How To Produce Independent Super Star Leaders #5

This will be number five in our series. We're doing with up and coming million dollar earner Joe Tanzi out of New Jersey. And this is, we're talking about developing leaders. And this was my system that I used for going from, to me, this was the key, Joe, of how I went in 19, 1979, my first year in North Carolina, from 56 recruits to 1980, 1800, 1981 we did 7200 recruits. In 1982 we did 15,000 recruits. And that added up to around 20, what, 22, 3, 2, 4. Somewhere close to about 24,000 recruits over three years. How did that happen? Well, obviously there were some levels of control, some things that allowed us to do that kind of compounding and avoid slumps. And that was before the company had all our computer reporting. Every system said, and that's when ours called and said, Larry, shut your bay shop down and work with all those people you've developed. And so it seemed to be like a good idea at the time. That's what I did. And I won't talk to you about why that was a bad move, but I will say that's what I did. So how do we get to this point? How did we have this consistency? Is that an interesting topic, Joe? Absolutely. That, that, that's what I want now. All right, I'll tell you and I'll promise you, you may do it, but nobody else will. Because I told people this since 1980. Nobody ever does it. Okay? Nobody ever does it. I don't understand but got up to where we were doing. We, we wound up doing, I think in our peak, you know, we recruited like four or five hundred people. I mean we make five hundred. He was a juggernaut. And so now people are struggling to do one or two a month. And we had hundreds and I had 60 direct full time people, 40 different offices, probably 50 different offices inside the training center. Wow. And I ran it, I ran it a lot like, because I had the experience from being in construction and working with, I ran it like a hierarchy type based shop. And that's to me the model of greatness where you're running a training center, you still have the control over them, you can still develop them, but they're doing it almost like they're totally on their own because they there, that's where they're going to learn the most. And so I have some philosophies about it. Number one is they would never work for me. They wouldn't work for me as hard as they would for their self. Well, some people say, well, I've got them in my. I've got a whole office full of people who are supposed to be working for themselves or on commission. And they don't seem to work at all well because they're in your office and you're paying the bills and everything. And you don't do anything to really make them feel like they have their own office, their own business. They think they're just like it, employee. So I did things to create, you know, to break out of that. The other thing is I had the idea nobody wants to do. I knew this, no business person, let's just say man, man, woman, person. Nobody wants to do the books. No one wants to do the book. But if you don't do the books, what are the books? The books are the numbers. No business. Now anybody be starting on their business, Anybody talk to the clients, they want to be out circulating. They want to be trying new things, developing new product, coming up with new services, mingling. They don't want to sit down and be an accountant. They don't want to sit and look at the numbers. But you either do the books. But every businessman learns she'll either do it or you'll work for somebody who will see. If you don't know your numbers, you are like the blind leading the blind. But if you don't know your numbers, you are like a blind meeting the blind. And the Bible says if the blind lead the blind, they both fall in the ditch. That's the way most leaders are. They're blindly leading their people in the ditch. They don't know what their numbers are, where they are, where they're headed. They're just wandering around like idiots. And then they have a slump. Oh my God, I had a slump. Well, of course, you moron. Take the blindfolders off. Been wandering around for 30 days like an idiot. You know, take charge. Did you see that? You were marching off in the wrong direction. And then halfway through the month you turned around and made a 90 degree into another non direct wrong direction. And then 4 days later you marched off in another wrong direction. Don't you even know where you're headed? So anyway, you know, I kind of. The deal is you're trading people for big income. Be their own boss, lead other people to greatness. Well, if you're not going to know your numbers, I have. I know people don't want to do that. Nobody want, no want do it. But you cannot be independent if you don't do that. I get a little wound up about this. Joe and I get a little wound up. We just had a meeting last night and I'm asking my leaders where their numbers at last, last month and last year. They all look at me like freaking deer in the headlights. It's like how you know what the freak you're doing if you don't. They don't, they don't know whether two years ago, last year, this year, whatever. They don't know what they're going to do. They do not, you know, they have no, they, they are employees and they, and they say, well, and they're trying to, trying to do a business