This Strategy Made Me $2 MILLION in Insurance Sales ft. Grady Polcyn | Ep82

What up, y'all?

John Wetmore back with another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Have my buddy Grady Poulsen on. He and I have known each other a really long time, and he's one of the best in the industry, not only at selling, building teams, marketing. And we had him on to kill it and share with you guys. Hope you enjoy. Obviously, you know how I teach. We've been around a long time. And, you know, from your perspective, though, I'd love for you to kind of give them a little vision of what this industry can do because they aren't familiar with FFL or you or the journey or any of us, dude. It's just this big conglomerate that people come into now. Um, so would love for you to give some insight into, into that and like what you see, man, the, the ones that, the ones that win versus the ones that don't, you know what I mean? Like what, what they do right, what they do wrong. Just get into that, man. And, um, whatever you call along the way, great. And maybe we'll chop it up along the way.

I love it. Sure. Well, I'll start with just a tiny bit of backstory, right? That's always give some clarity, right? Everyone's got a story and, you know, mine can be good at times. It can have impact. It can get— you can find yourself in my story and find clarity within it. But, you know, like many of us, I mean, I'm a father of 4. When I started this business as a father of 2, I always make the joke that my wife's the best salesman in the house, which is why we have 4 kids and not 2. But I reflect back like we've all, you know, you wouldn't be here choosing no salary, no benefits, buy leads, and you against the world if you didn't believe in yourself to some degree. And that is a, that is a good place to be. Now, do you believe in yourself all the time? Do you push yourself all the time? Do you make all the right decisions all the time? No one does. So this isn't, this isn't like, you know, a rehab accountability call, but this is the same time, like, if you've, if you've made the decision to be here right now, like, just keep making the decision to be here and keep taking these steps forward. And I reflect back to my, my life as I, you know, started in in network marketing, which is like Amway, Avon, Herbalife, that type business. And it was a company called Vemma and they had a liquid supplement and then they made an energy drink and I did pretty good, you know, but pretty good was I had 30,000 people in my downline and I think my best month I made $10 grand, best month, which is bananas, 30,000 people in my downline. And so great product, not great comp plan, but I learned a ton about personal development and growth and communication. And then from there I got into software and software. I don't know anything about zeros and ones or coding or JSON or, or jQuery or anything like that, but I could talk enough and I was ambitious enough to go find customers for our software company. So in that 4 years I built that business up to $300,000 in gross, uh, revenue per month, which sounds great except when you're the owner, you eat last. And all my coders and all my software stuff and all the tech stuff we had to pay for, all my affiliates, I was probably making, John, $40,000 a year, $40,000 a year running a company that's doing millions in revenue. But because you're, you're betting on the future, right? Every profit you get, you're buying new this, you're buying new that, you're trying to redesign, you're trying to do programs. And so I learned a ton in that world. And, and for anyone that's done stuff that hasn't made you a bunch of money, welcome to life, right? That's why you're here, because you're trying to find the thing that can make you money and take care of your family and satisfy your ambition. And so for me, when I saw insurance, I saw this, this business, I ran into Andrew Taylor at an old hotspot back in the previous deal. I was in there for a minute. Hotspot. That's what they called it back then.

They were.

Yeah, back then. And so I saw this young guy in 2015. And so here's, here's context for you guys. I mean, you know, some of you may be young, young at heart or just trying to get this thing going. But I saw Andrew Taylor in 2015 and I remember him speaking from stage and he goes, I made $100,000 last year selling insurance. And $100,000 last year in overrides from my team. And I was like, that's crazy. Like, that's, that's like, that's like doctor money in my mind. Like, I was like, that's bananas. But still life hadn't, you know, been hard enough, right? The pain wasn't, wasn't strong enough for me to take the leap of faith. I was trying to pursue this software thing and I was doing this, I was doing software and then I was trying to build more, make more money. 'Cause 40 grand when you got a wife and kids at home ain't, is nothing, right? And so, wasn't ready, wasn't ready, wasn't ready. Went out a couple more years and the pain got strong enough, right? What's the old adage with the dog on the porch where he's yelping on the porch and the guy goes, you know, why is the dog yelping? Well, he's got a nail in his foot. Well, why doesn't he pull it out? It doesn't hurt that bad, right? And it's just like this thought process of like everyone's in pain but no one's willing to do anything about it, right? So finally, end of 2017, I had my third child and, And I was just like, okay, I got to figure something out, right? These kids are expensive, right? My oldest is getting in a dance. Like, just, you got to figure something out. So I reflect back and I connect with this Andrew Taylor guy, and I reach out to him and go, hey man, I met you a couple years ago and I just wanted to see if you're still bringing on agents. And he's like, yeah, for sure. I was like, how are you doing? And he goes, well, last year I wrote $400,000 on my own pen and I made $400,000 in overrides. And my head exploded and I was like, oh my God. So like, if that tells you anything, guys, it's consistency, right? Andrew maybe started in 2012, 2013 and just built it up to $200K. And then the compound effect took over and by 2017 he's making $800K. And here I am going, okay, this is it. And for me, I just was, I burned the ships with my software company. Respect. I mean, burn the ships is, that was the wrong term. I left amicably and just said, hey guys, I'm gonna pursue something else and gave them the company. 2018, you know, I bought a batch of leads and, and started down the phone. These are booking in-person appointments, doing my best to, you know, build trust and try to make sure that, you know, make sure they're going to show up because, you know, it used to not be sitting in board shorts and a backwards hat and dial the phone on a power dialer. Right. We had to like call humans and then show up and like drink their, like, you know, cup of water that had like, you know, Flex on it. And you're like, there's, there's a piece of hair in the water, but I'm so thirsty. Fuck it. You know, like, just, you just do it. And so, so, you know, let's talk about the olden days, right? But, but for some perspective on what you guys have at your fingertips, on how we had paper apps and a drive all over the country to make money, my first 10 appointments I booked, the first 9 no-showed me. But throughout those first 9, every time I'm driving to the appointment, I'm listening to John Wetmore on how to sell final expense. And when they no-showed me, I'm 7 minutes later after banging on this carport front door and they didn't show up and there's no car there, and I'm just like, I got to get better. I'm listening to John John Wetmore on the way, on the way home, and back and forth and back and forth and just trying to get these appointments. And finally, the 10th one, Patricia P, she was there. John came out of me. Like, I'm not like— this is just— this is my story. And I've, you know, it's good to see— it's so fun to see John and be on this call with you guys, because without John and these early calls that I used to listen to religiously, because my words were shit, I didn't know what to say. Is this PG-13? Is it PG? Oh bro, you know me. All right, we'll keep— we'll keep it PG-13, right? But I didn't know anything. So like, that's the problem with most new agents is they go, well, I've sold cars or I've sold pest control, I've sold solar. Like, I know how to talk, feel, felt, found, right? You know, find the why, push. You know, all those things are relevant. But what you don't know is how the mind works when you talk about money and death and the value of life insurance and how to knock out any other carrier and why they shouldn't go to State Farm and why they should work with a broker and how their HR lady Nancy doesn't have their best interest and how their bank policy is an accidental— like the things you have to learn about why what we do is so amazing and how great our product offering is and the compensation for you as an agent. So I'm listening to all this, John, and I finally get to Patricia Shippy. $43 a month, Americo Eagle, sign on the spot, check deposit in 2 days, and my freaking head exploded. So that was January 10th, 2018, and by the end of the month I wrote $14 grand. I was like pigging shit, man. I was so happy. I'd never made that kind of money before. And, and it was wonderful. So what do you do after you have your first— have a great month? You go on vacation, right? So, so we went to California, visited her mom, took her out to dinner every night, bought her a new TV, filled her pantry with groceries. Right. And the exact thing you shouldn't do because what happened? A couple of chargebacks set in. I'm not working the level I was working. Ended that second month, wrote $8,000. And Chantel's like, bro, you got to— you got to— this isn't what we signed on for. Like, you owe $3,000 and you need to still need to buy leads and then write business and get on top of it. With it. So I got focused and I went to convention. Ironically, in that month, my second month, I went to convention. So for any of you doubting any of these Ignite events or conventions or just getting obsessively becoming committed to personal growth, you're shoot— you're, you're shooting yourself in the foot. My third month though, focused, deliberate, I wrote 30, and that changed everything for me. And by the end of my first year, I ended up writing 256. Team was doing about $150,000 a month. The end of my second year, I wrote $350,000 and I was like the number 12 in the company, right? Back then at $350,000, agency was doing about $350,000, $450,000 a month. And then end of my third year, we're doing about $2.2 million and I netted $1.7 million. And that is nuts to tell you that in 3 years I went from literally driving or doing everything I could to just try to take care of my wife and kids to 3 years later making that level of money. It's a testament to opportunity. It's a testament to leads. It's a testament to our great carriers we're partnered with. And it's a testament to that. Anything that people are doing that in, in a third of the time now, but it's because they're deliberate and focused on selling at a high level and then recruiting. So I'll kind of pause there for a second, but just that's so, so you know that it's all possible, guys. Yeah. What's that? In person, right?

