so it's like, if you just rely on him to build everything, eventually it's gonna catch up to you, you know what I'm saying? It's like, it's dope. He's— I hired him and he's hiring all these people, and we're doing $100 grand a month, and I got 30 points. I'm making $30 G's a month. I'm gonna go sit at the pool. I'll buckle up, that train's coming. Yeah, it's no difference with You know, the other— it's all the same because we gotta keep buying things, right? Yeah. And you gotta keep recruiting. So for me, I incentivize him to keep growing. And I, I like the way I built it was you got different options, right? When you scale, you can add staff. That's one, right? Add staff and manage all his shit. Or as I see his comp coming, I start teaching him to add staff. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, so I don't have to have staff. I teach him to manage the shit. So I don't mind the lower— I don't mind the squeeze because it's less work for me, and now he has to manage the staff. You're not paying for it. Yeah, I ain't paying for shit. So I want to build that way. I didn't want to build it with 20 staff and manage everything. That sounded like fucking headache to me. And then I didn't— I teach him nothing. He doesn't know how to run shit. He relies on my staff to do everything. So you give him less comp to do to to build, to basically— I take less comp. You take less. I'm gonna make less off of you because you're gonna have the same people. Okay, I got it. Because if anything, time— so let's say if you had a 20, you might take— say, okay, I'm gonna give you— I'm gonna take a 10. Yeah, I might give people a raise early and you're doing good things, and you say you want to build and you have— and you're listening, you're easy for me, you know what I mean? And I see opportunity and you're gonna get there anyway. I'm giving away free game now, but I'm like, if you're gonna get there in 6 months anyway, yeah, let's just say. What the fuck's it hurt me if I give it away now? So I lose 4 grand for 6 months, who gives a shit? So I invest 25 G's in you, I teach you how to build a business, you're automatic, and I get to go work over here and I'm fucking printing money for the rest of time. And all it cost me was 25 G's spread out over 6 months, and now you're fired up that I helped you out early. Does that make sense? And I'm like, I'm just being smart. One of my biggest mistakes— my biggest mistake was giving a guy— you ever give side too much props. You know how you talk to her, you give her too much props. So let's say you might have them on a call, it's eating their ego. I'll mess them up sometimes. Next thing you know, they're, they're diseased. They're like a bad apple that destroys the whole bunch. Because we had a great team, we're probably doing about $175K, which ain't shit to you, but to me I was like, yeah, I was like, great, you're doing $175K a month. I remember being there, bro, like I was fired up when I was there. I promise you. Yes, I was like, give me— yeah, yeah, he kept talking to everybody, man. COVID happened. Yeah, you gotta learn how to kill a cancer, dude. Yeah, it's a fine balance of highlighting someone, do that again, and at the same time— and you can see I do it, I'm on purpose with it too. It's like, it ain't that big a deal. Like, I'm not blind to what we've done. Yeah, but I'm like, I am just a dude that has the same license as y'all. I just done it long, you know what I mean? So even if you sell a lot, I'm like, all right, he sells $500 grand a year. Okay, no offense, anyone can fucking do it if they put in the work. So it's cool that he's doing the work, but he's not special. Yeah, yeah, because we're not, we're not, you know. And some people like you did, ah, it's no big deal to you, bro. The guy that bought me, he did $25 billion last year. I fall off the books right now, I'm a fucking rounding error to him. He don't give a rip, you know what I'm saying? Are you able to— $25 billion. We did $200 million. Like, uh, $25 billion. I don't know what the percentage but really small. I guess I was about to come into it, like, understanding the industry, being new to it. It's— you hear calls, you hear numbers, you hear this and that. Dude, you're gonna hear a lot of fucking talk. Just— here's what I learned. If I go fucking get paid, I do good. And if I help people get paid, I do better. All the other noise, who gives a shit? Like, none of it matters, dude. You know, there's always noise. There's always fucking noise. They're like, Google this, Google that. Dude, Google your fucking religion. See, see how much bad shit's out there about that. You mean like, what do you got to do? Like, who cares? For me, all about no noise. I don't, I don't even— as you see, I hear, I'm like, like, who gives a shit? Just, yeah, if you're getting, if you're getting paid and you're with good people, it's all good. If you had to rebuild it right now, where would you start? What do you mean, where would I start? What would you do? I mean, what would would you do anything different from— I mean, knowing what I know today, or not— I mean, what I know today with connections and shit like that, dude, I could start an empire tomorrow, right? You mean it's like— but if I was starting fresh, like for the new guy, if you rewound me and I got to keep a little bit of knowledge, and, you know, I mean, dude, I love our space. I love the life space. I love the advanced model. What company are you currently with? I'm on Marathon Health Integrity. Um, dude, I would just— I would be smarter. There's not a ton. I don't go like, I would do it totally different. I like working under infrastructure. I don't want to be the dude that has to fucking figure out all the pieces. I don't really— I don't care. I don't need that necessarily. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just— I'm not that— I don't give a shit. Sounds like a lot of fucking headache. I don't care about work. Yeah, I just don't give a shit. You know, I can do— I can— so I, I would still run the same path. I even enjoyed— even though there's certainly people along the way I'm like, damn, but I learned from that, those situations, you know what I mean? I'm not one that's like, let's run to the green grass over there, because I don't believe it. I'm like, you're full of shit. Yeah, I just think most people are full of shit. Yeah, you know, so that's facts. For me, that's like, dude, I don't need— the reality is none of us need anybody to go print money in this business. I didn't need you to get paid. You haven't needed me today to get paid, you know what I mean? Like, we need clients and we need to be able to prospect and talk to them. We need a product. All the other shit, dude, it all works. Every lead type works. Every company works. Every strategy works. Telesales, not telesales. One-call close, not one-call close. Fucking field sales, telesales, Zoom, not Zoom, book appointments, don't book appointments, hell, fucking ACA. They all work. Yeah, yeah, Power Dollar, it all fucking works. It's like, who cares? I don't care. All the stuff, I don't care about it all. Just like, who gives a shit? It does. It all fucking works. Just take your thing and go. Most people just don't. You just aren't pushing the pedal hard enough. That's most people. You know what I mean? Go buy his book. He's got a book for— yeah, a couple, I bet. Is that in that bag? Dump it out. See, it's like fucking Halloween right there. She knows exactly how many you had in the bag. Exactly. Look, I got 4. Get Amanda. Oh, you noticed that? I like her. I can take payment. I have a little thing. Push yourself. I could take So what, did you write the book for simplicity's sake? For— did I write the book for what? Here he goes. Did you— I want to really understand the question. Did you write the book for simplicity's sake? What was for you— I didn't write it for simplicity. What did you— I am simple. Okay, there you go. I wrote a book. So by default it is simple. Okay. Because did you see— because what I said wasn't that crazy, like monetizing in months instead of just saying 6 to 7 years, saying 70 to 80 months or whatever. It wasn't that crazy. But I can tell that you don't like things that are uberly simple. And I feel like— and I've heard from Arturo, he was like, bro, John's outlook— and I've seen your interviews and your podcasts. And I've seen your stuff. You speak before. I know how much you value just fuck the noise, literally, you know, you need a product and you need to get prospects and leads to connect the dots between those two. Did you see so many people? Yeah, did you see— I wrote the book as a challenge back to myself. I've had a lot of people tell me over the years I should write one. Yeah. When I started speaking and training, hot on. Yeah. I mean, it's— how much is a box? Um, and, uh, okay. I, I had a fear of doing it. I don't really know why. I'm like, I don't know, I'm not like, like English, like not just speaking it, but like proper. Like I'm learning Spanish and they're like, do this with a pronoun and this with a verb and this with an adjective. I'm like, you know, I don't know what that shit means in English. Right? Yeah. Like, that's not the way to teach me. Do this verb before the adjective. Yeah, conjugating the verb. I don't know what conjugate means. Spanish 101, for sure. You know, like, now I get it, but I'm like, she had to teach me a different way. Yeah. Does that make sense? Because I'm like, it was difficult to get out of your own head to be like, I'm just gonna write this and fuck with it. Yeah. So I just, I just had it on the sideline for a while, dude. And just quite frankly, man, a lot of people asked. And they're like, and then a lot of people recommended that I should, and I'm like, sounds fucking complicated. Yeah. And then I just like, I do like doing hard things, so I just decided one day to fucking do it. How long did it take you? I did maybe like a year and a half, probably. Um, it wasn't complicated because the way I, I went about it, I, I tried to sit down and write, physically write a book. Well, first of all, I couldn't even read the fucking writing after I wrote it. Fair. Like, what did I write? Did you use Ghost— that I did. And then I was like, I have it on my phone. I'm like, this is awful. Like, because then I got to like think a lot. But I'm like, what am I really good at? Fucking talking. Yeah. I'm like, what if I hire a company that just lets me talk? Yeah. And they fucking transcribe it. So you like— you use like a ghostwriter? I mean, no, no, no. He had a transcriber. He just talking. And they wanted to do that where they wanted to get my story and then they tried to rewrite it. Yeah. And I read the first 2 chapters and I said, that's not me. I didn't say that. Okay. Those are fucking big words. I don't know. Okay. If I have to Google the words in my own book, I didn't write it. I got it. You said this. I did not use that fucking word. I promise you. And they kept forth trying to— I'm like, bro, I'm writing the book like me. If they like me, they'll like the book because this is me. So we did— they helped me. I knew the concept. I had the concept. Do More. It literally means do more, but it's also an acronym that stands for some things that are important to me. So I had the concept, and so I got on with them, and then I was like, but I don't know how to write a book. Like, it's like writing a movie. It's like, dude, there's things on purpose and they flow, it flows right. So they helped me with the structure first, and so then we came up with all the chapters, and I was like, cool. Then when we had the chapters, I went one at a time and I did the