The Secret Handshake w/ John Wetmore & Perry Lunsford

What is up everybody? Happy Thursday! What's up, Insurance Syndicate? So I'm here solo today. My boy Perry is on a well-deserved vacation with his family, chilling in Colorado, skiing. Maybe he's sleeping right now. He doesn't sleep, actually. He gets up at 4 in the morning. So if he happens to watch this, he'll know I'm joking. Um, but yeah, he's out with his family chilling out and I'm sitting in the office, so I'm like, well, hell, let's go live anyway. And, uh, happy to see you guys. If, um, if I can help with anything, feel free to, um, send a message, question, feedback, anything. More than happy to answer. I probably won't stay on crazy long because usually he and I shoot the shit. And, uh, for those of y'all that follow for a while, you know, we do this honestly for him and I to hang out, learn from each other. And we just figured we'd do it live so y'all can follow the journey. But I'm gonna give a little, little something today. We, uh, Perry and I were at dinner. He flew in, um, he had a meeting in, um, Tampa last week. Actually, some cool stuff has happened. I wonder if I should tell any of some of this. What if Perry wants to tell it? You know what, I'm gonna tell it. Who cares? Should I? Shouldn't I? I don't know. Um, Maybe I will. Anyway, he had him— he had a meeting in Tampa, uh, last week and, uh, to do some content creation. That's where— if you see his content, his guys, his team is in Tampa, so he flies out there I think once a month or whatever, records a bunch of stuff. He actually had a car shipped to Tampa to have it in the content, which is kind of boss. And, uh, water down, um Anyway, so he had one of his cars— whoa— he had one of his cars shipped down there to, uh, do some of the content. Then he had a meeting in Virginia, DC— maybe it's the same thing— right after. And, uh, I'm texting Amanda. And, um, he was like, hell, I'm gonna stop in Atlanta on the way, we'll grab dinner. So he came to my office, obviously recorded live last week for those that watched it here. Um, we're obviously tech geniuses, so I remember the beginning was a little choppy, so we're working on that for next year. So we go to dinner, me, him, Steph, and his wife Jamie, and we hung out here at the office for a little while, went to dinner, and it was like— it's funny when he and I get together. I love being around good people, um, that neither one of us needs each other technically, like to survive in life. Like, we'd both be fine, you know. But at the same time, we both need each other in a lot of ways because we both help each other in a ton of ways. Um, and looking at how it started, like, he, um, he and I just started talking, man, and we were talking a lot about building and scaling and things we're doing. He asked a lot of questions, and, uh, so I just was helping out where I could, you know, giving him some advice and feedback. And where he's really— he's good at a lot of things, but The thing I think he's the— if we said what's the biggest, like, is it disparity? Is that the right word? Like, where he's good and I'm bad and there's the biggest gap is marketing stuff. And, um, I don't really know how to, like, get in there. I don't know exactly what I'm doing wrong there. And, uh, so he and I started talking at dinner and, uh, he gave me some really cool feedback about kind of the differences between he and I. He has this really dope brand, you know, Healthy Insurance Dude brand, where I got what I got. John Wetmore, sure. We have Agent Force, sure. Some Insider, Insurance Insider, sure. Um, there's this little Do More with Wetmore's out there. There's a lot of like little things, but there's nothing that's like, like, wax like his does. So I'm like, bro, what would you do And so we start having conversations, um, and, uh, he's like, dude, you're just not intentional, you know. He— where he— there's this actually really cool video. I can't even bring it up because I can't tell it like they did. I watched this really cool video on, uh, an explanation of marketing on social, on Instagram the other day. If I was smart, I'd have had it ready and post it for y'all, um, but I think it's like gone viral, so you can Google it and probably find it. It's a young girl who did it, and she explains like sales versus like promotion versus— it's really, it's deep, dude. Um, so y'all should check it out. It's, it's out there. It's not hard to find. So anyway, he was talking about his level of intentionality, and he really gave me a rundown. I'm gonna let him break him— we're going to talk a lot about this, this stuff this year. But he gave me a little rundown of, of how and why he does some of the things he he does. And for me, that's my goal this year coming up, is to like really implement some more marketing stuff to help the agency, to help agents, to help the brand. Sure. Um, because it all, all trickles down to help me help more people. And that at its core— he asked what I want to be when I grow up, and I was like, dude, that's a tough question. And, uh, because I— it evolves a lot, and I always have big goals and they keep increasing. And, uh, I was watching a podcast with Patrick Bet-David this morning, and, um, he was talking about the— Patrick Bet-David's made a gang of money. I don't know what he's worth, but he openly talks about selling his insurance agency last year or whatever, year and a half ago, whatever it was, for— I think he said $300 million, whatever the number is. It's a lot of money. And he's a— if y'all haven't seen, he's like a minority owner in the New York Yankees now. So we were talking about a lot