And there's a few guys that A few guys in here and girls that, that run in-person still. Giovanni and his team do a lot of in-person in Florida. There's a lot of, a lot of people doing telesales, of course, trying to go that route. And, um, you know what's neat is like you did it in half the time I did it, and then you taught people to do it in half the time you do it. And so a lot of us that sit here and look at it now, we watch these guys that come out and they knock, they knock down a million a month in their first year with a team. It's like, all right. How do I articulate this to them? You know what I mean? Like, if there were— if there were a Grady playbook to get to 7 figures quick, multiple 6s on your own pen, what, what's that look like?

I would say, so I love all the guys that write 100 a month, but instead of writing 100 a month, write 50 and take the time that you spend the other 50 a month on recruiting and then teaching people how to sell and helping them get good. I remember I felt And I, when I was getting going recruiting, I was like, I'm going to be rich when I know when 10 people know about diabetes the way I know about diabetes. The thing we don't talk about, like on the recruiting videos, is how much you're going to learn about pharmaceutical drugs and like what you're going to know about Parkinson's and diabetes and COPD and anxiety meds and all these things that you've like never thought about. But now it's everything you think about because you're like, does she take this? She don't take that. We're clear. Oh, she took it once. How long ago? Right. So you're just navigating Drugs. So that would be part of it is I would spend every single minute selling as much as you can so you can lead by example. John, Hall of Fame producer. I never hit Hall of Fame. It's my biggest regret, but I grew so gosh darn fast that I, I remember having conversations with leadership and they're just like, just keep going. You're doing it right. Like, and, and at the time, Hall of Fame, there's like 7 people that hit Hall of Fame. Now this year we might have 200, which is crazy. So doesn't mean don't, don't strive for it because you want to focus, but there is a necessity from selling at a high level. Like, for my 2 and a half years that I sold, I was the number one producer on the submit and the issue every single week. Why? Because I wanted the right to coach. I wanted to be as knowledgeable as possible. The money was great, but there's no greater respect that comes from you being number one. Giovanni, I saw you number one, bro. Someone's got to be number one. Might as well be you. Stay— don't, don't let that go. Don't, don't give that up. Don't think There's, there's, there's, there's unspoken respect that comes by being number one that you don't have to— you don't have to introduce yourself at number one. That's me, right? So but that thought process I recruited with that, hey man, I just made $1,700 this morning selling policy. I made $2,300 today. I made $7,000 last week. I made $22,000 last month. I don't know a ton about this business. I'm just getting started. I'm working leads. And if you're, if you're in sales at all and you want a lead-based opportunity with warm leads, this, you should take a look at what we're doing here. And that just had that conversation 2, 3, 4 times a day, 15, 20 times a week, hundreds of times, you know, as many times as I possibly could to expose people to this business. And then I led by example. I led with truth, right? I did what I would tell them to do. And that would be my greatest advice to any of you is if you do want to do this, because selling at a high level is amazing. I love the income we can make selling, and you should sell as long as you possibly can and need to, and to, to fulfill the fruits of your business. But the word I just used there was business. And when you are a producer, you are an employee to your business, because when you don't sell, the business doesn't make money. But when you start to recruit people and teach them what you know, and it's getting over this thought process of using or manipulating or taking advantage— I developed a high set of skills, you developed a high set of skills that we now teach other people for 5%. That doesn't come off their— that doesn't come from them, and then they can earn and go and get high comp too. But that's the trade-off. You, you take an 80 and we'll teach you how to sell insurance at $30,000 a month, right? You want, you want higher comp? Great, I can— I just have less to give you because I have time, right? Or, or you want free leads? Great, go check out these other companies. They'll start you at 25% and give you a batch of free leads that they ripped out of Yellow Pages or White Pages. Yellow Pages is business, um, but But that's the philosophy though. So to get to where I was, I am, and to where we are, where you can go, it's sell as much and as fast as you can, right? If it was day one, John, I would have 2 dialers, a CRM, AI book helping me book, and I'd be going basically, you know, 16 hours a day Monday through Thursday, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'd be a dad. And within those 16 hours, 4 days a week, I would be doing as many appointments as I could, and then as many quick recruiting calls. Because that's the thing about recruiting calls, guys, is The thought process is I have to— like, you teach people you're recruiting how to recruit by how you recruit them. If it's a 45-minute conversation on all the amazingness of Shawn and the business and the history of life insurance and, and like, that stuff is important, but they can get that from a video. Good recruiting uses the principle called the credibility triangle. You, your prospect, and a tool. I point everybody to a website where there's a video that they can watch or a webinar or a past training call, and then 3 things will happen. One, they won't watch it. Great. Not coachable. Two, they watch it, not interested. Great. No time wasted. Three, they watch it and they have questions. Perfect. Exactly who I'm looking for. And so that's how you speed up time, is you utilize tools like we use dialers, we use CRMs now to be, to be able to get appointments and to be efficient in, in our selling, in our selling world, right? We have to drive all across the country from North— do I put 300 miles a day on my car, man? It was good. It's a good car. Step on the freeway, right? And then I had to get it towed to BMW and I got a Hyundai Genesis and that drove that thing another 50,000 miles and then gave that to Grandma. That thing's still ticking. So, but, but that, that's the philosophy, right? How can I compress and but speed up, right? And that becomes sell as much and as hard as fast you can, which means sometimes you got to spend more on leads. You got to, you got to train staff. I got a guy writes 100 a month. He does it on his own. He dials on his own. He's like, the dialer will never be as good as me. I'm like, I know, and you'll never have a business if you, if you have to work 6 days a week 16 hours a day. Like, I can't get through it to you. He's written— he's gonna write a million plus this year, and he just is so into his production. But he's also like, just kind of like, dude, you gotta break free from this philosophy. Like, you can't sell at 100 hours a week forever. Like, you just can't. You— your body, you're physically— you'll, you'll, you'll begin to not— you'll begin to resent the business. But that's the beauty of it, right? You get in, you learn, then you grow and then you teach others. That's, that's the, that's how we truly can win. And then that's actually when you truly know something. I mean, John knows this better than anybody. The learning triangle says if we hear something, that's like at a 20% level how we learn it. If we write it down, it's like a 50, 60% level. But if we can teach it, that's a 90, 95% level. We truly know something. So how fast can you get to a level where you're teaching other people your objection handling, your rebuttal overcoming, how you tie down the client, how you make them forget the fact that there's any other people that might be calling them. 'Cause you're the manager on, you're the personal record. I'm the manager following up. No, that, that's gonna be nonsense. How good can you get to tying down your, your clients? So that's what be, that would be my advice, John, is just sell as much as you can, as fast as you can, but then spend every waking moment having conversations with other people.

