STOP Your Insurance Applications From Getting Denied ft. Steve Bouslog from Transamerica | Ep93

If you had to tell agents what your client you're looking for is, how do you describe that so they avoid the declines? And how, like, who do y'all want?

We want COPD but no oxygen. Oxygen is pretty much a decline with us. We like congestive heart failure. I don't think anyone else is taking congestive heart failure day one.

Keep going. COPD, CHF.

Yeah, we like diabetes.

You do like diabetes, bro. Neuropathy and all that.

No one else will take, um, we don't care about the insulin levels, right? We don't care about neuropathy. Uh, we're taking just tons of diabetes as long as amputations No, we will not. That's, that's what we travel on. That's what we're out. But obviously don't just send us those 4, right? You're not trying to turn your bad business on us.

Steve, what's up, bud? How you doing, brother?

Good, how about yourself?

Is that a real— is that real what I see?

Uh, yeah, it's just my— I converted my old garage into my office. I have a small house. I live in Denver, Colorado, and it's like, uh, you know, these old bungalows. Yeah, there's just no room in the house and I got two small kids, and so I, I just took my old garage and, uh, yeah, insulated it, put a heater in this thing and put a couple of arcade out here.

What arcade games you got? What are they?

Uh, I have a, uh, it's Attack from Mars, Halloween, and an NBA Fast Break over here. And then I had a Simpsons that I got rid of that last year.

I like the NBA one.

Yeah, they made Fast Break, awesome game. And then next to me, which you can't see, I got a Golden Tee, which is probably my favorite game to play. What's that?

Golf game. Yeah, it's the one where you spin the thing. Oh, that one's fun too.

Yeah, hell yeah, it's incredible.

Yeah, that's fun. That's good, that's good. I love it. Well, welcome on, dude. Appreciate you getting on the podcast.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, it's been, been a minute. Obviously have some history, but I don't know a ton, and we're gonna figure some stuff out today. So I appreciate you getting on and sharing, dude. Not only, uh Well, I have you certainly share some stuff about trans and all that jazz, but I like to learn about people, man. You've been in, you've been in the space a minute. I see 2005. Yeah, longer than me.

2005, I, I graduated college, took my first job at a company called Jackson National. I got my, uh, back then it was kind of like boiler room-ish, right?

Really?

You had 30 days to pass your Series 6 or else you got fired. And you didn't get a second chance. It was just, you take your Series 6. If you don't score, I think back then it was a 70, it might be a 72 now. But if you didn't get a 70, you were out, you were gone. There was no exceptions.

Don't even show up.

Yeah, don't even come back in.

It's so good.

Yeah.

I think we need to implement more stuff like that.

It definitely brings in a higher quality of individual that like, there's pressure there, right? There's competition for the job. It was, it was pretty neat. It was fun. Couple of years there and then hopped over to Transamerica, which was just across the street.

Great. Oh, no way. Okay. Yeah.

Dig it.

Dig it.

Variable annuity side there for 2007 to 2016.

Selling or always like— what was the— are you selling product to clients? You got it. So always, always getting business in the door.

Yeah. Calling financial advisors there. Yeah. They moved me down in 2013. I was here in Denver, Colorado. And they moved me down to Alabama. I'd never been to Alabama. And they're just like, hey, this is how the job works. If you wanna stay with the company, you gotta take the first opportunity. If you skip out on the opportunity, you never get the opportunity again.

And so— I love it.

Yeah, they gave me the worst territory in the company. It was, I loved it down there. It was Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida Panhandle.

Was there an office there, or your job was just go figure it out, live down there and scout?

Yeah, it's, it's, it's essentially you wake up, you rent a car on Monday morning, and you got to get to the rental car place fast because they sell— they, they run out of cars. And so you're, you're there at like 6 AM right when they open, get a car, go back home, shower, hit the road, right? And then, you know, I do like a loop around the state for a week, and I just drive and hop in.

So you didn't move there? You just traveled there, sell— traveling sales guy, or did you move?

I was living outside of Mobile.

Got it. Okay, makes sense.

Yeah, do a loop around every state, you know, drive 800 miles a week and hop in. Very similar to kind of what some of your guys do, right? Like, yeah, they're just calling people between calls, they're setting future meetings. And, uh, yeah, it's a grind for 7 years wearing a suit in the South, mostly cold knocking or mostly appointment? Uh, it was, it was mostly appointment. It was all financial advisors, you know, guys, banks and warehouses and whatnot. Yeah.

How'd you like that relative to different, different, different vibe, different clientele?

I love this way more. Yeah, I can wear a hat on, on calls now, you know. I had a tie on every day for 7 years. I hate wearing suits, man.

You and me both.

It's my least favorite thing to wear. I mean, this is dressed up for me right now. I actually put pants on today.

Right, I'm in sweats right now, bro. Yeah, yeah, yep. I show up every day sweats if it's cold, gym shorts if it's not. Yeah, you know, only suit, only suit you catch me in, bro, be on stage at convention.

That's about all I wear about it, homie.

Otherwise I'm, I'm pretty chill, you know, and I try to sneak away. Most times I'll just wear— I'll just throw a jacket over this t-shirt. And be done.

Yeah, it's a good look. I like the t-shirt under the jacket look. I, I'd like to be able to pull that off, but they don't.

Yeah, well, I, when I— I was never— I was like always in restaurants and warehouses, and then I got into accounting and they made me start wearing khakis and I hated it. And then in the beginning of insurance, somehow we thought we had to wear khakis and button-ups and polos and shit at the office, and I was like, why are we doing this? We work for ourselves. Like, at the beginning of FFL, like, we'd show up in our own office with 4 people here, and I'm like, what are we doing? And nah, so I don't, I don't, I don't do that much anymore either, though I feel good. It does feel good every once in a while, but daily, I'm good.