about that, and, uh, he's— he was talking about— what's that guy's name? Tucker Carlson. That sounds like it comes out funny. Y'all know what I mean. News guy. I think he got let go or fired or whatever happened. I don't really pay a lot of attention. But at one point, uh, Bet David offered this dude a $100 million contract. And he was like, nah, I'm good, dude. And he said that something along the lines of like, uh, what's his name, Elon Musk retweeted something Tucker did, and he goes, that retweet was worth more than $100 million. And he was talking about the influence that a few people, like influential people in the world, have. And the interviewer was like, what'd you think Then he goes, I realized how broke I am. Like, Bette David said that, and I've said before, like, a lot— the more money I make, the more I realize how little I make. And it was wild to hear someone that just sold this company for $300 million— he's— I'd be shocked if he's not in the realm of billionaire by now. I mean, he's got— I would think definitely on paper, um, he has, I don't know, 6 or 8 or 10 companies. He's a boss. And it's wild to continue to hear people that grow at different levels say that. But what he's really good at is the marketing angle. And so Perry and I were talking about a lot of that dinner, and he was just like, dude, you're just not intentional. You know, when we were talking about some of the speaking events I do, and I'll be honest, I don't even prep for this. I just get on and start talking about whatever's on my mind for the day. And he's like, I think we don't need to prep for this. But he's like, in other areas you should. When I do a talk, maybe I should be more intentional about the things I talk about. That he goes, I get— he told me, Perry goes, you give so much value content. You give and you give and you give and you give and you give and you give and you give, and you never ask. And he goes, your ask sucks. And it doesn't have to be ask for paid stuff, but he's like, dude, you don't even ask people to go to your website or like follow you on social. And you know, and where his, his is he gives value, he gives value, he gives value, but then he does ask for something, um, whether it's again to apply to his company, to work for him, to whatever those things are. So that was a, it was, it was a really eye-opening moment. And, uh, you know, Perry and I got to talk about 2024 goals and beyond. So we're going to start sharing some of that stuff throughout. I want to, I want to wait till he's on to do some of it. Um, but end of year, my assumption is y'all have goals, those of you that are watching. Um, have goals. I, I get a lot of messages from a lot of agents throughout the week, a lot of comments on my, on my, on my content, which I appreciate and enjoy. Even the dumbasses that comment really not smart stuff, it does challenge me and teaches me patience and perspective, which I do appreciate. Just not saying that to say that. I actually do appreciate people's perspective because it lets me know who we're working with on a day-to-day basis. Um, so I do, I do like varying perspective on my stuff. Um, but what I would say is that the end of year is coming up. I posted something yesterday that was like, dude, Wednesday before New Year's is definitely not a holiday. Today's not a holiday. Friday's not a holiday. Saturday, Sunday is not holidays. Monday, if you think it's one, hey man, if you're off, cool. My staff's off. It is what it is. But at the end of the day, if you have really big goals— like, people are funny. Someone complained recently about like agents of ours working. They like— some agents dialed on Thanksgiving morning, and there were some people that were like appalled. They were like, that's so desperate. Who would work? Who would make that? And one, we don't make anyone work. They're all 1099. I don't— if you work, you work. If you don't, you don't. I'm just saying the opportunity is there to work, you know. And, and coming into this year, it's like, man, what you've done, who you are and what you've done so far has got you where you're at, you know. And I think for a lot of us that have either accomplished something or working on accomplishing more, I think I definitely realized that I have to continue to change to continue to grow, you know. And that doesn't mean you have to work on every holiday necessarily. That's not where I'm going. But I think it's It's like, maybe it's time to stop making the same excuses, um, and, and using things like it should be family time. And maybe it should be, and if you're happy and successful, great, do you. Um, and I'm certainly gonna spend time with mine, but I'm— there's zero chance. I told my staff this, we got— we're planning, we have to plan because they have the 3-day week last week, 3-day week this week. And I'm like, do y'all really think there's any chance in hell I'm going to— at Thursday at 5 PM all the way till Tuesday morning, not work. Yes, I'm not wired that way. So I'm like, what can I work on while y'all are chilling, you know? So I literally plan what I can take off because there are 3, 2, 3 day weeks, which means not everything gets done, or they have to work a ton before and after. So I'm like, there's zero chance I'm going 4 days without working. So Um, the thing back to the, the working on Thanksgiving thing and other holidays, the funny thing is like, can you imagine if— I wonder what they thought while they sat at home and watched like NFL games, you know what I mean? It's like, are they desperate because they worked on Thanksgiving? Hell, they all just— they played a game on Christmas. You know