This Sales Training Will Make You A Millionaire.

You want legit stats? I don't know how well you see that. February, 2,276 phone calls.

Okay.

181 people picked up. I had 75 presentations. I had 113 appointments. I count a one-call close as an appointment also. 46 sales. I wrote $67,549.92. Now I do have people who DM me, and I love all of you for doing it, that are in the big overall agency. For the year to date, I'm number 1 on my Base Shop. Okay. And I'm tracking for Hall of Fame. I was number 668 at FFL. To be clear.

This guy does not need an introduction, but I'll give you just a few accolades from somebody that I know, that I look up to, but also someone who's a good friend of mine. And there's certain people that you meet in your life that you know have done it at a high level, but they're also just really freaking cool to just be around. And that's no other than the $200 million man himself, and counting, John Wetmore. I think you're the most frequent guest, by the way. You probably 5 times at this point.

I think that makes it good, right?

Yeah, for sure. Keep bringing you back. And, um, and one of the reasons why is because your journey and your story I can really relate to. And I promise I won't ask you to tell the whole thing again, but I will ask you for just the 60-second Cliff Notes where you started, how the journey was, what you built it to, and then what you're doing now. And, and then we'll get into some stuff. So the way I want to kind of take this as an organic conversation, but I want to preface the authority of like, okay, who is John Wetmore? You know, the reason to market in the first place or to post content like this is to bring more awareness to who you are, what you've done, and where you came from. And what better way to do that on a podcast? So we're gonna be talking about the quick backstory. Yeah. What you're doing now, you've got a workshop coming up and how you're leveraging starting over, building a brand new base shop because you never did telesales before, which is very interesting. Yeah. Everything you did was in the field to build your empire. And you decided at some point, cuz I can't wait to hear this story, to go into telesales and you're absolutely crushing it. So anybody who's got any excuses about leads and telesales, we're about to kick all of that to the curb. But who is John Wetmore, man? How did you get in this business? Where did it start? Like, gimme just a quick overview.

Ah, short version. I'm a dad and a husband and a dude who likes to provide for his family. I like to provide for my team. Um, I have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder just in life to prove a lot of people and myself that you can do big things and hard things. Um, I don't know, man. Grew up in the hood outside of Boston. Single teen— single teenage mom I was born to. I was a teenage dad. I have 5 kids now. Uh, 4 are officially adults, and Maddox is my youngest at 14. And, um, you know, I went from restaurants to warehouses to put myself through school while having multiple kids, working full-time, to, oh man, mortgage business to bankrupt, 2 foreclosures, car repo'd, divorce, to starting over from scratch with Stephanie. And, um, you know, been married now, I don't know, 15 years or something now. And, uh, you know, fell into the insurance business from a dude I met in the mortgage space, just coincidentally quit on my first dial day in the mortgage— in the insurance space, literally quit on my first dial day. Um, let my license lapse, and I got it put back in right before I had to retake the test. And, um, you know, got into it part-time in 2012 and mediocre for a couple years. And life punched me in the face a few, few, few million times, like many people. And one day I decided to start punching back, bro. And that was, that was mid, early, early 2015. And it's been like a rocket ship since, dude. A lot of help from a lot of people. Um, but it all started with me deciding to make a change, to be honest.

Yeah, for sure. And so let's go just year timeframe, because you did this at the Orlando Mastermind that I thought was really good. Dude, I take so many notes and study you. Like you said, 2013, mediocre for a couple years. So can you kind of give me that timeline of like the growth and the scale? It's just like, you know, 2001, it was terrible. 2003, we went to $500,000. We went to $100,000, whatever. Yeah.

It gets harder to do the more years go by. See if I can keep doing it off the top of my head. Um, I'll tell you this, in 2012 and '13, it was just me. The first year I had any kind of team was 2014. My team for the year in 2014 did $180,000 for the year. John Wetmore was $174,000 of it. So I had 4 agents that year, and they did a combined $6,000 in premium for the year. So they wrote like one app each and quit. Um, 2015 is the year I changed. I did— the team did like $1.2 million, I think, for the year. I was $460,000 of it. Um, then '16, I did $1.2 million. We did like just under $3 million in '16, and I was like a little under $400,000 of it. Then I got out of the field. In 2017. That year we would have done $6,017,000. Then we did $10,018,000. Actually, funny story, you know, you know FFL's Agency Hall of Fame is $10 million?

Yes, dude.

I did $9,975,000. I missed Agency Hall of Fame by $25,000 for the year, bro. So when I say $10 million, I'm rounding up because I did not officially hit it that year. I missed by— I missed Agency by literally like a handful of apps. But we did 10— that was, uh, 2018, we did $10 million. 2019, we did like $22 million. That's the year that Integrity came knocking and started the process of acquiring my agency. I closed in 2020. Um, 2020, we did $50 million. '21, we did $100 million. '22, we did $150 million. And '23, '24, and '25, we did over $200 million each year. We ended at like $240 in '25, about 6,000 agents sold. And again, a lot of help, dude, for, you know what I mean? Like I have an obnoxious number of savages in our group now. So I get credit.

That's insane. And then, you know, the other myth too is you said something in Orlando was about the average writing agent, like how much premium they write that attributes to that. I can't remember what that number was. Do you remember off the top of your head?

Yeah, I mean, even now it's almost $8,000 an agent. Now, um, it's even our size now. There are some, we have some groups like sub-agencies, dude. Some of our sub— when I was building it direct, it was my own base shop early on. I was like, I didn't, I didn't want to be anywhere near under $10 grand. I was like $12 to $15K a month, depending on the phase. There are some, we got some guys doing $20, $30K a month average per agent in their agencies now. Um, but my entire, the whole pie is about $8K a month average. Um, which means some people are doing $300 and some people are doing $200 grand a month individual, right? It's a, it's a, the disparity is insane, bro.

Yeah. One of the other things you talked about, um, because I remember I think Zach was asking these questions about trying to find more people like him, you know what I mean, to replicate himself. And, and you were like, almost like, dude, I'm a pain in the ass. I don't need another person like me. Right. So I think that's what maybe one of the myths of like building, building an agency.

Yeah.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I think, um, I think I understand what people mean, you know, when I, when I say that I've found people similar to me certainly over the, over the years. But if I have found exactly me, John Wetmore would not put up with John Wetmore. You know, I think that most people come into this thing and they're like, I only want killers. I'm like, dude, there's— I've learned, and I used to think that way in a sense, but like, there's no way you're gonna beat the odds. Like, there's a lot of nerd scientific stuff with the, with the— what's that, the damn, uh, God, what's that damn chart that they taught us in school where it's like it shows the middle percentage and you got the, the ends where the— oh, what do they call that damn thing? Shit, someone watching this is gonna— the bell curve. Yeah, right, like, yeah, it's like your averages are your averages, the 80/20 rule, call call it what you want. There's all these scientific— you hire 50 people, there's no chance all 50 can all be savages. Correct. It's just not going to happen. Um, no different than no matter how many times someone buys leads, you ain't closing them all. It's never gonna happen.

Yes.

You know what I mean? And so I think too many people try to beat the odds instead of work with the odds, you know? And so for me, dude, I learned that a couple things, man. If, if, if all I One, if all I did was hire people like me, for instance, meaning I'm a go-getter, I figure things out. I don't necessarily— I don't— I get a lot of help, but I, dude, I can figure some things out in life, you know?

Right.

I'm not the most needy person necessarily. My wife and Amanda would probably argue a little bit there, but I, you know, I can, I can, I can get through some things. If, if, if all we did was find people like us What would they need us for? And why would we get paid anything, right? You know what I mean? So I think that those of us that understand how to, how to work with— it's like clients, dude. I always say like, and you can even take this into account, this is any business, not all your clients are the same. Fair. So you, Arturo, you have to be really dynamic in the way you deal with each personality. In situation and financial stuff and their thought process and their needs and where they want to go in life and what they're trying to accomplish in business, right? You have to, you have to sort of adapt to who you're talking, even though you have your standards and who you are and way, way you do business. You have to, you have to be pretty dynamic person to person, right? Right. And we're like that with clients in, in the space. You don't treat a 70-year, 78-year-old widow the same way you treat a 24-year-old newly married couple. You you speak to them different. You're dynamic. You, you can adjust. And somehow, dude, when we start building and scaling stuff, teams, most people trying to build, they're, they're like a one-trick pony. They want to have one style, speak to everyone the same way, have one set of rules. They don't want to be dynamic anymore. And they feel like if, if they have to adapt and adjust, the person is wrong. You know, no different than like when we try to teach agents that when they aren't making sales, the problem is probably the agent, not the client. When, when a sale isn't made, right? It's like, it's not the lead, dude. It's the age, it's the way you approach the lead, it's the timing. It's— there's, there's, there's different things. And so with the manager, the person trying to scale, uh, the agency owner, call them what you want to call them, they're trying to— they're, they're now in the role of the salesperson. When it comes to building, and all they do is blame the agent, just like the agent, all they do is blame the lead. And I'm like, wait, yeah, you tell the agent they should take ownership and it should be their fault why they didn't make a sale and they should adapt and they should adjust and they should get better. It's not the lead, it's you. Well, I'm like, well, shouldn't that principle hold true for the people trying to build?