It's nice to dress up for occasions, and you got all those backups now to put on as long as you don't wait, which I'm, I'm getting there.

Yeah, suits for this year for convention because I'm, you know You need bigger or you need smaller? Which way? Ah, that's, that's tough. I don't like that route. I did that for a few years and I don't, I don't, I don't like that. My last— I had some custom suits built, made a few years ago, and they can't be changed anymore because I fluctuated so much and I've altered them too many times. And so I, I got into a health kick this last year and I love it. I don't— now I need smaller. So this year I gotta go get small stuff. It's weird.

I need to get there. It's— I've been traveling a ton, right?

Yeah, it's hard.

Products and with everything we're putting out right now, we're getting invited to more events with you guys. And so, I mean, my schedule has just been, you know, two states. You know, I'm on a flight Monday, I'm on a flight again on Wednesday, and I need to be hitting the hotel gyms more. Yeah, but it's like you get done with the conference or something, or, or, and then you have a dinner, and then you go home and you're, you're back in the office.

That's where I get you. That's what got me, those late night dinners, the extra steak and appetizers and desserts and all the alcohol. Mine was lemon drops. I'd have 5 lemon drops too, and that didn't help.

I know you love your lemon drops.

I do, I do. I haven't drank— just Christmas Eve will be 1 year.

Really?

Yeah.

That's why you're looking so good.

Yep. Yeah, I had no— nothing to drink, and I have— my diet is on point. No matter if I travel or not travel anymore. I go to so many— anytime I travel, on the plane we look up smoothie and those, you know, those açaí bowls. I love those things too. Everywhere I go, I—

this first thing I go, I get me a smoothie drink, whatever airport shop there is.

Yep, yep.

Okay.

Or in the local town near the hotel, there's always one. I can always find one.

Yeah, I might have to give that a shot. I mean, that's a, that's a first step, right?

So I traded lemon drops for smoothies. And I've lost 40 pounds in a year.

Oh wow.

Yeah, that's it. Other than that, workout. I work out, but that ain't the magic, I promise.

Yeah, you can't out-train a bad diet.

Nope, nope, nope. It's like our agents, dude. They know everything in the world about all your underwriting guides, but they don't work. They don't make no money. It's weird.

You gotta make the calls.

Yeah, I love it.

Show up.

Cool. Well, tell me what you're out there teaching. I know I, I've got— I don't know if you know this, but I've been selling recently. I haven't sold full-time in 10 years, um, just doing the team and stuff like that. And I've been selling a bunch. So I have got into your site and your product in the e-app, and I'm like, this is pretty dope, you know. Certainly, you know, we, we naturally have, you know, our— we use AmeriCo a decent, a decent amount too, naturally. But dude, I'm— I like your stuff. It's nice and easy, bro.

You know, for a long time we didn't focus on this marketplace, right?

Yeah, I remember.

You, you probably sold us back in the day, right?

Monumental back in the day.

Yeah, exactly. Monumental started Final Expense. We bought Monumental, uh, and then we, we kind of just kept their paper application going. It was this waterfall.

I remember that thing with no height-weight chart that everybody loved.

Yeah, right.

I hated writing the name and social on the top of every page 17 times.

Yeah, uh, but then you send it in, and what was the process like?

Oh dude, I always missed the checkbox, I promise you that.

Yep. And it'd take— it takes 3 weeks to get approved.

100%. Yeah, it was brutal.

It was awful. Then we, we switched to a new app and it was like 45 pages, and that was in 20— I think January 2019 we switched.

Why? Who thought that was a good idea? And you don't have to call them out if you don't want to, but I always wonder, how does it— like, who thought that would be genius?

Just me speaking. This is not my company speaking.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We can mute it out if you need to.

Here's what I think happened. I, I think that they just saw this $90 million final expense sales and, and they're like, oh, this will always just keep coming in. We don't need to do anything. We didn't have wholesalers for final expense anymore. We got rid of all them, got it, you know. So, and so nobody really inside the company knew about the marketplace. We had an internal sales desk that took inbound calls only to help final expense, right? It wasn't a marketplace that we focused on at all. And so I think product team just like, hey, no one will notice, and they put out this terrible application. They put a height-weight chart in which killed the product. And buddy, and then they saw the sales go from $90 million a year to $3 million a year.

Stop it. That month? Whoa.

Dropped like a rock. And so I was on the life insurance team at that point, and we had every product but final expense. So we didn't get paid on final expense. We didn't talk about final expense. I'd meet with final expense agents and they'd ask me about it. I don't know anything about the product. No one's taught me about it. And so after that, they saw the sales drop. They're like, we need a team to go after this. And so they gave it to us, and we learned real quick that there's a bunch of issues with it.

Yeah.

And so what year was this? Uh, that was 2021. They gave us the—

oh, okay, got it.

So it's only been, you know, it's not been long, 5 years, 4 and a half, 5 years. Uh, and so we start figuring out what worked. And, and, you know, we didn't know who you guys were. Yeah, we just started knowing who Family First Life was in 2021.

Yeah, which is crazy. But I remember because we did— we were like, now we don't mess with that company.

Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you guys hate us for a long time. I mean, you know, all we've done is—

we didn't want to, but you made us.

