Episode 203: Visions Come Before the Game-Plan with Financial Expert Peter Schneider

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

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I'm back with Peter Schneider. He is the president of Primerica, has been since 2015 and before that he was the chief legal counsel. And he's got a career commitment to proving wrong that the company, whenever a lawyer takes over a company, it won't necessarily go in the tank.

There's a good chance, but it doesn't always happen.

So welcome back, Peter.

Thanks, Larry.

And talk about, you know, you do the best I've ever seen at the vision, casting the vision, you know, looking at the facts and seeing what is the opportunity in front of us. And that's a key thing with.

You.

Know, this researching what you know, where can I go? What are the possibilities? Where, where are the openings? And when you have that firmly in your mind, it energizes you to go out there and attack with a focus but also an energy because you've realized how big the opportunity is or the possibility is in front of you. And how, how did you get to that point? And why Is that something you've always done or how did you get into that thing? Was that just an assignment Glenn gave you?

Well, in the company, I'm responsible for strategy for Primerica. That is a function that reports to me. Government relations, legal compliance, dealing with our board as a public company. Corporate communications and now social media and reputation and image come up to me. And so those are the areas of focus. What Glenn does is Glenn is the CEO of the company. He leads a whole company. He's the ultimate decision maker. Glenn Williams and Glenn Williams. And Glenn also is the one who's. We both speak to the field, but Glenn is really the driver in the field. He is the one that deals day in and day out with our field force, which is the greatest asset that we have. It really is the company is our field force.

And so talk about how important it is because it pretty much sets the context for all the decisions you make. You've got to know what the market's like, what the company's like, what the opportunities are like, what people are looking for and how big it is allow you to think, if we have success, how much do we need to scale up to and how you take those steps forward. Talk about the vision piece, how important that is to our company and moving ahead.

Basically, I think it's really everything that we need to cast a vision, and this is done at every level of the company. Glenn certainly does it. I try and do it. But even in the field, your field leaders do it. You need to cast a vision of where we can be, where we can go, what is the opportunity for us. And I believe our opportunity is unlimited. And I think what I also talk about, Larry, and love talking about is our mission. So I don't think it's enough to just have a vision of success of where you can go. I also think you need a vision of how you're going to make a difference in other people's lives. And if you do that, then you're much more likely to realize your own personal success. So it's a combination of casting a vision and having a purpose behind that. And the last thing I put in there is passion. You've got to be passionate about what you do. I think people do well, what they like doing.

Right.

I really. I've never been able to do. There's a lot of things I don't do well, and it's. It's a very big list, and everything on the list is something I don't like doing.

So.

Yeah, I think you got it. You got to focus on what you like to do.

Yeah. Except for golf. You know, with. With me, I like doing. Playing golf, but I'm no good at it. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I like playing golf, too. I've gotten a little better. I went through a slump.

Yeah.

And now I fought my way out of the slump. So I'm. I'm doing the. I'm playing the best golf I've ever played, which, by the way, in the scheme of things, is not good golf, but it's the best I've ever played.

Well, congratulations. And you. The thing is, you've got to know where you're going because. And how that's important for you, but also allows you to explain to the people inside the administrative side and as well as the people of the outside, how big the impact is they can make, how this can pay off. You're not going to run out of business why it is unlimited and why there's such a big potential for growth. There's really no. You got to take the vision and the opportunity and translate it where people can understand back to their level. This is where we are. And if we grow, that means good things can happen for you, because the company's going to Be bigger. And there's going to be more opportunities inside the company. If you're inside the cut, you know, inside the home office and things like that. You know, if we're expanding, adding people on, we're going to need more department heads and more management. More teams are going to have to form, you know, and so they realize not only will it pay off for the field, but this works both ways. You know, it's their fighting to make the company grow. And if a company grow, it's going to mean good things for them. And of course, in the field, you know that the more they do, the more they get paid and the more they stabilize their. Their business.

I also think you need to cast a vision. You need to. You need to cast a vision before you know how you're going to get there.

Right.

And so Lynn is at. Glenn Williams is absolutely the best at that. We decided we were going to make a goal to get to 130,000 sales agents. When we were at, I don't know, 99,000, we had no idea how we're going to get to 130,000, but we felt like we needed to get there to be successful. And we'll figure out how to get there. But let's begin with the objective. Otherwise what you do is you get so bogged down into the details about how we're going to add one more salesforce. How are we going to go from 99 to 100,000 sales agents? You can get bogged down in all the details of that. But if you say we're going to be at 130, then you got everyone moving towards a goal.