Right. So this is a hot take that I have, um, seen, I've experienced, but also I want you to kind of speak to this. Because we talked about this in Orlando too. If you haven't been to one of the AJC masterminds, like, you really want to talk about real stuff to actually like grow your business. Like, John Wetmore's in the room giving sauce for 2 hours, goes, does a run, sits down hella sweaty on the patio with a salad and talks for another 2 hours. And we're inside this beautiful, um, 3-story place. Kind of looks like, um, what's your, uh, your downline that's crushing right now on socials?

Giovanni's compound, as he calls it.

Yes, yes, it looks like the compound. And then John just sits down there sweaty as can be and talks for another 2 hours in the humid Orlando on the patio, and he talks about some of this stuff. So one of the things that I'm noticing coming up right now is insurance agents blaming the leads and the vendors for the chargebacks. Sure, right, which is— and so The reason why I'm asking you is because—

and then they go dispute their credit card from somebody there.

Yes, that's the next thing. Yeah, so that's the next— I wasn't even gonna bring that up. I did it for you, bro, since you said it. And then disputing after they wrote $50,000, $100,000 off of something, and then saying the lease didn't work. So let's, let's start with accountability on not— nothing like— because we talked about not knowing chargebacks are about to hit, like being shocked that a chargeback is about to hit, first and foremost.

Right, more roll-up. But yes, yeah, yeah, debt. But yeah, I mean, I think chargebacks, dude, it's like, I don't know, man, it's, um, there's so many people, there's, there's different levels to it, right? Like, I think no matter who you are, dude, John Wetmore gets chargebacks. It is what it is, you know. Not, not everybody's life doesn't work out for everybody all the time. Sometimes someone who's on a fixed income, their car breaks down and they owe $1,200 and they only made $800 $1,000 that month. Like, stuff happens, you know. So I think there's some level of it. And again, the way I was trained in the business, Arturo, was really simple concept of— and Mike taught me this early. He was— especially when I was doing mediocre stuff, you know, you get that agent that writes 1, 2, or 3 apps a week and then they struggle financially for their entire career and they're confused and they blame the leads. So the way I was taught the business was you're going to have 3 chargebacks every week. If you only write, if you only write 3 apps, those will be the 3 chargebacks. So he's like, you may as well write 10 so you can account for it. I was like, got it. That seems pretty simple.

Why doesn't more people talk about this part though? Like telling somebody the truth about like, here's what you need to expect and here's what you need to do to outpace the inflation of being an insurance agent, basically.

Man, I mean, it's part of the game, dude. And again, I could give you a million analogies where every, every industry has some form of a chargeback. Yeah, um, so it's just normal, normal cause, cause, case of business or whatever, you know. So I think there's that level. Um, I think it could get even, even deeper, and this gets into more agency stuff. I think there are the agents that still continue to sell like terribly, you know. There, there's certainly the agent that does the thing, we're just seeing if we get you approved today, close, which is terrible. I think that there's, there's agents that push for people in, in, in— and I'm all about pushing people that are procrastinators, but there's a right way and an aggressive way to do it. I think we can all get more sales if we pushed really hard, knowing full well it's going to come back to us. But a lot of agents will do it just so they can get a quick commission, knowing it's going to charge back so they can pay their bills, and then they worry about it later, and then they get stuck in this little loop. I see that. Um, and then quite frankly, dude, if we're going to be really transparent, I see agents do shady stuff out there, bro. You know, that they, they know they shouldn't be doing. And, and, and that's where agency stuff comes in. It's like, are you watching your stuff? Are you watching agents' business? Are you watching the debt? Are you watching where they write business? Are you, are you paying attention to it? We can see it coming, dude. You know, sometimes it's hard to cut off. I got, we got guys we're dealing with it now and they're like, oh, this is the reason. And they make up all these reasons why, but I'm like, dude, you can see debt coming if you're paying attention. You know, so again, I think about that though.

That's the thing that I'm saying. I was like, what do you mean by you can see the debt coming?

All right, guys, if you'd like to attend my office 2-day workshop event that we put on 2 or 3 times a year, um, spend 2 full days, deep dive into everything you need to know to be successful in the space, whether you're selling or whether you want to build an agency, whether you want to learn how to run a staff, recruit, sell at a high level, whatever it is, we dive into it again workshop style. So super interactive. I run them every 2 or 3 times a year. There is a waitlist. If you go to JohnWetmore.com/workshop, you can put in your information and we will let you know when the next one is. There are 2 levels only. There's a basic ticket. You sit in the back of the room and you can attend, but the executive ticket is access to a private mastermind at my house where we have a full dinner. We spend 3 or 4 hours there as well, engaging with each other and learning at a deeper level, a little bit closer knit. So if you want to be at the next one, Register at the link later. All right. So if I want to— I want to— dude, I told— I told my team today, bro, I'm really— I'm having a— you know how everybody shares all the stuff out there on social leaderboards and how much they sold? I really want to share debt with names.

There's somebody out there partying and acting like they're making a bunch of money and they're rolling debt to me.

And there's people, you know, there's people like— they're literally people on the internet right now going, oh, and they're rolling debt to me today. Like, we could tag them. They're, they follow us, you know what I mean? And I'm like, I really kind of want to do it. I just, I kind of really do. And I don't, I don't, I don't know. I, I'm, I'm on a, I'm foul today about someone that you would know. Um, anyway, yeah. So, and someone interrupted me at the gym today, and gym's like my therapy. If you saw me post that, and I had to yell at someone in the gym over there, and I'm like, why we start this early? I accidentally accidentally answered a call I shouldn't have answered. And anyway, for me, it's like, you see a lot of warm market. If you're in the lead space and you see someone suddenly writing a lot of warm market stuff, referral stuff, friends and family stuff, red flag. You know, they start writing big premiums when they don't normally write big, big premiums. It's, it's probably a red flag. Um, you see, you see stuff where, um, agents have a chargeback or two at a carrier. Especially if it was someone that wasn't a lead canceled, and then they start writing that client with another carrier. So they write Carrier 1, it charges back, then they go write Carrier 2 with that same client. Oh dude, a lot of people don't notice.

I—

what we watch that stuff, um, even if it's lead-based, if they have debt here and then they stop writing the main carrier and they start writing this weird carrier over here that they don't normally write because they want to avoid the debt pay off so they can get their commission now because they, they need the money. You know what I mean? Like, so we pay attention and we compare where is the debt relative to where the IP is. So you start seeing people move carriers around. That's why we don't let agents get a lot of carriers until I know them and trust them. You get the main few and that's it. If you need Joe Blow's insurance company, I'm not a big fan. You know what I mean? If you're trying to get contracted with these one-offs. So we're watching where people place debt. I try to pay attention to consistency. I try to watch lead purchases relative to issue paid, you know what I mean? You start seeing people's lead purchases go down, you start seeing them stop attending trainings, you stop seeing that, you know what I mean? Like, you see their attendance kind of drop if you're managing your team anyway, you know what I mean? You start seeing little signs that they're pulling away, you know what I mean? It's like, you can start watching some stuff, dude. And then it's weird It's weird. They start pulling away. Suddenly their uncle's policy cancels. It's freaking weird, dude.

Magic.

You know what I mean? Or you see a guy that like over the years, I could give you 100 examples I have seen over the years where I remember back in the day and make this apply to whatever's today's world. I can make this apply to the IUL world easy today. But I remember back in the day, dude, when, when return of premium products were relatively kind of a new and cool thing on the mortgage protection side. And if you know anything about it, the shorter the term, the more expensive it is, right? So if they want their money back in 15 or 20 years, it's significantly more monthly premium than if they want it back in 25 or 30 years. So you'd suddenly see a guy start writing a bunch of 15-year return of premium policies. I'm like, yo, I never written one of those. This cat wrote 5 this week. Like, what are we doing? Or suddenly they write 5 apps that are all max face amount, $100,000 trans. They write 5 of them this week. You're like, yo, that ain't normal, you know what I mean? You just start seeing— I saw one time, dude, there's one guy's dumbest move ever, and it was in downline. So this person was nervous about someone, and I'm like, dude, do you look at your business? They said no. I'm like, if you just look, just look at your commission statements, just look at the pending business, just look at your portals, you'll find something. We go in, this one dingbat, dude, I don't know why he did it. He wrote like at least 5 applications at the same carrier, and he picked the same monthly premium amount. So like, instead of $40 grand, $40 grand, $40 grand, $40 grand face amount, he picked $200 a month, $200 a month, $200 a month, $200 a month. He wrote like 5 straight apps for exactly the same AP. I was like, yo, that ain't normal. You know what I mean? You just see weird inconsistencies. Um, and that maybe that doesn't scream the same way it does for me. If people aren't paying attention to their business at all, maybe everything's weird, you know what I mean? I don't know, dude, but I, I was always— I, again, I was taught this from Mike early, look at your commission statements every day. And I knew, I knew agents, and still I know agents have chargebacks before they know they have chargebacks because we see it right away, you know, so that I can warn them and I can talk to them. And for me, it's not the first conversation because it's It's a convo I have when I hire someone about managing debt, you know, but I think you just start paying attention to the business and where they're writing business. And again, you start hearing stories. It becomes story time about why they can't show up or why a policy canceled or why they can't pay, make their payment this month. The story time is bad. Don't believe the stories. Crooks have great stories. And some of them will watch this. And yes, I'm talking about you. I, I, I know I appease you and pretend I believe your stories. I don't believe your stories at all. So then what we do, Arturo, is if they have debt here, call it America, and then they start writing Transamerica as an example, or vice versa, it doesn't matter to me, but say they have debt at America and, and instead of paying their debt, they start writing over here at Trans. I'll put them on as earned at Trans and leave them on advance only at America where they have debt and force them to write it. So if you mess up and write over here, you no longer get paid. You have to write here. People go, that's mean. I'm like— so one guy goes, you, you did this to me. I'm like, I didn't do it to you, you did it to you, because I warned you about that's what I would do if you didn't handle your debt. You know what I mean? And he pretended he was going to handle it, pretended he was going to make some payments, and he never did the payments. And so we cut him off. And I tell people along the way, dude, if you force me to make a hard decision, it ain't gonna be a hard decision. For me to make.

