Why You Are Making No Money In Sales (Watch if You Are Broke.)

That kind of leads into, for me, like the system stuff, right? It's all related to me. Y'all can flip to the next one if you want. Like, systems aren't necessarily for me just like, what CRM do we use? You know, I think so many people, man, early on— and I like systems, I I'm a systems— or anybody like a systems nerd in here? Like complete fucking nerd with automations and how things work and behind the scenes and tech? And there's not many, right? The downfall for people like us is most people don't see things the way we see things, and we solve it through all this techie stuff. When there's any kind of problem, they don't know how anything works, and it makes their fucking head explode, and they think they need to be techie like you to make things work. So although I am very techie, I hide a lot of it from new agents mostly. I don't share a lot of the, what most people consider systems. I don't share a lot of that early. When he asked me about a CRM, I'm like, "Fuck CRM, dude." And what'd he do? He went and got one anyway. Right? I let him. And then he found out it wasn't the fucking magic. You know what I mean? There were some flaws in working with a CRM. And I'm like, "You know, if you just pick up your fucking phone, that works too." "Yeah, but the caller ID." I know. I got it. But what about all the other shit the automation fucks up? Like, it's— there's pros and cons to all of it, you know? And when he wants to sit down for 3 days and customize the text messages that go to all the clients, I'm like, bro, you haven't made a phone call yet. Like, what do you need to know? Like, earlier, the thing we're talking about, like, why do you need to know that now? Can a CRM help you? Can a drip campaign help you? Yep. But it helps you a lot more when you know what the fuck's happening. You know what I mean? I remember sitting in my son's basketball practice at that— he had— what's that little, um, it's kind of like a little church basketball league. They do it little small churches up, up, upward. Yeah, so he'd play in that thing and I'd take him play a little basketball when he was fucking like 3, and I would be sitting on the bleachers manually texting leads. Like, hey, take a picture of the lead. Hey, got that, right? You still— he still does it manually. Yeah. Um, and for me, I've always taught people who want to know all this stuff, I'm like, fine, you can get it there. You understand how long people have been making money in the insurance industry? Do you all know? Can you wrap your head around how long people have been printing money in the space? You know, it's been like hundreds of years, right? What tech did they have for 90% of this industry, of the length of time of this industry where people have built trillions and trillions of dollars of wealth? What CRMs did they use? What leads did they buy? Kaboom, wasn't there. You know what I mean? Like, they used fucking their voice and their feet and their knuckles to knock on doors, and they networked, and they built fucking empires. Am I saying the new tech is invaluable? No, I'm just saying you can get rich without it. So if you're good with it, fucking knock yourself out. But most people aren't. 3 people in the room You know what I mean? I'm like, so for me, part of a system for me is making sure people don't fucking use too many systems. And then they want to switch from Ringy to Agent CRM to— I gotta go HighLevel. I'm like, fucking Agent CRM is GoHighLevel with a different logo on it, you know what I mean? They just— it's— people want all these different— I want to use PhoneBurner, that's the one that works. Kixie, oh my God, Kixie is amazing. And I'm like, this is fucking marketing. No different than when you sell mortgage protection or final expense. You know, you just sell insurance, right? That's just marketing. It's how we get in the door. Final expense is just a made-up marketing term. Fair, it's something you buy insurance for, but it's not a real thing. I can use the same fucking policy for mortgage protection or final expense. Same underwriting, same product, same pricing, same everything. It's marketing, it's angle. So for me, part of this process early, and this is the part we're going to work on, is like, what do you do when you onboard someone? I'll walk you through mine, certainly. And again, it's evolved with time, but early on, dude, I'd write a fucking name and try my best to write their number on it. So when I looked at my phone later, I could 'cause I didn't know who I was talking to. It's fucking blank number on my phone. I'm running into an appointment or into a meeting or to the next interview. I wasn't gonna sit down and type it in a fucking CRM. I'm driving down the interstate trying to get to my appointment that I'm 47 minutes late for. I write this shit down on a piece of paper next to me and hope I find it later, right? And then at Monday morning I come in and I'm like, yo, I interviewed like 27 people over the weekend, Amanda. Can you get 'em all started? Who are they? Here's all my leads. Fucking, they're on the paper somewhere. Names and phone numbers. Can you fit? Can you call them, email them, send them the stuff? That's how it starts. And I'm like, all right, well, this is fucking not working well, right? So we made a Google Form early on. So now when I hired someone, I put their fucking basic info in and it shot them to Amanda. And then we were like, what if instead of going to Amanda, we just send them the info that Amanda sends them? You know what I mean? I'm like, you do type the same email 27 times a fucking day. Can we just make it a template, right? And we start— so we built our system super slow. Now everybody's looked at it and gone, all right, what's the insurance space do? What are all the problems? Hey, we got it built out for you in full right here. Here's everything you ever need. But you've never done it day in, day out. Like, I understand how AgencyRM works inside out because I fucking did it manually. But when something goes haywire in any system, most people don't know how to manage it. They don't know why it broke. They don't know what happened. If they, you know, I mean, if you're supposed to send an email to get on a team call, what if your email don't go out? What if it hits spam? What if it goes out late? What if there's a fucking problem? I don't know when I wanted people to get on a team call. I don't do it quite as much today, right, because we have a lot going on. But you, I'd be texting like, yo, team call, 20 minutes, get on, here's the link. Talk to them. Hey dude, don't forget about call later. Hey, you got questions ready? Don't forget Mike's doing the call later, dude. No one asking fucking questions. Can you have like, what are your questions? Are they ready? I'd be prepping people during the week to start having stuff. Like, to me, that was a system, right? Why? I know this comes here. I know people don't have questions. I know I can't be the only one asking. I want them to ask. I want them to get uncomfortable. I want— so I'm pushing people on purpose. To me, systems were as simple as that early on. And no different than I think with Braden getting on the phones. He doesn't need shit to get started. I don't think you need any system at all. Use a fucking green crayon and a napkin. Can be how you track people early on if you want. You know, I used to write out my group every day. I was taught to write it down every day. I did that little circle thing I did earlier, and I'd write out who was who, and I'd pay attention to their comp. And keep in mind, I'm getting people started every day. If you get someone started every once in a while, like, you probably don't do any of this. But as people are getting in, I don't— you talk to 20 people this day and you don't— this week and you don't know any of them. I'm definitely going to forget their names. I'm definitely going to forget their background. I'm definitely going to forget some of their goals. I can't remember everything about everybody, right? So I had to start having lots of conversations with people throughout that process. So then I was like, shit, I can't keep up. When we created whiteboards, I'm like, here's a whiteboard and what stage— remember all the stages we talked about earlier? Did I have this every stage at the top, all the names on the left? We have one upstairs actually, funny enough. Amanda has one somewhere. I think it's— I don't think we erased it yet. And that's how it started, right? And then I'd walk in every day and I'd look at the whiteboard. I'm like, oh, here's all the names on the whiteboard. Oh, this guy's in contracting, this guy's in licensing, this guy got leads, this guy got paid. Cool. Hey, who the fuck's Steve? Oh, Giovanni heard him. Dope. Is he good? Should I call him? Should I— you know what I mean? It was like, to me, the whiteboard was the system early, you know? Then we got to a point where we had fucking 9 whiteboards with names on them. And then people weren't updating them because we were so busy. So I'd come in and I'd be like, yo, fucking Steve did contracting last week, why does it still have he's in class? Well, jackass, we've been busy onboarding all the people you brought in, we forgot to change the light board. That's when we got into a system, see, more of a CRM style. But we were— I was 4, 3 years in probably before we started building that shit out, that thing you built with the templates? And that first system we used to send the emails out, what was that thing called? PipeDrive. You know, 2018 she built that. I mean, I was fucking doing $800 grand a month. PipeDrive we used at $500 grand, at $800 grand, or 2018. Yeah, we're doing $800 grand a month that year, right? That was my system. Can you use one? Sure. Can you probably do some things faster? Sure. I bet you can. Are the people that you bring on that want to build going to be able to build any kind of system? Nope. I promise you they fucking ain't. So I'm like, I want to teach it at the most basic level first because I can get the most people doing it. How many are going to sit up on a Saturday night and build a fucking CRM or build an automation versus how many can I get to post a video on Instagram on Saturday night and just tell them to fucking fill out this form and Amanda takes care of everything. That was a lot easier. I could do that at scale, you know what I mean? So I think for me, man, my biggest goal in this whole thing with systems was to create stuff that was so easily duplicatable by the masses. Remember this, this middle thing, right? I want to work here again. If you run a CRM, fucking home run, you're over here, dude. You're these people. And if you can't open a computer, you're these people, right? The majority live here and they overthink the shit out of everything. You give us— you introduce a system too soon, it makes people's heads spin, you know? So for me, I always found super easy ways to get things. I'll give you an example. Um, you know, recruiting early, one of the ways— someone who asked the ways I was at you That's the ways. So like paid ads was one of them, certainly. Um, but dude, I used to straight, um, cold DM 100 people a day on LinkedIn. Every day I'd send 100 DMs, type them. Hey dude, see you in the business. I help people make $400 grand a year, sell $400 grand a year in life insurance space. Are you happy with where you're at financially? Are you open to a conversation? Send 100 of those a day, you'll get 5 a day like fucking clockwork to answer you. 95 tell you to fuck off, some form or fashion. Either ignore you or tell you to fuck off straight. But it works, right? And, and it's free. And so everybody says they want to build, so I like to give things, but they're like, I don't have the money, I can't buy leads, I can't have staff, I can't— everyone can send 100 DMs a day. And if I send 100 and you can't send 20, I just don't think you're that serious in building. Now you got a bunch of money to throw at it, I can give you another strategy. But if you ain't willing to teach people to do the basics— again, you can't do it alone. So even if he's like, fuck it, I don't need to send DMs, I can fucking spend 3 grand a week on recruiting. Cool. You know who can't? Your whole group. Spending 3 grand— 3 grand sounds dope, but is that duplicatable? If you can spend the money to skip the process You bring 10 people in, how many can do that versus how many can send 50 DMs a day, 25 DMs a day, 100 DMs? You know what I mean? Anyone can choose to do it. So me, it was making sure that I shared that, did that, even if it was just to prove it worked. I'd be like, hey, got another one on LinkedIn. That's why I keep telling you to post in the group. Hey, got another one on LinkedIn. Fucking cold DM, send screenshots, they show it work. I still to this day, I had someone answer me several times this year that responded on LinkedIn to a DM I sent in 2018, like, that responded in 2025. It's the weirdest fucking thing ever, dude. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 years later, dude, people respond. They're like, yeah, what do you got? Right? So to me, that was a simple system. I got agents to ask every client that they sat with— I still talk about it today— hey, now that we sat down, Zach, hey, quick question, man. There's a lot of people like you looking for help here. We get hundreds of them, which is why I was late. Like I mentioned, I'm so busy. I'm also trying to hire. Do you happen to know anybody looking to make some extra money that could do what we just did here? I didn't say go throw up on the guy, pitch the guy fucking levels and comp. And I just— hey, ask him if he knows anybody looking to make some extra money. Do what you just did. That's it. You ask 10, 20, 30 times a week, you get some people. And every agent can do that, and they can do it starting today. They can send DMs today. Makes sense. And it's like, can you post on social? Why? When you send all the DMs, what's the first thing the person's going to do? You know, look at your shit. You got 3 posts, dude, no one's going to be excited to work with you. Fair. We had that conversation fucking a couple months ago. You start posting content on social and then you start DMing, people start seeing your stuff and they're like, holy shit, this person's making some money. Especially if you're a guy making money. It's really easy to see. You stand out to them relative to everyone else that's doing this, maybe doing the same thing, but they aren't doing all the pieces, you know. He started seeing a big change when he started posting content also. Why? 99% agents don't post shit, so he stands out like a fucking mother just posting every day. It doesn't have to be good, you know. Hell, his first video that I saw, the first one I saw, was like, I stutter, I have a lisp and I still sell $30K a month. If you want to work with me, hit me up. That's what he— it wasn't anything good, like not fancy, which is good, which makes it good, right? So for me, I think systems to me means something different to most, right? Getting started, dude, I early on, man, I would give people an onboarding package. Here you go, 30 fucking pages, step 1 through 40. Then they miss something, and Amanda be like, it's on page 7 of the PDF, jackass, underlined and bold. And I'm like, oh, they didn't read it at all. And if they did, they didn't absorb it. So can we cut that out? Let's get rid of that. That's no longer part of the system. What do we give them? Step 1. I just— I'm not giving you the fucking full play. What's the point? You know what I mean? It confuses you, you overthink it. Chances of you doing it all, zero. I muddied the waters by having too much systems, too many things in place. So part of my system is literally simplicity first. If someone can't perform it simply and typically, again, depending on who you're bringing on, how many you want to take that have money. If you only want people with money, it's going to be tough to get people started. I know how to get people started with no money. Is it gonna be easy? No, it's gonna suck fucking ass. You are going to fucking hate it. It will be a horrible living if you do it long term. But Brian, get you out of the fucking hole in like 2 weeks, but you have to eat shit for a couple weeks. Like, a lot of it, dude. You're gonna eat so much shit, it's gonna be weird. It's gonna start to taste good. You're gonna have to fucking eat a lot of shit. You want to do it? It sets a foundation, you know what I mean? And I'm telling them, it's not age leads Sure, it's a game plan. If that's your game plan long term for agents, it's a shitty one. Fair. So I deliver in a way that it doesn't— because they feel like it's going to feel like forever. Oh, this is how the industry is. Nah, dude, what do you mean that's how the industry is? How much fucking money is made in this industry in ways y'all can't even imagine, behind the scenes and creating pro— there's so many ways to make money in the space, you know. But if I let them feel this is going to be— so for me, I'm like, don't forget, you're in kindergarten. We're gonna do recess at 10. I know you're gonna be starving. You can have some fucking Cheez-Its at 11:15. Like, settle the fuck down, dude. It won't be this way forever. Eventually you'll be able to go to the grocery store by yourself and buy whatever you want, but today you just need to stay over here, you know? Do people like that? No, people train the totally opposite way. But it works for me, and it obviously works for a lot of people because, I mean, we do have the result. Like, something's fucking working. I'm not saying the other stuff doesn't work. This guy's like, nah, I made the best CRM, we onboard a million. And we have one, we have one we sell. And I'm over here saying don't get one, and I sell one because people wanted it. So it is valid, but it's, it's first, it's down the road, you know what I mean? Um, so for me, what I, what I— again, same concept here. Um, and y'all, y'all can kind of map this out, and then, um, we'll probably go to lunch a few minutes, a couple minutes late, but Take like— we'll go to 11:30 with this. Just document. We'll, we'll talk about what's right after. Oh yeah, this will flow into that. Cool, this is perfect. Um, kind of take this and think about your current— the current steps for you to bring someone on board, right? And if you haven't brought someone on board yet, for those couple of you that are just figuring it out, think about what I always laugh about with agents. Is they go like, I don't know how to do it, right? We struggle. They're like, I don't know how to onboard someone. I'm like, you were onboarded. You literally did it, which is why I started earlier with like, hey, isn't it easy to get people started? Like, the thing is we do. So I just— even if you don't do it currently and you want to build, you're like, what should I have them— what's— and even if step one's like, I send them to John or Steve or whoever you work with, whatever it is you do. Like right now, him getting someone started, he ain't teaching them shit. I'm like, bro, tell them you're new. Tell them you don't know what the fuck you're talking about and you're learning from Tyler or Giovanni or me. And here's, you go watch this bootcamp to learn it. Just tell them that. You don't have to know the information, but if you know where to get the information, you can point someone in that direction. And if you get trained by calling Steve, tell the new person, we get trained by calling Steve. Steve fucking trains us, you know what I mean? And for me, I never struggled there with Mike running everything. I was like, this dude Mike's teaching me to fucking print money, bro. I don't know shit, but I'm making like 6 grand a month and I have no business doing it, but he's teaching us everything. You want to come along for the ride? That was how I recruited at the beginning, and this shit worked, you know? And he knew I was doing it too. Obviously it helped him build his agency, so he knew if I was doing it, it it benefited him to help you. So not only would he help my guy, he would teach me all the things I fucked up and didn't miss, or the questions I didn't ask, or the thing— all the things I'm talking about now, I got taught that because I was willing to hire before I knew anything or had any system. And I built it with time, you know what I mean? You start doing things repetitively, to me, I'm like, why do we keep doing it over and over again? Can we, can we fix this? Can we narrow this down? Can we tighten it up? And so a lot of people that come work with us internally, some get frustrated because I always want to fix shit. I always want to make it better, make it smoother, make it work, flow better. I'm always tinkering, and that's part of what y'all have to do. But we have to start somewhere. So the same thing, onboarding, same concept, um, kind of list out what your steps are currently. And then we're gonna— as you start to do this over the next few weeks, a few months, now we're going to start paying attention to the list and go, hey, did I hit this step? What do I want step 1 to be? Ah, shit, when I do step 1 like this Here's where it leads them. They overthink things. They fucking want to know about leads too much. You start teaching people in-home stuff before they buy leads. Oh bro, their brain is spinning with what if, and they have this avalanche of negative things that could happen, you know. So I just, I try to eliminate the overthinking part the most. That's the thing most people have in common, is just they don't— they can't perceive what it's going to feel like. And look like day to day. And so when you start putting stuff on social, they can almost touch it, you know. He starts putting things on social where he can't find the front door. Why? The house is such a piece of shit. You're like, is the gate the front door or is it the cardboard? Like, where do I knock? And he was like, on one of his videos, like, I guess I'll knock on the window. And he walked up fucking through overgrown grass and knocked on the fucking window. His agents can't say they don't know what they're getting into. You know what I mean? Whereas you don't talk about that stuff. Hey, you know how many times I've hired a guy, first appointment he goes in a trailer home in fucking Cedartown, Georgia? Fucking no teeth and banjos playing and shit. Guy shows up in a suit and I'm like, bro, what the fuck are you doing? He's like, at New York Life we wore a suit. I'm like, fuck, I didn't tell you how this goes. You know what I mean? And it's so— this is— this part is all super important. And again, if you want to do it my style, it's like, how can I make it fucking simple first, and then complicated can be later? And for us, we even do complicated again behind the scenes, but nobody knows that necessarily. They— you know, many people question, like, is this— they reply to the CRM, is this really John? I'm like, well, I mean, it is, but it's not myself, it's the fucking CRM. I just happen to be staring at it. You know. Um, so yeah, lay that out. We'll, uh, we'll go to, you know, take 10 minutes, kind of lay that out, and then I'll have them start getting lunch ready. And when we're done, we'll probably chat more about this after lunch. So take 10 minutes now and kind of write this out best you can, and we'll go from there. All right, y'all good for right now? At least got a base. Any question? I know we'll talk about a little bit deeper after lunch. Y'all, y'all good for lunch soon? They're hungry. I don't know what we have, probably sandwiches and shit, all kinds of stuff. Um, I think like as, as we start doing this, we'll, we'll wrap this piece over to after lunch, but during lunch feel free to talk about it, discuss it, and we're gonna, we'll, we'll talk about it a little bit of ways. Like he was, when I looked at, he's like, yeah, now I know all the stuff I gotta fix. Right, which is cool. So it'll be a combination of things you do now so you understand it, and then would you make any tweaks, especially after we go through this and you start kind of analyzing your businesses. Like, there's a lot of options, you know, on how you want. So we'll walk through a little bit of ours, um, onboarding plan again, kind of things I've learned, why I choose the way I choose it, and kind of some pros and cons of each. I heard y'all talking about like reps, how many, 6 presentations, so many calls, you know what I mean? Like, that's piece of your onboarding is explaining this stuff and expectations and You know, again, then you have, you have decisions to make. What if someone doesn't want to do that? What if they do? How do you handle it? What if a guy has money? What if he doesn't have money? What if he, you know what I mean? Like, what if he's worked leads before? What if he hasn't? You, you find variations in how you onboard people sometimes because they got, they can kind of, you can go in that door or that door, you know what I mean? Like, we're gonna onboard your leads, but you got a gang of money, a whole different path than if you don't. And you might meet up somewhere else down the road, but the strategy is going to be significantly different person to person. And I think too many of us try to lump someone into an onboarding system and everybody runs the same way and just kind of works for Pete. But when you get into the nitty-gritty, that's where it's like you really got to know what you're— where you're trying to lead people. And so at each step, I always have like, here's where I'm trying to go and here's why. Here's the things I'm trying to eliminate. Here's the things I'm trying to get rid of. Here's the things I'm trying to get them to see or feel or be able to grab or hold on to or chase All that's part of this, the psychology. Again, think sales, man. Presentation. All the intentionality we have in those situations. I've got to do that more frequently with people so I understand how to approach it. And sometimes, sometimes things don't necessarily need to be addressed right away, you know what I mean? You might want to deal with someone or some situation, it's like, hey, let that one cool off for a minute before you head there. I mean, someone's losing their mind over something. Dude, sometimes I'm gonna let them sit in the corner and cook. You know what I mean? I don't have to answer when they want the answer. Just because you're losing your shit now doesn't mean that you have to bring me into your shit. I get the control, you know what I mean? Someone sent me something about legal shit the other day and I just ignored it. I'm going to answer it, but on Monday afternoon this week when I had a lot going on, I'm like, I'm not allowing you to bring that into my— that's not important to me today. I'm gonna table it, and it's a big issue, but I'm choosing to table it over other things today, right? It's a big fucking debt issue. I'm like, yeah, she— it was urgent for her now. She's been ignoring it for a while. I'm gonna let it sit for a while, you know, just let it fester. She mad? Probably. But I'm mad too, so join me. Does it make sense? Um, so anyway, so we'll, we'll cover this a little bit more. Um, food's that way, drinks that way. Do whatever you want. Obviously we have the bathrooms here. Um, if anybody needs anything along the way, we're here, team's here. Let us know if you need anything at all. But we'll do lunch till we say 12:15. Go ahead, what else? You told me I could go. What do you want me to do? You want me to stall for 5 more minutes? 