For those of you follow that have followed me for a while, you know, I've, 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 working with you, DM me, hit me up, whatever you like.

Makes sense.

When you, when you're trying to figure out like who to pour your time into, right? And you have this little combination of like the tech helps, but you got those guys and girls that want to use all the tech and they still don't see anybody every week. You know what I mean? Like, how are you dissecting that fucking weird dichotomy where they think it's the tech and they're not doing the work? But I really like who to help, who to You mean that, that like these guys are having a hard time, like who to put their time into from a, from like a lead and client standpoint?

Nope. Nope.

From a, from an agent, like who to work with more. Yeah. Because again, you, you hear all the AI stuff and they spend all week doing the AI and they, they run, they do 3 presentations for the week and they're like, oh, I must be a different AI I need.

Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? It's like who to focus on. How do you, how do you pick who to pour your time into?

We started with a cell phone, you know what I mean? Like, and then we've got now HighLevel numbers and then HighLevel's got the SMS number or the MMS number or the iMessage number. Then there's, they like, at some point guys, like though the answer would be your results have to dictate what you're doing. And if you are organizing your Rolodex and, and, and taking the Ameri— I got a guy this morning, he's like, I was on the Americo product overview video. It was great. And I was like, great. I didn't tell you to do that, but I'm glad you did it. Initiative. Like, good job. Thumbs up. You know, double thumbs up. Right? But like at some point, if you've got 3 presentations at the end of the week, you have to be mature enough and have the internal discipline and vision to go, this isn't working. I need to change. Now, it doesn't mean that you don't keep trying to tweak it, but it does mean you've gotta go back to the basics of hand dialing the phone. Because being honest, guys, the best contact rate is 100% always gonna be from your personal cell phone. It just is. It's your personal cell phone, right? If you call them 3 times, they're going to answer. If Max Hornstein pops up 3 times on my phone, I go, what the fuck? Who's Max? Max, what's going on? Like, he's like, hey man, I'm calling you back about the request you put in my office. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, that's right, man. You know, Max is going to know his script and he's going to convert and we're gonna have a conversation. But all the tech stuff is great, right? If you're— I mean, we've got agents that spend $400 to $600 a day on Facebook leads. At which is going to bring in a ton of traffic. Now, at some point, though, they have the maturity and discipline to go, I need to have 10 to 15 appointments on the books per day because I know my close ratio. And they also at that level know if there's not 10 to 15 appointments on their books pre-booked, they're going to be dialing. And if they're dialing from Kixie or from Wave or from PhoneBurner or from whatever these— all the different dialer systems, and if it's not working, They're gonna pick up their phone. And that's something that, you know, Michael, Zachary, Tyler, you will mature in time to go, I have to have a baseline number of appointments. Now granted, we would always say out of a, out of 10, out of a, out of 100 presentations, 25 are gonna be laydowns. They're just waiting. And it's true. They're just waiting. What took you so long to call? You know, uh, then 50, 50 of 'em in the middle, 50, you're gonna have to have some sales skills. You're gonna have to just overcome some objections, build the rapport, build trust, right? And then 25 of 'em, they just fill out forms or they've already died. Right? And that's just part of the business, right? So 10 out of 100. Now, the hard part for you to wrap your head around is those 25 laydowns. Oftentimes they come at the end and you got to work through all this shit to get through to that level. And but it's, but it's, it's those numbers ring true. You get to enough presentations, enough appointments. People are just, they want to buy insurance. Like, that's the thing. Like, we screw it up. Now, buying aged leads puts you at a challenge, right? Because they may have been called a few times, right? Buying new leads is always gonna be easier. It's always easier with new leads. Always. Why? Because they just filled it out. They just filled it out. Now, aged leads, you gotta dig back in. Oh, someone didn't call you, but there's still gonna be that same numeric amount of gold in both of those, both of those avenues.

So how do you, how do you teach people like the whole, like a lead's a lead even though we know they're different? You know what I mean? But the mentality towards all the variations and You know, for us, we always were able to look at, go like, dude, someone's winning on all of them. Someone loves and hates every kind, you know? So how do you go about teaching that from a management standpoint? Like, I need to get my guys on the same page and think like Grady.

