This Telesales Phone Script Made Me $250,000 in 6 MONTHS ft. Roy Clancy | Ep73

tougher thing to come to grips with is like just some people aren't going to make it.

It's true.

You know that way better than I do.

But yeah, it's sad, dude. And it's, it's good people too. And they convince themselves of all the wrong reasons why they're not making it. That's the part that kills me. You know what I mean? I'm like, you don't even see the real reason. Shit, it's tough to watch. What up, y'all?

Welcome back.

Another episode of the Insurance Insiders Podcast. Got Roy Clancy today. Another young buck leading the space like crazy, dude. Sound a lot of insurance, building a big team, uh, much like, uh, what's your buddy's name I talked to a couple weeks ago? Uh, Trace. Yeah, similar backgrounds, door-to-door stuff. Yep, kids in college figuring out they can make a bunch of money along the way. I'm trying to teach my— I'm trying to teach my son Brayden that. He's 17, he can get his license in November and and he's on the phones booking appointments right now, and he's looking into all kinds of stuff. I'm like, I know door-to-door guys, I know pest guys, I know alarm guy, I know them all. What do you want to do? He's, he's enjoying insurance, dude.

So honestly, dude, like, I felt like door-to-door was such a great experience, but it was one of those things where it was going to propel me into something else, you know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

It wasn't the end game, you know what I mean? So yeah.

Did you know that going in? Like, was it on purpose? Like, hey, I want to learn this skill set, so I'm going to start here? Or was it just shit luck?

When I went in, dude, it was like I did not want to do concrete again, you know?

Okay, got it.

I was like, anything to not do that shit.

Why?

What's that like?

I don't know nothing about it. I drive by the places, we have a ton of them near me, but I don't know what happens.

So I did concrete with my football coach, so So there was that dynamic, because it's like if I did a shitty job or I woke up late for work or something like that, because we do early pours like 4:00 AM, because the heat's like 115, so you'd have to get done. Um, but yeah, and then you pull up to football practice and there's your boss again.

So it was nonstop.

Yeah, nonstop.

So dang, did you start You were young doing that in high school, I assume, or college, did you mean? 18. Got it.

And then so kind of my trajectory was I got a random text from a buddy, super obscure, you know, hey dude, I'm doing this thing over the summer, you know, this business opportunity.

I've got one of those texts, bro. That's how we're both here right now.

Exactly.

I love it.

And so, and I was so naive that I was like, business opportunity, anything to not do what I'm doing, you know?

Yeah.

I hopped on a call with his manager, you know, that's pretty classic, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Naturally.

It was like, dude, I was sold day one. It was like 80 hours a week, door to door, straight commission. And I don't know what it was. I feel like a lot of people, because then I tried to recruit, right? And I was going into the mindset like I would just recruit people that were like me.

Mm-hmm.

You know, they just get it.

Yeah. Yeah, how'd that work out? So is it similar model where like if they sell you get a little piece, or is it different, like in that right off the rip you get spread?

So in that business there's no, um, you don't recruit your first summer.

Got it.

You don't know what the hell you're doing. So yeah, which makes sense to me. Like I couldn't have brought a team. Now I did bring out like my brother and a couple other of my friends, but he went under my manager, which Yeah, yeah, got it. Probably the right thing too, because I didn't know what the hell I was doing. Sure.

So you have to become a manager, and then you can manage a crew and get some spread type of deal. Makes sense.

You have to get like invited back to do it again.

Really? Oh dude, can we do that?

What do you mean?

Can we invite— every week agents have to get invited back?

That's actually not a bad idea.

You know, I agree.

Make some work for it.

Would you invite every one of yours back next week if you could? If you had the choice right now today and I said you have to pick— how many you got total selling?

Uh, just 10.

Okay, if I'm like, you can only bring 7.

So, okay, so it goes from I can I invite all of them back to I can only bring 7.

I mean, if you only got 10, I guess you got some stragglers that don't sell is what you're saying.

I only like one, so But our model is a little bit, it's a little bit different than we tried right now. We're new, John. We're not.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah.

But I like this type of stuff.

We're trying to do that all on the front end, you know, like, see, hard to get in on the front end. You're in the office, you're taking up space, you're not paying rent. So it's basically like, yeah, not showing up on time. This is free rent anyway. Time to work from home. But I don't have any experience with people that are remote at all. So yeah, it's interesting. I'm learning a ton, that's for sure. Yeah.

What are you learning?

Okay. Yeah, I like it. We're solid crew, man. And they're gonna watch this podcast. So if I said no, then they're gonna be wondering.

Well, mine are gonna watch this podcast and I will say no.

Really?

Yeah. You know what I haven't figured out how to get really good at yet, dude? What? Is like setting all the expectations up front and them all saying, yes, I'll do it. And then when they still don't do it, not like bringing it to their attention.

What do you mean? What way?

Like, I want to point it out, you know what I mean? I'm like, you said you would do this, but you don't do this, and yet you're still frustrated financially. Like, do you not see it's not what you think it is causing the problem, right? You know, because I can't get them all to listen still. So if you figure that out, dude, I would love to hear hear more.

I have not figured that out. I think, I feel like in, in, uh, when, and this might be, this might change, right? As time moves on, but it's like, let's just recruit a bunch of killers.

Yeah.

You know, build out the foundation and then we'll turn on the floodgates, run ads and, and do all that stuff. And actually, dude, I was really curious with you, like, how are you recruiting right now?

Yeah. Uh, me personally, I'm very fortunate that somehow because I do a lot of this shit, people tend to come to me pretty often. Um, and want to be part of something new, huh?

So how do I get a piece of that?

Yeah, um, it's— yeah, it's crazy, dude. I didn't— it, it's progressively switched from me having to do outbound, actual recruiting, or running ads, right, or some combination, or working people's warm market, which I still do, um But the initial people, like when I said I'm going to rebuild this base shop, they— none of them were from ads. They all just came from my YouTube or Instagram or some video, or they saw me speak somewhere, or— it's content has got all of it for me today. Um, yeah, all— literally all of it.

Wow.

I don't run any ads. I run zero ads today.

Wow.

Could I get more people with ads? Yes, but it would be a different demographic. Have you ever read— I always talk about this book, uh, Five Levels of Leadership from Maxwell?

No.

John Maxwell. You seem like a guy that likes to read stuff. This one was like one of the most enlightening books ever for me with people. Yeah, because it let me know, like, there's all these leadership things and we go, how do I do A, B, and C to have leadership qualities, right? How do I be a better leader? How do I— right? And we're always trying to develop ourselves. Well, this book threw a curveball because it's— it explains the view of how other people view you as a leader relative to their position, your position, how well they know you or don't know you, right? So in an ad, you're just a leader because Roy ran the ad. They don't know shit about you. You haven't done anything for them. You hold no weight, typically, you know? And that book talks about how to change that and influence it.

Is that how you got into content creation? Was it— did you read that book and you're like, you know what, I should start pushing value adds? No, I don't value add content.

No, that, that started— it started the trickle though of me understanding I can influence people's perspective. Meaning one of the things we talk about really easily is when I get you on a podcast and I go, hey, he's at— my team says this, I'm looking down because my team gave me notes, they said Roy's at $274,000 through June. His team is at $985,000. You've only been in the business 2 years, you hit Hall of Fame, which is $400,000 your first year. Like, dude, that, that is going to instantly make you carry more weight with the people who didn't know that right before I said it.

Sure.