10 minutes? Fuck yeah. All right, cool. Let's talk about this first then. Um, do you all— do y'all want me to kind of How do y'all want to play this? Either again share some things you have questions about or some things you want to change, or I can talk about kind of some of the ways I do it. I'm open either way. Again, this is y'all's day, so anything we want to cover on onboarding specifically, um, system process that you got going on? Go ahead. Um, so Gio just kind of brought this to my attention, a huge gap. I'm so used assume face-to-face sales? Oh, got it. Okay. Yeah, that you overthink it would be for like a telesales agent. How much time do you put into them? Like, how does that start up? Okay, I know how to do telesales, but all right, how many calls would you make with them? Yeah, so I always— it's like, set the, set the stage first. Let's pretend they're in person first. How frequently do you like run to that guy's house and hold hands in the driveway and teach him the business? How often do you go to his house and sit down at his kitchen table and sit down and game plan when they're, when they're close in proximity to you? Oh, never. So what the fuck's the matter if they're remote? Because even the people close, you barely see anyway. Okay, fair. That's fair. How do you talk to most people even when they're close to you? So what changes? Maybe it's, uh, I'm asking more— yeah, the actual practice of telesale versus face-to-face. How to teach it to them, for example, face-to-face, meaning how to teach it to them. I mean, again, for me, dude, it's so part of the— part of the one I don't overcomplicate the difference. I don't think there's a difference. Are there differences? Yeah, there are differences. Just like when you sit with fucking grandma versus sitting with grandpa, they're different, but you're still selling fucking insurance. Does that make sense? You still have to do the same framework, the same structure. Everything's relatively the same. You check male instead of female, he's going to have different health issues than her, but it's relatively the same. Telesales versus in-home face-to-face is the exact same fucking thing. Is it— does it vary slightly because they're on the phone? Obviously they're on the phone, but it's— I don't think it's that big a variance. It's the same client, right? It's the same demographic. The client doesn't choose when they become a lead if they want to be a telesales lead or a face-to-face lead. They don't pick, we pick. You close them anyway, you know what I mean? So one of the things I want to be careful about, especially in today's world where there's been such a shift from in-home to telesales, everyone wants to complicate it. Again, there are variances. I'm not confused by the variables of it, but 95% of it is the exact fucking same, right? So I don't— I, I want to make sure that first I express that And people are like, well, telesales, you got to build trust because you don't see them. I'm like, bro, these fuckers let me into their house. They didn't know if I was armed. You don't think I had to build trust walking into someone's fucking kitchen? I argue I had to build more trust coming to my house versus me taking a phone call from you. You ain't coming to my fucking house. Unless I know you. Does it make sense? And it's like, call me on the phone, sell me something easy. So I see it as opportunity to be easier in a lot of ways. What's the— what's the difference? More reps. You ain't doing telesales without more reps unless you're the fucking unicorn. The overwhelming majority of people need more reps. What's the pro? You don't have to get in the car and drive around. You save gas money. What's the negative? Dude, you got your fucking dog nipping at your toes all day long, and your kids dicking with you, and your wife, and your— you know what I mean? There's pros and cons to both. So for me, I keep it at the core of what it is. People that have inquired for something that happens to be your product that need help, and without your product, they're fucked. If we can keep that as the core of what we do, dude, I don't care if you do it on the phone or you do it on— it's like, is it different on the iPad versus Android? Who gives a shit? It's, it's communicated to me. So to me, it's truly about the same, right? Um, in terms of the sales side, I also, along the onboarding process, part of for me is I— we do give them stuff to study, right? So there is a boot camp that people can go through to appease them. I am going to actually give people training, but I tell them to be careful to not overthink it either. Like, study it as you go. The, the magic is Study it, go do it, fuck it up, come back and study it, learn what you messed up, go do it again, mess it up some more, come back, make a few tweaks, learn. Preferably not on your own because you are the one fucking it up, so you probably can't identify your own mistakes very well. So it's better if you ask someone who knows their shit, right? Then you go back and you make some more mistakes and you make small tweaks. Like anything in life, pick something you want to get better at that ain't going to include going and trying it, messing it up, getting better at it, making tweaks along the way. Pick something. That's the process, right? And so I'm more concerned about that, and I'm more concerned about them overthinking. And then when the dipshit up the street at the other agency tells them telesales is completely different, I'm like, bro, it's fucking same client, dude. And I can have a conversation with that guy in 3 seconds and get him to change his mind. I've had to learn how to do it because some— most people overcomplicate it, you know. Um, and again, I see the variances, but they're so minute to me It's no different than if I go sell insurance in the hood in Atlanta versus if I go sell it here in the boonies, in the sticks in Georgia. You don't think that's fucking different? Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not spending fucking days training on it. It's still insurance with people who need help for their family, you know what I mean? So I don't get into the inter— I don't let people trick me into believing this is more complicated than it is. You want to trick yourself, cool. You are not going to use me to validate your overthinking. I'm not going to allow that. So when people try to do that, I'm just not going to be that guy. I'm going to be the guy that pushes you into Blue Leaf, and it's not that different. Why? Why wouldn't I? What if you don't believe that? You should probably learn how to believe it because it helps, you know what I mean? No different than anything. Do you believe you can make a million bucks? If you don't, it's going to be really hard to make a million. If you don't believe you can or you deserve it or you think it's that hard, it's going to be— you're gonna be fucking hard. You know, so I think for me, I set the stage first, and then I've had— you know how many people I have reached out to me that kind of both, they want to work near someone physically in location? I literally every time go, bro, what does that have to do with anything? Do you think I'm going to— and I say what I just said to you— do you think I'm going to come skip down the driveway with you and hold your hand while you go see clients? No, man, I don't need that. So we're probably going to communicate a lot by phone, bro, right? Yeah. So what's it matter if I'm local? 'Cause if I were local to you, I wouldn't take time out of my day when I'm working to help you on the need right now. You'd still have to do, it's still gonna be the same. In fact, you have more access on the phone 'cause I'm only in the office this little window. So it's actually to your benefit to be able to call me anytime versus only see me in an office. So I'm selling them for sure. We are in sales, dude. And so for me, man, it's always, if the process is, here's my process and mine is simple enough to always give something, again, I say this fucking, I'm like a parrot that's repeating himself. I always give people something to do. And then it's always their job to let me know when they're done with that thing for the next step. That's how I play the game, right? Do you babysit calls at all? What do you mean? Listen to calls? Oh yeah, fuck yeah, I will. Not at the beginning. If they're remote, over Zoom, over 3-way, I have— I usually what I do is I have people send it to me, send recording calls. I like listening to recordings. What I like about it best is having them listen to it. There's more magic that happens from them listening to their calls than me coaching them on listening to their calls. So I will do it. I'll especially tell people I'll do it because they'll be fucking excited. They'll record it, they'll send it to me. I know behind, in the back of my mind, they're also going to listen to it and they're also going to discover for themselves how bad they suck, which is what I want. But I make that normal. I'm like, we all sucked. Name fucking— name someone who didn't suck at this at the beginning. I think they're lying if they tell you that. I just do. I think if someone says they didn't suck at some part of this at the beginning, they're lying to you. So, tell me the question again. I'm gonna get there. About like listening into the problem. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, for me, I want that step to happen first, but I also set the groundwork, dude, for even if I coach you too much, I will fuck you up. I got some good shit. I always tell people, dude, if I could put all my good stuff in this bottle and you could drink it and you could say it later, I'd be fucking loaded. But, and I'm getting questions for the analytical guy. I go, hey, let me tell you this, bro. I did this with you. If I gave you the best fucking script ever, every keyword I say, every scenario in home, the way I fucking maneuver everything in pricing and believability and buy-in and get their why, dude, I'd lay out a fucking perfect picture, the perfect in-home that I do after thousands of reps. Okay, I know you want it. If I lay it right here on the table for you and I say, go say it tomorrow, what percentage of that can you do tomorrow? Okay, why are you trying then if you know the answer is none? Is it fair to say you know it's going to take a lot of reps and you practicing this back and forth. You're aware of that, right? Okay, can we do that? Like, dude, you ain't gonna know left from right for the first 100 conversations at least. You ain't gonna know up from down. You ain't gonna know what to say. You're gonna stutter. You're gonna fucking trip on— you're gonna have a big swollen tongue that you never knew you had. You won't be able to get words out of your mouth from the beginning, no matter what I put on the piece of paper, dude. So can you just do the reps and just take note of the mistakes and the things that aren't going the way you want them to go? When they give you objections and they get you, just take a couple— nothing crazy. Don't— I don't know what to fucking a whole dissertation on it. I want like 3 words: told me to fuck off, hung up on me, didn't need it. Make sense? Do that throughout the day. Go get me like 40 of those and then come back to me. We'll review them. What you'll learn— and there's probably only like 3 or 4 of them— when you get 40, you're gonna see the same ones repeat over and over again. When you get those, call me back, give me 3, we'll work on those. Okay, that's it. Now I don't have to fuck with him again. So what? He brings me 40 objections. Bring me 40 objections. That's typically the first one when a person's getting on the phone. Go get it. What am I getting? 40 objections. Why, dude? I don't, I don't want them pissed off when they talk to 3 people. Can it get worse than what I just said? Probably not. Is it overwhelming majority of the time going to be better than what I just said? I'm fucking winning, you know what I mean? Like, I'm— they're expecting to go into a fucking torture chamber. They're like, oh, all they did was tell me to fuck off, just like he said. Oh, weird. Okay, you know. And so, so for me, it's more— it's more about that, um, than anything. And so when they're remote, I can do that. If they're— they're on the phone, again, I'm— if they— you know how many agents I've had live within minutes of me? That I never stepped foot in their house. They never stepped foot in my house. We talk on the phone, right? So for me, I don't know anything better, dude. I just— I was talking to people on the phone who were local and at a distance. I didn't care where you lived. I was running ads in multiple states. Now certainly, as soon as I found someone in a state, I'm like, yo, I'm building a team in South Carolina. I got one guy getting started who hadn't done contracting yet, and in my head I'm building this whole team out there. But I was You know what I mean? And so I, I talk to people about, we're going to build an office out there so you'll have a place to call home. I'm looking for some leaders. Hey, are you a leader? Do you have any vision one day to build a team and open an office? And I'm touching on all— that's some of the upfront shit. If I notice someone who's maybe there, I might touch on some of that stuff, you know. But I'm gonna, I'm gonna help build a foundation somewhere, and this is what we're gonna see. And I give them vision, and, you know, we have fucking 40 people in our office dialing in the closets, and we're going to build that here, right? Especially when they see us doing it, which is why I'm pushing these two for an office now. Like, dude, when people watch what you got going on in an office environment and you see it, you don't think someone out of state wants that shit? I just think about this, dude. Like, how many people do— were you ever out there during your journey of this thing, out there like, guys, need a fucking opportunity? I just need something better than what I got. I just need the thing. I wish the thing would come into my life. You have the thing for someone out there who wants the thing. There's millions of people who want the thing. There's also millions of things. Plenty of shit you can sell to get rich. There's plenty of people who want to get rich. All I did was try to touch enough of them that eventually our paths met and they wanted my thing and I had the thing and I could sell them on the vision and get them on the dream and tell my story. And you know what I mean? I was just trying to match that dude. And so like this, I didn't overcomplicate it. I didn't make it weird that they were remote or on the phone. I didn't get on Zooms. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but I didn't overcomplicate that piece either. I'm like, I'll talk to fucking Steve in El Paso, Texas. Yo, what's El Paso like? You know what I mean? I just wanted to get people going. Hey guys, just created something really cool. And if you want to be part of it, join the Discord group I just created. The link is going to be be in here. It's a dope environment. You can chat with others that are kind of in the community. You can see beyond the curtain of our agency, have access to all kinds of stuff that we got going on, events. And my staff is in there, um, we have agents in there selling, me helping agents and sharing information. We're gonna, as we build this thing out, share everything out there with all of you guys. So again, follow the Discord if you want to be part of everything we got going on. Join it now. We'll see you in there. Hope to help you more. All right, any questions on this onboarding stuff you want to cover? Um, certainly I'm going to start kind of— we're going to go from here, onboarding stuff, and it's going to sort of flow into the staffing stuff, right? Which obviously connect a lot. But any clarity you want on the, on the process of onboarding, anything you want to know about what we do, anything that you want to cover there at all, and literally wide open about any part of it, I'm all ears. Anything you learned from someone else in here? You're like, oh shit, I should probably fucking do that. Y'all figuring that out yet? No? That was a question to y'all. Nobody's learning shit, huh? Cody, you might have to come speak earlier, bro. Go ahead, brother. Uh, I'm learning a ton now. Yeah, please. Yeah, this, uh, deep space— what I love is the like you can design your day in a way, right? You mentioned earlier about starting here and here. Yeah. But yet there's a lot of hunger, right? Sure. A lot more drive for that. My question is, when you're onboarding different personalities. Yeah, right. You got the action-oriented and the— the dabbler, right? How do you— what's a great way to keep that dabbler or that person that's asking questions, wanting to learn more? Yeah, get them involved faster, producing results with it. Yeah, the one, the one dabbling, dude, like, is it dabbling? I guess it's depend on the situation a little bit, right? Like if they have the job or they single mom with a bunch of kids and they're dabbling because they— that's all they can do, right? I'm gonna handle that different than the person that could do more that's dabbling. They're two very different people to me, right? One's dabbling out of circumstance and one is dabbling out of choice. Maybe fears, maybe laziness, maybe it could be anything, right? So, so for me, at its core, again, the, the role is help people get where— from where they're at to where they want to go. That's ultimately the framework. Where are you now? Where do you want to be? And again, if they're where they want to be, I don't see it as a big vision. I can certainly— I've said it multiple times— I can, I can give more vision. I can push people. I know how to— I've learned how to do that piece. But at its core, dude, I'm, I'm trying to figure out where everybody's at now and where they want to go and what they're willing to sacrifice and/or change to get there, right? Because what got you where you're at is the shit you've been doing. So if you want to go further, is it fair to say you're probably going to have to work harder, get more uncomfortable, learn a little bit more? This is going to have to get added onto your current life. Fair. The mistake a lot of people make is they dabble. And I can— I'll come up with an analogy. Like, I don't know, any of y'all golf? Or you said you run, right? You're a runner, you're not a golfer. Okay, if you dabble in running, how good are you going to be at a marathon? If you say you want to do a marathon and then you dabble in training you're probably going to suck at the marathon. Fair? So if you say you want to do really well here and you dabble here, it's probably going to feel like the marathon. You're probably going to feel like you can't finish or get there or you're not successful. So dabbling is scary, right? Even if someone is a part-time and out of circumstance, like, it's not— they're like, I would, however, I need benefits, I have this secure job, my— what would all the stuff You know what I mean? I'm like, what I try to do there is go, is the vision to be full-time? Because some people, the vision is only to do this part-time forever. Not my favorite to work with, you know what I mean? Will I let one mate? Sure, kind of mate. I don't know, it just doesn't fucking excite me, dude. But if their vision is to be full-time, right? Now I'm going to start talking about vision with the person who can only do part-time. I go, I started part-time. So I can relate. I had a job, I had 5 kids, I was trying to figure it out. This was on the side, so I had to figure out how to fit it in. My schedule was Sundays I would be on the phones and I would run a little bit after work Monday, Tuesday night, and then Thursday, Friday during lunch at work I would get on the phones a little bit to run a little bit on Saturdays to see clients. And I would end up seeing a handful of people a week. Sometimes on a Monday, Tuesday night when I booked 2 or 3 appointments after work, a lot of times I didn't see no one. I was booking appointments. Or you start dialing, everyone hangs. You got 2 or 3 hours to play after work. Some days you're going to get nothing, you know what I mean? You go fishing for 2 hours, some days you don't catch anything. You go fishing on a 12-hour boat tour, you're probably more likely to catch some shit, right? So my mistake was not understanding how to structure my schedule the right way, because I wish going back in time that I could have experienced what this feels like as someone full-time, even though I'm not. Meaning I wish that when I went back, instead of running, dialing a little bit on Sundays and doing Monday and Tuesday nights, right? And then I would take the kids to fucking— we went to Wendy's 7,000 times. How many times do we go to Wendy's, bro? Because they had— we did the balloons. The face painting and the kids meal was like buy one get one free or half off. It was whatever. I could go to Wendy's and take all the kid— usually it was 3 of them, um, and we could all eat for like $20 and they could play with the balloons and the face painting and shit. So like we lived at fucking Wendy's as, as that was part of my schedule, right? So not only am I working, I, I have them for Thursday nights cuz her— his— the other kid's mom and I got divorced, so it was like every other weekend dinner nights. It was this crazy schedule. I wish going back in time that instead of kind of dinking and dunking a little bit when I could, I wish instead I took a Saturday and a Sunday and I turned my entire life off and did insurance all day Saturday and Sunday for a couple weekends straight to see what it felt like. Because when I did part-time for a year, when I went full-time, everything felt completely different, right? No different than again, we go running If you start running and you go take Saturday and Sunday and put in 20 miles over the course of Saturday, Sunday, or do 2 miles a day every day, dude, 20 miles in 2 days is going to feel very different than 2 miles every day. It's a completely different fucking workout on your body. Does it make sense? Time-wise, scheduling-wise, mental, it's completely different. And so I've learned if I can get people to feel what it's going to feel like full-time— you talk to 2 people, have 2 appointments, have 2 presentations— that ain't what full-time feels like. So you never know the— you never catch the momentum of like, oh shit, dude, I showed up. Like, y'all see— do any of y'all follow Giovanni's stuff besides a couple people up here? You should. It's like, it's fucking hilarious. And we— I get to see the raw material, so it's even better seeing the pre-edit shit. Um, but he, uh, shit, which one was I just gonna talk about? Uh, there was one you said I lost my train of thought on it when I said it. What was I just telling about? I was getting to something. Help me there. I lost it. Huh? I know. What were we talking about right before that? It was something you said right before that that made me hit it, and I lost it. I hate when I do that. See, y'all forget too. There was something specific I was gonna— I don't remember. Yeah, but we were talking about the hours and the full time and shit like that. Um, oh, the fucking laydown, right? So dude, he, he has on the fucking cameras, on the glasses, dude. He walks into a house and the guy goes, I'm gonna be your first laydown of the day. Like, fucking told him that when he got there. And then when he's leaving, he's like, thanks for being a fucking laydown. It was like $200 a month or something, wasn't it? You don't experience that Dinkin' and Dunkin' typically, you know what I mean? Whereas you run all weekend, Saturday, Sunday, and and you go see 10, 15, 20 people, you start having conversations, I know the likelihood of tripping over one of them like that is really high. I don't know if you know that, but those of us that do this for a living at a high pace, we know, like, we'll admit, I got 3 fucking easy ones today. Fair? Y'all get 'em? They literally throw you fucking money. You do no work. You walk in, they're ready to fucking buy. But agents don't feel that with the combination of dabbling and lack of understanding of the business. They think they have to oversell. I mean, that's a learned skill set to identify, lay down, and do it right. You got to kind of learn that along the way. But I know if I send people in a mission to go like, hey, take 2 days off from work and run Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I'd rather see you do that for one weekend then do 2 nights a week and 3 hours on Saturday for the next 3 months to see if it feels right. Like, dude, let's fucking condense it now and go. Can you take some time? And I try to see if I can build that in somewhere, um, in, in the initial scheduling conversation with everyone, you know what I mean? Because I want to avoid it, because dabbling sucks, dude. Dabbling in anything sucks. Pick something that you dabble in and tell me how good you are at it, you know what I mean? And so I just, I don't know, I just try to tell people what that's like. So if they have to dabble because the schedule allows, when they all— when they only talk to a couple people and nothing good happens from it, they're not confused. You know what I mean? It's just gonna be harder to get laydowns when you spread 10, 15 people out over the course of 7 days versus if you get it in 2 days, you know. So I'm a big fan of like condensing time frames with everything, you know. And even, even at my peak, man, when I'm selling $40 grand a month— I, for those newer to the story or whatever, I only sold insurance 11 days a month. That was my schedule. 11 days a month, see 10 to 12 people a day. It's 120 people a month, it's 1,500 people a year. Like, the shit adds up quick. So in the— my schedule was like Tuesday, Wednesday, I did every week I sold. So I did that all 4 weeks of the month. Tuesday, Wednesday, every week was a sales day for me. And then not only did I have them for dinner on Thursdays, I had them every other weekend. So Thursdays I didn't run because I knew I was going to pick them up after school so I could dial. But on a weekend that I had them for the weekend, Friday, Saturday, I didn't dial on that Thursday because I was going to hang out with them Friday, Saturday, Sunday. You mean I didn't really want to work? So every other weekend when they were at their mom, I would run, uh, Friday every other week. And then the 2 weeks where they were at their mom, 2 weeks Steph and I just had Maddox. One of them I'd work, and one I would, I would stay home and hang out with just Steph and Maddox. So it was two weekends I was with all the kids, one weekend I was with just Steph and Maddox, one Saturday even, and one Saturday I would work. Um, so Tuesday, Wednesday every week, 8 days a month. Every other Friday, 10. Once every month, 11 days. 10 to 12 people a day, you know what I mean? And I'm seeing more than most agents are seeing in a full week, you know. So that left me a lot of time to to make a lot of shit happen. So when I was in the field, I was going at it, right? I didn't want to drag it out either. The shit I preach, I don't like. I hate nothing more than having 4 or 5 people to talk to in a day. Present to 3, 4, or 5 people, I want to hang myself that day. There's just no action typically. Again, can you sell one? Yeah, I get it. But you have 5, especially if you're booking appointments or in your world, if you're presenting people want to present to a couple a day. I mean, like, ah, dude, it's fucking rough, bro, you know? So if you're one-call closing versus booking appointments, obviously there's variations, but the reality is I want, I want opportunity, man, to kind of trip over stuff, you know? And when I was doing it, I didn't want to kind of do it and then go back to doing something else and then go back to doing sales and then go do something else. And then I'm like, can I just sell all day and all night on the days I do it? Can I just— that's all I do, you know? And then the days I don't sell, I didn't have to worry about that piece because I knew I was going to get the numbers in on those days. And for me, the consequence was if I don't do it right, I now have to call them, be like, yo, Thursday night Wendy's, I can't go. I had to pay the bills too. So for me, my end was if I didn't do what I had to do, not only did I have to work extra, I also had to explain it to them and they don't understand shit. They're fucking little kids that are like, I just want to go to Wendy's and play with my dad, you know what I mean? And I didn't want to give that piece up, so I had to build my schedule in a way that I saw the quantity of people I wanted within a month. And I was taking 3 months to see 120 people before, and I'm like, fuck it, I want to do it in 1 month. I was seeing 40 people a month before, at the beginning of my career here. 40, low 40s was my average. It was 10 people a week. And I'm like, that didn't cut it for me. It didn't get me anywhere. Right? So when I condensed it to a smaller time frame and increased it, that exponentially— I went from selling— I sold— I issued like $170K in 2014, kind of doing the 10 people a week thing. And then when I went to 30, I issued $460K. And it changed my entire business because no one gave a shit about issue. If you issue $150K in our space, you make no fucking money. It's 10 grand a month. You're broke as fuck if you're issuing 10, 12 grand a month. Fair? Is anyone confused on that? You're broke as fuck issuing that money unless you're just like a college kid living in mom's basement. You'll have a little bit of extra leftover for sure, but you ain't living any kind of lifestyle on 10, 15 grand a month paid volume, you know what I mean? And so when I changed the schedule, instead of dabbling, I changed the schedule to feel different. Not only did I see more people but I caught momentum that you can't catch dabbling. You will not catch momentum dabbling. You just won't. And then my skill set increased at a pace that I— it's hard to explain. When you start seeing that many reps that frequently, you're bound to get fucking really good, especially when I was combining it with studying, you know what I mean? And getting coaching and getting feedback and having other people help me. I was doing all those pieces, um, to make sure that when I did it, dude, it was effective as possible. You know, and I still kind of understood, man, I was always going to have bad days. That never went away. 10, 12 a day, I had a bad day almost every fucking week. Almost every fucking week I have an off day. Almost every week. Um, you know, months, they usually weren't that bad. A bad one was pretty fucking good. Give me a shitty one, I'd be 25, 30 grand. 