Watch This If You Want To Make $500,000+ in 2026

What's up? Thumbs up if you hear me clear. Thank you. Good deal. Appreciate the intro. That was— I need to just take you on the road with me. That was freaking great. I'm just a, uh, a dude out here in Atlanta trying to make shit happen every day, and you do it long enough and people start following and give you more credit than, than you probably deserve. But I, I appreciate all the, all the accolades and stuff. Um, I do love enjoying people figure this thing out, and I, I want you guys during this to be able to ask stuff if you want. I mean, I'm, I'm super— I don't have anything prepped, I'm just gonna let it rip. Um, but if you guys have certain things you want me to talk about, please, please don't hesitate to ask along the way. Um, you know, what I would say is like, I, you know, for those that don't know, I've been in— I've been, I've been with FFL since the day it opened. Um, so Founders Day is tomorrow. I was here in the first one before there was even a Founders Day existed. Hell, we started getting this thing ready in November of 2013. It's been a hell of a journey. And I don't get the credit, I don't get anything I got without all people like y'all doing what you guys do out there in the field to make us look good. I just happened to be here from the beginning. And I think if, if I gave myself credit for anything along the way, I really became a student of this game early. And I tell my crew, I'm rebuilding a base shop now for fun because, you know, the bigger it gets, the more help you get, the more people running things. Honestly, it gets a little boring. You get disconnected from some of the, some of the, the new, new blood coming in. So I'm having fun doing that. And I don't know if y'all notice, KG, or not, um, and Kendall, but I started selling again a little bit recently because I start— I hear so many agents talking about how this is difficult and You know, then I'm like, y'all know me that know me. I'm like, nah, it's an easy game when you play it right. And I just think a lot of people are playing the game wrong. And I had some people start saying things like, well, you sold in the field. You don't know what it's like on the phone. So I'm just here to say I rolled out of retirement and sold $40K in November and I ain't never done telesales in my life. So I am going to challenge all of you to stop pretending this is difficult because it's not. And I don't, that's not for me. That's for y'all to know. My assumption is, and I'll continue to say this, I think aside from being a student of the game, I know that I outwork most people. I'm 100% sure of that. Um, selling $40K, my close ratio last month was like 33%. I don't, I don't, I'm not your 90% close ratio guy, and I don't give a rip. Um, I had like 80 no-shows last month. I don't care at all. Why? I made $40K. Selling life insurance, calling leads. And someone DM'd me the other day, because now if you see it on my social, it's, it's kind of new content or whatever. And, um, some— of course, the most common message I get is, what leads are you working? That's what everybody wants to know. And my answer to everyone that asks is, I'm working all the leads that all of you tell me are shitty and don't work. That's all I call. Anytime someone tells me a lead don't work, I buy them and I go sell them. I've— you name it, you— ILC, GOAT leads, you— age leads, 5, it doesn't matter. They all are humans that are trying to take care of their family. And for me, not only, not only do I go out and do this, but I, I let everybody sneak peek and look behind the scenes, like pull the curtain back and watch. I do it all live. It's in my Discord. You can join my Discord. You can see me in there most days dialing live. My team's dialing live. I put it all on YouTube, the good, the bad, the ugly. I just, and I, I think what, what, what a lot of folks misunderstand is like The stuff that you get irritated by, that's never going away. Those things, they're just not. And so when you learn to factor them in and expect them, you know, I go, I don't know, how many, how many no-shows did you get last week? Because I had like 30, you know, and I don't even do this full-time, to be clear. Like, I'm the guy, if you read my book, y'all read it and go, how many, how many dials per hour? How many presentations per hour? What are your hours per week? When I calculate my own writing that $40K, it was 16 hours a week if I used a minute of dial and an hour of presentation. And to be clear, on telesales, it ain't an hour to present. So I ain't doing 15 hours a week even using my own math, you know. So for me, I, I, I definitely love being able to teach this thing, but I find far too many people want to— hence the name of the book, the Do More Now, Get Better Later— is like So many people want to get really good before they start doing a lot of reps. Same in the recruiting side. How many, how many y'all go like, I want to recruit, but I want to wait till I'm good, right? And I'm like, as my mentor used to tell me, what if you never get good? You know, you can still build a massive business. Not every person that builds a business is an $80K producer necessarily, you know, but learning how to simplify this thing has helped me a lot. I became a student of the game to really understand it. And for me, I think, um, this thing comes down to only a few things. I did a talk at, um, at 8% in July or whatever it was, and, and the premise of it was like, if I could only teach 4 things in this deal, the way I would teach it is that lead flow is by far the most important thing. It, it's the, it's the trigger for everything, right? And I'll, I'll, I'll get into detail on all of them. So I think the number one most important thing you need to figure out is lead flow. I think that the number two most important thing you need to figure out is work. And when I say work, I mean specifically like money-making activity. And if you're an individual agent and you sell life insurance for a living, the only things that make you money are prospecting and presenting. Nothing else will pay you, right? And so I've always taught, if you do 40 hours of the work, which means 40 hours of prospecting and presenting, you will see and talk to significantly more people than you're talking to now. It won't even be close, and you'll trip over money, right? I think the third thing is training. I think that far too many people don't take training as seriously as they should. There's a lot of you that have been doing this for 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, 12 months, a year, 2 years, and don't know underwriting guides. You don't know the nuances from carrier to carrier. You just kind of like take for granted that there are cheat sheets out there and toolkits or Integrity Connect, and you just don't— you don't really know your craft, you know. And I think far too many people don't— don't— I take this like like it's a sport and I'm trying to make the NFL, and I need to memorize not only my playbook and what I got to do, but I need to know what everybody else on the field is going to do, right? If I know what I got to do, that's one thing, but if I know what you got to do too, I know how to play the game better than you. I can predict and see what's coming before it comes. And then I, I would say the last thing, the fourth thing I would teach is coaching, you know, being coached by someone who's doing this. I, I see far too many agents reach out to other agents that they're comfortable talking to. Most of y'all are sitting next to the person you always sit next to. You're conversing with the person you always converse with. You tend to not challenge yourself and be around people who think different. We tend to not want to be around people who challenge us because it's uncomfortable, you know. And so I, I, I think we can get caught up in talking to people who will validate our concerns. You know, so if you say something negative about a lead or a lead company or a lead flow or a vendor or a carrier and an underwriting decision or whatever, an e-app, or the way anything works, and someone next to you agrees and it's negative, dude, stop talking to them. They're ruining the way you think, you know. And, and what I've learned, if I take those 4 things, those 4 steps for me Um, and I'm aware there's a lot more to learn. I'm not confused that there's a ton, but what I know is like most of the people that get started want to know all the things and the details and the nitty-gritty before they do the basics. And most agents want to do those 4 in reverse order. They want coaching first. They come on board, they want me to sit down and coach them before they've done any study on their own. They have no leads yet and they ain't worked. They want coaching, number one, and then they want to train so they don't have to work, and they want to spend all day training and they never do the work. And then they typically don't buy enough leads to be able to do the work, right? And you put yourself in this corner, and you, and you put yourself in a position where, to where it's really hard to win, you know, where, where for me, what I like to teach is like, why don't we play the game the correct way and understand that there, there is something to be said about if you call enough people, you will get plenty that just go, I need some insurance, and they don't push back at all, and they don't argue about anything, and they don't give you any objections whatsoever. How many of y'all get laydowns, right? We, we all get laydowns. The question is, how many of them do you get? I like getting 5, 6, 7 of them a week. How do I do that? But I gotta talk to probably 30, 40 people a week. You ain't getting 7 laydowns talking to 4 people. It's not gonna happen. And you ain't gonna talk to 4 people setting 5 appointments a day. Not in today's world. That ain't a thing. You know, we're playing a different game out there with phones and spams and different numbers and telemarketing, and it's a different game out there in this world. And with that though, you don't have to drive all over God's green earth to sell. Now I know there's still some people out there doing the field thing, and that's fine. But you can— I sat at home in my PJs and wrote $40 grand part-time buying the same leads. All I bought was final expense leads, ILC, GOAT, and I had some aged shit that we had from 2 