And what do you think about as you move forward? How do you do you think of it in a vague and a big thing. We're going to generally help a lot of people. How important is it to put numbers on those things? When you look at the opportunity out there and then when you put your game plan is it's basically what going to get. Making the vision real is. Okay, now what are we going to do with that? Now we're going to be going after certain amount of accomplishment by a certain timeframe, and then you get your game plan. Because now you've got the bite of the elephant that you're going to take. If the elephant is the global or national or worldwide opportunities, we're going to take this bite over this time period. Who wants to go with us? It's going to be great. And so then you, you know, because you. You got to identify, you got to take that Step of identifying the chunk you're going to go after of that big vision out there and before you can really put the plan in place. Right. Because plans got to have deadlines.

Yeah. Well, I mean, there is a degree of accountability, especially in a corporation, which is, you know, you got to measure, you got to see where you are on your game plan. You just, it just can't, it can't be vague.

Yeah.

Like when we said we're going to try and get to 130,000 sales representatives, it wasn't. We're going to just get bigger. It wasn't. We're going to get like a lot bigger. It was, we're going to get to 130,000. So that brings a degree of accountability right there. You have a number and you can measure how you're doing against that goal. At the same time, Larry, I do believe that you need to set goals that are pretty hard to achieve and may never be achieved. I think you need to try and your goal should be bigger than what your vision is at the moment because your vision changes as you get closer. So when we got closer to 130, we began thinking 150.

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Yeah, you're running through. As you know, there's a thing I say in my book, as you run through you, as you get closer to the finish line, you gotta stop thinking. Focus on, don't think. Don't be doubting yourself coming up with new game plans. Don't get sidetracked. Now you're just about to go through. But as you get right to it, you got to raise your sight so you could run through the finish line and start thinking about where you're going to go. Because now you've got, you know, you're close to being, having it in your rear view mirror. So where are you going to go next? And so that's what you're talking about. As soon as you start getting to a goal, you start raising the, raising the sights about where you can run to next.

I think that's a great way of thinking about it. And I also think you need a goal that people themselves can believe in. You know, we as leaders in anything, as leaders in our business, we are accountable through our vision to the people who can make this happen. And that's people in the home office, people in the field. And so they need to believe in the goal as well. If they don't believe in it, you'll never get folks there. And so part of that is convincing folks we can get there. Here's how we can do it, here's what we need to do. We can do this. There's got to be a we can do this mentality and we need everyone to believe in us. And by the way, if you're not a believer, that's okay. Maybe you'll come around later. I mean, I never want to throw anyone off a team because they have their own doubts. What we want to do is just is set out a pathway, get everyone started, and just keep everyone we can marching in the direction that we can. And you might lose some people along the way because they say, you know, Schneider or Glenn, I'm sorry, I just, I don't believe you're going to get there. I'm out. And if they're out, they're out.

And you know what I used to do, Peter, is when I ran the training center, you know, recruiting was my, my lead play and I knew I had to grow recruiting before anything else happened. So the first minute of the new month, I would call everybody out and say, okay, are you going to grow or slump this month? I got to grow. I'm in charge. My name's on the, on the bay shop.

We got to grow.

So are you going to be a part of my growth team this month? And if you're going to, you are, you're going to grow your recruiting. And I go around looking for who would get the first. When the first recruiting recruit would come in, I call everybody, let them know this again when we're small and we're revving up, you know, in the startup. But I was like a madman through the first of the month to get the recruiting numbers up and going, you know, get everybody to break the ice. It's a new month. There is no carryover, you know, let's go, go, go, go, go. If we're going to grow. And because I knew the month we're going to have a slump if I didn't have a growth in recruiting that month, you know, so they didn't know that they didn't have my experience, but they weren't in charge of. They couldn't see what everybody else is doing. They could only see what they were doing. And so I made it my job. My number one job is to get the recruiting, keep the recruiting going because the recruiting went to a slump, didn't matter what else we did. We weren't going to have many people doing it. You know, we were going to have less and less. So I had to keep the recruiting going so I didn't have to deal with the recruiting slump. And so I kept that recruiting momentum going. And usually about the half to the two thirds of the way through the month, I get a feel for like the numbers. Like if we had done 20 the month before, usually if we're up to 12, 15, I know we got enough momentum and focus and energy towards the recruiting thing. Now I can shift my focus to the follow through, the training, people getting promoted, promoted and things like that. You know, in other words, I had pushed the wheel long enough. I knew that wheel was going to go over the finish line and we were going to. I didn't know how many recruits we'd have, but it'd be more and we would grow. But that's the kind of thing you're talking about where you get as a corporate level, you're shooting for 130, but as you get to that level, and that's an old goal now, now we've got to look for 150. And part of your job is helping Glenn raise the vision. And that's what leaders need to do for their team. Because once people think, well, that was the goal, we hit it, everybody's going to relax. If you don't, you know, there's a penalty for not doing that out there, not putting that next step out there in front of people. And that is that people are going to ease off in spite of whatever they say, whatever other, anything else you do, if there's not something bigger to push for, they're going to relax a little bit. And that can have devastating consequences. And you've seen that in sports, haven't you?