chapter on Zoom. They transcribed it, your pretty face. They sent it to me, and me and Amanda edited the thing. Okay, we did that chapter by chapter until we had the whole book. Then they sent the whole book in order, and what they would— they would help with the order of things. Yep, yep. Does it make sense? Because each chapter, some things overlap, some things tell the same story, you know what I mean? So they kept kind of like organizing for me, um, and then they sent it to us. But then I had to edit it because they don't know me and they don't know the story, and sometimes they take it out of context. And so they, they take my words and type, and I'm like, ah, that don't fucking make sense, that ain't how it went. And so I— we spent, I don't even know how many months fucking editing the bitch. She read it like— she edited it like 6 times, something like that, 5 times. Wow. I did it myself 5 or 6 times. That's on top of the company who support— their job is to edit that bitch. Yeah. And we I wouldn't release it until it was me. There's a big word in here. Nah, shit. And, um, ain't gonna be that many, I promise you. Like, how does the structure go with that? Like, do they give you a publishing deal, or like, do they pay? I ain't made a fucking penny on that book. You haven't? Okay. Nah, dude, it cost me 20 G's to get it, and then I gotta pay every time to print it. Just 20 G's just to hire the person to do that. You pay an annual print, the annual— you paid it. I pay per— what do we pay, like 4, 3, 4 bucks a book to print it now. Well, if you, if you buy it on Amazon, they take 60% rip right off the top. Yeah, so I don't see no money from— I see like 2 bucks. If you bought off the website, we buy it from a third party, we print them, we bring them to the website, and we pay like— yeah, so I pay 4 bucks a book, but then I gotta ship it, and we send all kinds of free shit with it. So I don't make no money. I made a couple bucks a book, maybe. Yeah, but it's building a ton of those You just fucking marketing, bro. My brand has blown the fuck up since I put that out. Yeah, that's awesome. Why didn't you increase the price a little? Because I wanted people— I don't know, I'm weird. So even if it's like $20, because if you don't do it, you're worried about the brand, it's better. Yeah, like, because I'm like, what am I gonna do with $8? Yeah, I know $8 times a million of them is a lot of money, but you're like goodwill. I don't know, man. I was like, I don't know how I— how did I come up with a price? Like, why did we I was like, when they— because she tried to get me to put it for more. It is. So there's, there's meaning behind that too. I was like, nah, I'm gonna give— I'm gonna give it away. I'm gonna give away— I've been giving away game for a long time, and I'm like, I'm gonna make it easy entry. I don't know, maybe I don't value myself, or maybe it was smart. I don't fucking know. But I'm like, I'm gonna make it, I'm gonna make it, I don't know, I'm gonna make it so I can be like, I don't really make money on a book. I didn't write the book to make money on the book. Um, I am gonna fucking make money from it because I do make indirect money because of it. Um, but I'm like, I don't know, dude, I want to make it easy entry. And then 34 is like my favorite number, so I was like, it's got to have a 34 in the price. And then we started talking about ideas, and 1534, I'm like, that sounds stupid. I don't know why, it just sounded dumb. Yeah. And then she has a number that's 12, and I'm like, we can make it 1234, and it'll be 1, 2, 3, 4, and then people will ask about it, we'll be talking about it and shit. And here we are, you know. So I was like, fuck it, let's do 1234. And if they buy it on Amazon, your profitability is like $2. You're like $2 in the green. I'm 40%, I keep 40%. Right? 40%. So they— if $12.30, I get 40, I get like 5 bucks. Yeah, you got like 3, 4, but they take off the book cost too. Yeah, the printing cost. So it's 40%, but then I pay the print cost, which is like— it's a little cheaper at, um, from Amazon. From Amazon? Yeah, I don't know. I think we were like 500 the other day. Yeah, damn, that's been out for— we've sold probably between sold— I give— I mess up and give away a lot of them sometimes. Yeah, like, I don't know, she— they bring them to like charge people, and then I'm sometimes I'm like, here. I know. So we, we probably, we're probably a couple thousand books in. Yeah, something like that. Yeah, yeah, we, we give away— I do give them out. I like giving shit out, dude. We had a guy follow me in Mexico, and I'm like, go pick a shirt. I'll get— I'll send— he's like, but I'm in Mexico. I'm like, yeah, but it's fucking dope. So I told my team, I'm like, I don't even know what it costs to send a fucking shirt to Mexico, but yeah, if I lost $100, I'm like, fuck it. Someone tagged me in Mexico, but I don't even know. He's like, you got a fan in Mexico? I'm like, fuck yeah. We got an event this month. Someone from Canada's coming and someone from— is it Puerto Rico? I'm like, shit, some of the views now are coming from overseas. I'm like, this is fucking Cool. That's awesome. Have you ever gotten to a point in your career or where you made money— have you gotten to a point where you said, okay, I've made this in insurance, let me diversify in terms of what I use for my income? Real estate. I've made— I've made probably— okay, I don't know how much I've made in real estate last few years. Probably, probably not $2 million, but definitely over a million. Yeah, something like that. Real quick, sorry to interrupt. Has anybody not gone upstairs yet? What's up? Is anybody not going upstairs yet? I got a shower still. Okay, so, um, we need to kind of make our way that way. We got it from 4 to 6. He said get the fuck out, you gotta go. Yeah, so just go ahead.