Episode 202: The Rainmaker Mentality with Board of Directors Peter Schneider

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell.

And before we get started, if you.

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I'm here today with my good buddy out of Atlanta, Georgia. He's in Kiowa right now. He's the president of Primerica since 2015. Isn't that right, Peter?

Yeah, 2015 is when I became president.

It is Peter Schneider. And so what an honor it is to have you here and president. He's president of the company that I also represent and want to thank him for all the great things he does and the example he is of kind of strength and vision. But Peter makes an impression on everybody who talks to him in terms of his genuineness and his capacity for handling tough situations and coming out on top. And so running a, you know, big, you know, the executive side of making things happen in a. What is it? We're now a Fortune 1000 company.

Fortune 1000.

Fortune 1000 company has got to be demanding give people an idea of the scale of the numbers of people involved, agents involved that you just field agents are in the hundred and how many thousands now.

Larry, great to be here and I always love talking with you. You have so many insights into life. Not yet, not just. But let me start with company like Primerica. We the scale and scope. We have 130,000 sales agents, 25,000 of whom are securities license. We're financial services firm insurance and mutual funds. And we also have a lending business. And when you think of Primerica, you think of a middle income market focus. We go into households that are neglected and try and make a difference in those families make sure they're set up with basic financial products. That's always been our focus.

But the scale of it, how much you do all sides of financial planning for middle income people. And so you of course have the insurance because people could die tomorrow, but they won't necessarily retire tomorrow once you start talking taking them on as a client. And so then they go into the investment side. So there's a lot of mutual fund business there. Assets. The scale of this is staggering in terms of the client base and assets under management. You have those figures. I know you watch.

So the way to think about it, let's just take the face amount of life insurance in force that Primerica has. We have three quarters of a Trillion dollars of life insurance enforced this past year, we wrote 100 billion, over $100 billion of life insurance face amount. We on the, on the asset side based on, you know, obviously it changes based on the market. But think in terms of $75 billion of assets in our clients accounts. And when you think of clients, we have, you know, 5 million and so clients between just those businesses and we're.

Adding more every day and people to run this administratively in Atlanta, how many.

People is that we have when you look at our employee base? So again, in our field, our independent contractor sales agents, we have 130,000 sales agents. Within the home office, we have about 2200 home office employees split between Duluth, Georgia and Canada.

And over all of that, in the executive capacity as president, we have Peter Schneider. And so the thing about being on top is it's not the happy things that work their way to the top. It's the problems nobody else can solve. And that, you know, you, you know, somebody's got to be there and make things happen. And when you're dealing with something, a scale like this, it is a massive army and you're dealing with assets that are like small countries or medium sized countries. And like they say Exxon, if it was a country, would be like the fourth biggest country in the world, something like that. But you know, the obligations are overwhelming and the complexities of it. And you don't fall out of bed when you're born and say, you know, I want to be involved in a corporation like that, that kind of position. When you came up, you grew up in Winston Salem.

I was actually born, I was born in Brooklyn, New York.

Were you really?

Yeah, and then my family moved to Winston Salem, North Carolina.

That's hilarious.

Really.

It was a big move. It's amazing how many people are born in Brooklyn.

One time I saw a stat on that that at one time a significant portion of the country was born in Brooklyn because folks came over from Ellis island and settled in Brooklyn. I think that's changed now. But there's a fair number of us out there.

I know that. I noticed when I find that out, they moved quickly, they got out of Berkeley, but now they're going back. So the thing is, in your upbringing, what was as you grew up, was it an upper income? You know, upper income, middle income? Obviously you didn't grow up in the ghetto. So how would you describe your upbringing?

Well, I think I would describe my upbringing as I grew up in a family that was not low income, but wasn't high income. I Think we were probably at one point we made our way up to upper middle class. I think that's probably the height that we went to, that we strived to. And we got into upper middle class, I'd say. But we never wanted, I mean, we were better than most, I suppose.

How many kids?

But you have to transition from, from Brooklyn to Winston Salem.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Obviously. Now how big is the family?

I've got there's five kids. Oh, I have three brothers and one sister.

And are you oldest, Youngest?

I'm in the middle.

You're in the middle. You, you, you and Tim Tebow are exploding the myth that the middle child is the problem child.

Well, you learn, you learn negotiation skills. Skills. When you're the, when you're in the.

Middle, where was the, what was, what motivated you coming up as a child? You know, what, what were some events helped you or caused you to want to do something special, you know, you know, distinguish yourself. What, what are, what kind of motivation did you have?