You had no rep, you had nobody to talk to, no one to help with issues. And so at that point, we decided, hey, we're going to go all in. And we brought a new head of product in. He brought me in his office, said, hey Steve, what do you need to compete here? And I told him exactly what we needed, and he built the product. And it took him, you know, 2.5, 3 years to build the product. But FE Express came out last year, and it was a good start, but we had this terrible signature process still. And it was like the client has to go in and, and use it, put in their social, their date of birth, you know, all this stuff, and then, and then sign on their own. And we're like, no, we need text-to-PIN. Yeah, and we kept, we kept yelling at them, text-to-PIN. And then they came back to us, uh, I don't know, probably 6 months ago. They said, what if we have a link the client puts the PIN in? We're like, no, that's not text-to-PIN. Nope. And so we finally got through text-to-PIN about 2 months ago. That's it.

I didn't know that. Yeah, crazy. All right, that's about when I started selling it because I heard it was easy because I didn't know shit about shit. I ain't done the e-app I mean, I was a field guy, paper. I did a few eApps early, early, early, but you know, I didn't have to, and just being real, the size and how many managers, I wasn't messing with you. I didn't even know. So I, I start selling. I do one company who I won't name and it took for, it was excruciating. So I call one of my agents. I'm like, yo, what's easy? And I got two names and that's all I write. And bro, I'm like, this is great. I've written a shitload of your product in the last 6 weeks.

Love it, that's awesome, thank you. Yeah, yeah, we, we may have, uh, gotten some tips from another company on, uh, you may have built out our application.

It works really easy.

So at first, when our tech came out, we had a bunch of validation errors on it.

Oh no way.

So we were, we were matching up the client's name to their phone number, and we didn't realize that a lot of people have like government phones and they wouldn't come back or validate, or if a kid owned the phone, it wouldn't validate for them. Yeah, so that was a lot of pushback again, like, hey, we gotta, we gotta fix this. We got that fixed a week and a half ago. Yeah, and now we have no more validation errors, and the sales have just— I mean, It's exponent— it still amazes me sometimes when I look at the sales.

Like, uh, where you at now?

It was like you guys were submitting maybe 600 a day, right? And it just, it just popped last week when we fixed the validation errors. It popped to like, I think you're probably submitting 1.5 a day now with us, and, and the word's not even out yet. Like, it's, it's on this curve, um, and sales are always lagging, right? Because everyone's doing social media.

Sure.

Um, and so you don't see the sales— we won't see this big pop in sales until the 1st, the 3rd, or the Wednesday.

Sure.

Of next month. And at that point, it's just, it's gonna go blow up.

Yeah, man, you'll be nice 2026, bro.

Oh, for sure. He's— so MFL did, uh, I don't know if the official numbers are out yet And I don't have the net numbers. I just have the total paid, not including the chargebacks, whatnot. But total paid was a little over $6 million last month.

Okay.

Which I got to think—

November?

In November.

Yeah. Yep. Dope.

Which I think puts us maybe in third, second. It's up there.

I think you're pushing too. I think it's— I've been seeing it creep. I'm like, oh, this is moving. Yeah, there's a lot more of them. What's, what's funny is I get a spreadsheet and y'all are all the way to the right on the spreadsheet. It's in alphabetical order. It's not because it's who we like and who we don't like, right? It just is what it is. A is here and T's way over there, and it's like the middle is kind of empty now, and the middle used to be pretty busy. Yeah, I mean, those middle letters are like, where'd they go? And it's all, it's all over on the right side of this. I'm like, holy smokes. It's, it's good. You know my favorite thing about it?

The middle's empty. Yeah, uh, you can probably figure out, you probably forgot who's in there.

Yeah, yeah, you know, it's the— I got the beginning couple and then I went over there and this is popping. That's where most of it is now. And dude, my— what I like about it too, it's a real approval when you get that sucker. Yeah, it's not like a kind of approval. Because there's some that do that.

We're pulling, um, it costs us $90 every time you run an app through our back office.

No shit. Okay, that's good. I like knowing stuff like that.

Yeah, not every company is pulling every piece of data. Most are, um, we have very little policy rescindals. Like, we hardly ever rescind policies because we're grabbing all that data right up front.

You know everything.

Um, the downside to that is at some point, and this is starting to happen, we're going to start paying more attention to declines. Sure.

Yeah, yeah, you're bound to for sure.

If someone has, you know, 100 declines, that costs us real money.

Yeah, placement matters when you're spending $90 a pop. Yeah, placement don't matter up front when you ain't doing everything and you get a little approve.

Yeah, yeah, going off the application, it's almost free for them to, to approve stuff.

Yeah.

And then they pull data later, but we're grabbing it all up front, which I, I think is great. I don't want a recension. I don't— that's not a good look.

Yeah, no, it's not. I think it is not. Craziness. That's good to know. So you're gonna smash $90 million next year?

Oh, that's not even— I mean, it's— yeah, we're gonna destroy that.

Yeah, good for you.

Next year, next Christmas is gonna do more than $90 Hell yeah, next year.

I love it, I love it.

I, you know, I, I love convention.

Yeah.

And in the past, right, we've been, we've been slowly moving on the stage because Sean, Sean sets up the carriers, uh, in order of— I don't know if it's how much he likes them or if it's how much sales they're doing. Uh, I think it's maybe a combination of both.

It's, it's probably a lot of— it's a little of both. And how much y'all pay, not only pay but pay extra and pay bonus and pay all the things. I think there's a formula, bro, and he just makes it up on the fly, but he gets it. He's pretty good with it.

And so I'm hoping that we're, we're closer to the, I guess, stage right.

Yeah, you get the mic early.

We get the mic late. They start, they start on the left.

Yeah, no, you get the mic early. It ain't— he's like, get out.

Oh yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, he makes those guys go quick. Yeah, so we've always been right in the middle, and I think We're going to be moving more towards the right. So it's good.

We'll see. We'll know in what, 8, 7, 8 weeks, 6, 7, 8 weeks, whatever it is, 6 weeks, 7 weeks.