Yeah, like third-party validation, super simple way to do it. This book talks about different ways to do it and how to, how to more intentionally control that view other people have of you as a leader. Um, and then with— as time went on, you start seeing like, again, third-party validation. Dude, if I'm on people's videos, I'm on people's podcasts, I'm teaching people how to make a bunch of money, and all the, all the responses are like, hey, thanks for your book, thanks for this talk, thanks for this video, it helped me do ABC— that gives validity to me from strangers. Um, so when I, when I realized it was the same I turned it up. I was not smart enough to realize that when I first read the book 10 years ago.

Got it.

It took me a little while to figure that out, that it's kind of the same.

He talks about, you know, your lid.

Yeah. It's not— I don't think it's the same book, but it's one of his laws. I think that's one. I think that's his like 21 Irrefutable Laws of something.

So many damn books.

He does.

Yeah.

He's got like 100 books or something crazy. Yeah. Good stuff too.

That one we got. So Southwestern, the company that— and this is a sister company. Of Southwestern, what we're doing. They partnered with FFL or Integrity back in 2020. That's an interesting story to start with. But, um, and I wasn't a part of that. I was still, you know, selling door to door, but yeah, yeah.

Yep.

We had, uh, the, one of the best things about, uh, door to door companies is they get really, really good at teaching leadership.

Yeah.

You know, like, yep. I mean, Southwestern has been around for forever, you know, so they're really, really good at that piece. You know, skills and character. They're really good at the character part, you know. Neat. How so?

What are, what are some things?

Well, the whole idea of the program isn't to make money. It is. That's a part of it, but that's not like your primary focus. You don't, like, I didn't sell books because I want, well, I ain't gonna lie. I, I went in because I, I needed to make money, you know, I thought I was going to go back to school and I needed to pay for school. I didn't end up going back to school because then I found sales.

Right.

How the hell would I get 3 more years of school? And that's because I was going to school for accounting, you know?

Got it. Okay.

That was like a totally different career path.

I could, that was my background.

Yeah. Yeah. So, but anyway, we had a meeting after my first summer and this guy was teaching about leadership, you know, and he was talking about your lid, like if you're a 5. You're not going to recruit a 9, or if you do, you ain't going to stay long.

Yeah.

Well, I think about that a lot, you know?

Yeah.

Like, we all screw up, you know, we all got our own issues and problems and whatever, but that's one thing that's definitely stuck with me. That's like, you know, you're not— if you're a, if you're a 7 recruiting a 10, it's tough. Impossible. You know, it's tough.

You ain't gonna attract them.

Exactly.

So, you know, or if you do, you pass them off to your manager too.

What was that?

Or if you do, you pass them off to your manager. That's why they do that. Yeah, they're like, hey, this guy— I used to recruit like that too, bro, for sure. Yeah, hell yeah, dude. When I was new, I was like, yo, this guy Mike's over here teaching me how to make a bunch of money. You in? Talk to Mike. Right, that was, that was it early.

Who is this legendary Mike character? I've heard you talk about him in your videos. And yeah, it kind of seems like he was your mentor, right?

Yeah, he, um, Mike Kilimatt. He's retired since like 2 years ago, a little over 2 years ago. And, uh, he was just a dude that was in the upline, you know. It was like he was here and a guy he hired and then a guy he hired and a guy he hired, and that dude hired me. And I— that dude sent me the text like, hey, I'm doing this thing. Yeah, that was that dude. And he was just in Mike's hierarchy. And, um, I don't know, he was the one at the front of the rooms running meetings. So when I had questions, I tend to ask him instead of— again, my buddy's great dude, but he wasn't at the front of the room. Mike was. So I would go to Mike a lot. Um, and then the more and more I learned this business and kind of took the path I took to take a lot of initiative to do more than what most were doing, you know, because I just watched the people killing it and I was like, there's differences. I want to do what they're doing. And we became close because I was— I became more of a student of the game from— of his. And fortunately, he didn't worry about hierarchy or depth or any of that. Kind of treated me— he taught me to treat everyone like they're direct to you, right? It's like, just treat them all direct to you, like they're direct to you, because why not help them? And it all works out in the end, you know, with money and all that crap.

Yep.

And he taught me a lot about patience and people and communicating and how to manage people. And I, I didn't have experience in any of that shit, dude. Yeah. I was a— I was just— I was willing to work hard.

Yeah.

And I was very direct, like I could just be honest and, you know what I mean?

But that's huge. I mean, it's a huge plus. I don't know if you learned it, if you were born that way or whatever, but yeah, I mean, I had to work hard.

That's all I knew my whole life. You know, my mom had to work hard to get us out of the hood and off welfare, and I had to work hard because I thought it was a genius idea at 16 to start having babies. So no, you realize— yeah, then you realize real quick you got to work. So yeah, I was, I was paying for daycare in high school.

16, huh?

Yeah, she was born right after my 17th birthday, my whole senior year. So I was paying like $80 a week for daycare so I could go to school, and then I would leave school and go to Little Caesars to work after school.

I'm sure you tell your, your boys that, right?

Hell yeah, dude. I had the conversation with my son and my daughter literally yesterday. No, Brayden don't have kids. Brayden can't have kids. No, zero. He's— they're negative Uh, 13 more years. I tell them all 30, bro. I'm like, yo, wait till you're 30. And he wants kids bad. I'm like, you don't want them that bad, dude. Go play with them. Do daycare. Play. Do something else. Amanda has twins. Play with those. Wow. Yeah. So I'm trying to teach him to think more like y'all think at that young age. I didn't grow up in that environment. I didn't have access. I didn't know anybody. And I'm like, yo, if I went back in time, if I had someone And I probably did things wrong to not earn that someone. But if I had been in that situation, I'm like, I can't help but go, dang, what could life be like now, right?

You know?

So I want you to talk to that.

I didn't come out of the— you know, my dad's a business owner. Like, I've got 10 older siblings. I'm the youngest of them, you know?

It's crazy.

We had a scrap at the day. We had to split a P-11.

Yeah, yeah. You were trying to get people to remember your name, bro.

Exactly. They kept calling me Rob. I'm like, fuck you, seriously. You know, he'd go like this. He'd go, uh, Tommy, Danny, Oh, John, uh, Mark, Jimmy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that whole thing. So 100%. But yeah, I mean, he taught us a lot though. Like, he's, you know, he's kind of a, you know, you call him serial entrepreneur. I don't know, he just works multiple businesses and he's always scheming. He's always got something.

Yep, I like it. How old is he? Probably my age for kind of loud.

No, dude, he's, he's almost 70.

Okay, got it. Oh yeah, you're after 11, duh. I'm still—

they had me.

I didn't do basic common sense math there.

No, it's all good. She was 42. He was—

you probably have siblings my age then.

Yeah, my— I probably got a brother. You're 46?

Yeah, yeah, I'm 48. Yeah, makes sense. I got siblings super young too, so I get it.

To walk into Walmart and they'd be like, oh, is that your son? You know, but so yeah, I didn't grow up in a scenario where I had to like— I, I had to— I had to manufacture it because sure, like my parents would have paid for everything, you know, but I didn't like— here's what I didn't like. I didn't like if you're paying for something, I've got to listen to you. So I watched a Gary Vee video when I was 18, and he said, if you— if your parents are paying for your shit and you're complaining, you can go fuck yourself, or something crazy like that. And yeah, that's— oh yeah, watching it on Instagram, I'm like, damn, that's me, you know? And so from that point forward, I was like, I gotta find something to make money. So I— so I don't want to be that guy, you know? I got to find something.

I need you to send me that video so I can send it to my kids.

You know, I've tried to find it. He, um, 2017 and— but he's had like different ones. I'll find one.

Yeah, I love his stuff. His mentality is really cool. Yeah, on a lot of things. Hell, he'll, he'll scream at me saying I'm, I'm super young and I shouldn't be worried about the future and starting over or doing anything if you want to. 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 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.