25, you know what I mean? Which ain't bad. A great month be $60,000. The only shit falls the right way, I hit a couple big policies, I catch an annuity, a couple replacements, you know what I mean? You hit some shit, sometimes it spikes big. Um, but that consistency, consistency led to averaging $35K a month for 2 straight years, you know. And that, it was more than just double, triple the activity, triple the income. It also attracted a different type of person to me. You know what I mean? And, um, you know, the combination of that, man, it started to teach me the dabbling thing. Let me just address it up front and just call it what it is. I'm not being mean, I understand your situation, but it doesn't take away the fact that it's going to fucking suck if you dabble. It just is. When you're training reps to one-call close, how do you have them work like a full day schedule? Um, do you have them like build in any time to do follow-ups, or is it just strictly dialing, or what's that look like? Yeah, man, for me, dude, I think the overwhelming majority of people aren't going to be busy enough that kind of building in extra times for follow-ups matters, right? Again, you— we take 10 agents and get them started tomorrow, how many are going to make enough phone calls that they're so overwhelmed they have to plan all this stuff? What percent? You give me 10, I get I get 10 started, how many are like balls to the wall right away? Maybe one. So I don't really fuck with it a lot because it's this much of the business, right? I want to focus more on the others because the guy that's going to go balls to the wall, dude, he's going to figure out how to fucking fit in time to call, do his follow-ups too. Just quite frankly, you know what I mean? Like a guy like you, I don't have to be like, make sure you work on your follow-ups. If you're there. Now you do get some A players that go balls to the wall and they ignore the rest of their world. So then I can teach it to that small percentage that show it, but I don't do it up front. I don't try to get him to build in follow-up time. I'm like, motherfucker has all kinds of time. Stop fucking with me, dude. You know what I mean? Like, just call in between. In between what? Well, I see your dials, dude. You're doing like 300 a day and you like, come on. You got like 9 hours to fuck, you know what I'm saying? So it depends if it's an issue, but I don't really— I don't set it as like when you're brand new, make sure to build in that time necessarily. Um, there's— because there's so much back and forth when they're new that I'll see that coming. That'll be a tweak more than a set the stage for, you know what I mean? I'd rather tweak it when they're doing so much shit and they're like, I can't fucking keep up. I'd be like, cool, let's walk through your schedule. What's it look like? What time do you call? What time— hey, what do you do your follow-ups? Hey, when do you call the carriers? And I'll build it. I'll be like, ah, make a tweak here, tweak this, do that instead of this. You mean I'll shift some stuff based on the actual— what's actually happening versus hypothetical? You know what I mean? Because again, 9 out of 10, bro, I ain't gonna have to have that conversation with anyway, right? So I don't want to put it on the table and make it sound more complicated than it's going to be because that person's never going to encounter, I'm so busy I don't have time to follow up. Right. Yeah. No, I'm with you on that. Let's say maybe just like for someone like me, I guess I wrestle with just being balls to the wall with my business versus like, you know, you can just schedule time and actually re-talk to these people that potentially could buy it. Are you talking about like, I'll call you on Tuesday if you leave me your card follow-up? Or are you talking about like annual reviews, people you didn't get a hold of? Get like a banking objection or whatever. You're kind of all the way through it and you feel like there's like a decent— okay, do you want to know what I did or do you want the formal answer on what I could— you know what I mean? Like, I guess like, what would you tell someone now who's like producing at a pretty high level just about like— do you follow up with them now? It depends. I don't think I follow up as much as I used to. Okay, let's take 10 that you do follow up with. Okay. You take 10 that are like, I can't find the banking info, call me on Tuesday. How many of the 10 actually give you the fucking banking info next Tuesday? So again, I don't fuck with it, dude. I move the fuck on. I don't— me, I'm not following up with that client. You're either buying now or moving the fuck on. Are there cons to that? Yep, I'm aware of them. I don't care because I gotta follow up with 10 to get 1. What can I do instead of following up with 10? Okay, now you get 10 new people on the phone. How many of those do you close? Okay, so you're asking me how do I sacrifice the more than one to get the one? Yeah, no, that's good, right? So for my answer is fuck the one, let me get the 5 over here I can get, or the 2, or the whatever, right? It's a, it's a strategy. Now what's the downside of it? My follow-up skills weren't the best, bro. My getting referral skills weren't the best, you know what I mean? I just, I, I wasn't an A-player at that piece. But I just found, dude, if I didn't worry so much about the— I did the follow-up, the referral thing, give me your beneficiary's name and I'm gonna— all the bullshit. I want to make sure they know you're safe with me and all this bullshit we say to get new names and numbers, right? I did that. Working those follow-up leads, I hated. Hey Giovanni, hey, just calling you, man. I just sat with your cousin and he said you might need some life insurance. And I'm gonna— I don't— I didn't want to do that, so I chose to just go fuck that. Instead of doing follow-ups with Giovanni's cousin, I'll just call more leads. I'll actually pay to not do that. But that's me, right? The guy that wants to do it, I can convince in 2 seconds that they're losing money doing it, like I just did with you with the 1 in 10 thing. Thing. Now, if your numbers were different, I'd have handled it different. I actually genuinely didn't know. I assumed it. But if you're like, bro, I'm fucking great at it, I'm getting 6 of them out of 10, I had a different answer for you. But I've never had someone answer that way. Everyone says 1 out of 10, you know what I mean? Um, so again, I think a lot of new agents get stuck there, man. I think it hurts more people than it helps them, you know. I'd rather— my lead strategy became, let me get so many leads coming in that I can take the easy appointments. And if I take the easy appointments, I get way more laydowns than you. Yeah, I spend more on leads, but also deposit 3 times the fucking amount you do, and my net's significantly higher. So if my net's higher, what do I give a shit about being efficient? I don't, dude. I just fucking don't. Now, how do I find a way to be efficient? I take the cream off the top and I give the new agents the leads to follow up that I did a shitty follow-up with. You know what I mean? Someone needs a referral, dude, I send my agent. I'm like, yeah, I'll have an agent call. They'll call the friends and the family and the neighbors. And I, I gave that to agents. Why? Because they were dabbling. They didn't have the money in to invest. Whoever was asking me that over there, they didn't have a strategy. So I'm like, here's a strategy, take my leftovers, there's plenty of money in there. I fucking barely follow up, call them. Because it was true. Does it make sense? And they would make shitloads of money because I was weak at following up. I played the follow-up game. I fucking hate it, you know. Again, think about anything else. You go on a date with a girl and you're like, hey, text me, and she don't text you. You'd be like— are you gonna chase her? Like, hey, you haven't texted me yet, where are you? Or do you be like, now find another girl? I know what I would do, right? Neither are wrong. And just in my head, it's so— even though you're trying to be effective and efficient, to me it feels very inefficient trying to solve that problem, right? So some problems I just let be. I know it's there. I know it's— I know there's a hole, but it's a little baby hole, and I can bring in a waterfall of money over here. So I'll sacrifice that to get this. You know, I do that with a lot of things. Um, that just kind of happens to me be one of them. When I explain it that way, again, all I did was explain this how I did it, and it worked. So you don't have to pick that way, but I liked it. If you like following up with people that said they were going to fucking call you on Tuesday after they talked to their lawyer, you know what I mean, to make sure the policy was— yeah, bro, stop, right? We've had it. I don't I don't want to play in that world, so I just go, fuck it, I missed the sale. Keep it moving. I must have sucked. I didn't push enough. So I'd rather, I'd rather train myself to push harder in the moment versus follow up better. I'm like, you got them there. Why'd you, why'd you let them off the hook? Don't you know how to find banking info better? Can't you talk to them? Hey, are you the type— do you, hey, do you do online banking? Are you still old school mail? Just curious. You do that early in the presentation. I do everything online. Ah, what do I know now? I get their fucking account number on the statement on their phone. I know that now. And I'm saying it very nonchalant. They got mail everywhere. I'm like, oh dang, you a male, you bank statements in your mail and shit you don't open still? Are you online yet, right? It's easy to see that stuff coming. So I'd rather gain the skill set of how to find it in the moment more effectively than how to do the clean up the mess after. Effectively. Help? Yeah, you got something to do, bro? Yeah, this one might be a little bit different, uh, a little bit easier for agents, and pretty much the same concept. But, you know, a question that we'll get is like somebody gets— finally gets one on the hook, and then they get declined, get declined. Yeah, it's a little bit different in the house. Sure. Leave the house, but same concept because they're just on the phone. Yeah. And then they'll call and be like, hey, what'd you Should I do this? They're spending 2.5 hours. Yeah, one guy. Yeah, sure. Um, what do you say to that new agent who his, um, his alternative is going back to the leads that he's called 15 times? Yeah, you know, it's like he doesn't want to do that work. He's got somebody on the hook that's like, there is money in there if you can find a carrier. Sure. Yeah, I go, hey dude, if you knew underwriting better, do you feel like you could find a home for that person? And especially if I know, right, I can be like, hey, what's the issue? Because you can do that in most— in this scenario, this made-up scenario, could you ask 3 or 4 or 5 questions, find the carrier? Okay, so I go, all right dude, here's the thing. Why do you think you can't cover them? And we're gonna talk it out. Oh, they got this, that, or the other. Okay, what did you do when you find out they had X? Pick something. Fucking neuropathy, I don't care, pick it. When you found out neuropathy, what did you do? The answer today, I put it in toolkits and it told me what to do. I'm like, okay, do you think that's the most you should know your product? Again, week 1 dude, I'm giving him the answer. Fucking write this and move on. He's been here 3 months, I'm gonna question how well he learns his craft, right? And I want to teach him how to do the thing. So what does he not know how to do? Go figure it out, right? How do you figure it out? You gotta know your shit or know where to get the shit. Toolkits ain't gonna give you the answer to everything. It's not gonna teach you how to ask good questions. Does it make sense? It's not going to teach you why there's a difference in if the cancer spread or repeated itself or didn't happen either way, like recurring, whatever they call that word, or the metastatic, you know what I mean? Like it's different. It's different if you have, obviously you have, I don't know, fucking diabetes, obviously pill or not pill. Is there complications or they're not complications? Some carriers give a shit, some don't. Some will let you have fucking neuropathy and write you right up, right? And I know new agents tend to default to 'Oh shit, I don't know what to do,' but they also don't want to pause and have that awkward, like, 'Fuck, I gotta look it up and figure it out' time. Most people don't want that. That happens in home too. It's not just a telesales thing. Someone's sitting in the house, they don't know what to do, they fucking panic, right? I like to let an agent feel that panic, not day one. But if I'm explaining to people, like, I'm not sure, Dick, I know we have technology for stuff, but not Not only do you rely on the technology, not only do you not know your underwriting without the tech, you don't even know where to get it and look it up. If your agents don't know where to look up health stuff, whose fault is that? 100%, right? So to me, early on when they start fucking with stuff, I'm like, all right, what'd you do first? If we got time— assume we have time and I want to teach a lesson here, right? Because sometimes the lesson might be like, fuck it, just pick the phone and keep dialing. If it's his third dial, like, who cares? Right? So we can obviously scenario different, but if he's kind of going like, hey, what'd you do next? Well, I called you. Okay, what if I was fucking in the cancer ward right now because I had an accident? Like, what would you do then? I'd call Steve. All right, dude, work with me here, bro. The whole world blows up and you're by yourself. Do you not know what to do next? 