Yeah. Well, let me go back to how we do our numbers. So every week we have a meeting within the home office in which on all sorts of numbers, at the beginning of month, everyone puts down what we're going to do, what are we going to try and achieve. And then every week there's a meeting where everyone says, okay, how we doing against that objective? Are we doing better or are we doing worse or are we right on? And it checks it off and we go through every one of those numbers and people have to bring. There's accountability for that. If they're not hitting their goals, then they got to explain what's going on. By the way, it's. Sometimes things happen and you can't hit that goal for that month, but there is that accountability. What you were just talking about, Larry, what you did in your business is you, you started out casting that vision right on recruiting. And then as you went through the month, you were seeing how you guys, how you were doing, and about two thirds, you had a pretty good idea that month was going to come out. We're just, we're exactly the same way.

Yeah. And because wherever, whatever your goal is, you got to stair step your way there. I mean, you know, how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time, you know, so how do you copy something great? You got to do it one step at a time and again, relentlessly pursue that goal. You know, you can't like launch it and we're all excited about it. Then everybody forgets about it. You got to get, you got to measure that thing.

So in sports in high school, I was a wrestler. That's what I did. I was a wrestler. And believe it or not, I wrestled at 119 pounds was my weight. It went up as you, as a year went by or as the time went by you got up, you could get as high as 124, I think, in terms of 124 pounds. And I was 5ft 11.

And so good night.

Yes.

Wow.

So I figured out that my competitive advantage was my height relative to the weight. So if I could get my weight way down, I could wrestle in a lower weight class and my opponents would not be as tall as me. And because you had to be really skinny to be as tall as I was with that and weight and not that 5, 11 is very tall, by the way. It's not 119 is pretty low. And so I would have an advantage over my opponents given my height, weight ratios. And so I was always fighting to get to what's called make weight in wrestling. And I would go on a scale and sometimes I would have to spit saliva into a cup to make weight. So you'd weigh in. If you were the scale hit, then you couldn't wrestle. You were going to be disqualified. And you had to figure out, then you. They'd weigh you again in 30 minutes. You had to figure out, how can I take off an ounce in 30 minutes weight. But once I made weight, now I had it. I'm in a lower weight class with smaller guys, and that gave me an advantage. And that's what. So that's. That was, that was a sport that I did in high school was wrestling.

And I would have never guessed that. I know, I thought you would have been a basketball player, but I love.

Basketball, so I play a lot of basketball. I played a lot of. But in high school, I was on the wrestling team.

Unbelievable.

I'm not even sure I enjoyed it or not, but it was, you know, if you. Let me tell you, there's nothing lonelier in life than when you're on a wrestling match and your shoulder is one inch from the mat and you're about to get pinned and all eyes are upon you, and you got to figure out, how am I not going to get myself pinned, pinned. How can I reverse this situation? Because you not only have to get out of that dilemma that you're in, but you then got to get on top of the other guy and try and pin him. So it is a fight when you're rest. I don't. Have you ever wrestled?

Have you ever. I never wanted anything to do with wrestling.

Okay.

Yeah.

Strength. It's leverage, too.

Yeah.

And so. And it's just you. It's just you against the other guy with the rules.

Interesting.

Interesting.

I always wondered why people wrestle. Thanks so much, Peter. This has been great. We. We've used up our time and I can't thank you enough. So thanks for sharing.

Great to be here, Larry. Appreciate the opportunity.

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