The Sales Calendar That Made Me MILLIONS (Houston 8% Road Show)

He's known as the $100 Million Man. Our first speaker of the day. Welcome back to Houston Roadshow, John Wetmore! You didn't let him finish singing it. What is up? You're excited. I love it. Yeah. Well, good morning. Um, appreciate it. I'm going to give you guys— I was thinking about, um, what I want to talk about today, and I like to mix it up. So if you've seen me before, I, I do my best to kind of tell the same thing in different ways because this business is really simple at its core. Um, and oh, that worked. Thank you. Um, and Cody, I am proud of you, dude, for calling them out for being late. I didn't expect you to do it twice even, and it was like traffic. I'm like, it's Today the first day Houston had traffic. So that didn't— that ain't the real reason. That's just the shit you thought Cody was gonna buy. So leave early. Hell, what time we got here? At like 7:38. I was like, damn, is there an event? Did I come the wrong day? I was kind of confused. But I'm going to go over a few things. I made a whopping notes of 4 words to do my talk today. And I think this business has a little bit of an evolution, this kind of circle of— as there's different levels, I feel like we kind of end up at the same spot. So if I look at the beginning, I write like crap. And I didn't want to do slides. We have like one QR code that all this, like my team's recording it and we can get you the stuff. So if you don't take good notes or if I talk numbers, I'm sorry if people are bad at math in advance, just ignore me for a little while if I get too deep in numbers. I will do my best not to. But I think for me, desire is like the first step in any stage you're in. You know, when we all got, I know when I got started, I had a desire to get out of my job. I wanted to get away from my boss. I was tired of like not being able to pay my bills. I hated living paycheck to paycheck. I hated credit card debt. I want to get out all that stuff, right? I think that we looked at this industry as an option and we were like, hell, I have a desire to get a license. Like we all have that in common. Does that make sense? We wouldn't be here if we didn't have that first step. But then as you start to go higher, you know, Cody desired to start this thing at 8:30. But he couldn't. It's twice for you now, Cody. I got him. But, you know, I know at the beginning, like I was talking to Hector, right, last night, and he's a trucker, I believe, full time, has a desire. He does this part time. His desire is to get out of trucking, do this full time. Right. Pretty simple. Rue, where are you at? Right here. Dope shoes. Into voting for the nicest, some of the nicest in the room. Hey, I like shoes. Right? But she has a desire to get 7 figures. Right? Different levels. But same concept. Now maybe she's already hit a certain point. She's doing $15K, $20K a month, whatever it is. But that was her deal. Then Sharon, I was talking to in the back, and she was like, her desire is to just be able to have more people show up when she books appointments. Right? Like, that's the beginning. There's— and you probably were at that stage at one point, and maybe both of y'all were at his stage at one point. You know what I'm saying? I was there. I know at the beginning I was working an accounting job, commuting an hour and a half each way in Atlanta traffic also. And I had to be there at 7, which meant I had to leave at 5:30. And I did that for 4 years. And on the way back in Atlanta, it took 2 hours to get home just because traffic was worse. And if it rained— are you from Atlanta or been to Atlanta? Yeah, does it like if it rains, do people like lose their mind completely and can't drive at all? Oh my Lord. I'm like, what is happening? Right. But it was like there was this beginning phase of this thing for all of us. And for me, I've noticed as I continue to climb the industry, I've learned I ain't really done that much in the big scheme of things. Like, sure, we did whatever numbers we do. We did a couple hundred million dollars in premium last year and a few thousand agents. You know, but the guy who bought my company, they do $25 billion. I'm a rounding error to that guy. Straight up. There's like several less zeros on the end of mine than his. Right. But his desire is still to grow and acquire more companies. You know, now I'm trying to figure out how I can get a jet and just get dropped off like in the parking lot with a helicopter. Yeah, I would love that. I'm just— I'm working still. And you guys have to look at where are you at? What things do you desire in the business? What do you desire to get out of? And then sometimes I think that the negative side of that can hold us back. Like some of y'all desire to catch up on the newest Netflix series too much. Right? So which desire outweighs which? And we kind of have to look at that stuff. You know? Some of y'all, I don't know, still like to be negative and blame external factors for your reasons for not being where you want to be. Does that make sense? In my office, we have this idea like even if you do do something incorrect in maybe my eyes, I'm like, yo, what did we do to get there? Right? We have to look at it differently. Because I had a desire in my life to stop blaming external things. Because at the beginning, for the first 4 years, the reason I was bad is because I blamed the leads, and the weather, and the clients, and the people who generated the leads. And they said they didn't fill it out or that they weren't interested anymore. Like, I was messed up too. But I really wanted my kids to go to private school altogether. I come from— like, my background— I had kids real young. First one on the way at 16, and my second on the way at 19. I have 5 total now from my oldest is almost 30, my youngest is 12, right? But when I