I love that mindset though, because I mean, we would— now his is a little bit extreme where it's like, you know, eventually you're gonna die, right? But he's like, you're 7 years old, you're young. But you'd rather have that mindset than like, man, I'm old, bro, you know? True. And even just on a micro level, we used to do that over the summer. That's how we would trick ourselves. So if it's like week 10 You know, we've got 12 weeks in the summer, so it's starting to get to that point to where it's like, yeah, kind of over it about the trip and going home and seeing your girlfriend or whatever it is.

Yeah.

And so we'd be like, day one, week one, baby. Just getting started. Just left sales school. Just getting started. You know?

Yeah.

It's a cool mindset. You know, that's neat. I love it. Love it.

Love it. So how's that transition over to insurance, dude? How old are you now? 25.

25.

Sir. Killer, dude. So how do we, how do we, how do we teach more people how to print money in insurance, dude?

Dude, it's not that hard.

Let's talk about it. What's your playbook? Let's, let's roll through right now. Yeah, let's go.

Um, it ain't hard, bro. Like, all you got to do— I think there's a couple things that are the most important pieces. Get in an office, at least for the first couple months. Like, get into a damn office.

Get in somebody's.

Okay, an office. Like, if whatever, you got a family, you can't move, whatever, it's 2 and a half hours away.

Yep.

Which we don't— well, one, one guy on my team just had twins yesterday and they moved their whole family with two kids to move here to sell insurance. Sick. That's commitment.

That's one of my favorite parts about what y'all do is have people move to you or you don't mess with them. Yeah, I like that. Yeah.

And like, eventually we've talked about eventually opening up to like that more like single mom remote type of deal. But sure, what we're trying to do right now is like, at least you got to move at least for a couple of months. Yeah. Okay. Systems. I know a lot of other people do that. I don't think we're special in that way. I think, sure, you know, a lot of other agencies do that, but, um, I think that's—

most don't. Yeah, most don't. There are others, plenty that do, but most don't.

Yeah. When I heard that 92% fail in the first couple years, that was my first thought, is like, you're just probably not around people, bro, you know? Yeah, it's true. And they've done studies too. Like, I'm not gonna act like I You know, this was— I was watching on my, you know, a peer-reviewed study on TikTok.

Yeah, yeah.

They've done studies on like, apparently if you sit next to a top producer, your, your results go up 50%. No, sorry, 25%. If you sit next to a negative person or like a low producer, your results go down 50%. Double.

Makes sense.

And so if you're a low producer, you're always around yourself. So it probably goes down 100%.

Oh, I'm gonna hit deep for some of those people. It's true, dude. I was— so when you talk about Mike Kilmett earlier, the best move I ever made that other people had the opportunity to make that they did not make is he offered— at the time it was early 2014, FL's first month, and they reached out. Mike was like, I'm getting an office and I'm trying to see who wants to have an office inside, like an office, individual office inside his building, if you will. Yeah, it was $300 a month. And someone do— someone in the other upline called me and was like, hey, Mike's doing this office, he's trying to see if people want to be around it. $300 a month, do you want one? And I first was like, yeah, let me think about it.

Yeah.

And then I hung up and I was like, that was really dumb. Hey, I called him right back and I'm like, I'm in. And I got the office literally right next to Mike. I, I was 8 feet from him for 9 years.

Shit.

I was bound to learn some shit.

Makes sense. Yep. You know, I was talking with Cody Adam on our Life Pros podcast and he was saying, um, he said knowledge isn't power. Proximity is power. Yeah. I was like, damn, it's a good one. It's a heater.

That is a good one.

Yeah, man. Proximity is everything. I mean, um, you know, Monday morning meetings, daily sales training, you know, the whole deal. And now don't get me wrong. My mindset on this is like, if you want to figure it out, you will find a fricking way to figure it out. True. Find a way or an excuse. That's what we were taught selling books.

Yeah.

And it's true. And we all do. We all make excuses, you know?

Yeah.

Like plenty of excuses. But with something like this, it's like, part-time sucks. I don't think anybody should do it part-time.

Agreed.

Not a big, you know, I'm not a fan of anything part-time. Like, why would you do anything part-time? You know? There used to be a saying like, that they used to toss around too. It's like, um, full-time, double full-time. You're— I forget exactly what it's like. Double time, full-time, so you can— no, no, double time, part-time, so you can full-time, free time, or something like that. I forget exactly, but it was interesting like that.

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it makes sense actually.

Double time, part-time, so you can full-time, free time.

And that's saying I want time and money.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like if, if this thing, okay, if this thing can make you $2,000 on a sale, $3,000 on a sale, $1,000, whatever it is, it's like, where are you going to find something else that you can do? Like, I really don't know. Like, we've got a bunch of solar guys coming in. One of the guys on our team was in the solar business. He's just, you know, bringing a lot of solar guys in and there's a mass exodus. There was one guy in here chatting this morning before this and You know, he's talking about like how the commissions work and like 2 months for this. Like sometimes you wouldn't get it and then they dropped it. I'm like, yeah, holy shit. Like that sounds like a nightmare, you know? So something like this, I mean, where you can literally call somebody up on the phone like that, that lady, it's like, hey, you know, Roy here. She's like, oh, about the insurance, right? What? He was, his eyes were like, what? You know? Yeah. And, um, Yeah, it's just crazy. It's a cheat code. You pay for leads. It's a cheat code. Like when I left door-to-door, I was like, whatever I do next, I don't want to cold call. I just knew I didn't want to cold call and I didn't want to call my friends and family. Even if I'm selling something great, I don't want to. Yeah, I don't want to leverage relationships for money.

Sure. You know, I don't like that side either.

Thanksgiving or Christmas to get awkward, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've done that too. So, but, um, not like that much, a little bit.

Um, it's awkward.

It's awkward. Yeah, it's kind of like they say no and you're kind of like, all right, no big deal. Then you try to like build rapport on something else. I don't know, it's weird. Yeah. But anyway, when I found this, I was like, holy shit, you can just buy leads and then you can just skip that part. Yeah, you know, now some people coming in, as I'm finding out—

I think you're reading my mind about my next question.

Yeah, because I'm finding out they ain't got money, you know, and—

or, or the thought. So what my question was, and I want you to touch on with the money, is like, you came from generating prospecting without a lead, right?

Yeah.

So when you see a lead, you're like, oh look, they know what it is. Yeah. Or the dude watching's like, my leads don't say that, right? They say they didn't do it.

You know what I mean? I'm not going to say I started— I, I was on that for a long time.

Yeah.

When I first started, I was on Integrity Lead Center, gold and silvers. For the first month we were doing in-home and then the leads kind of dried up. Something happened. They dried up around Tennessee. And so we kind of were forced to switch to telesales. Ended up being a great thing.

Yeah.

But we were driving, dude, we were driving 3 hours this way, 3 hours.

Tennessee's tough too, dude.

And setting up fricking, oh my gosh, they'd be like, I set an appointment here and that's like an hour and a half drive to this guy that doesn't answer his door. Whatever. But I only did it for a month. I'm not gonna act like I did that for 5 years or 6 years, like something. But, um, yeah, dude, I don't know. Uh, it's like you just go through the nose. Like, I'm not gonna sit here and act like, um, yeah, you can twist and you pull the right lever and the right thing and get every person to say, I want life insurance, you know?

Oh, that ain't how it works. Thank you for confirming. Yeah, because sometimes you watch social media and you think all their leads call them and book them for them and buy their insurance on their own without—

as much as I said, like, that, that lady that was like, oh, about the insurance, right? Like, how often does that happen? Like, even if they did fill it out, like, you got to do a little bit of work and whatever.