what I mean? And like an obnoxious number of tens of millions of people watch it and go to it and consume it, and most of y'all just cheer them on. And no one's like, man, the NFL sure is desperate for money working on Christmas. But yet some of y'all don't think you can work on a holiday. And again, not saying you have to work, it's just an example. You know, people work all the time and people sacrifice like crazy. Think about athletes, the, the, the amount of stuff they sacrifice to be where they want to be for a temporary period of time to set up their future, you know. And whatever those sacrifices you, you need to make or willing to make, aren't willing to make, those all factor into your level of success you'll have for sure. Um, and you know, certainly there's always people watch my stuff, it's like, you could be more efficient and work smarter, not harder. I'm like, okay, well, I wasn't that smart, so working harder worked really good for me. Um, and I certainly work smarter now, but I still work harder than most. But with time, when you work hard and you, you learn a lot, I think then you can incrementally get smarter with certain things. So, you know, what I challenge you guys to do— um, I agree, Michael, Activity does equal money. Actually, I'm putting together this— so one of the things I learned from, uh, Perry this week, the market, it got me thinking. So I'm an activity nerd. It's what I do. I'm an Excel nerd. I've tracked numbers forever. I use it to, to deny— understand how much I can make with any given activity. I've used it a lot to build my agency, um, Like, if I have someone with a small amount of activity, there is still a value in their activity. Meaning, even if those of y'all that are like, don't feel like you're very successful yet, or you're unhappy with where you're at, or maybe you're struggling, right, and you're doing X amount of activity and you have Y number of— amount of income, there is still a value. Like, uh, it'd be like Y divided by X equals amount per activity. And that's something I've used a lot. Like, if someone's doing very mediocre effort, um, and they have some result, if I can, if I can, if I can show the amount of, of income per piece of activity, meaning per dial or per appointment or per presentation or per door knock or per whatever, there's a dollar amount per activity I've done a, I've done a really good job of tracking my agents' numbers over the years to show someone who's performing in their own head at a very small level that they make $10, $15, $20 every time they make a phone call. They make $200 every time they book an appointment. They make, you know, $400 every time they present, even if you miss the sale, just averages. You know, and it's allowed me to really empower people to believe in themselves more than they do otherwise. Because someone that's struggling doesn't see any level of success. But I'm like, if you're struggling and I can show you that you're making a couple hundred bucks every time you book an appointment, now, Michael, activity does equal money. But people don't— activity doesn't equal money if you don't look at, track, and review your numbers. It's just activity equals broke in their head, you know, what they feel. And so I learned how to really make people see the money in their activity by doing averages. And I remember taking the low end of the leaderboard— always I did this every week— I would take the low end of the leaderboard and I would, I would see what their average number of appointments were And then I would take the top end of the leaderboard and what their average number of appointments were, and you could always see the difference. The bottom of the leaderboard would average like $1,200 a week issued or submit. We were doing submit at this time. Um, we did issue it up, but the, the visual I'm having is on our submit leaderboard because I did it every week before numbers came out. And then the top would be like $8,000 would be the average submit and the bottom versus top activity was like 3x, 4x, and the income was 3x. It wasn't that much different. So then what I did is I went, all right, you make this much per appointment, you make this much per appointment. And what's cool is the top and the bottom of leaderboard, that number was very similar. The guys at the top weren't making quadruple per appointment on average than the people at the bottom. They were doing quadruple on average activity, but their per activity money was only sometimes less. Sometimes the bottom of the— very often the bottom of the leaderboard, someone would be like, they'd make $300 an appointment, but they'd only run like 10 a month. And the person at the top of leaderboard killing it, whoever was like, bow at their knees when they see them, He'd be making like $250 an appointment, but he'd run 100 a month, you know, or whatever the number was. And I was able to take people at the bottom and go like, dude, you're actually as good, if not better, than this person when you're sitting with a client. But where they're better is the activity side. So if you can somehow figure out how to match their activity and you keep your averages, you'll crush it. And it always infused this level of confidence in people. And so combined with talking to Perry last week and me just— man, I've been in my head just thinking, and just how do I get more intentional here? How do I get better here? How do I start studying marketing stuff? How do I— how, like, how do I improve at what I suck at? One is going to certainly be having good people around me, but I also need to get better myself. So we are going to hire someone that's