years ago that I just threw into a CRM. That's it. That's what I wrote for. And I bought the cheap GOAT lead. I didn't buy nothing. I bought the $18, like, basic final expense ones. I didn't get no premium, nothing. You know, and again, I don't think it's— give me a lead, I'll call them and close them. I've done inbound. There's a couple people that like these inbound leads and they're trash. They think everything's free from the government. Dude, I'll close those suckers too. Why? You— I learn how to work them. I learn how to do it the right way, you know, and I understand that most are going to say something stupid when they're that type of lead. I'm just not confused by that, so I don't let it slow me down, you know. And I think people get really confused with ratio, so I share all my stuff. You know, there was not one lead type that crushed it more than the others. I closed a little bit of everything. I closed some from ILC, I closed some from GOAT, I closed some from aged, I closed some from call-ins. There was none that slayed. There wasn't one, you know. Again, no-show ratio was like 70+% on appointments. It's significantly easier to book this thing on a one-call close. I see a lot of agents who complicate— how do you know how to one-call close versus book appointments? I'm like, just keep— don't offer them a time, just keep asking the questions. You mean like, hey, this is John calling about this, I need to verify some stuff, and just keep asking questions. What's your date of birth? All right. What's your health? All right. I'm here to help you figure out if you can get some insurance. It's, it's not a complicated process. I think too many people get caught up And I, I'll say this first: I love that people put together scripts. I, I love that they're out there, but scripts were built for those of y'all that overthink everything and think this is hard and couldn't just listen to what we said and say something similar. And I'll challenge you to think of— give me any other situation in your life where you have to call or speak to another human being that you need to look at a piece of paper before you have the conversation, during the conversation. Give me another situation in your life where you use a script, you know what I mean? Like, we don't raise babies— I need a script for raising babies. Stop it, bro. When they shit themselves and it's all up their back and you're in the middle of the Target, dude, you got to figure it out, you know what I mean? It's like, it's part of the game. Use a script for marriage. I mean, like, what? Call the doctor and figure something out. I got, I got, I don't know, something I need for a medical something or other. Do you have a script? You know what I mean? Like, how many situations in life do you have to handle things on the fly? This is, so it's, can we learn how to communicate with people? Now, should there be structure? Yes, please. How do you learn the structure? You mess it up so many times and you get coaching after your work and you do your training after the work. And the combination of the two is what's deadly, right? There's a lot of people who do a bunch of work. They don't— how many y'all listen to your own phone calls? Pick a phone call or two and listen to them every night and compare what you say versus what we say you should say. I bet none of y'all are doing that. Now, in sports, can you imagine if when the quarterback threw interceptions, they didn't go watch game film and figure out what they did wrong? And watch what their shoulder did, their elbow did, the way they, they maneuvered on the field. It'd be really weird. And in fact, most of y'all, especially the guys, you would be yelling at the TV because they made the wrong play, and you know their playbook better than they know their playbook, and you're frustrated. And I'm like, but you don't know our playbook. Why? You don't know the mistakes you're making. Why? You don't study it. You don't study yourself. You don't study and find your own mistakes. I find it to be one of the weirdest things in our industry. You don't— I, I sound weird when I listen to myself. Okay, get over it. Like, this is like real training. Like, understand, if you, if you listen to a recording or two of yours a night— and I'm not saying in the middle of the day, this is that work thing, this is stuff to do after hours. You know, but if you listen to it, you'll be like disgusted with what you say, and you'll hear clear as day why they didn't buy. You don't even gotta know what you're doing. It's, it's a requirement for new agents that work with me. If you don't listen to your own stuff, I ain't coaching you. Why? You ain't training yourself. Remember the order, right? We lead flow, work, training, coaching. If you ain't doing training, you sure as shit ain't getting coaching. You know, so I think it's really important to, to look at this thing like a profession. And I was taught, if you want to get paid like a professional, you better act like a professional. You know, think if we were on— I don't know, you were an actor, actress, you're on Broadway, you're on some TV show, and you don't study and know all the words line by line. And maybe you do know yours. Can you imagine not knowing your partner's? That you're on the film with and you don't know their lines and the timing and the cadence, it'd be really weird, right? And so it's, it's learning to understand and study this thing. And it's so easy to do with technology today. Yeah, I mean, hell, you throw damn transcripts into ChatGPT and it'll tell you where you suck. You ain't gotta put in that much effort, you know? Every piece of content I do is recorded. Everything I— every— we make content from all of the trainings. This is being recorded. Every call I make, every client call, Everything I do, I record. My team throws it into any type of AI and we look at it and we study it and we come up with stuff with it. I, I think again, don't skip listening cuz if you hear yourself, you will hear and find mistakes cuz you'll be— a lot of us think we say what we're told to say, but we do it and we stutter before it comes out of our mouth, or we pause at the wrong time talking to a client. You know, you ask a question and you pause at the wrong time, you, you die. Sometimes if you pause at the right time, you can create something like you start creating emotion with clients and there's times to speed up and slow down. And maybe some of y'all know this, maybe you don't, but this is the, these are the things that people don't study, you know, because this thing is more about just buying leads and making phone calls. And I, I would say that the overwhelming majority of people, myself included— and, and I want to, I want to say this, if, if, if you haven't read the book, and this is not a plug on it, I share all of this stuff I'm telling you. I effed up all of it. I was not good at the beginning. I know, I know, I know. I recognize a lot of faces. I know a lot of you know the actual story. I was a shit show. I, I'm actually still a shit show. I was a shit show and I was really bad. Um, And so I had to figure out how to learn this game. I think what I had and still have that most people for some reason don't, and I don't know why, is I've always believed if someone else can do it, I could do it too, you know. And when I saw my first year, again, I was here at the beginning, but I'm always really direct about it. I wasn't here at the beginning because Shawn Mike recruited me because I was a killer. I was in someone's hierarchy 4 in depth and just happened to come over. I was basically a part-time agent that just happened to be in someone's hierarchy, you know. I was 5, I was 5 in depth from Sean. So I wasn't recruited early at the beginning when he— we had some of the killers. Y'all know some of the OGs that have been here, they were all on stage already killing it. I was learning from them. I think if I had— if I took anything, I was probably the first like, what's the word I want to use? The— I was probably one of the first spawned out of the teaching of the early FFL OGs because I was just a dude in the crowd at our very first convention in, in Atlanta when it was 150 people there. Hell, there's more people in this room than I think than we had at our first convention, you know. Um, and so I, I, I, I take a lot of pride in that because I worked my face off to get on stage like some of the OGs that were there, because I wanted to be like that. And I'm like, no offense, if this dude from New Jersey who's doing whatever can sell that much insurance, and this guy from Cali, and this guy from Washington, and this dude from Maryland, if they can get up there and say those words and make $400,000, $500,000, $600,000 a year, why can't I say those words? And y'all know those people that I named, y'all probably know who I'm talking about. Like, it's, I just, I was like, dude, they're killing it. I want that. I want to be on stage. I want to change my family's life. I want those dope shoes. I want that sick jacket. I like the cars they drive. I like the vacations they go on. I like the debt they paid off for their families. I want to live different. But to live different, you gotta live different. And I had to give up a lot of stuff and had to sacrifice a lot of things, and I had to miss a lot of kids' stuff, and I had to miss the soccer games, and I just— I had to give up a lot. I had to sacrifice things along the way. 