Yeah. And then you also— so at the, at the Orlando Mastermind, you talked about like having that conversation too, which is making sure that you're showing up as a leader and having that conversation with the person, except for just expecting them to just come to you and handle it themselves.

Yeah, that's that thing where it's like, is it the agent's fault or is it my fault? Again, I could blame the agent for having the debt. I got it. But like, did I articulate it? Did I explain it? Did I talk about it up front? Did I, you know what I mean? Did I cut someone off when I knew I should have? You know? And, and sometimes you can't, dude. I got a guy that rolled me $16K last week. I just couldn't catch it. He had 5, 5 big policies canceled within a month. You know what I mean? Like, it just, by the time you catch, but it's too late. Sometimes, sometimes you're, you're gonna get hit with something, but he ain't gonna roll me $100 grand. Why? Cuz I cut him off and now he's mad I cut him off. I'm like, sorry, bro. I can do this. Nah, dude, you can pay it or you don't write with me ever again. That's what you can do. You know? And so—

So what does that do for you as an agency owner? Because I think that sometimes we get into people pleasing and we have all these considerations and, you know, new agency owners are thinking like this and I need this person because they're a top producer on the team or whatever. You know, I'm just thinking of all the things that somebody who hasn't been around for a while can have in their head to like, Yeah, what's your thought process? And then what's the practical way to protect your business? And by doing that— and not that you don't care about them, but again, your job is to keep the ship afloat.

I just think, dude, if they aren't gonna pay it, like, if they ain't gonna pay the carrier, they ain't gonna pay me. Um, and if they do it once, they'll definitely do it twice. You know, I had another guy this morning, and maybe he sees this, maybe he doesn't, I don't know. This guy that I made mad at, that made me mad at the gym today, Nice guy. I like him. I actually fucking like the guy. And, um, he went into business with a buddy. They went into business together. I let them get contracted under me. I like them both. Technically, one dude sold, one dude kind of just managed the thing. They went into business together. The dude that sold racked up like 7 G's in debt. They got mad at each other and split. Okay, the dude who didn't write wants to now get recontracted. And I'm like, dude, you have $7,000 in debt. He's like, no, that's so-and-so's debt. I'm like, y'all were on the LLC together. He's like, yeah, but he did it. I'm like, bro. He's like, yeah, but I just want to make it up. I want to do right. I want to sell insurance with you. I want to show you what kind of guy I am. I want to prove I can take care of it, blah, blah. I'm like, then call AmeriCo and take care of it. He's like, but I didn't write it. I'm like, dude, we can argue back and forth about this all day long. You want to know the one thing I'm 100% sure of? It ain't mine. That I'm 100% sure of. So if you're willing to let it roll to me and you just want to argue semantics over whose fault it was between two business partners when y'all when I let y'all in to get, like, dude, you'll definitely do it to me again. I, you don't take care of it here. You and I will never do business again, ever. That happened this morning, dude. Oh, you know, and I'm like, he's called me like 4 times today. And I'm like, dude, I just pay the debt or I don't wanna have a conversation. And so we cut 'em off. They can't write anywhere anymore until they take care of that. You know? So I'll, I'll get, I'll probably hit, get hit by $7 grand. But it beats getting hit by 50 or 100, you know what I mean? It's like, it's no big deal if you, if you handle it right. Um, it's part of it. You're not getting away from all debt. You're just, you're not. It's just the way the business is.

It's advanced. What the hell?

Yeah, you froze a little bit. You're right.

Am I good now?

Yeah, you're good. Yep.

Yeah. So somebody that's maybe got 50 agents, right? Maybe they got 25 agents. This person rolled up a little bit, but they're like you know, they're $40K a month producer, they're like their top person. And so they're afraid to lose maybe that person. So then they have to go back to writing or something like that. I'm just thinking of scenarios where it's like, ah, they're avoiding having that tough conversation.

It's case by case. First of all, behind it, it's case by case. I think the more— dude, if I rolled you debt, I would be disgusted with myself. First of all, as like a dude. You mean like, knowing it came out of your account because I didn't handle my business, I would be so embarrassed. I would be so apologetic. I would do anything I could to fix it. You know, I mean, I would be very proactive about it. Whereas like some people are like, what do you want me to do? I ain't got no money. Like that guy, I don't have any sympathy for at all. I'm cutting him off. If it's like, if I feel like they're genuinely apologetic, genuinely in a situation, they're working their face off, they're trying, like I'm I'm willing to give someone a hand and, and assistance and figure it out. Put it, put it, go on a payment plan, dude. I don't care. These carriers will take 9 cents a month. You know what I mean? They just want communication. Um, and so yeah, I think for me, dude, I, I think if, if, if you're so caught up on the volume versus the integrity and the structure of your agency, you'll get whacked one day. I promise you, you're gonna get whacked. I promise you, dude, sit down and talk to a, And all the people at the top of any agency or any organization, they will tell you stories, you know what I mean? And so it's like, I just wish people would listen more. And the volume is the volume, dude. People are going to come and go over the years, you know? And so it's like, I don't know, man. I just, I just wish people would take care of their stuff better, and then we wouldn't have to have the conversations anyway, and we wouldn't have to make hard decisions. So I just—

right, take responsibility for, you know, the stuff.

For sure. The agency guys, no different than sometimes you got to be willing to walk away from a client that, you know, ain't right, ain't a right fit, or something like some client trying to do something shady, or, you know, I mean, like sometimes you just got to walk away because it ain't a fit.

Yeah, for sure. And again, these are all tough decisions that sometimes young leaders, they haven't been thrust in the role to be able to, to like just make a decision like that because they're trusting that they know they need to make a decision, but they're trusting and like moving on from the person or the relationship where they're putting these emotional factors in there, which I have too. It was like firing somebody was like the hardest thing for me to do, was avoiding that conflict. But again, it comes to bite you in the butt.

And I'd rather cut my losses than hope like hell it's gonna work out. Trust me, you know, it's not, dude. Yeah, I mean, the overwhelming majority of the time, I— if I went with odds If I have 100 agents in the room that all rolled debt and all swore to me they were gonna take care of it at some point, if I would just let them write more, how many of the 100 are actually gonna take care of it versus how many let the debt roll and eventually figure it out? Because we know the industry doesn't give a shit. No, the carriers ain't worried about it cuz they know I'm gonna pay it or someone's gonna pay it or the IMO's gonna pay it.

Yeah.

I mean, it's rolling up the industry's weird, dude. The, the insurance department of insurance doesn't care. No one cares. It's the weirdest thing ever to me. I wish I could solve that. I don't understand it at all. Still being 15 years in the industry, I don't understand why no one— why they don't go to prison, to be honest.

Yes. And so on that note, like, again, the reason why this is important is because you have survived these instances, right? And so the question becomes, how do you survive it? I think one of them was You know, making sure that something isn't the biggest leg of your, your business so that if somebody decides to go in a different direction, you starve and depending on other people.

Sure.

Uh, watching the debt, obviously. Um, and then how you're able to put systems in place to replicate and scale, which is what the whole purpose of this podcast was, was, uh, talking about growing a new agency, leveraging socials, putting systems in place, duplicatable systems. Because I'm literally watching Giovanni just like, I'm like, I'm looking like this is a nephew of John Wetmore, pretty much. Him sitting in the chair, lean back, like the mannerisms and everything. And again, I'm not hating, I love it because I'm like, he's running the play that works, right?

