This Phone Script Made Me $963,000 in Telesales ft. JY The Insurance Guy | Ep20

Whatever you want to be normal, make it normal, dude. Just talk about it so much that it's normal. If $300 before lunch is normal, normalize that. I bet it would take you less than 60 days to normalize $500 before lunch. If that's just what you do and what you talk about. What up, y'all? John Wetmore back with another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Got my dude, Jonathan Young, J-Y, the insurance guy. I assume, uh, marketing is your thing given you got a cool name and brand and it works. Uh, so I appreciate you coming on and I definitely want to learn some more about, about you and that. And so thanks for having me.

Yeah, dude, appreciate you having me.

Always. So is it a market— you're a marketing guy or did you just get lucky?

There's no, no such thing really as luck. Nobody gets lucky. Um, I, I think that You know, whenever you got initials that where you just so happen to be a guy and your last name starts with a Y and you've been called J-Y since the 4th grade, you start to play on it. Whenever I was in the car business, I was like, your guy, J-Y. You know, it was like, okay, just one of those, one of those things that I've used and it just turned into a marketing personal branding thing.

Yeah, it's working because more people I think know you by that and they're like, yeah.

I prefer to get it.

Yeah, yeah, I get it though. The whole Wetmore, and we play on that a lot by, you know, it kind of happened by mistake to start on my end, and I'm like, oh, there's something here. I'll do more, and it turns into do more with Wetmore and all kinds of crazy stuff. So exactly, it's wild. Exactly.

Creativity.

Yeah, yeah, I love it. It's working for you, dude. I noticed when we were in— was it Chicago?

Is that where we were together?

Yes, sir, in Chicago. You were one of maybe— I remember two. There might have been three because it's the— John raised his hand, you raised your hand. I'm trying to think if there's anyone else. There might have been a third person. I think, I think someone asked, I don't remember who it was, for people making over— I think it was $400 grand.

Was it Arturo that asked?

Someone asked.

No, it's Cody that asked. Cody asked who was making over $400,000.

Yeah. And I was like, all right, cat's doing something. So I guess today, how do we teach people how to make a bunch of money, dude? And you're in a health space, of course. And, you know, if you want to give it— give a little background and some clarity, certainly do. I, I have— I know what I know about you, but, um, would love you for you to, um, give a little bit more insight. And, you know, I would love to give some value to people, dude.

Absolutely. I'm looking to do the same. Um, I first want to start off by saying that I'm not special. Uh, yes, I do make multiple six figures a year, planning on making multiple millions, uh, over the, the course of the time to come, um, because I'm nowhere close to my potential. Every day that I get better, my potential gets further and further away. And, um, you know, I'm not special at all. I graduated top 30 in my high school class only because there was 28 kids that graduated. Uh, I'm from a town of 608 people. My English teacher brought me in for extra credit the day before I graduated and let me come in and fill out some paperwork so I could even walk the stage and told me that, "Hey, you can barely pass my class. How do you expect to make it in the real world?" I come from a broken family. I've got a, you know, if you've ever heard the country song "Time Marches On" by Tracy Lawrence, you've heard my life. Mama's depressed, barely makes a sound. Daddy's got a girlfriend in another town. I grew up with that, right? And so, uh, I grew up just like a lot of people that are probably going to watch this. And, uh, you can either use it as an excuse or you can use it as, as a reason to go do something with it. So I chose to do something with it. I, I did use it as an excuse for a while. Eventually I decided to go do something with it.

Yeah, I can relate, dude. I, um, I think what's funny is, dude, I, I'm very fortunate, get to meet a lot of successful people at this stage, and I always like to ask questions. I'm super curious about people, and it's like, man, most of us are a shit show in some form or fashion, or come from, you know what I mean? Like, just go through stuff. So I, I, it does drive me a little bit crazy when people use that as the excuse still.

And I'm like, yeah, well, it's supposed to be like that. I think, uh, if you look biblically, um, you know, the, the apostles that followed Jesus, they were like the most messed up guys. You had guys that were drunks, liars, cheaters, um, people that stole. Uh, you had Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, uh, used to cut heads off of Christians. Um, you know, Moses was a drunk. Uh, oh, he uses— God uses the most messed up people to make the biggest impact, because if you have a perfect life, like, who's, who's going to follow you anyways?

Yeah, I love it, dude. Have you, um— so you said you used to use it as an excuse. Yeah, you look, you look pretty young. How old are you? You look pretty young. You look—

I turned 30 this year. I turned— yeah, I turned, I turned 30. And, uh, that was a big— yeah, I mean, hey dude, you've been in the game for a minute.

You've been in the game 12 years.

12 years.

Yeah, too far. Yeah, 12 years. So almost 30. Cool. What, uh, when did it change and what changed? Obviously car sales before, right? So you've been in, you've been in insurance 5, is that right?

Yeah, been in insurance, uh, about to graduate into— about to complete year 6, I guess it is. I started in October of 2018. I actually started in the insurance business. I don't talk about this part a lot because it was an utter failure, um, but I actually started in the insurance business in late 2014 as the youngest ever life insurance agent for Modern Woodmen of America out of Rock Island, Illinois. Yeah, my dad worked for them for like 40 years, and, um, I was just in a really, really bad— like, not really bad place, but, uh, number one, I was young. Uh, I cared more about getting drunk and chasing women at that time than really anything else. Uh, I didn't work. My only source of leads was calling orphaned leads, so old policies that had lost their agent. And you know what an orphan lead is. Um, and you know, calling them up and trying to flip them over to a new product or something like that. And then basically, um, my brother also worked for the company, and he gave me business so he could get, uh, his builder bonuses and stuff like that. And I just had to pay him, turn around and pay him back the commission on what he gave me. So I made no money. Um, I was lucky, really. I paid my bills during that time by playing the guitar and singing, uh, believe it or not. And, um, yeah, I didn't make any money doing, doing insurance at all. Um, I just, I was terrible. And if I would have actually put some effort into it and called and did it with some, actually cared about it, then yeah, I probably could have done, done it. But, uh, obviously I wouldn't go back and change it now for sure.

Yeah. I think you should share it more, dude. Yeah. It's part of the journey, bro. Hell, I quit twice. Yeah. So I'm like, it is what it is.

Yeah. After that, I did get into car sales, which I also sucked at. Um, because I would, I would leave the dealership and, and go instead of, you know, a lot of people, everybody's like, oh, you know, you're the top 5 people that you hang around, you know? And so if that was the case for me, I can literally track back. Like, I would, uh, my wife worked at Texas Roadhouse. Um, she was my girlfriend at the time. And, um, so all the free bread I could eat and go back there. And I would, I would work all day at the dealership, get there at 8 in the morning, leave at 7 in the evening. And then my buddies lived in a camper. Keep in mind, I'm like 20, 20 years old, 21 at this time. My buddies lived in a camper around the corner from the dealership that I worked out, and we would just go and, you know, smoke a shit ton of weed and, um, just be losers together. And that's about it. Like, we, you know, they were in college doing their— so it's completely acceptable for them. But for a guy that was— who had a pregnant girlfriend, um, and was basically— instead of looking up and getting around people that were doing better than me, doing more than me, I was literally turning around and, and falling back into the, the loser lifestyle, if you will. Not that those guys are losers today, but during that time they were, you you know, broke college kids that were just smogging out their camper with, with weed and vape smoke, you know.

