Why Every Practitioner Must Attend Think Tanks

If there's one event and you have a business that's solely or, or holistically primarily focused on teaching Nelson Nash's concept, and you're have an opportunity to be there as a, even as a guest, but primarily as an authorized practitioner, and you're not making that a priority in your business. I, I just have to ask why. There's a number of people, I have.

To ask if your business is priority.

Is your, yeah. And, and is this a priority element of your business or are you up to, up to something else? Because there's a number of people who simply have not attended in a number of years. And I personally think, and we, we'll see what direction the Nelson National Institute goes on this, it's up to the board of directors. But I personally think that you should be required to attend one, a minimum of one every three years or every fourth year, assuming that maybe you had a death in the family or some, you know, find, you know, maybe you're getting heart surgery or something, you're not able to attend. Like there are reasonable circumstances why people can't attend. I understand, but I really do think it should be a minimum of one every three years because there's so much possibility and potential and connection that's there, and people tend to, I don't want to say divert, but maybe get, you know, through proximity. The farther you away you are away from something, maybe the less it is in your mind when you get into that room of people. It's extremely difficult to not be fired up and, and really activated about Nelson and his core elements in his message. And you mentioned something that got me thinking. You know, one of the gentlemen I, I, I got to connect with on the first day at registration, who I, I always see every year, but I, I don't, I didn't, you know, I don't necessarily get a chance to speak to every year like you had indicated. And the gentleman, his name's Thomas Young. I don't know if he had a chance to talk to Thomas. Really neat guy. He's been in the business a long time. He's been in the business for 49 years. He's 75 years old and he was more fired up than, than, than people one half of his age in the room. He was elevated. And I talked to him and he had, In August of 2024, he said he had his best summer ever in the business, doing amazingly well. And then he ended up going and getting quintuple bypass surgery. I'm like, well, first of all, I didn't even know they did that. That's crazy. And I said to him, I made this joke, I said, so you mean to tell me, even though Nelson's gone, you couldn't let him have his quadruple bypass? You had to one up him somehow, you know, so he thought that was pretty funny.

And I'm thinking now he's uninsurable.

Yeah, well, he's 75 yearly. He's uninsurable, but he's got a whole life. He's got paid up additions. He's still buying more insurance every day because of the system. But he was so animated and excited. He's like, you know, after that experience, you thought I was fired up before that. I'm, I'm more fired up now. So it was just so good to see, you know, again at the age of 75. So many people are thinking that they're gonna turn it in at 75, like they're, they're winding down. And here's a gentleman, he's winding up, he's turning the crank, getting ready to take on the next 10 years, the next decade, and make it his best decade ever. And I thought, wow, that's amazing. Well, how often do you get to go to an event or a place where you can be surrounded by somebody like that, people that are animated about helping others in a way that Nelson's message allows us to do is really, really a fun energy to be around and to not make that commitment of being there. I just don't understand.

Right. And it's, here's the thing, for the people that are listening, that aren't practitioners, your, your industry of where you work is the same exact thing. You have conferences, you have things that you can go to. Why are you not going? Why are you not making those connections? You can be the lone ranger, but at some, at some point you're going to need help of other people. Like I'm going to email Richard or I'm going to text Jason or Winnie or whoever in the industry because I need help. And over the years you need that. I have a, I have an agent that works with me. And last year I didn't, I told her not to go because she had, she had gone to my, my client event. And then within three weeks she would have been that think tank. And she would went from think tank to her European trip. Right. And so I was like, oh my gosh, that is so much travel. Do not miss your family for this event when you're just starting, like, you're good, you're good. She. She didn't yell at me, but she set me straight. When she got home, I overheard.

She was. She was not happy that you told her not to go the first year. I think. I think to some degree she was. You know, there's a little bit of comedy there, but. But she was. She wanted to make it very clear and known that she. She definitely would have wished that she had a clear opportunity.

Yeah. And she told me that, which is awesome. And I thanked her for that, because I said I didn't. Like, I was just trying to protect her financially. I was trying to protect her from not missing out on family stuff. Right. Because she had gone to. So she would have gone to so many things. So I was thinking, like, don't, like. Don't, like, rearrange your whole life for this. It's just your first year. Like, you got your whole life. And she's like, I would have done so much better in my first year had I come, because I would have had extra mentors that I could have called upon. And I'm like, I never thought of that. Right. I was just thinking, hey, God, you've been traveling a lot. This is crazy. And that's not my spot to think about. So I was in the wrong. But she like, it. It's done. It's in the past. She's golden. She's gonna be fantastic. But it really is, like, if we're not going, how is that slowing us down? And we don't make those extra contacts, we don't make those friendships. We don't have those other mentors. And that helped me. The first year I went, I met all those other people, and I was like, well, you know, the person I started out with didn't work out, and at least I had other people to go to because I knew those people. Otherwise, I'd be out of the industry. I was just thinking about this the last couple of days, and I saw. I heard a podcast today talk about the average farmer is 59 and a half. And that's horrible, you know? And I'm like, is it horrible? The average life insurance agent is in their upper 50s, but, my God, I'm 50. Like, it took me some time to get here. How many people fall out of this industry? So we're saying that the average age is bad because it's older, but you have to work to get where you're at. Like, it's not like it happens overnight. And so we have to start. We have to start somewhere. It doesn't matter if you're old if you're not, whatever. But it is nice to have those mentors to be able to reach out to.