Well, I mean, I think that it's different times. I think that changes. Yep. The. Probably as a, as a youngster, the most seminal issue for me was my father passed away when I was very young, which is why we moved. So When I was 10 years old, my father passed away and my mother remarried. And when she remarried, she remarried someone from Winston Salem and so we relocated to Winston Salem.

Oh, there's the reason. So as you went through that trauma, how do you think it impacted you as part of your motivation moving forward? Because there's a lot of people to go through those things and somehow you worked your way through it to where it didn't hold you back. So how did you, how did you look at that?

I mean, it's at that age, it's very traumatic. It's, you know, your memories are still strong of that kind of event. In terms of motivation, I think that it was very important to me to make something of myself. And I think it gives you a degree of independence that you know you've got to be on your own. You can't, not everyone's going to be there to take care of you. And so you have to be self motivated. You have to think about what you want, you have to think about what you're going to do. And you never know, by the way, Larry, whether or not this is your last day. And so you've got to make the best of the time that you have on this good earth. I mean, I think those are some of the things that come when you watch a Parent pass away that young.

Really, it impacts you. Was like, my clock is ticking too. I mean, that stayed with you or that it. It brought you to that kind of realization. Very interesting.

I don't know that you have it at that moment, but you think about those kinds of things.

Yes.

You recognize how precious life is and you got to do something with it because, I mean, this was. In this particular case, it was a very sudden and unanticipated death.

And you fought, you know, you. You did. You followed the career path that we all thought was going to be answer everything, do well in high school, get in college, get a degree and get out in the world. And Andy says you couldn't get into Wake Forest, so you went over to Chapel Hill.

Yeah, Andy would say that. You know, I used to hang out actually at Wake Forest when I was in high school. So I would. In high school, I would go to the library there and study just to be around people and to learn there. But I was always going to Chapel Hill. I mean, I applied to one school, so. And Andy. It wasn't Wake Forest University and we have a much better basketball team. Always have and always will. Of course, Andy was on the football team, right?

Yeah. And so. Yeah, it's funny, most people apply to four or five. I did the same thing, applied to one. I was too stupid to think, to realize there's a chance of me not getting in. And that's how I got went to Georgia Tech.

But.

Well, at the time, the tuition for North Carolina was $202 a semester.

Yeah.

So as an in state. And there was no question, not only was I applying to one school, my parents were sending me to one school.

And you got, you went on into the law, got your law degree. What motivated that and where did that position you in life?

I went to the University of North Carolina undergrad and to the University of North Carolina School of Law. And I kind of always knew I was going to go to law school. It's just something I had always had an interest in, in government, law. And so it was a very natural choice for me. I. Everything I did in college was set up towards that.

Yeah.

And so I always. I always have. For whatever reason, that was the profession that was in my mind from a very early age.

Yeah. And where did you. When did you get the idea that you wanted to get what were. What was happening to you? Was this a normal, uneventful, just no challenge type thing? I mean, did you. Was easy ride through that that time or were there things you had to Fight, fight with to get through. Was school easy for you?

Well, I don't know about. I mean, there's never an easy ride. I mean, you have to. You got to get the grades, you got to get the scores, you got to get yourself admitted again. I did all that. I mean, the thing I did do that, you know, talking about career, is I wanted to go to the best after law school to the best law firm I could find. And it was in New York City, and it was a law firm that did not recruit at the University of North Carolina. We were, we weren't good enough for that law firm. They would recruit at Harvard and Yale and, and schools like that, but they had never recruited North Carolina. So I wrote them a let said that I wanted to work for them and would they be willing to interview me and see me.

Hey, listen, there's a lot of information online, but there aren't a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business that's accrued over $5 billion.

In assets under management and has done.

Well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to whiteellawinning.com webinar Now I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move up.

Guy in the back of a pickup truck in North Carolina with a law degree is probably how they envisioned.

They clearly did not see North Carolina on the horizon. You know, that old New Yorker cartoon that has New York as a center. But it was the best litigation for firm I felt like in the country that does litigation defense. And so I wanted to go to it. Its name was Paul Weiss, Rifkin, Morton Garrison. And so I wrote them to try and get them interested and see if they'd interview me.