Yeah, I teach them that what a lead is, is someone that loves their family so much that they want a stranger to reach out and talk to them. That's like, if you think about that, like, that is what a lead is, is someone that has, that has no access to buying their own life insurance. They don't know anybody that sells life insurance, they don't have a license or sell life insurance, no one. And, and they don't know where else to go except either going to Ethos and trying to maybe buy it themselves, but it gets confusing, calling in a phone number that came in the mail, filling out a form online about IULs or veteran benefits or final expense or term coverage because they want to know more about either quotes or benefits or have someone review. So if you understand that mindset, like I made the joke 3 minutes ago, but like, we are not ripping a page out of the White Pages and they say, here, start at the A's. Anderson, Alabaster, Abernathy, right? We're not just starting at the A's going, good luck, right? These are actual people that have filled out these requests. Now, sometimes they already got a question answered. Sometimes they don't answer phone numbers they don't recognize. Sometimes they're out of the country and you just have to work through and be strong enough to do that. And like, that's, that's my philosophy on leads. Like I had this girl on a call a couple of months ago, Christina. Andy, highly suggest you having her on. She's phenomenal, but she writes 10 a week off referrals. But how does she get the referrals? She buys $100.50 bronze final expense mailers that are 3 years old and calls them and digs in and says, hi, I'm following back up and super sweet. And we can all be sweet, right? And then just builds rapport and says, well, let's just do a review and see where you're at. And boom, from there she then will dig out 2, 3, 4, 5 referrals, go down pathways, and all of a sudden she's writing. She said she spends less than $1,000 a month on leads and writes 30 to 40. Why? Because she's working. She's just— she's smart. That's why. She's just smart. And she puts in a little bit extra effort for ask for referrals and digs in and builds the rapport, which is the problem that a lot of us have, is we are conditioned to the path of least resistance, which is just buy leads and call people that want it. I agree it's easy, but There's a lot of like, you know, ERS or ERN, Emergency Response Network, calling the beneficiaries. There's a lot of different ways where you can increase your profitability and honestly helps tie down the original sale. Because if you're calling Betty's son Janine and our son, daughter Janine, and getting her a policy, it could be in today's time. But that puts you in such a position where you're now working within the family, solidifying your business, right? You're— what you guys understand, though, too, and this is heavier business stuff. Is your clients are your competition's best prospects. So if you're not doing things to elevate yourself as their broker and taking care of the family and send— like Wiley Hawkins said on a call one time, and I try to share all the time, he goes, any policy over $100 a month, I go to 1800Flowers.com and I send flowers. $34 plus shipping, it's under $50. It's like I made $1,200. Why am I not sending $50 to say, you know, thank you for allowing me to take care of your family, or have a wonderful day, Betty, or whatever, and his persistency is like 90+% on term and final expense stuff because he does that little bit extra care. But I get these other agents that go 36 minutes, it was $250, slammed it through. Would you call them? No, I don't call them back. Oh dude, chargebacks are coming. And so like oftentimes, guys, like take care of your clients and your leads the way that you would want to be taken care of as a customer, or as you'd want your mother or father to be taken care of as a customer of a business. And that philosophy will ring true, and then referrals will come in. You'll let your chargebacks go to the floor. Anything happens, they'll, they'll reach out to you and go, hey, someone's calling me about doing a review. Is this guy from your office? You know, no, it's not from my office. No, don't bother that. That's spam. You know, just block his number, right? So you can keep that persistency high. So yeah.

What do you think, dude, is this is so intriguing. We've seen a lot of people fucking come and go in the 7, 8 years we've known each other and You know, actually, because you've been— you've known Andrew since 2012. So even if I go back to then when I first got involved, there've been a lot of people come and go in this business. You get to this point where you see like even big producers don't make it. And as you know, a lot of the big producers don't build anything of any significance. They get stuck. And there's a lot of people business in our business and problems. And can you— can you talk a little bit more about like the You don't have to get too deep, but just the shit about building an agency and what you think makes or breaks someone that gets to that million plus a month versus the ones that just can't crack that VP level, a few hundred grand, you know what I mean? And there's, there's always drama, something going on. Just what's, what's the magic there, you think?

I mean, I do. It's such a good question. That's such a deep but powerful question because the reality is, is like this, you know, I'm using this word again. This is a business, right? And so like all these You know, books. I got books up, books up the books, right? I buy books like crazy. I read like 12 pages, but I'm 12 pages book better by, by, you know, by 100. But like, that's a part of it too, guys, is like you have to be smart enough to know that you don't know anything, right? Like, that was for me. I was like, I don't know anything about this business. Andrew, Sean, John, what do I do? Like, okay, just keep selling. Encourage people, spend time with the ones that are selling at a high level, give agents to the ones that are selling at a high level. If they're not selling at a high level, ask them why they are, why they're choosing not to sell more and not buying more leads. Is it a skillset thing? And so a lot of that too is like, how are we evolving as us to lead and be mature enough to mentally deal with the stresses, right? I remember a guy asked me one time at a meeting a couple years ago, what do you do all day? And I was like, I just deal with problems. That's all I do. I deal with problems. And my ability to, though, reflect on the problem. How big of an issue is it? How can I address it? How can I solve it? How can I make both parties feel like they won? And how can we keep everybody moving forward? And so like we're talking about some higher level, high level, you know, mindset and business stuff here. But like you want to make $1 million a year, you want to make a couple hundred grand a year, like the— you got to respect the money, right? So are you growing as people? Are you listening to books? Are you taking care of your body? Are you eating right? Are you getting— you getting shitfaced on a Tuesday, sleeping in on Wednesday, partying Thursday through Sunday and selling a little bit of insurance insurance and, you know, posting on, on social that insurance is great and the only way you can afford your party life is because you sell— like, I mean, what level are we maturing, right? I see a lot of these new young, young groups coming up and coming, and I'm like, hope you're saving for taxes, right? Like, that's a reckoning. But like, so, you know, the thought though is, is like I reflected on marketing at the top of the call, I gain insight from other places. The same thing in this business. I go, how are these businesses being run? What is that? What are— what principles are working in these other businesses? Like Zappos has like there are 9 principles that they adopt by, and it's not the management firing a staff member. It is the staff member did not, did not honor principle number 7 or something. And like, it's this— you broke this principle. And so it's like, it's thinking, how can we apply those sort of methodologies within our business? Like, a big thing that I try to do is I make decisions based on rules. I don't make decisions based on exceptions. So-and-so one time did this thing one time and it worked really well. Great for so-and-so that one time, but we know if you buy leads consistently, you're going to, you're going to be able to get enough appointments to make enough sales, to make enough money. And if you take care of the client, your chargebacks are gonna stay high. And so to build something to that level though, involves self-maturing, but it also, it, it's something like what John's doing right here, trying to help you all mature and grow as people to have an insight and, and foresight into this business. But it also sums, it comes at the same stop, same message that you have to find other people that want to grow with you, right? Grady is only good because I found Nina and Hayden, right? And I found Jamie and Marissa and they found other groups that have grown. Morgan and Ryan, all these groups. However, like, you know, John is great with Zach Tredowski, right? But Zach Tredowski would not be here without John Wetmore and the years of time that he put into him to get him to the level that he is today. And now he's blossoming. Same thing with me, Nian and Hayden. Hayden would still be selling medical device sales and Nian would be a personal trainer. I mean, maybe they would have gotten into something, but without me spending hundreds of thousands of hours with them selling them on this business and leading by example, they wouldn't have been able to blossom into the incredible people that they are, finding the next level of great people. So it comes with a heavy, heavy responsibility. But you also have to trust yourself if you want to do great in this life. Like, you got to keep growing your brain. Like, I learned this, this equation a few years ago. It's knowledge plus skills equals value to the marketplace. K plus S equals V. Knowledge plus skills. So the knowledge you have, right, what you know, what you've learned, the personal experience you've had from the sales you've made, from the time you've spent growing your brain outside of it, from other classes and courses you've bought, right? Have you read How to Win Friends and Influence People? Are you watching Charisma on Command? Have you listened to Jim Rohn? How to, how to, how to build your business? Are you listening to Darren Hardy on how to grow your business from an entrepreneurial mindset? Like, are you growing yourself and then embodying it, right? So knowledge plus skills, right? Skills. How good are you at overcoming objections? How good are you making You know, clients trust you. How good are you making agents trust you? How are you good at helping agents believe in themselves and being there for them when they need to evolve? So knowledge plus skills equals your value to the marketplace, and that's how much money you earn. And if right now you're on the bottom of that list making $0 last week, if it was a week you worked full time, you need to take some real assessment on are you— what are you focusing on? Grow your knowledge and then develop your skills. Knowledge, listen to more calls, take notes like crazy, use pen and paper. Right. Use actual paper and a pen. Don't use— don't use it. Don't type it. The agent in the front row with the phone up. I just recorded the guy that never issue pays anything. Right. And then skills. How do you build your skills? Making the dials and getting uncomfortable. No, no. There's no world of comfort that doesn't come without going through discomfort. John, I've been through hundreds of discomfort and uncomfortable experiences that have allowed us to trust ourselves to make good decisions under pressure. And then to evolve us to move through. And do we win? I bet that 300, we didn't win 295, but the 5 we did win taught us then how from 301 on to only win. And that's a difficult thing that most people will go through. Like when you dial the phone 300 times, if you know 285 times you're going to get no to book 15 appointments, 15 appointments come out of it, but 285 nos and no, no, I didn't fill that out, that type nonsense. So knowledge, skills, value the marketplace and grow those two things. Like, if that— now you have the answers. What do I need to work on? My knowledge and my skills will then make me more valuable. Giovanni has become valuable. He's not crazy valuable, but he's becoming more valuable, and he only wants to become more valuable, right? Right. That's right. Thumbs up. So, but, but that— so there you go. That, like, all those little messages and principles is what can help you keep moving forward. And you will have hard days, you will have dark days, you'll have great days. You will have great weeks, you have great months, and then all of a sudden someone you were with for 3 years just decides they want to go sell Medicare now only, and they quit your business out of nowhere and walk away from a $50,000 a month bonus and go sell Medicare because that's nature. And you're like, I don't get it, why? And then now they're— now they run an ayahuasca institute in Utah or something. I don't know what they— I'm big, you know, John knows what I'm talking about, but I do. But people are— you can't do it. So what can you do? You keep making the best decision for it. So when that person decides to go off and do something else, that everybody that you impacted goes, I don't want to go do Medicare with you. I want to keep selling life insurance because this has been amazing. And you build trust within your business. That's— there you go. Insight.