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. For winners that want to work their ass off and build something dope. Click on the link below, or you can go to johnwetmore.com/join and put in your application. We'll see if I'd be interested in working with you. DM me, hit me up, whatever you like. You know, but, but myself and Steph, my wife, many of y'all know, we were on the same page with that on how we were going to go about it, you know, and what it was going to take from not only me but from her. And everybody has different family situations, right? You got to figure that life out. I have a, um, I have a, um, like a little exercise I give out a lot. Y'all can have it, it's free. There's no— this isn't like a funnel or something paid. Literally, I just give this shit away. But if you go to johnwetmore.com/resources, they will— you'll get an email. You will get on my email list, and I will spam the shit out of you to unsubscribe because I put a lot of content out. For those that don't, I just unsubscribe and you're good. You can move on with your day. You can take the shit, steal it, and move on. Uh, but, and unsubscribe and then move on if you don't like all the emails. By the way, Reese isn't— thank you for posting that, bro. You're— he's good. Was that you that just popped that up? I think I just saw your name. I appreciate it, bro. Uh, Reese handles all my content, so if you like my social, it's not— I promise it's not me. I don't do any— I do the talking, but all the rest of the shit is, is my guy Reese. He takes care of all that, um, from the office. And, um, so you'll— if you, if you go to that link, you can download these— there's There's like 2 worksheets that come with it and a couple videos that explain it. And this is the exercise that I did back in early 2015 after the first convention where I realized I wasn't putting in the work. I'll say this, y'all, a lot of y'all know Mark Mead. You know, he's moved on to other things in today's world, but that's my dude. Like that mother effer helped me more in a stage in my life than anyone was willing to because he told me the truth one day and I was frustrated. I had been in the business for 2.5 years. I was a $12,000 to $14,000 a month kind of guy, issue paid, not deposits, issue paid. At the time I was probably at a, I don't know, 80 comp, 90 comp, whatever it was back in the day. And I couldn't figure out how to get to 20. And you have all heard Sean go, if you ain't selling $20K, you're probably broke, right? And y'all can all agree with that. If you're selling under $20K, you got no money. Or if you do have a few, it's probably because you're in mom's basement and have no bills. But there's not— there's not real money there. And if you do make a few bucks, you go buy a nice car and you get a nicer house and you pay off some credit cards. There's no money left. And the real money started, I understood, at $40K. All right. Which is why we developed the whole Hall of Fame, which is whatever, $35,000, $36,000 a month, whatever the math is. But I remember I, John Wetmore struggled, numbers guy, analytical, do more that, that developed later. Um, I didn't know how to go from $14,000 a month to $20,000. I could not crack the code. I spent 2 and a half years trying to figure that out because I was trying to figure out how to stay on the same schedule with the same leads, making the same limited phone calls with the same shitty script, not studying my own stuff, trying to figure out how to suddenly sell basically 50% more with the same work ethic, the same lead flow, the same everything. I just thought, if I say just the right words to Bob, my issue paid could probably double. I just need to know the right script and the right lead and the right time to call them and the right time of day and the right weather. You know, the weather forecast is important when you call people, especially in the, in the field days. You know what I mean? Like, what time— what's the best time to call a lead, bro? Like, but I was that guy, you know? So I go to Mark after he explains on stage for 30 minutes on how to do it. I still go up to him and I'm like, yeah, but, yeah, but. And I asked him 3 yeah, but questions. And he's like, did you not hear anything I said? I was like, bro, I don't— I mean, what Like, I'm— I just, I just want to know how to— I don't, I don't know how to do it. Any, any good? He asked me how many appointments I was running, and a lot of you all have heard this story. It's literally the turning point of my career. He asked me how many, um, that fool, he goes, how many appointments do you run? And I said about 12 a week. And y'all, y'all know my boy The Laugh. Some of y'all know. He did that to my face, and he said, why do you expect my results with your work ethic? And I didn't have an answer, you know. And I was like, it took me 3 days to go, well, how many do you run? I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I wasn't, I don't know, maybe y'all, I think a lot of y'all are confused because you don't run enough either. You know, and, and when he told me the number, I was like, wait, he makes triple what I make, but he runs triple the appointments? Oh, weird. That, that, that's it. He was like, bro, did, did, do I need to clarify again? I was like, nah, I got it. So I went back home and I did the exercise I just sent y'all. I sat down and I looked at my schedule and I figured out how do I get— now I didn't think I was as good as him, so I made my number bigger. I just had to run more appointments because I didn't think I was as good as a sales guy, whatever. And in that schedule, and that it's a goal, there's a goals exercise and there's a schedule exercise in there. And there's videos that you should watch. Don't just print it out and cheat and do it because then it's pointless. All right. I really want you to absorb the how and the why I did it. And I went back and I looked at the schedule and I kind of sat down with Steph and we figured some things out. I won't go through the whole thing, but I really started to focus on what I was doing wrong and what role I played in what wasn't going right. And prior to that, I was always blaming something external. It was always someone else's fault. It was always the lead company didn't do this for me. The number was bad. They didn't refund it. Company took too long for the commissions. I had people email me last week like, the commissions are just taking long this week. Like, what? I need to get paid. I didn't get paid enough the holiday. I'm like, you know, if you sold $40 grand, you wouldn't be bitching, right? Yeah, they, they're closed on holiday. Banks, they're— newsflash— they're closed. Insurance companies, they go home early the day before, the day after holidays. They don't give a shit. They don't read their emails. They don't process anything. The banks are closed. They don't care that you're broke. You— hey, guess what? Next year Thanksgiving is on the same week. Holidays come to say y'all knew they were coming. You didn't prep for them because you ain't playing the game right, you know? And so I really had to do these exercises and really sit down and look myself in the mirror and go like, I'm the only damn commonality in this whole thing. Every new lead company I tried, I still had the same problem. Every carrier I sent business to, I still had the same problem. I was still broke, you know? And I, I got tired of that. And I just— I know y'all, some of y'all are tired. I see some of the same faces still nodding their heads at the same shit I say that I've said to you 100 effing times. I see you, girl. I see it. I ain't call— I didn't say who it was, but I see it. Who's pointing? Why are y'all pointing? You think I know who— you know who I'm talking— I see it. Come on now. There's a couple y'all zoomed in on. I guess the, the big crowd I'm having a hard time seeing. I see some bodies back there, so I can't wear them out quite the same, but a few of y'all I see really clearly, you know. Um, and I just challenge y'all to change. Like, you got to be tired I mean, you've got to see the growth in other people, you know. I mean, you've got to see the results. The difference is you don't see the grind and the things they're changing in their life every day, you know. And you're, you're gonna have to change some stuff if it ain't going the way you want. You got to change some stuff, and you don't have to change a lot. That's what I learned, is, is really simple tweaks. And the tweaks aren't what you probably think they are, right? I, I, I find a lot of agents try to They try to dictate or tell us or ask us. They like— a lot of y'all reach out and go, hey, I need help with this. I'm like, hold up, you're the one that's broken, sucks at this, right? It's really bad for you to say what you need help with when you're the one that's broken, but it's really— it was really uncomfortable to go to other people and go, hey, where am I messing up? What am I doing? Can you tell me from your view what I'm doing wrong? Be careful when you ask because some of us gonna tell you the truth, you know. But that's one thing that I always appreciated from Sean. And early on, when I, when I was fortunate to be around him a lot and get, get, get a lot of direct training— we used to have a weekly call every Wednesday, one-on-one call with him early on. He always got on our team, or we had like this recruiting call. It was like, uh, I think it was Thursday nights back in the day. He would get on like once a month with my mentor and a bunch of us. And, you know, a lot of us will go, hey, do you have any questions? I prepped y'all plenty to be able to ask questions, and I do it in advance because most people won't have questions. But I was always, I was always big on just asking. And my favorite question to ask Sean all the time is like, dude, where am I messing up and where can I improve? And you know, that fool is going to tell you. So I got some really tough answers along the way, you know, but he always pointed me in the right direction, you know. And I, I challenge you guys to stop asking the people that you're comfortable asking. Like, get out of your comfort zone. It's, it's a big way to make things happen. The, the environment you're in now ain't working. Change something. Challenge each other. When people say negative things Challenge, don't let them. You know, I had a dude on a podcast yesterday that's killing it, and he, he wants to make a million bucks next year. And he's like, I mean, I hope next year I make a million. I was like, can you, can you say that over please? I don't like the way you said it. You sounded like you lack confidence in that statement and like you're hoping it falls out of the sky like the rain does on a random Thursday. Like, that ain't how it works. How about you tell me you're gonna go make a million bucks and then you put a plan behind it in order to do it? And some of y'all, maybe that number's too big. I get it. My first year, my goal was $80 grand. 