He is, he is, he is like a little— and I, you know, he— I would say this one's sitting right here, but he's like a little aggressive, young, raw version of me. It's, it's awesome, it's fun to see, you know what I mean? I enjoy molding them and teaching them things and tweaking them, and sometimes I gotta You know, like, calm down, little man. You'll be okay. What up, y'all? So YouTube memberships, we have one now. Right next to the subscribe button, there's a neon white join button. You can't miss it. Subscribe, whatever it says, click the link, get in there. I do a ton of coaching, teaching people how to dial corrections, working on their presentations, working on their mindset. I will coach on theory, but I like coaching real-world stuff. And if you join the membership section, you're going to see live live coaching where I'm not only helping people, but every once in a while I get in there and dial myself. There's some cool videos coming out, tons of content. All the training videos will be directly on my YouTube channel that's available to members only, super easy to find. So join now if you're interested, click below, see you in there.

Um, but he is—

he's the one— he's by far— it's not even close of the people I'm working with directly, dude. He's the one that's just executing and, and following the path and, and being the most coachable right now, for sure. You know, and he's always eager to learn. And he's, you know, and he's the 24-year-old version, so sometimes he's a little raw with it, but he knows it. That's, that's my favorite part about it. He, he knows he sometimes loses his mind, but dude, he's, he's attracting a lot of people. They respect the shit out of him. They follow him at 20. He's got a following, dude. You know what I mean? It's kind of neat to see. It's kind of cool. And I miss that piece of it because as you build this thing Um, you know, it becomes funny, man. You know, um, I don't know, the agency gets big, it gets— I've gotten caught in like not building direct over the years and trying to help other people. I spent a lot of years just giving agents away, and I can, I can certainly tell you how that's hurt me. You know what I mean? It definitely didn't do me any favors, I promise you that.

What do you mean by that?

I mean, dude, I don't— you don't have a direct— I don't have a— I don't have a direct. So all the agencies that I built direct all became Integrity Partners. Hmm. You know what I mean? So then you look at it, just being really transparent, they look at it and go, all right, you got all these Integrity Partner legs. What do you have outside of that? I'm like, nothing. I'm just helping them grow. And they're like, yeah, no, you need something outside of that. So now, quite frankly, I'm the dude with nothing direct when I'm the one that talks a lot about not getting in that situation. I got into that situation because I was trying to help everybody else grow. And after a while, dude, nobody cares. They're like, okay, yeah, they, they, they don't need you anymore. They're good. Which is true. You know what I mean? So it's like you end up and I'm going, oh yeah, I guess I didn't, I guess I am, I'm not directly have people direct to me anymore. You know what I mean? It got to a point where the whole agency is, was under, under a few big groups and then one big group quit and now it's like, oh, there's only two left. You know what I mean? It just, things changed, man, over, over the years that I didn't see coming. You know, yeah, I definitely went through a phase where I stopped hiring direct. I definitely did.

Yeah. And I think that's the tricky part for us as entrepreneurs and business owners too, is that it's working so well for a long time that, you know, we're, we're, you know, that big 757 going across the ocean, like turning around, we're halfway, but there's nothing but water on all sides. It's like, well, we're halfway there, dude. Like, where, what do we do? You know, if something happens like that and navigating that. So I'm curious, is, is that, is that any part of when you started a new base shop? Is that give you another challenge? Or like, yeah, I mean, it's a combination of things, dude.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's a combination. Um, yeah, I mean, I think that I needed something to focus on, you know what I mean? Um, I wanted to have fun again. I wasn't having fun. In the business last couple years. Honestly, I, I don't know, it's not been fun. Just being real. Uh, yeah, you know, my funnest time in the business— what my mentor would always say, he goes like, we became glorified HR people. Yeah, all I do is handle shit, you know what I mean?

Other people's, dude.

Yes, I get phone calls, I'm like, oh God. What did I do, or who did something wrong now? You know what I mean? Like, certain— I just like, dude, that's what it became. That became not fun, dude. It was so fun building this, just running up, all of us trying to make a living for our families and build something fantastic. You know what I mean? Like, we were all in it together, just— and that, that, that dynamic goes away eventually. I didn't know that was gonna happen, you know? And, and I enjoyed the the part of being at the top of the leaderboard and teaching people, say this instead of say that, and teaching people how to build and scale and seeing the result and seeing like, dude, Giovanni this week, he's, dude, he's out visiting his dad or I think is with his dad or something. They're basically kind of on vacation-ish, but he's not. He's with visiting family, wrote $6K on Sunday and he's making fun of all his agents who didn't work on Sunday who actually need the money. Right.

They actually need the money. Yeah.

And he just rolls in $6K just because you can. If you buy leads. And, you know, he's— he texted me the other day. I always, I always say this thing, I always go, easy game if you, if you know how to play it, or if you play it the right way.

I kind of word it different ways. And then another way is the competition's so damn soft these days. Yeah, like, it's easy, it's easy to win. It is, because everybody's just so okay with being mediocre and soft and what they've seen on social, what somebody else thinks about them, or their own weak mindset about, like, if you just don't give a rip and go and do what you need to do and go hard enough, you can kind of get it. And more than that, you'll just get past everybody else that's just pretending like they're going hard.

Yeah, yeah. So he texted me this past week before that, you know, he has that place out on the water that he just got now. It's literally on the water somewhere in Tampa. I don't know what the water is. I don't know if it's the ocean or river. I have no idea what it is. Um, I assume it's the ocean. I don't know, but it's, it's a lot of water that he's on. And, uh, he, he has this boat that he, he like— he's in this boat club where he can use a boat whenever he wants type thing. So he's always out on a boat And he texts me a couple of days ago and he texts me a picture and he goes, uh-oh. And it was a picture of two jet skis. And, you know, he rolls in, he buys like $30K worth of jet skis and he goes, I'm going to, I'm going to put a name on them. And one's going to say Easy Game and one's going to say If You Know How to Play It or something like whatever he named it, you know? And I'm like, I enjoy that part of it is being able to help be a piece of his journey. I mean, he's working his face off, you know what I mean? I'm only doing so much for the kid. But yeah, I enjoy seeing people change like that. Had another dude reach out to me this morning like, hey, hey, another kid last week broke as a joke a few months ago, dude, struggling to get in the business, part-time job, just barely scraping by, um, to pay his rent for him, him and his family. Dude wrote $13K last week. He's out of his mind. Yeah, I mean, just someone I've been working with for a couple months just trying to help him figure it out. I, that, I love that part it.

Yeah, so let's talk about that because you, you know, you've done it at a high level, get to $200 million, and then you decide that you want to start over. But not only that you want to start over, you're in this new age— social, telesales, like all of these things— and you're not a tech person by any means. So, you know, doing and building all this stuff. So, um, shout out to your assistant holding it down because she's incredible. But, you know, walk me through the, like, a new builder is like thinking about doing is you just did it for the second time, starting completely over.

Yeah.

Usually knocking doors or doing in-person, doing telesales, the whole telesales lead thing. Everything's, you know, that stuff's unfamiliar to you, right? Yeah. Because I, I know every time you come and do a presentation, you're talking about in the field, and people are like, in the field? Yeah.

What's that?

Yeah. You know what I mean? So walk me through, like, what are some of the things that you had to put in place to get this started? What did you— what did you need to, to learn? And then how was it, you know, over— what's the time frame too? Like, you know, because I've seen it on social but I don't know a lot of it.

Yeah, I, um, I started thinking about it when I started doing this base shop a little bit because they would ask me stuff and I'm like, I don't know, bro, what do you do with this product, this kit? I don't know. How did they— the e-app, what happened with the PIN? I can't get them to sign it, what do you do? I'm like, A pin? What do you mean a pin? I don't even know what a pin is. You might not know what a pin is, but the people that know do telesales know what it is. You know, I'm like, dude. So some part of it was like, it was intriguing to me. Um, some part of it was like my original journey. None of it's recorded. I have a lot of like 1-800 conference call calls. Like we have those, but there's nothing of me. The, the, I wasn't recording anything when I was in the field. There was no video. There was no content. There was no, none, nothing. None of it. You know, I don't even know. You could probably look when my YouTube page was started, but like, I don't know, 2018, '17, '18, '19, something like that. I don't remember. And, um, so that kind of was there. And then, you know, trying to get this bass shop started. Um, you know, and then I was like, I got mad a couple times because people would— I'd be like, dude, this is so easy. And you know what I heard the most of is like, you— and you still hear this a little bit. Is like, what's the difference between the field and telesales? And I was like, dude, it's damn near the same. Yeah, I mean, yeah, they can hang up on you. It's this, this, this much different. And a lot of agents would be like, you don't know, man, you ain't never done it. You don't know, you ain't never done it. Yeah, it's just, it's different. You don't, you don't know. It's, it's harder than it used to be back in your day, old man. I don't hear shit like that. I mean, I got pissed off a couple times. This is the chip on on the shoulder part of me. And I told Amanda one day, I'm like, bro, I just really kind of want to go smoke some of these fools. And she's like, you should do it. And I'm like, but I really don't want to sell. I don't know. And I was, I was having a little bit of a mental, like, is it a backward step, kind of, you know what I mean? I was like, I was in my own head about it a little bit in some ways, um, and but then I was like, you know, this would be really cool to do it and show it.

