The SECRET to Building Generational Wealth | Ep4

And when you make the money, when you have the deposits and you have the activity, the deposits factor in all the stuff we hate. No-shows, cancels, chargebacks, whatever, bad leads. The deposits factor all that in. All right, what up y'all? John Wetmore here, another episode of Insurance Insiders Podcast. Appreciate y'all getting on. I am going to roll solo today and talk a little bit about the journey, why I started this thing, give you a little bit of insight into I don't know how the hell we got here today, I suppose. Um, some of y'all know, you've heard it, great. If not, I hopefully can put some insight into things for you. I, um, it's funny, I started thinking about this a while back. A lot of people do podcasts, and what I didn't want, um, was for it to be kind of the same as everything else. I do want to mix it up a little bit. Some of y'all watching, I am looking for people with really cool stories. You don't have to be making a zillion dollars or be kind of well known. I really just want to do something that, that highlights people that are doing well in their own version in the industry and actually thriving in the industry. There's a lot of people make money from the industry that aren't in the industry, which frustrates me a little bit. And so I really wanted this to be somewhat different. And I also want to— I'm certainly the first few people that are probably somewhat known, um, just because I have a lot of connections with people doing really well in the business. But what I'm doing from each one is going, all right, can you refer me someone that I wouldn't know? Because I want to hear some cool stories. I want to be able to help some new people, uh, build relationships and take this in a direction that's a little bit different than anything else out there. So if you're in the industry, have a story, know someone with a story, have— even if up and coming, I'm just intrigued by how many people have success in the industry, and I just want to do my part to continue to spread the word and give people hope that they can succeed here. So it's kind of what was, was on my mind when I finally started this thing. I've been thinking about it for a while and just, I don't know, I just, I wanted something slightly different, and I, I enjoyed navigating it with people I know less about the story. It feels less scripted to me. It feels less prepped because I don't actually prep for them like at all. I just like to kind of have a conversation. I might get some bullet points about the person, but I really like to just dive into conversations. So again, you know anybody, let me know. Or if it's you, reach out, feel free. In the meantime, um, for those that don't know, I have been in this business, and I'm going to touch— I'm going to give a little bit of the background, but then I'm going to touch on some some things for you to work through to increase your profitability, your business, your sales, your income, your thought process. There's a few things I'm going to touch on at the end, but I'm going to give a little bit of a background for maybe someone that comes across that doesn't fully know it. Been in the business now. Well, funny enough, I technically got licensed. I got like— I say I've been in business since 2012, but I technically got licensed in 2010 and I actually applied and chose to be in the business in 2008. So '08, I applied. I said to the guy that I answered an ad to, hey, send me the stuff to get in class. I want to knock it out like this week. And it took me almost 2 years to get the license. And then I got the license. At that time, I was— wait, what was I doing? Hell, I was in a call center. I was working in a call center for AT&T making like $10 an hour.. And then I was working in— that was at night. And then I was during the day, I was doing taxes at like one of those local tax joints and like a, like where a grocery store is, a little place where they flip the signs. I was doing taxes inside part-time for like $8 an hour. So I was working 2 jobs making like $400 a week. It was really sad. So I looked into insurance, didn't do anything with it, just kept putting it off. And then got my license. Those that have followed know I picked up the phone, I dialed one day, and I quit that day. And my license lapsed 2 years later. And very fortunately, I had a buddy reach out who I knew, met in the mortgage industry, and he was like, yo, what are you up to? I'm sure you hate your job. At this time, I was doing accounting work. I did get— I didn't do the call center tax thing long. Got an accounting job. That I had for the next 4 years. And he reached out and he was like, yeah, I got this thing. I call him, he says insurance. I'm like, nah, I ain't doing insurance. I'm good with that. I tried it, didn't like it. Not for me. And he's like, bro, I'm telling you, there's something here. You remind me of some of the guys killing it. I think let's go grab a drink. Can we go to some local, what's the name of that place? I think she was in the hiring room. I don't think it's irrelevant. I was just trying to think of it. Some of y'all would know it. Um, anyway, goes to a little local sports bar, basically explains the business not only from a sales perspective but from a business perspective, kind