Yeah.

So buckle up.

I wish we could— I always tell them, dude, I wish we could sit down for like 4 straight days and probably too much. I used to say too many lemon drops. I haven't drank since December, so I don't know what it'll be now.

Yeah, you, that's awesome.

And tell the stories, dude, of all the shit we've been through that we continue to go through to get, you know what I mean? It's like you got to rely, we rely on each other to help us through those phases. Cause like when you're going through shit, I might be able to think right. When I'm going through shit, you might be able to think right. Um, and having those along the way, you and I ran a very similar play in business. I don't know if you and I've ever talked about this, but like. Who I was for Mike, you were for Andrew. Yeah. Like adding value to the bigger picture in the company. Yeah. And you run that play really flawlessly still to this day. Yeah. And I, I'm curious how intentional that was along the way, or is it just who you are, or do you, do you see any, you teach that? If you're an insurance agent and you feel like you're stuck, you've hit a wall, you're trying to figure out sales strategies, the scripts to use, how to get like off the ground and get to that top of the leaderboard type status. I have a course that I've put out, super affordable. I'm getting a ton of great feedback from people every day on the strategies they've learned and been able to implement, from goal setting to sales techniques to calendar scheduling, everything you would need to get your business off the ground and get running quickly. jwcourse.com, click the link below and get in there today.

I think it's a combination of both, like, right? Like, I think you want, you want to be relevant, but you don't want to be naggy and needy, right? Andrew taught me early on, he's like, dude, everybody comes to me with bad news and you keep coming with good news. And I was like, okay. Like, I was like, and because in my head I was like, I want to solve these problems on my own. Like, Andrew's a guy's making $800,000 a year. I know at some point, like, I deserve his time, but I don't deserve his time and I haven't earned his time. So I only want to come to him with like, hey, real quick. Or like, I would go to his staff me with my— like, Andrew's not going to fax my paper Moo apps in, but I didn't have a fax. And so I'd like picture them and then I'd email them to Shannon and Shannon would do it. And like, I just would say I would only go to Andrew when I was like, hey, I got an agent to recruit, or I didn't really even talk to a bunch in the beginning because I didn't— I knew like that those conversations were golden conversations and I wanted to protect that. And I think I kind of try to teach that now. Not that people can't approach me or talk to me anything like like you should be able to solve your own. My job is to help you with sales, right? Let's get, let's get sales and let me help you recruit some people, right? Other than that, like, if you got tech issues, this is the ILC link. If you need scripts and rebuttals, they're right here. How many times you gone through them? Let's go through that. If you go through that a few times on your own. And so like for me though, I, I have a, I don't know, maybe it's being named Grady and getting made fun of in high school and like just having you know, childhood baggage where I'm like, if I've got value to give, I'm gonna share. Like Hermozi said one time, this is a great line. Um, he said, you don't gain status by taking from, by trying to take from the group, by asking for things. You gain status from the group, the collective group, whatever group you're a part of by giving. That's how you gain status. And that, I heard that a couple years ago. And so I'm always like, okay, how can I, provide value to the group. So I don't need anything, right? But down the road, if I needed something, people go, dude, that dude's been helping me out with all kinds of stuff for a long time. Whatever he needs, I'll, I can, I can help with. Yeah. So that's kind of, there's some philosophies that I've had, like, and it doesn't mean guys, if you go have problems, you can't, you know, ask, but, but the faster you can solve 'em yourself is you don't have to wait for something. And then now you know how to get the answers. And that, that's like where we talked about the recruiting at the beginning. Is like you're teaching people how to recruit by— based on how you recruit them, you're teaching them how to solve their problems. If every time an agent comes to me and goes, why can't— like this guy right now, like Jade's like, I don't know if he's going to make it. He made $1 million last year in solar, but he can't figure out his AML and upload it into SureLC. She's like, he wants to come to the office an hour away so I can help him upload his AML. I'm like, dude, he needs to call the Geek Squad and get someone online to like help him. Like that— we don't do tech support. Like, you know, like, what do you want me to do here? Like, how did you make— But that's just, that's just people. It's funny. It's funny industry.