Yeah, for sure.

Um, now you can get better, you can gain some skill, but it's like that. It's not, it's not rocket science. You gotta hunt leads, you phone through them, 25, you know, your 25 rule, 3x Vegas odds, you know. It's like eventually you're gonna get somebody who's like, oh, Insurance. Tell me more, you know, or whatever.

Yeah.

And then if you— and you're gonna suck at first. You're gonna get— it's always the same. Social and banking. Yeah, social and banking. And they just get thrown around like a rag doll. I'm just here to get quotes.

Yeah.

And they'll just let that, let that phrase stay in that person's mind the entire sales call and never address it. Now obviously you don't want to address it right there because now you're building tension, but it's like, sure. Let them be like, okay, yeah, no big deal, and then address it once you get into the rapport building, you know.

So how—

let's talk—

I want to know how you do it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to know how you do it without— because I know the way y'all sell is good— by avoiding those like crutch closes where we're just checking to see if you're eligible stuff, like, and we're pretending they're not buying, you know what I mean? I, I see a lot of new agents get into that because they're, for some weird reason, even though it's like Dude, y'all realize you're lying to people? I got onto my team last week about it, and I probably talked about it on 3 podcasts because I'm like, why are we pretending, you know? But I, I, I sort of understand the psychology of it. So I would love for you to figure out— they do struggle with— that's the things I watch guys in my— I'm building this new base shop, we have our guys dialing in Discord live, smooth as shit. And dude, one guy, they asked for banking and the lady goes Holy crap, a tree just fell on my house and hung up on him. You know what I mean? Like, it was that— like, yeah, right the second he gave pricing and he did the banking, it was a wrap. Suddenly a tree fell, like, legit. And now it wasn't legit, but she said it that way, right? You know what I mean? And you're seeing people go like, I'm sorry, I can't hear you. What? I can't hear you. And they're like, can you hear me? I swear, dude, I'm watching it happen with my new guys, and they're like, what am I doing wrong? I think that I would love some insight, dude.

Again, that's just part of the beginning. Yeah. Accepting. Yeah. You're going to get banged on a bunch like, but to that point.

So I told—

I sell the truck drivers.

Okay.

Lots of IULs and term.

Sure.

And final expense too. Like, yep, you get good at like transitioning out of, you know, if they're in poor health. Again, you don't get everybody, but my mindset on it is, and you might find this a little bit interesting, at first, if you just need money, Okay, I'm just saying I don't condone it. I'm not saying that it's a good thing. It's like, oh, let's just see if we get you approved or whatever. That is going to charge back. Yes, without a doubt. Like, there is no doubt in my mind that policy will charge back because I've done it. That's— dude, when I first started, like, come on, I'm scrappy. I want some money. Yeah. And it's not like I'm like, I would let them know the effective date and stuff and they're like, well, yeah, I guess it'll give us enough time to think about it. Sure. You know, the only way I think that that makes sense is when you're picking between a few options.

Mm-hmm.

And, and the way that you do it's important. You're like, for example, there's a time and a place for it, for sure. Time and a place, but under the context of they wanted to buy land.

Correct.

They just didn't know what amount made sense. Yep. Like, and I, I've heard your close on that one, which is great.

Sure.

And, you know, there's other ways to do it, you know. Well, let's start with the lowest option so you don't seem like you're trying to gouge them or whatever. But I don't do the 3-option thing. Okay, let's hear it. The way that I do mine is like, you know, John, when it comes to life insurance, you know, my mindset on it is, you know, does it make sense to buy something if you can't afford it year round? You know what I mean? So for you, you know, some truck drivers tell me, well, if you can keep this around $200, $300, You know, some tell me higher, some tell me lower. I guess for you, what would you say is comfortable? And I'll see how much insurance this— these insurance companies will give us for that.

Yeah. What point are you doing that in the presentation?

Like, where? Very—

yeah, right before you show pricing.

Yeah. And I'm bringing that up subtly, like, one at one— I like it— after the health questions, bring it up subtly. So my process with truck drivers is this, because when I first started I was like, IULs, I got to, I got to get them on Zoom. I got to build illustrations. I got to do all this stuff. My mindset on IULs and what we're doing is, you know, these truck drivers want a big death benefit. They're not as concerned with, with the cash value. Now they fund it if they want to, but we start about typically Mutual of Omaha, right? I have a mutual policy and essentially it's like you don't want to shoot yourself in the foot by overpromising and then be like, ah, shoot, I just explained this awesome product with all these living.

Yeah, yeah.

And then boom, it's $40,000 of whole life for $300 a month, you know?

Yeah.

So my process is, you know, rapport, whatever. First part, set the stage, tell them who you are, what you're about to do, and they want to know what's going to happen. In my mind, if I hop on the phone with somebody, and this has happened plenty of times, like if I hop on the phone, it's like, it's ambiguous. I don't know the goal here. How long is this going to take? Who are you? Are you an expert? Like, what, what's the deal? You're going to pass me off to somebody eventually? Like, you know, who are you and what's the goal here? Like, I think those are the questions subconsciously running through their brain. So I was like, hey, Roy here, you know, got that request, blah blah blah. You were curious about the trucker's life insurance, right? Yeah. Okay. Good deal. Well, just so you know, and then I make sure I didn't catch them at a bad time. Yep. They don't do truck drivers unloading.

Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's like that. My biggest thing was like, I just never caught anybody at a good time. So then I just, oh, what a bright idea. I didn't catch you at a bad time, did I? You know, I'm like, dude, I freaking simple months, 3 months, because what I was scared of, I was scared of getting the no.

Yeah.

You know what I mean? Like, oh, now I got to schedule an appointment and this and that, but that's just scarcity.

You know, they use it when you're down that path of confusion. They're like, that's them pulling the brakes. Exactly what you're saying. Yeah.

You're like, ah, no, you caught me in between blah, blah, blah. But you confirmed up front, like you're, it's not a bad time. You know what I mean? Slick. I like it. Um, and then let's see, setting the stage, just so they know, you know, just so they know my job, I'll walk through exactly what my job is. I tell them like exactly what we're going to cover too. I think that's important. It's like when you go up on stage and you give a part, you know, it's like you kind of wanna tell 'em what, get a little framework, what is this, you know? Yeah. I don't typically tell 'em how long it's gonna take, but you know, I'm like, you know, take a few minutes, you know, whatever. But then the most important thing is I go over health questions first.

What are you telling them then? Set the stage for me. How you, how you go about that?

Briefly.

With the health questions right before, like where you said, I'm going to explain what's going to happen. So how are you saying, here's who I am, here's what we're going to do today?

Okay, so I'll just give you that pretty much word for word. Maybe a couple things are up. Hey, like to think my job's pretty simple. You know, I'm like, I'm the licensed agent here, so I'll be the guy handling everything for you. And, you know, mainly just based on what you're looking for, I'll be the guy to help educate you and help walk you through, you know, what you may be able to qualify for. And John Wetmore, ultimately, if it makes sense, well, you know, potentially look at getting you an approval. Sound good?

Super simple, dude. So, so you're not pretending you're an underwriter or you're some benefit coordinator or you're the licensed state regulator?

Oh, none of that shit, dude. I'm the licensed agent, you know. And then I'll also say, and I'm not going to pass you off to anybody. Yeah, I'm your guy here. I'll be handling everything. And a lot of times I started implementing that actually just a couple weeks ago, to be honest with you. I love it. I've got— gotten a lot of like Oof, thank God. Ah, they don't know. They don't know.