of the entirety of the business, how it works. And, uh, after that conversation, I'm like, all right, I'm in, I'm gonna try it. So I had to— my license did lapse, but it was only a couple weeks after. So I don't know how it is today, but at the time in Georgia, you could, you could like renew it, if you will, or like pay— I had to pay a— I had to pay an administrative fine for not applying on time, and they reactivated my license. And so it's basically a late fee, but they call it a fine. So now every time I get contracted with a carrier, I have to answer that question, have you ever been fined by a Department of Insurance? I have to say yes because it's still on my record that I had a fine. It was like $50 or something stupid. Um, so anyway, I get it active, I do a year part-time while I'm doing accounting work, my part-time schedule. So I had a full-time job. I had to be there at 7 a.m. It was 50 miles from my house and I had to go on 3 interstates. Those of y'all from Georgia had to go 20 East, 285 North to 400 North to Alpharetta. I was in Powder Springs at the time and then I had to on the way come back. So it was an hour and a half, an hour and. And if I left, I would get up at 5:00, I'd leave at like, if I left at like 5:30, I could get there before 7:00. If I left at 5:40, it might be 7:30. It was like, there was like a 10-minute window where it was like traffic was way worse or not. On the way back, hour and a half was a good day. If it rained or there was a wreck, who knows, it could be 2, who knows how long coming back. And I did that for 4 years to make $40,000. So in 2012, I was definitely tired and decided I was gonna start doing this thing part-time. So my schedule was 7 to like 3:30 at the office. And then fortunately we moved, eventually moved to like Woodstock. So it was Cherokee County in Georgia. So 7 to 3:30-ish. So I would work, my week would start Sundays, I would dial. After church, before dinner. I had like a window I liked dialing, not for any particular reason, then it kind of worked. We'd go to, we'd go to church at, I think we used to go at like 11 back in the day, and then we'd do groceries and then we'd be home by 2 and Steph would start cooking. And so I'd dial from like 2 to 6 and I would book Monday and Tuesday nights. I'd book like 3 appointments. I'd either book them in Cherokee County, which is why I'm giving you all the locations. I'd book them in like 3 in the county where I worked. This is days of in-home too, by the way, for y'all. That are all virtual today. I was kitchen table sales, like 99% of everything I sold. So I'd book 3 after work from like, I'd book like a 4, a 5:30, and a 7, something like that. And then if, or I'd book them in my county where I lived in Paulding County, and, but I need more drive time home. So then I'd book like a 5, a 6:30, and an 8 or something like that, Monday and Tuesday.. And my expectation then was like, or looking back, really, I learned it wasn't right away, but my expectation had to become, man, 3 appointments. Hell, I might not even sit with a client, much less sell one. And I had to get there. I wasn't there at the beginning. I was negative. If I got a no-show, I was pissed. I would have this like mindset, like, yeah, I wish I went home. I should have just gone home. I could have been sitting at home watching TV instead of getting no-showed. But I had to learn how to overcome that. But I was like super emotional about stuff, and I had to learn how to get over that with time. And through, through time, I'll give you some tips on things I learned to get over that. So I do Monday, Tuesday nights. So if I, if I, if I— a lot of times at 5 AM, I don't get home till 9 PM, you know. So I did that every, every week for a year. So those were long days, Monday, Tuesday. Again, sometimes I do it 5 AM, 9 PM and make no money. And I would go home and complain, and my wife would keep me positive and, you know, best she could. And some days I was like, is this really what I want to do? I definitely went through stages where I questioned it, considered quitting again. Um, anyway, so then I would do my week. Wednesday, I think Wednesday nights I had my kids for dinner. Thursday I'd start getting back on the phone Thursday and Friday during lunch. I would call from work and book up Saturdays and I'd run till like, I don't know, afternoon. I'd run like 5, maybe 6 appointments max on a Saturday. But I would dial Thursday, Friday. So basically I was working every day. Sunday I was dialing, Monday, Tuesday I was working and running appointments, Wednesday, I was just working on the job, had my kids, so I didn't get home till like 9 PM then because I'd take them to dinner and do whatever and drop them off at their mom's, go back home. Thursday, Friday, I was doing my best to dial at lunch so I didn't have to dial too much in the evening at home, but I had my regular job. Saturdays I'd sell insurance, Sundays back on the phone. Wash, rinse, repeat. Did that 52 weeks. I don't know if I took a week off or not. I have no idea. If I did, it wasn't much, but I made 60 G's that year. And I was at a company long before Current and at a very low comp and still did fairly well. And I think what I did right there was I didn't spend any of the money. All the insurance money went into a separate