I remember when the first real memory of you I have is when you ran that event. It was probably one of your first events that you ran on your own where Andrew wasn't kind of like quote unquote in charge of the event. And dude, you were like, you ever read that book? Hey, what's the one, Amanda, that I always recommend now? The yellow one. Unreasonable Hospitality.

Oh, I like that.

Have you not read that book yet?

Unreasonable Hospitality. I'll write it down. I'll have to order it.

You do that a lot by default and you don't know it. It's, it's, it's a dope book. Actually, I have it right there. It's a dude who ended up running like the number 1 rated restaurant in the world.

Okay.

And he talks about how they got there. But you, you ran it, you, you went and put on a fucking event and you put it on big and you reached out to every speaker and you got us all excited and like you were kind of the new kid on the block. And I still have the email because I read it every once in a while and you were like, hey, don't forget, we're here for a reason and we're— your job is to get these people excited and don't half-ass your talk and and you kind of went through this process of like, I was like, damn, fucking new kid's got it, you know? And from there, dude, it was like, all right, this cat got some respect from a bunch of people in the business at the time. It was, it was neat to see. Um, so really nothing to add to it for you.

I just wanted to, you know, and so that, that comes from, so as I, as I talk to everybody here, right? All 38 of you or 36 minus John and I, like you've all done something in life. That you've chosen to get good at. Maybe it's sports, maybe it's a musical instrument, maybe you're good at writing or Rubik's Cube. I don't know what you're good at, but you've given time to that thing to get good at it. I gave 7 years to my network marketing business trying to build something, going in living rooms, speaking. I've got— I went to Australia one time and built the business and dude, 30,000 people and I was making like my best month was 10 and I was probably hovering 4 to 6, right? And but I put so much because it was like if you could break another leg, then all of a sudden, boom, my income could triple or quintuple. And it just— so I spent a lot of time like working with people because a big part of that business is keeping them on auto-ship, meaning they've got to buy every single month the product, consume the product, share the product. But in here, like, I want you to buy leads monthly and weekly and daily, but I don't care if you don't, because if you don't, You're making the choice, right? I gain no benefit until you start selling at a high level. Now, I want to help you sell at a high level. I truly do. But if you're making the choice, I like— I'm not going to push you to spend $1,000 on leads you're not going to call. So it's almost kind of like we in this business, we fortunately get to set up more challenges, right? Like, I'm not going to help this guy figure out his AML. I hope he does it. And he— and I hope— I don't hope he quits. Let me be very careful here. But I, you, you have to, as a, as someone who wants to lead or as someone who's looking to be led, you have to develop that I'm gonna figure it the fuck out on my own discipline. Like you have to, you're, you're not gonna make it like this is not a job where you show up. And I remember 3 weeks at University of Phoenix training on how to be an enrollment counselor. And I'm calling people on how to sell, how to, how to sell them on getting into school. And they're walking us through how to create client profiles and they're walking us through how to like, like, you know, get your phone scripts and like everything is done for you because you're a cog in the system, right? My job was just to do what they said and read the scripts and have the conversation they said. That's not this. But guess what? I made $33,000 a year at University of Phoenix. And after 1 year, the number 1 enrollment counselor, I got a raise to $35,000 a year. And that was right before I got into network marketing and, you know, and then all my future. But like, that's not this. Like, you have to— we have systems, we have training websites, we have weekly trainings, we have I have 800 training videos on my YouTube channel now of just all these great interviews of people telling me how they sell insurance. But if you can't figure out to go, I, I need to learn how to say these words better, you're not going to figure it out. And I don't wish that on you. I wish the discipline to grow your knowledge, grow your skills, and become more valuable in the marketplace.

But dude, I'm gonna give them a chance to ask a couple questions, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna go based on the leaderboard. So I'm gonna let Giovanni go first.

I like that idea. Yeah, buddy. Going on, bro. You kind of answered some of this, but I was going to ask, what do you feel is the most or like the biggest mistake you see like leaders or agency builders make when trying to grow like a huge team? It's the— it's hard to say this out loud, but it's wanting to help every single person win. And you have to understand, like, if we look at the simple math in the US, what, 90% 94%, 95% make over $100 grand a year. And money isn't everything, right? But it's a barometer we can use as a, as a, as a metric. It means that, that 94% of people lack the discipline, the ambition, the desire to make a higher level of income and to provide a greater life for their family, donate more to their church, take care of their parents, or whatever they can want to do with money. And so I've got— you see, wrap your head around that and you go, if I'm going to recruit 10 people, The likelihood of them all doing something is zero. So, but one should. So if I understand that, I, I provide the opportunity, I provide the, the open resources from live dials, training, weekly training, lead accessibility, coaching calls. Are there, are 9 of them choosing to chase me down or to, to seek mentorship? I remember early in my business reaching out to Amy Michelson asking her why she sells so much Gerber. And I was just like, hey, you know, like, why did I do that? Why did I choose to reach out to people on the leaderboard and ask them questions? Because I wanted to win. Because I had pain. I had children I want to take care of and a wife I wanted to make proud. Right? So as we're recruiting, our, our desire often is for them to grow so we can grow. But the reality, though, is, is it should just be instead of 10 people, I should have 100. And when you have 100, now you whittle it down, you know, 30, 40, 50, 60 of them are just— they're going to check out. They're not going to do the class. They're going to get stuck on AML. They're not going to do contracting. And you're going to find your tribe. And that's why when you're recruiting and building, cast a big net, move fast. But when they're not licensed, it's 5 to 7 minute conversations. When they are licensed, it's 10 to 12 minute conversations. Why FFL is the best? Our lead program, no fees to join, no monthly fees. Top comp, producer bonuses, agency manager bonuses, cash bonuses from the carriers, trips from the carriers, trips from corporate. Like, I mean, like, there's so much stuff now, John. We— I want to go to Puerto Rico. Like, why do we— I can't even— like, there's so much stuff now for the producer, Giovanni, that it's like, it's silly. It's silly. Like that. So that's what you have. But if some— but if you're going to expose people and they're going to make the decision to not buy leads and dial the phone because of whatever reason it is, they're not going to make it. And I want them all to make it. But I got my own life and my own kids to give my heart to, and I can just be here as a guide. And so it's kind of heavy and deep, right? I don't want them to fail, but I want them to find the drive to solve their own problems. I'm here to help answer their problems, just like you are. You're not running $11,000 a week, not knowing what to do. You know what leads to buy, you know, words to say, you know how to navigate the carrier back offices. You probably know how to push through stuff in underwriting. But you, but you, you figured it out. Now you're here to guide them. But are they calling you with like, hey, I got a client that has this, this, and this. Where do I put them? Boom. Then that's who you want. That's your person. If that makes sense. Like, like your bigger goal is cast a big net, but then quickly dwindle down to just a select few. And the other ones, let them come back to you. If they're in the Slacks or the group chats, the Discords, and they see what's happening. I got group chats with 3 to 30 people. 3 people respond, 27, they retired early. What am I going to do? But one day they might want to come out of retirement because the pain got hard enough at their job that they think is going to take care of them. Or solar, the big beautiful bill may or may not go in, might go out, like whatever. Like at some point they might come to you. But, but our job as leaders, keep selling at a high level from the front and keep exposing new people every day so you have new people to work with, right? That's part of the problem is you get 10 people and you want to just, you want to just suck all the life out of, or pour all the life into those 10 and You know, one of them doesn't have a license, one of them's got no money, 3 of them don't ever respond because they already quit. And then we're just overdoing it to this group of people when we just go get more people, right? Yeah.