And so if people are looking at this saying, what did Peter do? And what lessons can I draw? Right? You fell into a pattern where not just thinking about taking every day serious, this, that and the other, but as you said, realizing you needed to be independent, you need to establish yourself. And you started looking ahead. And so you weren't going to high school just to do it. You were looking forward to getting on to your undergraduate degree. And even there you're looking, where can I go from this and talk about.

I felt like I needed to be. If I was going to be decent or try and be decent at what I was going to do, then I need be around people who are better than me. And so I knew the lawyers at this law firm were excellent at what they did. And I just wanted to be part of that atmosphere and learn from them. I knew this wouldn't be where I'd stay the rest of my life, but it was, to me, it was almost like an apprenticeship. I wanted to be with the best and see if I could do it. And I never expected them to say yes. Quite frankly, I expected a no or non response or something. But they were willing to talk to me and I kind of talked my way into the job.

Yeah, pretty good. Your first sale. And so that's where our company ran into you. And they came back from. It was you were the other side of the fence and the conflict thing. And the guys came back and saying, we lost, but we sure like to give that guy on our team. And that happened what, about 10 years later around.

No, it was a while later. I went from after I finished at this law firm, I went to a law firm in Atlanta, Georgia, got married. I was my. Who became my wife. She was in Atlanta. So I moved to Atlanta, went with a law firm there. And the way I got to Primerica is I defended a lawsuit that Primerica brought against someone. And so I was on the other side of the case from Primerica. This is, by the way, not a career path that I recommend to anybody that you begin in opposition to your future employer.

Yeah. And so you came on board, they gave you a bunch of Citigroup stock at the time, and then it proceeded to go from $50 or in the 50s, down to 50 cents in value.

The sales job on that was. I was. They asked me to come on board after the lawsuit had ended. Would I be willing to come in as a general counsel of the company? And I had some trepidation. I liked my law career. I saw. I came on part time, actually, Larry, I came just like Primerica. So I said I wanted to keep my partnership at the law firm, but I would try this out. And they said, we're going to give you Citigroup stock. That's a ticket. You can't earn stock where you are. And it proceeded to go down eventually to 99 cents.

I don't know.

That was a very smart business decision.

You can't get. There's no say. And that's one thing to address. There's really no safe place in life that you can go and work your way into where you don't have to fight, you don't have to deal with problems. That life can't get you and strip you back down, basically. Back down to your basics. You know, talk about. Talk about dealing with the challenges of, let's just say, being a partner in a law firm. I mean, not all law firms go on and on forever. I mean, there's competition even in law firms and accounting firm. People think you get in these professional partnerships and, you know, you're set for life, but you got to keep producing, as I understand it.

Yeah. Well, the way law firms are set up is the most highly compensated lawyers in a firm are referred to as rainmakers. They're the ones. They are actually salespeople in a sense, who bring in the business, they land the clients, they bring in the business. And then there are other lawyers in the firm that day to day will do the research and write the briefs and set up arguments or write contracts or something like that. They're usually less compensated because they're just doing that yeoman's work. Very important, by the way, in a law firm. But it's the rainmakers who are central to bringing that business in the front door. Land in the new client, landing the new assignment.

Yeah. And as a part, what happens if you don't do that? I mean, does that happen by itself? I mean, I'm sure you get referrals and word of mouth from past performance. But is that something you take for granted? Or do you have, like we say in sales, everybody prospects? You know, I don't care where you are, you know, at your management or whatever, everybody prospects. You gotta always be looking for that new client if you want to grow, because if you don't grow, then you're gonna slump. And once the slump kicks in, it can unravel pretty quickly. So is it that type thing, the rainmakers? I guess you have different people, but at the top, the rainmaker were the ones that had to be out on the lookout for new clients. And they kind of handled the pressure of keeping the enterprise going, it seems like.

Yeah. And I think you have to have a mentality, so I adopted a rainmaker mentality when I was at the law firm. I enjoyed pursuing new clients and business. By the way, you need to deliver for your client, you need to give them great service. You need to make sure all of those bases are covered. But if you're going to be successful in a law firm environment, or put it this way, highly compensated, then you need to bring in new business. And so I was pretty relentless, I have to tell you, in pursuing it, so I would get to know you. Larry I would find out what your businesses are like, what you do, and try and figure out, is there something I might be able to help you with. And I would get to know you and understand what you do day in and day out and see if there's something my law firm could do to provide you and service you with an opportunity to make you reach your goals. You see, that's the thing. I've got to make you reach your goals for me to reach mine. And that's the way I approached it were you.