2013, when this thing started going into 2014, I just want to make $80 grand in 2014 for the whole year. I'm like, how do I make that a day now? Can I Is that— can I, can I do that? Like a year? Like, I don't— that's not good anymore, you know? Um, so you can, you can, you can grow a lot in a short window. I wanted to make $80K and I changed some things. I cracked $100K that first year. I probably netted $80K after leads and stuff, to be honest. But when I, when I made that, when I made that change in 2015 and I, and I ramped up my schedule and I really got that under control, and I really focused on the discipline of doing this. And more importantly, I got rid of a lot of things in my life, a lot of bad habits, a lot of wasted time. I got rid of a lot of people that I associated with, and I started focusing on improving me daily. And I still do. You know, I had someone text me the other day and he's like, hey, can you recommend the book? I'm like, so I took a video and I'm like, I did a video and I'm like, here are the 200 I've read in the last 10 years and pick one. Like, you know, I mean, I could give you one, but I mean, I just read a lot of them. There's no one book that did it. It was lots of them because they all have good stuff in them, you know. And that time of year is coming up, you know. Christmas is obviously in a couple weeks. That my least favorite thing ever is New Year's resolutions. I hate them. If any of you are saying words out of your mouth that you're going to start in January, just cut it out. Like, if you're going to start in January, why not start today? Like, if you're procrastinating from now to January, you're just going to procrastinate again in January, or you're going to do it for 3 days or 3 weeks like you did last year, you know? So the time is now to make the changes, and you got Christmas coming up. Somebody watching that ain't in the best financial position today, literally right now, by Christmas can have a gang of money in their account. You might not— you're not gonna have a million bucks, but someone has got $127 or $2,000 or $500 could have $20,000. That's possible. You could have $10,000. That's possible. You know what I mean? You can make an extra 5 G's to take care of your kids for Christmas. You You can do that this weekend. How? You tell me you go buy 200 leads and you make 1,000 phone calls a day for the next 5 days, you can't go make an extra 5 grand? Cut it out. Like, there's bound to be— it's not that many people, 200. What, you gotta find 5, 6, 7, 8 of them to make an extra 5? Like, you don't have to find that many. I close— I did the math since I've been back in the field. I started end of September just trying to figure it out again. I've never done telesales. I don't know anything about CRMs and dialers and automations. I just— I like this thing. This thing I like the best. I've tried all the other things, I hate them all. I'm just like, use this thing and call people. Um, but I've— I don't know, I forget the number, but I'm, I'm like over $80K since then. Um, and it's just talking to people a lot, you know. But I've only closed 5% of the leads I've purchased. And I 5x'd my money in like 8 weeks, only closing 5 out of 100 of them. I'm not the guy that's going to come up here and pretend I book 10 appointments and 10 of them show up and I close 10 of them. I'm not that guy. I'm just like y'all. I just talk to a lot more people. And what's crazy is like, yeah, Kendall, I'm not— I don't— I'm not that good, bro. It's 5% of— dude, you can buy me 100, give me— close 5, there's money in it. I mean, y'all do the math. $20 a lead at 100, it's 2 G's. You close 5 of them, it's 5 G's. It's not that deep, you know. Imagine if you get good. And there's some things I'm really good at. Like, I'm really good. I, I find and replace a lot of policies. I'm really good at that. My average AP on final expense is like 2 G's a pop. It ain't $800 like a lot of agents. Why? I mean, I, I got good at something. That, that I got to keep. I might not have sold in 10 years, but I know how to talk to people. You can't take that away from me. That's skill set stuff. That's study stuff. That's learning my craft stuff. I think 40% of the apps I write are replacements. My average replacement app is like $2,800. You know, I know how to do that. I got really good at that piece. I know how to find— I know how to— I know how to get a why out of someone quick. I know how to make someone comfortable quick without building fake rapport, because I hate it, especially over the phone. It's weird and awkward. You know, I can show for someone pricing in 10 minutes, and if they don't buy, I don't give a shit. I'm on the phone with the next person right away. I don't need 47 minutes to figure out if they're a buyer or not. And if you do, just means you're doing it wrong, and that's okay because there's a lot of room for improvement. And if you're, if you're getting the lead flow and you're doing the work and you're doing the training, I promise there's going to be someone there to coach you. But a lot of y'all want the coaching but you don't put in the work. I had a guy message, leave me a voicemail yesterday, and I'm gonna open up for questions right after this because I don't even know the timing. I don't know how long you want me to talk, so some, someone please have some questions. Um, I've, I've prefaced it like 19 times. I had a guy, um, reach out yesterday. He left, he called me a bunch during the day. I saw the call, I'm like, I don't— it was a call that said a name, but I didn't know the name, so I have— it didn't say like spam or no, you know, sometimes it says the name on the preview and the little red whatever. Somehow it knew his name, my phone did, but I didn't know who it was. And, um, I find it weird when people call me and they don't leave a message. I don't know why. I just assume they didn't need anything, so I just move on my day. And after like the 7th call, he left me a message and he asked me if I retired or bought an island or moved. So then I called him back and I'm like, hey bro, got your message. What made you leave that stupid message? Nicely, I mean this nicely. And he was like, oh, well, I couldn't find you. And I'm like, do you not have the internet? Like, I'm not trying to be an asshole, but I'm everywhere. Do you not get on it? Like, what do you mean you can't find me? He's like, oh, well, you didn't answer earlier. I'm like, I don't— who— I don't know you. You weren't on my phone. You didn't leave a message. You didn't text me. I'm sorry, what's up? Long story short, he wants to work here. He wants to work with me. I'm like, okay, cool. So we get talking, we start talking about some things, and I was like— and he's a nice guy, super nice guy. We had a great conversation. I just— I kind of— I remember the part where I'm broken. When he said that, I had to like— I had to be a turd back. I don't know why, because I was just in a weird mood yesterday. But the point of the story will come. And, uh, so I started talking to him last night, and we're going back and forth, and he's like, all right, my bad, I should have— I should have just left you a message, whatever. And I'm like, yeah, my bad, I shouldn't have been a dick. We're, we're good. Let's start over. And, um, he starts talking about wanting to work here. And so I ask him the questions and I'm figuring out if he knows about leads and debt and how it all works and yada yada. And he seems like a good dude and wants to do some things. And I find out he was, he's during this conversation, I find out he's already in the hierarchy. He's already in my hierarchy. He already works. He's already an agent, but he hasn't sold with me in 4 years. And I'm like, bro, you just called to ask if I retired. It sounds like you didn't even ever start working. I'm like, you, but you're in the hierarchy already, like, you're 4, dude. And he goes, but I called this guy Chris. I said, Chris ain't worked for me since like 2021, bro. And then he named another person. I'm like, dude, you don't work here at all, do you? And we go back and forth a little bit, and I'm like, all right, I'm open to a conversation to help you get here, but I want to be really clear on one thing. You said you don't— again, he started asking me some training, where does— some carrier stuff and yada yada. And I'm like, dude, if you are engaged in my group, you will get more information than you know what to do with. If you— I mean, you just follow me once by mistake, you're going to see me on every platform every day. It's just what I do. And I said, I just want to make sure we're on the same page with one thing. If you treat this remotely like you've treated it the last 4 years, and you don't do an obnoxious amount of training, and you don't show up to everything that I got going on— and if you can't watch it live, everything I do is recorded and available to you in my Discord. If you don't go out of your way to train your face off to learn this industry, I'm not going to help you. He was like, what? I said, dude, if you don't take it serious enough for you to do training on your own time, you're not using me as a crutch. He was like, shit, that's fair. I was like, all right, thank you. Right, good business. Follow the process, do your training, get your lead flow in, put in the work, do your own training, and then I'm there for you. I got you, bro. But if you don't do what we do, I'm not your guy, bro. Go work somewhere else, you know? And it's not to be mean, but like, if you ain't putting in no effort, why do I gotta answer the question on what Transamerica does with COPD when you've been here for 18 months? Why? Like, why do you got to call me because your commission didn't get paid on time? Like, why you call them? You know the carrier has an 800 phone number. You mean like you have to be— you want to get paid? Like, I'm here for you. If you're, if you're a killer, you're my guy, bro. You can ask me all kinds of dumb shit, then I'm in. But if you're dabbling Dude, I just have no interest. Why? Because I know how it's going to turn out. This is going to suck forever if you don't do this thing and play the game right. It will be inconsistent and suck for the rest of time, and too many of y'all prove me right on that every week, every month. I'mma pause there. I hear the echo, which means y'all unmuted, I'm assuming. Um, so whoever's in charge, KG, Kendall, whoever, if y'all got questions or anything, or you want to turn me off, I'm good with whatever y'all, y'all need help with. I'm here. I see you, Terry. I don't know how y'all gonna do it. You gotta type. You want me to read them in the chat? I don't know how y'all want to do it. You tell me if you want to ask them or you want me to read it. I'll read them if you want. Let me see if there's—