bank account. And my goal was to save up 6 months of income. So I had $20,000 because I was making $40,000. So to save up $20,000 so I could quit and go full time. And I was afraid. To do this full-time, mostly because I've been in the mortgage business for a minute. That was commission. That was my first commission experience, and I made a few bucks, but like under a year, the whole industry went away. The economy collapsed, and I lost two houses. I got a car repoed, and I lost two houses because I bought one I couldn't afford. So I had a little baby house I lived in. And then I bought a big house I couldn't afford, and both were financed, so they took them away. Had a car repoed and had filed bankruptcy and got divorced in a pretty, like, a year window. And I was scared, you know? I was scared of making that leap. I was scared of what I thought was, not having some consistency in pay, kind of the safety net of a weekly paycheck and benefits and stuff like that. I was afraid to leave that. And, uh, you know, it took me a little while. So long story short, I did the insurance thing, made 60 G's. I spent some money on leads, whatever it was. And, um, you know, if I had to, you know, travel or go to an event or training or something to learn the industry— I was doing a decent amount of that my first year, so I'd I'd go to like little hotel events, sales conferences, and they would have, you know, sometimes in different areas, and I'd travel somewhere to see someone that I liked that was really good to listen to them train. So I spent a few bucks traveling to go to a couple events, and, uh, but I had like $30,000 left after a year sitting on that bank account, and I didn't use any of it to pay bills. It was only insurance money. I'd either buy leads or, or invest somewhat in my education or training or knowledge or whatever, travel for insurance. And so I did a good job there and I just figured we were already living off the income. I don't want to have two jobs to pay for anything, to pay for a lifestyle, because I'd done that before and it wasn't a good lifestyle. But I had two jobs just to pay the bills and I didn't want to just have more bills and have two jobs to pay those bills. So I was like super fortunate. I was, I was, I was intentional and consistent enough to not touch that money, even though we definitely needed it. So had 30 G's sitting there, and I'm like, all right, I'm thinking of quitting. So I took a week vacation from my accounting job, and I acted as if it was a full-time insurance week so I could understand what it would feel like with a kind of different schedule. And it went fairly deep, fairly decent. So I don't remember what I wrote, but I, I wrote enough to quit. So I gave my notice when I got back and, uh, you know, went full time. This was summer of 2013. And, um, you know, we got started FFL December 2013, and I nearly quit again in January of '14. First full month in business, 10 years ago now. We're in April, but in January, 10 years ago January, I made $800 that month. In insurance and nearly quit again. And thankfully I had some good people around me, like, short version of it is slap me around and, and talk some sense into me and point out that I wasn't putting in the work and I was being whiny and negative and sort of expected the money to just come without the effort. And it's like, I, I didn't expect— I don't know why I didn't expect, like, hard times. I didn't expect difficulties.. And I thought if I just like was self-employed and worked when it was convenient around my sleep schedule, my kids' school schedule, you know, eating the lunch I want, taking, you know, the breaks I wanted, or being home when Steph was home before she was home from work, and just all these things. I just had the wrong expectations in what it would take to be consistently successful. Versus having a great day or a great week or a great month. I've even seen agents have a great year and then fall off. So I started to get into that, and again, had some really good people around me that helped me through those stages. And 2014 did okay. I was issuing maybe $12,000, $14,000 a month. I think I ended the year at like $160,000, something like that, and cracked $100,000 deposits.. And, um, I didn't— I probably netted a little under $100, um, after leads and expenses and stuff. $80 grand, $90 grand, whatever it was. And, um, you know, after again making that with the job that I made $60, you know what I mean? Like, I had to start spending some of the $30 to get leads and, and, and, and supplement life's— or just our life because I no longer had the job. So that $30 grand ran out pretty quick. Through that course of that year. And then you get a little bit like, you know, we're making more, maybe we should get a new car. I mean, I didn't go crazy this time because I was scared, but like I had a piece of crap. I had to get something a little nicer, you know what I mean? It's like, oh, we can go on a vacation finally. And like the money didn't go that far. And I remember being really frustrated and really wanting to— again, this is— I'm now 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. I'm in my 5th year licensed and really only first full-time year, but I'd been licensed a while and dinking around. I remember feeling some level of frustration