I'm excited. Stop by the booth if you're watching and you're an agent. Stop by the booth, say hi to me. I'd love to meet you. Um, we just did the one in West Palm Beach. We were down there. I brought the head of light down with me and, uh, you know, he gave us more time. He was happy with us. So I think, I think it's looking good for us.

I like it. I like it. For those of you that have followed me for a while, you know, I've, I've helped build this agency up to over $200 million in paid annual premium per year. We have over 5,000 agents a year that sell, and I am rebuilding. We're building a new base shop, helping people build big agencies, get to multi-seven figures in income, or producers that want to, that want to just sell and get to a multi-six-figure sales career. Hit me up. I'm hiring direct. I'm looking to train and mentor winners that want to work their ass off and build something dope. Click on the link below, or you can go to johnwetmore.com/join and put in your application. We'll see if I'd be interested in working with you. DM me, hit me up, whatever you like. That's good. Well, we're going to keep sending more. I got my guys sending more. I, I might need your help on something, I don't know. My Amanda's working on something, a personal— on mine. Somehow they— I haven't sold in so long, somehow all my shit's on as-earned. Somehow. So I gotta figure that out.

That's not good.

So if you have, if you have a magic button, I got like 10 policies literally paid as earned in the last 2 weeks, and I will use the podcast platform to pull up, push a button if I can. She's going back and forth with you, and I don't— it is what it is. I'm not stressing over it, but would love to get some figured out so Amanda doesn't have to argue with whoever she's arguing with.

Yeah, so what usually happens, and this is good for everybody to know, uh, we send out, um, we've been terminating a lot of people for, for not sending their anti-money laundering in.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And we probably termed you for it, and then maybe we got you reappointed, uh, but we reappointed you on as-earned and we didn't turn your, your advance back on.

Yeah, I mean, I've got overrides forever, you know. I mean, I've never had an issue there because the whole team sells there. But maybe, again, I told Amanda it's probably something silly. It's literally, I'm sure I go, I bet it's a button. You just hit a button, hit save, and it'll be fine. So yeah, that's dope. I love it. It'll save her a little headache.

All day.

Cool, cool. I love it. What, um, if you had to tell agents what your client you're looking for is, how do you describe that so they avoid the declines? And how, like, who do y'all want?

So for final expense, right, we're looking at COPD. Uh, we want COPD but no oxygen. Oxygen is, is, uh, is pretty much a decline with us. Yeah, um, we like congestive heart failure. Uh, we're okay with it. I don't think anyone else is taking congestive heart failure day one, but I heard that two days ago from one of my guys, Giovanni.

He's like, they do CHF. I'm like, stop it, there's no way. He's like, I'm telling you, got one approved this morning.

Yeah, we'll take it day one. I got some slides that'll blow your mind. Um, keep going.

COPD, CHF. Yeah.

We like diabetes.

You do like diabetes, bro.

Neuropathy and all that no one else will take. Um, we don't care about the insulin levels, right? We don't care about neuropathy. Uh, we're taking just tons of diabetes as long as—

Amputations?

No, we will not. That's, that's what we got a lot. That's what we're out. So if you're losing toes or a foot, we are—

I was trying, bro. I'm trying. Can you have, can you have the combo of any of those three, or combos mess you up?

Yeah, you can have some combos. You can't have all three, but you could have two of the three.

Yeah.

Um, and then, uh, we're okay with heart attacks, even recent.

The only thing, under one year you'll take them?

Under one year we'll take them. But the issue that messes people up here is you can't have 2 or more nights in the hospital in conjunction with any of those things. Otherwise, any of them.

Got it.

Correct. So if you have essentially 2 or more nights is, is a decline.

I tell people, can I ask a technicality?

Sure.

And that probably asks— this is just me being ignorant— is it 2 or more nights because of those things? No, it just, it just asks for more nights ever.

2 or more nights ever.

Um, Let's say, you mean, if I had the flu for 2, you know what I mean? Something stupid like that. You know how it is. Just shit curious. I know I'm getting technical, but that's who I am.

That— so those technically could get through.

Oh, okay. See, that's a good question then. It's gonna be harder.

I get it. It's so rare. It's so rare that that's the reason why the clients are from something else.

Yeah, it's true.

We get a ton of declines from not having that. I'm trying to get changed to be an auto decline on the location.

Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, I think, I think it's smart.

I mean, it's not worth the additional business we get.

No, and people fudge it.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that's good. I like that.

So those are the 4 that we love, uh, but obviously don't just send us those 4, right? You're not trying to just turn your bad business on us, uh, we gotta stay in bed. We want to be around for another 100 years, right?

Like, I mean, the pricing's good, dude. I mean, on healthy stuff, it's just— this is good pricing, man.

Yeah, it is. It's not, it's not bad at all. And, um, you know, at some point we'll probably come out with a preferred rate class as well too.

I figured. Yeah, that's where you lose it just a little if you want that extra clean, healthy, just a touch. But it's, it's not bad. And for the convenience, in the real answer, dude, it's worth it. I go there, I'm like, eff it, it's a few bucks more, but I know what I'm getting.

Yeah, yeah, they'll just, they'll give us first shot. Versus right now we might be getting second shot in some places. Yeah. So, you know, it'll be— it'll help the— it'll overall improve the quality of the book.

But I guess if you understand the business, it allows you to send a lot more business there. So, I mean, it's— yeah.

The other big change that's coming is we're going up to $100K.

I heard that. When's that coming?

I'm hearing like February-ish, but whenever I give a date, we always miss it.

So, yeah, I mean, February in the insurance business means summer. I get it.