you gotta—

I can't—

anybody got a question for John?

Yeah, I can hear. Hello, John. What's up? Yeah, we are resetting up. This is Crystal. What's up, Crystal? How are you? I'm trying to hit the phone, so I hope it's not— No, you're good. I know I probably threw a loop in it because maybe y'all didn't plan on questions, but I like to mess things up. No, you're totally good. We can work on the fly. So what I'm going to do is anybody virtually, go ahead and drop a question if you have questions for him in the chat.

Yeah.

If not, I do know that we do have some questions for you here, John Wetmore. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, and if you want to relay them, do it. If you want them to come up to a certain phone or mic or whatever. I'm down for whatever. What does getting to the why look like coming from John Wetmore? Go ahead. You want me to answer that one? Okay, I got the chat up. Um, if you're in the insurance space and trying to build an agency, or you're trying to like break records in sales, just hit new levels, new heights, click the link below to apply to my consulting and coaching program that I have out there. I'm helping tons of people get to new levels, get to new income heights, help them build their teams, put systems in place, staffing stuff, recruiting processes, automations. I'm just teaching people how to get to a point where they're selling on their own pen 30, 40, 50 grand a month. And if they're building a team, teaching how to have an effective structure to your insurance agency for the most profitability you can. There is an application process. I'm only looking to work with like high-end people who who really want to make big things happen. Couple recent clients that we've had in the, in the coaching program. One dude as an individual went from selling like $8,000 a month, barely getting by, about to quit the industry, found the book, hit me up direct, started a coaching program, went to $35,000 his first month, has issued like $150,000 in the last 90 days and has changed the trajectory of his career. Working with another agency builder, very first month went from doing like $800,000 a month to almost $1.1 million. We added like 10 or 15% production in 30 days and continue to work on things there. So if you're interested, click the link, apply, and if you're a fit, I'll reach out. I want to, I want to, I want, I want you guys— I want to articulate the way I, I try to do it. I always, I always, I always tell a story when I try to explain this because I want, I want people to I want people to really grasp the way I do this. My wife Stephanie loves going to the movies. She's a movie freak. She can just go to movies, sit down, and my wife is funny. She, she bring one of them purses where she'll sneak in her own drinks and snacks, and she puts the jacket over the purse, and like, I'm like, you know, you just buy it at the front. She's like, nah, I ain't buying that $12. She just brings in her own stuff and She basically camps out inside the movies. And when we go to the movies, I maybe last 7 minutes and I fall asleep. Every movie. I don't— I can't— I don't know how to stay awake in a movie theater. I just don't know how to do it. I mean, I'm not much of a movie guy either, but any movie I watch, I fall asleep. And then I have this really annoying habit. Y'all may know some people like this. It's probably your husband or your spouse or whatever. But if I wake up during the movie, I want to ask 17 things about what happened and what I missed. Like, hey, what happened to Bob? Where'd he go? Like, they were on the train and it was going 100 miles an hour, and then what happened? And I'm that guy, and she wants to punch me in the face, right? And when I, when I look at a why for me, I want you to picture these people's lives as a movie, right? This is real life, but if, if we have a movie— and you ever seen those movies that they, especially the old folks, they used to make books like this where there were like two plots, and depending on which page you went to, the story was different? Um, but if you had to explain the way a movie ended, like, all right, they, they flew over to this country and then they snuck into the house and the key was there, and then this happened and they rescued the little girl, blah blah, and you can explain the movie to someone who fell asleep. If you can't leave an appointment and explain to me with detail like you would in a movie what that person's life would look like after their spouse dropped dead without insurance, you ain't got the why. So however you got to get there, get there. Like, you should be able to really understand, you know, if Bob dies, Susan's going to have to sell the house but her kids are in private school, so she have to unenroll them. Grandma lives 4 hours away, so they got to move in with Grandma, put them into a new school. You like— you should be able to explain this stuff with names, especially if you're new. Now I know some of y'all been around a little while, we know how to read some people. Sometimes you ain't got to get a deep why, you can move on with your day, get a nap and keep it moving. Like, I ain't confused, but this is for the people that don't know how to get one. You should be able to explain with detail and names and how quickly it would happen to me because I fell asleep during the movie. You should be able to explain it to me in detail what that life looks like without the insurance. And if you can get there, I, I've always said this, number one, Some of the leads that y'all have right now that you ain't calling, some of them are dead right now. Y'all have a lead in your CRM, in your stack, in your pile, whatever, in your Google Sheet that you didn't call, and they're dead right now. And something played out in that family's life. That's real life. That happens all the effing time. Do this for a minute, you'll hear plenty of stories. You know, and I think if you can understand that behind a lead is just a family who gives a shit about their family as much as you do about yours. And I've, I've, I've always said, if, if we could play this like if I could be God and have this crazy video game experience where we could talk to that person that's dead and go like, hey, I know you don't have the insurance. If we could rewind back to the time when I got your lead and the only way for you to pick up was for me to call you at 6 AM 17 times in a row and tell you you were being a punk when you wouldn't buy insurance— I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm being a little facetious. But I had to call you at 6 AM and call you 17 times that day and push you when you said no and kind of be direct with you and make you really uncomfortable in front of your spouse and ask you all these hard questions. But it would have prevented your family from living like that, that you can look down and watch right now where they live like shit because they didn't have no insurance and they had to pass the hat or all the things that happened, pass the hat around and GoFundMes and all the stuff. Some of y'all in the text groups that you see this in our family inside. Y'all are in the text groups. Some of us sending text around like, yo, this person in Frankie's world or F's world or someone's world, something happened. Y'all, some of y'all see it or in those group texts that I'm in. But can you imagine if we could go back to wherever you think people go when they die and talk to that person and be like, yo, what if you could go back in time and by me calling you 17 times in an hour would have prevented that? Would you been upset? Or would you prefer I did it? What do you think they're going to say? There ain't a dead person on planet that would be upset that you called them on a Sunday or at 7:00 AM or at 9:00 PM. There's not one that would be like, nah dude, let them— I mean, that would have been really mean of you to call me on a Sunday. I'm just going to let them like GoFundMe, that makes sense, because Sunday, I don't do business on Sunday. So I'm— I like— yeah, we did it good. That's how we should have done. We should have kept it that way. There ain't one that would have said that, you know. So if you can understand that first, I think getting a why is easy. But the reality is, and I don't say this to be mean, and I don't think it's intentional, But some of y'all don't give a shit, which is why you don't ask the questions. You just want the commission. And I was that guy once too, and I understand it. And I understand leaderboards, and some of us are chasing things and we want the flashy stuff and we want the light. I get it. But to find a why, it just means you care and you're asking questions and you're trying to identify stuff and you're curious and you're genuinely trying to help someone's situation. And they'll talk themselves right into it, you know. And if they're not willing to talk themselves into it, that ain't your client. Hang up and move on. If they don't care about their family enough, it's all good. But if you do your part, that's all you can do, you know. You, you— but you got to give them the opportunity. And so for me, it's, it's, uh, whoever that was— Reg, is that what that says? I'm old and can't read that. I think it says Reg. Um, oh no, that's not who— let's see who asked that. I might have— I'm gonna let that go. Uh, Terry. Oh, that was Terry. Cool. Um, and I don't think you're one that doesn't give a shit at all. Like, we've met, we talked enough. But I think for you, if you look at it from a different perspective, then it just becomes asking, asking questions and refusing to proceed until you get enough detail where it feels like that movie you didn't catch and they're explaining it to you in detail. You know, for me, that's, that's, that's how I— in my head, if I get it like that, the curiosity alone is just like when I wake up and I ask Steph and I'm like, yeah, but that don't make no sense. The train was going that way. How'd they end up over there? And the kid was with the mom. How'd they— how'd the kid get kidnapped? He was with the mom. Oh, they tricked him with the— what happened? You know what I mean? Like, there's a— we got there somehow. You know, and I think we all have that ability every day, naturally, in our natural conversations, which is why I hate scripts so much, because so many people are worried about what they got to say next from the piece of paper instead of being live and present in the conversation with the person and being curious and actively listening. You know, I can remember being early on and being so caught up on the steps and the procedure. Why am I so caught up on the steps and the procedure? Because I don't know it well enough, because I haven't been a professional enough to say it so many times to where I know it like the back of my hand. You know, so I think for me the why is pretty easy. And then, and then it's a little bit of refusing to go forward and give pricing if they don't tell you why they need insurance. Because the reality is, if you show pricing when you ain't got a solid why, you already know what the answer is going to be, and you're going to waste another 27 minutes. And then you know what's worse? You ain't getting to the next person who is going to give it to you because you're busy on the phone begging this guy after the objections you get because you didn't get a good why. And you're begging them to buy. We've all done it. Fair. And what's really funny is sometimes, many times, especially new people, after they get told no, after they show pricing, and after they get told they want to think about it, now you start spitting out questions about what happens. But what, but, but if you die? Ah, you too late now. Movie's over. Movie's over. It's a wrap, you know. And I had someone— I had— so I questioned someone on that recently, and I was like, hey, you know all those questions you ask after they tell you no? They're great questions, just really shitty timing. Can you just take those same questions? Why don't you take those same questions and ask them earlier? And she goes, I just feel really uncomfortable. Asking them upfront. I said, how do you feel after they told you no and you're essentially begging? That can't feel good. She was like, I kind of feel like a schmuck. I'm like, all right, so do you want to be uncomfortable? Do you want to be a schmuck? And she made one tweak and made 4 sales that day. So a lot of y'all, Terry, know the questions to ask. You just won't do it because you're uncomfortable. That make sense? Yes, ma'am. Uh, yes, I have a Discord. It's in there. You can join it. It's, uh, there's plenty in there. There's all kinds of stuff. I put all my workout stuff in there. We put— there's a video in there explaining the whole thing. It's live dials in there. I got a cool crew in there dialing live all the time. There's, there's any, any, anything. My whole world runs through Discord. Discord right now. Um, and one of my guys set it up. I don't, I don't know much about Discord, but Reese and this dude Giovanni set it up. Um, I just wanted a community because somehow I got a lot of people who like my shit, which I appreciate, so I keep putting it out there. Um, but that's where we, that's where we house everything and share everything right now. So would love for you to come in and join. If you want to dial live, that link won't get— it'll get you access to see our dials, just to be really transparent. We don't give everybody access to be on video and to be on microphone and— because I don't want dipshits like interrupting our people dialing, because people from outside of our company follow me too. But if you want to dial with us and participate, just ask. We'll give you the right access so you can get on camera and stuff too. Uh, and let me see, any other questions typed? Let me see if I can see.