What changed? Was it the baby or something else?

Well, so I changed a little bit during, uh, after my son was born, but that wasn't enough, I guess. Um, I, I really— I got a good mentor, number one. Um, so whenever my— uh, this guy came into the car business, you know, short little slick-haired, uh, car sales guy wearing a pinstripe suit. He came in and, and everybody was kind of poking fun at him and making fun of him. And I was like, you know, man, I kind of, I kind of like this guy's energy. I kind of think that he's the real deal. And I started seeing him close deals and just the way he interacted with people. And, um, he took me under his wing because at that time, really, I was the only guy that listened to him. And I still wasn't selling the most cars. I wasn't the most talented guy, but I was starting to get you know, make good money on the cars that I was selling, the 10, 12, 15, 18 cars. Um, I'd usually hover between those numbers all the time, but, you know, making good money on those cars. I really don't like anything to do with the car business nowadays because, I mean, we could— that's a whole nother conversation, but, uh, it's really dirty business and, and I don't particularly agree with it, um, very much at all. But, um, as far as my sales skills and communication skills go, I, I grew through having a mentor. And then with, with my son being born, you know, I got really, really fat and out of shape. And whenever my daughter, my wife was 9 months pregnant and I was laying down in the bed trying to go to sleep. And I remember one night sending her to the gas station to get me some, I mean, dude, I'm 22 at this time. And, uh, I was not a sexy 238 pounds. Um, you know, 5 foot tall, maybe, yeah, maybe 5'11", 238 pounds with man titties is not attractive. Um, and my head was— my head's already huge as it is, um, but my head was like a 7 5/8, 7 3/4, uh, hat, which is ridiculous, especially the fat layer on my, my head. And I couldn't lay down in my bed without having acid reflux. And so at 22, 23 years old and And my daughter's born, right? And I'm looking at this little girl and I start coming to these realizations as I'm growing up. And I'm like, look, my son is going to grow up and he's going to want to be just like me. So right now he's going to want to grow up and be a freaking loser. Okay. Because me at that time, not really bringing home the bacon, you know, uh, doing just enough to get by, not really. Not really doing my family proud, right? My wife and kids. But then with my daughter, my daughter is going to grow up and marry somebody like me. And that was the problem. I don't want my daughter to grow up and be— and marry somebody that is incapable, incapable of defending himself or her, incapable of bringing home, you know, enough money to where they can go out and have good experiences. Incapable of, uh, leading their family mentally, physically, spiritually, and financially.

So I love it.

That's what changed for me.

So then what did you change? Like, did it happen overnight? Like, I remember— I can remember my change, you know what I mean? People always ask, and my dude, I changed like it was one day, and I was like, eff it, you know? Now it took time to evolve, of course, you know what I mean? And, and I still work on stuff today, but the decision was like Yeah, one day.

Yeah, the change, the change was around that, that time, you know what I mean? And I remember it was a very short period of time where I kind of made that decision. Actually, I can track it back whenever I actually decided to really, really go all in on it. I started off in the business and if you look, you know, right here, this says October 29th, 2018, whenever I wrote my first policy and I went on a little hot streak. Because, you know, you got your inner circle stuff, your, your, your Frank thing. I don't know if you saw my training in Chicago or not, but you know, your Frank list— friends, relatives, association, neighbors, kids, stuff like that, right? And, and you're going through that stuff. So you kind of have this little hot moment, but then whenever you run through that stuff, um, that's whenever actually the real work starts. Um, and so I came out in the business, did really good, set a whole bunch of office records. Our kind of standard is, well, you should hit your $100K in 13 weeks. You should produce $100,000 of annualized premium in 13 weeks. I came out and knocked it out in 6, tied the office record, right? And that was during open enrollment when everybody's shopping for health insurance and it's quote unquote, you know, shooting fish in a barrel. But then January hit and I went from making like $9,000 my first month, $11,000. I'm like, all right, me and my wife, we're going out extravagant dinners and we're, you know, paying off debt and hey, we're living the good life now, babe. We're living better than we were in the car business, right? This is gonna be easy. And then I took my foot off the gas on the work side of things. And then my January, I made $2,700 and some change. And our big thing too, we have a bagel club, right? Which if you're, you know, you write zero, nothing, you have a bagel, right?

Got it.

And so I had two bagels back to back in January. And I remember one dude, which I ended up using this as fuel later, he was like, man, open enrollment's over, buddy. Like, you're done. You're over with. You're old news. And I've been stomping that dude's ass for the last 6 years. But my wife, during that same timeframe, had a conversation with me and she said, hey babe, you know, this insurance thing was great. You know, and it was awesome while it lasted, but like, you've either kind of got to figure this thing out or you need to go back to the car business where like, we know that you can make some money and have some steady income. And I just said, babe, like, I'm not fucking going back to the car business. I'm not, I'm going to figure this out. And so that was kind of the conversation, uh, the moment that where I really started adopting a brand new schedule and changing my daily activities as a whole, and not just in the work area of my life, but in every area of my life. I mean, you're talking, started waking up and running 3 miles every single day, started getting to the office at 6:45 so I could read my book for 15 minutes prior to me starting calling leads on the East Coast at 7:00 AM, making 300 dials before lunch because we got a progressive dialer and you know, you can get 300 dials knocked out before lunch. I would not allow myself to eat lunch before I hit 300 dials, right? I had, I had disciplined myself. From after lunch, now we're, we're calling referral partners, trying to make, you know, connections with people so that whenever they can't help their customer, they can send their customer to me. Um, and then using the afternoons to pick up another 150, 200 dials throughout the day. And then run my appointments and to where it's like, okay, I now have a mind frame of I'm either on an appointment or I'm doing something to try to get an appointment. And if you're not coming up to me trying to, you know, I'm not having no water cooler talk, basically. You're not gonna come over to me and try to distract me from my goals and, and all this stuff. Like if you want to come learn or you want to ask me something or something, come sit by me and you can watch me work. Other than that, leave me alone. I'm trying to change my family's life.

Yeah, I love it, dude. It's funny how easy it is, you know what I mean? It's like, it's not difficult.

No, necessarily decision.

Yeah, yeah. I love the mentality, just the words. Work. At the end of the day, it's work.

Putting in the work. Do more, get better later.

Amen.

You know, dude, like, that resonates in my language. Yeah, yeah, it resonates with me. We have a similar message.

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's funny, every time I post about working more, dude, I always, I always, every motherfucking time, dude, someone posts on there like about working less or being smarter or being more efficient or why work. And I'm like, I just, dude, I can't understand it, you know what I mean? It's like, I don't know, dude, I'm maybe because I'm a fucking dipshit and I just had to work hard. And I, I can't do this. I don't know, I didn't make a bunch of money doing the, the smarter. Now we got smarter, certainly with time. Yeah, I mean, that came, sure. Um, but I think getting out of the hole is, is relatively easy.

I'm in the process of having to get smarter right now. Yeah, you know, my, you know, and there's some, there's some reality to the, uh, the, there's some truth to the what gets you here won't get you there mentality. But what does stay constant is the work. The work does have to stay constant.

Yeah, it might just be different work, right? You know what I mean? You might get better at one thing. Sure, get a CRM, it does some follow-up, whatever. But you want to grow your business, buckle the fuck up. The next stage is going to be work too.