Document it.

Just share it all live. No, just come watch me. Let's see what happens. And one, one week it happened. It just one weekend, dude. Someone said something to me. I text a man. I'm like, yo, I need to figure out how to get leads. I'm, I'm doing it. And just the end of September, bro, I just bought leads one day. And I picked up the phones and I stumbled all over myself because I mean, I know how to talk to people, but I didn't, I didn't, I ain't never done a telesale, dude.

Right. You never done it.

I don't know how to go from hello to like, give me your social. I didn't know how to do it. I mean, I could think in my head, I'm not a dummy, but I ain't never experienced it. You know, like, I can probably drive on the wrong side of the road in another country. I'm not stupid. I could probably, but I never done it. So I know I would be nervous and I know I'd mess something up. You know, I mean, it kind of felt weird like that, I think. Um, so I just went for it, dude. And I had to learn some things. I had to learn the, yeah, I mean, I come from booking appointments too. You know what I mean? So I first started trying to do it by booking appointments. Now I believe everything works a little bit.

Mm-hmm.

But dude, if you're gonna book appointments on telesales, you better have like 20 or 30 of them a day or you ain't gonna talk to nobody.

Oh, okay. So let's, so, so while you're doing this, I'm loving this because I'm hearing the things that you're learning, which is instead of trying to book them for appointment, I'm assuming you try to like, if you got them on the phone, talk to them right then.

Yeah, I mean, dude, if you get them on the phone, again, it's my day, you book an appointment, you go to their house, they forget about you, they don't want to let you in, or they're mad, or they forgot you were coming, or they changed their mind, dude, you're at their door. An overwhelming majority are going to let you in. 20%, 25% will slam the door in your face and pretend— duck behind the couch and pretend they're not home. But 75% of them, if they're physically at the house and you show up, they're going to let you in the house. You book an appointment on the phone with someone, 75% or more are not going to answer the phone for sure. No question. I don't care what automation you have. They ain't picking up a second time, right? 75% or more of the time, they ain't picking up. You know, so now, do appointments work? Yeah, dude, I sell one or two every week off an appointment. But like, some people keep their appointments, dude. Not— they're— people are so all or nothing about it. Appointments don't work, only this works, only that. Nah, it all works some. You just got to figure out what works for you. Yeah, you just got to figure out how to do the combination of it all, you know. So I had to figure that out, um, dude. I did not know how. I had no idea. Of the struggle of walking a 76-year-old woman through getting a text message to click on the link to get to e-Docusign, or whatever they call it today. It's not DocuSign officially, but same concept. Um, or to get the— just get a code off your phone. The difficulty of it, dude, in the— in how to navigate it and how to set the right expectations and how to control whether or not they get frustrated and want to give up and quit on the process. And you mean like how to control that part of the conversation, dude? That take— you got to buckle up, you gotta learn that.

Keep it light. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, buddy.

Weird, it gets frustrating. You can't, you can't take their energy and make it into nervousness for you because then they're gonna quit.

Yeah, so you gotta kind of know. Then you also now have to figure out which carrier do I write in advance, because you have to know, do they have a bank account? Do they have the, the little green government card? The, uh, what are they?

Green Dot?

No, no, no, no, it's, uh, Direct Express. The Direct Express card. Do they have a Green Dot card? Do they have Cash App? Do they have a bank account that they call a bank account but it's really Cash App, which is Sutton Bank, and not every carrier takes that? You better know how to ask that.

Hey, hold on, hold on, hold on. Now people are getting that now and they're complaining about the, the non-virtual bank account. Um, they're like, not all the carriers will take them.

So they can give you a routing and account number, but it's not a— it's not like a Bank of America.

Correct.

Not every carrier takes that, right? Yeah. Buckle up if you don't figure that out in advance.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Now it's not that deep. We have a list. You just look at it and, you know, you learn how to ask it. But I promise you, I messed that up 17 times the first month. I promise I had to text Giovanni and go, yo, who takes Chime? What's Chime, first of all? And who takes it, you know what I mean? Like, I had to figure that stuff out, dude.

Yeah.

Um, you know, so that, that was a little difficult at first. Um, figuring out lead flow was interesting, you know what I mean? Because it's a different game. I come from direct mail, dude. You know, you send a bunch of mail, you get a bunch of letters back, and you go call them. Dude, this, this, this digital lead game is different. Lead flow is different.

Selecting a lead type also.

Yeah.

Yeah, because when, when we first connected, everybody in our group— and I was, I'm assuming that was the first time you're introduced— could be like, what is this vet leads stuff? Because yeah, I have really just broken that through. Now everybody's doing vets and they're like pretending like they don't, you know, saying they invented it or whatever, which I'm not tripping on. But I know for a fact back then everybody that was cooking it in that group, like the vets was producing some money. Was that like 2022? Coming to Nashville. So did you start with vets or were you doing final expense general or what? Like when? Because I—

so the very first person I ordered leads from, they gave me, um, some vets and some trucker leads because someone told me to try truckers. So I did it and I hated it. Um, I tried AUL leads and I— brief, but I'm not really an AUL guy, not because I don't believe— I just never wrote any. And I'm like, I'm gonna stick with what I know first. I know final expense, I know mortgage protection. Mortgage protection leads are more expensive. I'm working with a new base shop, they're younger, they don't have the budget. I'm like, you know what, I'm gonna stick to bread and butter. I'm gonna go final expense. So I decided final expense first. Um, I have since started doing a little mix of vets. I do currently my current today order, I do, um, I do 50 final expense leads a week and 25 vet leads a week. The vets are doubled. So, right, I write bigger—

hold on, hold on, hold on. Yeah, go ahead, because I got a question about that. So, because I remember you said this, I remember a lot of stuff you said. You said at one point you were the number one mortgage protection agent in the company, but you sold the most final expense business.

I was the number one final expense producer. But all I got that year was mortgage protection leads.

Okay. Yes, that's— yeah. Okay, cool. And so, you know, so again, you— so you basically sold above—

and I've sold final expense my whole career. I always—

I've always done that in and out. That's a conversation to sell. Okay, cool. So that translated into telesales because then it's like, okay, I just need to learn these technical things. But like to sell it, it's just like, dude, I've sold final expense more than—

from like once it's presentation time. Dude, I'm golden. I didn't know how to, I didn't know how to navigate the carriers anymore. I don't, I didn't remember. I knew basic underwriting, the big stuff, but I didn't know the quirks. I don't know who took us if someone had a stent 6 months ago. I didn't know who took that. I don't remember that. If you have insulin or you're, or you have neuropathy with the diabetes, I don't remember who takes that and who doesn't. I had no idea, dude. I know it's important to know. But I did not know who took it, you know what I mean? Like pacemaker, well, do they have a defibrillator too or just the pacemaker? I forgot that was a thing, you know what I mean? Like that, that matters in underwriting, you know, um, knowing little quirks, dudes. You get, you get an insulin diabetic versus not insulin diabetic, some carriers look at it different. I forgot that stuff. I didn't, I don't remember any of that. You know, so I had to get back to like, oh, I got to study underwriting. And I know there's all the tools, but dude, sometimes the tools are wrong, bro. Right. I also want to know it. Right. You know what I mean? I want to know my craft. Yeah. For those of you that have followed me for a while, you know, I've helped build this agency up to over $200 million in paid annual premium per year. We have over 5,000 agents a year that sell, and I am rebuilding. We're building a new base shop, helping people build big agencies, get to multi-seven figures in income, or producers that want to— that want to just sell and get to a multi-six-figure sales career, hit me up. I'm hiring direct. I'm looking to train and mentor winners that want to work their ass off and build something dope. Click on the link below, or you can go to JohnWetmore.com/join and put in your application. We'll see if I'd be interested in working with you. DM me, hit me up, whatever you like.

So navigating the technical aspect, selecting, you know, the type of leads you want to run, and then like honing in on like a specific, like final expense, mortgage protection, or IUL, just to keep it simple. And then just like focusing on that, because I see so many people— here's what I do know from, um, you know, have the consulting, the agency, and doing the lead gen— is agents just hop around blaming the leads, and they just hop from lead source to lead source, but it's also the same cycle that they're having they're having Groundhog Day every, every 30 days also.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that I, I've always said— here's what I've told, and I've, I've, I've, I've tested with every lead type basically that since September, and the most common DM I get now by far is, what leads, dude?

I guess every agent thinks it's a magical unicorn lead source for sure.

And, and, and I, I will tell people, fine, message me, I don't care. But my, my generic message lately, because I'm who I am, has been all the ones you say suck. That's the leads I've run. Because when I— someone in my group would do it, I would order those leads and I would go sell. Now, this dude I watch on social, I don't know his name, I can't remember it, but he's, he goes like, I bought $500 worth of Arturo leads so you don't have to. And then he'll record his week and document it and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, there's a little skinny white guy doing that. Yeah, yeah, pretty cool.