because we were starting to have some credit card debt. I had student loan debt. My wife had the more— I lived in Steph's house. She had a mortgage, which most people have, but I didn't like it. You know, we're thinking about like, what do we do with Maddox? Was like 9 months old when I started. So he was probably 3, 3 at this point. We're starting to think about what do we do for school, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, I don't really want my kids in private— in public school forever. My other kids are all in public school, you know. I'm like, you know, I want something different. I want to live different. My kids in Steph's house, you know, she bought it for herself. She was like 21 when she bought her house. She had this little split-level, like, I don't know, 1,200 square foot house. And, uh, when, when we got together, she took on a lot of baggage because I brought 4 kids. So my kids, their bedroom was like the basement. It was a finished basement, but it was one room. And they like— there's a boy and a girl, and they— the bed was on either side. And when they got a certain age, we had to put them in. So there was 2 rooms in the basement. One was a playroom and one was their bedroom. And we had them on opposite sides. They got a little bit older, we split them so one-on-one even though they were connected. And then when I started insurance, a corner of their bedroom had to be my office. So I had a little desk in the corner, you know. And then Maddox had his room upstairs. And then the, like, the boys were sleeping with the girls, you know what I mean? It was like, dude, it became— it was chaos. Um, we were cramped in. It was, it was— and they had a blast. They didn't know any better. They're little kids. They don't give a shit. They sleep 12 of them in a room and be happy.. But I didn't like it. I wanted different. I wanted all my kids to be able to go to school together because they didn't all live together. So they went to separate— 4 went to one school district, not the same school because different ages, but same school district. And then Maddox, again, wasn't yet in school, but he would have been in a different school district because we lived in a different part of the county. And I'm like, I really want to bring them all together so they, they grow up together in a different way, even though they're not every day together. Maybe they're getting a little bit more. And mixed with some frustration about life and finances and trouble. And I remember I had this period of time where I was like complaining over a $1,000 a month bill. And one of my mentors came in, I was pissed one day about it. He comes in, he's like, yo, are you really losing your shit over one application a month? A statement like that changed my world. And I decided to do a few things because it gave me a lot of perspective. I'm like, I am actually complaining and I realize I shouldn't be. And he made it seem so simple. One app gets you out of that hole. And I'm like, huh. And I'm watching people in the industry write, you know, 5, 10, 15 apps a week. And I'm complaining about what was the equivalent of one a month. And I realized I really had to work on myself a lot and I had to focus. So, at that stage, that was early 2015, I made a decision that I was no longer going to accept a life in that, in which I worried about $1,000 ever again. And I decided to sit down and build a schedule on my ideal schedule when I would see the kids. Ideally, you know, the night a week and every other weekend I want to be with them. I want to be home on Sundays. I didn't want to have to work after church. You know, I want to spend some time, but I was willing to put in the work around that. And I really looked at my schedule and I committed. One of the things that I think I did really well is I looked at what my activity was that year and what I made, and I compared the two. And when I divided like the money I was making by the activity. I learned I was making like a couple hundred bucks every time I booked an appointment. And that's what I used to fuel and get rid of all the negative emotion I had with this business, because I realized if I knew what I was making per an activity, per appointment in this case, I know— and again, when you make the money, when you have the deposits and you have the activity, the deposits factor in all the stuff we hate. The no-shows, cancels, chargebacks, whatever, bad leads, you know, underwriting declines. The deposits factor all that in. So I looked at activity and I looked at deposits and I'm like, well, I can definitely do more activity because I wasn't working that much when I break it down. Um, and then I started going at that year like, you know, if I'm making a, you know, $250 every time I book an appointment Instead of trying to get like so much better at sales and closing, what if I just go out and run 1,000 appointments? Wouldn't I make 250 G's? And that thought process changed my world because I went out and ran those appointments and I got really good and I caught momentum and my skill set increased. And I, and I issued $460-something grand that year. And at the comp, I basically made that. I mean, there's a lot of advance money, so I made, you know, well over $350,000. And then the rest of it I made on the back end