Yeah, but you, you, you, John Wetmore, are not going to get to— I think you have 6,000 agents, something like that right now. You know, like, you're not going to get to 10,000 agents by calling more leads. You know what I mean? Like, that just doesn't make sense.

It's different. No, no, no. Yeah, 100%. But I still have to— now the work is look at all the stuff I do, right? You know, I mean, how much I'm out there, how much content we put out, how much I travel, how many events I go to, how much— it's different work, of course. But it's— I'm still out working most people in our space, just in a new way.

Exactly.

Exactly. You know, exactly. So yeah, it evolves. It's like a little circle. It's like, I work more. Yeah, it gets easier. You get better at it. You get more efficient. You can make more money, less time. But you want to level up, it's like, all right, it's kind of reset, do it again.

Uh, what's the thing Bradley— Bradley has a really, like, the most simple thing. It's— and it's very similar to do more now, get better later. It's— it's— he says do more, get better, right? He's like, okay, you need to do as much as humanly possible to get your desired outcome, and then once you get your desired outcome, then figure out how to get better and collapse the time. But then you set a new, you know, new goal for yourself and you do as much as it takes. And you just— that's the scalability part. You just do as much as you possibly can to get that new desired outcome.

And then adding either staff or agents or whatever to take some of the burden off and duplicate. You know how many people I have? Dude, if I could call leads, I could recruit, I could recruit 24/7 right now, right? I could not outrecruit my agency. No matter how much I do it, just because we have so many people doing it at this stage, right? You know, but 10 years ago when I was the agency, you know, it's like different story. I had to do all of it. Yeah, you know, so it's, it's cool. What up, y'all? Officially releasing my book. You can go on and order it now at johnwetmore.com or click the link below. That's where I go over the 6 basic principles I implemented to go from Struggling Agent for my first couple years to issuing nearly half a million bucks a month. And go through stories and examples and exercises that you can do to implement for yourself.

Appreciate it.

Again, JohnWetmore.com, get yours. Later. Well, cool. Let's get into some sales stuff, dude. You mentioned the Frank thing. If you want to dive in, certainly I understand it, but if you want to add any value there to people to give them some insight, because that You know what's funny is like, I am certainly— my personality is wired more for leads, especially I'll say my personality when I got into the business. If I were getting into it today, I'd work it certainly differently. And I think where I was weak was your method, the initial. I wasn't strong. I wasn't taught that. I didn't have a desire to do that. I was even bad at referrals, dude. Like, I didn't have referral partners, I didn't have clients giving me referrals. I mean, I was a lead junkie and did well with it, to be honest.

Yeah.

Um, but I, I certainly would, um, and certainly advise today that we tweak some things and, you know, do it better today. So of course I would love to get into some ways you're generating business because, as you know, you're building an agency. Most agents come into this thing broke, can't afford to buy leads, can't afford marketing, can't afford a lot of the the broke and broken. Yeah, amen. Which, hey, is not a bad thing. Nope. For those— like, it's— don't use it as a disadvantage, as we've talked about already a little bit before. But, you know, I, I think certainly a harder one to overcome, especially if you haven't done it and can't teach it, is, all right, I'm broke and I'm broken, but I'm willing, but I ain't got no money, right? You know, so I would love some So we, we use—

I've got it around here somewhere. I think I left it in the other room or else I'd grab it. But we use a stool, you know, to kind of show the, the overall picture of what your business should look like. The three-legged stool, right? Oh yeah. And so we have one leg of your stool, which I think, I think leads like what you're talking about is the most important part because so many people are so scared of calling leads. They have so much, so much of their, their identity is like tied up in what that person on the other end of the phone thinks of them. And dude, they could give two shits about you, just like you probably give two shits about them, until they say, yes, you can help me, right? And so, um, this phone weighs like 300 pounds as soon as you try to tell somebody to call Leeds, you know what I mean? And so Um, I think leads is like the most important part, and I don't know about you, but like for me, I'm like a huge, like, you need to— if I spend all day calling leads, like, yeah, you can leave voicemails and stuff like that, but I want to get somebody on the phone too. So I'm like super big on, you know, I'm sure your people are licensed in multiple states and not just the home state too, right? And so give a bigger footprint. And so like why I start calling at 7 in the morning and can call until noon and, you know, not have to worry about, you know, calling people in the middle of their day is like, well, if I start at 7 AM, I'm going to be calling East Coast people at 8 AM, right? And I could call those. And then by 8 AM, well, now I'm calling Central Time people at 8 AM and I'm calling West Coast people at 9 AM. It's still the morning, right? Once I get to like 11, 12, well, it's still only like 10 o'clock. In Nevada, you know. And so I've got— I'm working the morning, right? And I can get my 300 dials in. 300 a day keeps the bagel away, you know. And so like, that's kind of how— and I've seen you post about, you know, hey, if you're not making at least 300 calls as a telesales person, you have no right to be complaining, right? And so I'm with that too. And so that's the first leg of your stool, right, is your leads. These are leads that, you know, you go out and purchase or your company provides to you, right? Which, wouldn't that be very nice for your company to provide you leads? Um, and so I'm sure you provide some great leads for your people too, and they probably don't, uh, appreciate them as much as they should. If you get free leads, you should appreciate it. All right.

Yeah, I, um, I have funny thoughts on that, dude. I, um, and we'll get back to it, but since you're on it, it's like Typically, free leads aren't free, right?

Most places cost somebody something, correct?

They might be free to you, they ain't free to me. Does it make sense? Now, some places make up for it in comp. They give you lower comp, and someone's like, I have free leads. I'm like, now you got 60 points in comp of leads, or 25%, or 50%, whatever it is, you know. So I think be careful there. But you know what I've learned, dude, is like I'm not a big, like, welfare system believer, even though I grew up on it and it helped my family get out of the hood. Like, I just— man, it, um, it— you know what my favorite thing to do is? To see a person that's going out there and doing their best, and they're working with whatever budget they got, and they're trying their hardest to get to them, and they're calling them a bunch, and they're following up a bunch, and they're knocking on doors if they need— they're doing everything it takes. They just need a, like, a lift. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, they would, they would make 1,000 dials if they had the leads. Sure, you know what I'm saying? They would run 40 appointments a week if they had the leads, but they can only run 10 because of their butt, you know what I mean? I'm like, I like taking that guy and going, here you go, slapping so many leads on them that they can do it right away, make the money, and then I teach them to reinvest it so I don't have to do the leads long-term free. I'll give it to them a ton in one week. And then the cool thing is, if they don't perform, I give them to Bob and he don't perform, bro, I can just give them to you, right? You know what I'm saying? So I, I find out quick if they want to put in the work.

No, I dig that.

And then teach them to be self-sufficient, because I want to teach people to be independent agents at the end of the day. I don't— I, although I'm willing to help people, I don't want a thousand people relying on me to provide them to feed them. 100%, you know. So, uh, yeah, so I think we think a lot similar on there.

Yeah, absolutely. But you were asking about the other legs of the stool. So yeah, leads, of course, um, you need to be dialing those. And then of course in the afternoon, later on too, you start again at 4 o'clock, and, and then you got all afternoon till 9, 10 o'clock. It's the same type deal, right? So you could do 600, 700 dials. I personally chose to stop. If I could go back and do it again— this is for the first-year agents out there— If I could go back and do it again, my first year all over again, I would have worked until 8, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock every single night without fail because I would have put my family in so much of a better position today.