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, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 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 really want to make big things happen. A 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 the 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 grand 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 mean, I mean, you get them thinking. Most people are going to go, I mean, I could probably call the carrier, right? All right, we're working with fire now. Like, we're getting there, right? Hey, do you know what the carriers create? You know, there's rules to underwriting. Do you know what they create to put all the rules in a document? Cheat sheet. Someone said cheat sheet. Nah, I made that sitting on the weekend on my couch one time. How? I took all the underwriting guides, I nerded out and took all the questions, and I put in all the answers and and I looked at how they varied by client. I literally took every underwriting guide we had and went through— all the questions are basically the same. I took every question from every carrier, put them on a sheet like this, and then I looked at the ones that were the same. And on the top was the carrier, and I looked at how each one answered it— approved, denied, need to know shit. And I built a cheat sheet. This was probably 2014 or '15 that people still use today, and there's a million variations of it. But I hand-built one because I wanted to understand the differences when I ran into situations like that, because I learned the people that knew their shit didn't deal with as much stuff, especially in the time of paper apps back in the day. Now it's weird. So we obviously— there's placement issues, how much your shit gets placed, meaning I applied and it got approved. The carriers care about that stuff. They watch it. If you suck, they're not going to like you. And the only reason you suck is because you didn't look or learn it. Again, good news is they put that shit in alphabetical order, right? So anything you want to know— diabetes is going to be under the D's. You can look it up and it tells you exactly what they'll do with that diabetes, right? So if you don't know how to— now I'm going to teach that person how to actually underwrite, right? Because in the moment you might have to do it, dude. It's really easy. And again, if we're on with the client, you can set the stage for that. Hey, we're going to try to go through some options. I work with a bunch of carriers. I'm going to do my best to get all your health information clear, financials, make sure, like, because part of this process, we have to apply, right? We have to get the approval from the insurance company. So none of this shit matters if you don't qualify. So we're going to get you some insurance best I can today, but I got to make sure you fit in their mold. So these questions I'm asking you, if you forget something or if you try to leave something out hoping it won't affect you, like if I miss it, it might fuck you up at the carrier. So I'm like your defense attorney. I need you to tell me everything so I know where to send it. The more I know, the better I can help you. Does that make sense? And so I'm, I'm sending the states, they're going to give me everything I want. I'm, I'm— it doesn't work every time, but I'm at least going to lay it out there right now. Things go sideways and something comes up because they're going to pull your medical shit and they're going to see it. If there's something we don't tell them, they might put a red flag up saying they need more information or they have questions, or I might have to go to a different company. I don't know yet. So we're— do your best to give me all the information because I don't want to waste your time on the back end having bounce around and find you coverage. You cool with that? So I can set— I can teach him to set the stage with the client, right? And then when he doesn't know what to do, I'm walking through, hey, what'd you do next? All right, let's— hey, do you know how to get an underwriting guide? Nope. Hey, where do you think they would hide that sucker if a carrier had one? Which they do. They were smart enough to think about all this, bro, and put it in a list for us. It's really fucking cool. You obviously don't get on the carrier training, or you would know this already. So do you know when the carrier training is already like— right, they're missing pieces, dude. They're not doing the business right, or you didn't, you didn't explain it clearly. This is not for day one stuff. I want you guys to remember that. I ain't doing this with a guy his first week. I'm assuming they're like been doing it for a few weeks at least. And I'm like, I teach people that you should— I think it's weird that you don't have the fucking guides with you. At least download it on your computer, at least in your favorites. You open that bitch up, hit Ctrl+F, it does a little find thing. You search for the word you're looking for, take you right to the page. You know what I mean? And so if they don't have that, then I can be like, do you have the cheat sheet? Fuck, if you don't want— we have it here. You can cheat and look it up, right? So I can go into how he's handling the process, and I'd rather fix that. Because if I just give him the answer, next time it goes sideways, what's he need now? Just the answer. Because he doesn't know how to do it. You have it memorized because you put in the work, so you can give him the answer. But I don't want to— I don't want to be the answer guy, right? I can be the information guy, but I can also teach them how to get the information and how to do the job. You know, you'd go to a mechanic shop, dude. You think every mechanic knows how to change every part on every car off the fucking top of their head? No shot. They look that shit up. They get in a little computer and they're like, fucking oil filter, how do you change it? And it should take out this screw and that screw and use this thing, you know what I mean? You can change any part by just reading the manual. Y'all ever heard that term, the RTFM, read the fucking manual? It's a thing for us old folks to know that. Um, so in that situation, dude, I want to teach them how to do the thing first so when they're in it next time, they know how to pivot quicker. Right? And then when they understand the concept of the slight variations can mean a big difference in your pay. Fair? If you know small tweaks in— name a major medical issue— heart stuff, cancer stuff, diabetes stuff, COPD stuff. So if you know nuances, oh, I can place double the shit you can place. At least double the shit. Fair? So it's a big factor, dude. So I just don't let people rely on toolkits. It's dope, you don't have to know shit. Walk in, punch it in, it'll tell you most of it. Are you gonna miss some stuff? Yeah, dude, you don't know what the fuck you're doing. You're definitely gonna leave some— there's definitely gonna be more meat on the bone, you know. So when they come to it, man, I, I, um, I'd rather teach them how to do it so next time it's okay. And I would explain, like, I would just tell clients, man, again, phone, in-home, I don't care if I need to go, hey, I just need a couple minutes. This— you gotta, you gotta go like a Rubik's Cube here. This is a little bit of a tricky one. Do you mind, like, hey, why don't you go grab a glass of water? I'm gonna sit here and figure a couple things out. By the time you get back, I should be good. I can do that on the phone, you know what I mean? I would do it in the house all the time. Hey, why don't you grab me a glass of water? Let me figure out some pricing. Let me figure out some options. And I would slow everything down. I like to spend a little bit of time on underwriting, man. I want to get it right, you know. I got to a point where You know, I always, I always, I always kind of manipulate the story in a little bit, and I'm like, I had a fucking 40% close ratio, which is true if you count the fucking appointments. But if you count the amount of people I showed pricing to, I was closing fucking 90% of them, 89% of them. If I got all the way down the road, I'm fucking closing them because I had so many things I was focused on here, and my placement was so high because I knew the product and persistency stayed high because I knew how to make sure the client knew what they got, and I covered— you know what I mean? I did all those pieces right. So if I got over 90% placement and persistency, I can see way less people and net more money than everybody, you know? I have the fucking awards upstairs. I have placement and persistency awards sitting up in the fucking room upstairs. I was in— I had a lot of fucking awards because I just wasn't— I, I was okay just in my little box, dude. You know, and if they didn't fit, I moved the fuck on. But the thing I knew was I knew the key to the puzzle was understanding, getting the truth from them, which is a big piece of the puzzle. Asking health questions is very different than getting the real deal, right? How many people you've been like, you healthy? Healthy as a horse. And then they bring out the fucking bucket of meds and I'm like, Dude, I think that horse is dying, right? Perfect heart, and they're on fucking 3 heart medicines and carry nitro with them everywhere they go. Dude, you don't have a perfect heart, bro. I'm sorry, it's a poor-worded question, right? So I can teach them to go like, hey, we're— we, you know, we have this— you know when you go to the doctor and you go to check out, they do that little fucking yellow piece of paper, they check all the little shit on, and then magically your prescriptions end up at CVS? You know that process? They're like, yeah. I'm like, that information, they store that on a database. So as part of this process, I'm going to be able to— I won't see it, but the computer will see all that shit. And we got to make sure we hit all that stuff, because if we don't address all that stuff, what is the underwriter going to think if on your report you have something about heart stuff and we don't disclose it? What's, what's the insurance company going to think, Giovanni? Yeah. Are they going to want to give you insurance? All right. We don't want to fuck with them. Because they don't have to give you insurance. So the more clarity I have, the better. Right? And I'm just teaching the agent that same thing, dude. I don't have to— And again, what percentage of them is that? I know it's higher. It's not 1 out of 10. But you get 10, how many need a little bit more underwriting? 30, 40%. You know what I mean? It ain't 80%. And it's not 0. So it's a little bit more of a factor for me. But I want to teach them what to do. I want to teach them how to get the answer. Right? So they can underwrite without me anytime, anyplace. Um, and I know it's kind of follow-up-ish, but in the moment I'm okay slowing the fuck down, especially if— and they don't know how to read if they got one or not. A new agent doesn't know how to tell, you know what I mean? So I kind of let them believe it for a while, and I'm like, don't even try to gauge it. Or an agent that, like, they take an hour and a half in appointments and they want to know how you do it in 25 minutes. You ever have that? How you— how do you— I'm like, don't worry about it, it'll come. Don't stress out, just it'll fucking come. You do this paperwork enough, dude, you know where everything is. You get bullshit enough, you know how to ask better questions. Just it's okay on that right now. Take an hour and a half, who cares? You know what I mean? I don't try to rush that process. Why? They'll fucking skip the most important parts. And I want them to go through this phase to where they're— I like this phase where they're missing sales and they're making mistakes that are costing them money. I want them to learn from the fucking experience. I want that bitch to sting. So it happens in our group, we talk about it, it's openly one of the things we talk about a lot. Hey, would you fuck up this week? What lesson did you learn this week? And he'll fucking— they'll tell me, every one of them has one. I've done it with everyone. Hey, what lesson did you learn this week? You know what I mean? One of your— you had an early one, I don't remember what it was right now, but I remember talking about it. You missed something, so like something small, you just didn't know any better, you know? And I'm like, all right, cool. Probably won't make that mistake again, are you? Right? And so I got to a point, man, where I'm working with someone, if I'm explaining this, and I've had this with someone I'm close with, I build a really— he calls me for something underwriting today. I'm like, I'm gonna hang up on him. I'm like, you know what, fucking get— now if he's like, I got a complex case, I got a, you know, the business owner wants to— I'm helping him. He's like, Susan in a trailer home has fucking neuropathy. I would hang up the phone on him. I just— you know what I mean? I wouldn't hang up on him, but I would explain all this shit to him, and I'd let him feel the sweat. I'd let him feel the pain. So again, I can go in-home because I did it a lot when I was explaining this stuff with agents. When they would call, they'd be like, hey man, I have this situation. I'm like, grab your underwriting guide, let's walk through it. No, no, they have this. I know, I know, I know. Grab a guide, dude. I'll walk you out. I'll show you how to read it. Well, I don't, I don't have it. All right, call me when you