True.

Just a guy on the other end of the phone. I think one piece too, a lot of people get banged on at that first part when they first pick up the phone. Hey John, you know, 100%. And I think like, man, this might sound weird, if you sound a little unpolished, it actually works in your favor.

Agreed.

So I'll be like, hey John, Hey John, Roy here. Hey, um, got that request you sent me. Looks like, I don't know, a couple minutes ago or whatever, a couple hours ago, yesterday, 3 weeks ago, or a little while back, you know, if it's like 2 years.

Yeah, yeah, a little while back, 1994, you said. We're scraping over here.

Yeah, exactly. Um, you were just, uh, you were just curious about the trucker's life insurance, right? You know, if they tell me no, like, I'm not gonna lie to you, dude, if they tell me I am not interested in your life insurance, gone.

Just move on.

Move on. I got enough people to call. I'm not— I ain't gonna sit there and argue, you know. I've done that plenty of times. You pulled this out at 9:56 AM. I've got the time, your signature. Look, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, well, if you didn't, then who did? Because I got your statement. It's like Yeah, and I'm just gonna get all riled up and it'll ruin my next hour, you know. It's true. So I think that first part, because a lot of people will be like, hey, this is Roy here at the Trucker's Life Insurance Department.

Correct. Yeah, yeah, I don't like that stuff, dude.

Shooting yourself in the foot, in my opinion. Now other people might work, whatever, but in my opinion, it's like, I don't want to talk to the guy that, that's at the department. I want to talk to a guy that owns the department. Yeah, you know what I mean? In my mind, I want to come across like I have the biggest penthouse, you know, penthouse apartment or, or whatever, office view in Nashville, you know. Sure, that's sick.

It's also true versus the other one is untrue, right?

Yeah, fair.

You are not a benefits coordinator, ma'am.

When we first started, we'd have to like— I'd forget like the county, you know, because it's like all the time like Where is that? Like, if somebody on the other line was like, oh yeah, where are you guys at?

Uh, yeah, yeah, I'm the benefits coordinator in right here in New Mexico.

Oh really?

What street? Ah, trust me, I've got caught on that, bro.

Love it. Get effing paid. Get effing paid. Get effing paid. Get effing paid. What up, guys?

If you guys are looking to get to a new level in your career, you may have seen that we've been running some workshops in my office in Atlanta. I have them every quarter now. The last one sold out fully. It was a massive success. Um, couple different levels you can attend. Just a general ticket, um, get you in the door, listen to 2 days of training, interactive workshop style. We really dive into what you got going on and how to get to new levels. If you're looking to be in a new crowd, higher level up, um, I have a private mastermind. Last one was at my house. It was insane. Um, all the value that everybody added to each other and we had a good time. And, uh, I heard it was way underpriced relative to what people got out of it. You can check out some of the testimonials here, I'm sure. But if you'd like to attend, click the link below. I do 'em every quarter. The date'll be around here somewhere. Look forward to seeing you there.

If you are in the insurance industry and you're looking to scale and grow your business, I highly encourage you to check John Wetmore out.

Honestly made the cost of the event back in like the first 2 hours of being here.

John Wetmore is the beast.

So much value in everything that I've learned here.

It is worth the price of admission. Make sure you get to the next one.

That's good. I mean, that's how, dude, when I changed to like, hey, guess you need some insurance, huh? Yeah, people started saying yes, and I'm like, why are we complicating this, right?

So that's so important. And like, same thing on the doors, like when I was, you know, selling, you know, educational stuff door-to-door, it's like, like I'm selling educational Like I would say I'm selling educational systems for the high schoolers down to little guys, um, or whatever. And it was never like I'm sitting down with, um, what was another one people would say? I'm, oh, uh, the Joneses, they, they, they picked up the whatever. Picked up, what does that even mean? They bought, they bought it, you know? Yeah. And, um, just being more like forthright because in my mind it's like I'd rather get told no right from the get. Of like this confusion, freaking massage it, this matrix and whatever.

Yeah.

So yeah, I found that that's really important and it makes me feel better too because I'm like, I'm just being honest.

Legit.

Yeah.

So then you do next health before you get into financial and why stuff.

Correct.

And I mean, I got some guys asking in the group now, they're new and they're like, I do health first, I do it this way first, and we're trying to mold. Correct.

As long as you As long as you don't tell them what they're going to get before you go over health.

Perfect.

In my mind, it doesn't matter. Like, I'll, uh, I actually don't do health first, John. Like, I was just saying, like, I'll take care of health first and then I'll go over what they can actually qualify for. Whereas what I was screwing up before is I'd promise everybody an IUL.

Yeah.

Truckers.

Yeah. Yeah.

You gotta pass the DOT physical and this and that. So I was naive. I'm like, dang, dude, this job sucks. Like, truck drivers suck. Oh, don't you know, whatever. But all I did was replace this part first, and then I created a script for the final expense if they could only qualify for that or for term or whatever, or if they didn't qualify for an IUL and got denied during the application when they told me they were scot-free or totally clean. But no, I want to figure out, like, I literally just ask them, dude, like in my sales script or my word track, it just says So first things first, I guess, what was the main reason you were looking at life insurance? You know, and then I ask them next question in there is how much do you currently got? And if they tell me zero, I want them to say zero.

Yeah.

So that they feel it like I have no coverage instead of just being like, oh, okay. You know, I'm like, so just so I get this straight and then you just repeat it back. So, so we're on the same page here and I know exactly what we're looking for. Currently, if something happened to you, you're telling me— so, Diane, they would not receive a lump sum check to pay for the house and to pay for the funeral and all that stuff. Is that accurate? And now they have to say it. I think that's really powerful because they're just thinking it. They've been thinking about it for a long time. And then another one is a lot of people get on the phone with somebody and I, you know, like I would get on the phone with somebody and then get procrastinated on. Yeah. And I still do all the time. But a lot of times they'd be like, um, they tell me at the end, well, I just got started looking at stuff, so I want to make sure blah, blah, blah. I'm like, ah, damn it. Or I've been looking, they've been looking for a while and got discouraged and now everybody's too expensive. So then instead of getting that at the end, I just added that question at the beginning, which is, I guess, is this recently or have you been kind of trying to get this taken care of for a while now? So if they take, if they tell me that answer, it was like a puzzle, dude. It's like, okay, I keep getting this shit here. Why don't I just ask that question up here to knock that part out?

And you have an answer for a yes or a no there, I assume.

Yeah.

If it's recent or been a while, I assume you have a strategy.

Yeah. And actually, speaking of which, I should put that part in the script, but I ask it every single time and I should put that piece in there for our guys that are running them. Um, And yeah, it just makes it way simpler. It's like, oh, he's been looking for a long time. I guess what's been holding you back, John? Is it health or how much coverage? They just tell me, you know, imagine like, wow, that's crazy. I tell them my job and what I'm gonna do, and then they tell me what their problem is and if they need it fixed, you know?

Mm-hmm.

It's like, it doesn't have to be this fricking ninja.

And what do you do if it's new? I just started looking this morning.

Oh, great, John. Well, you know how typically you'll go into Google and you'll type, you know, life insurance and then you get a million phone calls from a million different people or for all these different things, you know?

Yeah.

My job is to eliminate that because I'm going to shop around for you. I'm going to find the best possible option. You just got to trust me and we'll, you know, find the best possible option for you. Sound fair?

Simple. You know, how deep are you getting on the why stuff? I know a lot of people on telesales struggle with that, dude. They don't know to go deep enough or they miss one. And sometimes I might tell them like, dude, you don't know shit. You mean like, how do you learn to read that?