Yeah.

Um, but I didn't. I chose to go home at 7 o'clock because I got there at 7 in the morning and I've got receipts, bro. Um, nobody was outworking me. I've got old Snapchat stories of every single day whenever I showed up and the parking lot was empty and every day whenever I left the parking lot was empty. Nobody was out working me. And so like, I guess I was already setting the standard. If somebody would have maybe challenged me on it, maybe they would have pushed me to, to get the 8, 9, 10 o'clock. But in reality, sometimes nobody's going to be there to push you. You got to push yourself.

And so, yeah, then 100%. I'd have done it.

Yeah, 100%.

Hawaii, bro.

Somebody would have or should have, dude. And like, it sucks because You know, it was like there was not a lot of people who outperformed me in that business. And they did, they were, they were already in the business a year, but there was no other rookies that were even willing to step up because like, man, they knew they were gonna get run over, which sucks. It's like you gotta have some sort of dog inside of you, um, to make it here too. But so you have your, your leads, your leads leg. Okay, well, if you just got one leg of a stool, you're balancing, bro. Like, you're gonna fall over at some point, and you can run out of leads, or you go cold, or you're lapsing. You know, whatever. Um, we call that hunting, okay? You're going out and you're hunting. That's what you're doing whenever you're calling leads. And then you have your other two legs, which are more like farming type activities, where I'm gonna go plant seeds and I'm trying to grow crops that I can harvest later on, okay? I'm gonna start building my social media brand. I'm gonna start informing— I'm gonna teach people something online that they don't know about, you you know, in your case, life insurance, or in my case, the difference between an HMO or a PPO, or why you don't need one of those shitty share plans, or why you don't need to go on Obamacare, or, you know, short-term plans, all this other stuff that you can educate people on that they don't know about and teach them why they should do business with you because you know something that they don't know, right? If all you say all day long on your social media is call me if you're looking for health insurance, why? For what? We know the same shit, you know what I mean? Like, that's it.

Teach them. I unfollowed— I unfollowed the people that go, life insurance is important, call me if you need some.

Exactly.

All right, I can't follow this person's social.

Give me a story, give me an example, right? Get, get their emotions involved with it, right? And so like, I like to do like the 80/20 rule. 80% not about insurance, 20% about insurance. Or every 3 to 5 posts that I don't post about insurance, 1 post about insurance. And then, you know, we kind of rock with that. So you, so then you have like your social media slash personal branding. I'm not big on spamming the groups or anything like that. I think that stuff's kind of corny and all you get is the low-hanging fruit. Typically you're just going to get a whole bunch of people that don't qualify. I want to, I want to get legitimate qualified customers that are my customers, not the low-hanging fruit. Any, any Joe Blow can go out there and get the low-hanging fruit. A broken clock's right twice a day. You can go out there and just spam a whole bunch of groups and you're going to get the people that are like, please help me. That's not really who I'm personally looking for. Right. I want to build a brand where people are calling me. Exactly. I'm in here for the long game. You know, do I want to make short, quick money? Do I want to feed my family right now? Yeah. But I want my stuff to be paying me and people calling me in 10 years because of work I did. 10 years before, you know, the brand I built 10 years before. So you have that and then you have your referrals, of course, where you go out and maybe in my case, you partner up with a life insurance guy who doesn't do health insurance. Well, somebody asks you about health insurance, John Wetmore, and you got X amount of people and I'm partnered up with 100 other people like you that don't do health insurance. You know, you send them to me. You want your customers taken care of, I'm assuming. Just like I want my customers taken care of whenever they ask about life insurance. So hey bro, let's work something out. I'll send them to you whenever they're asking me about life insurance. You're going to take care of them. Yeah. And then I'll send them, or I'll take care of them whenever they ask about health because you want them taken care of. We'll, we'll work together and, you know, hey man, like you're sending me stuff, I'm going to send you stuff. Let's go to the top together. I think too many people go like, oh, I don't want to work with XYZ because whatever reason you make up in your head, you know, it's just a bunch of BS and you will get farther in life. You know this. You'll get further in life with working together with other people than you will be trying to go out and lone wolf that shit.

So 100%. So just cold outreach to different potential referral partners and building relationships. I know you do events, so I'm sure you meet people there.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. Cold. I mean, whenever you have nobody, sure. Cold outreach. Luckily, I mean, hopefully you run across somebody that's in a very similar starting point. As you are in the business, and you can kind of grow together. And then now you've got a dude that y'all can, you know, y'all can really go in and conquer the world together rather than just trying to do it on your own, because that's just no fun to do it by yourself.

Yeah, for anyone—

the only reason it's lonely at the top is if you didn't take nobody with you, right?

Amen, bro. That's true. And it's true. I was gonna say, for those overthinking this, like Google you'll find plenty of people to call. Oh my gosh, don't make it that—

how about Sales Navigator on, uh, on LinkedIn? Like Google, there's a whole bunch of different ways.

Sales Navigator is bomb, dude. I, I used that when I was early on. I used to wear this thing out.

Yeah, there's— and then if you, if you're too lazy to do it yourself, like there's automation for that kind of stuff if you're willing to spend a little money on it.

Yeah, I thought— you know what I think is, um, I think it's good for people to do. I love automation. I'm an automation nerd.

You'll get more out of it if you're doing it yourself.

Yeah, but that's the truth. I'm a big believer in you can't automate shit if you don't do it manually first, right? You won't know what it's doing. You don't know why it's automated, you know what I mean? And I just think too many people today, dude, are trying to automate stuff they ain't never done on their own.

Yep.

You know what I'm like? Cut it out, dude. Automate it because you've done it manually so long you want to now do more of it and more efficiently.

And you know, they want to hire somebody to make dials for them whenever they've never made dials themselves.

I can't. It makes me mental. Uh, yeah, you know, for me it's like I'm never going to teach someone how to do something I ain't done, right? You know, so it's like, I— dude, I was doing— but bro, when I started recruiting, certainly I was doing— I was doing like Craigslist stuff at the beginning, and then where I had a lot of recruiting success early, straight up cold DMing people on LinkedIn, dude. I do 100 people a day manually. Yeah. And then to one point, like, after shit, 2 years of it I'm like, I figured out a way to automate some of it for sure, but I didn't like— man, I mean, I— hey, JY, John, you know what I mean? Then I learned to copy paste. I'm like, oh, this works, change the name. Then I learned how to get— use a couple tools, you know what I mean? It was like— but so I, I teach a lot of that stuff when people are trying to recruit and they're like, I don't have money for ads. I'm like, I do. Here's, here's 3 ways, and I give them 3 things they can do to, you know, but most won't.

Well, I want to talk to you. I mean, if we need to do that out outside of this, I need to talk to you about building building my team and then, uh, yeah, uh, figuring out some other stuff too, which I'd love to talk to you about either on camera, off camera, I don't care.