Yeah, we got 2 questions in the chat.

Okay, those bottom ones, Reg and Corey, you want me to read those?

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. As I grow and improve, how can I be the best example in my efforts of building and recruiting even when I'm not particularly winning at the best and highest level. Uh, is that person on video or in there with you? Yo, you're on mute, Reg. Is it Reg? Is that what you go by? Reggie? Is that what it is?

Reggie? Yep.

All right, what's up? How you doing, bro?

I'm good, I'm good.

Yes sir. Um, as I, as I grow— how long you been doing this?

I've been with FFL, uh, now we going on 4, but in the industry 10 years.

4 years, is that what you said?

4 years here, 10 years altogether.

Okay. When you say I'm not particularly winning at the best or highest level, can you, can you put that into words in a couple sentences for me?

Yes, sir. Uh, you know, there's areas where I feel like in building the team I can improve, right? Or I can push myself to be better at, um, where I dropped the ball. you know, and self-reflecting and, and can tighten up. And I want to not be the recruiter, um, that has a negative effect on someone I bring in that can win when I know I didn't do— I don't want to be the, the, the influence to result in them not winning because of something I did or didn't do, okay, at that moment.

Okay, so you've been in, you've been in the industry 10 years, so it's about same as me, similar, right? I mean, a couple years earlier, but I didn't do shit the first 2 years, so I'm kind of 10 years in kind of too, you know. Who do you work with? You're in this group here?

Now I'm directed to Mr. Kendall Clark.

Oh, okay, dope. I want to, I almost want to ask Kendall to give me a cheat code as to what you're doing wrong because he'll probably tell me the truth real quick. Um, All right, what do you think you're doing incorrectly? Where do you think you're weak?

Probably being more, more consistent.

And how much, how much do you sell? Issue? How much do you issue?

My biggest one has been $15,000. It's been months where I haven't sold anything. I am part-time trying to transition into full-time.

You have a full-time job?

Yeah, or right now transitioning with due to some litigation and some That's like punch in the face. Some, some life, like, situations happen. Yeah. Yep.

Hey, when, when you get punched in the face, you know what you can do back? You punch life right back in the face. I mean, if I came and punched you in the face, you'd probably punch me back, wouldn't you? Yeah. I mean, you wouldn't just let me hit you in the face, would you? Would you let me just keep hitting you in the face and just take it, or would you fight back? Would you fight?

Absolutely.

All right, what if I was messing with your family?

Oh, definitely.

Yes, he's saying we'd be going at it. You look like a big dude, but I'm pretty fast, so I don't know, right? But dude, you might have to punch back a little bit harder. You might have to fight a little bit harder. You know, I don't know your full situation. I could talk to you for 30 minutes and figure out everything, but I, I, what I, what I do know, Reg, is All of us, every one of us, me included, bro, I give you a big ass list. We all know the things that we are doing that we shouldn't be doing, that we keep saying we're going to stop doing and we don't quit doing them. We all know those things. You have those things. I have those things. I just have less of those things probably than you. Right? Because I chip away at one at a time. You know, some of y'all ain't seen me in a minute. Right now, if I showed up right now in that office, you'll be like, damn, you sick. You good. I had some buddies last week I ain't seen since last year, but like, you sick. I'm like, nah, I just stopped drinking. I stopped eating like shit, so I lost 40 pounds. That's it. I just stopped drinking. I— December 24th will be a year I ain't had a drink. And y'all know I like my damn Lemon Drops. I'll pound those things. But it was giving me headaches and it was making me sick. It was making me eat like shit. It was messing up my insides. It wasn't good for me. You know, so I fucking quit, dude. I've been drinking since I was like 12, bro. I like vodka, like a lot, but it wasn't— it wasn't helping me get where I want to go in life, you know what I mean? You can leave them on there on the screen. I don't mind them up there. I like it, actually. Um, whoever's doing that, unless it was just coincidence, maybe because he was talking. Um, You know, so I think you really have to, in, in general, and if you want to hit me up offline, me and you will talk offline, like shoot me a DM. Good. And we'll, we'll get deeper because I don't want to go too deep, and I'll ask you some legit questions you may not want to share in front of everybody. Um, I, I think the reality is you probably know a decent amount of the things you need to stop doing, and I think that you need to stop in general. If you can sell $15 grand, you can sell $50. Because it's the same fucking thing. It's just doing it more often and more, more consistently. If you've been in the business this long, you know what to do. So I'm not during this gonna let you trick me into pretending you don't know, right? So I think you should start with the list of shit you know you need to change, because I know you got one, all right? And then if you change the top 1, 2, or 3 things in your life that you know you need to change and you get rid of the top 1, 2, or 3 people in your life you know you need to get rid of, and you stop those 1, 2, or 3 bad habits that you have every day that you keep having, and you do that consistently over the course of the next 3, 6, 9, 12 months, bro, you can be living a whole different life next year. I don't care what kind of situation you're in, you know. And I think, let's not overcomplicate it. Because I'm not going to give you a magic script or a magic lead that's going to change anything. I bet you can't. I know Kendall, decent. We ain't best friends, but I know him. I know him well enough and long enough to know he's definitely told you some of the shit you need to change. Fair? And I bet if I get him on here, he could give me a quick list, you know. So I think you should go through that. You send it to me? Thank you. I'll take a cheat sheet, bro, because, hey, hey, sometimes these agents be like those clients who say they're healthy as a horse, and then you run them and they get confined in 4 days. Yeah, buddy, they forget the medication. Like, damn, you're on heart meds and you forgot to tell me? Come on, you know. And so I think you and I can have a one-on-one because I feel I can see your emotion. You know what I'm talking about. I don't even know what it is, but I know you know what it is, bro.

Let's share that one-on-one. Yeah, yeah, again, there's some things too.

No, it's all good, dude. Bro, I've been punched in the face more than most, and I share it all, dude. You know, vodka, I liked it. Vodka and depression meds together were bad in my 20s. They weren't good, but I took a lot of them, you know what I mean? And then I was like, well, hell, if I can't drink, maybe I can smoke something. I've done more of that in my life than most of y'all can imagine. Just— but it ain't good. I don't mess with that. I'm like, I got to get rid of that too. And then I was eating like shit, which makes you sleep like shit, which makes you think like shit. So I had to fix that too, you know? And it's a slow process, man. Changing who you are as a human is tough. Because we're all jacked up. So not only do you got to be like the person who's got to make the changes, you also got to be the person in charge to make sure you don't punk out on yourself, you know? And I, I learned early on, dude, like, I was losing to myself a lot. Like, I— me and you fight and you win, straight up, man, you beat my ass, more power to you, dude. I lose to you, all good. We're going head to head in sales and you sell more than me this month, more power to you, bro. I love it. But losing to myself, that got old. And it's really dumb. You know what I mean? And I'm like, I think acknowledging that I was the problem for me early on, and y'all read this in the book, it's a phrase I've used forever. The minute I accepted I was the problem in life, not only did I instantly get this level of relief because I was always blaming others for it, and I can't change others, bro. Whoever it is in life, they ain't gonna have some light bulb moment and all of a sudden be like, you know what, Red, you right, shit, I am the dipshit, I'm gonna change everything, you're right, my bad. That ain't coming. The lead vendor ain't changing, the carrier, whatever it is, they ain't changing. But you, just like selling, the way we deal with objections is we don't want to— most agents want to learn how to overcome them. How do you overcome all the shit? Hey, the best way, prevent it. Don't even get there, you know what I mean? So sometimes we got to change everything about ourselves, and you have to, you have to reinvent yourself. And it takes time, dude, and it's really hard. It's really hard. Like, it's really fucking hard. But if you get around the right people, man, and you don't put yourself in poor environments, you know what I mean, and you're around people that you let challenge you and push you, it, it will come, dude, you know. So I think start with the basics, man, and put, put together a real schedule and go through that exercise and, and be willing to change, bro. You got to make some changes. Whatever it is in life, whoever's fault it is, I— we ain't— me and you ain't gonna be able to do nothing about that. It's all going to be about what can you change to prevent life from continuing to punch you in the face. Makes sense.