I still feel like I probably struggle with that one. I mean, I'm not like— okay, um, some people go there. Yep, they go there every time. Sure. And so, you know, get real emotional about it. I've never been that way. I've never sold that way. I don't feel genuine doing that. Yep. Um, so when they're going over the why, if they're just like, yeah, I'm just looking at options, or like, yeah, I just want $100 grand. Um, in my opinion, like, if somebody just says like, I just want to look at my options, I'm like, oh, okay, why is that? What are you trying to cover, mortgage or most? And I'll make it like, um, I think, dude, if you just make it like everybody's looking at this.

Yeah, you know, most you're giving them a thing too, putting it out there. Yeah, your question gives them the answer. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. Most— because, dude, most people have the same shit. They got credit card debt, mortgage, and funeral, and then income replacement. That's pretty much it. And so you just give them those 4 things. I guess for you, was it all of them or just 1 or 2 of those?

You know, simple.

And you dig into that a little bit more. It's like, okay, well, if you don't mind me asking, John, and I don't mean to sound like I'm, you know, I don't want to dig into it too deep if you don't want me to, but it's kind of my job. Um, you know, how much do we own the house? You know, and you just, you like cover the objection before.

Yep.

Um, and it takes a while to learn that stuff because when you first get started in the job, you're just trying to get past the first part. It's like, holy shit, they're actually interested. And then you get all the way to the end and then they bang on you. It's like, it's like you just get a little bit better. Okay. I got to get better at that part. And then this part and then this part, you know, with our people. It kind of seems like, and it's probably the same for you, everybody gets banged on at social first. Sure. And they get banged on at banking last. So if they're on that part and they're getting banged on at banking, and that's like their last step to conquer, that's great.

You're almost there.

Almost there. And then after that, it's like when you have to redo an application or you've got to find a different carrier and then you got to master that part and how to bring it back. True. But it's all just like little milestones, tiny little milestones of getting better. But at the beginning, it feels like you got to learn it all at once. Sure. You know, and that's just how it should be. I love it.

What do you— how do you, how do you teach people to eventually overcome the social banking thing? Is it just reps and they figure it out one day? Are you trying to give them a little like, hey, try this? Because it is hard. It's like, I just remember it stopped fucking happening. Yeah, the better I got at all the other stuff, it just— there was never a magic line for me that I can go, when I say this, I don't get it anymore.

You know, as stupid as it sounds, it's just your confidence.

Yeah.

On the phone. And that's just the hardest part to master. Another thing though, too, and this is a little tidbit of advice for people. Call the Department of Insurance, add them on the line and have them verify your info.

No shit. That's a thing. Every time I've heard that one before.

Yep.

Last night, really?

I banged on a banking last night. It was like 7 p.m. I'm like, dude, we've been working on this National Life Group policy for an hour. This is what I'm thinking. I'm not telling them. Yeah. 7:15, I'm gonna be late for this dinner that I was about to go to. So now I'm like starting to get pissed off, you know, and it's 7, but he's in Pacific time.

Okay.

So we call, um, the department and they don't pick up, but just, and nobody answers. I'm like, ah, dang it. I was like, I literally told him this. I'm like, well, um, shoot happens. I could print off my license, but it's going to be like $6. To me, for me to print it and to send it over to you. And he's like, no, no, no, no, no, not necessary. I trust you, blah, blah, blah. Just because I called him, he didn't even get any verification, you know? And that happens, dude. It's like, no, no, no, I trust you. Scammer, we get it. Or like saying something like, John, you seem like a pretty intelligent guy. You probably would have hung up on me at least 20 minutes ago if you thought I was trying to scam you, you know? You know what I mean?

I love it, dude.

Because it's like, right, you would have, you know.

Agreed.

Yeah. And I was like, in the off chance you got all my info, you got my national producer number, I give them a little, um, what do you call those things? Like a, it's like a virtual business card. Yeah. It's literally just like, that's nothing cool. It's not a link.

It's literally just a screenshot.

Got a picture of me and my fiancée. So it looks like, you know, like, uh, whatever, family. And I'm wearing like a Carhartt, so I kind of look like a trucker a little bit. Probably not at all, actually, but I thought it would help. And then, uh, my national producer number and first name, last name from, you know.

I love it, dude.

One dude yesterday, he's like, he's like, ah, dude, you're kind of ugly.

Nah.

He's like, nah, you're a pretty boy or something like that. All right, thanks, dude. That makes me feel good, Juan. but, um, that helps a lot too, because it's like they, um, they, you know, they just get to know, like, this is what I look like, that's me. Yeah. Um, but yeah, yeah, I, I don't know the answer, like the exact answer. It comes with time. Yeah.

How many, like, how do you, how do you articulate to people, um, what it takes to really learn this from a time commitment-wise, um, your mindset, like how much are you putting into Yeah, it's phone calls and leads, sure. But dude, we all know that ain't it. Yeah. You know, how do you articulate that to people, especially given you come from that? And it's like you walk in and people are pushing you to do more and lead more, you know what I mean? It's like, yeah, exactly. I mean, kind of, you got to seek it a little bit more. Yeah, in a sense. So I'm curious what your convos look like.

One guy in our— on our team here, he said, um, Tyler, when he was down at the event, to the solar— awesome dude. He was like, nobody's going to care about your business as much as you. Not your freaking upline, not your grandma, nobody, you know. And I've heard people say this time and time again, like, there are so— there are so many resources out there for you to tackle, so much YouTube videos, and the people that want it are going to get it. That's just number one. People that want it, you're going to seek the knowledge and they're going to find it, you know, if they're committed enough. We tell our guys when they come in, it's if you have basically, and we're, I'm starting to do this now. I'm learning a bunch too, but I'm starting this now where it's like, there are two routes. Okay. Some of them, some of them, you can't, you know, some of us were good at saving money. So what's more, and there's a cheat in the game is if you can just fund the business with the leads. And then there's the other way, and most people are in the other way. 100%. So that one thing I learned is like, if they don't have money and I'm recruiting them, they're going to find money somewhere and it's probably going to be from me. And so we'll actually— it's just the truth, man.

It's so true. Oh, so true.

And so, and we bring people in full time like we don't, you know, part-time thing and people can be a server on the weekends or whatever, but most of them are broke, their 20s, you know.

You have daily standards like here's what we do a day, $300 minimums, 6-day presentations or 3 policies.

So basically our thing—

$300, 6-day, 3 policies. I like that.

Okay. Our thing was this. In December, we came together like our, you know, top leaders and we went to a cabin out in Gatlinburg and we like created the vision for the year. Yeah, which I think is important. Um, and basically it came up like, what are the standards? Like, what are we gonna hold people to? Like, what is— what are we gonna hold ourselves to? Whatever. And, um, 9 to 6, 3 presentate— or 3 policies or 6 presentations. Best 2 out of 3, you can leave.

2 out of 3, I like that. We can't dip with 300 dials and nothing.

Yeah, right.

You can't dip on a 300 dial day with nothing happening.

Yeah, exactly. Sick. That's the theory, you know, and then people input stats nightly. We've got this stat thing where people input stats, like how many, you know, whatever. It's hard to track, you know, a lot of people, you know, hard to track that. Presentations tell a lot, um, through someone's presentations, either they don't have enough leads or, you know, in some cases, very, you know, like take it with a grain of salt, but like in some cases they just, their reach rate's just horrible. You know, you just watch them. They're dialing a ton. Maybe it's more spam, whatever. But most, for the most part, dude, like, I, the, the recent conversation in the office recently, like past 2 weeks, we've been hearing like spam, spam, all my phone numbers come up.