Yeah, it's supposed to be before the second quarter. Uh, yeah, it's not that big of a— it's not that big of a change. It's not like we have to feel like—

you won't get a million of them, but it'd be nice on those occasionals where, you know, those younger, younger final expense where they want. I had a guy yesterday would have done it straight up. Yeah, 60-year-old guy from the military, he had a big old policy before, went to an ex-wife, he needed something for the new wife, and he want— he want $100,000. So I was—

I have to stack policies. And this goes all the way down to 18, right? So our final expense product goes from 18 to 85. And so from 18 to 75, we'll go up to $100,000. And so that gives you opportunity for those younger— like, let's say you got a diabetic who's 35 years old and you want to get him coverage. Like, yeah, you don't want to stack much policy. You'd rather just go bam, $100K with Trans.

Yeah, crazy. I have a client that I'm calling her. We have a follow-up next week. Her son is like 30-something, heart something, or I don't know full details, something with a heart, 30-something years old.

Sounds like somebody we're going to take.

Yep, yep.

Uh, we pay full boat comp no matter if the client's 18, 65, or 85 years old.

I didn't know that either. There's no bump in comp for 85.

No shit, you're getting the same as long as they're not graded. Graded is less.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

But with FE Express, we're point to point, so whatever your FFL number is is what you're getting paid.

Yeah, yeah, yep, yep. That's badass. Yeah, you're all gonna—

y'all gonna—

you're gonna be the last speaker and you're gonna get a lot of volume soon. Holy moly, good for you. I love it.

Yeah, I love it.

What else you want to share product-wise? I know you got a bunch of other stuff.

Anything else? The tip, right? We got— yeah, we, we have a brand new IUL that just came out, um, IUL Express we're calling it. Super original, right?

Uh, yeah, why not?

I wonder what we're going after there, right? Um, and so, uh, the IUL Express has like— it goes up to $500K. So $18K to $60K, it's $500K. 61 to 70, it's $300,000. And then last week we just launched juveniles. So we'll take a 15-day-old kid up to 17 years old, up to $250,000. Uh, right now I think the only option other than that is maybe a $10,000 Gerber policy, or maybe a whole life $50,000 policy with that company. Yeah, but those aren't— those aren't built for cash accumulation, right? They're not built to max fund. And so You should see some of the illustrations you can run on juveniles now. You can, you can do a max fund policy, you know, put $400 a month in for a, for a 4-year-old, fund it till they're 18, never fund it again, and when they're 65, you got like $12 million in there. I mean, it's, it's insane.

Yes, you need to, you need to run 3 of them on my kids somewhere else.

Okay, I mean, I, I would never— IULs, you don't You don't want to like move them, you know, they're surrender charges and whatnot.

Yeah, I get all that. I mean, they can always use more.

Yeah, it's so much. Yeah, to write one now, um, the owner has to be the parent though, or legal guardian. You can't have— the grandparent can be the payer, um, if you want to set up that way, but it has to be owned by the parent. Yeah, it's cool. Those are gonna take off.

I've heard, um, I have a couple of my guys that have written— I don't know what the product is, but it's like big face amount, term, something easy as shit. They love it. I, I'm like, I— that's not my forte, bro. I stick to the kind of final expense, little— but they're writing the snot out of something. What is that?

They're writing our Trendsetter.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

It's the Trendsetter Super and Trendsetter LB. Uh, one is, uh, just if you die or if you have a terminal illness, that's super. We pay out. The LB has living benefits on it. If Costs a little more. The trends are super— here's what I'll say about it, right? If you're 18 to 45, we go up to $2 million non-medical. 46 to 55, we go up to $1 million. So keep your clients inside those dollar amounts and ranges, and it'll be a far better experience. Now, if you send somebody who's 57, looking for a million bucks, that's outside the range. It's going to be a medical— blood, urine, stuff like that— take longer. If you send me a 70-year-old and you're trying to do as a final expense alternative, you're not going to have a good time. Yeah, yeah, not going to be fun. Yeah, uh, we're gonna do a cognitive exam, we're gonna do blood, urine, we're gonna order—

it's basically underwritten at that point.

Yeah, it's going to take months. Uh, but like somebody young and healthy like you, man, you're gonna fly right through there. Uh, I got one for myself for 1.5 million the other day, or not, 2 years ago, I guess. Um, and it, it hit the underwriter and it was approved in 15 minutes.

What?

I mean, so we're getting some instant, like, not mid-app instant decision, but yeah, but pretty damn, pretty damn— yeah, it's for young healthy people. If you send me people with, with heart conditions, with health problems, yeah, yeah, you know, criminal history, It's gonna take a while and we're gonna decline a lot.

That's good to have though. I mean, you get them, you get people that fill out the form for this thing but they really want that thing. And some people like myself are ignorant to those products when you just stay in this little hole over here. But you lose a lot of money, these agents, when they don't, when they don't know their product mix well. I got guys, they're writing some big ones, dude, on those. Like, they're getting paid. I'm like, sheesh.

The largest one I've I've done was, uh, I believe it was— is it $30 million? I think it was $30 million. Yeah, it was for a— it was for a pilot, a billionaire pilot. And no kidding, premium was $330,000 a year.

What?

Yeah, and he just cut a check. He did an annual premium for it.

Naturally, like, why not? Is that agent— that what he do, or was that like a, oh shit, like biggest commission of my life kind of agent?

It was, it was a, that's what they do.

That's what they do. Yeah, that's cool. Ain't mad at them, man. More power to them, bro. They don't—

you don't get a ton of those a year, right? You get one a year.

Yeah, yeah, right.

I love it, dude.

I love it. It's all good stuff. Okay, so $100,000. Anything else coming down the pipe?

Um, yes. So right now, you know, we have the Final Expense, we have the IUL in that same spot. It's missing something. It's missing term in there, right?

Yeah.