I'm like, shit, that's a good idea, you know? Um, so I've kind of done that within my group. I didn't make that a thing on social, so whoever you are, I think it's pretty neat. I do watch your show.

Yeah, I just saw one this morning that was very interesting that he was cooking up, um, in regards to that. So yeah, that's funny.

Yeah, man.

So I—

you know, I think what I decide— I did decide is I'm gonna stick to final expense People go, why? I go, because it's very duplicatable. It's not because John Wetmore wants to be a final expense producer for the rest of time. I had a guy messaging me last night about IULs. I'm like, yeah, IULs are great, dude. I ain't mad at them. Sell us, sell us all of them. Sell $100K a month in IUL business. Amen. I'm trying to do what's for what I feel like is most duplicatable for me. It's easy entry. It's low cost. I can teach it really simply to agents. You know what I mean? I can scale it. There's a zillion of them. You can get unlimited leads. And so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna stick with this first and then I'm gonna teach people how to graduate up to other stuff as we go. And I'm gonna slowly teach them how to get better and better in the space. And so I've just kind of stuck to that, dude. And I've documented it and literally, dude, I dial live. All of my sales are live in my Discord. All of them. I am live every day selling. I go, watch me. People go, what's your script? Dude, I'm not a script guy. I'm a structure over script. I know how to talk to people. I know what I'm trying to do. I know what I'm trying to accomplish. I do. So, you know, I, um, I can't, again, so for me, I go, you wanna know my script? Watch me talk. Just come listen to me. Watch me live. You know, it's all on my YouTube. So my team puts it all on my YouTube today. Reese takes care of all of my YouTube stuff. Whatever's on YouTube, Reese picks. I don't have nothing to do with it. I just talk. I record everything. Every call is recorded, all of them. And he takes my stuff and he chops it up and he created this YouTube membership thing that we have now apparently. And people sign up with like, I don't know, dude, my social's blowing up from just sharing it, you know? And I had to learn how to navigate on the phone and the right way to keep people's attention and keep them on the phone a little bit longer and ease into what we're trying to do. But dude, I've, I've got to figure it out, bro. Like, I ain't the highest producing guy at FFL, but for an old man who ain't sold in a long time that rolled out of retirement, I wrote 67K last month. Yeah, I mean, I wrote 67K on all final expense last month. On like, uh, I think I was on— I was just under $6K in lead spend last month. So I'll hit— dude, if I—

so that's for the year, bro. Hold on, hold on, John, hold on, hold on, hold on. 10x ROI running final expense leads. Yeah. And people are like, oh, I don't want to do final expense.

Amen. Yes, I have chargebacks, to be clear.

Well, not even— I'm not even tripping on that, but like, what's the— what's the inputs for you to get that on a daily basis?

Oh, I have it. I'll tell you exactly. Hold on. I got, I created this little app, dude. You know, I've always had the tracker thing and I've always had it like, like you can go online and download it. So I know I'm not a techie, but I'm a nerd. And I figured out with some AI and some tools and stuff how to build this whole online tracker. So now I'm gonna drop my own stuff, dude. You cut it out if you don't wanna share it. But tracker, if you go to tracker dot, you should look at it. Tracker.johnwetmore.com. All of it's on like on an app now. Um, so I'll tell you exactly what my stats are. Um, hold on, analytics. Hold on, let me go all time.

You said tracker.

Tracker.johnwetmore.com. Yep. Um, let me do custom from October 1st till— what's today? March 10th. Apply. All right, this is obnoxious, dude. All right, you want, you want legit stats?

Yep.

I, I don't know how well you see that. I've made—

I can't see it that well because you're on your Facebook.

I've made 8,865 phone calls since October 1st.

Okay, is there any way to sort from this, like, this month Yeah, this one. Yeah, yeah.

You want to load last month?

Yeah, let's just do this month, February. I want to see like active, like I'm gonna give you February. All right, cool.

Perfect. Unless you want like 10 days of March.

No, no, just do it. Just do it. Just do it.

Yeah, February. 2,276 phone calls.

Okay.

181 people picked up. Uh-huh. I had 75 presentations. I had 113 appointments. I count a one-call close as an appointment also. So some of those are one-call close. The difference between the 75 and the 113, I had booked. Does that make sense? So 40 or 50, whatever it is. So 2,200 phone calls, 181 contacts, 75 presentations. I made 46 sales. I wrote $67,549.92.

So 40— 46.

And 32 of them were by one-call close, $43K. $12K of it was call-ins because they see your phone number on the thing after the page and they called, they called my phone number. Uh, 5 of them, $10K, were by text because I text, like, book by text or whatever. Um, I wrote, this is how well appointments work. I wrote one app for $851 by a booked appointment. And I can tell you by day of the week how much I, I, I can tell you any stat you want.

I made, yeah, I'm curious on which day of the week you write the most business. I'm curious to do that.

I'll tell you, um, Wednesday, I wrote $21,323 on Wednesdays were my biggest day. Nice. It's like a, it's slower at the beginning of the week. It gets big in the middle and then it goes down at the end of the week. Uh, just 'cause my schedule. So, and to be clear, I do this part-time. I'm not full-time. I spent, I'll tell you, I'll even tell you this, uh, 'cause I track my hours. I get 1 minute per phone call and 1 hour per presentation is the hours I give myself. I worked 114 hours in February.

Hmm.

On the phones. So it's like 25-ish hours.

How many hours were in the month of February? Yeah, but I'm noticing 25% close ratio off of that and wrote 60, uh, 67, 75 present.

No, I guess a little more than 20. My close ratio was 61%.

Well, I'm thinking out of the presentation, 181 booked calls.

No, 181 contacts answered the phone.

Oh.

Okay, contacts. Yep. So $2,200, 181 people picked up.

Nice.

Yep. 113 appointments, 75 presentations, 46 apps.

Okay. Well, that's good too. So, and that's part-time.

93.8% of it issued.

Interesting.

Was approved. Like, the policy got approved.

Interesting.

I had like a couple, couple withdrew them, and I think I had like 2 get declined.

Mm-hmm.

That had to send underwriting. I do almost everything instant, but a couple carriers, you gotta— it goes to underwriting, you know what I mean? Some quirky stuff. And I had, I think I had 2 policies get declined.

Yeah, yeah. Working part-time and putting up 67 is impressive. Working I like that.

I run the agency. I did 100 podcasts this month. I've done, you know, I mean, like, I've done an obnoxious amount of stuff.

And the guy that's struggling, that's saying he's doing this full-time, it's clearly that it's just like, you're not full-time, bro. You're not working full-time hours, or you're not buying leads consistently, or you're not on the Discord or on Zoom. It's something that—

it's the hours.

It's all—

it's always, dude, I track my whole team on it. Sadly, I wore my team out for it this month. I only had one dude who did more hours than me in the month of February, and he was by 1 hour. He did 115. I had 114. I, I was the number 2 in hours spent on the phone in my direct group. Now I do have people who DM me, and I love all of you for doing it, that are in the big overall agency. I, and I looked at this yesterday. So far in like FFL's legit issue paid, like on their website, they're a little behind. So they just came out with like week 3. I think I'm in place for the year to date. I've issued like, um, I think January, February issued, I think I was at 70K and I was in, I'm number 1 on my base shop. Okay. And I'm tracking for Hall of Fame. I was number 668 at FFL to be clear. Do you mean so like I'm not doing anything amazing selling that kind of, kind of volume. I mean, I'm doing more than the average dingbat, but I get a lot of DMs from my guys that people are making.

Yeah, right. Excuse me, people making is Final Expense, it's shit leads out there. Yeah, um, nobody's picking up the phone. My, my, um, show rate on my appointments is 40%. I can't make this work. I got chargebacks. And I'm listening to all the things, which is like 3 policies. You need my steady lead flow.

You need my favorite stat, dude. My contact rate. So the number of people that pick up the phone, contact rate. Mine's— in case anyone didn't do the math, it's 8%. So every 100 phone calls John Wetmore makes, 92 don't pick up. 2,276 phone calls, I had 181 people answer. So no one picks up for me either. 8%?

Is that what you said?

Yes, 8% pick up. I work with 8% of people. That's not 8% of leads, that's 8% of phone calls. About close to 40% of my leads though never answer the phone. Ever, ever, ever, ever. I just move on quick too, though. I don't, I don't, I don't spend a lot of time chasing people.

Yeah, other guys are just complaining, whining, um, sitting around, charging back, all of the, all of the above. So, well, one of the things that I do like is that you're, um, leading from the front though, is not just coming from an ivory tower about what you did back in 2017, 2018. I love that, having that chip on your shoulder. But I'm curious to what made you want to document the whole thing? And then how is social media, would you document everything, allowing you to grow your eBay shop?