money. So that little decision to remove the emotion based on numbers, to look at my schedule and map it out in a way where we put in when the kids— I put in my ideal schedule when I see the kids every other weekend, when I had them, you know, church. I literally put it on a schedule like I printed a calendar for a month and I wrote it all in. And I just filled in the blanks. Here's how many appointments I have to run in-home kitchen table, 120 a month. If you're virtual, it should be probably double that. But I just started putting them in. I'm like, all right, Monday I can dial from this time and I can dial 7:00 AM to 9:00 PM. Cool. Tuesdays, I'm wide open. Hell, I was already on the accounting job and insurance working from 5:00 AM to 9:00 PM. What if I start seeing people at 8:00 and go to 9:00? Hell, it's saving me some time. So Tuesday, Wednesday, let me do that. Move the kids to Thursday. Let me get the kids Thursday night for dinner. Dial Thursday during the day. Every other Friday when I don't have the kids, run on Friday. One Saturday a month, run. Boom. Put the schedule together. Here's how you map out 1,000 appointments. Sitz. I booked 1,500 so I could sit with 1,000 and, uh, just mapped it out. Sat down with the family, told them the plan that I had in mind. Here's what it would do. I could put the kids in private school. We can get a house. We can donate to church. We can You know, I mean, like, here's, here's what I'm aiming for. Here's why. Here's what the schedule will be. Are you in? And Steph was in. The kids really didn't know any better. They just, you know, they were, they were good with whatever as long as, you know, they could see me and we'd have fun sometimes. And we made that decision. We hung it on the kitchen table and I stuck to that and I became like insanely consistent and disciplined in that schedule because I knew no matter what, I was making $250 every time I booked one. In my head, every booking, $250, booking appointment, $250, booking appointment, $250. I didn't care the outcome. So if I missed a sale, not that I didn't want to get better or try, but I didn't care because I knew the averages were going to work out. Made a big sale, I didn't get too excited and take the week off because I knew the average was going to work out, and that appointment was only worth $250. The sale was worth nothing to me anymore. The sale became irrelevant to me. The no-show, the negative, the cancel, the chart, it all became irrelevant because it was $250 an appointment. Appointment. And then what's crazy is that year I got better, right? So then it became more than— it was like $350 an appointment, whatever the number was. And then I got to scale back my appointments a little bit and make the same money and be more efficient, and then start recruiting and teaching this thing. And it all snowballed together into this, which y'all see today. Um, and I'm still out there chasing bigger things and don't by any means think I have the biggest or best thing going, but we've done fairly well. You know, super proud of my team and all the people I have for help. But I did get this thing rolling by one decision and sticking to that decision and a desire to do more in life for my family and myself. And this thing has like literally avalanched. I was talking on a call earlier and I think what stops a lot of people, because that seems like relative common sense and not that deep, But I think what happens is when it gets hard, people expect that it isn't going to be hard forever. And there is some— hard is all relative. It's all in the eye of the beholder. But there are difficult situations still every day in business for me. And those things never went away. But I learned how to like factor them in and expect them, not like them necessarily, not be okay that they happen all. But I know I can never get rid of all of the hardships. In business or life. So I stopped trying to, and I really started to learn how to navigate around it and with it as part of the everyday ebb and flow of business. And, um, you know, I was talking to a group today, and it's this, this crazy balance of like urgency to do more and urgency to get it in. And there's— there has to be this urgency to really go at it, but there also has to be this level of patience to understand you can't change it all tomorrow. Again, if you change the activity, your, your lifestyle, it's not going to change tomorrow. It's going to take years before, typically, before things pile up in a way where it's like, all right, maybe I can put some balance in, in life now. But, you know, even today I, I work a ton, um, but I, I'm able to have some more balance in life than ever before. And today I have like 8 straight recordings, but tomorrow I don't have any, you know what I mean? I just, I'm able to like I have the time and money now, so I can schedule the things I want, but I'm happy with life, but I'm not satisfied. So I'm trying to achieve more, which is why you keep seeing me do the same thing, is continue to do more in my own world. So it's like this delicate balance of patient in the sense that it takes time to get wealthy or rich or change your— like, it takes time, but I need you to have some urgency in starting the process it takes to achieve that. Um, you know, I was saying, like, I don't