Yeah, we do it either way, dude. I'm, I'm wide open. I mean, I can certainly share— I'm open to share everything, but we can certainly— I don't mind giving you a couple of ideas. You know, I think recruiting, dude, we'll touch on— we'll share some of it now just for fun, and if it answers your question, great. If not, we can— you can, you can certainly ask me questions here. I don't give a shit. We make this whatever we want. And, uh, if we need to talk offline, we can too, because one of the things we're doing now and focused on is how can I help other people build. You know what I mean? It's like, I, I helped a lot of individual sales guys make a ton of money selling, right? And I've taken some guys in our agency and gone like, all right, let me help you build your agency, which is under our umbrella certainly. And then it started trickling to other agencies within our IMO and organization and company. And now it's become like, you know, I got people reaching out that have nothing to do with nothing, trying to look for, for our help, which I'm having fun doing, you know. It's like, I just, I want to help a bunch of people make it. Big, dude. Yeah. Um, and it's, it's fun.

Well, I'm trying to go big, and a lot— by a lot of people's standards, I'm already there, but it's like, no, like, that's— I know that I'm barely scratching the surface. Like, you're, you're friends with people that are doing— like, in my company, you're friends with people that are doing what I would like to be doing. And so I'm, I'm trying to do that and not take as long, you know what I mean? Um, now I know that I'm willing to put in the work And so, uh, if I can talk with you about that kind of stuff and like, again, for anybody watching this, like, look, look at this. Like I'm looking to this guy. He, he asked me to be on the podcast. I'm looking at this guy like, hey, I want to learn from you, bro. You're trying to bring me on here to get me to teach some people some stuff. I'm trying to turn around and go, hey, I'm trying to learn from you as well. And so It ain't you. First off, I'm not going to come on here like I know everything, you know what I mean? Because there's dudes in my company and in your company that are making 10 to 20 times the money that I'm making, helping 10 to 20 times the people that I'm helping. And so is that not what we're in the business to do anyway, is to help other people? Like, that's what I'm here to do, but I'm here, I'm here to help a ton of people. On the customer side. I'm here to help a ton of people on my agent side because I need to figure out— that's something that I've got to figure out too, is, is helping convert my agents to mini me's running around and making a ton of money. Like, if I'm not producing 10, 20, 50 six-figure earners a year, well, I'm not fulfilling my potential because they should be. Like, if I can do it my first year, I should be able to teach them how to do it. Right? And I've not cracked that code yet. And so that's why I need to talk to guys like you and, and learn.

Yeah, yeah, man. I was, I was taught early on, man, find 20 people to get to $20K, you know what I mean? Help them get to $20K. Get 20 people, $20K in life volume, you know what I mean? I know the, the commission structure is different in the health world, so use the lingo, whatever it is. But sure, you know, for us, for in my world, it was like help 20 people make $20 grand, right? You know, that was the goal. That, and I remember getting to that point, it's like, holy smokes. And I certainly couldn't do it with only 20. It took more than 20 to get 20 there. Oh, 100%. You know, but, you know, I think, um, dude, some, some basic stuff. And again, for those watching, we'll, um, I want to get into some specific sales stuff with you after.

Let's go.

But while we're on it, I'll touch on this. You know, I think duplication is certainly key. Um, simplifying stuff is making things as simple as possible, dude, which you seem like.

Simple statement.

Yeah. Yeah, because I mean, even if, even if I'm sure some parts of health insurance are complicated, fair. Yeah, there's got to be something complicated, but there's— I can make life insurance complicated if I wanted to, just like many agents do, you know what I mean? But when I'm, when I'm teaching it, my words and my true belief is this thing's really simple, you know what I mean? Like, people want to overcomplicate insurance. They're like, I don't, I don't I don't know how to explain it. Uh, I'm like, I'm not trying to be an ass, but like, when someone dies, the family gets a check. That's life insurance.

Yep.

What you're worried about is the qualification. They go, oh yeah. I'm like, okay, well, good news is they put it in a book and it's in alphabetical order. That's easy. Don't worry about that. Let's get on the phones. And I word it like that on purpose, you know what I mean? Because it— like an underwriting guide, y'all have them. Does it make sense? Good news is they put it in a book and it's alphabetical order. I'm worried about the application. Good news is it's in English. Yeah, I'm like, good news is they put it in English, and where they ask first name, you type their first name. Where they ask address, you type address. I'm like, why? What are we doing? You know what I'm saying? It's like I've learned to minimize things, minimize everything. And then normalize stuff. So whatever you want to be normal, make it normal, dude. Just talk about it so much that it's normal. If $300 before lunch is normal, normalize that. Some people are like, $300, oh my God, dude, make $500. I bet, I bet it would take you less than 60 days to normalize $500 before lunch, right? If that's just what you do and what you talk about, you know what I'm saying? So the things that you want to make, no, just you normalize. So minimize, normalize was one of the best things I've ever learned. To really create duplication.

I've got up on our board right now, not to cut you off, but—

No, go ahead.

I've got up, I've got up on our board right now. So it's good because I am implementing some of these things that you're talking about. Obviously I can add to it, but I have up on our board right now because I just, I just took over a small office. Nothing crazy. It's like 1,500 square feet, right?

Yes.

We just started June 1st.

Amen.

And, and on our board, our whiteboard with where we have everybody's name, with a zero next to it. If you're on zero, you still got a bagel right now. Uh, we got everybody's name with a red zero. You want to wipe that shit off and change it to a green, you know what I mean?

I like it.

And, and, um, I was gonna say colors. Yeah, at the top I have, uh, 20 agents at $25K average a week. That puts our, our team doing $500,000 a week. And that is our first goal. We're not gonna stop. We're not getting a bigger office. We're not doing nothing until we get to that goal right there. It's 28. And so the agents that do something, do something stupid, like small, not really small to them, maybe stupid and small to me, but it doesn't mean it's stupid and small to them. But like, if I got an agent that cracks 20 and gets within a few K or of the 25K, take them, hey, let's bro, let's go to the gas station. We'll fill up your car. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like something that works, something like that.

So did you get that colors from the car biz business or just shitlock? Where'd you get that? I got it in a book. I'm gonna tell it, I'm gonna tell it to you. So you're a previous car guy, do you know, um, you heard the name Dave Anderson? No, he's an author. He's an author, speaker, super good guy. Um, he's been a headline speaker at our events for like a decade.

Uh, look him up, guys.

Got it. I've heard the name, I don't know him though. Yeah, um, look up Dave Anderson. He has, uh, I'm trying to think of the name of the books. He has two books, um It's Not Rocket Science is one. He has a bunch. The two I like— It's Not Rocket Science, and I'll think of the other one in a minute. I think that's the one where he— dude, he— I was going to tell you the color. I got it from his book, and he explains, like, we would have them write up their numbers. If they were below a threshold, they had to write it in red. If they were above a threshold, they could write it in green. And if they were in the middle, they did a yellow. Yep, they'd write the whole thing, and no one wanted to write on our whiteboard in red. When they did their number. I'm like, yo, you're the one, you're the one that chose to be in red. Get up there, ride it. And it would— but I literally stole it from this dude, Dave Anderson, his book. He's a car guy. That's how he did it with his car sales guys in, in the dealerships. Yeah, sick. Um, so yeah, if I don't think about what we're talking, text me after. I have the other book upstairs. I'll tell you the name.

Um, simplify everything, keep it simple, stupid, minimize everything, normalize what you want to be normal. And then you were gonna go on to something else and I cut you off.