started, we were broke as a joke. And I just wanted to be able to sign them up to a sport. Simple. I had bankruptcy in my life. I've had 2 houses foreclosed on. I've had a car taken away. I've been divorced, right? Who heard Nate last night about the amount of— who has shit in their life for those that missed it or were too cheap to pay? Like, yep, some of y'all haven't had shit in your life, like, go wrong. They don't like to raise their hands here, Cody. Who's had shit go wrong in their life? Okay, well, they ain't going away, and we've all had it, so stop using it as an excuse, you know what I mean? Like, and I don't know the way exactly Nate said it, but he was like, the more shit you got, the more money you make. And he had some really in-depth talk about it. Yeah, I'm not going to do his thing, but it was like, it was valuable. And so for me, it was like, all right, what do we do from here? Right? And so for me, it became— and I don't know, I before E or E after I. I don't know how to spell belief, but that's what that says. After C, sometimes. I don't know. Is that right or wrong? All right. I grew up in the hood, and I started skipping school in second grade. Yeah, and I don't give a shit that it's wrong. How do you say it? I can't say that. Faye? Oh, that's way easier. So F before E. There we go. It's way simpler. Oh Lord. But like when we all got started again, go back to the beginning, we all believed we could succeed in this industry. We got our license. We all believed we could have got licensed. Does that make sense? And for me, I just— what I believed was I could achieve what other people in the industry achieve. I've had that. So when I saw other people making money, I was like, yo, I can get there. Now at the beginning, I only believed I could make $60,000 or $80,000 because those are the only people I was going to put myself around. You know, like when I was talking to you, you like to sit in a corner and not talk to anybody in the industry because you're afraid to ask questions and think everybody's too busy to help you. That's a poor belief. Does that make sense? I believe if I walked up to someone rich, if I'm doing the work and I ask real quality questions, they'll give me answers. I also don't believe they're as busy as you believe they are. Does that make sense? Because I know how people think how busy I am. And I am with me all the time. Right? And I ain't that busy. Fortunately, I was at one stage where it was nonstop. But I built this thing in a way where I can— I wanted time and money for me. You know, so I get to, I get to choose things a little bit differently today than I once did. But When I was younger, I believed I was only worth 30, 40 grand a year as an accountant. You know what I mean? I grew up with a single teenage mom. I just believed that's how it was gonna be forever at first. Many of y'all probably like that. Hector believes he needs to keep being a trucker forever. He's making 2 Gs a month part-time, right? Wants to make 5 full-time. But somehow in his head, he believed he had to make 5 part-time to match the 5 full-time before he could quit. And I'm like, yo, let's figure out the hours. If you put the same hours into this as you did trucking, you'd be doing better right off the rip. But right now, you don't believe you can do that. And you don't believe in yourself enough to take that jump. Does that make sense? And I'm convinced you didn't believe you were making more money. I just turned it into an hourly thing instead of a monthly thing for you. You know what I mean? He's working 10 hours a week in insurance making 2 Gs. He's working 40 hours in trucking making 5. Going to Trucking costs you money. You know what I'm saying? Hell, if you worked, so you're working 50+ hours a week, 60 hours a week. Imagine you did 60 in insurance. Does that make sense? You're doing 10 now, 10 hours is getting you $2K. You're doing 50, 60 hours. So what if we do that times 5 or 6? What's that equal? Yeah, 10, 12 Gs. And you're new, right? And like you, probably still believes he sucks. You remember what my answer was to you when you said that to me? You're like, I still, I think I suck. I'm like, I think I suck still. Productivity. Yeah, I mean, do more. But the competition ain't that deep in this industry. You know what I mean? I'm like, I cannot work y'all. That's easy. I can make more phone calls. My answer to you is book more appointments, right? She's like, only, I think, what'd you say, 1 out of 10 show up or something like that? 1 out of 8, whatever the number was. So she books 8, only 1's there. She's still going to people's houses, which I like. That's my style. But I said, all right, if you sit with 10, or you said you sit in, I think we came up with 8 a month, something like that. Like actually sitting with. I was like, how many do you close out of 8? She said 5 or 6. I'm like, holy shit, I never closed that. And I sold $500,000 a year and didn't close 5 out of 8. You know what I mean? So for me, I'm like, I believe you're better than me at sales. You just don't believe that yet. You know what I'm saying? And you have to get to a certain point where, again, for Roo, she was like, I want to make 7 figures. First she goes, I want to get to 4,000 agents. I was like, Why that number? She goes, I did the math. I'm like, alright, what's the math equal? What do you want to get? She said 7 figures, right? Like, so you think you need 4,000 agents to make 7 figures? How many did I show you it took? Remember? It was 50. We did pre-meeting. If we did 50 agents, I— when I was— when I had 50 agents, they were averaging $12,000 a month. That's $600K a month total premium. I was making like 30% of that. It's $180G a month with 50 people. You know what I mean? Now I had to talk to a whole lot more than 50 to get 50 selling. And not all of 50 sold $12,000. Some