person's job. You, you know what is a CEO? CEO has to make a projection and hit it. You know, we heard Rick Williams masterful performance on the numbers of where we're in the industry, how we're positioned for greatness. He knows those numbers. Like, you've got to have a little bit of that, at least a little bit of that if you're going to be a leader. And so here's what I knew. I started them at district. It's like this. It's like your kids. No kid wants to do homework. Now, you guys probably had a bunch of little nerds grow up in your family, but the kids, I know, no one wants to do homework. My kids still don't like to do homework. That's our issue right now. Yeah, some kids like to do homework, but I've never met one. Anyway, the. What do they have to do homework to get them to do the homework anyway, Joe? Oh, absolutely. They got to do it. Why? Because they're gonna have to pass test. They're gonna be tested the same thing in business. You're gonna be tested. Knuckleheads, wake up and smell the roses. You want to be a third grade the rest of your life? Well, do your homework so you can get promoted up there. Otherwise all these other your friends are going to be promoted up and leave you behind. Same way in the training center. All these you have in your training. They're gonna be promoting up. They'll be running their own office. They're gonna be out of here. They're gonna be living a great life, having their own businesses, having their own teams. You're gonna be sitting back here sweeping out the closet again because you're too sorry to do your numbers. Grow up, develop some. You know, we've got to. You gotta see, here's where I am right now, yelling at them what you did last night. Yep. Doesn't work, does it? Nope. You got to have a system. Must have a system. Here's the greatest example I ever saw that I ever heard of this. You take a cop. Have you ever got a ticket, Joe? Yes. Go down the highway, all of a sudden, you see that blinking light behind you? Yep. Now, when that guy comes up, he pulls you over and he comes over. Does he yell at you? Joey, you idiot, what are you thinking? How did your mother raise you? What are you doing? Does he yell at you like that? No. No. You're not scared because. You're scared because what he's going to do, he's getting ready to do something to you. He's not going to stick you with a you know what, a stun gun or shoot you. He's going to give you a ticket. That's all he's going to do. But you're getting a reprimand. We don't want to reprimand. And I'm very familiar with this because I get a lot of them. Don't ask Tracy how many. But the thing is, he's very polite. Mr. Tanzing, I see your license. Very polite. But the thing is, he's holding you accountable. Then on the other hand, Joe, let's just say that same cop, let's say you're buzzing out the the highway, you know, 80, 90 miles an hour, you're in a hurry, you got this. After whatever reason. Let's just say you got a valid reason. But no cars out there. You're not dangerous. You're just screaming. Now, let's just say that cop doesn't have a car, doesn't have a motorcycle, don't have a car. He's on the side of the road and he's got a little laser gun and he clocked you going too fast and he's screaming you. As you go by, you see him jumping up and down. He's screaming. He's, you know, he's chasing you and he's, you know, waving and he's yelling, you know, what are you doing? Are you worried, Joe? No, not worried. As long as you didn't get my license plate number. Yeah, you know, you're not worried. What's he gonna do? He can't do anything. He can't get me. He can't get me. But if he's got. And he's over there yelling, screaming, you know, that's why yelling doesn't work. You gotta have if what they have. You got to become the cop with the system. You gotta have a way where you keep tabs on them. Am I getting your attention, Joey? Yes, You Are okay, here's what I can't be more than enough. When you deal with trainees, it has to be a monthly. You have to teach in the business one month at a time. And so here's what I would do. I talk, let's just say gone on this whole thing too. I'm going to give you the punchline and if this doesn't do it, Joe, I can come back later and we can talk about it some more if you want. Okay, but let's get to the punchline. Everybody's listened to five of these tapes. Here's what I did. You know what you want. What I did was every district, once you went, even the part time management, every district had to turn in a report at a specific time, 10am on the 1st of the month, the first day after month end. They had to turn in their numbers, they had to turn in their report. That report is very simply what they did. And what it was, was I had a. I made up a simple form. Whereas I had a log of recruits and I had the key information. You know, you can look at them in a column. I was doing this not in the beginning. I did it because we didn't have everything on a computer. And this was a way of keeping up with it. You know, I'd have the names, age, where they were, you know, what market they were in, things like that to see if there's any problem area. There was a form. Now think of it like this. When they're district leaders, they're beginners. They probably only have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of these things. If they couldn't keep up and do a report when they were small, I knew they'd never be worth a stink. And they got bigger. And if I taught them how to do this stuff and held their feet to the fire, just like teaching kids to do homework. Because homework is not an option, buster. You don't do the homework. And as soon as you get used to do that, then you can see how quick can I do it and get on with life. Then you can learn. This is not a negotiable item. Non negotiable. 