Um, yeah, I would say, um, you know, learning, learning to define— one of the best things I did— you know what I think, man, messes people up? And maybe I feel like this might happen in the car business too, um, but I know for sure in our business most people call themselves full-time based on this strictly being the only thing they do. It's not based on hours in any way. You know, and then I learned from there, once I get them on that, they will convince themselves that they work 40 hours or full-time when they don't. So then I started to define what the 40 hours were. Here's what 40 hours looks like in our world, and I used it as me. Here's how I defined 40 hours for me. You should do it the same if you, you know what I mean? And I, so I started to, I started to define part-time versus full-time. As I was recruiting. And the reason I did that is, if you're part-time, I ain't mad at you. I don't care at all, right? But I got one rule: you can never complain when it's inconsistent and sucks, because it's going to be, right? Does that make sense? So even if they were quote-unquote full-time, if they ran 8 appointments a week, in my world, that was part-time, right? And I would just be like, dude, I'm not smart enough to help. I don't know how to help you get rich. With that effort. Yeah, you mean I just don't know how to do it?

Not enough activities?

Yeah, I'm not your guy. I don't, I don't know how to do it, and I haven't met someone who can, so you know what I mean? So I got to put them down two different directions: full-time, part-time. You mean I ain't mad if you're part-time? You're just gonna understand it's gonna be inconsistent and probably suck forever. It's just what it is. And I was part-time, and it was inconsistent, and it did suck, you know what I mean? So I'm— so then I can define who I'm working with So what that did is it relieved a lot of the mental energy that I drained, that drained from me trying to drag low activity people to be something else and to have success. I was trying to drag too many people, right? So I could put them in two different boxes, which helped. So then I got the full-time people because they're putting in the activity, right? Dude, then it becomes easy because the, the skill set stuff is so simple to teach. Yeah. You know what I mean? So if you define it and you go, here's the two doors. Behind this door is low activity. It's gonna suck forever. You can't complain. I don't really know how to help you, but you can work here, right? I'm not mad at those, dude. I had like 1,200 of those sell a policy last month. It added up to a lot of volume, and it's low energy if I do it right, if I define it and I set the expectations. And then the high activity guys I'm like, all right, cool. Now that's who I start working with more closely one-on-one, because now I can make small tweaks. No, say this instead of say that on the phone. Do it this way instead of that way when you're in the sales situation. Oh, when you ask the question this way versus that way, here's what it does. Now I can start tweaking things. There's a lot more mistakes that I can make.

And they're the guys that get the training. They're the guys that get the one.

Yeah, they get the one-on-one time, dude. Yeah, because I can work with— and it's not to be mean Dude, if you only see 3 people a week, I don't know how to get you rich, right? You know what I mean? And I— and when I started doing that up front versus later, just like sales, dude, you know what I mean? You get into all the reasons why they should work with you after they tell you no, you're a schmuck, right? Does it make sense? But when you do it up front and you set the right expectations, and here's who I am and here's why we should work together and you do discovery and you ask questions and you try to figure out where they want to go with things. I'm doing all that on the recruiting side too. So who are you? Who do you want to be? Yeah, yeah. What are you willing to give up to get where you want to go, to help the family, your family, the way you say you want to? You mean you're working a job now, you can't afford to do this full-time? My first question is, bro, what are you going to replace to add this? Because it's not going to take less time to have a second job, it's going to take more time. You're gonna have to sacrifice more. So I, I get into like specific— are you missing Bobby's soccer on Wednesdays? Are you giving up church on Sunday? Like, what do you— I don't care the answer, I just need to know so I can, I can give them a path, right? You know what I mean? They got to give me something to work with. So from there, dude, then it's, and it's just wash, rinse, repeat, bro. You know what I mean? And then it just becomes quantity, you know? And, and then I would say the last thing that I'll give you on here, because we could— I could talk about this forever— is of those that go down that initial path of like, they put in the activity, they're coachable. I need coachable. I need you to do the things you say you're going to do. Yeah. And if you can't, I need you to communicate. I mean, I'm a big on like, I know stuff comes up in life, so if you said you're gonna do A and you can't, at least let me know, right? You know what I'm saying? Um, So I would say from there, what I do is, of all those people that go down that right road, say I got 10 of them. How many agents you have right now selling, roughly?

20.

All right. If you need— you can say the name if you want to, but you don't have to if it causes ruffles. Sure. If I said, think without knowing any context to this at all, the person who stands out the most, do you know their name right away?

JoJo, you know, there you go.

Yeah, but you mean, so it's like, and we didn't even define what that means, it's just like an innate— they stand— so I always look for who stands out the most and I, I, I try to get them to the next level. I try to stretch them, I try to see if they want more, I dig more, I challenge them more, you know what I mean? And then I go outside of JoJo, of the rest, who stands out the most, right? You know what I mean? And now I'm going to take that top 20% that stand out above the rest and I'm gonna give them a little bit more. A new level.

Is it true in your business too, uh, the top 20% do 80% of the business?

Yeah, hell yeah, dude. Yes. Yeah, I mean, our top guys are knocking down— yeah, I mean, that's the world, bro. So I'm, I'm trying to find that. How, dude? You can just look who stands out, dude. Who does more of the right things? Who's more grateful for help? Who's helping other people around them when they don't have to? Who's helped cleaning up shit around your office when they don't need to? Some do, some leave their shit all over the place. Oh yeah, you know what I'm saying? Someone's gonna erase the whiteboard and someone's gonna leave it up to you to do little stuff, dude. I'm just watching.

But who wipes their piss off the toilet seat? Correct, bro.

Amen, amen. You know, that's real. Get you an office, you'll find piss on the floor and on the seat every day. Oh yeah, you know what I mean?

It's like—

but I watch for who stands out relative to the rest.

You get a nickname from me for that kind of shit, man. Uh, yeah, it was, uh, one guy He came in on his first day. He was with us for not, not too long, 3 to 6 months. And every single day I called him Butt Hair Brian. Just every day you go in the bathroom after that, dude, there's going to be a butt hair on the toilet seat. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, I love it. So yes, that's some, some, some free game for whoever's watching. You obviously, you know, whatever I can do to help you. Let's talk offline too, because we can dive in and It's not a one-call thing. I mean, it's ongoing. I mean, I've been working with some guys for years.

I appreciate it, I really do. So yeah, let's get talking earlier to sales stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to get into some sales stuff, dude. Let's give them some health. I don't know that space at all. I know sales and the principles, I'm sure, are the same, but you, you got the lingo. So, you know, if we're going— let's go down two roads: leads, and let's go down the, the other leg of, you know, I mean, things you've self-generated, if they're different. Sure. And kind of how you get into the sales process. And I would love specifics whether quote-unquote scripts or, you know, I mean, like questions you ask, things like that, angles you're looking for.

Yeah, they're scripts. I mean, that's for sure. I mean, so like for, for me personally, if I'm calling leads, um, obviously I'm not going to call the lead. And this is probably the biggest deal. I just saw this with Cody whenever he was doing that live sales call as well. The, the most common mistake you see is whenever the lead picks up, you go, hi, is this John? Hi, is John there? It's like, no, if a dude answers and the name says John, just pretend you're talking to John already. Hey John. Yeah, I mean, that, that alone will, will, will lower your chance of life. That's crazy. It's crazy you even have to teach that shit. Okay. Um, but yeah. Hey John. Hey man, it's just Jonathan. Got sent over your information. You were looking for some possible health coverage solutions. Just wanted to see what your situation was. How's it looking?

Boom.