Yes, sir. Good stuff.

Hit me up on Instagram. I answer there the fastest. Uh, you leave a message when you call clients? I mean, if I do, Corey, it never fucking works. So no, not really. I mean, I play with it. Like, yeah, I could go like, hey, it's John, call me back, and If I— if you say anything about insurance, they ain't calling you. I bet you 100% on that. I'm not really a big voicemail guy ever. I just— I'm not. I think by the time I leave, if I call 30 leads today, by the time I leave 30 voicemails, I could instead call 60 leads. I just— I look at it like that. I waste— if you add up all the time you spend leaving voicemails, I just— you won't convince me you won't trip over a laydown instead of leaving voicemails today. And you'll never convince me of that. I just— I know you can make more phone calls if you stop doing that stuff, you know. I think that little things— people write notes on leads and put notes in their sheets and put notes in CRMs. And like, you spend all day putting notes, what's gonna happen when you pick up that lead next time? You're gonna see the fucking note, you're gonna feel weird about it, and you're gonna call them all timid. Stop writing shit down. Just call them like it's new. How do you call age lead? Like they filled it out 4 seconds ago. Why, dude? These people fill shit out. That's what they do. Stop overcomplicating it. Pretend they filled it out 4 seconds ago. If I told you it was new, you would call them like it's new. So I can trick you and you'd call them different. Can you trick yourself? That's the mind games you got to play with yourself. I got really good at playing mind games with myself along this— during this thing, Corey.

Oh, we got an in-house question. Hey, John, we got the in-house question.

Yes, sir. Who is it? All right, I like that camera view. I can see way better now. I see your hand back there. I can't tell who you are though. Who— you can, you can relay it or he can come up and ask, however you want to do it. Come on up. Well, now they're telling you to come up, which makes it seem you're timid to come up, so now you're definitely coming up. 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.

What's good, bro?

I love everything you're doing, man. You're so damn inspired, bro. Uh, real quick, man, you talked about the 4 pillars, right, in the business. Yeah, give us a little bit about that for recruiting and building and duplication. Like, I know you, you have— I know you have your own framework, right? So I want to hear a little bit about that, man. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. What's your name, bro? I recognize you. Have we met? You look familiar, but I can't tell. It's a little grainy and I'm old and blurry. We're not—

no, we haven't. We haven't met in person.

I just, you know, I've been in this street for a little bit and, uh, thank God I came over out of foul a couple months ago. So, my man, you said Jay, right?

Yes, sir.

All right, nice to meet you, Jay. Um, I, I would say, are you recruiting right now?

All the time, man.

I'm always prospecting. Okay, how much do you sell? I just started, uh, this week.

Right now I'm at $11,000 since last Wednesday or last Tuesday.

Okay, good man. Yes please. Thank you for giving them that. Good man. One, I say this: you always got to eat first, so don't let no recruit get in your way of eating, ever, ever. You know, I, I think that so many agents want to ask— they want to ask us for help, and then we want to spend time teaching them stuff, right? Because we feel like we're obligated to, and we want to be nice, and it's our job to take care of them. Right. One of the worst things you can do is stop, stop prospecting and presenting and start teaching when you should be prospecting and presenting. Because what are you teaching that person is important, not prospecting and presenting and taking phone calls. You're by default teaching them that it's okay to bug you in the middle of your game. Again, imagine we're playing football, bro, and I'm the backup quarterback. I ain't running onto the field and being like, yo, What are you doing this play? Like, he'd be like, get the fuck off the field, bro. You know what I mean? When do you get to ask? Film tomorrow. That's when you— that's when it's open questions. Right now we're making calls. Now you want to watch? Come watch. You know, so I think, don't forget, dude, a lot of people struggle with the how do I sell and build at the same time. I'm like, the problem is you're trying to do it at the exact same time. You're trying to build while you sell, so you keep stop selling to build. So you always got to eat first. Don't let nobody mess up your money, dude. I let it happen to me one time, and my guy Kilomet, that was my mentor forever, I had a shitty week one day and I called him on a Wednesday because we used to dial Monday, sell Tuesday, Wednesday. I call him on a Wednesday and I, I picked up like one app in 2 days, and you know, I had like 7 appointments over 2 days because I was an idiot. I was like, yo, I'm having a crappy 2 days, man. What? Like, and I called the bitch, I'm sure. And he goes, that's because you spent all day Monday playing office, bro. I was like, what do you mean? He's like, you did good, you got a bunch of agents to come in, but you spent all day showing them you don't work. That was the last time that happened. That never happened again in my career, bro. You can ask questions when I have my open Q&A call. You can type a question in Discord and I can answer for you later when I'm not busy. And I used to have a sign on my desk when I was an accountant, because being an accountant— anybody in there ever been an accountant? Like crunch numbers, pay bills for an office? You're one of the most hated people in a company. And everything that everyone needs from you is urgent because everybody wants the money right now. And I used to have this sign on my desk that said something along the lines of, your lack of preparation does not constitute an emergency on my end. And I get text messages and emails from agents all the time. They're like, call me ASAP, urgent. And I respond and go, urgent to who? Because it ain't to me. Because I'm in the middle of making money right now. Excuse me, I apologize, but you're going to have to wait. It just is what it is, dude. You know what I mean? And go, is that mean? I mean, it's mean if you didn't tell them that's how it works. It's mean if you weren't smart enough to create a schedule every week and make yourself available at certain times. Can there be exceptions? Yeah. You know who gets the exception? The guy selling $40K. The guy selling $10K, $11K a week, he gets the exception because I know that fool ain't calling me for something stupid in the middle of the day. Something's probably on fire with that guy, you know what I mean? Like, some people get exceptions, but you, you got to really create a process, dude. And by showing people how to do this business is the best thing you can do. You know, telling them is what it is, dude. They're gonna listen, they're gonna not listen. It is what it is. So I think going out and showing how easy this business is is the best thing you can do to build. And then I don't know if I stole this from Grady or Trey, or probably both of them, because they kind of worked together forever, but they had always taught that the best promoters— and y'all just had Trey there, right? Wasn't he just there? Did I just see him on Facebook yesterday? Yeah. I don't know if he said this, he might have. I stole it from either him or Grady. This is not my words, but I, I definitely implemented it the first time I heard it. They've always said the best promoters build the biggest businesses. And so you don't got to be the guy. You just don't have to be the guy, you know what I mean? Like, I didn't need— I didn't need you to win in the business. I didn't need shit from you to succeed in the business. And to be fair, you didn't need shit for me to succeed in the business. So why you think the next guy needs me or you? He needs someone like us. He needs the resources and the system and the things we got. But he don't need you necessarily at 12:17 PM for a random fake emergency because he didn't prep and doesn't know his shit. And he wasn't on the training call that you have every week, and he didn't ask any questions on the team call when it was open to, and he doesn't get on the new agent orientation, and he doesn't get on the weekly, you know, builder's call, and he doesn't— like, why, bro? What? You want me to go out of my way and you barely participate at this? That's the biggest reason why most of y'all don't build, is because you let people walk all over you, just like new agents let clients walk all over them. Why do— why do new agents let clients walk all over them? Why do new agents worry about chargebacks? What's the main reason, the number one reason agents let clients walk all over them and worry about chargebacks? They don't want to lose the sale. They don't want to lose them. Why don't they want to lose the sale? Why are they worried about the money?

They're not working.

They ain't working hard enough. Hey, if they wrote 15 apps this week, would they worry that Mary's $57 core bridge policy didn't pay? All right, so then why are you worried about that agent?

Why?