Bro, thank God. Please cover this. And I want to bang my head against the wall with the comments I'm getting about it. So please.

Okay. So first of all, it's like, okay, well, what can you control about that? Okay. You can put it in a spam thing every day. Verizon, AT&T, whatever is in there, T-Mobile, and you can just put it in every morning.

Yeah, that's an everyday thing. You got to enter that. Oh, I've heard about that thing, but I've never done it.

No, I don't do it myself, but he does it for me.

Got it.

And it's helpful, I think. I don't know. But bro, I've literally had like— especially when I was calling a lot more people, my reach rate's been a lot better with truckers for some reason. I don't know, there's a trade-off with everything. But, um, when I was calling like 200, 300 people a day and old leads and whatever, you're gonna get Part of the job. Yeah. I mean, some people are going to pick up the phone, some aren't. And I've had plenty of people tell me that I was Mark spam and they bought a life insurance policy. Sure. You know, it's just more numbers. You know, in that case, you can control what you can control. We have a guy in their office that literally has 5 phones.

Are you serious?

I'm not even kidding.

Sick.

I think 5 phones. I think at least 4 that I know of. But yeah. And then you do, you get Google Voice. We have GoHighLevel, so we use the CRM sometimes. Um, but yeah, you just, you just get different numbers and you just call them from those numbers. So our guys will do like, you know, call from the work phone, call from your personal phone, because we try to separate the two. Call from work phone, call from your personal phone, call from Google Voice.

Makes sense.

You know, if you're down that bad.

Yeah.

So easy work. Yep.

So you're saying they ain't getting out of the work?

Correct. Yeah. There's one way to get out of the work and everybody knows what it is, but not everybody comes in with that thing. Moolah.

I love it. I love it.

That's so good. Like, I don't want to tell people a story where I didn't— that I didn't come from, you know? Yeah. But there was a point in my life that I was broke. Sure. But then I did things to make sure I wasn't broke. You know, like, you know, I clicked the nozzle on my first summer, that first Saturday, and it was like $7 in the gas tank. I'm like, how the hell am I going to get out of this? You know?

Yeah.

And my manager— I literally went home. My manager is like, well, looks like you're going to have to sell something on Monday, you know? And welcome to the real world. That was really helpful. So I don't know, dude. Another thing too, like, tougher thing to come to grips with is like just some people aren't going to make it.

It's true.

You know that way better than I do.

But yeah, it's, it's sad, dude. And it's, it's good people too, and they convince themselves of all the wrong reasons why they're not making it. That's the part that kills me, you know what I mean? I'm like, you don't even see the real reason. Shit, you know, it's tough to watch. Still, as quote unquote good as I am according to a lot of people, but I ain't got the shit figured out either. I've just learned how to say this now instead of later better, and how to tell the story better, and how to get people to view. But dude, I still deal with 80/20 rule, dude. I can't— I don't know how to get over that thing. It still exists no matter how good a quality I do talking to people, asking questions, explaining the path. I still can't get them all to do what it takes, you know what I mean? It's like, God, so I— now it's, hey, just find the people who are. And I just— I joke now, you know, like when you go to a family Thanksgiving dinner and like you probably had to sit at the kiddie table.

Yep.

I just have that. So I'm like, you can stay here, but you got to go sit at the kiddie table.

Yeah. And just building out those analogies, did those things come to you or did somebody teach you those? Like the combo combo.

Yeah, yeah. I had to have someone teach me how to do it at the beginning because I didn't understand how they would do them to me. I'm oblivious, so I miss stuff. So if you don't give it to me straight, I'll miss it. And so this one dude, uh, it was actually Shawn Mike, the owner of FL. He used to try— he would do them all the time, and it would always make me like think different.

Yeah.

And I'm like, damn. So one day I go, how the hell do you do it, bro? And he, his little answer was so stupid, but like powerful at the same time. He goes, I just pay attention to the world, bro. They're everywhere. And he hung up and he moved on. And I'm like, they're everywhere, huh? So I started just paying attention to the world and I'm like, how can I make this thing people know? Cuz that's what, that what I got was he would explain something I was familiar with or understood and then link it to the thing he was trying to explain to me.

Do you have one that he gave you that really clicked with you early on?

Well, the first one I remember, okay, I'll tell you that one. When we were negative, like, from a, from a mindset standpoint, we're bitching or moaning, or I had a rough day. You say I had a rough day to Shawn Mike, he'd be like, hey, you got a hospital near you? Like, yeah. He goes, they got one of those cancer wards there?

Oh shit, yeah, yeah.

He goes, hey, go pull in there, go inside, and then call me back after. Let me know how rough your day is.

Yep.

I was like, wow, good point. So I remember that one because it was like the very first like, oh shit, he's not wrong kind of moment. Yeah, you know. And then it just— I started paying attention to how he delivered them, and I'm like, I want to learn that skill set because no one could say anything back when he did it. There was no— all the excuses went away. And I was like, I have to learn that skill set. And so I just started practicing it, working on it and trying them and messing them up. And I use stupid ones sometimes and people are like, what?

I've just—

13 years of it, dude. I've gotten pretty good at it. It becomes a way to communicate for me now because it's so easy to get people to transfer, like, the way I see things relative to the way you see things. It's like a translator.

Not to get all biblical, but that's literally all Christ would do.

Seriously?

Yeah, that's all I did.

I don't know it that well. Yeah, hence the stories and parables and all that.

That's it.

Yeah, crazy.

You read it, dude. Like, I mean, I wasn't super, you know, right? You know, I'm Catholic. I was raised Catholic my entire life. Yeah, Latin, right? The whole, uh, 13 years Catholic school, 1 year homeschool, I guess, technically. Yeah, the whole thing, the whole book is all just about it. I remember thinking like, man, stupid. You know, he couldn't tell them what it was. Yeah, yeah, I never thought of it that way because I learned the best through stories too. That's interesting. Yeah, crazy.

Well, there you go. It's like magic. 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 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.

When you guys were, um, when you guys were first starting out, you know, and it was— how many of y'all were at it, like, from FFL standpoint?

Yeah, I mean, there was no one here at the beginning.

So you were with another company?

Yeah, all of us. Yeah. And he started this and we moved. So Mike was with him at the other company. I was still in the hierarchy but not Sean's. I knew of Sean, and when Sean started this, he had Mike come with him. So he was like— Kilomet was like Sean's right-hand guy for the first long time, years. I was just in the hierarchy. So I also got to watch Sean Mike train my Kilomet. On how to build an agency. So I had a first— I had a front row, like I was literally sitting in the passenger seat, in the back seat if you will, while those two were driving. So I got a crazy different perspective than most people, um, just how tight they were. And I got to watch him shift kilomets. Um, so there was no one here at the beginning. The year I was Hall of Fame, it was 2015, it was our second full-time year at FFL. There was only 5 of us that did it.

No shit.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow. Yeah, that must have been nuts. That must be crazy. I mean, is it crazy to you?

Yes. Yeah, especially to what it's come from. I mean, dude, there was no company. We had a company name, but there was no company.

You guys—

John was still selling, huh? I don't even know, dude. He— Sean's like, worked a miracle. We had AmeriCo, was the only contract we had the first year. We tried to get a couple others and we get terminated. Yep, it was, it was messy.

Yeah, I bet. You know, that must be so cool to see the rise. And yeah, now that's like, what, 6,000 agents a month writing, you know?

Oh, it's a ton, dude. It's crazy. Yeah, it's, yeah, it's bananas. So it's been a neat ride, dude. And it's— we ain't here without people like you continuing it. Yeah, you know what I mean? As things evolve and things change and things grow and systems change and the process changes, like, dude, like, y'all, y'all are taking that now and going, all right, let's get to the next level. I was just early.