30, 40 years in the business I've told people about this and they think if they do it, it's negotiable for the guys. Do it if you want, maybe they'll try. No, this has got to be something like your key to graduation has to do with you turning these reports in. Because once you get out on your own, you're going to have to do reports. If you can't do reports, then I have to do the reports for you. And you're essentially a baby. And you're gonna stay in my training center the rest of your life. And frankly, I don't like you that much. I'm gonna be able to stand you for a year or two. And then you're gonna be like a dead fish. You gotta move on, Chucky. Come on. You're supposed to get this stuff, move on. I got other people who gotta come behind you. You're not gonna make me enough money in your life for me to build all my hopes and dreams around what you might do. I've gotta have. And then if you. Even if you were, you'd get rentals and buy a truck. You. And then I'd be back to ground zero again. So I gotta have. I've got a video on eggs in a basket. You know, My job was to keep them war and let them develop While they were sitting in the basket. This is what I had them doing. Teaching themselves the business. See, I wanted them to teach. I can only teach it from the outside. They got to teach themselves. They have to find out what they don't know. They got to prove to themselves what they don't know. If I don't put them in charge like this, they just think they're an employee working in my office and I'm doing the numbers, yelling at them to do more. But if they have numbers and they've got to do the reports, they understand they've got a little business inside of my system. They're supposed to produce results. See, my job as a leader is not just to build leaders. It's produce, growth. I got to deliver every month. I'm a CEO on Wall Street. I got to deliver every quarter. Well, if they're going to be in business, they're going to have to deliver every day, week, month. That's how you make money. You deliver. And so they've got to find out what they don't know. They've got to develop, learn how, what a sense of urgency is. If I don't put them in charge of the numbers, I'm actually handicapped. And then we wonder why we produce people that they don't know how to do nothing. It's their own darn fault. We created incompetent people. We never gave them this chance to develop. What if you had a kid? Same school teacher, taught all day long. Never had to do any homework, ever had to do any work in this. And then they took tests and they flocked. People say, I Don't know. These are the dumbest kids ever met. No. Stupid teachers, stupid parents. You didn't raise them right. You didn't teach them they had to do stuff on their own if they were going to learn. I'm ranting and raving, aren't I, Joey? That's what I did. I mean, you got to make things happen if you don't be a leader. That's right. So go back to the report. So they log the recruits, their premium, their. What else would you have on that report? Okay, I can't. Yeah, I got up there. They would have a log and then they would have a copy. They have a log and then a copy of each thing. It's easy to do now. You know, we can do it off the computer, but they have a copy of each sheet. But they have a law that way to make it easier to go, da, da, da, da, da, da. And if I want to drill down and look at more information, I can see a copy of their, you know, their application. But they have a. A log for client, for sales. You know, same thing. There'd be a log and it would have like the name, the age. And I put things like the beneficiary, the amounts, you know, things in our business that make a difference, like the securities, the amounts. So you could see if things that would be. Create a red flag, like if you're recruiting people too old, too young out of the market, if you're making sales to people too old, too young out of the market, they're not going to be able to pay for it. So they would. I would have them. Also there was a comment line on these forms. The last thing was comments. So if there was anything in here that was a red flag, I'd want them to make a comment so they would know. I would know that they knew this was a chancey piece of business or chancy recruit a little bit out of the market that they took a chance on, even though it was not, you know, it might not be as good and it might be a little iffy, but they took a chance because of this reason, and they wrote a comment on the side to let me know they knew that. Okay? And they. And they wouldn't wait for me to have to point that out to them, okay. Because that's the way I can see is this somebody who's got business judgment? Remember on that first thing where I had the five list of things, if as they go into this thing, I find