Yeah, totally. I appreciate that. Now, you know, we did a couple other interesting.

But now I'm going to say to her, I heard you were mad. You're telling people you're mad.

You're gonna say I was talking to Richard and I was talking to Richard.

And he said that you were mad.

Yeah, well, well, her and I got into a fun conversation about Colby as well at one of the evenings, which is nice. It doesn't take long for me to get animated when we talk about the Colby A index. But not to digress too much now, this year we did something else kind of different. We had what I called coaching corners. So during the breaks we had longer breaks of the think tank, some something that the, the membership had been asking for. So we had approximately 2530 minute breaks and we had different stations set up in the room on the interior so people could go out and connect with the sponsors and the life companies and so on and one another. And then we had these stations. So we had one for kind of like the veterans group, the experienced practitioner. We had our council corner. So yourself, myself, Bruce Wayner. Granted, I didn't get a chance to really go in there because I was a little bit busy with the MC situation. And then we had one for the coaching academy. Now your perspective, I just want your thoughts on that. What did you enjoy about that experience? What were some of the comments you heard from people attending the event?

Well, honestly, I didn't go to them either, Richard. I can't, I can't even lie about it. I was so busy talking to people on those that maybe didn't go that I didn't even attend any of them. And I got home and thought, what the heck, I didn't even go to those. Why didn't I go to those? I have no idea why I did not go to those, but.

Well, you didn't go to all of them except the one that you had to facilitate because I. Yeah, the one.

That I facilitated, I was in and.

And there was a crowd of like 25 people around you at that time, by the way, because I did happen.

To look, so I, I mean obviously I went to that. That one was great. That one was, that one went well, but I did not go to the other ones. So I can't, I can't. All I can say is next year I'll be attending those because I think they were amazing. I think it was super smart to do them. But why I didn't go to them, I don't. Obviously I don't even remember them. So that means people were talking to me. I don't know.

The event does become a bit of a blur and I did see good groups of people at most of the sessions and when I spoke to some of the other people who volunteered to handle those roles, but also, you know, some of the comments about people who had attended them, I received incredibly positive feedback how much value that was, especially the new people. They had that time to say, hey, look, maybe I don't know anyone in the room yet, but here's a direction I can go and I can ask specific questions of somebody. And I think that was really tremendously valuable. Now I wanted to change gears a little bit. We have an upcoming coaching academy coming up here in May, which I know is a date that you unfortunately won't be able to join us.

No, I'm coming.

Oh, you're coming. Okay. You've reorganized your calendar.

Yeah.

Oh, so grat. That's great. So I get. So the great news is I get to see you again in about a month or so's time. Maybe when this airs, it'll be at the time that we're doing the, that Coaching Academy. So this is something that was, I think I'll call it, you know, demanded, requested from the membership. Although we didn't know the format at the council, we've been talking about this now for two years and being able to implement some direction how we can add more value, more education to our practitioner community. And also a lot of the new people coming in. You know, in the last year, year and a half, there's been a pretty good spike and increase in applications that the Nelson Nash Institute has received for people to go through the interview process to see if they can join the practitioner body, you know, become a, become an authorized practitioner. And there's a, there's a, I'll say issue with mentorship and trying to find good people to mentor individuals and make that a functional aspect. So now going forward, anyone who joins the Nelson Nash Institute and is approved to go through the interview process, get their check mark, they're able to get started. They pay their initial fees. Their initial fees also going to include access to the first coaching academy. They have to attend one in the very first 12 months, which is hugely impactful. We've had a number of people attend, a couple back to back ones and we're seeing from your perspective of mine, we've had these conversations one on one. I I would say we're seeing an elevated, almost an exponential growth in those individuals who are attending that. So give me some perspective from yourself, from what you've seen both facilitating and what you see now. Having done a couple of these events.

I think it's awesome because people are actually taking away what they need to create a business, right? They can talk about IBC because we break down Nelson's book so they can talk about ibc. They know how to talk to a client using byob, but they also then know like we're giving them a 30 day book challenge and they're generating clients where we've been starving before and they've been struggling to build their business. We're giving them all the tools that they need to go out and actually utilize to create income coming back to them and share the message correctly so that they know exactly how to use the book. I think there's a lot of practitioners, myself included, that I didn't use a book correctly for a very long time because I didn't understand the book for a very long time and I wasn't taught to use the book.