sold $50,000. Some sold $2,000 or none or $8 or one app every 4 years. You know what I mean? Like for perspective, 6,000-something agents last year, but we only have like 1,500, maybe 2,000. A big month would be 2,000 in a month. So 70% of them don't even work every month. You know what I mean? But I didn't let that hold me back from building something big. I just let the ones who don't want to work don't work, and the ones who do, I help them more. You know? And so it was like— For me, then it was to get to the next point. Really simple is decide, make a decision. And for me, that's a lot different than belief. Like, again, very simple. Like, you decide, I'm going to get my license, and you got it. One that deep, you know I'm saying? I decided for me, like, I had to change things in my life to get where I said I wanted to go. Like, I believed I could get to certain levels. And eventually, I believed I could get to $100 grand. And then I believed I could get to $500,000. Then I believe I Actually, in 2015, I wrote down I can get to $1 million. It took me 2 years to do it from the day I wrote it down. But I put— it was a decision for me. Like, yo, I got to change stuff in my life to make this thing work. And I think so many people don't make real decisions. Or again, we'd said positive, negative on the belief stuff too. It's like decisions— y'all made— a lot of poor decisions. We all do. Y'all know the poor decisions you make that are counter to what you desire, right? We said desire to make a million bucks. But sometimes your decisions are, I don't recruit enough. I don't even run ads. You know what I mean? I show up to meetings late. There's 3 for you, Cody. You know what I mean? Like, what are you doing every day relative to what you say you want? You decide to be mad when someone tells you no. You decide to be mad. That's a decision to be pissed. You choose to be upset at the things you're upset at every day. Fair? Because you can be not upset if you don't want to. You know what I mean? Like the little things you get upset at. Think about them. And then we go, all right. I don't know, someone in my family has a health issue. Do you care that the client told you no anymore? Of course not. It's irrelevant. Like, who cares? But in that moment, you're making decisions to let little things bother you and then choose to blame clients or whatever, or kaboom leads. You know? And we all did that. I was at that same stage. I was 4 years in the business and You know, the first 2, I literally did nothing. I didn't even— I didn't even set— I did nothing. I just had my license. I picked up the phone once, quit for 2 years, just sat there licensed, nothing to do, you know. And I made a decision every day to not pick up the phone and not buy enough leads and not get on the phones and not go see people and not knock on doors and not follow up with clients, you know what I mean. But then I changed that thing. And I decided to put action and things behind what I wanted to achieve, which again for me was put the kids in private school together. They come from two different marriages. I want them to go to school together, the younger ones, right? So the oldest of the younger three, she graduates that school this week, you know what I mean? My kids been in private school together for like 7 years now, where 10 years ago in January, January of 2014, I made $800. For the month. 10 years ago, I made $800 for the month. I mean, this thing can change in a second. You know, you have to, but then what? So when you decide to do something, there's more to it, right? Yeah. Now we got to go execute that shit. You're gonna do it. You know, so it's like, Are you getting up every day and executing what you say you want? I know a lot of people don't. And it's hard. It doesn't get easier, to be clear. Hell, there's arguments that it gets harder. As you start making more money, it does get harder to sacrifice and give up things and get up early. And you know what I mean? Like miss family things. It can get harder, but I have big goals. Like my wife and I have been married 14 years. Our anniversary was yesterday, and I'm in Houston. We have a lot of stuff we want to accomplish. We're building a dream house— her dream house, not mine. I just— I'm like, can I have an office and a gym? The rest of it, I don't know anything about. It's obnoxiously big for her. I just— I don't even know why we're doing it. And they were texting— the design lady that's helping with the house, she texted yesterday and was like, hey, don't worry, I'm taking Steph to dinner for your anniversary. She was joking with me. And she goes, see, I'm worth every penny. And my response was, between the two of you, I have to be here to work. And so it went crickets. So I'm going to go through quick what I did. I'm using all of your paper, Cody. No one else can use it today. One of the things that for me was super important, you don't necessarily have to draw this. I'm gonna do, this is kind of like a calendar for me. See if I can make one. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Is that enough? Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. So we had to make decisions in life. And my wife and I got together and we decided we wanted to live differently. We wanted to affect our family generationally. We didn't want her to work. We wanted to be able to stop saying no to the kids when we didn't want to say no. Like, I say no to them, but I don't have to all the time. I wanted to be able to make decisions in life and make choices and have options. So we sat down in 2015, again, 4 years into the business. And I'm like, yo, we got to change some shit. And this is one of the exercises. And if you do the little QR code, it takes you to the website. We're going to give you a copy of the talk once we edit it. And a copy of my actual schedule that I changed and some other stuff. I forget what Amanda did. She was emailing Cody's staff at like, I don't know, what is it, 1:30 in the morning last night because we didn't get it ready in advance because we procrastinate stuff still to this day. Like it's, it's hard. But the way I, the way I like to do this exercise with agents and I've done this thousands of times now is if I look at a, if I look at a month right? And we'll go 1, 2, 3, 4 weeks in a typical month. I like to put in the things that I can— that I either cannot move or don't want to move, right? Like my ideal schedule. So I mapped out a month, and we did this for the whole year. But for me, I had my— like, ideally, I didn't want to work on Sundays anymore. I did for the first year and a half. I did my ideal schedule. I didn't, right? Then I had my kids for dinner because, again, marriage, divorce, that whole thing. I had my kids for dinner Thursday nights, every Thursday night. So I wanted to see the kids then. I didn't want to move that if it were up to me. Then I had them every other weekend. So like this weekend, I'd have the kids Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And then this weekend, I'd have the kids Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Other than that, I'll be honest, I didn't really give a crap. So that gave me Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday was wide open for me. I didn't have any kids. Now Maddox I live with, but I talked to them and I'm like, yo, I need these days to execute what we said we want. I need this time. Can you take care of everything in the world? Literally, my wife does everything besides business, money. Everything else I don't know how to do. Like literally, like packs my clothes. I don't know what's— I find out what's in my suitcase when I got here. And one of my desires, Tony, was to speak without dressing up. So I do it because I don't want to wear a jacket anymore. And now the Rose brothers back there were like, man, you keep doing it. Like next time I think they're going to show up without a jacket. I'm convinced. See, I went out of my way and I put on dress shorts. Like country club shorts. I ain't quite there, Joe. Right? So this was my schedule. So for me, I had every other Saturday off, open. I decided I was going to work one of them. Right? I was going to work. For me, I was in home sales, similar to you, right? And this is again, 2015, this decision. So take the concept here. And apply it to whatever the hell you do today. For me, I was going to dial here every Monday. And I was going to be the first one in the office every single Monday, 7 AM. I was going to be in the office to start getting on the phones. What I chose, because I want to be done dialing. I hated it. Right? I didn't love being on the phone. But that was the path for money. And then I said, these days, I'm going to be in the, in the field. Right? So every Tuesday, Wednesday, be in the field. And then every other Friday when I didn't have the kids, I'd be in the field. And then one Saturday a month I'd be in the field. That was my goal. That was it. So if we go, all right, if we count them, I'll put them out. We got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 9, 10, 11 days a month I sold life insurance. I sold $500,000 in life insurance with that schedule. The prior year I had the same shit going on in life and I had a hard time getting $100,000. But what I did is I looked at what I had to— how many appointments I had to run, and I kind of looked at sort of my numbers, kind of like I did with you guys, and I'm like, where you at now? Right, wherever you are now. However many appointments it takes you to make X amount of money, just kind of look at it. And if you— for me, I had more in the tank as far as time to give towards calling clients, presenting to clients, and for me recruiting was a big piece of it. Outside of those 3 things, everything else was like— I was going to do 40 hours of those 3 things, everything else to me was extra. I had to do that many. And for me, when I did the math, I was making like couple hundred bucks an appointment on average that I booked. Like if I just looked at everything all in, I went, how many appointments are around, how much money do I make? Forget all the noise in the middle, the cancels, who gives a shit? If I go activity, deposits, that's all I looked at, right? Because there's an average. I was making $17 a phone call, I was making $200. I'm almost done, Cody, I promise, right? And I had to look at it, so I decided in these 11 days. I was gonna run, I was gonna book 11 appointments each day. It came to about 120 a month, came to 1,500 people a year. My thought was, if I can suck and sit with 1,000 of them, 500, 500 don't show up, and I only closed 25% of them, which is 250 apps, that was 250 G's. I was like, fuck, I'm in. Forget all the other stuff. Who cares about anything else? I just quit thinking about it. And I just went to work and I executed this schedule for the next 2 and a half years. I made over $1.3 million on my own pen. And then this is all I've taught for the last 8 years. You do this and you put in 40 hours and you map out and you commit to whatever you want to commit to, whatever your desires and goals and dreams are. This were mine. And I just filled in the blanks and I executed it flawlessly. And I'm not the best, but I have a hell of a result and I'm happy with it. And my life's changed, my kids' lives have changed, and we get to live very different because of it. Does that make sense? So this will get you an actual copy of, like, my handwritten one. I know it's a lot and I'm kind of messy, so hopefully the concepts resonate with you and you can apply it to your world. Appreciate your time. Way to go, man! Way to go! Wetmore! Way to go, John Wetmore! Give it up for John Wetmore time! Let's go!