Because you ain't talking to enough of them, bro. That's facts. You want that agent to succeed so bad because if he don't call you tomorrow, you ain't got nobody else calling you. It's just facts, man. I had to go through that and I had to realize that, you know what I mean? And so for me, the framework is copy what I do, which is the framework. And then if I want to build, I just got to do that on top of what I got to do to eat. So I got to do that outside. I got to fit that in my schedule. When do I talk to people? When do I recruit? Do this at night, it's on weekends, it's all, it's all the time. It's just, it becomes a lifestyle. Some people go, I recruit on Monday and I sell on Tuesday. That ain't gonna work. That is just, I promise you, that ain't gonna work until it becomes a lifestyle and it's who you are. You ain't gonna build nothing big. And with time, man, you just got to learn how to, how to create systems and process. But the reality is at the beginning, y'all don't need none of that because we already all got it in place. You can just promote the other stuff. You don't have to be the guy. You don't have to have a team call. Dude, I ain't had a team call since like, God, it's so long. It's crazy. Now we got one now because I got a little baby base shop. But I don't do any— like, I don't do any of the extra stuff, the SRS training. I don't mess with none of that. I don't— I'm like, nah, go to that call. I just promote all the other stuff, and I promote where people can access things, and I make things available to people, and I point them in the right direction. And what's that saying? Like, um, what's that? Like, you can bring them to water. Y'all know that saying, teach a man to fish, whatever the hell the saying is. It's that concept. Yes, there's a bunch of them. Y'all get the point, you know what I mean? It's like you, you, you gotta, you gotta learn this thing first. You gotta teach someone how to do it, which is duplicating you. And then to really scale, you got to be able to teach. That's that third layer. So learn it, teach it, teach someone how to teach it. Most of y'all are— most of y'all got this one kind of figured out. And if you don't got it figured out, you probably know what you got to do. Teaching it, different game. Can't be a one-trick pony there. You gotta learn how to work with different people, different personalities, different styles. You got to learn how to deliver messages. You got to learn how to make things simple. You got to learn how to normalize things. And I mean, Shawn Mike's talked about all this stuff for years, but if you can't teach someone how to teach it, that leg ain't never gonna grow, you know? And then it gets big enough, dude, where it grows so uncontrollably, dude. My group don't need me no more. They got so many people teaching this damn thing. Like, what the hell else am I going to do? I may as well sell and build another base shop. You know what I mean? Because it becomes pretty self-sufficient over time if you do it right. And quite frankly, most of the time with building, you just got to point them in the right direction and get the F out of the way. Because what we do isn't crazy complicated. You know, be there to support the right people and guide them and tell them the truth. And you got to take care of people. I'm not excluding all that stuff. But you got to eat first and you got to teach people. It's like, what did they say with kids? Any of y'all parents? They're going to do what you do, not what you say.

Yeah.

That holds true forever. You know? So if you're inconsistent and you let people control your schedule and you, you know what I mean? If you don't hold it on lockdown and you aren't consistent calling people and buying leads, your people probably aren't going to be either. You know, and if you're begging people who are inconsistent to keep being consistent and they keep showing you they're not going to be consistent, you keep begging them to do it, you're just like the agent who keeps begging that same person to call. And they call them again on Tuesday because they took the number and they're going to call them back, and they think, I got one on Tuesday, a big one coming, they just got to give me their banking. They forgot their sister has the banking, they're gonna, they're gonna call me on Tuesday with the routing and account number. You know, they ain't calling. And that agent ain't gonna do shit if he knows what to do and he ain't doing it. That's why I'm like, most of y'all know the stuff you got to do. Is it hard to implement? Yep. I got it. Yep. Is it a lot of work? Yep. Yep. It's a lot of headache, a lot of people, a lot of stress. You're gonna get chargebacks, you're gonna get roll-ups, you're gonna deal with stuff. It's just— you ain't getting out of that. But I don't know any business you do get out of that. You know, pick a business, pick a business, like buckle up, you know. So if you want to live like this, this— it comes with stuff. So get really good at managing and dealing with the stuff. We got a sign that hangs in my office, it's actually in Amanda's office, and it's a bright neon sign and it says, always something, always something, fucking every day, dude, always fucking something. Someone always pisses me off every day. Something always goes wrong every fucking day. But if I think that's going away and I don't get really good at solving problems, how good am I? You know what I mean? So for me, I learned to— although I, I yell a lot and I get mad a lot and I, I get frustrated a lot with problems, I learned to appreciate them because without them we couldn't have grown the way we are. and it, it couldn't have made me grow the way I am and, and learn how to get through hard things, you know. So hopefully that helps, bro.

Hey John, this is Kendall. I got one more question. I want to take your time. Can you stress the importance of the events? Like, this week has been almost like a mini conference because we've had Trey here, Heather here, Frank and Mike just came in, FNG's here, uh, Corebridge was here— I mean, not Corebridge, AmeriCo was here. So Can you stress to the team how important it is to go to national conference? Because I always learned when I came from network marketing, if you got 100 people to an event, it never will stop. So can you stress that?

Is there anyone, is there anyone in that room who's not registered right now? Raise your hand. Raise your hand if you're not registered. I'm— yes, we're going to call you out. Raise your hand if you're not registered legit. No, not like this. I don't want this one, I want like this one. No, no, do this. Go like, yeah, all right. So I would say if by the end of the day they ain't registered, they don't really want it. It is what it is. And some are going to have excuses, some of them that might be valid, but I bet you if I was like, yo, if you go to Dallas and you pick up this briefcase by the airport, there's gonna be a million dollars in it. Sure as fuck figure out how to get there then with whatever excuse you got going on, you know what I mean? I think this is one of those things, Kendall, where I think they all know the importance of it, you know, but people are uncomfortable and people are going to have money excuses and time excuses and family excuse and babysitting excuses and dog daycare excuses and all kinds of other stuff. And that's fine, but the ones that show up, dude, we wouldn't be having this conversation, Kendall, without Conference, bro. Man, that thing changed my world. And everyone who speaks says the same thing. It's the best of the best of the best at the best company in the best industry teaching you how they did it verbatim. Just giving it away.

Hey, John, you know what got me, man, was the COVID year when we split in a couple of different areas.

Yeah, I was in Jacksonville. It was 5 virtual.

Yeah, I was in Jacksonville and I got a chance to speak that first 6 months. And I'm on stage with this kid that was 22 and he did $500,000.

Yeah.

So I'm looking at him while we talking. I said, wait a minute, my son's the same age. That's like admitting my son is better than me. Yeah. I said, there ain't no way in hell he came from me. There's no way in hell than a 22-year-old. If that was my son, then he's better than me. And that's what made me like— the next year I hit Hall of Fame, the first year. Yeah, so I was like, you gotta see these kids, you gotta see it, because you're gonna sit there and be like, there's no way in hell this guy with two left feet, no kneecaps, and his ears where his eyes are, he's better than you.

Hey, watch how many of them— and this is no disrespect— watch how many of them get on stage and they got their phone and a notebook full of notes to be able to tell you what they— and they're making $500 grand a year and they're stumbling over their words and they're stuttering and they're nervous as shit and they're sweating and they're freaking out. You know, they're just like me and you. They just go to work, you know, and they're going to explain exactly how they do it and they're going to give you details and they're going to tell you exactly the things they say. And there's always someone that come— there's always gangs of people who come out of that thing like a slingshot, and I was one of them. And I've rode that wave now. That was— it was February, it was the last weekend January, first week of February, very similar. It's always that kind of weird weekend, end of the month, begin the month, um, of 20— because we started end of 2013. 2014 was the first full year. That January, February 2015 was the very first conference here in Atlanta. I came out of that thing like a slingshot after Mark Mead challenged me. And I've been riding that wave, and this will be 11 years, 11 straight years of growth, 11 straight years of increase. That year, Kendall, uh, my team in 2014, for the, for the year, Kendall, we issued $179,000 as a team for the year.

That's terrible.

John Wetmore was $175,000 of it. It took 6 other people with me to issue $4,000 for the year. Right? 2015, we did $1.1 million as a team. I was $468,000 of it. Then '16, we did like $2.8 million. '17, we did $3 million. '18, we did $6 million. '19, we did like $10 million. '20, we did like $22 million. Then we went to $50 million. Then we went to $100 million. Then we did 150. We've done 200 the last 2 years, and we're going to be really fucking close. We're doing a— I think we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna just miss 250 this year, I think. You know, I think we've had— I don't know how many writers, dude. I, I'll be honest, I lose— I'd have to look in the damn system to see it now, but it was some obnoxious number, like 6,000-something agents wrote policies this year from a dude who had 6 10 years ago, bro. You know, so I, I say if they, if they're confused and you believe them that they're confused, you gotta work on your ears, bro, because I don't think they're confused.

Nah, they're not confused.

I just think they don't want it as bad as they say they do if they ain't going.

Well, John, I appreciate you, man. I appreciate you taking the time. Team, clap it up for John Wetmore.

My man, appreciate you. Thank y'all for having me. If I can do anything to help, let me know. I'm always around. And, uh, if I don't see y'all before, I will definitely see y'all at conference.

Yeah, I'll see you at conference, man. Appreciate you, sir.

All right, homie, later.