like a marketing genius, but I also have to get better. Um, and so I started thinking about it, and I'm like, I wonder how I can use this to, to attract— to one, give value, to attract people to my world somehow. So I created this, like, I had this— I always, always had these spreadsheets. I'm a spreadsheet nerd, and I always have these like activity trackers. And I talk about it if y'all seen me speak or see YouTubes. There's a couple out there where I'll put them up on, uh, on the, like, a PowerPoint on the projector or whatever, and I'll go through my actual numbers year by year, month by month, like during the journey. Like, I still have the spreadsheets to this day from 2012 on, real numbers, like how much I— how many appointments I booked, how many dials I had, how many everything, how many door knocks I did, how many closings I had, how I have all of it still to this day. And every once in a while I share it because people like it. And then I would do all these calculations with it just because I like figuring out what my activity numbers were, what the money per activity equaled. That fueled me to do more. So if I knew I was making, you know, at my peak I got to like, I think it was like $300, $300-something bucks, $350, whatever the number was, every time I booked an appointment. Didn't matter if I closed, it didn't matter if I went. I had to go to a lot of them to get the averages to work out, but it didn't matter the result, which for me removed a lot of the emotion because I knew no matter what, the average is going to work out. So anyway, long story short, I, I'm sitting around this weekend bored out of my ever-loving trees with 4 days of quote-unquote holiday time, and I took my favorite formulas and tracker and I kind of made it into one really easy one that I'm, I'm close to put— I'm just going to put it out for free. Um, it'll be on the website and in Perry's World I'll go, hey, if you go register here, you get this activity tracker free. And then we'll have their contact information, be able to send them more free trainings. And every once in a blue moon, maybe someone will come work here, maybe they don't, who knows. I don't know what I'm going to do with the information long term. I don't have anything to sell. I don't— it's not my jam. Um, not that maybe— who knows where the future leads, but That's one thing I put together because I really want to help people see that. So I put together this little activity tracker that I'm going to put out, and it's going to be literally— you plug in your daily— how many dials you made, how many appointments you booked, how many presentations you made, how many door knocks you did, and then your deposits every day as you get them. And all the formulas are gonna— they happen like magic, and it'll show you how, how well you're doing, how much you get. I even broke it down to like uh, how much money you make per day of the week, like how much you make on Sundays versus Mondays versus Tuesdays. Like, my best, my most productive day, weird enough, was Fridays. That's where I made the most issue-paid volume, is when I made sales on Fridays. Those were my biggest personal days. I don't know why. I don't have a magic method to it. Granted, I didn't really run Sundays. I never ran Mondays and Thursdays. I only ran Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. And some Saturdays for a majority of my career. But Tuesday, Wednesday, I ran a lot more than I ran Fridays, but Friday's number was bigger. I always found it intriguing. And maybe because I saw it once and I'm like, Friday's going to be a big day, and psychologically I was in a different spot. Maybe I, maybe I did better because I thought I was going to do better. That's probably part of it, you know. But I like seeing stuff like that, so I'm going to put it out. So again, any of y'all want it, let me know. Um, you can actually register on the site, but nothing happens yet. We're working on it. When you register, it just comes to us. But we don't actually have any like, hey, thanks for registering. Like, we haven't built that yet. We're working on it because I'm going to turn into Perry Jr. this year. Um, so you can, and I will post it out there and it will be free. If you want one, DM me, I'll, I'll, we'll put it out to you guys. Um, but that's one of the things, like, if you're trying to build, maybe you can learn how to empower people and, and, and, and have people believe in themselves more than they would otherwise. You know, and, you know, certainly I think now is a good time of year to sit down and really go over your goals, one. But what is your strategy to achieve those goals, two? And three, what are you going to give up this year that you know you need to give up? You know, what are the things you're just going to get rid of? The bad habits, the hobbies that aren't benefiting you, the, the people in your life that aren't benefiting you, the— you know what I mean? Like, what, what, who whatever it is, what are you giving up this year to it? Because you can't put more things in place if you don't give stuff up. I know there's a bunch of you that next Monday or whatever the day is, you're going to start at the gym. But if you don't— excuse me— if you don't go through and go, hey, I'm going to give up A, B, and C, dude, that's probably not going to last that long, you know. So for me, I really have to pay attention to things I'm giving up. So I'm working on my own list. I'm going to share those things certainly as we start doing them. I have some cool goals, some personal stuff, some business stuff, some challenging stuff. I like following Jesse Itzler, and he