Right? I mean, like, from there, oh, I already have some. Okay. Hey man, that's not a problem. Most of the people we help already do have health coverage already. But hey, if there was a plan out there that had higher benefits at a lower cost per month, you'd want to know about it, right? I just need to get some basic information from you. Zip code, date of birth, stuff like that. Uh, put some plans together. Go over some highlights, give you the price, see if it's something that you'd like. What's your zip code? Right? I'm not gonna sit there and wait to have a banter back and forth and getting to like an objection handling contest of how many objections from this guy I can handle. I want to— I want to— I know he's got an objection. He gave me one. I already have coverage. That's an objection. That's not a reason to hang up the phone. That's an objection. Right? So it doesn't matter what the objection is. I have to handle the objection head on. I have to address that it's there. If I just ignore it and go by, you're not listening to me, I'm gonna hang up on you, right?

Yeah.

Hey man, that's not a problem. Uh, most of the people we help already do have coverage, but if there's a plan out there that had a higher benefit at a lower cost per month, you'd want to know about it, right? You don't wait for them to answer that question. Hey, I just need to get some basic information from you, put a quote together for you. What's your zip code? Right. You just go into—

super assumptive.

More often than not, ol' boy's gonna give you a zip code. And then from there, um, with a lot of places, you know, obviously you don't have to go through a whole lot of that stuff with, you know, self-generated stuff because man, they showed up on your calendar and that's the best type of deal is, hey, they're on my calendar. They've scheduled on my link. Kind of like we just set up this podcast. I knew I was going to be talking to John Wetmore at 12 o'clock Central today. From 12 to 1, and we were gonna talk about some insurance stuff. I knew we were gonna talk about it, right? And so whenever they're on your calendar, yeah, that stuff's great, but man, first year stuff, you gotta go out and you gotta drum up this stuff. You gotta be hot on the phones. But again, this thing weighs 300 pounds whenever you tell somebody to start calling leads. And so like, you gotta pick up the phone first and make the dials first. You're gonna get hung up on, you're gonna fail. But if I told you, uh, that an MLB, you know, Hall of Fame hitter, he got into the Hall of Fame with a.325 batting average, uh, that's like, you mean that guy doesn't care that he goes up and strikes out 7 times every 3 times he gets on base? Does he just go in there and kick the freaking fence and go, oh man, I really freaking suck, I might as well quit? No, he gets back up, he goes, oh well, I'm gonna show up for batting practice tomorrow. And, uh, and then tomorrow, whenever the game comes around, we'll go hit some dingers, man. You know, that's what they do. They don't care about the, the failing because they know that they're going to fail. It's like a game of failing. You're going to fail more than just like with golf. Like you're talking about Maddox the other day. It's like pro golfers. I saw it like a John Daly video and it's like pro golfers hit bad shots, you know? And so you, as some Joe Blow off the street, going to play a golf game, expecting not to hit a bad shot and getting pissed off about it for the rest of the game. Game. That's crazy. Yeah, you know, you're gonna hit bad shots, you're gonna make bad calls, you're gonna get hung up on, but yeah, make the adjustment and fix it, you know. So like, back to the objections thing, whenever you have an objection, it doesn't matter what the objection is, face the objection, address the objection, and then ask another question to move further along in the sales process to get them back re-engaged in the conversation. That's it. And then from there you go through and I like to call these roadmaps and it's just setting expectations like what you're talking about. So I have like 3 major roadmaps in my presentation, uh, or overall process or process as, uh, Chase says, uh, we gotta give him a shout out one day. Yeah. Um, you know, my overall process, but my first roadmap is that deal where I'm setting expectations around what's to come. For example, John, how often do people buy life insurance?

In their life?

In their life. How many?

Yeah. They say 5 to 7 times.

5 to 7 times. And the, the overall spacing between those times that they buy life insurance, every 5, 10, 3, 5 years?

Yeah, certainly if you averaged it, it'd be every 10, but it tends to be like they buy it at one point. And then they buy it several more times. It's like the gap gets closer as they age. Right.

Okay. And that, and that's cool. Um, so, and then if you take it with houses, if you take it with health insurance, if you take it with cars, the reason people get like all weird about your process is because they don't do this shit every single day like you do. Okay. And so whenever you're not going into the call making it stupid simple, okay, and like normalizing this, you're surprising them. And what do people do whenever you surprise them? They pull back. Yeah, they, they try to get out of the sales process, right? And so whenever you go in and you go, hey John, um, I just need to get some very basic information from you. From there, what I'm going to do is put a quote together based on what I recommend for most people in your situation. From there, we'll go over some highlights, we'll go over the price, and if that's something that you like and you want to hear more about, then we can talk about possible next steps. Cool. What's your zip code? Yep. I've told him everything I'm gonna do, so it's not a surprise to him whenever I do what I said I was gonna do. Then whenever we get into the actual product, hey man, I'm gonna go over the whole policy in full detail, section by section. Hopefully everything makes sense. If it does, great, we're gonna keep on rocking and rolling. Only question, only thing I ask of you is that if it doesn't make sense, ask me as many questions as possible until it does about that section that we're on. And then if that's something that you like and it all makes sense, then we'll go about seeing how we can get you approved. Cool? And then I go through that process, right? So that's my second roadmap. And then my third roadmap is my final destination. John, everything we talk about makes sense. Yeah, it does. Great. Cool. So everything that we just talked about, it's all hypothetical. Unless we're able to get you approved for the policy. And so I'm gonna ask you some more in-depth information. I'm gonna get where you want your cards mailed if you're approved. I'm gonna get the last 4 of your social. I'm gonna get, you know, some other stuff, middle name, height and weight for your kids. I'm gonna ask you a bunch of medical questions. And then I do have to get your routing and account number for what you wanna pay for the policy with pending approval, of course. And I'm gonna keep saying, you know, pending approval, of course, 'cause I don't know, it's hypothetical unless I can get you approved. And then I'm going to set up a time for the company to call you up, verify everything that I put on there is true and correct. Everything's all good to go. Uh, we'll be ready to start. What's your mailing address? Again, I'm not asking, uh, is it okay if we do this? Would you like to apply for it, John? No, I'm going to set up my last roadmap to my, to our final destination, which is getting this shit put in place. Like you said you wanted to, we spent an hour together already, John. Like, surely you wouldn't want to not do this. We spent 57 minutes and 7 seconds together.

I love it. So it's just providing clarity, being super assumptive that they're going to go forward with it, which changes your entire demeanor and tone and the way you word things and just rocking through.

But like, dude, literally, that's exactly what I say to people on the calls. I do the roadmap and then I do what I said I was going to do. And I do the roadmap, now do what I said I was going to do. It's simple.

Hey, so building your agency is the exact same thing, bro.

You got it. Appreciate it.

It literally is the same thing. You'll see, I believe, correlations. Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, hey, here's how this is, talk about it and then do it, right? That's it, dude.

Okay.

Yeah, except the, the only, the only— and it's similar because you got to get the client to also do. In this part, you're providing insight. Like, you doing your part for the agent's easy. Yeah, the agent doing their part to achieve what they say they want to achieve is— that's the bitch, you know what I mean? And no matter how much clarity you provide, no matter how much expectations you get, the reality is, dude, most people ain't wired in a way where they'll keep fighting through the hard times. And so probably the hardest part about building this thing is me having to accept the amount of people that are willing to quit on themselves, dude.

Yeah.