It's, uh, you want them all to win, but you're sure as shit willing to watch them fail right in front of you.

I'm not wishing it on them. I'm just not gonna— I can't, I can't sell them. I can't sell the leads for you, Betty. I can't, you know, I can't do— you got to do some of the work here.

Yeah.

So any other questions up next, dude?

You got one? If you got one, you can ask it. Otherwise we'll go next because I didn't warn you.

I like it.

Yeah. What do you say for real?

Yeah.

Do you got a question for Grady? You're next on the leaderboard, bro. So I'm giving you— I feel like, uh, that was a very blanket answer. I think it answered, uh, I had a question that was similar to Giovanni's, but He answered it pretty much in that.

Well, ask it differently.

Is that you saying no? I guess I'll give a situational question. Here we go. Um, for like in-homes, people who are— I guess, uh, have you ever gotten like people that are like, oh, I don't want to talk about death, or I'm— I don't like talking about all that?

Sure, of course. You know, so your thought process is, I don't want to talk about it either. But I Googled it. It turns out we're all going to die. So we talk about this one time. We open the box. I always do that. We open the box and let's just have a conversation, right? And you go, God forbid something happened yesterday. You talk about it yesterday. You don't talk about it tomorrow. It's never in the future. We're not, we're not, we're not prophesying. We're reflecting, right? Something happened yesterday. How would you want your house to be handled today? God forbid something happened in the past. You know, where, where would your— if you're talking to the husband, where would your wife go live? Could she afford the mortgage, right? You make $4,000 working construction and you— and she makes $1,200 volunteering at the school for— with doing, doing daycare. I mean, it's always very unique situation. Husband oftentimes is the breadwinner, spouse does support if they've got family and kids. And but what's cool, so as we talked about leads earlier, this is who leads are. Leads are families of people who just want to make sure the family can stay intact. And so they don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it either. So then what you also can focus on, living benefits. John, I understand you don't want— let's not talk about too much, but one of the benefits is, God forbid, if you got sick, you know, chronic, critical, terminal illness, something tragic happened, couldn't perform 2 of the 6 activities of daily living, got diagnosed with something terrible, you can access this money today and use that before anything terrible happens, but use that to prolong your life, pay for medical treatments, pay, pay for any, any, any things you need to get done, settle your affairs. And that's one of the great benefits of insurance now is you can access this money while you're alive. So you kind of, you know, they filled it out for a reason or you go, well, why did you fill it out? Why am I here? What's going on? You can push them back, you know, but always it's always at this kind, soft heart, right? I'm inquisitive. At no point are you leaving the house. If you, if you're driving to homes now, at no point are you leaving without putting insurance in place. There's two things that are happening. You're putting insurance in place. Or they're throwing you out. No, I'm just, you know, but you're— but they filled it out for a reason. So, but this is part of you ascending as a communicator is how can you navigate? Like, well, I just don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it either. But they said the office sent me out here right now to resolve this case file. And so if you don't want to talk about it, John, Betty, why did he fill this out? Or did you fill this out with his name? Right. And you just start digging, just opening conversations. How old are the kids?

Right.

Just start talking. Perfect. Where would the kids go live if God forbid something happened to you both yesterday? Just make them think about it, dude. That's your job. Our job is to make them get a little uncomfortable. Now, that's going to be part of that 50%, that top of the 50%. It's going to be the harder sales. Most people, when they fill this stuff out, is they're ready to buy or they just need to get quotes or they're navigating or they have an idea of what they want. So, but that's a, it's a rare one. But hopefully that will give you some insight on what to say. Help, babe.

All right, let me get one more. Max, you ready, dude? You got one? I'm gonna give you a little preface on Max, dude.

I—

he's newer with me. Awesome background of high ticket sales, knows how to sell, studies guys like Jeremy Miner, things like that. We've been working on him being him instead of him being Jeremy Miner, you know what I mean? Like just being authentic to himself. And obviously it's a new— it's a new widget. It's not high-ticket coaching or whatever the hell else he sold. This is— it's a little different. Um, so now his question could be anything, but dude knows business and knows how to sell with whatever.

Welcome home, Max.

Thank you, I appreciate it. Um, and thank you for what you shared, was awesome. I talked to John a little bit about this and I wanted your take. So like, one of the things I'm noticing, obviously, like, the more presentations they make, the more sales. So I'm dialing everything right now, and I previously— I've ran systems where I have setters and closers. What are you seeing from your top producers? Are they having appointment setters dialing? Because my thought is, if I can just jam my day with presentations and just push through, I'm gonna make way more fucking money. Want to see what you're thinking?

Yeah. Yes, the answer is yes. No, um, that was kind of his opening in a sense. Yeah, that was great. No, so I'll reflect on the guy that I— the couple guys that I talked about. No, so now it's, it's an ascension, right? So if you're just buying one-off leads and putting them into your dialer or your CRM or hand dialing That's level 1. The next level is you're setting your own ad campaigns. Now everybody's using Facebook today. So, you know, TikTok, you're going to get a very little more diminished quality of person. So everyone still sticks to Facebook because you can have some adjustment in parameters. But that's where a lot of the top guys will take their, their— some of them have multiple vendors doing 200 a day on 2 to 2 or 3 because their ads might be different. Their, their backend widgets might be different. They send them to CRM. and some will just hand call 'em right immediately as they come in. Second, we'll run 'em to an AI communication chatbot, and then we'll have their dialer follow up and book and book it like that. But that is a bigger lead spend, right? They're spending a couple, you know, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 grand.

Yeah.

So where, I don't know where you are monetarily. 10 Gs a month. What's that?

You're spending like 10 grand a month. I don't mind spending money. Yeah. I'll spend it if it works.