And so that's what's next, is an instant mid-app decision term with a text-to-PIN code. I don't know much, but I do know it will have living benefits on it. I don't know what the max face is going to be. I don't know if it's going to be the same as the IUL or if it's going to be, you know, a million bucks. I hope, I hope we get it up to a million bucks. That would be pretty—

just regular term, no cashback stuff, I assume?

No, no cashback things. Uh, it'll have living benefits. That's, that's the only thing. And then, you know, we're gonna keep tweaking all our products, right? Uh, people, people ask me, you know, the main, the main issue we have with our final expense right now is that you can't change the payment date. So if you elect the third of the month, it's the third of the month forever.

They can't call in and change it, you're saying? Got it. Okay, I didn't know that. I got it.

That's one that you have to cancel the policy and rewrite it, which is awful.

Um, that ain't smart for y'all either.

No, it's not. But we are, you know, we have a limited amount of tech resources.

Yeah, I was gonna say, that's just a coding right now to build products.

Yeah, versus, um, kind of tweaking the products out. They feel there's value in putting new products on the shelf versus—

I mean, the reality is most of it's Social Security billing anyway, and it— yeah, it's such a small percentage need to change them anyhow.

Yeah, we do have some where the clients aren't Social Security billing and they switch. Yeah, you have an age and they switch from the, the first to the third of the month. Yep, yep, you know, and those have been a problem.

Yeah, that makes sense. Not—

yeah, so yeah, I'm honest about our downsides.

Hey, I mean, dude, we— hey, we all got them, bro. Yeah, as we all got them, we got plenty too. Yeah, it's part of the journey in business. There's always problems.

One thing I like to talk about, about final expense, is the Social Security.

Let's do it.

Uh, it's right now we have a The last I heard from our product team, it was 24% of people were electing Social Security billing.

Okay.

Which I think is somewhat insane. Every one of your clients that you're, that you're talking about with final expense, pretty much 99% are on Social Security. They're getting some form of Social Security. So why not have that payment draft on the day they get paid? I used to work in a bank, and, uh, on the 1st and the 3rd We would have lines out of the bank, right? And it'd be people that got their Social Security sent to their bank account, and they would come in and they would just be withdrawing their money.

Sure.

And so when you do Social Security billing with us, we know if, if the first falls on a Saturday, we're grabbing it the Friday before because that's when it's hitting your client's account. And we're grabbing it at 6 AM before the bank opens so that your client, when they go and they, they go to grab out their money later that day.

Yes, it's already there.

Crazy.

So 24%, do you know what the 24% that are on it versus, say, 2575, what's the, what's the chargeback percent?

Oh, I don't know. That's a great question.

Yeah, I'm a nerd. I bet it's— I want to know the difference. When you figure it out, if someone's not looked at that, I'd be shocked if someone doesn't know that number.

So there, there has to be a re— like, we, we will advance on Social Security Direct Express cards if they're entered in under Social Security billing, but not if they're entered in under Pay Immediately or Schedule Payment.

Oh God.

So we realize there is a difference in the chargeback rate between them, and we're rewarding people for putting them under that.

I didn't know that. So I had an agent tell me they They write, they're like, I use the cards, I always get as earned. I bet they don't know that little tip.

Yeah, they're probably putting in schedule payment and then putting the third of the month in there.

Got it. Dipshit move. Hey, y'all watching, I'm talking to you. She knows. Yeah, I'm gonna message them right after this because that was, that was not a complaint, but it was like, it's, man, I wish we could get more because so many people have this card. I did not know that was a quirk that they can easily fix.

We'll view it as a traditional credit card. Yeah, pay immediately or schedule.

Wow, that's, that's big. Yeah, that's good. Nice and easy, because I have seen people do that. You know what I see sometimes? I see you hear the clients request it. They are, I get my money on the 3rd, can you make this on the 4th?

Oh. Yeah, you don't want to do that.

No, I, I say no. I'm like, not anyhow this works. But I, I hear it requested from clients, so I bet a bunch of agents do that. Or at the first, then they put it on the second, you know what I mean?

Right.

I hear them because they want it the day after, and usually mentally it's because of the weekend thing, and they know they don't get it till, you know what I mean? And they just, in their head, they don't realize how it all works electronically, that everybody's got that figured out.

Yeah, we are. Not everybody. I mean, there's a lot of companies that do true Social Security billing. True.

Yeah, yeah.

We've been doing it for a long time and we got it, we got it locked down.

Yeah, that's smart. I like the early withdrawal too. I think, yeah, it's good.

It's— go to a bank on the first of the month and just see the lines. 100%. Yeah, 100%.

What up, y'all? So YouTube memberships, we have one now. Right next to the subscribe button, there's a neon white join button. You can't miss it. Subscribe, whatever it says, click the link, get in there. I do a ton of coaching, teaching people how to dial, corrections, working on their presentations, working on their mindset. I will coach on theory, but I like coaching real-world stuff. And if you join the membership section, you're going to see live coaching where I'm not only helping people, but every once in a while I get in there and dial myself. There's some cool videos coming out, tons of content. All the training videos will be directly on my YouTube channel that's available to members only, super easy to find. So join now if you're interested, click below. See you in there.

Um, the other thing I— that I, I follow all these like Facebook groups. I mean, I'm in all the life insurance Facebook groups and I see—

how do you do it?

I don't know. I, I can't— my company won't let me comment on any sort of, uh—

it makes my brain hurt in those. That's more power to you, dude.

Yeah, but a lot of people don't understand how these IULs work.

No. Oh my God. They don't.

And they don't. So I, I do like to talk about that a little bit.

Um, I see it on TikTok. That's where I see the people bitching, the TikTok wars. Every once in a while I'll scroll through that and I see, are you all fraud? They're not real. Or people that set them up, they think they know them and they don't set them up right also.

Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Uh, yeah.

So with IULs, right, it used to just be universal life policies. Yeah, that's all that existed before 1997 when Transamerica came out with the first IUL. Um, and the only difference is really, instead of taking that, that dividend from the general account and crediting the client with that, right, and deducting the fees and everything, we took that, that dividend and we bought options, right? And that's how you create that cap and floor strategy.

Got it.

And so like on Facebook groups, I'll see, oh yeah, the client returned— the market returned, you know, 20%, the client got credited with 10. Transamerica is keeping that 10%. We are not. We don't care what happened. The options— the cap and floor strategy is created via the options. And so we don't— if it— if the market does— oh yeah, the extra 20, it's just—

it's going back. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We structured this to, to do— to work like this. Like, it— there's no money on the back end for us on that.

That's funny. So F you, Facebook group people. Since you can't comment.

Yeah, I can't comment. I can make podcasts, so I can do that, but I can't comment.

Can I, can I cut out a clip and have some random person post it?

Yeah, I don't care. That sounds great. He doesn't know what he's talking about.

I'll have Reese give you this clip and you choose what to do with it. I'll cut out the clip and send it to you. You send it to your friends, do whatever you want with it, and send it where you want. Explaining it. Yeah, that way you don't have to— these go on, so we have— they go on every— my YouTube is the long form, and then we put them on true podcast platforms too, the iTunes, all that shit. Um, so this goes everywhere, and then it goes on all of my social, so we share it out. It goes in our whole email list, um, and we're getting some traction. I'm like, um, I wish I knew what episode I was on because I don't pay attention. Reese does them all for me, my social guy, but I'm like 2 years in, dude. We're getting close to 100. I think I'm at like 80-ish, somewhere in that range. Starting to get some traction. There's not many insurance podcasts out, and you know, I'm trying to mix it up and get a different, different group of people on, and you know what I mean? So we're getting some traction with it, dude. It's, it's been fun, and I get to meet cool-ass people.

Yeah, you know, it's always virtual, or do you do— do you host them in your—

yeah, I have, I have a spot right there. For like a live one. Okay, but most people are so spread out and they don't want to fly to Kennesaw, Georgia to come up. But come in, dude.

I got— we got—

all I gotta do is— let's see if I can turn— I might mess Reese up. Hold on. All right, uh, it won't go down enough, but right there, right under that TV, is seating and a table and all that stuff.

Okay, where's Kennesaw?

Right, it's northwest of Atlanta. We're like 30 miles from the airport. 30-something miles from the airport. The airport's in South Atlanta, you probably know. We're, we're directly above it, just on the north side. Okay, yeah, super easy. I mean, it's 40 minutes from the airport.

Yeah, yeah, I'm coming to Atlanta. We have our, our national sales conference there.

Do you really?

January? Yeah. Okay, I should have planned this around that. I could have just done it in person.

Yeah, I mean, smart. I mean, hell, New 2.0, who cares? Come, let me know when you're out here if you got time. I know you're crazy during those things, but Let me know what's up. And if it makes sense, we can connect.

Those are just like yours, right? All the sales conferences are the same. They get us up at 7 AM. We got to be at the meeting at 7:30. And then you're there till 6. And then they have an event afterwards. And then you go to bed at 10. And you wake up and do it again for 4 days straight.

Yeah, you're in a coma for 4 days.

Yeah.

Yeah, the best but they're the worst at the same exact time.

Yeah, and my wife thinks I'm out partying and I'm just sleeping, you know.

Your feet hurting? Yeah, trust me.

Yeah, you got your, your dress shoes on all day that you wear twice a year. Um, yeah, it's not fun. I don't like doing it. I like doing yours. Yours make me money.

That's true.

I tell them about products, they go and they immediately sell. This is like the only most wholesaling jobs, it's a, it's a massive lag between, yeah, somebody new product and when they actually can go sell it. I, I can talk to an FFL agent and they sell it an hour later.

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, this will, this will push it. Just being in our group, seeing a little bit more, me selling it, to be honest, because I haven't sold in so long, you know, they kind of follow what we do. And I'm building a new direct shop, base shop. So they, they do what I do, you know, and I put my issue paid out and it is very clear. The couple I write, I don't, I don't know much about any of the other ones. I'm, I'm pretty simple. And you know the history of the company, dude. We started with one company, so you give me three, I'm like, it's a home run. I don't, I don't need much more. I don't, I write three about it.

I, I could probably guess who those three are.

You 100% could, because we don't take cancer. Yeah, correct. That's correct. That's what they get.

Those are the 3 that you need. Those are really 3 core carriers.

Yeah, I don't mess with nobody else.

It's—

it is a single premium whole life one somewhere else, just a single premium, because I don't know anyone else that did it. And I'm like, well, they get that, I guess. You know, an annuity. Yep, you probably do. I only know one person that does it. I don't know much. They write them, and then, you know, you write annuity. I've written a few of those, so of course I write a theme and just keep it moving. So I guess technically 4 and a half, but that other one— I mean, I've written 2 single premiums my whole career, so I don't anticipate much of that.

I'm trying to get, um, our fixed indexed annuity.

Are you? We—

so we offer them, right? We, we built a product that goes through a third-party carrier right now to, uh, got it, to distribute um, and then I think we offer them to licensed financial advisors if they're Series 6 or 7. But I don't carry that in my bag. And I, I grew up on that. Like, I grew up on variable annuities and fixed index annuities, so I know those products inside and out. Yeah, yeah. We just announced yesterday that we're moving— so we're owned by Aegon. Yeah, which is a Dutch company. And, and we had our big announcement yesterday that we are moving everything to the States. Cool. And what that allows us to do is it allows us to use the U.S. accounting standards versus the European accounting standards, which lets us build more competitive products. Nope.