out, did they have good business judgment or not, are they going to be able to see this is also. Are they confident and can they do it at speed? How much can they get done in a month? You know, how can. What are they going to do when they get out of the road? This is what they're doing under my supervision. Yeah. So this, this, them and their team. Would they also. This is them and their team. Them and their team. Okay. You know, I could care less about how much they did personally once they went to manage. I could care less what they did personally because their job was to grow their numbers. And obviously if they didn't have a team, they had to do it all themselves. Ideally, they have so many people that it's hard for a manager not to work if you got lots of activity. It's hard for a mother or dad who have 12 kids not to work. I'm not going to say, you know, to a mom or a dad who's got 12 kids. Yeah, but did you do anything this month or did your kids do all your work? They weren't. They had to keep up with it. So it's a matter of this gave me a system. So you take your key areas, the ivory recruits, my clients, my same thing on activity. You know, I keep up with the activity numbers. So they would have to turn in the end of the month. They would come in and we would have a little meeting. Now I spent at this meeting five minutes. I didn't have time to screw around with them. Five minutes. I'd have 40 guys lined up inside my office in order to, you know, the one with the biggest numbers came in first. It'd be like going to the principals. They come in and we close the door and they'd show me their reports 10 o', clock, not 10:01. I gave them very few rules, but this one they had to do because I had to find out if I could trust them in business. In the five minute meeting behind closed doors, they would show me last month, which is basically this. Keep it simple, but enough to where they know what they did and then you get their projections for this month. I'm not telling them what they're going to do. They're telling me what they're going to do this month. But see, they're giving me their targets, Joe. And so by doing that, they learn how to go through a year where they can go and, you know, hit targets. And even if they put a target out there and they don't get it, well, at least they're learning, you see? Yeah, yeah, they're learning. They're Finding out what they don't know. They're learning how to ask questions. They're not just learning to do it. They're learning how to collapse time frame, how to be responsible, how to be in charge. And so these were the things that I did. I don't want to take too long on this. We talk more later. In fact, call me if you want to do it again and we'll put you another one. But this was simply, it was a simple thing, not complicated, but I essentially delegated the record keeping, tracking and I made. I created small businesses inside my big business. Lots of small business leaning created for me a big business. That makes sense. Yep. And if they couldn't handle the small, it was obvious they were not capable of going out and taking a bigger contract and doing the bigger business. Now we haven't gotten into. But let's do one on replacement sometime. Okay, let's do one on replacement. What they leave behind, this is. No, this is good. This is where some things that I needed help with as far as the system and how you, how you ran it, because those, those recruiting numbers are outrageous. And the question is, how do you, what do you did. The big question that we always get, what do you do with all those people? You know, now I see them. You know, you recruit them, you train them. See, that's when I found out, you know, when they turn in the recruiting numbers, I could see, well, what happened to this guy? What happened to that guy? What happened to that guy? If they weren't doing anything, then I would drop in there and get it fixed. They had to prove to me they, if you recruited, you trained, if you wrote the business, you know, you wrote the sale, you followed up on it. Yep. I'm not going to follow up with you. What am I, your secretary? If you can't write clean business, I don't need you. I can't get big. Everything was off saying, how can we get big? Well, if I've got to do anything for you, everybody's got to be an independent. See this whole thing, Remember the independent leader? Yep. How can I build independent rbp? Strong, growing independent. Well, this you started from the first moment. They get promoted, congratulations, you make a big deal upstage. And now come over here, son. Let me show you what big boys do. And you're not going to have much to do because you ain't going to be doing that much, but you're going to learn how to do this. So once you get to where you're doing hundreds a month, it's Going to be like playing patty cake to you. You would have been doing it all your life. You know, we would have taught them the numbers and they can do it in a second nature thing. As hard as it is for them to do it in their districts and divisions and regionals, the easier it's going to be for them to do it when they're out on their own will be second nature and they can do huge. But this allows me to build independent leaders and this allows me to keep growing. If I have job, my secretaries