have it. I can bring in agents here today that are still with me that remember that conversation, and in the moment they might hate it, but it's one of the most valuable lessons I taught them. Dude, it's 3 PM and you have an underwriting question and the first person you thought to call was me? You know the insurance company's open at 3 PM and they have an entire fucking department that will answer any training product stuff you want, anytime you want. You could tell them to come to your office and put on a fucking circus and they will to be able to train you on product. Fair? They beg us. To come to stuff. So I just— for me, that's on the agent, dude. Again, day one, week one, I'm in, I'm helping you because I want action. But he ain't confused. I don't fuck with carrier stuff. You want to know the cat? I don't— why you call me to ask what Mutual does, bro? Sorry, you know what I mean? Can I give the answer? Sure, probably. But I want to teach them how to gain the knowledge and do the thing themselves. Why do not a lot of people like to do that? They want to be the center of attention and have all that themselves. I felt— I fell into that at some point, you know what I mean? I want everybody to come to me because I want— it feels good, and it's like you feel like you're doing something and contributing. I wanted that too at some stage, but I realized it hurts him and it hurts my ability to grow. I can just do it in a nice way, you know what I mean? At the beginning, I was kind of a dick about it, and I can— some of the people I'm referencing now, I'm like, oh, I'm surprised they stayed with me. You know what I mean? But now I covered it with him before he got started. We talked about all— him too. I talked about all the carrier shit with them, you know, and I'm pretty honest about it today. You think I know where the fucking buttons are on the e-app today? Could I figure it out? Yeah, I'm no dummy. I can log in and figure it out. But I do an app, bro. I gotta call the carrier now. I wrote 2 annuities in the last month. I was called the theme 27 fucking times. And I know some of the best annuity producers in the game. I called Athena. Well, they had the answer, you know what I mean? Now, when I got the answer and all the stuff, I called one dude. I'm like, yo, here's what I got, here's what I did, here's what I'm thinking. Would you think this, or you think different? He sells fucking $5 million a year in annuities. Mine's $164 grand. I did most of the work, and I confirmed with someone who I knew would confirm with, you know what I mean? But I helped the guy a lot, and so and he was willing. I could have definitely fucking taken advantage of him and learned nothing. I could have probably had him do the app for me, you know what I mean, at this stage in my relationship with the guy. But I just like, yo, let me learn this thing. And so for me, again, long story, long way to say it's— I think it's really important to teach people how to do the thing that they're lacking, you know. That's more important to me than saving the moment, because the reality is, had they done the work, they wouldn't have been stuck. Most of the time. How many scenarios are that difficult? I got— we need a little more underwriting 30, 40% of the time. How many are like you need a fucking PhD in underwriting for? Like almost none, right? So I keep it simple, man. You can keep it on your desk, have a cheat sheet, fine. But you can download them all in 3 minutes, keep them on your computer. And again, if you have questions or there's clarity or it's confusing, fucking call me. I'd way rather them their first answer be like, dude, I tried to look, but— or, hey dude, real quick, I know if I fucking call you without doing the work, you're gonna fucking be annoyed and tell me I should do the work, but this dude's trying to run. I got a $300 app. Hey, quick question on this. I'm in for that guy. I'll give him the fucking answer. You know what I mean? I'm not gonna torture the guy, but he has 2 appointments in the next fucking 3 days. I'm also not going to give him an underwriting lesson, you know what I mean? I'd rather give him a lesson like, oh shit, I I've been here long enough, man. You've been here for— you've been doing this business for 90 days and you don't know your product? I'm like, okay, seems fucking weird to me, but okay. This is starting Sunday quarterback thing to me, you know what I mean? You ever see the guy in the game that relies on the wristband? They call the play and they gotta look at their wrist to see what each guy does. Why does he have to do that? He doesn't know his shit, you know what I mean? Can it be there as a backup, as a just in case? Tom Brady had one, but he sure as fuck didn't need that to know what was happening, you know what I mean? He might have been decision-making, changing some things up, who knows, you know what I mean? But it's like, I, I want to get people— I want to teach people the skill set more than it's the most important part for me, you know, because then I can take that concept and apply it in any area. The concept of like You know what I mean? Just don't take advantage of me. I think if you've been here 3 months and you still need me for underwriting, I believe you're taking advantage of me. And at scale, it's hard to manage. If your process is they call you with all the problems, how many people can you take calls from a day? Okay, how many? And then if you teach your guy that that's how they do it, what happens when he starts recruiting? They can't call him because you gave him all the answers. So now all his guys have to call you too. Does it make sense? It's like, ah, it's fucking scary. We fall into this thing too. Totally separate topic, but if you're here and you start recruiting, right, and you get a lot of people in, and you got this guy over here and this guy over here, and you're getting a bunch of recruits in, and you tried to bless this guy as your next leader, and you're like, dude, I'm getting so many recruits, will you take a guy? Will you do all the work here? Will you hire this guy? Will you get them started? Will you interview them and you're giving out recruits. Any of y'all ever do that? Like, you're giving out, helping people recruit. The danger to just doing that off the will, off the rip, is when this guy— you give, you stack this guy here and he wants to build and he goes to him. What does he not know how to do? He doesn't know how to build because you gave him the people. Right? So as he builds out, where does everyone have to go to learn? They have to go to you. And if you're giving out free leads, for instance, you give them out to him, you give out free agents to him, you move— that next layer is going to be like, I want to build. Hey, he built and he didn't do shit. You did all the work. Where's mine? And at scale, dude, that doesn't work. You see, if you've been around the business long enough, you see a team blow up, it's like, weird, what'd he do? Oh bro, someone transferred, you know what I mean? And why do they get stuck? I mean, how many people can you fucking transfer to win, you know what I mean? So it's like, you could— that second generation can get stuck. So if you don't teach this thing the right way to the first generation, that second layer of agents, he doesn't know how to help them. That's why people get stuck at weird spots. You get stuck at $150 grand. Why? You have no one doing shit. You have 4, 5, 3, 4, 5, 6 guys selling, great. Y'all are a twosome, you just have 6 animals. There's no— there's not a lot of people doing anything, you know what I mean? And so you got to start to think about this structure, like, how do I want it to trickle? Giovanni came into the business on all my trainings and didn't know they were my trainings till him and I talked. We started talking about a lot of things he learned along the way, and he knew his one of his upline— I think he was your upline, right? The dude that we talked about was downline to someone who worked in my office 10 years ago. So he learned a lot of the methods, put it in place, taught it to him. Him and I started talking, and I started saying shit, and he's like, wait, he said that? And I'm like, yeah, I remember when he used to come to the office and ask the questions about that. Right? And it's— it's so— for us, a lot of the basic level things that we do trickle down to him. I couldn't tell you how deep he is in the heart at that point and who that person would have been. 15 fucking layers deep by the time he came around, you know what I mean? But the things were so simple that they were still teaching the base. He's like, I've heard all those stories, I always wondered who the fuck did it. I'm like, oh no, I can tell you how that started. I was there, I did that. I— you know what I mean? It's wild to see the things trickle down. And I learned that was a big key to the scaling side that most don't think about. They just think about how to do it with this guy, and we want to make it so easy on that guy he doesn't feel the pain. Well, if he doesn't feel the pain, how the fuck does he describe it to that guy? You know what I mean? And I got stuck. I got stuck at a certain point. We were about— but about $800 grand, that when I think she was talking about like that 2018 year. 2018, we were doing like— I think in January we did like $820 And in December, we probably were at like $860K a month, right? Which maybe means nothing. I've never been flat in a year. The whole year we stayed relatively flat. You know, the year prior, 20— that would have been 2017. We were probably doing, I bet, $300K at the beginning of the year, and then we got to $800K by the end of the year, right? So this was '17 into '18. This year was flat, and then the year before here, 316. Let me think what I was doing in '16 a month. Oh bro, I was probably doing fucking 16, dude. I might have been doing $100K a month as a team, you know. But by the end of the year, I was doing $300K. So we triple here, we fucking triple here. This year I was flat. I was like, what the fuck is happening, right? Because I had like 10 or 12 people that were building supposedly and I was, I was doing all the shit I'm saying not to do with these people. Huh? Said you were the bottleneck. Yes, 100%. 100%. Because I couldn't— nothing would duplicate. I had to do it all. All the things I put in place, all the— I had to be the answer guy, I had to be the guy for the leads, I had to help with recruiting, I had to do all the pieces because these fuckers didn't know how to teach it. Why? I made it too easy on them. I didn't teach them the logistics of the game. You know what I mean? Sure, and I taught him to pick up the phone and dial and shit, but I didn't go like layers. I didn't take that into account. If I spoil these— like, dude, no offense, my fucking kids, they're spoiled as shit today. Like, Brayden's funny. He grew— he saw both sides of it. I'm not— he was a baby and I didn't have any money, but he— you know what I mean? Like, where Maddox is younger, dude, all he— all Maddox knows is money. Brayden saw broke and money. Brayden loves the country club. That makes sense. Now I can, I can pay for it all. I can keep spoiling them. I can keep taking care of them. Why? And be like, yo, layers down when you're 23 and you're trying to take a girl on a date. Like, you know what I mean? Do you really want to go to Waffle House because you didn't learn some shit and Daddy paid for it all? You're gonna ask me for the money, or am I going to teach you how to pick up the phone and make some fucking sales and you can figure out how to do this stuff for yourself down the road. It's the same concept for me. Did you recruit for them? The 12? No, no. Fuck, I recruited for me, dude. You know, I've made the mistake of giving agents to people who didn't recruit, but I wasn't like, I'm going to recruit for you now. I went, do you want to build? They went, yes. I go, cool, I got people. Will you help them if I give them to you? He said yes, and I would send them. And on a Saturday morning when they were at fucking soccer, soccer game with their kids, and the guy sent them was on their first appointment, they wouldn't pick up the phone. Why? They're too busy. And I'm sending them agents no matter what. What do they give a fuck if they help them or not? I'm just feeding them. It's welfare, dude. You know what I mean? You get a $300 welfare check every week, the overwhelming majority of people are not going to go work to make $500. They're going to take the $300 and sit on their ass. If you're an insurance agent and you feel like you're stuck, you've hit a wall, you're trying to figure out sales strategies, the tips to use, how to get like off the ground and get to that top of leaderboard type status. I have a course that I've put out, super affordable. I'm getting a ton of great feedback from people every day on the strategies they've learned and been able to implement, from goal setting to sales techniques to calendar scheduling, everything you would need to get your business off the ground and get running quickly. jwcourse.com, click the link below and get in there today. Right? So if I'm just giving agents, or I'm just giving leads, natural tendency for people is to go, thank you, and take it. What does that teach him? To rely on me. If I pay for everything for Brayden, what does that teach him? Rely on Daddy. Now, I'm here for certain things. I ain't gonna let him go homeless, but bro, he's almost 18. He wants $300 sneakers next year, dude. I barely get them for him now. He takes my— I give him my fucking leftovers, you know what I'm saying? I'm like, I don't know, you're in a fucking great private school. I send him on mission trips around the world. I bought his car. I mean, he can go to the country club whenever he wants. He brings his friends, he puts them on the thing. I'm like, yo, you want fucking $50 underwear, go buy them yourself. I mean, like, figure it out. I'll help you figure it out. But if he doesn't show up here, Again, I'm not going to let him go homeless, but I'm certainly going to teach him how to make money in the world. I think it's an important skill. What he does with it, I don't know, I don't care. He can make it apply in the doctor world. He can take these concepts and apply it there one day down