Yeah, so it's going to get better. That's crazy.

It's going to get better.

It's like, good for you.

4 years ago, if you would have told me this is what it's gonna be like at Transamerica right now, I would say there's no way it's It's not, it's not true. You know, we're getting— at the time when I started, we were getting maybe, uh, 0.8% of all your sales. 0.8%. I, I got that up with the old product. I got that up to around 1.5 to 1.7%. And then we came out with new product, and I haven't run the numbers yet because the year's not over, but I, I gotta think we're getting 10 to 15% now.

Yeah, I would bet. I might, I might— let me, I'm gonna just for fun look. Let's see what I can see. I can pull up November real quick. Hold on, let me see November. We— and see if I can pull it up real quick. November, what is— where are you? 2.5 to 10% of November just in my group. Okay, just November. Yeah, of total.

And we— and that, that's before we checked the process.

Yes, you are, uh, one, two— you are $100 grand from being second.

Really?

In my group. Yep.

Can I ask who two is?

They have cancer.

I love it. Uh, yeah, we're gonna pass them. We are 100% gonna pass them next month for December. We're gonna be— my goal is to be number 2 at FFL. Yeah, I think we can do it. Uh, now that we got most of the processes fixed and we're making it so there's, there's not the validation errors, um, I think 2 is attainable.

Yeah, I agree. That's good.

I love it. I mean, Transamerica, everybody knows Transamerica.

Yeah, I agreed. Yeah, I mean, I don't— the clients, you— yeah, hell, I've used it when we go, we're a broker, we work with A, B, and C. Y'all's are in it even when I wasn't writing it, just to, just to give like a validity to it. People know it. Yeah, I mean, it is what it is, you know. You go, hey, use this company, it's a great company, but nobody's heard of that name. Yeah, you know, so on the quirky end, again, most of us, as you know, dude, they're buying us anyway, so most times you don't need that as a hook, but it didn't hurt to throw it out there.

Yeah, the, uh, you know, people know us for the pyramid. Yeah, in San Francisco, uh, we sold off— we sold it. We own none of it now. We don't own the pyramid at all. We still have rights for perpetuity, so it'll always be the Transamerica Pyramid. In San Francisco, but we sold off half in 2014, and— or 49% or something. Then we sold off the other 51% in December of 2019, right before COVID hit and knocked down commercial real estate prices. Yeah, so we nailed the high on that. San Francisco real estate in 2019 was— I mean, I, I can only imagine that building, but we sold it at the perfect time.

Nuts. That's good for us. I love it.

Yeah, it allows us to build better products for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I appreciate it, dude. Anything else you want to add?

Um, yeah, I'll put my number out there. I want people to call me. I know a lot of wholesalers don't want—

they don't. I was almost gonna ask you, but I'm like, I don't know, because Amanda— I got someone asked me for it yesterday, and I'm like, all right, I'll get it. And Amanda's trying to figure it out. I just— I told her to call you earlier. Might just ask him, he'll fix it. So throw it out there.

720-614-3000 is my cell phone. I am in Denver, so if you're calling me at 7:00 AM your time, it's 5 o'clock my time, I'm probably not going to answer, right?

Be courteous, leave a voicemail, he'll call you back. Like, you don't have to call 17 times in a row. We get— like, we get the messages. We all work. You don't have to email too and then text, and that we'll get the voicemail. We 'Promise we will call you back.' Yeah, leave a voicemail.

I love voicemails, dude.

I think I called me 7 fucking times yesterday, daily voicemail. I don't know him, he's not in my phone. I'm like, it's spam for all— he's like, 'Are you retired?' On the 7th one he goes, 'Did you retire?' I'm like, 'Who are you? I don't even know you. I haven't heard from you.' He's like, 'I've called 7 times.' I'm like, 'Why didn't you leave a voicemail?' He goes, 'I didn't think anyone listened to them.' You know, there's a lot of young guys in the industry and maybe they don't listen to voicemails. No, no, you know your audience. I mean, Jesus, you're about my age.

Remember when texting was weird? Remember when you're like, why doesn't this person just call me?

Yeah, yes. I mean, I'm good with one. I'm— I don't care what you do, but when you don't— just give me one. That's the part that quirks me. They'll Leave voicemail. They'll call multiple times. They'll text. They'll email. Then they'll call, text, and email Amanda. And I'm like, okay. And then I'll get a couple DMs. And I'm like, blah, you just made it take longer out of principle because I'm stubborn.

I do like the move where they send a text to the client and then they call afterwards.

That is good. Yeah, I'm mad at clients. I'm just saying I'm not a lead. Do it for the leads, bro. I'm the first. I'm the first. Call them 27 times and text them. But that, that does work. Text them first and then maybe John calling. That shit works. Exactly.

That's awesome. Versus probable spam instead, right? That's the last thing you work.

It does work.

We're going to keep building products for you guys. We want to be, you know, we want to be a top carrier for you. We are committed to this business. If you ever listen to— you don't have time, but If you ever listen to our management, they talk about life insurance more than any other business we have right now. That's right. And it's because they see the potential. Yeah, they want to be here for you guys in the long run.

I love it, bro. I love it. I appreciate it. Appreciate you getting on. We will share everything out and my team will let you know when it goes out as well. And then I appreciate you helping on mine. I'll let Amanda know that you'll work on that. Get all taken care of. So I appreciate it. And if you need anything from me, dude, or if I can help, let me know.

Perfect. Thank you. Have a great Christmas. Absolutely. We'll see you at convention.

Yes, sir. Appreciate it, my man. Later.

Bye.

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