And I just have to watch them fail. Like, I literally— I go like, it's like a bunch of people jumped off a boat in the middle of the ocean and I have to watch them drown. I just do that. That was the— that was the hardest part for me to get used to.

You know the deal about the Coast Guard? Speaking of the ocean.

No.

You know the deal about the Coast Guard, right?

Tell me.

Um, I don't know if this is real. I saw it on a movie. Okay. Guardian with Kevin Costner and Ashton Kutcher, right? All right. But Kevin Costner is talking to Ashton Kutcher and he goes, do you know— he goes, how do you know who to save? Right?

Yeah.

Because Coast Guard goes out, you know, there's 20 people in the water, like, and it's dangerous conditions, all that. Like, they can only save—

you gotta pick—

only so many people fit, fit in the bucket, right? Yeah. It's like, who 'Who do you save?' Right? And he says, 'The ones that swim towards you.' Right? So like, I got the— I got the buoy in the water. I want to save you. I want to help you. I will go out and I will throw out the buoy, and I'm willing to reel you in and drag you along as much as I got to, but you got to start swimming my way, bro. I like that.

I'm stealing that one, bro. I love it.

You got it. I stole it from somebody.

I'll give you credit. I don't mind that, but I'm definitely going to use it. I like it. It, it further enhances my example.

Yeah, exactly.

I love it. What's the hardest part about selling health insurance, dude?

Um, the hardest part about selling health insurance is like what you were talking about earlier. At some point it's gonna get hard, right? At some point it is going to get hard, and how you deal with that is probably what's going to make up your, uh, your career, whether you make it or not.

Yeah. Um, what's the hard pieces for an individual agent dealing with clients? Like, what's, what's hard about navigating or making a sale or locking it in or comparing products, or, you know what I mean? Like, I don't know that world.

None of that, dude. No, it's the same as yours. None of that shit really matters. The product, it does not matter. The hardest part is waking up every day and doing the exact same activities you did yesterday with no— with expectation of the result, with no actual, like, reason that it should be there. You know what I mean? Like, like, I have no proof that this is actually going to work other than these crazy people keep telling me it's going to work if I keep on going. But I personally have no actual proof, right? Luckily, I'm on the other side. Not on the other side of like, I haven't reached the top of the mountain. Okay. But I'm making some pretty good money. Okay. I am in a nice residual account. Like I'm making some, some pretty good money. Okay. By most people's standards, not by mine, but by most people's standards, not by John Wetmore's, promise you that. Okay. But, um, the, the discipline to keep on going to whenever you're getting your freaking teeth kicked in and you're getting hung up on and maybe you're having a bad day or dude, like I've had a couple of these in my lifetime. First one was whenever I had the two zeros. Okay. That was in 2018, late 2018, early 2019. Okay. Then I went on to write $963,000 that year after I made the decision. Okay. And I made $147,000 my first year. Okay. Then second year rolls around 2020. Everybody knows what happened to that, right? Um, so then, so then COVID's going on, COVID's doing great. And in July, my sister gets run over by a boat and killed. Okay. I mean, we're coming up on the 4-year anniversary. Uh, it was a terrible deal. Completely destroyed my family, completely put me in the middle of it, trying to navigate who's right and who's wrong and who deserves life insurance money and all this other shit, right. That was going on. And that I'm sure a lot of people deal with. Okay. And I'm being very open and vulnerable about it right now, but like, Being in the middle of that effed me up in the head for the back half of 2020 and my goals of being a million-dollar producer that year, my income goals, all that stuff. Now granted, the work I did before, I still ended up doing fine and making more money than the year before, but that completely screwed me up. I had to dig myself out of a hole. And the first time you and I actually ever talked in, I want to say it was in early 2021, I was on a 75 hard workout. I remember it. And you were sitting on your back porch or something like that. And we talked. I had no idea who I was on the phone with and you didn't either, right? Or that we'd cross paths again, which is pretty cool. But I was in the middle of coming out of my worst mental downfall of all time. But I was on the phone selling customer the day after my sister got killed.

Damn. No shit.

Like talking, talking to them about the critical illness benefit and death benefit. Life insurance is built into this stuff and, and trying not to freaking break down and cry. Um, but shit's gonna happen to you. It's gonna happen to you like it happens to everybody. You get to choose what you do with it or not. It's either going to make you or it's going to break you. The choice is yours.

That's it, dude. I've always, um, I've always referenced like athletes that you hear about a lot of stories because it's typically more mainstream news media, you know what I mean? Michael Jordan's dad, and then he played right away. All— I mean, you hear all these athletes, they lose a kid and they play the next day, and yeah, nobody's like, wow. It's like kind of normalized in that world, you know what I mean? But when we get into just every— which there is everyday life to them too, but it's funny like how many people don't perceive it the same way. Yeah, but You know, it's life. Life is real, you know. So now instead of using Michael Jordan's story, I'm gonna use yours. Yeah, do it. Like, you got to fight through life, dude, and it ain't, it ain't gonna stop. It's gonna keep punching you in the face. It's like, how much, how much? And what's crazy, dude, until you just said that about us talking, I didn't remember we talked back then, but I do remember it now. That was a while ago, bro.

Uh, it's 2021, I believe. Yeah, early 2021.

No, I forgot about that. I totally forgot about that.

Yeah. I mean, dude, honestly, you're probably like, who's this freaking dipshit out on a 75?

I think you hit me up on social or something. I remember it.

We're connected through Arte.

Yeah.

So—

oh, that's right, that's right. Yeah, that's on your profile picture still.

Yeah.

Yep, I saw that. That's funny. I do— I definitely remember the phone— the phone call. That's cool as shit, dude. Um, cool. What up? Do you want to add anything else to anything we've talked about? Anything we missed? Anything we didn't cover?

I don't think so, man. Um, hey, you know, you know what, Matter of fact, hang on. Be patient like it depends on God. Work like it depends on you. If you're going to be a million-dollar producer, you, you have to become a million-dollar producer first. I wrote some shit down for this that I didn't even say. Um, you have to do the things a million-dollar producer does. You got to act like one, think like one before you can become one. I think it was you, somebody mentioned Jim Rohn, and, uh, as you mentioned Jim Rohn Jim Rohn.

You know, Arturo first, and then I piggybacked on it. Yep.

Jim Rohn's one of the greatest. Okay. But Jim Rohn talks about if you give somebody a million dollars, they better become a millionaire quick or else they're going to be broke really fast. Yes, sir. And then if we're going to leave it on something biblical, you know, the wisest man who ever walked this earth, King Solomon, who wrote the vast majority of Proverbs. In Proverbs 20, it talks about the sluggard, basically a lazy piece of shit, does not plow in the autumn, and he will seek at harvest and have nothing. So if you don't make those phone calls, if you don't call the leads, if you don't post on your social and teach somebody something, you don't go out and make referral connections, you don't go out and do anything with the business, don't be complaining and don't be mad at the people who are, who are plowing in the autumn and now they're reaping their harvest whenever you had the opportunity to plow just like them, but you're looking around and you ain't got nothing.

My dude, I love it, bro. I love the way you think and, uh, a lot resonates with me. We have a ton more in common than I'd have known. And, uh, it's fun watching you out there killing it. So keep doing your thing. Appreciate you taking some time and sharing with everybody. And I'm 100% sure I'll see you soon, dude.

Yes, sir.

Ready to go. We can do it. See you later.