Peter, I'm going to tell you something here, okay? You come across as this, you know, the law room, you know, the attorney, the calm, the reason thing. But what you are relentless pursuit is. I'm digging through all that and I'm finding out what got Peter where he is and what keeps him where he is and keep him moving up. And makes me feel good about you being in that position is I feel like in the marrow of your bones, you've got this relentless pursuit for greatness, for moving up, for being the best and being at the top and.

Has.

Been with you kind of revealed itself in. Not when you went to Carolina, I might add, but when you said, I'm going to get that degree and I want to, I want to, I'm going to, I want to do something great when I come out of this deal. So where's the best? You know, you said you got to be with the best. You've paid your dues. It's one thing. It's one thing to pay your dues, but just because you pay your dues and you, you might have the great report card and you've got the degrees. I mean, there are graduates of Yale driving trucks today cross country because they can't get another job. You know, there are. That's. I'm just talking about Ivy League, you know, just because you have the degree doesn't mean the world's going to come knocking on your door. You got to go out there and make something happen. And so even before you got out of law school, you're in pursuit of something great. And you identified. You wanted to be with the top. You wanted to get the most out of what you were doing. So if I'm going to do that, I'm going to be with the best, if I can. You pursued him. When you got that, you got with the inside, that firm. You said it wasn't good enough just to be in that firm. I want to be a rainmaker. And you went aft and you figured out how I could Be a rainmaker is turn that relentless pursuit now to getting new clients in there. And I think that might have had something to do with your underlying motivation. And also, when you took on a case, you wanted to deliver for your clients, like you said, and you were relentlessly pursuing a victory in those cases because you wanted to deliver for your clients. This idea of relentless, I would stop.

I would make one correction to that, by the way. And then, you know, when I went to this firm in New York, I was probably the worst of the best, but I learned how to be better and also found out they were not quite as good as I thought that I could hang with them a little bit. But in terms of when I would get hired by a client in a case, I absolutely needed to deliver for the client. But my motivation was I wanted to win the case. So it was. I think. And maybe this is bad, but I felt like I was winning for me, I wanted to win because I wanted to beat the other guy. I wanted to. I wanted to win that case, and I wanted to chalk up a W in my column. And by the way, the client benefited from that.

Yeah.

But I'll tell you a little quick story. So I did have a case where I was trying it. I felt like I was doing really well. And the client wanted to settle the case in the middle of the hearing, middle of the trial. And I thought I was going to win, and I didn't want to settle. They were going to settle. They thought we had done well enough, and they want to settle. And so I was trying to talk them out of settling. And a senior partner, I was a much younger lawyer, senior partner, who heard about this, came to me and said that this is. Said, peter, this isn't your case. You're actually not the client. You're the lawyer for the client. They get to make the decisions about what they want to do. And if the client wants to settle the case, then you should not take it all the way to conclusions just to see if you can win or not. So I went along with that. But I did poll the decision maker afterwards and say, well, would I have won? And they said, yeah, we were going your way. So that satisfaction. But it did teach me a lesson that you got to be careful. You can win for you. But there are also others that are dependent on you. You have constituencies at Primerica. We have a lot of constituencies. We have our field force. We have our shareholders, we have our employees. We have regulators, members of the public clients. These are all constituencies. And so it just can't be about what you want. It's got to be delivering for those constituencies, too.

But even sitting inside the home office and having to deal with so many administrative things and the people running those complex areas, you take, I can tell, and it's, you know, it might be good for people to hear. It's from what I've seen everyone in that home office administratively, who's worth anything take, gets a kick out of seeing the company perform and do great things. Like this insane surge we had in the COVID year that you got to be exhilarated and I got to feel like you're not the only one in that building that feels that way.

Everyone feels that way because everyone contributes to that success. I mean, that's the other thing is if we can get everyone in our home office and we have an amazingly great home office that cares deeply about the field, but if we can get everybody caring about the outcome, then we're going to realize that outcome. And so. And everyone looks at the scoreboard and how we've done as a company, and it's their success. It's their scoreboard. And doesn't matter where you are, by the way, doesn't matter what your job is. You're a contributor to whatever happens, good or bad.

Absolutely. Thanks so much, Peter. I really enjoyed getting behind the scenes with you and see how you look at things and you got, you know, you paid your dues, you went through the steps, but you wanted to get out and do something spectacular. And you really have, and you've influenced hundreds of thousands of people. So thank you very much, Peter, for sharing with us today.

Great, Larry. Glad to be here.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go, go, go.