Yeah. So good. So that's the level you want to get to. And then from there they're having their power dialer, like a Kixie platform or a Kixie dialer. They'll, they'll work back through everybody that didn't dial and they'll just be doing that. Now, a couple additional tips. We've seen this, you know, so John and I grew up in this business with mortgage protection and it was a blast. We love mortgage protection. We still love it and it's freaking awesome. Problem is interest rates have gone up and they're still hovering up. So if you've seen this massive movement in our company to IULs and so there's some thought process inside of that. The final— um, LIMRA says that traditional life insurance, term and whole life, is at a 70% persistency, right? 70% just down the books after 12 months. Now we've got good agents like a Wiley type scenario where people just truly care. They can get it to 80%, 85%. I got agents that are doing 90%, right? They're just really loving on them. But when you've got a $76 Aetna policy and someone comes behind and they offer them something else for $72 and you sweet-talk them for 35 minutes, all of a sudden 8 months ago they forgot you existed. And that's just a little different scenario, but it's something we deal with in the business. Well, the movement to IULs has not only increased targets and increased commissions, but IULs, because it's got, um, the death benefit, the living benefits at a high level, and the cash value growth, that we see persistency at 90+% starting. And I've got agents that have written 20, 30, 50 that have lost zero because there's so much additional value in there that it's not just a term, it's a retirement vehicle, it's cash value, it's living benefits. And you're dealing with a mildly more mature and affluent type clientele that is looking at something that's— if they have a 401 and you're going IUL is better than 401, you're dealing with someone that understands 401s, not just a lady with $1,200 of veteran, you know, it's Social Security benefits from her third husband that died that she's trying to now get a $42, you know, core bridge policy, right? So I love all the clients, but that would be some additional insight. But yes, you can have your dialers that you can get Filipino dialers. No one will work harder than a Philippine dialer. Like, oh my God, if I, if I wouldn't trade Jade for anybody, but everybody else I'd trade for some of them Filipino dialers. Like they're just, and so they'll work. You get your, your AI working and just flood your calendar. And that would be, yeah, that'd be the idea.

I have a follow-up to that. So would you, like, if you were going to choose, would you choose selling IULs over final expense? I feel like I totally believe in final expense. The one frustration I have is just like, um, excuse my language, like some people it's like, bro, like you're so dumb, you're on disability, your family can't afford it. Like, I'm like, I don't want to deal with you if you're this stupid. Like, I'm just being honest. Like, like, you fucking need the insurance.

We all feel that. Okay, all right.

So would you, if you were going back in time, like now would you only do IUL or would you do a mix?

Like, I would do— if I had a choice, I would do only IUL. But I— but then now the problem, the only issue with IUL is it is a little bit longer sales cycle. And so if you get into the fully underwritten stuff, um, which a lot of these companies are going, like, you can get up to what, 350 or 400 with AmeriCo and Moo. And then, um, NLG's coming out in September with our simplified immediate approval, IUL. And then so a lot of people want our business, right? But like mortgage protection is great in that regard because you can really build value. Final expense will always be that way. It's just the way it is. You're just dealing with this, this end of period of life, done working, waiting on government subsidies. Now, granted, there's a lot of good people still in there. It's just, it's, it all kind of works. But the main thing I would say with all that is do absolutely everything to tie down the business. Building massive trust, building rapport. Spend the money on brownies or flowers or thank you cards or all those things, because you're going to do final expense. It's getting those referrals and peppering around and circling that lead with even one, even one more sale that then validates that you're the guy for John Wetmore. Um, that's, that's the issue, because the, the, you know, selling just straight through and doing no back, no follow-up, like, you know, they Yeah, anybody can come behind you and replace it if you built no trust and rapport. That's where a big— and that same thing can happen in IULs, but it's just a lot rarer because they've, they've, you know, as soon as you start putting $200, $400, $600 into something, you've committed to it, you've logged in the back offices, you've seen it start to grow in cash value, people are pretty, pretty resistant to wanting to replace those.

Yeah, thanks. I'll do some research on it. Appreciate it.

Yeah, it's a, it's a cool— final expense is like a cool entry point to our business. It's easy for a lot of people to get into. It's easy to get into with a smaller budget. It's easier to get a lot of dollars in. It's a different client.

Yes.

Once you start graduating, dude, why would you not go to IULs and annuities and all the things, you know what I mean? It's, it's a no-brainer, um, to graduate up to that.

Well, I didn't know if I could yet, just based on how short of a time I've been doing it.

Yeah, I mean, whatever you want. It's— but it comes down to that discipline of yourself, of being able to pay your own bills and make sure you stay you know, financially afloat and all the, you know, I don't know what your, you know, your, your packing cash, cash is, but yeah, if, if, if it was, I was, yeah, if I was day one, it would be a dollar or two CRM, you know, $200, $300, $400 a day on Facebook leads and have them coming in and just make, having conversations. Boom. And then boom, passing it over to my staff once I've closed it to help kind of solidify the sale.

Yeah, I thought about the two. Yep. Like having a CSM, customer success manager, so I don't have to Talk to him again.

So that shit works if you can afford it, dude. You know what I mean? It's like we have to start people here because again, we're looking for the masses.

So it's like from the masses, it has to go to the same time. You got a great skill set and then just, you know, pace design. But, but you're on the right track. You got, you got the best coach in the league. You know, you're doing, you're going to make it going. Okay.

Appreciate it. Good, good question, Max. All right, Grady, I'll let you end it however the hell you want, dude. If we miss, if I missed a question you think I should have asked. Or whatever you want to leave them with, bro.

I appreciate it. Thank you. Hey guys, I would tell you though, like, this is a, a truly life-changing industry, and there's many different— from P&C to Medicare, like that girl, and, you know, and to life insurance, to term, to IULs. I can't buy— if I got my real estate license, I can't buy real estate leads. If I got my If I was doing solar, it's pretty difficult to generate and buy solar leads. If I was selling cars, it's difficult to buy car leads. But for some fascinating reason, people love their families so much that they fill out forms online, they mail in cards, and they call in phone numbers to say, well, someone help protect me. That's a very incredible place for us all to be. And we have 500,000 leads in the ILC right now that are, you know, 2/3 aged, 1/3 new that are waiting to be called and taken care of. And that's a pretty incredible place to be, especially given the commissions. Many companies have tried to go direct-to-consumer over the years and no one has figured it out yet because life insurance and God forbid you died yesterday, what would you do today? That conversation needs to be had out loud. And so you guys are an incredible industry. You got a phenomenal coach. You're the best company in the game. I mean, ChatGPT says it now. Like, it's pretty well seen that. Yes, that was like crazy. So So guys, I'm grateful for your time, grateful for your commitment to yourself, and hopefully you got some value out of this call. But just believe in this and just work every day to grow you, because the greater you get, the greater you're going to be able to get for your clients and then your future agents as well. So thanks, bro. Appreciate you having me on.

And thanks for your time as always, dude. Keep killing it. And please let me know if I can help in any way, dude.

Man, thank you.

Thank you.

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