It's, um, it's really funny, dude, the documenting thing, because I hate social media, dude. Like, I would never get on it ever. I barely look at it, to be honest. And I apologize to all my friends. I know I don't follow you or comment. I'm really bad. I'm just, I'm not, I'm not good at I'm not good at participating in social media, but thank you for all the people who do follow mine because it's a, it's an, it's an ass ton, dude. I had Reese send me some stats, so I'll, I'll, let me see what he sent me. Hold on. We just had, uh, let's see where the podcast, which I sometimes am like, do I keep wanting to, do I wanna keep doing this? I don't know. I, I enjoy it some, but some days I wanna hang myself. Um, and no offense to the people that get on it cuz I do enjoy it in the moment. But it's a lot of work. It's, it's, it's a lot of work, dude.

Yes.

Uh, we had, we just hit 10,000 downloads on Spotify, which I don't know if that's good or bad, but I certainly didn't expect that. 10,000 downloads on Spotify. Spotify plus Apple Podcasts. So like actual podcast platforms. Hey, on YouTube, 100,000 podcast views, 1.2 million minutes watched. On my podcast, which is bananas to me. Instagram, and I don't— to be clear, I don't pay for shit for views. I'm not— I don't pay for nothing. I don't pay for bots. I don't pay for fake ones from Japan. I don't do any of that. 417,789— what is this— views on— this is— hold on, shit— on Instagram in the last 90 days. Um, let's see, this is February engagements is by week. It's $80,000 week 1, $66,000 week 2, $54,000 week 3, $60,000 week 4. What did he tell me this? Oh, he goes, he goes— Reece always does these funny stats. He goes, I'm getting enough engagement on social media to— and he sent me a picture of a football stadium. He goes, you fill a football stadium full of people with engagement every week. He also does it on like, you know, the Finding Nemo movie.

Yes.

Sometimes he'll tell me how many movies, how many Finding Nemo movies he watched, and it's like some obnoxious number.

Yes. Uh, based off your watch time hours. Yeah. Yeah.

And then dude, we got downloads and like, bro, I didn't know this. I'm learning this as we're doing this. Hold on. He sends, I don't, he does all this. Podcast is global. He said, we even have a download in Iran where there's a war, LOL. And he sent me these states. Hey, we had 310 downloads in Singapore, 233 in Canada, Philippines, UK, 35 in Germany, 29 in Tanzania, and 28 in the Ukraine. I'm like, I don't know, something's working, dude. I don't know what. I don't know what any of it means. I don't know how it gets there. I don't do that. I don't. I just talk. I just share everything and we post. And this started from like, I'm not at 10 years yet on doing stuff on social, but I think 2017 or something, I started doing it. My entire goal at the beginning was post every day on every platform. That's where I started.

Post every day on every platform.

Post every day on every platform. That's where it started. And I was like, one day it'll, it'll work itself out. Something will happen one day. I don't know what. I don't know where it's going. I don't know. I don't have a plan. I don't know what to post. I was just going to post something every day on every platform. And early, it was the same thing every day. So every platform got the same post. Now today I have help, you know what I mean? And Reese is like really intentional and he pays attention to analytics. And dude, he's a, he's a savage now. So like each platform has different things today. I do none of it. I literally just talk. He edits and posts.

Just show up and talk.

That's it, dude. Yeah, he's, he's going on 2 years with me. So Reese has been in charge for 2 years. I think this month is his 2-year anniversary. Um, so yeah, everything on social, dude, is a combination of me talking, him putting it out there, and folks that I'm impacting. And I get DMs, bro, every single day of the week thanking me for something that's helped someone somewhere, which keeps me doing it, dude. What up, insurance agents? If you're looking for a roadmap on how to win in this industry, check out the book I wrote about a year ago. Do More Now, Get Better Later. Check out the reviews here somewhere. My team's putting them on. I'm getting tons of great feedback about all the people it's helped. Appreciate those of y'all that have bought it. Appreciate all the reviews that are going out. If you're new to following me or the industry, check out the book and get it in your hands now.

Well, I mean, I think it's inspiring too, because you've done it. You know, a lot of times it's like people have made it and then they, they're just telling you what they used to do that doesn't— I was like, I want your mind to give the agent an excuse in some ways that it doesn't apply, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, but he's like, nah, dude, the work ethic is the— is the— is the secret is that there is no secret. I'm just outworking you, basically.

Yeah, I just wanted to be able to continue to say with confidence how easy this business is. You know, and I'm showing it, dude. I don't, I don't have to sell. You know how hard it is to sell when you don't have to sell?

Yes, tell me about it.

To pick up the phone every day when I don't have to pick up the phone every day. I, I don't know, dude, it was a lot easier when I was broke, I'll be honest. It just was. Um, and I didn't like it then, but it's, it's harder today. Yeah, I can definitely make an excuse today. Yeah, you know. Um, but I've been here at the office, dude, till 7, 8 o'clock sometimes, dialing with my crew. And the weekends, dude, I'm on Discord till 10, 11, midnight sometimes, dialing with people, just helping them, helping them figure this game out, bro.

Yeah.

And that's leading to the growth of the Bay Shop, which you said, which was kind of the part of the question, is me continuing to do the activity and show it and share it and do it live and not hold anything back and share my mistakes. Dude, I've made mistakes, you know what I mean? Oh dude, I had these internet trolls up in arms.

It's so annoying. These, these keyboard warriors, what we call them.

Bro, so I'm like, okay, got it. That's, I can't say that, my bad. I made a mistake. Got it. I'll still, I'll stop saying it and still sell. That wasn't the hook. So now I don't say anything about anything and it still works. In fact, it's like, I can, I just, I don't know, dude. So it's like, I'm learning, I'm learning too as part of this journey. And I'm not afraid to make mistakes, man. I think so many people are scared to mess up. I'm just, I don't know, man. I'm imperfect too. So I appreciate all the messages saying how imperfect I am. And I apologize that I'm not, you know, perfect in every moment, but I'm trying my best.

Right. So, so in that practical matter, what's the one, 4 to 5, like, key things to wanting to grow personal brand that, that ultimately is for you to get more attention and people to help you or join your base shop? Right. So you said one is posting consistently, showing work, like, I'm just throwing something out there, but I'm curious on like, authentic.

I think for me, I'm genuinely me. I refuse to like, I put a camera on and let's, let's record some stuff. You know, every once in a blue moon, dude, Reese has me record an intro. Hey, this is John Wetmore, come to my workshop on blah, blah, blah, blah. You mean like I'll do a brief, but 99.9% of my content on social is that whole concept of— hold on, do I have it right there? Oh, can you see if you can see that? Oh, can you read that? Can you read that?

No, I can't, but go ahead.

It says document, don't create. It's, um, I still— Bradley and, um, Gary Vee say that a lot, so I stole that concept because that feels good to me. Just document the journey. So I'm, I'm not like creating a lot of social, you know what I mean? It's like, but I— everything I do is recorded as I do it, and and we share what I got going on. And I promise Reese has to edit a lot of stuff.

Yes. Okay, now I get it. Yeah. Don't, he said don't create the content, be the content, which is—

So meaning I don't stand in a corner with one of those things like it's a movie and go, okay, go. And that's not me. I don't do well. That's like a script to me. It was so scripted. It's not me. So for me to stand in a corner and create some content for you, I don't, that's not me, dude. But to have a camera in my face, I don't care. I just, I can just talk. Please edit my stuff because I'm gonna mess up.

Yes. But again, it's good stuff. Like, I've spent tens of, tens of hours with you, and one of the things that you don't do, which I do appreciate, is, is you keep it real. Um, you don't gatekeep, and no matter what it is, you shoot it straight. If it's right, it's right. If it's wrong, it's wrong. You don't care who it is and who is not to like not benefit you or throw shade at anybody else. You just speak the truth, which is what I love. But the one thing that I do love more than that is if you say you're gonna do something, you do it, man. Yeah, you know, because, because I was talking to Angel about this and I was telling you this, um, before we started, which was I was like, man, I don't know why John Wetmore, anytime I have an event, it's not like it's a big thing, it's super small, he's kind of gotta like got some stuff going on with his kids towards the weekend But he says he'll look at his calendar and then he shows up. And he's never like backed out or like asked me to pay for anything or to like fly him out. None of this extra celebrity type stuff. And then when he shows up, he didn't have to be there. He's pouring into people, not just for his 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes to talk. He's doing hours of it, sits down and kind of chops it up. And so You know, I wish there were more people in industry like that, which, you know, people get to a certain level and then they feel like they're too good. But, you know, one of the things I can say about you is if you say you're gonna do something, man, you stick to it.

Yeah, I try to— I try to be that guy, bro. I ain't perfect, but I can— I can control what I can control pretty well. Yeah, I enjoy helping people, man. I got a lot of help in the space. I continue to get help from people.

Yeah.

And I'm like, if I can add value to people, I find it— I still find it I don't know if weird's the right word, but like, I see it and I, I can appreciate it and I can understand it in some realms, but also in others it's like just wild to me where it's gone, you know, from the perspective of whatever brand there is, you know, whatever level I help people. And just, I don't know, dude, it's kind of neat. And I, I like, I like being a piece of people's journey, man. I like that just whatever I'm doing or the words I'm saying can impact people. And it's a lot of people I don't even know, bro, at this stage. It's insane. Yeah. And I just— I don't know. It keeps me going for whatever. I don't— I don't know why it fuels me really well.