are keeping up with all their paperwork, all their position, all their follow up and training all their people. We can't get duties. But if I have fully independent units, every unit is independent. I can keep adding and adding and adding because it's no more wear and tear on me. Same thing of putting these videos up on YouTube. You know, I do it one time, then it's up there and we could have like. You've watched a bunch of these videos. You know what? I didn't have a sleepless night. It didn't like suck the life out of me. Because you were watching these other videos that you watch. I didn't even know you watched them. They're up there. Or we can have 10,000, 100,000. A million people can watch the videos. Go wear and tear on me. Well, that's how I set up my next shop. Joe, if you're going to be in here, you've got to be independent. You cannot create grief for me or I can't afford to have you around. I don't hate your business. It is going to be a burden. I need your business and I need you because you make a contribution. But if you're a burden because you screw up my fine tuned Ferrari of growth, well, I gotta throw your butt out of my Ferrari. I can't afford you in leadership. I gotta let you. I gotta roll you back underneath somebody I can trust. And so if that's too tough, Joe, I don't really care. I don't really care. I'm trying to develop people who can make a quarter million, half a million dollars a year as fast as possible. Is a certain minimum thing. Is it too tough for little Chucky to read, you know, to do his arithmetic? You know, when I was in third grade, my uncle sat down every night. It took me forever to get my addition, my subtraction and my multiplication and sit with those cards. Michael Martin sat down with me. Hours. You know what I had once? We did this about a month. And after that I had that Stuff imprinted in my mind as a result. Algebra, trigonometry, geometry. The rest of my life. Even now, today, I can do calculations in my head because at third grade, Uncle Martin sat down with me for hours. We did those flip charts and I memorized that stuff. And that made the rest of my life in math and easy. So is that helpful, Joey? No, that's very helpful. I think this part was big because I being that I'm a recovering control freak, I needed a system. You know, I got a system. But it's not as I see, you know, we do a business plan. I see the part where I'm missing that I need to have them take care of their numbers, report their numbers last month, every month. And I got some ideas on the recruits, the production and stuff to put on that log. So I'm going to implement that. Well, you see what we're talking about these five things, you know, like this is what we have. How do you teach rookies? Because superstars, you know, how to teach them how to make things happen, how to be independent leaders who can amount to something. Well, how do you get them to where they're confident in these five areas we talked about earlier? How do you get them where they can be confident enough and you know, you wouldn't even have to worry about it if they move to another state and started from scratch and pioneered a new area. Well, because you've seen how they operate in all these key areas. They demonstrated their core competence. It's not like they promised to you. Well, I'll be good. I'll be a great guy. You can trust me to make big decisions. I mean, to handle decisions. I'll manage my money. I'll do things like that. And you can put that on the report if you wanted to. You could put into your reports how much money have saved, how much you making, how much you save? Are you got money for your taxes? Okay, you can add all these things as far as how many leaders you're developing and things like that. Licenses, that's another thing. How many licenses did you get this month? And so whatever the key things are how many security sales you have logged in those areas that matter. And by doing that, turning in, you're teaching. And then that's important. Rather than yelling at them like you know you're making and you don't, at the end of the month, you walk up to them and say, your report. Need your sales log. I see your client log. Can I see your new license log? Can I see your securities log? Of course they won't have those licenses early on, but once they get a regional leader. And can I have your projections for next month? You've done it very low key. And their hearts are racing inside. They all, you know, they all panic. The people who do the biggest numbers, I don't care how much they do, they're all intimidated. They hate to go to the principal's office because they all know they could have done more. And you're just glad to have anybody who's doing anything. But on the other hand, you can go in without a system. You sit there yelling at them all night long. It doesn't have 1/5 of an effect on their life. And it keeps you in control without being a control freak. Because the rest of the month, you can care what system or how they do it. Just get it done. End of the month, though, you're going to show me what you got. Do you like that, Joey? I love it. I love it. I'm writing out my chart right now so I can get it done. Okay. All right. Hey, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks so much, Joe. Thank you.