It's like, um, you know, I think I've heard you talk about this too. It's like back then everybody was just, you know, usually in their what, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s?

Oh dude, yeah, I was 35 when I started and I was one of the younger ones. Wow.

Yeah, they got guys like your son, it's gonna be 8 years old if he starts.

Correct. Yeah, he's already booking appointments for people at 17, you know what I mean? And guys in my group are 23, 25, 20. I mean, it's nuts, dude. That started really really shifting in my group probably in 2017 or '18. Yeah, I started noticing it and I was like, oh dang. And it just turned into— there were a couple guys early, like Andrew Taylor, a couple other guys, they, they started at 18. So even at FFL they were the young crew, but there was still more of us older folks than them for sure at the beginning.

Yeah, because Andrew Taylor, I kind of heard her story, he started off and he was, he was no good, right?

Yeah, I mean, he was like, worked at the grocery store, dude. Yeah.

And Started.

He's been doing it a long time now though.

Crazy. Yeah. It's really cool, man. I really don't like, I don't know. Um, I don't think it's rocket science at all. The job ain't that difficult. I think actually the hard part that I will continue to try to get better at every day is the people part. Sure. Like the selling part, like sure. Yeah. It takes like 3, 6 months to get good at.

Correct. Uh, people don't change, dude. It's ever evolving. Yeah, I mean, again, I'm still— I'm whatever people think I am, great relative to their skill set, dude. I still struggle with it. I still lose my mind some days. I still have a hard time communicating with certain people. I'm, you know what I mean? It's like there's personalities, dude. Yeah, so it's, it's always there, always something to get better at.

What would drive you to, to, you know, get the people— I mean, like recruit again, you know? I don't know if you were fun, dude, 100 people or whatever.

I mean, now I'm— I gotta— in order to do that, I have to have a base direct to me. Yeah, you know what I mean? Because the agency is what it is. It's already grown, it's already there. I did help people along the way, certainly they did most of the work, but at this stage, to start from scratch, I have to pick a handful of people to run with, you know what I mean? And trying to find those right handful of people, this, this interesting, you know. It's— I, again, I have more clarity and it's easier, but it, it ain't gone away from the difficulties.

Yeah, I mean I think, I mean, in my mind, when I first started in this business, we couldn't comprehend how much money you could make with how simple it is. Yeah. Like Logan and I, Logan Merritt, um, it was Logan, Austin, and I were pretty much, you know, we're the— Austin was the first one in the office and he kind of, you know, started everything. And then, you know, Logan and I were recruited and whatever, but we were talking one time, we're like, why is it— why do they pay so much? And then we're like, well, it was probably way harder back then. Paper applications, underwriting, going to their house.

It's changed a lot.

You know, it's like, it's just a lot easier now to be successful. But what's interesting about that too is like, just because it's easier doesn't mean that more people are going to be successful at it. I would like to see what the numbers would—

There's a bigger number of people successful. I don't feel like the percentage is changing much.

Of success.

The quantity of successful people, obviously, in our company has blown up.

Yeah.

I don't think the percentage has changed though. I think you still have that 80/20. And dude, we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of agents that don't sell shit every month.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just part of it. Like, you've interviewed, I mean, probably what, like thousands of people.

Excuse-driven is what it boils down to at the end of the day. It's just the excuse is different. Call it valid, call it invalid. To me, I think we all got shit in life, and some of us figure out how to get around it, and some of us don't. And I've been on both sides of that coin. I was 35 and broke, dude. So my excuses I let slow me down. And I think when we start finding reasons to figure it out, figure out how to win, it changes, you know. And there's some motivating factor that pushes us, and I don't know how to give people that piece. There's something that drives you to do what you do and me to do what I do, internal. And I don't— that part I don't know how to give people, dude.

Do you think that it was just dormant for you, or did it— why did it flip on at 35 then? Or did you just find this business and that was the right—

man, I had a, um, I think just a culmination of a lot. Like, if I look— I get to look backwards on it today, right? And can go, oh, this happening, this was happening, this thing played out. Oh, this moment was kind of like the center point for me. And it was not one of those I was tired of being tired type things, you know. I've been doing it for a little while. I've been kind of messing around, just getting by in the insurance business. I was dealing with financial stuff, ex-wife stuff, kids stuff, child support stuff, alimony stuff, new marriage stuff. New baby stuff, job stuff, you know what I mean? Just life, dude.

Yeah.

And I, I just see so many other people winning, and I had to one day go like, I must be doing something fucking wrong because I have the same license and I, I hear the same trainings they hear. It's got to be me. And when I just owned that it was me and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to change, to win, shit started changing.

Yeah.

You know, but I had a moment that drove me like to dig deeper than I was able to dig before without that tough moment, you know. And I don't know if everybody needs that tough moment or not. I don't, I don't— that part I, I struggle with, you know.

Yeah, I mean, it's either that or you got to manufacture something, correct?

Which I do really good now. I can, I can do that internally today and just mindfuck myself however I want. Yeah, you know, that's it. That took years.

One of the tough things too is like if, if somebody starts making a little bit of money— yeah, it's true.

That's that drive thing. There's something else besides money that does it for me today. Money— if it was the money, I'd be like, dude, I could just go to the beach, I'm, I'm good, you know? But it's, dude, I love helping. I love helping people get rich, and I like being able to like have my staff be able to support their kids. You know what I mean? And in their path, because they're employees, they don't have the same mindset as us as in this early entrepreneur, self-employed type. But do they want to do well in life too?

Yeah.

And if I do really well, I have more money. If they were part of helping me do really well, I like to pay them more, right? So I, I, because I don't want everyone to have the mindset we have because my employees would leave me.

I don't mean—

so I'm like, thank God you want to help a dipshit like me. But here, let me give you a— let me give you more upside than the dipshit up the street would.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, so I try to let my people eat too. If, if I'm eating well, it's like, all right, come on, come in. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, um, yeah, it's like, retire— is that even a part of your vocabulary?

Nah, dude.

No.

Again, I do it more efficiently today than ever. I have plenty of time. I focus on myself, my life, my family, my well-being, my fitness. Like, I have time for all that stuff, but I can get a lot done with a team. I have a good squad, you know what I mean? So I can accomplish a lot without it all being on my plate today, which is why I get to do stuff like this. My world still runs and I'm back to back to back. I got another one right now and it's like, I just— but that's— I like it that way, you know? When I'm having fun, I keep doing it.

Like, it's just—

this is fun, you know? We'll actually be up in Nashville with my team in October.

Yeah, I saw that. So, uh, when is that?

I don't remember the dates, uh, I forget. They did it, they picked it. Maybe it's September, it might be September. I'll get it for you. It's— I should know it, but Amanda knows it so well. We released a date the other day.

Um, yeah, somebody, one of the guys in the office showed it to me.

I was like, oh yeah, it will be on this video when it's live. Reese will put it up here on the screen so y'all watching. If it's not out yet, click the link, the whole thing. You can go to the events page though, johnwetmore.com/events. My guess is they have the dates up there already. Okay, um, I should know it, but I'm really bad and I don't. But I'll let you know, and if you want to connect, or I'll swing by if I can help you guys out in any way, dude, we'll be up there. We'll do a little lock-in type thing.

Yeah, be a lot of fun.

So would love to connect, dude. All right, homie, well, I appreciate, appreciate the good insight, great convo, and, uh, keep killing it, dude. And like, along the way, if I can help, let me know.

For sure, John. Thanks, dude.

Yes, sir.

Okay, man, talk to you soon.

Later, guys.