Yeah, for sure. And that kind of leads me into this last thing too, which is, is now you're like, hey, if you like this, come go deep with me. If you're serious and not curious and you really want to get better, then get in the room. And so you started doing these workshops.

Yeah.

Right. And so you've done a couple, I guess, you know, talk about how this whole idea came about. What's the purpose of them? And then who are some people that should be in the room and what they're going to get if they show up?

I am— I always knew I wanted to do something in the space, like, outside of just what I normally do, you mean sell and build. And so I've gone to a lot of events, you know, and I know I don't want to put on an event where— and nope, this is no shade to anyone that does. I don't mind, you mean like Cody's things? I like his thing. I just don't want to do— I don't want to do that. I don't want to put on an event where people come speak up and talk to a bunch of people. I don't want to— that's not my— I see what he does, that's a lot of work. Yeah, I don't want to mess with it, you know. Um, I attended, um, some Patrick Bet-David stuff, and he does more of like a workshop style event, the one I went to anyway. And I really enjoyed that, where it was like interactive and you learn your workbook and you're, you know what I mean? Like he's on a stage, sure, but it was super interactive. Um, so I was like, I like that. And a lot of the, a lot of the years training coming up and building the agency, I would spend Mondays and Thursdays early, specifically Thursdays as I was building with Mike, um, with our group. And we'd have a training where I'd sit at the front of the room and they'd all be in the chairs and I would, I would coach agents for the week on, say this and don't say that, and tweak things and whatever. That's how I built the agency. So I'm really comfortable in like kind of small to medium groups where I can be interactive. I can, like in your settings, dude, I'm— I, that's— I'm most comfortable there.

Yeah.

Versus on— I can get on stage and talk, but it's— I'm not most comfortable there. Give me people that I can engage with and I'm— do I kill it. Um, and so I wanted that style, so I put out interest last year. I was like, would anybody even want to come if I put one on? I don't know how to put one on. I don't know what to charge. I don't have, I don't have a clue, dude, but we're gonna try it. Um, and dude, it sold out last year twice. So I was like, all right. Um, so we're, we just started doing them, bro. There's 30 people. It's in my office cuz I'm lazy and don't wanna rent a hotel and go somewhere else. I'm, I come to work every day and I'm like, well, if y'all wanna come, come to my, come to where I work. So it's literally right there in my office. We got 30 seats. Um, it's 2 days, full days. I go through everything, anything and everything about scaling, selling, building, teaching, staffing. Um, again, word tracks. It's super interactive. It's not— it's, it's engaging. Um, I go through numbers, I go through the story, I go through people's individual situations, whether you're— they're, they're newer to selling or they're trying to build something big, dude. I always have multiple 7-figure people here. Um, that come to learn how to get to the next level as well. So I do 2 days. There's only 2 ticket options. There's the cheap one and there's the, the, the— I don't know if it's expensive, but it's more expensive than a cheap one, um, you know, and it's like an executive level ticket. And that— all I do different there is I have a smaller group of people that want to be a little— have a little bit more of an intimate setting. And there's— you came— yeah, you came to it last time. I forgot.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Yeah, so why did that—

first of all, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So we put— we like pulling up and I'm always—

I just invited you in, you weren't part of the workshop. I just was like, hell, come over, you were in town.

And I, and I'm pulling up like, yeah, sure, I, I'm gonna come check it out because John Wetmore supports stuff. And I pull up and we go down this beautiful road and I'm like, is there gonna be horses walking across this grass? I'm like, where does this guy live? So number one, if you want to get the best out of something I'm a VIP person. I always select the VIP option because you're going to get the best experience, and then you get to the proximity that you get to spend going to John Wetmore's house to take a selfie in John Wetmore's house, in this mansion, this billionaire mansion, John Wetmore's, um, um, and sit on that patio and, and learn from him. Definitely take the VIP option. But absolutely incredible experience. Um, we, we sat around for 2, 3 hours, yeah, workshop, talking about real topics that you can't really do in a big group setting. After the workshop was over, these extra hours that you get to spend to actually ask him questions, learn from other 7, 8-figure people in the room, is absolutely incredible.

Yeah, it's fun, dude. So yeah, we bring people to the house, we take care of all the food. So we do breakfast, lunch, my team does all that stuff, breakfast, lunch, there's dinner at the house the night of. So it's like Thursday, it's, uh, the 16th, the 16th, 17th, April, Thursday, Friday. Um, and I'm gonna run the Boston Marathon that fall. I leave literally the next day to go to Boston to do the Boston Marathon on Monday, the 20th, April 20th. But it's 17th, so all day Thursday in the office, we leave here at 5:30, go to the house for dinner, and then come back Friday, all day. Um, Friday, and again, two tiers. It, it, you, you will learn some stuff and you get to interact. And again, it's everything. Everything. Sales, systems, staffing. We're gonna talk about some AI stuff this time. I always, I always change, mix it up a little bit, add some new stuff. We talk about social stuff and marketing and, you know, a lot of my mistakes, bro. I share a lot of them, you know. Let's try to help people skip some of the journey. Um, so yeah, I think people that want to get to the next level, I mean, it's— if you're— if— just be honest. It's like, you gotta, you gotta be— well, you gotta be willing to be challenged because I'm definitely gonna challenge you. If the reason why you're not successful is you don't work, you will feel very embarrassed if you come, I promise, because we'll talk about it like live. Um, but we'll, we'll go through people. I get people to like quote unquote role play with people and I hear how, how little they study and work on their craft. So we work on people's skill sets. But for me, dude, I do well when people want to advance and push themselves and challenge themselves to a new level. Um, those are the people I like that, that tend to do the best here. Um, if you, if you're happy where you're at, it's not for you. Honestly, just, you know, I mean, stay home. Um, but, you know, if you want to, if you want to get to new heights and be challenged a little bit, and we're open book about what we do to win, and people like to come see my, see my office and see the staff and see what happens, see our operation. And I'm like, it ain't— it's just me, Amanda, and Reese. Like, it's cool. Oh, but you can come see it, come see the pod— the studio, and, you know, we'll feed you a lot and teach you a lot.

Be a lot of fun for sure. And what's the website if people are looking to go and want to sign up for this?

Johnwetmore.com/workshop.

And it's April 16th and 17th, right? Yep. And Kennesaw.

Yep, it's Kennesaw, Georgia. So you definitely should come in the day before. Um, if you're interested, just fill out the thing. My team will send you everything. Um, it's like $300, but it's 3— I think it's 3, dude, I think it's $397 for the basic ticket.

For what you get in value.

Yeah, dude, it's stupid. I'm like, I could, I could make money selling insurance, to be clear.

Yeah, yeah, it's less than like a $50 a day, $50 per month policy, right?

So it's like $397, and I think the VIP one is $1,397, I believe my team priced it at.

Still, still cheap to get to go to the house and, and spend time together. It's absolutely incredible. And what I— again, the reason why I'm talking about this, because I went, and so I'm like, man, the value that people you got is worth $5,000, $10,000. And again, the whole purpose is to just to, to help more people. And I know when you do get the VIP experiences, you know, the deeper you go, the higher you grow. So I think if anybody is on the fence, they're kind of struggling, they're not where they are, they should be inspired by this story. For somebody that's come in and passed you up when you got all the resources and everything, that he didn't know a lot of this stuff, and then The other thing is sometimes you need to get in the group to get out of your own head. And that's one of the things I do like about workshops is getting in an environment that you can see everybody's got some shit going on and how they're able to transcend it. And sometimes you need to get away from it, right? To get away from it, to reset, to get back into that and that mode. Or maybe you need to recommit, right? Maybe you need to refocus. Maybe you need to redesign how you're doing things. Maybe you need to restructure some stuff. Maybe you need to reposition yourself. Maybe you need to reapply some things you were doing before. All of those things, when you get in an environment like that, this immersive event, it can only help take you to the next level. And if you have stopped investing in yourself, that's the first mistake that most entrepreneurs make in, in developing themselves. Because I always say entrepreneurship is nothing more than a journey of personal development, right? So let's look at this journey for you too. You got— you start— you took your health serious, you start committing to social. And like, as these things are going on, that's hard stuff to do. That dialing the phone when you don't need to, which is still hard, seems easy compared to all the other things that you've done in your life outside of work, like climbing mountains and like all this other crazy shit, right? And so again, my point to that is, is when you stop developing as a person, you also stop growing, um, as well. So definitely get in the room.

My man, I appreciate it, brother.

John, for sure, man. Anyway, I can support you, dude. Thanks again for dropping all that game, guys. Go to johnwetmore.com/workshop, April 16th, 17th. Get your tickets. We'll see you next time.

Later.

Mm-hmm!

Oh my God— oh no... Ahh! Mhm?

Huh?! What was that!?

Um, um, uh, I'm sorry about this one guys. It's just not working out for me today so we'll have to do it again another day. Okay bye-bye now! Bye!