know, if you're planting crops, like, you have to be patient and wait till whatever season the crops produce fruit or food or vegetation or whatever. But you have to be really impatient, know that you have to, you have to, you have to plant the stuff before a certain time of year also, or it doesn't work. So there's a level of urgency in planning everything. And doing out the rows. And I'm not a farmer, so I can't use any of the words, but, you know, making sure things are in line and the soil's right. And, you know, I mean, they get watered the right way and all those things, and they get sun at the right time of the year. But then we also have to be patient in, in, in waiting for, waiting for the crops to come, you know. And I'm sure there's something in the middle that they're planning, whether it's distribution of those products or, you know, how to package them. There's things that are happening in the meantime also. So it doesn't mean do a bunch, stop, wait. It's like do a bunch, do a bunch, do a bunch. And simultaneously things are happening. And you're— if you're doing a bunch now, it's producing the bunch later, right? And if you do it long, like right now you might be receiving a bunch, but if you stop doing the activity, your future bunch goes away. So now you got to like plant the seeds, if you will, and and harvest them simultaneously if you want to keep it forever. And if you don't want to be in that role forever, you're going to have to learn how to build some kind of business, you know. And I would say probably the next thing that really helped me, the last thing I'll talk about, is ego. I think for a while I had a little bit of an ego and I wasn't willing to ask for help. I wasn't willing to own that I was the problem. I blamed everybody else, everything else, whether it be the leads or the clients or you know, the vendors or the carriers or the underwriting or the weather. I couldn't go out today. It was a bad call day, a bad batch of leads. It was the blah blah. I just, I was very blameful of external factors. And I had to, I had to learn how to kind of let go of that. And it's, it's this interesting balance again of like some sort of ego to believe in yourself enough that you can achieve things, you know. And I think far too many of us don't believe in ourselves. I would say that's one thing I was pretty given pretty well is like I believe I can accomplish what others have. I just need the roadmap. And I do this to try to give you all a roadmap to things. And, you know, this is a short version of it. But, you know, I did believe that I could accomplish it. I just had to be willing to, you know, kind of put my ego aside, have the urgency to put in the activity. At the same time, have the patience to know I can't change my family generationally in a few months. It might take a few years of work. And, you know, just be able to kind of continue to do that and get myself around good people where I could— that could always challenge me and let me ask questions and guide me in the right direction. So part of this, again, is for me trying to help you guys with that, provide insight from other people that can help, maybe different personalities, different stories, even though they're all somewhat the same in maybe The principles of success are pretty similar, but the stories, the details might vary a little bit. So we're going to do my best to continue to bring on some cool stories and people have that, that can help with that path and be a conduit to other success. And in the meantime, I'm doing some— you can go to my website, johnwetmore.com. We're doing some trainings, whether virtual, monthly I do one on Zoom. Where it's just open to whoever. We get in, I go over some topics, I let people ask questions, I dive into some things in detail, give advice, feedback. And then once a month, I have an in-person in my office. When this is recorded, it's— I think it'll come out— today's the 17th. I don't know what Monday is. Come out the 20— whatever it is, 2nd. I don't know the date. So, we're having our next events. It's on the website, but I believe it's May 2nd. And, if this is past May 2nd, I'm sorry, you missed it. There's another one. Just go to the website, JohnWetmore.com. There's an events tab. You can register. You can get on the email list. If you do get on the email list, I have this tracker, activity tracker that helped me keep up with all these numbers I talk about. You can get it for free. You'll get a newsletter that keeps you posted. It's everything we got going on in the office and all the events we're putting on to help folks. So, if there's anything I can help you with, don't be afraid to hit me up on social, DM me. I do answer personally in my Facebook and Instagram. Anything else, I'm probably not the best at answering, but like LinkedIn and things like that, I'm a little slow on. But in Instagram and TikTok, I'll answer DMs. Emails, john@johnwetmore.com, go to the website, any of that stuff. I see myself and more than happy to help where I can. And again, if, if, um, if some of the events help you, please get on and get in, and more than happy to contribute there. So hopefully this helps. We're going to continue to grow this thing, and I appreciate you listening. Share it, subscribe, do all that stuff, and appreciate y'all.