the road, you know what I mean? So the layers, the depth of it, they're duplicatable— the duplication of it, the repeatability of it is most important to me. You know what I mean? And there's pros and cons to that too, you know what I mean? I may not give everybody the attention to detail they think they need, but I tell— I say that up front. I'm fucking super transparent about that. I'm here, but bro, if you ain't busting your fucking ass to learn this thing like I did, I'm going to be annoyed. I just know I am, man, you know? And that doesn't— again, that doesn't have to be you, but you're going to get stuck. You know, when I started taking these people and I stopped believing all the words they said, and I was like, you know what, instead of stacking this guy— he doesn't hire nobody— but this dude is hiring like 3 people a month by himself already. Hey, let me stack him. I'm gonna add fuel to fire. I mean, you're already doing something. Who gets the recruit— who gets all the recruiting leads now, Amanda? All the ones that come into us, who do you send them to? Two people. That's it. Why? They're the only ones doing it on their own already. Now he got his brother, but he's so new, I'm like, yeah, I'd fucking drown him today. I'm like, yeah, not yet. But they're already doing it anyway. So if I have an extra guy that doesn't fit my mold exactly, I know their box, their framework is different than mine. It should be. They're fucking new. They can't be as picky, you know what I mean? So some, just quite frankly, if they ain't fucking one of them, I'm like, yo, here, take them. I just give them to them because they're doing it with or without me anyway, you know what I'm saying? So I like adding fuel to fire. I want to help someone with leads, for instance. I'll help people with leads. Probably not if you're buying none. Probably not if you're buying leads and I see work ethic and I see you hitting those, like, Coachable, do the shit you say you're going to do, communicate, you're you're doing trainings, you're doing shit, and I see you doing some stuff, I'll just fucking surprise them with some leads, dude. I'll smack them on them in a sec, you know what I mean? Like, here, make it easier. I will do that. Yeah, I'm just— it's what I am. Like, why not, you know what I mean? We'll send 100 leads sometimes. Like, here you go, go make it happen, go figure it out. But he's already doing some on his own. I've done that with all of them, you know. I've learned fuel to fire is appreciated differently. Right? It builds a lot of goodwill. They see I'm trying to actually help them. They'll— again, they're more inclined to listen. The relationship's going to strengthen. There's a lot that happens with it, you know? Or if I just give it to everybody who breathes, you know what I mean? Like, does it mean anything anymore? Like, if everyone gets one, is it value? Is it a value at all? Nah, you know what I mean? So I'll make people fight for it, dude. For sure. You start getting paid— people paid quicker than he does, I'm gonna send more to him. Ain't that deep. Why? He gets them paid, you don't. How do I learn it? Implement the shit I tell you. That's it. You know what I mean? It's not that deep. And I love it because I can be super, super open and transparent about the strategy because I'm going to teach him the same thing. You mean the things I'm doing with him, I'm like, that's what you're gonna do with him. I'm going to do to you what you're gonna do with him. And I can tell him that too. I'd be like, you can watch and you can cheat. So he gets to actually steal the information while he learns it, if he does it right. Because I'm working closer with Giovanni than I am with him or her. So if they pay attention, they can watch the shit I do with him, and when they get to that level, they'll already have seen it happen with him. I mean, and I understand that dynamic too. And they keep killing it. I'm working a little closer now. I don't even know anyone else on this team, I don't think. Do I know anyone else? I know those two. Oh, the Abe guy. That's your guy? Yeah, barely. But that's— I only talk to those. Yeah, I don't know, he's 10 guys, 10, 12 guys. I don't know how many guys he has. I talked to 2, barely. And I only talk to them a lot, but on the calls, and if they're around and we go to dinner, you know what I mean? It's very targeted in a sense. Why? They're different than everyone else he has. They show up on every call, they contribute in his team, they make posts, they do social, you know what I mean? They're doing comment, they're They're making changes as he— as I tell him the changes he has to make, he goes to his whole team, he explains them, they make the most changes for him. I see that, you know what I mean? They're the next layer, dude. They're coming up in that next graduating class potentially, you know what I mean? He only has 2 or whatever, he has 10, so 2 stand out from the rest. Like, he has 40, he might have 10 that stand out, you know what I mean? If I can teach this to 10, one of those fuckers gonna go I love Giovanni, he's been a great help, but I'm going to fucking work whether or not he does shit. That person will pop, and they can be running buddies. Maybe they don't. I have— I have people in my agency, dude, that listen to the guidance and the coaching and they implement the stuff, but personally they don't like me at all. I'm like, okay, I've taught you how to get rich, can we good there? I don't really like you either. You know how many agents I don't fucking like? Like, they don't like you? No. Do you like everyone you know? Do y'all like everyone you know? You like everyone in your agency? You like everyone in your group? Do you like everyone in the hierarchy? You know they don't all fucking like you either. I mean, I understand the dynamic and I'm okay with it. I don't have to be mean, it doesn't have to be weird, but I can teach people to make a bunch of money and just like we just say hey every once in a while, you know. But I'm weird. I'm okay with that. You know, you put me in a room with someone or a long trip with someone, or like, you ever go in a car with someone and like don't talk? Is that awkward? But I can ride 3 fucking hours and not say one word and not give a shit. I don't care at all. But some people can't be in that dynamic, you know what I mean? So you got to know you as well. To me, it's not awkward to just have that level of relationship where I teach you how to make money and you disagree with whatever you want to disagree with. I don't— you know what I mean? Because again, I'm— can we, can we align on everything? But I don't rely on everything with my fucking wife. I'm certainly not going to align on everything with y'all, right? So also part of the thing is like, I've learned to take the good from people and ignore the bad. So if you got something amazing that you're amazing at, but I hate all the other shit, instead of cutting you off fully, I only take the little piece I like and I ignore the rest I got really good at that. What would be a good example of that? Yeah, yeah, I'll fucking give you exactly one. So I won't, I won't name anybody because if I do, y'all could figure it out pretty quick. But there's a dude who I'm really close to in the business now. He helped me learn a lot about the space in, in terms of sales and cash flow and leadership and stuff like that. But he's a very aggressive dude, like super aggressive, can be emotional. Like when you ever hear like someone you don't know, like another guy building a team and people don't like something about him, certainly you know someone, you're like, that guy's a dick, or that guy's whatever, that guy, you know what I mean? Like this was, people either love him or hate him. There was not a lot of in-between. And even top-tier people were like, eh, he's this way, he rubs people wrong, he does this, he does that, and I'm like, he'd be fucking amazing at teaching sales and the cash flow portion of the game. He was so good at that piece. And people would ignore him because he wasn't good at necessarily maybe a relationship part, or he was very abrasive to some people and they didn't like that. So they ignored the good shit he was giving in terms of sales technique, in terms of like activity approach, and in terms of literally cash flow, you can buy revenue in our space. You can literally take your money and go, I want to buy more money. And there's ways to do that. You can literally purchase cash flow. You can purchase volume. Meaning if I buy him leads and it teaches him to sell $40 grand a month, I bought volume. Does that make sense? You can— that's a, that's a play, and I do it sometimes. Um, but this dude, people would get frustrated because overall there were things they didn't like. And I'm like, yeah, I fucking like him, like a lot. He really— I lined with him, I can relate to him and all the other stuff, you know what I mean? It's like, I don't know, if he has too many drinks, yeah, sure, he's a lot, but I bet you are too, you know what I mean? Like, so why the fuck you hating on that thing he's good at when you don't like this thing? Like, who gives a shit? I mean, so what, he does fucking— I don't know, he drinks too much, he does coke, and jumps into fucking pools naked. I mean, I don't know, he taught me how to fucking make $100 grand a month. And I'm not saying he did that, but it could, you know what I mean? I know people that do that, and I've learned something valuable from them. I'm like, but I'm probably not going to do coke, bro. I just— I'm going to ignore that part, you know what I mean? I'm like, I ain't my style, dude. I'm not mad. Give me a lemon, drop them in, you know. All the other stuff, I'm like, I'll just— so I took the piece I liked, and all the others, I just And you'll have to do that with me. You think I'm confused? Not everything I say here ain't gonna hit, you know what I mean? So it's like, all right, take the piece you fucking liked over here, and all this shit that you're like, he's fucking crazy, just ignore it, you know? And I learned if I do that with a lot of people, I can pick up really big nuggets that otherwise would be ignored, you know? Some people suck ass at a lot of this. I can't teach it worth a shit, but they know how to make people feel good. That's a fucking— please teach me that, for the love of God. How do you have empathy? I would love someone to fucking discover that for me. I don't have that by default. I have to work my ass off to give a shit about the things in your life that are fucking with you. That's hard for me. But I see people that do it and I'm like, oh, interesting. Like, how's that work? I'm not heartless. I do feel it. I find it uncomfortable to go up to you and talk about it or hug you or rub on— I don't know what do. I'm like, what do I do with my fucking hands? How do I— how do I— what do I say? It's, um, it's awkward to me, you know what I mean? It's not that I don't have sympathy or I can't relate. I just don't know what to do with it, right? And so, but I know people that are good with it, so I've learned. And I'm like, oh, all right, I can get a little better there. I can fucking slow down and ask how their kids are doing every once in a while. I can, you know what I mean? Like, I'm just bad at that, dude. He's got— I don't even know— I don't know his kid's name. I'm terrible with it. I will figure it out, but I'm not confused. I don't know. Steph was asking about your— who you're with, and I'm like, I don't know. Is he with the baby mama? I'm like, I don't know, I never asked him. Why? It's irrelevant. I'm trying to make him money right now, and he said he's fucking good and can do whatever he wants, so I haven't got into that conversation yet, you know what I mean? But it's true, fair. I don't know shit about your family dynamic today. I learned about your dad this week, you know, because you told me some stuff. We were on the phone, I was like, oh, that's cool, you know. But I'm that— I'm weak there, so those things I try to pick up on. But I don't— I still want to be true to me, you know. I don't want to be fake, so I just accept my imperfections, dude. And I have to do that if I'm asking for that. I have to do that with other people also, you know. And so I just try to find good pieces and people that I can learn some shit from along the way as well. And sometimes it'll fuck you up, dude. It'll be someone that you're trying to teach. But like, oh fuck, you know, I'll never say the thing about leads, the telesales thing, the same again since you fucked with me on the— the— yeah, never again will I deliver that the same. I'm like, motherfucker, got me on that. No one's ever said that to me. I was 100%, I was trying to set his ass up and he got me back. I was like, oh motherfucker. It wasn't a big one, but it was, it was enough that I— a nuance that I changed the way I say it. When I remember early when I was fucking around, I'm like, the lead doesn't choose if they're a telesale or an in-home. He asked me for in-home leads or telesale leads, one or the other. He asked me for face-to-face leads, and I'm like, you think the fucking lead picks if you fucking face-to-face or telesales? He's like, no, asshole, I meant in my state or out of state, local to me or not local. I'm like, yeah, fucking county, bro. That, that actually makes sense. He wanted leads that he targeted face-to-face. Oh, you want your radius to be small. There was just a miscommunication in the way we thought about it. I was being kind of a wiseass trying to prove a point. He's like, bro, I just want to fucking run in my county. So now when I deliver that, I say it differently. This was fucking like 3 weeks ago. Yeah, sometimes I learned some shit from people. He got me another one recently too. I don't remember what it was. You got me twice recently. The what? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know, but I learned some shit from these, you know what I mean? I learned stuff from everybody. I try. Yeah, that helped. Um, cool. Hi guys, hope you enjoyed the video. If you did not attend the previous one, I have them every quarter now. If you want to make it to that one, you can use the coupon code YouTube for 15% off. Johnwetmore.com/workshop. You can always register for the next one. See you guys.