has this thing— I forget the word. If someone knows it, post it, because it's like a— I think it's like a Japanese word. There's some word he uses, it's like means something really effing big. And he does, I think, one or two of those every year. I always forget the word, but he uses this big-ass calendar. Literally, that's what it's called. You can order it and you can map out your whole year. But he always talks about the power of putting like a couple really big things on your calendar, um, and I like that concept. So I'm doing a, uh, I signed up to a marathon in March, which I have no business running. I zero. But I'm gonna do it. I will finish. I won't run 26 straight miles, but I will finish the 26 miles. Um, I just did a 10K a couple weeks ago, and it hurt, but I ran the whole thing. I ran the whole thing. I didn't walk. I slowly jogged most of it, but I didn't stop. And my goal at the— my goal is to do a half marathon sometime in January. I don't have it scheduled yet, but I do have the marathon booked. It's in Texas in March with my daughter. And then I'm doing this, the 29029 thing I've talked about. If you don't know what it is, Google it. It's pretty cool. It's 29029, which is the height of Mount Everest in feet. Um, and I've not verified it, I just listened to their story, so I assume it's true. And, uh, this is also, uh, Jesse Itzler's thing. He's like a part owner or part founder or whatever. But I got registered for— actually got my buddy that hooked me up with it because it was sold out, and I know a dude who knows a dude, which is really cool to have relationships that I had. A friend hooked me up with something that was sold out. Going to Whistler, Canada in August, and I have to climb this mountain, I think it's 9 times, to get to the equivalent of Mount Everest, the 29,000 feet. So I'm doing one big thing in March, one big thing in August that's way out of my comfort zone and challenging me physically to a new level. And then I have a ton of business goals that we're working on. So my challenge to you is put yours out there. I would love to hear them. I like when people tag me and stuff. I like when— I like, you know, I like even more when people— I did this at an event in Boston in— I was probably there in October, maybe September, October. And this group of people had this recruiting desire that they— and I told them exactly how to do it. And I said, what I want y'all to— here's some— here's how— because exactly what you got to do. Step 1, 2, 3. It's 3 really easy things. They were all free, repetitive, and redundant as all get out. So most people won't do them, but it's things I did and things I teach to do to recruit. Not forever, but for a temporary period of time. There's some really— it's— there's some stuff you can do. It's pretty simple. Um, beside the point. So I tell them, hey, dope, here's what I want you to do. Every week I want you to tag me on social with the activity that you said you'll do. And I challenge you, if you'll tag me every week, if you'll actually tag me every week for a year, I bet most of y'all won't after a few weeks. And not— I don't, I don't think anyone's tagged me in like 8 weeks. It happened for like 3 or 4 weeks, the level of activity, the things they said they were gonna do, and then it fell off. So for y'all, same thing. If you want, because I actually really enjoy it and it is a challenge because most of y'all won't do it, um, to come up with your goals, I would love to hear them. If I know you and you're actually working hard, I'd love to give feedback. If I can help with anything, I'm always here. Um, and I do challenge you to, when you hit those activity levels every week, to tag me in it and see if you can do it for 52 straight weeks. Someone will do it eventually. And, uh, I would love to hear the journey, see the journey, and help in any way I can. Excuse me, I got a little frog in my throat or whatever. Um, So I think, again, that's my challenge to you guys, to go out and put your goals out there. I think if you put them out there in public, if you're anything like me or many people I know like me, it's a— it's an accountability method to yourself, is to start talking about them even though they might make you feel uncomfortable. Tell people in your circle the things you're going to do and then back it up, you know. And if I can be there myself or Perry as a support, I would love to— love to be part of that journey. Tag us in it. and the things you want to do and the things you're doing week in and week out. It'd be cool to see. And if it's something cool and, I don't know, someone dope that does something, uh, fun, we'll have you on and we'll talk about it and get you on here as well. So that's all I got for today. I don't have any questions popped up, so I'm gonna roll. Hope you guys have a killer New Year's, um, weekend, day, hours, whatever it is you do with your family. Enjoy it. Be safe if you're one of those that goes out there, like, don't do nothing stupid. I will be sitting on my couch chilling because I ain't getting out there in the world with dipshits on that holiday. So we'll be just chilling at home. Um, and then I am taking the family to, uh, or actually I'm just taking Steph. We're going to this really cool, uh, what's it called, like a, um, like a retreat type thing, uh, like a wellness retreat in Arizona, the 4th to the 9th, I think, something like that. We just go do cool stuff and eat really good and work out and go on hikes and take care of your health and just a nice little mental breather. So, um, again, wish you all the best. If I can do anything for you guys, let me know. Peace out.